Saturday, June 23, 2007
What Makes A Restaurant Great?
So, I got worried for a moment that my investor got cold feet. It turns out that he has been out of town and this week approached the owner of the place I want to buy in Russia. What is this place you ask?
It is a restaurant that I spent one whole year planning. I did a lot of sitting on my butt in St. Petersburg waiting for this place. Planning menus and designing the kitchen, service systems, et. al. Then we opened and the Shit-Hit-the-Fan as the saying goes.
My lesson here is to always remember the cardinal rules of the restaurant business:
1. A sucessful restaurant does not indicate that it is run by people who know how to run a restaurant. This is more true than anyone not in the business can understand, I think. A sucessful restaurant is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. The best example I can think of is to ask you to remember that place that is packed with customers but completely baffles you when you really look at what they serve, the atmosphere, whatever...
Then, more often than not, there is a place very close by, often times next door that is hands down more creative, better food, etc. and it is a desserted wasteland on the verge of closing. Most people have seen that place I think.
Restaurant owners are a special breed. Those that really luck into success are special in a different way. They tend, ultimately, to believe their own hype and that is the beginning of their downfall. What they should do, and this is my advice, collect the profits and go on your next vacation and leave the work to the professionals. And that is what happened to me at this place, which for a little while longer shall remain nameless. ( I have become superstitious in my headlong-surge-to-buy-this-wacky-place and I think if I write it down it will never happen.) Suddenly an "Owner" became an "Idea Person", mostly because the money guys started breathing down his neck because his laziness really set the place back. Now, an owner that does not work in the restaurnt 24/7 rarely has any good ideas. (Sorry, guys, but that is the truth and your upper staff spends the time that you do spend in your own restaurant trying desperatel to save you from yourself.) And then when the money guys start going at him/her he starts pushing for things 5 minutes before they are ready, that, my friends, is the beginning of the end.
Anyway, my old job, which again is the place I am trying to buy, seats about 85 guests, has 4 owners, three of whom put up the money and one, the problem, who is the "creative" type that is supposedly the Operating Partner. Well, first, he is inherently lazy. Which I have known for years (I will say here that I have worked for this man for 5 years) and is really not a problem until he comes in with ideas. This is the problem as I stated above: there are two types of successful restaurant owners, first the kind that can spot and hire talent then leave them alone and second, the worker owner, who is usually but not always, a chef. My "owner" was neither. He was, by his own admission merely lucky. I recently said to him that he was the most successful restauranteur in St. Petersburg. And, this is gospel truth, he said to me, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, that he was not a restauranteur that he was lucky with other peoples money. (Then in a subsequent conversation started to say that he was a restauranteur. But, that is a whole other blog about believing your own hype.)
Anyway, I had to leave because I have ambitions, as you can see, to own my own place in Russia and the only thing that will make that happen is my reputation. I could not let that go down the drain.
2. Never believe your own press. This is the biggy. You are only as good as your last dish. And, that is a fact that many restaurant owners and chefs forget. Which, by the way is the reason I love Wolfgang Puck. That is a restauranteur that works. And, I mean hard. If I try to emulate anyone it is him. Now, I do not copy his food. In fact I have a very extensive collection of cookbooks and I do not even own one of his. I did once and found the recipes unremarkable. But, as a restauranteur I do believe this man is unsurpassed in America. And that is because he does the third cardinal rule better than anyone, I think...
3. Know your clientele and give them what they want. If your guests wanted to go to cooking school they would. It is that simple. People go to restaurants for a couple of different reasons and school is not one of them. This is the reason that a few "Top Chefs" will always do lukewarm business. They are so impressed with themselves or calcium alginate that they forget that their guest came to eat. Now I love that food and do a bit of it myself but there are limits and, actually, when I go to a restaurant it is because I want to go to school. Most people that are devoted to the food of Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria will go to The Fat Duck or el Bulli, everyone else wants either one of three things:
1. To eat. They are just plain hungry.
2. To be seen in a fashionable environment.
3. To not have to do the dishes
It is a restaurant that I spent one whole year planning. I did a lot of sitting on my butt in St. Petersburg waiting for this place. Planning menus and designing the kitchen, service systems, et. al. Then we opened and the Shit-Hit-the-Fan as the saying goes.
My lesson here is to always remember the cardinal rules of the restaurant business:
1. A sucessful restaurant does not indicate that it is run by people who know how to run a restaurant. This is more true than anyone not in the business can understand, I think. A sucessful restaurant is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. The best example I can think of is to ask you to remember that place that is packed with customers but completely baffles you when you really look at what they serve, the atmosphere, whatever...
Then, more often than not, there is a place very close by, often times next door that is hands down more creative, better food, etc. and it is a desserted wasteland on the verge of closing. Most people have seen that place I think.
Restaurant owners are a special breed. Those that really luck into success are special in a different way. They tend, ultimately, to believe their own hype and that is the beginning of their downfall. What they should do, and this is my advice, collect the profits and go on your next vacation and leave the work to the professionals. And that is what happened to me at this place, which for a little while longer shall remain nameless. ( I have become superstitious in my headlong-surge-to-buy-this-wacky-place and I think if I write it down it will never happen.) Suddenly an "Owner" became an "Idea Person", mostly because the money guys started breathing down his neck because his laziness really set the place back. Now, an owner that does not work in the restaurnt 24/7 rarely has any good ideas. (Sorry, guys, but that is the truth and your upper staff spends the time that you do spend in your own restaurant trying desperatel to save you from yourself.) And then when the money guys start going at him/her he starts pushing for things 5 minutes before they are ready, that, my friends, is the beginning of the end.
Anyway, my old job, which again is the place I am trying to buy, seats about 85 guests, has 4 owners, three of whom put up the money and one, the problem, who is the "creative" type that is supposedly the Operating Partner. Well, first, he is inherently lazy. Which I have known for years (I will say here that I have worked for this man for 5 years) and is really not a problem until he comes in with ideas. This is the problem as I stated above: there are two types of successful restaurant owners, first the kind that can spot and hire talent then leave them alone and second, the worker owner, who is usually but not always, a chef. My "owner" was neither. He was, by his own admission merely lucky. I recently said to him that he was the most successful restauranteur in St. Petersburg. And, this is gospel truth, he said to me, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, that he was not a restauranteur that he was lucky with other peoples money. (Then in a subsequent conversation started to say that he was a restauranteur. But, that is a whole other blog about believing your own hype.)
Anyway, I had to leave because I have ambitions, as you can see, to own my own place in Russia and the only thing that will make that happen is my reputation. I could not let that go down the drain.
2. Never believe your own press. This is the biggy. You are only as good as your last dish. And, that is a fact that many restaurant owners and chefs forget. Which, by the way is the reason I love Wolfgang Puck. That is a restauranteur that works. And, I mean hard. If I try to emulate anyone it is him. Now, I do not copy his food. In fact I have a very extensive collection of cookbooks and I do not even own one of his. I did once and found the recipes unremarkable. But, as a restauranteur I do believe this man is unsurpassed in America. And that is because he does the third cardinal rule better than anyone, I think...
3. Know your clientele and give them what they want. If your guests wanted to go to cooking school they would. It is that simple. People go to restaurants for a couple of different reasons and school is not one of them. This is the reason that a few "Top Chefs" will always do lukewarm business. They are so impressed with themselves or calcium alginate that they forget that their guest came to eat. Now I love that food and do a bit of it myself but there are limits and, actually, when I go to a restaurant it is because I want to go to school. Most people that are devoted to the food of Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria will go to The Fat Duck or el Bulli, everyone else wants either one of three things:
1. To eat. They are just plain hungry.
2. To be seen in a fashionable environment.
3. To not have to do the dishes
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