There’s a different vibe to the second season of ‘The Bear’

Folks at The Beef will consider where their place is in the world and what it’s like to deal with growing pains.

“Winning is losing,” says Creator Christopher Storer. “The minute you feel like you won something, there’s immediately the next challenge. They are trying to execute a finer line of dining but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that everyone thinks it’s the right thing to do. Obviously, there’s some inner turmoil.”

In the first season, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (played by Jeremy White) returned to Chicago to help keep his family restaurant afloat after the death of his brother. Instead of encountering a well-oiled machine, he discovered a business with lots of squeaky wheels. When he tried to make changes, others slammed on the brakes. Repeatedly, he was just trying get out of some jam. At the end of the season, he came into a considerable amount of money and was able to fund some of those changes. What stays? Who goes? Those are the questions that will fuel the second season.

Early on, Storer says, he decided to toss viewers into the heat of “The Bear’s” action – not unlike Carmy.

“We’re going to trust that you’re going to either be on the ride or not,” he adds. “The minute you say, ‘This is Carmy’s backstory in 11 minutes of Episode 1,’ it becomes cumbersome. Just dive in.”

To give the actors a sense of comfort in the restaurant setting, Storer hired his sister, Courtney, as a “culinary producer.”

“It goes beyond food styling,” Courtney Storer says. “It’s a little bit deeper: What do people look like when they’re cooking? How are they holding a knife? Where are they standing?

“Culinary producing for me was more getting in there, working with the actors and talking about what we would actually use – even from a pan to a pot.”

To impress upon the team just how important her job was, Christopher Storer gave her – and Matty Matheson, who plays Neil Fak and is also a co-producer – the ability to yell “cut” if something looked off.

“Some of the dialogue felt like it was more alive because they were concentrating on actually having to cook and turn the heat down or up,” he says.

“Every single thing is a pivot,” Matheson adds. “You’re moving with urgencies.”

With the details out of the way, co-star Ayo Edebiri says, “we could also focus on performance.”

“Now that we’ve gotten to know them closely, (writing) is so fun,” Christopher Storer says. “You see the chemistry in certain pairs. We should really let Liza do this or Edwin do that. We can really see how we can bring them into the folds more.”

Because audiences are now familiar with the characters, “Season Two is sort of like where the show properly begins,” Storer says. “It’s been cool to kind of just expand the world.”

For White, that’s a welcome shift. When he prepared for the series, he attended culinary school and was “maybe too detail-oriented. I wanted to become a really great chef…as good as Carmy…and that’s not realistic,” he says.

Through the course of a season, White also discovered how similar a TV production is to a kitchen. “There’s always pressure in my head.”

Season Two, Storer says, will look at balance and what it means to start fresh. “For someone like Richie (Carmy’s cousin), it’s finding where he fits.

“If we continue to tell an honest story and we try to be low to the ground, like we did last time, I think our hearts are in the right place.”

Season Two of “The Bear” begins June 22 on FX and Hulu.