The K2 Collections, Winter awakening

Gault&Millau: How do you plan for the opening of a seasonal establishment?

Jean-Alain Baccon: K2 Collections employs 450 people in its four hotels, including 400 seasonal workers. As you can imagine, recruitment is one of the keys to a successful season. Although we are fortunate, especially in the gastronomy department, to be a benchmark today and to attract many young people, we are always on the lookout for new associates. On the culinary side, our objectives are highly qualitative. Sébastien needs a large, high-performance team to work on the pastry and bakery worlds of our seven restaurants, and on the slightly outlandish Sarkara experiment.

G&M: Sébastien, how do you put together your team?

Sébastien Vauxion: There are 21 of us in the pastry department. Despite the popularity of our restaurants and the reputation of Sarkara, the annual turnover of my seasonal staff is around 70%. On the other hand, those who come back do so for a long time. Most of the time, they're here for four or five years, and some even seven. This is a strength, because they become the pillars of the teams, training them and passing on know-how in all areas and at every level. A large part of the recruitment process takes place during the opening, because these key people, who then leave for the summer season, come back with staff for the winter. They are our best ambassadors. The people they bring with them not only have the skills, but also the right frame of mind. As a result, we have people who don't know our houses, but who are immediately very efficient.

G&M: How do you make sure they come back the following season?

J.-A. B.: We train them in all aspects of the hotel and restaurant business with super pros, our chefs de service, who are with us all year round. It's a guarantee of quality in which the company invests heavily. Today, we know that it takes three seasons for an employee to really become part of the K2 Collections family, whatever their field. Four months goes by very quickly. They'll get the hang of things, but they won't have integrated our philosophy yet. It's only in the third season that they'll really apply what they've learned in the second. The advantage is that, by then, they'll be ready to take on higher positions and become trainers in their own right.

In pastry-making, and more particularly in gastronomy, people are passionate. But they don't necessarily expect the high standards required by establishments like ours. Sometimes it's too much for them, and they decide to leave us, sometimes even before the season has started. Those who continue the adventure must be well aware that, during this four-month marathon, they must maintain a level of quality equivalent to that of an all-year-round establishment. That's why major investments are made at the start of the season. In Sébastien's teams, the first employees arrived in early October for a December 15 opening.

It's also why we decided, with our owners, to reinforce our year-round teams. This represents a colossal investment, since for a four-and-a-half-month opening, we sign up people for twelve months. But that's what contributes to success, and it's unthinkable to operate otherwise, at the risk of ending up with the standards of the seasonal establishment that brings in its staff four days before the launch, with customers who will suffer for weeks, even months, from the company's adjustments.

G&M: You also have to create the conditions to welcome them...

J.-A. B.: We do everything we can to make sure they are received as well as possible. 99% of them are accommodated by the Group. This costs us a lot of money because, as you can imagine, beds in Courchevel aren't cheap these days! But it's also the key to a good season, and what's going to make the employee, who feels considered, come back and recommend us to others.

G&M: Has this attention always been present within the Group, or has it been reinforced by current recruitment difficulties?

J.-A. B.: It's always been there, because it's the philosophy of the owners, Mr and Mrs Capezzone. For example, Madame Capezzone has been here for two weeks, personally looking after the Christmas gifts for our 450 employees. We've just ordered a pallet of 500 bottles of champagne so that everyone can have one with their box of chocolates. She takes care of the gifts for the teams, but also for customers and their children. Santa Claus, who arrives on the 25th with his sled dogs, distributes them by name. During the evening, the children of customers and staff mingle happily together. I've been here for twenty-two years, and my daughter, who was 6 months old at the time, has received her little package and photo with Santa Claus every year.

G&M: Sébastien, at what point do you get down to designing your dishes?

S. V.: On the executive pastry chef side of the business, certain things are worked out from year to year. For example, the bases for the viennoiseries. At the start of the season, a member of our team launches a trial on these bases and on two or three creative ideas, which we then test. For the desserts at the Peruvian and Lebanese tables, it's something I anticipated in advance, when we closed the houses, took inventory, etc. After a few days' rest, I'm back at work. After a few days' rest, I get straight back into it because it throws me into the autumn moments at the very start of the season. On the other hand, I can't create gourmet dishes in the heat. I've done it before, but I don't like it in autumn. So I wait for the first cold snaps, the first snows, and inspiration comes spontaneously.

G&M: Most chefs look forward to the summer months. For your part, you have to deal with a different repertoire...

S. V.: Yes, a winter repertoire. But we have plenty of things to work with. Dried fruits and citrus fruits, for example, are at their best now. Exotic fruits, less and less, because my sensibility is really focused on local products. On the other hand, there's the whole operation of preserving fruit. Being here year-round allows me to pick seeds, herbs, berries and red fruits, which I work on beforehand, transforming them into coulis, fruit in syrup, candied fruit... They will enrich my palette of tastes for the winter. It's the very essence of our profession, and of good farming sense, to make logical and interesting preserves. I do this all season long, right up until the first snow, at the K2 Palace. I have my pastry lab there, which I never close completely.

G&M: Last question, are you ready?

J.-A. B.: We're in the middle of tasting. Every day, we taste the dishes from each universe, to make sure we haven't forgotten anything and that they're up to the desired standard. Sometimes we have to do dozens of tastings to achieve consistency in our menus. The sommeliers are in the cellars putting away the orders, delivered daily. The bartenders refine their final cocktails.

S. V.: And then there's all the production of chocolates, cakes and other Christmas desserts, supervising the hotel teams, who have to reproduce our basic recipes identically so that the first customers, who settle in at 10:30 on the first morning, have with their coffee a perfect little madeleine fresh from the oven.

K2, Winter 22/23 collection

In addition to its emblematic restaurants Le Sarkara (3 toques) and Montgomerie (3 toques), the group is inaugurating new spaces within its hotel collection this year. Building on its success at the K2 Chogori in Val-d'Isère, the Peruvian restaurant Altiplano is now also set up at the K2 Palace in Courchevel, while a Lebanese table, Aïnata, and its deversion of Base Kamp by Aïnata, under the supervision of Alan Geaam, and a vegetarian counter, with a menu designed by Peter Riedijk and Sébastien Vauxion, open at the heart of K2 Altitude.

Read Sébastien Vauxion's portrait

Read Gault&Millau's review of Le Sarkara

Read Gault&Millau's review of Le K2 Altitude