The Queen Bee

Every restaurant begins as a small, hopeful republic.

You hire with the best intentions. You talk about family. About teamwork. About having each other’s backs when the tickets stack and the fryer goes down and the printer won’t stop screaming. You imagine a single organism—front and back of house breathing together, moving with purpose, united by the simple goal of getting people fed and home again.

And then, quietly, almost politely, the cliques arrive.

They don’t announce themselves. They never do. They form in the corners, in the shared misery of a slammed Friday night, in whispered jokes by the soda machine, in smoke breaks taken together just a little too often. They form the way barnacles do—slowly, stubbornly, and with a talent for tearing the hull apart if you let them grow unchecked.

Restaurants are pressure cookers. Heat, hierarchy, exhaustion, adrenaline. Under those conditions, people bond fast. Sometimes that bonding is healthy. Sometimes it’s tribal. And tribes, once formed, start drawing lines.

Front of house versus back of house. Openers versus closers. Veterans versus new hires. Day shift saints looking down on night shift sinners. Suddenly, instead of one team, you’ve got factions. Information stops flowing. Resentment fills the gaps. “They don’t pull their weight.” “They get all the good sections.” “Management always sides with them.”

This is how division becomes culture.

When cliques take hold, the kitchen gets quieter in the wrong ways. Jokes stop crossing the line between stations. Servers stop helping each other run food. People do their job—and only their job—with a kind of cold precision that looks like professionalism until you realize no one cares anymore.

And here’s the hard truth: eventually, someone will blame you.

They’ll say you let it happen. That you played favorites. That you didn’t see it soon enough, or worse, that you saw it and did nothing. And they won’t be entirely wrong. Culture does start with the operator. Not with what you say in meetings, but with what you tolerate when you’re tired, busy, or distracted.

Every ignored eye roll. Every whispered insult brushed off as “just how she is.” Every high performer given a pass because replacing them would be inconvenient. These are deposits into the bank account of dysfunction.

Some will point to a different culprit. The queen bee.

There is always one.

She doesn’t always have the title. Sometimes she’s a server with seniority, sometimes a shift lead, sometimes the cook who’s been there since the doors first opened and knows where all the bodies are buried. She’s charismatic. Funny. Often very good at her job. People orbit her. They seek her approval. They mirror her attitudes.

When she’s positive, the place hums. When she turns sour, the rot spreads fast.

The queen bee doesn’t need to raise her voice. A look will do. A comment said just loudly enough to be overheard. A private conversation that somehow everyone knows about by the end of the shift. She decides who’s in and who’s out. Who’s “cool” and who’s not worth helping when the weeds come.

And here’s the dangerous part: she often thinks she’s protecting the culture.

She’ll tell you she’s just being honest. That she’s holding standards. That she’s saying what everyone else is too afraid to say. Sometimes, in flashes, she’s right. That’s what makes her powerful. And that’s why operators hesitate.

Because firing your best people is terrifying.

But left unchecked, the queen bee doesn’t just create cliques—she becomes the culture. New hires learn quickly who to please. Managers start routing communication through her. Suddenly, you’re not running the restaurant. She is. And she didn’t sign the lease or make payroll.

This is the crossroads where operators earn their scars.

You can try to coach it out of her. Sometimes that works. Clear expectations, real consequences, a genuine chance to step up and lead without poisoning the well. But if she resists—if the behavior continues, just more quietly—you have a choice to make.

And this is where nostalgia creeps in. Not for some golden age of restaurants, but for something simpler: respect. The understanding that no one is bigger than the team. Not the chef. Not the star server. Not the person who “knows how things really work.”

When you finally act—when you banish the queen bee—it will hurt. Productivity may dip. Her allies will grumble. Some may leave. You’ll question yourself at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling, replaying every decision that led there.

But something else will happen too.

The room will breathe.

People who were quiet will start talking. New hires will stop quitting after two weeks. Jokes will come back—not the cutting kind, but the ones that make a shift survivable. The energy will change in ways you can’t measure on a P&L, but you’ll feel it when you walk in the door.

Making an example isn’t about punishment. It’s about clarity. It tells the rest of the staff that the rules apply to everyone. That talent doesn’t excuse toxicity. That the team matters more than any individual ego.

Restaurants are built on trust—between cooks on a line, between servers and guests, between owners and staff. Cliques erode that trust from the inside, quietly, efficiently. By the time you see the damage, it’s usually widespread.

So watch closely. Listen harder than you talk. Pay attention to who controls the room when you’re not there. Culture isn’t what you write on the wall—it’s what happens when the printer jams and the tickets keep coming.

You wanted one team. Undivided. That vision isn’t naïve. It’s necessary. But it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because you protect it. Relentlessly.

In this business, everyone eats eventually. The question is whether they’re pulling from the same table—or carving it up piece by piece when they think no one’s watching.

Is there a Queen Bee at your operation causing division amongst the staff? If there is, we can help!

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