Month: May 2024

What are the folks at the top of our industry doing to help us and themselves? On today’s show, we chat with four-time James Beard award-winning TV personality, chef, writer, teacher and social justice advocate, Chef Andrew Zimmern. Andrew has not only reached the pinnacles of success, he’d done so while supporting and advocating for independent restaurants. Today we talk about the where we are and where we’re headed as an industry and what we can do to help each other.

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Want to streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over to http://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcast to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.

SHOW NOTES

• 3-pronged strategy for moving forward during the Covid crisis
• Not getting stuck in one metric or business model. Being fluid and flexible
• Covid give us a chance to review our businesses
• Many sectors of the hospitality industry were already broken – Covid accelerated the demise
• Building back the right way
• Reviewing pricing, menus, HR
• Realigning our motives for being in the hospitality industry
• Many people joined to become famous or seek wealth
• This can be poor for mental health as stardom is fleeting
• Stay in the industry because of love, not to get rich
• Wolfgang Puck took a huge risk coming to America and struggled alot in his early career. His passion led to his stardom.
• There is a low barrier to entry to become a restaurateur
• Anyone with finance can open a restaurant
• The restaurant life seems “sexy” and appealing to anyone who loves dining out
• The restaurant business is extremely fragile to run well – pennies business with slim margins
• Reflecting as a practice
• Andrew has a daily reflection practice he learned whilst becoming sober
• Taking regular inventory of problems e.g pros and cons lists
• Writing things on paper helps to reflect on them
• Any business or human being that doesn’t regularly take stock will fail
• Reflecting on the restaurant business
• Slowing down to learn from what is happening right now
• Working on ops issues
• How working for larger causes helps mental health
• Taking focus off himself slows his thoughts
• Working extremely hard
• Extremely fulfilling work
• Projects to help the hospitality industry
• Small anonymous group helping local community
• Speaking to the local governor regarding safety in hospitality reopening
• Why we are on this earth
• Andrew would ask First Peoples’ this question
• “We’re on this earth to love and nurture each other”
• Small gestures are more fulfilling than big gestures
• Things we can do to service the industry
• Start at a community level
• Create a community resource kitchen if it is needed
• Donate time, money, or food to resource kitchens and initiatives already operating
• Share causes on social media
• Checking in on people
• Donating masks
• The podcast is awareness-raising and impacting lives
• Positive changes predicted for after Covid
• Low-cost micro model restaurants for feeding small communities

Change is in the air. We’ve felt it coming for years and we see it happening before our eyes in this moment. Today’s buzzwords were the dreams of innovators from decades past. And innovation can be found everywhere.

Today we chat with Loren and Lisa Poncia, founders of Stemple Creek Ranch. Stemple Creek is not only famous for their regenerative agricultural practices but they’re also the guys supplying protein to every Michelin rated restaurant in the Bay area.

In our conversation we talk about the path to carbon neutrality, the future of ranching and how, despite a global pandemic, 2020 was a profitable year for the ranch.

For more on The Stemple Creek Ranch go to https://stemplecreek.com

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Today we chat with Barrie Schwartz, founder of My House, an events company in New Orleans, Louisiana. Schwartz has made a name for herself as an industry disruptor by democratizing chefdom, proving that chefs don’t need restaurants, they simply need an audience. These efforts have garnered her accolades including PCMA’s 20 in their Twenties, Connect Corporate’s 40 Under 40 and Gambit’s 30 Under 30. The COVID 19 pandemic has inspired new challenges as she and her team now work to ensure women and chef of color are represented on the front lines of this fight.

Click to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Click here to book time on my personal calendar.

Click here to download our Restaurant Recovery Guide.

Want to streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over to http://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcast to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.

SHOW NOTES

• Started her love of hospitality in college where she and friend ran a sandwich cafe
• What she loved about hospitality
• Making others happy
• Social aspect
• Entrepreneurial skills to run a business
• Time management
• Goal setting
• Community building
• Living and working by the company values
• How My House became an industry disrupter
• Allowing chefs to bring their voice and story to events
• Making food sexy
• Giving chefs an opportunity to add another revenue stream via catering whether they have a restaurant or not
• Getting past major obstacles
• 2013 they owned a food truck business that was forced to close due to politics
• Pivoted to start a food hall
• Learned that being pushed to a wall forced resilience, creativity and innovation
• Working in New Orleans
• Equally creative, entrepreneurial, and cultural
• Equally old school and present roadblocks for entrepreneurs
• Initiatives during Covid
• Providing chefs with other economic opportunities while restaurants are closed via small events
• Pushing female chefs and chefs of color to the forefront of community work
• Diverse mix of chefs feeding keyworkers in the community
• Rethinking the business model
• How can the business model accommodate smaller events?
• Could postponed events maintain their budget but happen on a smaller scale?
• Covid gives us time to pause and reflect
• What aspects of the business do we want to keep doing?
• Continue to bring different chefs together
• Continue to introduce people to food they may not have tried before
• What are the mechanics of keeping these aspects in a post-covid world?
• Allowing the team to rest and pause is also important
• Dealing with fear during the crisis
• Prioritizing self-care
• Somedays more resilient than others
• Not allowing fear to dictate the next moves of the business
• Not wanting to rush into things because of fear
• Gentle, slow approach to rebuilding
• Secrets to success
• Being adaptable to feedback and evolving the business idea over time
• You can’t over-communicate too much
• Communicate the “why”, not just the “how” and “what”
• Understanding your weaknesses and asking for help
• Pitfalls to avoid

The most direct path to success is to follow in the footsteps of the already successful. After 30 years in various leadership positions at the famed Union Square Hospitality Group, Mark Maynard decided to go independent. Rather than starting his own restaurant, he’s chosen to help other restaurateurs implement the best practices of his former employer. Today we discuss the strategies that made Union Square so successful and tools we can use to achieve the same.

For more information on Mark, visit https://www.maynardconsulting.net/.

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