[00:00:01] Speaker A: So today we're going to talk all about managers. Number one, how we find good managers, create good managers, develop those managers. We're doing that through a conversation with a very good friend of mine, guy named Steven Bloom. Steven is the general manager of Il Buco restaurant in Manhattan. It's in the NoHo neighborhood. He's got a really phenomenal resume. He and I worked together first, I don't know, 11 or 12 years ago. We've been, we've been friends ever since.
Very, very accomplished. He's just a low key demeanor, very.
And I think he's a really thoughtful, generous manager and he's really good at developing talent. So I wanted to bring him on the show so we could talk about how you do that, how you develop talent, all that and more on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 20 plus years in the industry to help you build that more profitable and more sustainable business. I also work directly with operators all over the world through my P3 master.
We just launched a brand new group. So now we filled two groups, closed. Those two groups are opening a third group. We're doing it because the program works. To date, we've put more than a hundred people through that program. The impact we're making is real. So listen, if you've got a busy restaurant but struggle to generate consistent, predictable 20% profits, then please set up a free 30 minute strategy session with someone from my team. We'll get to learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll get to ask some questions about the program. To see if you're a good fit for for that program, visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule. As always, you'll find that link in the show Notes.
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[email protected] chip and yes, that L is in the show notes. Now, as I said at the top, my guest on today's show is a guy named Steven Bloom. He's the general manager of Il Buco restaurant in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. He and I first worked together almost 12 years ago. We've been friends ever since. He's gone on to put together an incredible resume, really managing top notch Michelin star properties. And today he wanted to come on the show and we talked about what we were going to discuss and we're going to talk all about management.
Before we do that, let's welcome to the show. Stephen. Good to have you.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Thank you. It's nice to be here.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: My pleasure. So you've worked all over. Right now you are the general manager at Ilbuco restaurant in Manhattan in the Noho neighborhood. How long have you been there?
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So I've been at Ilbuco for about a year and a half now, but I've been in the industry for about 20 years at this point.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: That's right. So we worked together way back. I guess we start working together in 2012. So more than 10 years ago we did and we worked together for a while. And you eventually left there to go take your first management job, which sort of goes hand in hand with what we wanted to talk about today. So full disclosure to the people listening. Stephen and I kept saying, hey, we want to try and do an episode. There's a lot that we could talk about, but we have to give some direction to the conversation. And I said, hey, what do you want to talk about? And you said, hey, let's talk about managers, specifically young managers, how we find them, how we bring them along, how we develop them and make them into really good or better managers, into great managers. And I was like, yeah, we really haven't covered that before. So I thought the conversation was, was a good one. So we'll see if that bears out over the next hour.
Talk to me about so when you made the jump from waiting tables or captaining at a fine dining restaurant over into management for the first time, talk to me about that.
Talk to me about that experience, because obviously this is personal for you. There's something you feel like there's something that the industry could do better. And I know we've talked about this offline, but I'll let you sort of go into this.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: About your experience. Start there. Your experience of managing for the first time.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: I remember when I moved on to the management side of things, from serving and from food running and from, you know, busing. I remember that, you know, the desire to do it and the belief in doing it came about very suddenly.
I had been working in restaurants for about 10 years up to that point, and I hadn't really given much thought to the management side of things. But I had worked with a friend who was my manager. I met him when he was managing me in a different restaurant, and we were working together in a subsequent restaurant after that. And he was a great guy. He had a very, very Brooklyn accent. Very, very thick Brooklyn accent.
And he.
He bore a very passing resemblance to Robert De Niro. He had the mole on his cheek and everything. And I remember one day he pulled me aside and he said, with this, you know, very thick Brooklyn accent, he said, let me ask you a question. You know, it was almost like De Niro. He said, you think you could do my job?
And at first I got a little insulted. I said, I'm not trying to contradict anything you're saying on the floor. I said, no, no, you think you could do my job. And what I realized was that he wasn't pulling a De Niro and Raging Bull. He was actually asking if I thought that I could become a manager. He said, I think you could do this. You know, you have a good eye for the floor, and, you know, you seem to be very good with the people you work with, and I think that you should consider maybe moving over to the management side. So I started to give it some thought. I started to look around and see what positions might be available. I liked the restaurant I was working in at the time, but they're just really wasn't anything available for me there as far as management. There weren't any openings. So I had applied for a position as a service director, which I thought was the most logical progression from where I was currently at that point. Because up until that point, I had only worked on the front of house side of things. And I really didn't have much experience on the back end, on the back of house side. So I thought that a service director position might make the most amount of sense because we were working in a Very service oriented position. You know, we were working in a restaurant where the details really mattered, the steps of service really, really mattered. Those were really ingrained, you know, and those really discussed every day. So when I took the first position and I interviewed for the job, I remember that the general manager at the restaurant I was starting at. I don't know if I'm allowed to use names. I don't know if, you know, you can. I don't know if you want names here. I worked at a restaurant on the Upper west side of New York called Dovetail, which was a really beautiful small little jewel box of a restaurant on the Upper west side.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: I remember when I started there, interestingly, for the. For the listeners. So it's John Frazier. It was John Frazier's restaurant. John has now gone on to all kinds of acclaim, tons of restaurants. But I actually helped open that restaurant as the maitre d. They had a Michelin star. They had two Michelin stars for a little while. Right.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I don't know if they got a second. They definitely had one while I was there. When I started there, they had already gotten the one, and they kept the one all throughout up until they closed. That restaurant closed In, I think 20, 20, 18, I want to say. But this was. This was a little while back. But I remember when I started it, I interviewed for the position.
They were very excited to get me in because I came from fine dining. But I was also. I was at that right moment in which I had enough experience to know what should happen on a floor, but not too much experience that I was overqualified for a position because, you know, it's tricky getting a manager just at the right time for, you know, what's essentially a junior position.
What made things a little trickier for me was that I was coming in as the service director and I was taking over for the current service director there, who was stepping back into a captain's role there.
So I was in essence being tasked with managing my predecessor. So he wasn't leaving the restaurant. He was reverting back to a tipped hourly position.
So it made for an interesting transition for me.
And that required some tact and some diplomacy. But it ultimately worked out very well. Him and I are friends to this day and we keep in touch. So that was my first management position.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: So then talk to me about that. It's funny because I remember a lot about you going there and I didn't remember that.
That detail that you were managing your predecessor. Challenges for sure. Talk to me about what did you and I Don't even know if you could put yourself in that headspace. Like what did you know about management? What did you know like a manager had to do or should do or whatever? And what did you not realize until you had gotten sort of into the trenches, if you can think back that far?
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Well, I think up until that point I thought I had a pretty good sense of what it is that it meant to manage a staff because I had worked by that point. I had worked in about three or four different restaurants that had Michelin stars and I'd worked in high volume restaurants as well.
And I thought that it meant, you know, walking around the floor, you know, telling people what they should be doing and then getting a meal at the end, you know, and then making my way home. That's kind of what I thought it was. I thought it was leading pre shift.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: And that's the way it is in, in many restaurants.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: That's the way it is in a lot of restaurants. And I remember my first week in that management position, my general manager, my boss pulled me aside and said, he said 90% of managing is don't mess with their money, don't mess with their schedule. He said that's 90% of it. He said the other 10, you'll, you'll learn, you'll figure it out. But that's the, that's a big chunk of it. And you know, that's a bit of an exaggeration. There's a whole lot more to it than just that, obviously. But those were the very first lessons that I learned because my very first weekend I was charged with making a schedule and, or you know, taking the schedule on. And you realize that it does require quite a bit of diplomacy intact and that you have people that have been there for a while that have set schedules, you have people that have lives, you have people that have children and babysitters and daycare and religious observations. And you're trying to balance the needs of a business with the needs of your staff. And I think a lot of managers make the mistake of being very cavalier with their staff members lives.
But you know, what keeps a restaurant functioning and, and, and working and profitable is the idea of employee retention and you know, honoring someone's time, honoring someone's schedules and their commitments and making sure that you don't make a mistake there. That goes a long way.
So I learned that lesson very quickly.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Talk to me about some of the hard lessons. Well, let me back up here. Did you feel like it was a good transition, you moving from. Because you said hey, you thought a service director position made the most sense. And this is really a position you find in a lot of fine dining restaurants. Stephen and I obviously both were sort of raised in fine dining here in New York City. But did you feel like that that did make sense? It was a good.
Was it as an easy transition as you sort of hoped it would be?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: I feel like that was a really good transition, just because you're moving from what you know from before and you're bringing that as a strength into the position that you're being tasked with. I was not an operations person at that point. I was not someone that was well versed in, you know, permits and the DOB and H vac and all the things that go along with what a general manager or a director of operations might have to be handling. I was not versed in that. And to have the culture, culture shock of going from an hourly tipped position into a salaried position where now I'm supervising people. I think that I would have been at a severe disadvantage if I didn't. If I wasn't able to bring the skill set that I had from before into this position.
Now, what I learned and what I have subsequently tried to teach to junior managers who are moving into their first management position is I. Looking back, I can see that some of the mistakes that I made, some of the mistakes that I see that are very common with younger managers moving into their first role.
When you are a server, when you're a captain, if you're a waiter or front waiter, whatever you want to call it, you know, the idea of assisting where needed and helping out and jumping in and solving a problem that you see at a table or in a fellow server's section or in a different area of the floor, you feel the, the. The desire to do that. And I think young managers, and certainly I was guilty of it at the very beginning, you see a problem and you want to go and you want to fix it.
But you learn very quickly that, you know, depending on the size of your floor, there might be four waiters, there might be 10 waiters, there might be, you know, six captains, whatever, you want to have it, but there's probably only one manager, maybe, maybe two or, you know, some big house, maybe three. But the idea of, you know, your section as the manager is now the restaurant, it's now the floor. And if you keep jumping into these tables and putting out these fires, you're not managing the people that are supposed to be handling these problems.
So it really, it. It does. You A disservice. The I, you want to get in there and you want to help and the desire should be there to do it. But that was definitely one of the lessons that I learned quickly and the mistakes that I made that I needed to correct was that, you know, if you're constantly putting out fires and constantly solving someone's problems, well, then the problem isn't the fires. It's maybe the person whose section is continually falling apart.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yep. So talk to me because you've obviously so from Dovetail, you worked at a ton of restaurants. You know, since then, you've since become more versed in operations and all of that.
And I just want to focus in here because you said, you know, you can't do that. But when you're training a new manager, how do you tell them not? It's not a matter of what not to do, but it's also a matter of what to do, what they should be focusing on instead. So talk to me in that one area because I think it's a common problem that a lot of managers have. You had it? I had it when I first started managing. You just want to dive in. But we're not firefighters and we're not used to our fullest if we're just firefighters. So how do you teach them what they should be doing?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: So, you know, listening to your podcasts, I know that you like to start it off with a quote where there's people that see, there's people that will never see, and there are people that can see when shown.
And I think that the large majority of management are the ones that fall into that third category that can see when shown.
I think that when you're hiring for the position that making sure that you have a very, very clear job description is very, very important.
And not having someone have the sense of I am a manager, I need to manage because that's such a ambiguous word and such an ambiguous term.
So having a very, very clear, clear job description, having a very, very clear set of guideposts and standards, having a very clear set of having a very clear training outline, that this is not just a one week training outline or two week training outline, but this is an ongoing process that we're going to check your progress in a month, three months. You know, I have a junior manager. Let's just hit junior manager. I have a, a younger manager working for me right now who we sat down and did a performance review after six months, and we did review after a year. And we've talked about the what we look to see and where we look to see the growth.
And I think it starts with the work that happens off of the floor.
Making sure that they are well versed in your building, making sure that they're well versed in the back end, the office responsibilities, what it is that they are responsible for, what they're not, making sure that they are.
They're aware of what they are not responsible for as of yet.
With younger managers, with less experienced managers, I've always found that a better place to start for them is with things like dry goods, dry storage, paper inventory, coffee inventory, tea inventory.
Getting to know the nuts and bolts of the building, getting to know the nuts and bolts of what it is that we have, how much we have of it.
Before they're tasked with any kind of ordering, any kind of financial responsibilities, it gives them a more rounded view of the floor. So that way when you have that server who says, we're all out of coffee cups, your manager can say, we're not. I know where they are. I know how many we have. I'm going to break some out.
So really kind of starting from the outside and then working your way into service itself.
So by the time that they do step on the floor, they're aware of all the things that are on the back end. They're all aware of all the things that we have in storage. They're aware of all the things that are coming in today, they're aware of all the things that are coming in tomorrow.
So I think before there's even a moment in service, if you can start with that idea, those aspects of building them up slowly, it makes the work on the floor itself a little bit easier to do.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I want you. I want to go back to you at Dovetail.
When did you feel. And maybe it didn't happen at Dovetail. I assume it did. But can you remember a point when you realized, like, hey, I now know what I'm doing here, Like, I know how to be a good manager. I've now graduated. You know, I was a captain and now I was managing, but now I feel like I can really do this. Well, can you remember, like, when it felt that way and why you ended up feeling that way?
[00:18:59] Speaker B: To be honest with you, I don't think that it felt that way for me there.
I think I felt that way about Dovetail after I left Dovetail.
I left Dovetail to take a job working for Chris Cannon, who was a legendary New York restaurateur and operator and owner. He built a massive restaurant in New Jersey in Morristown New Jersey, which is about, I want to say, 15,000 square feet. It was this massive three floor operation that had two kitchens, four dining rooms, three different menus going at the same time. That was the job that I took after Dovetail. Actually got recruited from Dovetail and I moved to New Jersey to open this restaurant and I was the opening service director there. You know, a friend of mine was the opening general manager for it. And we started from scratch. We did not know New Jersey restaurants at all. We didn't know any of the restaurants out there. We didn't really know any of the talent pool out there.
And we needed about 70 front of house staff members to open the building because it was a big operation. So we had to hire. We did an open call for about a week. And when you don't know any of the restaurants out there and someone's handing you a resume and you don't know any of the names on it, you know, you can't really go off of reputation. You're really interviewing people and you're getting a feel for them based off of personality. You know, you're getting a feel for them based off of what you think their work ethic is going to be like. So we were asking them questions like, you know, what do you like to cook at home? You know, describe the ideal meal for yourself. Can you remember a job where you failed? You know, what do you take away from that? What are you looking to learn at the next position that you go to, wherever that might be?
So I think building up that restaurant, we spent about a month just doing service demonstrations and service classes and teaching a whole staff out there about food and about wine and about beverage and about the steps of service that we wanted for this building. And not just for the building, but we had different styles of service in the different rooms in the building itself. So I think going through that and feeling validated in seeing the lessons that I had learned at Dovetail that I was now bringing to this restaurant and watching this restaurant flourish, it made me feel a lot better about what I had learned at Dovetail and saying, oh, I think I was going in the right direction here.
So I think that I never, I Never felt truly 100% comfortable with how I was at Dovetail.
I was told by the people that I worked for and worked with that they, they thought I was doing well, but I didn't feel validated until I'd left and said, oh, okay, I see it now.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And Steven's, Stephen's a really great manager. One of the things that I like most about how you manage is your demeanor. You're cool, you're calm, you're collected. Like, I've just, I don't think I've ever seen you get flustered or sort of animated and I'm sure it's happened, but you're just really calm and cool. And that extends out because there's a lot of times when you're a manager, you get a lot of pressure from above, either from your boss or your owner or whatever. And, you know, shielding the staff, I think is part of the job. And likewise, right, the stress that comes from the bottom up, shielding, you know, the other people above you because they've got other bigger issues to worry about. You're, you're dealing with the stress that you're supposed to deal with. And you've always managed that. You've always managed that really well. Which, which is not me, which is not my style, which is not my personality. And I've tried for a long time to sort of cultivate that.
And it's always nice working with you and watching you do that. So my next question is sort of, is that true? Is the, you know, do you feel stressed and you just shield it really well?
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Are all of the things that you just said about me true? Is that the question? That's right.
If they're flattering, yes, they are true.
No, I, you know, I think it's good to have a healthy. A couple things. It's good to have a couple of things. Number one, it's good to have a healthy work life balance. It's very, it's, it's, it's important to do that. I, I know far too many people in this industry and I'd like to think that it's changing, but I know far too many people in this industry that wear the amount of hours that they work per week on their sleeve like some badge of honor. You know, I know kitchen guys who, oh, I put in a 90 hour work week. Well, then what's going wrong that you need to put 90 hours in? There's something, the math is off somewhere, you know, or people that put in, you know, consistently a 14 hour day when, you know, 10 hours should suffice. You know, if you can't get the work done in, in 10 hours and you need the 14 hours every day, then there is something off about the workload that you carry. There's something off then in the math there. And also I'm a believer that, you know, there's always more work to do. Tomorrow. So if you've accomplished the work that you need to get done today, and it's taken you nine and a half hours instead of the ten and a half, I don't need you to stick around for the extra hour to prove to me that you're doing the work. I can see that the work is being done. That's one lesson.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I hope that's something that changed. I hope that's something.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: I really do. Because I think that, you know, there's a far too many people that get burned out in this industry, and it's. It's a. It's a stigma. And I think that a lot of people are a little afraid to. To cut out, you know, a half an hour earlier than they do, because they are. Somehow they think that it's viewed as them shirking their responsibility. If you're getting the work done, you're getting the work done, you know, and there's. There's more work to do tomorrow. There's always, you know, the restaurants never finished. There's always more.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: So don't worry. There will be more work for you tomorrow.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: But here's the other piece to it, is that oftentimes managers are utilized as sort of overseers, as babysitters.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Yes. Right.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: We're there to open the doors and turn on the lights, and we got to be there at the end to lock the doors and turn out the lights. And I think.
I mean, I don't know how we get away from that one, but it's a little bit of like a. Hey, I'm hanging around for. For what? I'm hanging around just to. Just to make sure the lights get turned out. It's. That's a frustrating piece.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Well, I mean, the thing is, if I need you to hang around to turn off the lights at the end, why am I bringing you in so early? You know what, you can come in a little bit later if you need to turn the lights off. And if you came in in the morning and you turned the lights on, you know, I can. I can get you out a little bit earlier. You know that there. There shouldn't be. Yeah. You know, if. If this restaurant can run with one manager, then at what point do we need three of us on the floor? You know, what point do we need three of us hanging around at the same time? But I think the other aspect of it is, going back to what you were saying before, is, you know, I. I had a very valuable lesson taught to me by a friend of mine in the industry who has been a general manager and a wine director and a beverage director and a director of ops.
You know, she said, you know, part of managing successfully is understanding what it is that you're responsible for and letting go of the things that you're not responsible for, you know, for the owners. You're responsible for everything. And that's a choice that you make. But as far as on the management side, you know, she worked for a restaurant, a restaurant owner that had a septic tank for their restaurant. And she'd have to explain to the owner on the P L why their, their, their service contract for their plumber was so high. And she said, well, look you, have you decided to put a septic tank in? I can only tell you what the number is and explain. It doesn't mean that I'm responsible for it. This is ultimately a decision that was yours. So I think that having the healthy understanding of what it is that you're responsible for on your P L is what you're responsible for and what you're not.
You know, you have to understand the number. You have to demonstrate how the numbers are related to each other. But it's best not to lose too much sleep over that.
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So talk to me about that because. And I want to talk about your continued development through management, to talk about that, to dig a little deeper there, which is that, you know, making sure that managers have their areas of responsibility and how do you do that and what do you think managers should be responsible for? And I'll, I'll use this to say that I spent a lot of time talking about how we don't have managers. In most restaurants, we have overseers, we have firefighters, we've got babysitters. Right. They. They exist to make sure that nothing goes wrong and to put out fires and something.
When something does go wrong.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: And yet really, what we should be doing is managing for profitability. Like, business exists to increase shareholder value. Right. The purpose of a firm is to increase shareholder value. Milton Friedman told us that a long time ago.
We have to make money, it has to make profit. If not, there's no reason for the business to exist.
So talk to me a little bit about areas of responsibility and then specifically how we start talking about managing for profitability.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Well, I think it's very important in any restaurant where, as senior management that you develop a manager matrix that there are clearly delineated responsibilities for your managers. There are the general responsibilities that everybody has, you know, that, you know, if you're. If you're opening and you're working, someone's making a floor plan, you know, someone's putting, you know, the bar bank in the drawer. And, you know, someone's. Someone's making sure the lights are on and someone's making sure the music's playing, and someone's making sure the Internet's not down. Someone's. You know, everyone's always responsible for all of that. But there are other elements in which, you know, you need to have clearly delineated lines of responsibility. You know, you have one manager that's responsible for the schedule. You have one response manager that's responsible for uniforms or lockers or coffee and tea. You know, we have one of my managers responsible for making sure that that inventory is up, is kept up, and that we're not lower 86 to any of that. And I think that within those, you know, because every manager that you speak to, every person that you interview for a job, they always say, well, I want to learn the financials. You know, I want to learn a little bit more. It's the most common refrain when I like to always ask anybody that I'm interviewing for a job, you know, what it is that you'd like to learn in the next place you go to, wherever that might be.
And the most common answer is, I'd like to get a better understanding of the financials of the restaurant. Well, it's no great secret. You know, there's plenty of opportunities to learn the financials. It's just that you might start on a smaller scale.
So the manager that's in charge of the coffee and tea inventory or ordering understands what our budget is for that, you know, and it understands how that budget is related to the overall revenue of the. The restaurant itself. And if that inventory is being kept up, if you're not keeping people in the dark as far as the profitability of the restaurant, how we're doing on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, you know, keeping people informed of where we're at.
The. The biggest learning curve, the biggest learning lesson for me was learning it just about percentages. You know, my. I remember the very first PNL meeting that I sat and I said, oh, my goodness. I was a junior manager. I said, wow, we're doing great. And I needed my.
I needed my owner to point at the bottom line and say, you know, yeah, we made $700,000, but it cost. It took us $750,000 to make that. So I don't know what doing great sounds to you. That doesn't seem like doing great to me. So I learned very, very quickly that a budget is a guidepost, you know, but as long as you are keeping track of the percentages and keeping, you know, making sure that everything is in relation to everything else, that's a wonderful way for a younger manager to grow and to grow because, you know, keeping tabs on something small, like paper goods, not small, but important paper goods.
Keeping tabs on that, you know, on your budget, that might be, you know, you might have that budgeted at 2.7%.
If you keep that at 2.5, great. If that gets above to 3.1, maybe that's a little high. Is it going to break your P and L?
[00:31:42] Speaker A: No.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: But for that manager, who's responsible for that, that is their lifeblood. And then eventually from there, you grow that from paper goods becomes. I'm going to keep you tracking all of our variable expenses. You know, you can't control the control. You know, the. The. The fixed costs, that's a different story, but that grows to the variable costs. And then suddenly you're taking a look at that. Suddenly you're looking at things just beyond paper goods. You're looking at things like china, glass and silverware. You know, you're looking at breakage, you're looking at the things that go beyond that. And then eventually, as you grow into, say, an AGM position or a general management position, you're looking at all the cogs, you're looking at all the things that go into the budget from there. You're looking at all the things that go into from there. And that starts on, like a minute level. It starts as a building block. And then as you get stronger with that, that grows and grows and grows. And that kind of information is what ultimately informs you on the floor.
So if you know what your budget is for glass, for glassware, in a month or in a quarter, the quarter is a better way to look at it, as opposed to a month by month. You see the trends and breakage. That's a conversation in pre shift, That's a discussion with your staff. That's talking about not being cavalier with how we're throwing things out on the dish pit and losing forks every week. You know, my very, very first restaurant job, I was a busboy in the Diamond Club at Shea stadium. I was 17 years old. And I remember at the end of the night, we counted silverware, we counted it and we wrapped it. And at the time, I thought it was the dumbest thing. I wouldn't necessarily subject, I wouldn't necessarily subject staff to that now, but it's important to do an inventory. It's important to, you know, get those into spreadsheets or onto platforms to chart that and to market that. Because, you know, the, the younger manager that says, I want to learn the financials. Learning the financials is about applying these real world, real time circumstances and learning the consequences of those. The consequences hit the P and L.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: So talk to me about then again, your trajectory then. When did you start, when did you move up from now a couple service director positions. When did you move up beyond that and talk to me about then again that transition for you.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Well, in my Jersey restaurant, you know, my friend who was my general manager by the end of my tenure there, his role was basically a director of operations role in everything except title.
And my role by the time I left there was, you know, he, he tells me to this point, he says you could list general manager on your resume and I would not, you know, disagree with that. You were, you were managing that restaurant on a senior level at that point. But when I got back to the city, I moved back to New York after a couple of years being in New Jersey, and I worked for Tom Colicchio for about four years. I started in the Beekman Hotel in Lower Manhattan, and we opened a restaurant that at the time was called Fowler and Wells, but then eventually changed its name to Temple Courtney.
I started there and I got promoted very quickly to be the assistant general manager there. And I worked there for about a year and then got promoted to become the general manager of Temple Court, which was in recognition of just the overview of seeing how everything Kind of came together in that restaurant. But I really think that, you know, the place where I really understood the role was when I moved from that restaurant to Craft, which was the flagship restaurant for Tom Colicchio for crafted hospitality. I was there for about two years as the general manager there. And that was the place where I really, the idea of all the other elements that really go into general management, take over your day to day life. It was an old building. The infrastructure is not as ideal as it could be. And I really learned the value of a really good handyman, a really good plumber, a really good electrician, really good H vac company. And you really see how all of these things that are what you think are tangential to a restaurant are very important to its bottom line. And you can spend a lot of money and have a lot of money hit your P L or you know, you have a lot of money that goes towards capex projects that, you know, that the guest might never see, that your staff might never see, but you certainly feel. And that was a restaurant where when we sat down to do P Ls, you know, and do our P and L review on a monthly basis, it really got, you know, the responsibilities for a recap and an overview really got delineated out to the departments. And that was a very valuable lesson that the back of house, the kitchen would have to come to the P and L review and really talk about their food cost.
And at the front of house, my, you know, my service director that worked for me would come and talk about our labor cost and talk about how we're budgeted and why we were hitting a certain number and why we weren't. You know, my beverage director would come and really talk about our beverage cost and controllable expenses and the other gaps or things that I would fill in. So that was really the restaurant where it all kind of came together for me. And I really learned how all of these parts where, you know, you're all kind of. You feel like you might be living in your own little world, you might be a little separate, they really all come together.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: Yeah. It's funny because I talk a lot because again, another restaurant where I worked as well, I was there for 2007 and 8 and. And I feel the same way. I felt like sitting through a lot of those, those books meetings, the, the budget meetings once a month was, was really informative. And I still talk about it. I talk about it with the, the members of the, the mastermind that I run. Like a lot of the ideas that because there's so much transparency there in that place from, I mean, top to bottom, like, this is what we made. This is what we did. This is. This is what everyone did to get us to this point.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: So I was.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I will add this to. Not to. Not to plug the restaurant that I'm at right now, not to. Not to plug them. But I will say that my. My current restaurant, Il Buco, I feel that there is more transparency with how we are financially amongst the management team and structure than in any restaurant that I've ever worked at. But this is a restaurant where, you know, even the manager, who is low person on the totem pole, you know, they're responsible for putting in our numbers into a declining budget and seeing how that is changing and fluctuating day to day and week to week, we're putting our labor numbers in there. You know, we're really working off of this document, this sheet. I know there are platforms for it, and, you know, platforms can help utilize that. But sitting down on a meeting every week and discussing it in the management meeting and understanding why the numbers are what they are goes a long way into someone understanding how those numbers can change, how you can affect. Change to the bottom line, how the decisions that you make in service, before service, the decisions that you make, you know, in the manager meetings, can have a real effect and influence on the profitability of your restaurant.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yep. So I want to go back because I now want to merge two points that you've made, because again, the sort of. The thrust of this conversation is about managers, new managers, how you train them, how you make good ones, and how you develop them so that they become better and that they're ready for promotion. But you said a couple of things here.
Number one, we're just talking about transparency. And then a few minutes ago, you were talking about how you just give them a little something to be responsible for that makes sure that they understand what they're responsible for and what they're not. And I think those two things go hand in hand, because when they're responsible for their little. Their little garden, Right. They just tend their garden. It's part of the larger farm.
They understand in time. This is all you have to do. And if you do this well, this is how it then affects. Because then the. This radical transparency idea is like. And now you see how everybody is responsible for their own little gardens. And this is the. This is the end result. And that clicked for me at craft understanding all everybody's little gardens, because then after a little while, then I was paying attention to what other people were doing in their garden. And I started coming up with just building my, my theories about it, my philosophies about it, and just, and understanding, hey, I think we could be doing better. It's not, wasn't my responsibility, but hey, I think we could do better if we would fix this or that or. And it was. I think those two things are really, really important as we're training managers.
Some of the most successful restaurants I've ever worked for had this just open books, you know. And I think some of the restaurants that I see struggle is that they struggle to be transparent. And can, can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, of all the places you've worked, were they all transparent? Were some of them really guarded?
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Some of them were, Some of them were very guarded. P. Ls, some of them, you know, some of them, not all management would sit in a P and L meeting. First of all, some of them, not all management would even get the P and L. You know, I remember a restaurant, I'm not going to name names here. I don't want to besmirch people, but I remember a restaurant that I worked at in which I was not senior management and I would not get the P and L sent to me. So I really had no idea how we were doing. And I was in charge of making the schedule for the front of house staff. So I really had no idea what my labor cost was. I was not being given the access to the financial, I was not being given the access to the sales. I was not being given access to our percentages. So I really, I was kind of operating in the dark, you know, And I mean, the analogy. Think about driving a car and turning the headlights off, you know, you don't know. You don't know if you're going in the right direction. You don't know if you're about to drive off a cliff.
I think that the idea of giving people the transparency, giving people the clear budgeting in mind, giving people goals and realistic goals and targets, because a budget is a guidepost. And I think what's most important are really the percentages that you're looking for.
You could run a, you know, a pizza stand and say, our budget is a million dollars, our budget is a billion dollars, you know, but if the percentages are all in line, it doesn't matter what that number is, you know, it really doesn't. It comes down to the percentages. It comes down to we're staying trying to stay within this Percentage, if you are doing. If you are doing a weekly forecast, if you are forecasting correctly and you're giving people a realistic sense of what the forecast is for the week to come. And you're using all the information and all the tools that you have at your disposal, because there are so many wonderful platforms to help you really get, you know, a very, very solid, very, very close forecast, you know, very, very close to a number. You can do that. If you're using that and you are sharing that information with your staff, you're giving them clear indications of where it is that they're supposed to be going.
So the other trick, I think, is that the responsibilities that you delineate to a younger staff member might, as long as they start small and then work your way up, it could be different based off of the restaurant. And what I mean by that is this. I've worked in a couple of restaurants now at this point in my career in which. And I know Chip, you have as well that you have staff members that have been there for a very long time. You have restaurants where you have a lot of staff, some staff members with a lot of seniority. And with that seniority, a lot of them have schedules that are set in stone.
You know, I have a couple of servers that work for me now that have been at my restaurant for 15 years. I have a couple people in the kitchen that have been in my restaurant for nearly 25 years at this point.
And they don't necessarily need to get a schedule sent to them because their schedule has not changed in 10 years.
That can be a blessing, and that can be a curse, because, you know,
[00:43:54] Speaker A: I want to talk about this.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: If your labor cost starts to run high, you need to start making some tough but necessary decisions for the restaurant. And as a senior manager, I understand that putting a younger junior manager in charge of the. Those difficult conversations is probably not in their best interest, nor your best interest.
That's why you are in senior management. Sometimes the tougher decisions and the tougher conversations happen that have to happen for you.
If you're working in a restaurant that might have just opened, you know, where no one really has seniority, and you need to make difficult decisions as far as the schedule and as far as the labor to bring costs in line, you might feel a little bit more comfortable with having somebody who might not have nearly as much experience, maybe taking on some of those tougher conversations, but that could be substitute any purveyor, you know.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. So talk to me about when you. So now. Now You're a general manager. You've been a GM for. For years.
I'm a really big proponent of forecasting, using those projections to generate budgets. Budgets in all the key areas.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: I always talk about. I use the football analogy, right? 11 players on the field. The offensive lineman does not know what the other 10 guys maybe knows another two or three guys are doing, does not understand who the hot receiver is, what all the routes that everybody's running. He just knows, I gotta take this guy and block him that way. The other guy's got. I gotta block this guy. I gotta push him that way. That's only. And I know if I do this, that's what I'm supposed to do on this play. If I succeed at this, there's a good chance that the entire play will succeed because all 11 guys just have to execute their portion of it. So talk to me about how you. How you actually go about budgeting. Because for me, I always say, we. We fall into this trap. Tell me if you've heard this one before. Like, hey, guys, listen, we really got to watch labor this weekend. Let's really stay on top of it.
And we're so guilty of saying this. And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, okay, I know. I want to. I want to do what you're asking me to do. And yet we give them nothing tangible rather than, hey, listen, so and so called out Tuesday, Wednesday. So we had to call the daytime guy in for the nighttime. He went into overtime, you know, so we got eight hours of overtime. That equals X number of dollars. We have to shave eight, you know, $400 off of the payroll over the. Over Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's tangible.
And I always say, like, we never. We never hit our profit goals.
We never hit our profit goals, you know, by shaving hours. We hit our. We hit our targets. We hit our margins. We had our percentages on the schedule. So talk to me about how you, you know, the blinder analogy is how I think about. How do you think about it, especially when you're trying to bring a new service manager, a junior manager, and trying to teach them sort of the areas they need to stay within.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Well, I think the 11 guys in the field analogy is very apt as far as the offensive lineman understanding that. You know, I block to the right here, and I take this, man, these two steps, but they go over the whole play with the whole team. Every. Everyone on the team is aware of what the. The objective of the play is.
So if I'm blocking to the right, it's to create this hole, to create this opening for the running back to go through to veer left. I might not understand how that is done by him, but I understand what the ultimate goal is.
So I think that, you know, going back to what you talked about earlier, as far as my demeanor in service, it's, you know, you need to have a long view about some of these things. You know, you're not going to make, you know, you're not going to make your, your, your, your goals for the month on a Saturday.
You know, you're not going to make them on a Tuesday. You're going to make them over the course of, you know, 29 days or 30 days or a 31 day month.
So understanding the peaks and valleys of it, understanding you're going to have a higher labor cost on a slower day and a lower labor cost on a busier day. And the whole goal is to look at the week or look at the month and see what our ultimate target is. You know, there is, there is an understanding that, you know, that not every day is going to look the same as far as sales. Not every day is going to look the same as far as cost.
If you can budget that out, you can forecast that out over the course of a week, over the course of a month, over the course of a quarter.
I think the more specific that you can get with your budgeting. I've seen budgets in which, you know, going back to China, glass and silverware, I've seen budgets in which they have, I'm using just round numbers, but someone has $1,000 budgeted for glassware and that thousand dollars is the same number for January through December.
Some months you're not going to spend any money on glassware. And some months you might spend, you might, you know, double your budget for glassware. So looking at that on a quarter, looking at that on a six month period, you know, you really have to, you have to. The people that are in an area that can influence this, such as someone who is making a schedule, looking at how that schedule is out. There are some wonderful scheduling platforms, seven shifts, schedule, fly hot shifts, whatever you're using. There are labor forecast models in there. You know, forecasting your labor to your sales, understanding what the percentages are, understanding what's realistic and what is achievable. You know, you have the marketer, the, the operator who says, I want a, you know, a 4% labor cost for this month. I, you know, I don't, I don't know what planet they're on, but understanding what that is understanding what your realistic targets should be for the month that you're operating in. Because you know, in New York, it's also, it's, it's, it's seasonal. You know, our busy times are the holidays in October, November, December. Our slow time is in the summer. My restaurant in particular, our busiest month of the year is May. You know, it's graduation season. We're located very close to NYU and we have a whole slew of private events that occur during a three week period in May. We have, we participate in the open Streets program, so we have outdoor dining that nearly doubles the size of our restaurant. Understanding what our targets are for that month. Taking advantage of the times of your year in which you are going to be busy and making sure that you are managing your costs then, and understanding that periods of your year that are going to be slower and really managing your costs then, but just making sure that the people that are in a position to control the expenses and influence those expenses, making sure that they are aware of, you know, the, the, the lines that their crayon that they're, they're, their crayon should stay with them. They can color with them.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: I should say, I always say, right, like we have the, we're, we are in the unenviable position of having a business running a business that has not one, not two, but three moving targets. Right. Revenue is variable. Therefore, so are cogs and so is labor. And they're all moving and we have to get them moving together.
Often easier said than done. If it goes up, the others can go up. If it goes down, the others got to come down.
That's the challenge. And for everybody that's in this industry, I spent a lot of time talking about this with the members of the mastermind that I run.
Listen, you picked it, we're here.
You got picked an easier industry, could have picked an easier business model. We've got a very challenging business model. This is what it is. So if you want to figure out how to do that profitably, how to do that, bring some consistency to the returns, this is what we, this is what we need to do. Yeah, I want to ask about, so how do you determine how did you know when you were ready to move from just the service side into taking on more responsibility, understanding more about operations and really getting that full view to step into a general manager role and beyond?
[00:51:45] Speaker B: Well, honestly, you know, I think it got to the point where I had worked for, I'd worked for some really good managers as a server, as a, you Know, I started as a busser. I was a food runner.
I always joke. I was a very, very terrible barista.
I am to this day.
It's beyond my capabilities.
I was a bartender very briefly.
I'd like to think that I was a good server. But I got to the point where you're coming up and you're learning from people. You view this as well, I couldn't do that.
I couldn't do what they do. I don't know how they do what it is they do, but I can't do that. I think I got to the point where I just, you know, I. I was in a restaurant that I cared about very, very deeply. You know, I really cared about the service and the hospitality and the guest experience. And I cared about, you know, there. One of my.
There's a really, really great quote that a man is whatever room he is in, you know, so you have people that want to be actors, you have people that want to be musicians, you have people that want to be writers. But if you are a waiter and you are in the dining room, you are a waiter, you. That's who. Who you are right now. That's what you're doing. So you might not necessarily like what it is that you're doing, but you should take pride in how you do it. You should bring a work ethic to what it is that you're doing. And I think the people that progress are the people that take pride in the job that they're doing, because so many doors can be opened to you in life just off of how you present yourself, how you carry yourself, the respect that you bring to a position and the ethic that you bring. So I got to the point where I was in a restaurant and I looked around and I said, you know, maybe not here, but I see things that can be fixed, and I see problems that can be solved, and I see things that can be tightened up, and I have ideas for how to do that. So if this is not the restaurant to do that, or if this isn't the place where I can do that now, because there might not be something available, I want to find a place where I can get in there and bring a fresh set of eyes and bring some ideas to the table and let my voice be, you know, be heard as far as that goes, and really let my, you know, the experience that I now have, the experience that I now have being in this industry for a little bit of time and having a well rounded, you know, background as far as working in a couple of different positions and seeing the restaurant from a couple of different perspectives. I said, I want to do that now. And then you get into management, and then you realize, oh, I don't really know anything.
There's so much more to learn. There's so much more that I didn't know that was on the back end of it on the other side that isn't shown to the service staff. There's so many things that happen in the office. There's so many things that happen in an email or report or a directive from your owner that you know, the service staff is not aware of. And that's also a big part of the job.
Deciding what it is that they need to know and then deciding what it is that you need to hold to yourself and how you present that information. You're, you know, you're. You're a translator in that. That sense, because you might have an owner that wants something done a certain way. And then there's the restaurant speak, there's the restaurant language, and you have to interpret your owner or your operator's wishes and translate that into action. You need to translate that into, you know, something actionable on a floor, and then vice versa. You might have your staff telling you, there's only a certain way that we can do something.
You know, your. Your owner might want it done a certain way, but you need to be able to translate the restaurant language, the, you know, the actionable language into owner speak.
So there's. There's. There's a lot to it as far as that end as well, you learn that, and that also, that comes with experience. But what's most important for a younger manager coming up is knowing that, number one, you have the support of the people that you are answering to, that you should not feel afraid to ask questions if you don't know something. And also to just be exposed to all these things slowly to be brought along, those small little aspects of the financials that then grow that you are responsible for, you grow, you get more responsibility brought onto that after. And then before you know it, you're responsible for a lot. You see how all the parts kind of are, you know, linked together. Your. Your analogy of the. The offensive lineman, you know, at a certain, certain point, you're the one drawing up the play. You're the one that, you know, is leading the 11 men and making sure that each of those 11 men and on the field are aware of what it is that they're supposed to be doing.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think this gets into the.
The conversation of motivation which is something that's endlessly fascinating to me. Daniel Pink wrote a book called Drive a couple of years ago, maybe 10 years ago at this point. But it's all about, like, human motivation. And he says in the book, you know, for centuries, millennia, we've been sort of motivating people with one of two things, either the carrot or the stick. We dangle the carrot, saying, if you do this, then you will be rewarded with something. Or we threaten the stick, if you don't do this, then you will be punished. And he makes a really compelling case, you know, sharing all these. This sort of research and everything, saying, actually, humans are motivated by much deeper, much more interesting, much more complicated things, you know, just self sufficiency. And he's like, you know, why do we play video games? It's for neither the carrot or the stick. Why do we do puzzles? Why do we.
Why do we play pickup basketball? It's not so I can be good enough to make the NBA. I'm not. There's no. But it's fun. It's, you know. And what does it get you? It doesn't get you really anything. We just do it because we're past passing time, because it's enjoyable just for the sake of doing it. And this sort of goes back to what you were saying a few minutes ago. Like, if you're in the room, that's what you are, and so do that as well as you can. And I actually think most people want to do a good job. And this goes back to something we were talking about maybe 20, 25 minutes ago, which is, again, this idea of, you know, all right, guys, you know, listen, you really got to watch labor costs today. And, you know, everybody's like, yeah, I really do want to do it. I want to watch labor. But we're not giving them any. Anything tangible to do to actually accomplish the goal.
And I think we could all do a much better job because people genuinely do want to do a good job. Not because they're going to get rewarded, not because they're going to get punished if they don't do it necessarily, but just because they know what it means to do a good job. And I think that's worth quite a bit.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: Yeah. To just go one step further with you. I think what makes our industry so wonderful is that there are so many different ways in which it can be so rewarding.
So many.
Aside from just the, you know, the. The very, you know, base human level of, as you said, with the video game, of accomplishing something, there are so Many different friendships that you make. There are so many different ways that, you know, this, this industry manifests reward to somebody, whether it be through food or wine or experience or whatever it might be. But there are so many different ways that it is so rewarding, which is, I think, a great reason why you find so many wonderful people in this industry.
Because they, they understand what it is. You know, when they kind of crack the surface and when they get in it and they really have that first tangible moment of, oh, this is, this is, for me, it's very tough to get out of it at that point. You know, it's, it's not something that a lot of people want to get out of. You know, they, they enjoy it so much. And I think that being able to find that reward is very important.
[00:59:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the way that our industry is regarded, certainly in America, it's difficult.
Over in Europe, it's a way of life. You could definitely, it's a sought after career path and not so much in this country, but I think that's changing. I think that's over the last 10 years. I felt this can be a career path and PS could be also a career path without a college attempt, education like you can, you can do it and do it really well and make really good money sort of right out of the gate, you know, are you going to be a billionaire? Maybe not. But you can make pretty good money as long as you apply yourself and sort of.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: But it can also be a career path to so many other things. Just because, as I said, presents you the opportunity to interact with so many different people from so many different facets of life who are in so many different circumstances and positions. And I know so many people who have had so many doors opened for them because of the ethic that they bring, the intelligence that they bring, the humility and the compassion that they bring. The people say, you know, you might not have the experience doing this, but I see that you're a hard worker, I see that you're smart, I see that you're humble, and I'm going to give you an opportunity somewhere else. So it really does lend itself to, to, to, you know, whatever, whatever path you choose to go in your career, in your life, I think it's very important that, I think that the restaurant industry is a very important one to at least dip your toe in the water at some point.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I had somebody on the show a couple weeks ago and they said, you know, I wish, I wish every, you know, it's been said it's cliche, but I said, you know, I wish everybody worked in the service industry at least once in their life, you know, one job even, even if it was just for three months, because you learn so much by taking care of people, right? It's, it's the hot. It's a hard thing to do. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone can do it. Well, yeah, but it teach you, you know, it teaches you how to be humble and, and all that, to serve people, to be there for somebody else's
[01:01:18] Speaker B: needs, teaches you patience.
It teaches you time management, teaches you humility, teaches you manners. You know, restaurant people, I think they hold the door open for everybody more often than not. You know, a lot of pleases and thank yous.
It teaches you how to go out and eat. It teaches you. It teaches you a lot.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: I want to talk because I want to be respectful of your time. We're coming to the end of our time. I got five questions I ask everybody who's on the show. So we'll get to that in a second.
I want to talk about what you think makes a good manager.
Like, what are the qualities? Somebody has no idea they're in your position, the position you were in at one point. Position I was in at one point. They say, I don't know if I'm going to do this. I don't know if I want to do this.
What are the qualities? What are the soft skills that you just have to come preloaded with? And then what are the things that somebody could teach themselves to become a really good, effective manager in our industry?
[01:02:20] Speaker B: I think that.
I think it's important that there's.
There's a humility to admit what you don't know.
I think that that's very important to admit what you don't know. I think it's very important to have a genuine curiosity in the things that you don't know.
I think the, the best managers are the ones who want to genuinely learn things that they do not know.
So I'll go back to my terrible barista skills. I have not stopped trying.
For some reason, it has escaped me. I cannot make a.
I can make a cappuccino. I can make a passable, serviceable cappuccino. I will not stop trying to learn.
I think that the, the managers who succeed are the ones who do not want to stop learning. There's always something to learn. There's something that they don't know that they can learn, that can just be another tool in their toolkit, whether it be back of House operations. I've had some successful managers that, you know, they come in on their day off because they want to learn prep. You know, they come in and they prep vegetables, you know, or they. They learn how to debone a chicken. You know, they come in and they learn some. They learn how to break down a pig.
They learn these things because it might not necessarily apply in their current job, or it might, you know, you might get that guest that's really fascinated about something. You know, I have managers that succeeded because they were interested in certain spirits. So they decided to have field trips to the local distillery or to the local. You know, if there's a winery that's not too far away, you know, that the genuine curiosity in furthering their education.
I think those people are the ones that tend to thrive, but then again, they tend to thrive in almost every profession. The people that do not stop learning. But I think that that's a very, very important trait for a manager. I also think something that's very important for somebody who's starting out is the ability to not let the pressure get to you.
I guess the best example is when the health department shows up. You know, everyone always has the red alert in restaurants, which, you know, I understand it's a stressful time. You know, you're really being put under the microscope. But, you know, as long as your operation is being run the way it should, as long as things are being kept clean on a daily basis, as long as there's organization to your restaurant both on the front and back of house side of things, the idea of you, you panicking and getting your staff in a panic or getting your guests in a panic, it's counterproductive. So it's, It's. It's an easy thing to say, but it's not an easy thing to teach. The idea of you coming with kind of, you know, a, A, an inherent calmness and grace under pressure is very, very important too, I think, because maybe not just the health department, but if your door gets backed up and, you know, and you're half an hour, 45 minutes behind on reservations and you have a sea of people getting angry in your face, staying calm, staying collected, staying cool and graceful and apologizing and trying to do the best you can, it's hard. Tough.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: It's hard. Yeah, it is. It is really hard. Again, because we want to take care of people.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: And Absolutely.
[01:05:41] Speaker A: I was that guy for. For many, many years running the front door, and it was. It's. It's not easy, for sure. I think that's really good.
I got these five questions. Are you down?
[01:05:49] Speaker B: Fire away.
[01:05:50] Speaker A: Great. What's the last great meal you had?
[01:05:55] Speaker B: The last great meal I had. I've had a couple recently.
I went to a restaurant last night with my wife in Dumbo called Vinegar Hill House, which we hadn't been to in a hot minute. Hadn't been there probably, like, 10 years. We had a great meal.
Red wattle pork chop was lovely, and there was an appetizer of English peas and. And favas and ricotta, and it was really wonderful. That was a really good meal. That was 24 hours ago.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: Spring on a plate. I love it. Okay, second question. What's the last great hospitality touch you've received?
[01:06:28] Speaker B: Well, all right. This is maybe not a hospitality touch, but I'm a sucker for this.
My wife hates it when I do this. But there was a period of time which, you know, everyone always wants to see the kitchen, but I would go to restaurants, and I'd want to see their dish pit.
I think that the hallmark for a restaurant, for their organization, is how your dish pit is organized. So I had a couple of operators who would go, yeah, no problem. Let me show it to you. And it would be really, really lovely and really, really well organized and well maintained. The metro shelves are put together really well, and you can see the order for getting things washed and back in service in a timely fashion. And some would be a mess. And I said, oh, this restaurant's not going to last.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: They're not gonna make it.
[01:07:09] Speaker B: I don't think they're gonna make it. So I think the last good hospitality touch. I was in a restaurant outside of New York, and the operator said, do you want to take a tour of the back of house? And I said, sure. And I thought that they were gonna show me the kitchen. The first place he took me was to the dish pit because he was so proud of how it was set up. And I thought, this restaurant is gonna be in business for quite a while.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: It's got a good opportunity.
[01:07:33] Speaker B: It was a really good house hospitality touch.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: I love it. Okay, third question. Now, if a genie came down, it could grant you one wish as it relates to this industry. What would it be? What would you wish for? You only get one.
[01:07:44] Speaker B: I would wish that we didn't need to rely on tipping in order for people to have not just a sustainable lifestyle, but a comfortable lifestyle.
I love it.
[01:07:57] Speaker A: I love that. All right, number four. What would you tell someone who's about to open their very first restaurant?
[01:08:02] Speaker B: Don't.
[01:08:06] Speaker A: No, that's the answer I get 4 out of 5 times.
[01:08:10] Speaker B: I would say for the person that's opening their first restaurant, I would say don't. But I would also say think about what you're serving and what your rent costs.
[01:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:08:25] Speaker B: Because your dream of what your cuisine is, you might not be able to afford that.
[01:08:31] Speaker A: All right, last question.
We're going to talk about the future of restaurants. So I want you to look five years down the line, and I want you to tell me, what do you think is coming that other people may not see coming?
[01:08:41] Speaker B: I think that, like fashion, restaurants are cyclical.
So I think that the trends of the mid to late 90s, like the big, over the top, expansive Budokan spice market days, will come back.
Because restaurants kind of, in a sense, we. They're reflective of the economy, but they also chase the economy.
So I think just as the markets are cyclical and fashion is cyclical, there will be a period of this kind of over the top showmanship that returns.
And I think in between now and five years from now, you're going to see the bare bones approach come back in which everything is stripped of its essence. And you're going to get back to that point again where people say, I want a show. I want dinner and a show. If I'm spending this amount of money on my meal, I need more than just the meal. And I need more than just like some gruff demeanor. I need to be wowed.
[01:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Great. I love that.
I think that's a good one. Listen, Stephen, this has been a great conversation.
[01:09:50] Speaker B: It's been fun.
[01:09:52] Speaker A: Any last words of wisdom you want to share? Anything. We didn't touch on anything. I forgot to ask.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: I'd say just. In restaurants, as in life, whether it's an employee, whether it's an employer, whether it is a colleague or a co worker or a guest, the golden rule should always apply. Please treat people how you would like to be treated. You'd be amazed how much you can get out of them. You'd be amazed how much you can be forgiven. And you'd be amazed how far you can go just by treating people with decency, humility, and respect.
[01:10:26] Speaker A: I love that. Where can people go to connect with you if they want to connect with you? Learn more about you. Learn more about the restaurants. I'll include some of the links to the restaurants we talked about.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: You can come visit me at Il Buco.
We're on Bond street in NoHo in Manhattan, located between Lafayette and Bowery. It's a wonderful restaurant. It's been around for a while. We celebrate our 30th anniversary next year.
It is, you know, every restaurant strives to be the kind of place where you can have a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine. But we are that place. And our pasta is made fresh. Our wine is fantastic. It's a beautiful room. It's a fun atmosphere, and it's the kind of restaurant you can go back to again and again.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: I love it. It's a great. It's a great restaurant. Stephen, thank you so much for, for sharing your insights and your time. Really appreciate it.
[01:11:15] Speaker B: Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: So again, I want to thank Stephen for taking time out of his day to join us again. Go visit him. He'll probably buy you a glass of wine. If I knew Stephen well, Il Buco is a phenomenal restaurant in Manhattan.
One of the real greats again, like he said. So just about to celebrate 30 years again, great insights on this show. This is one of those you might want to share with your managers, you might want to pass along to. To other owners, you know, and bookmark it, go back and listen to it again, because I think there's a lot of really great, actionable insights in here. Again, I appreciate you guys being here as I appreciate you every single week. I know there's a lot of ways you can be spending your time. I appreciate you spending part of your week with me. Thank you very much. And I will see you next time.
