Jensen Cummings of Best Served - Celebrating the Unsung Hospitality Heroes, Investing in Your Staff, and the Future of the Hospitality Industry

Chris Spear
Today on the podcast I have chef Jenson Cummings, the creator and host of Best Serve dpodcast. On his show, he talks to hospitality industry leaders to learn about their trials and triumphs of their lives and careers. A fifth generation chef/restauranteur, Jensen has run acclaimed kitchens, owned restaurants developed concepts, and is now focused on evolving the restaurant business model, and storytelling through his hospitality strategy brand, Best Served Creative. Welcome to the show, Jenson.

Jensen Cummings
Thanks for having me on, Chris.

Chris Spear
So I get to interview the master interviewer today.

Jensen Cummings
I tell people I'm not an interviewer. I'm a conversationalist. I'm not smart enough to even write down questions.

Chris Spear
I started writing questions the past few months just to make sure that I'm on track. You know, when it started, all of my guests were people I knew really well. I think the environment of live versus online is very different. When I started the show, we were all in the same room. Often we were at JugBridge Brewery who hosted us for a few months. So you'd sit with a pint, you relaxed a little bit, and you just had conversation around a table. And now, I'm getting guests I don't necessarily know well. You and I have never met face to face. And you don't have the alcohol involved. So sometimes I make a few notes just to make sure we're on the right track.

Jensen Cummings
So like I said, You're smarter than I am.

Chris Spear
So, I appreciate that. So why don't we jump in a little bit about your backstory. So what's your history with cooking and culinary arts? Is that something you've always done and loved and saw a culinary career from a very young age.

Jensen Cummings
It was a young age, but not kind of the high school journey that a lot of people we talked to, you know, they're like I was 12 13 14 needed a job or was into, you know, cooking. It's always been a part of my family. So it's always been something we've been connected to, you know, fifth generation chef restaurant tour, throw out there because legacy is super interesting. It's very polarizing. And so I throw it out there just so I can have a conversation.about it. What that means to me. Fifth Generation. I mean, we opened our first restaurant in 1900. In Little Falls, Minnesota called Lafond house that was a great great grandfather, Grandpa great grandfather grandfather had bars, mostly bars and some restaurants in San Francisco. And my dad's three younger brothers all in restaurants kind of spread across the country. So when I was 17, graduating high school in San Diego, one of my uncle says, Why don't you come out a little bit of a troublemaker that's not surprising when you think of the archetype of people that work in the restaurants to come out to my restaurant in Ames, Iowa where I was stayed is for the summer wash some dishes cook a little bit chase college girls, I was like, Well, yeah, that sounds great. Let's Let's do that. And right away, I mean, shift one, shift two, I was like, these are my people. It was the you know, the pirates on the pirate ship, the band of rebels, the island Misfit Toys. I was like, This shit is crazy. And you know, the hazing, all of it. I loved it. I was super enamored with it. And you know roomed with three other guys that I cooked with and so it was just all encompassing, at that young age very, you know, very moldable and vulnerable in that time and I just I just took to it and had a knack for it within a year went from the dish pit to like running the line, because I was just all in every shift pick up every extra shift. First one and last one outs even as hungover as we were every day doing that. So I very much was like in it 100% and, and kind of found my way, work in that way. And this was a sports bar called Wallabies bar grill names. I was my first job. And it's like, USA Today's number 35 Sports around the country like we made everything from scratch, and you talk in a college town, Kansas versus Iowa State basketball or Nebraska versus Iowa State football. It's like religion in the Midwest. I had no idea coming from California.So I mean you do you know, five turns like with a five man line it was insane absolutely insane and I loved it.

Chris Spear
When I was in college we had a pub on campus and I had to work there for my work study, and we were a big wing bar, and I still have nightmares about wings alone. And just like the cleanup and I was always trying to you know, we close it a relatively decent time and still I would try to like leave there and go out to a club and in hindsight, I you know, I see why I was single because you trip to the club smelling like chicken wings in whoa at midnight or something like that. You know, I'd go and do like the bird bath in the in the bathroom, but you still can't get that wing smell off.

Jensen Cummings
My my wife now wife, Betsy, who I met there, she actually worked at one of my uncle's restaurants. And she said, I can tell which restaurant you were working at, by the way that you smelled. So there was like a different kind of aroma of the one restaurant where we had the woodfire grill. You smelled like this the one restaurant, you know where you had a lot of things going in the fryer You smell like that the restaurant that was you were on the fish station on the French top basting fish like a madman. You always smell like fish and butter, you know? And so, yeah, the aromas that you're talking about.They stand out for better or worse.

Chris Spear
Yeah, you always know who works in the food industry when you get in their car. Did you end up going into culinary school?

Jensen Cummings
I went to culinary school, maybe four years after I got into the industry. And this is an interesting topic. I don't know why I did. And people ask me is corner school worth it or not? I tell them Yes. The answer is yes. to both of those questions. Is it a waste of money and time? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. It really depends on what you put into it. What's interesting is, I don't remember much about the techniques that I learned the, you know, the mother sauces of French technique, like I'm never going to go cook chicken cordon bleu or chicken cacciatorre ever again. Like those things don't matter. Absolutely as a dated in that way, yes, it the relationships that I have coming out of that they're pretty fundamental to kind of who I am in the industry. And so it's always it's humans, it's humans in communication, Chris every single time I tell people, you know, chefs without restaurants, right, I'm not in the kitchen anymore full time. And so that's an interesting dynamic because what I recognize now is I've always just been a communicator, pure and simple. I just happen to use food as the medium for that, and communicating the experiences the flavors, and so a lot of those moments of epiphany happened in culinary school or cooking with French chefs from Leon or going to Vegas. And, you know, going to Charlie Palmer's restaurant like those moments that are catalysts to kind of me as a communicator, definitely came from those moments in corner school. So I'm grateful for those

Unknown Speaker
putting yourself in massive debt and not spending the time working in a restaurant at a time that I think is a vulnerability. Yeah, definitely, you know, it changes so much people ask me, it's like I went to culinary school from 1994 to 98. And the world was very different. You know, when we got the internet, like very briefly like 1995, I remember, but it was just messing around on AOL. Like, you couldn't watch a Masterclass with Massimo Bottura. you couldn't read 5000 cookbooks from the world's best chefs like everything was very different. And I grew up outside of Boston in a smaller suburb, like, we didn't have a dining scene, there was no like place to go stars or whatever. I didn't even know that concept. So you know, today I can say, Well, yeah, that makes sense for you to go. Not go to school or to go to school. But you know, it's really hard to look back on what I did. It's what worked for me today. I don't think personally, I would do it I would find a different way. But again, everyone's different. I also don't think I was mature at 18 years old.

Unknown Speaker
You know, I didn't have the maturity and I think four years in school, I grew a lot. And that helped as well. I think what you're talking about is an interesting concept when there's this generational speak, right? I think about today, there's a lot of finger wagging of kids these days aren't as committed. They're not this. They're not that they don't work as hard. All of these things. I don't know that that's true. Are there people like that? Yes. Were there in our generation and before and before? Yes, there's always lazy people in every single generation. What's happening is, you know, I thought getting a plate thrown in my head was a badge of honor. Now we're getting called out like, no, that's just stupid. And it's not sustainable. Right. The durability and longevity of the restaurant industry is clearly not sustainable. And I want to get into this we'll talk about a little later but like to set the table for people. I have this like vision, that 65 year old line cooks are getting ready to retire all across our industry because we invested in them in the

Unknown Speaker
model of a more equitable, profitable and sustainable industry so that the proverbial gold watch and the pension after putting in your 3540 years on the line is a viable option for people. It's just not I don't know, any 65 year old line cooks, maybe some bartenders. It's just not built for the long term. And I think that's a huge again, vulnerability for our industry. And so we're pointing fingers at kids. No, no, I want to have something that both I'm passionate about, and can work in forever, whatever that is for my career. And we don't like it, right. And we're not investing in that. And we're still you know, haggling about 12 or $13 an hour. It's crazy. We need to think about reinventing the model of restaurants because it hasn't been altered. The fundamental model of a restaurant hasn't been altered and over half a century, what other industry has not had to get disrupted massively, and be a completely new iteration of itself. Not many that still exist, and

Unknown Speaker
We need to pay attention to that. I mean, I'm not seeing a lot of 40 something line cooks, let alone 65. I mean, that's the whole thing with chefs without restaurants. I talk about chefs aging out of restaurants, you know, around this age. I mean, I'm 44. And it was just like, I had been an executive chef since I was in my late 20s. I had moved up pretty much as far as I was, I was a corporate executive chef, I kind of reached the top in my company. I didn't want to be a general manager. Like, that's not what I was interested in. And I didn't see any growth plan. And then the whole personal chef thing, it's like, you know, it's, it's not that it's easier. It's easier in a lot of ways. It's a better work life balance, in my opinion. But I started doing that on the side 10 years ago, and I've been doing it for years, but I've just seen over the years, more and more people seeing that as an option. Like, oh, I can just go basically like have my own restaurant that I take to people's homes and I don't have to work 80 hours a week and I can make decent coin. And just seeing more of these people. Getting out of the restaurant industry or getting out of restaurants not being line cooks executive chefs tied down

Unknown Speaker
They've got a food truck. They're a caterer or they work in r&d. I mean, my whole organization and podcast is dedicated to highlighting those people who aren't working in restaurants. To your point, the gatekeepers have shifted. It used to be you needed the big name chef, or even somebody like us, like I remember tag restaurant when tag restaurant opened in Denver under Troy guard. And the Larimer group, you know, it was a big moment. 2009 I remember being the chef cuisine there and having the number seven guy down from me come from being executive chef somewhere else because we were like an incubator for some of the best talent. And we held you know, the highest standard, everyone showed up two hours for their shift on page just to kind of work and siphon some of those superpowers that we were laying out for people, even in the decades since that has completely shifted now, where they have unfettered access to any piece of information, any level of training

Unknown Speaker
So we got to recognize that we're not bringing enough value to the next generation like we used to. We're still romanticizing the fact that we did used to it used to be like, yeah, you better be the first name. And last out if you want that. Now, nobody can promise that anymore. This is a learning opportunity. You get to put my restaurant on your resume does not hold sway like it used to. And that's a really hard pill to swallow. And I completely understand it. And sometimes, yeah, you know, a kid coming in the kitchen doesn't understand the value of that work. And that dynamic versus watching a YouTube video it is different, yet it is not as different as we might think. And so we need to kind of just come to grips with that and decide how are we going to invest in that model? What's the education because also, the chef driven restaurant is a super fascinating and polarizing concept to me. One, it created some of the best opportunities that I've seen in the last decade, two decades for restaurants for the food.

Unknown Speaker
industry. And the open kitchen is one of the ones where no longer were guests just nameless, faceless assholes that sent back food and had weird requests. Now there was a relationship created, I think that was very powerful. And also, it created the dynamic where people wanted to know who was preparing their food and wanted to connect beyond just what's on the plate we talk a lot about. It's not what's on the plate, it's who gets it at the plate that truly truly matters. And so that was a huge opportunity. On the flip side, a couple things happen. One is the chef driven restaurant put a huge stress on the business model. We are the only business where you're actually in two completely separate business, you're in manufacturing and you're in retail sales. And you think about the downtown corridor of any city you know, there's the nice shoe boutique that makes sense. And a high traffic high rent area. You'd never see the shoe factory in downtown yet we put the food boutique and the food factory in the same location puts a huge stress on the financial

Unknown Speaker
burden of restaurant or restaurant kitchen started getting bigger and bigger and more and more money spent on him too. All of a sudden, I did this I design kitchen is 50% of the space was the kitchen because I wanted all the cool shit. Yet you do not produce one single dollar in the kitchen. Every single dollar that a restaurant produces happens in the front of house. And recognizing that is difficult because it is our passion. It is our product and all that. So, you know, the chef driven restaurant did that. The other thing it did is all of a sudden chefs became brands, which again, I think there's a ton of value. yet. It also created a dynamic where the chef would all of a sudden be overseeing four restaurants, five restaurants, nine restaurants, right and we still were thinking about when you were side by side with the chef, the value there was clear you were going to get the most value of working side by side with them. The reality is the return on investment for somebody saying I'm going to show up two hours early before my shift is diminishing because

Unknown Speaker
Now you're working with the number 14 person down the totem pole. Yet for the chef and the company, they still think of it as the incubator like it used to be. And it not necessarily isn't that way anymore. So that's a huge challenge. And then what happens when the chef moves on to I mean, I've had this discussion with restaurant tours, you know, you don't always have this thing where the chef is part owner, but you build this empire or even just one restaurant around your chef, when that chef leaves or if they leave, that can be problematic. And I had this discussion with people in context of the dining scene here where I live, there are very few chefs who are known and I always felt like the chef should get more credit. And when I was talking to someone whose owner said, Yeah, but the problem with that is, if that chef leaves, we're screwed as an owner, you know, I can't have everyone know that chef Joe is the chef and they come here for chef Joe because if chef Joe gets a better job, Chef Mike needs to take over you know, in Frederick, where I live we have volt it's Bryan Voltaggio.

Unknown Speaker
But other than that, I couldn't name a single chef, with the exception of like to downtown. And I always thought that was weird because when I go to big cities, you go to DC I'm eating at, you know, this restaurant, because I like the chef, every single restaurant I go to in big cities is because of the chef and that brand. But in the smaller cities, you don't really know who the chef is, for the most part, I think we were talking about brings up an important part of brand, like your reputation is what your brand is. And so the ability to make sure that that is sound to what the restaurant is like who you are, as a restaurant, why you exist, is really, really important. And we talk a lot on the show of like, we want to value and focus on why and who before what and how we get so caught up in what we do and how we do it. And kind of the Chef namebrand feeds into that a little bit because you see it often very high caliber restaurants. When the chef leaves it's a completely new restaurant because the new chef wants to put their stamp on it. And I think it's important for brands

Unknown Speaker
Like you need to have your why and your who, who you serve who's in the trenches, why you do what you do very clear that that's unwavering. That never changes. So then you can add on the what and the how. And it doesn't feel like a new restaurant because restaurants a lot of times struggle with that because they've built so much brand around individuals or what's on the plate. And we got to remember that that is fluid that is ever evolving and changing. And if you are so stuck on that, that's when you get hyped out of the game because you aren't that anymore for people. But I think if you do a good job, you can grow your people and then they can be an extension of the brand as much. So again, going back to DC we have a restaurant called the source and it was WOLFGANG PUCK'S the source. I would have had no interest going there. You know, Wolfgang Puck is not cooking there. But there chef Scott drew No, he's not there anymore. He has his own restaurants. But he became the name for the restaurant. You know, he became

Unknown Speaker
known to everyone in DC, he was winning awards for Best chef in the city and all this and then it became like, Well, you didn't care that Wolfgang Puck was not there. You almost didn't want him to be there. Like in his own right. Scott got a lot of publicity and notoriety and was doing amazing food. And he sends leverage that and gone on to open a bunch of other restaurants in the city. And I think a lot of places they can say like, sure we're whoever chef restaurant, but this is the guy running it and kind of build them up and make him like his own celebrity chef and some right. What you're talking about now is really fundamental to the best serve podcast show itself. What I wanted to do when I was reflecting on my own career, I noticed that every time that I thought about a moment in my personal history, when I had succeeded, and when I looked at a moment when I had failed, there was a very binary action that happened. It was very simply, did I as the leader recognize that I worked for my team and in fact

Unknown Speaker
Everything of myself to empower them success every single time that I took them for granted and thought they were lucky to work for me because I did win the award, I won that competition, I had the articles or the TV spot, fail. Very, very simple, completely binary. And so like I got to focus more on the the times that I was able to invest in people, what was it and the word that came up again and again and again was acknowledgement, I spent a lot of time acknowledging the work that they did. Even when we would do dinners let's say, you know, beer, dinner, wine, dinner, a farm dinner, I would bring out everybody who cooked including the dishwasher, I would recognize them and allow them to have the applause because they did more of the work the end. And that was really important. And other times when I thought, like you're going to do the job that I hired you to do, because I'm the boss. It never worked. And it took me stepping back from the kitchen to recognize that and I said we have to spend all of our time acknowledge

Unknown Speaker
And for me, it's time for you to spend some time with some atonement for everybody that you did not spend time and effort on cultivating. And that was a really important part. It's why we've we've branded them they call them unsung hospitality heroes, hashtag unsung hospitality heroes, because they're the ones that matter. They are absolutely the ones that matter. We see this now 15 million plus all the ancillary, you know, industries that are supported the number two employer of people in the state in this country behind the government, right. And we need to invest in that. And so that has been a really important thing is like, every single episode of the podcast before we kind of made the pivot to the live video show. We had, you know, a name brand, and they were required, and they loved it. They were required to shout out somebody else. And at the end of each of those episodes, we had that second voice that they acknowledged, little 10 minute piece and what was actually going to be happening before COVID hit and kind of threw off our time.

Unknown Speaker
Our whole platform was the second voices, we're going to become their own episode, they shout somebody else out. And we get interconnected across so many more voices than we've ever known. And that's still a big part of the video side of our show is always we're bringing up other people in the background questions that we give people like tell us somebody that we need to know. Because I just love being introduced to new people. And the more people that I've met, the better I am, the more enriched I am. And I want to bring that to our audience. So I guess we need to talk about what is best served, what do you do on a day to day basis basis for business and the how the why the podcast where did the podcast come from? So the podcast again, was kind of my reflection of wanting to spend some time as a communicator in the space of bringing value to those on some hospitality heroes. And so I just started getting on my phone, having phone calls with people and you know, doing the audio podcast anchor. I'll give a big shout out to anchor and I

Unknown Speaker
Listen to an episode randomly of Gary Vee with Chase Jarvis. They're like doing podcasts you have to do a podcast you literally do on your phone for free. Like Shut up. What about like a $30 headset was like let's go. I just sat in the chair sometimes in my car with a sweatshirt hanging around me in my car in a parking lot next to Lark burger down the street from us, because there were there was better bars there then directly behind my house like totally crazy. And I was like, I'm just gonna have a conversation with people. And that's, you know, where we started when March 18 when we made the transition to going live on Facebook and now we're on multiple platforms was because I'm like, people want real time information. I need to hustle and communicate for them and try and get these stories out there trying to connect with them be more practical in the moment. Versus right now I don't know that everyone wants to talk about cooking with their grandmother when they were a kid. Now we're back to Cooking with grandma and your kid because it's fundamental to who we are, I think is an important thing.

Unknown Speaker
For us, so that's where we started in my day to day 200 episodes coming up now, in five and a half months, more than more than one a day we have been on every single day seven days a week have not skipped a day since that time because everyone else out there is not skipping a day of needing some support, needing some communication needing to know that they're not alone, needing to know that somebody is out there trying to like make some shit happen for them so on every day, and that was a reflection of you know, as somebody who's like a hospital strategist, consultant work really on how we invest in human capital do a lot of work with what we call the Paragon pillars on reinventing the model of, of the restaurant business. Mine. My jobs went to zero in a three day span, I was looking cushy through q2 of 2020, went to zero. And I was like, wow, we are so vulnerable. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna get on spend every day doing this. And, you know, we're about to start

Unknown Speaker
monetizing. Because I think there's, you know, an opportunity for that in a very different way than a lot of other shows and podcasts are doing that we're not gonna do advertising. We're more like partnering up with channel partners to kind of make sense that are bringing the most value to the industry and kind of connecting with the right people. Since human connector is like really what we are at scale. So, you know, it's, it's that it was just like, out of desperation, saying, Well, I don't know what else to do. And it was Christmas therapy. I literally needed to talk to other humans every single day, so I didn't go fucking crazy. That was it. There was no money in it. You know, people like God, he must be killing us like, zero dollars. zero dollars is how much and now we have a team though of like six people a bunch of like interns that are like crushing it. We have our first paid employee that you know, is totally crazy. Like, I don't have any money. This shows not generating money. I started investing in Sophie breaker who runs the show now, who started as an intern from Johnson and Wales, the Johnson Wales that's now defunct

Unknown Speaker
In closing in Denver, Colorado, because that's a huge challenge for culinary schools right now back to your point of this culinary school important, you know, and I was like, I need to invest in this person because it matters to me. And so, you know, I was like, I have some savings. And that's about to be gone. But I'm all in. All in no matter what I'm not scared of going to zero because a lot of us are going to zero right now if it means that we can do what we love. Full on hustle mode, I'm with you. If you want to get your show sounding really good, it cost money. Like you can start investing in not just the microphones and everything, but like getting into editing software and programs online and everything. One of the things I was super successful with is I just launched a Venmo and asked for donations, and I've raised over $600 like just last week, an old coworker of mine is like, I'm sending you money today and he sent me 100 bucks just to like keep the show floating. You know, I talked about doing a Patreon but that's so much work like what's your tier structure like? What do you get? Do I have to start manufacturing

Unknown Speaker
And all this stuff that takes more time. And I just said, like, Listen, if you listen to the show, and you want to support, like, three bucks would help. And I was amazed at the amount of people who are like, Here's $200.

Unknown Speaker
But you know, this the same thing, like you said, with talking to people, you know, we've been pretty locked down in our house, my personal chef business went to zero, I had 11 weeks off. And I was like, Well, you know, I've got this time, I already have the show, because we started in November, and like, well, I'm just gonna get on and get as many in the can as I can, and just start recording and editing and publishing. And then it gave me a lot more time. You know, I'm tinkering with what the show sounds like, do I put in a sound clip at the beginning? What's the music sound like? Because I've had time to be able to mess around with that a little bit. And I feel like now I'm hitting the stride and you start getting

Unknown Speaker
I hate to say bigger and better gas because I don't want to disrespect anyone who's been on but you're, I'm getting more well known chefs that I can kind of leverage them to then get more guests and more, you know, starts building the show a little bit.

Unknown Speaker
Well, now you've completely leveled up because you have me on the show. Totally. I wanted to wait just like, wow, this was the big this was the big basically the number one name drop for you now and be like, it wasn't about who the Who the hell are you talking about? It's interesting that you mentioned that because it's something that I'm very aware of. I'm very savvy when it comes to kind of the attention graph and where media goes and how you can kind of capture and what's very interesting is I actually have not allowed myself to do any growth hacking whatsoever zero and 200 episodes was the number I said you have to do 200 episodes where you have no opportunity for anything for yourself the end, you have to bring complete value and not do anything tactical for an entire 200 episodes, and I thought it would take a lot longer. I didn't realize I was going to stay on this madman trajectory. yet. It was also interesting that I am using the attention graph in one way I recognize having MING TSAI or cat

Unknown Speaker
The gun store formerly Jones or clouding upon, or Edward Lee, I'm totally name dropping right now on the show gives me the leverage and opportunity for the attention to have zuri resendez to Jai cook amber Graf, on the show who nobody's really heard of, you know, Amber Graf is the lunch lady extraordinare at bigsby School in Boulder, Colorado, because we have a whole channel dedicated to youth education, school gardens lunch programs, because it's something very important to me. And I think they're absolutely on some hospitality heroes, people that are feeding our children are more important than any celebrity chef the end, right? Yet I know that having those big names on also gives me the opportunity to hold space for the quote unquote, unknown names. And I think that's an important distinction of what we're doing is that, you know, at some point, I want so much attention that we just talked to people nobody's ever heard of, and I just talked to dishwashers all day every day. Yeah, no, I feel Yeah. And then an interesting part of that. Also.

Unknown Speaker
As promotion because I've had some well known guests on the show who I feel like they came on the show, they did the show. And then that was that, like, they wouldn't even retweet when I posted it or reshare anything. And then you have a dishwasher or like, you know, I've had people who, you know, nobody really knows they're probably a cook here in Frederick, Maryland. And they come on the show when they've posted across their Facebook and their Instagram or whatever. And they are doing double the numbers of downloads of that really well known chef who's worked in a Michelin restaurant who couldn't even share the show once. So it's promotion as much as anything. So you, you know, again, respecting all of your guests, they all bring something at the table, and you might get amazing more lessons from someone nobody's ever heard of that acknowledgement. People are acknowledging that they go Wow, it's about time somebody else recognize how awesome you are. I think it's important. Love you have imposter syndrome. Even I was like, Are you allowed to be somebody out there speaking on these topics? And I was like, Yeah, I am because they're my experience. And I truly, truly have the

Unknown Speaker
Intense of caring and bringing value the people in the industry. And so a lot of people are like, Well, I'm not a big name chef is like you're exactly that's why I want you I think of Matthew a Mac like lifer line cook, who volunteers for every single event that I've done for, you know, eight years and, and is, you know, the quickest to be like, Hey, where can I volunteer my time this weekend to go feed people yet I know that he's struggling. And just the amount of encouragement from them sharing from him sharing to his to his network was amazing to me because people go see, you matter. And I think that's an important thing. I look they don't need my validation. I'm just hoping that I can hold the space that creates the opportunity just because I say that you can be on my show. That doesn't matter. I'm just trying to find the opportunity, which is why 95% of the guests on our show have been recommended by somebody else. It's very important piece of what we do as I told you about somebody else. It's why I have to do so many shows criticism because people are like cool. You guys heard this

Unknown Speaker
person, that person, that person, that person was like, Okay, I'm gonna figure this out. It might take multiple lifetimes, but I'm game, I'm gonna hustle and keep doing that. And it's important. We are now starting to think about can we get multiple people on talking about a single topic that's really important to them? Because, you know, we're doing this thing we're doing our versions of shark week, coming up on specific topics within the industry. And marketing was one of the first ones helping restaurants understand how to market themselves. And I said, who's out there that you think is creative and strong in the restaurant, you know, food and beverage marketing game? Maybe like 70 something people that we got connected with? I was like, ah, I thought we were going to do one on one interviews with seven people now I'm like, okay, 70 people, I don't know that we can do that. Can we get 40 people on? So this is a good problems to have. Yeah, I'm getting DMS and emails every day. Some quite often from people. I don't even know who they are, or people who recently started following us on Instagram. And I've interacted with a little bit but they're like, you know, I want to share my story. It's like awesome. You know, come

Unknown Speaker
And if you if it's really because you feel like you want to have your story, I don't want it to be like, someone's just here to plug their thing, their restaurant, their book, whatever, I want to have real conversations. And that's where it gets a little challenging is kind of weeding through that and kind of vetting your guests. I mean, I've had to date I think only one show that I had squash like we did it. And it was just like, oh, there, they didn't know anything about me the organization and they just want to kind of like, plug their thing. They ducked every question and just redirected. And thankfully, that's only happened once and I put out 60 shows that were good. And one that I just had to say, you know, just didn't work out. Yeah, we were like the not plug show. But whatever your thing is, you better have the context to connected to like the people more than anything. We're very, very big on that. Yeah. So appreciate that. It's all humans and communication. Again, it's all the people stories that people care about. And in food and beverage and restaurants. Here's the thing. You may think you're unique. There's only one to three people in any segment that are best in class.

Unknown Speaker
Everybody else is commoditize white noise and you see that playing out very quickly where everyone's just hype chasing, the only asset, the only asset that you have as a restaurant is your people. It's the only point of differentiation that you truly have, the more time we spend highlighting that, the better. So I'm even challenging people on social media, Don't show me the picture of your dish and try to sell me on your feature tonight as a transactional sales funnel. Tell me about the person that's going to cook that or the person that's preparing that drink or the farmer or the tell me the name of the cow. And that's the compelling story that I want to like really touch on because I think social media, we kind of demonize it sometimes I think it's a huge opportunity for grassroots marketing for we talked about table touches and restaurants CREATE TABLE touches. Now you don't have 36 tables, you have 2,000,374 possible tables that you can touch. What story are you telling them And who are they going to come to see who are they going to be excited about? Because again, somebody else has the buffalo cauliflower

Unknown Speaker
ramen are the fried brussel sprouts or whatever you think is going to set you apart. If you are the individual number one in that space amazing, then you can lean only on the food otherwise you better tell a good story and connected to people. You hit the nail right there. I mean that's one of the major reasons I started Chester that restaurants one because I think most chefs who aren't in restaurants don't get any notoriety. You know, nobody's writing about us or whatever. But then just continuing on is I'm so irritated with a lot of the influencer stuff out there. Because it focuses so much on like extreme food and food porn and there's very rarely photos of chefs, restaurants, whatever, you know, the these people go into this place, they get this four Decker burger, they take a photo, they probably throw it in the trash and they walk away. But like where's that story? Like? Where are the people? Where are the influencers who are highlighting the chefs and the cooks behind the scene on that and just going to events and watching these people. It's like they almost don't even know how to interact with humans because

Unknown Speaker
As I see them come to like a food festival and they go up to a table, and there's a chef there. And like they barely even look them in the eyes and say thank you like, they come over with a camera, and they take pictures of food, and then they just grab it. And then they take pictures of the food they eat, and they walk away without even recognizing that there's like a human right in front of you, who made that food and served it to you. And I just find that so annoying. And like, what is the opposite of that? You know, interestingly, it's easy to look at your right and it's easy to look at the influencer as somebody who's outside of the industry that's perpetuating that. Yet, if you look inside the industry, we do the same thing. Restaurants post the pictures of food, not their people. We are so enamored with what goes on the plate and that needs to start internally. They are consuming that because that's what we put out there. That's what food media that's what restaurants that's what television, we put that out there and said this is cool. And they said You're right. Now let me capture if we told them that that's what we wanted from them. We now need to tell them something differently. So I take responsible

Unknown Speaker
That I spent too much time focused on, look at this amazing thing that I'm doing versus look at these amazing people that I get to work with. So we're guilty of that all day, every day. If you look at what's consumed on social media, let's say or in media, or in content, or in film, it from people that work in restaurants, well, they're mostly watching the things and paying attention to the things that are showing off the food more than the people as well. So I think we need to triple down on our investment in time, effort, and money to create that sustainability within the industry as well. And that's an important thing. We, you know, we are demonizing social media sometimes we see exactly what you're talking about the influencer, like, what the hell because we're living in that yet what we're amplify we need to spend equally as much time making sure that people know this is what's actually cool. This is who actually matters. And the more time we spend on that, the better. I'm actually interestingly challenging. Some photographers that let's come up with the new food photo. That is not

Unknown Speaker
The 45 degree or the top down angles or the super tight angle, some of the things that we created from food photography, what's the both infocus? The beautiful dish with the person behind it? How do we create that? Because I think that could be a way that we go about reinventing the look and feel of media within hospitality. So that's something we're working on too. So what are some of the biggest takeaways from your show from guests you've had as their common themes or just things that maybe you hadn't even thought of like? What have you learned personally from your gas? Your first job in the industry is the story everybody wants to tell. Every single time I ask people about their first job in the industry, big smiles and we talked we call it When did you first caught catch the hospitality bug? I wanted to own the space of like pandemic virus. And so when did you first catch the hospitality bug? The stories of your first restaurant, really set the tone and it's been interesting because look as a chef driven progressive restaurant guy.

Unknown Speaker
I often was like people that work at chains people that work at fast food, they are not me there are other what I've recognized as we talked about some of these first job at Dairy Queen, they're like I learned so much. I still know people from that job. My first job was at McDonald's. Sometimes people are a little like, you know, sheepish about saying that sometimes they say, yeah, that's my history. And, you know, it's not necessarily a part of the way that I dine or, or, you know, engaged today, it still matters. And so I've shifted my mentality from focusing on the restaurants as much as focusing on the people within restaurants and hospitality. And that means to me, I spent a lot of time cultivating relationships, you know, with fast food chains and, you know, restaurant groups and people that are really focused on the amount of people that work in that space is massive. And I think if we can influence and bring some value to saying, the way that you interact with your people, it matters and you should really be tripling down on that and invert the 73% employee turnover rate and the 56 day out

Unknown Speaker
Have a restaurant employee and say what does it take to map to 75%? employee retention? That's one of the two pillars of the Paragon pillars. The other being, fuck COVID-19. Let's get to 19% net profit. And there's some interesting ways that restaurants can do that thoughtfully. In the model where today seven or 8% is the industry average average, which again, does not create an equitable, profitable, sustainable model. So the first job and the people within that it's the biggest thing that I've learned is people care about their own personal history. And and I think we need to recognize that and celebrate that more. What do you have for resources? That could be books, cookbooks, it could be about business building, it could be about podcasting websites, what are some things you love? What are some things you think maybe people don't know about and should

Unknown Speaker
everything that I recommend to people has nothing to do with restaurants? I think we know enough about restaurants and we get so siloed in restaurants. So I look a lot of people that that are like understanding culture, a lot of people that are

Unknown Speaker
entrepreneurs, so I don't even this is interesting. I don't go to the gym right now when I went to the gym that for the last year, I wasn't listening to music anymore. I was listening to like podcasts. I was listening to, you know, YouTube channels. And so there's some of the people that I think are interesting are kind of on that like, like Gary Vee I mentioned like Gary Vaynerchuk. Tom bill, you have Impact Theory, Tim Ferriss who did the four hour workweek and it's just like a chameleon of absorbing superpowers. You know, Russell Brunson, who's like a sales funnel marketing online guru type. So I listen a lot of those types, because I think you can learn a lot from the successes of other industries to be like, what is you know, Kim Smith talking about radical candor, and working for like Google and Apple. And that's super interesting. How do we become the Google of this industry or that industry is a fascinating concept. To me, it's all about investing in innovation and culture is really what that means when you say you're the Google of the construction industry. What that means that

Unknown Speaker
mean that we have bouncy ball chairs? No, that's, that's the byproduct of it. I want restaurants restaurants are fundamentally we see it right now fundamentally, the pillars of culture and commerce and every community. How do you become like when tech companies are saying you need to be the volt of, of the tech industry? How does that become the way that we shift the paradigm? huge opportunity there? Because we see that everybody, everybody interacts with food. And the more that we make that interaction, the importance versus the food, I think we can win. Yeah, I think it's very important to get out of your industry. All those guys you mentioned, I've often said, I don't know that I would have started my business without Gary Vee. I mean, I consumed his content, read all his books, but I was 40. And he put out that video that was like, I think it's called like six minutes for the next 60 years or something like that. And he's like, I'm talking to you 40 and above, like, you still have time, like you've got another, you know, 40 to 60 years to like, do it and like I already know

Unknown Speaker
had been doing my thing on the side, but I don't know if I was ever seriously going to do it. And I really focused on just like, this is the year like I'm 40 if I don't like quit this job that I've been at for 10 years now, I'm never gonna do it. And I feel like that was the good kick. But like he had all this real tactical information on how to get there, you know, just kind of looking at, you know, I went to school to be a chef, I'm not a marketer, I don't know any of that stuff. But just teaching myself all those kinds of things to build my business. I started exercising now and I'm walking five miles a day, and I started listening to master classes on there. I have the master class unlimited. And I listened to one this past week from he's a ex CIA hostage negotiator. And he talks about negotiating and stuff like that. I think it's so interesting. You don't need to watch it. So instead of music, like sometimes I need music to keep the beat going, but I'm just putting this thing on and walking for an hour and listening all these tactics about, you know, better negotiating skills, and I think people should be looking at things like that. I could not agree more Seth Godin, who wrote the purple cow marketing, genius and

Unknown Speaker
other person that's interesting, you know, Seven Habits of successful people from Stephen Covey, I think is another interesting one. So like, yeah, I'm always looking at siphoning superpowers from potentially other industries or other kinds of lanes versus just being so siloed in in restaurants and food and beverage. So I appreciate that, Chris. Yeah, I think that's the latest book. I think it's called This is marketing was amazing. And one of the best marketing and it's a great audio book. I think I just put it on and listen to it while I was cooking and audible all day. Every day. I can't read sit down and read a book to save my life. I think kitchen confidential was the last physical book that I read. Yet I listened kitchen confidential twice, again on Audible through the pandemic. You know what I'm cooking and having board aids voice in my head, talking about the Pirates of the pirate ship. Talking about therapy that was that was soothing. To say the least, I might have to revisit that. I haven't read that since it came out and I met him. I have some great pictures on that book tour back in 2001.

Unknown Speaker
When I was living in Seattle, so it's probably been that long since I've read it, I probably need to put that on audio and give me a little, a little spark. Do it. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I'm so glad we could do this. I want to get you out of here and get you on to your next podcast. Yes, I'm excited. And we're gonna circle back. So make sure we're gonna have Chris on our show coming up as well. So I'm super fascinated, because it sounds like we've got a lot of overlapping kind of philosophy. So we'll dig into some of those on your side. So I'm, I'm pumped for that opportunity as well. So Thanks, Chris. You're welcome. I look forward to that. So to all our listeners out there, this has been the chapter that restaurants podcast as always, you can find us at chess without restaurants comm.org and on all social media platforms. Thanks so much, and have a great day.