Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. There’s no question that New York City is one of the world’s great food destinations, and the culinary bar and standards are high. Well, today I’m speaking with two partners, Karsten Johansson and Gary Wallach of Renwick Hospitality Group, two partners with complementary strengths, and they’re going to talk to us That are continuing to raise that bar and standard in hospitality even higher.

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Welcome back everyone to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. So glad you’re here. Thanks for tuning in. Carsten, Gary, welcome to the show today. Glad to have you here. Thank you for having me. Awesome. Fantastic. As my audience knows, I love to get the backstory of my guests because this is a business of passion and pride, and sometimes it starts really early in our lives.

Sometimes we discover it late in life, but everyone’s got a story. So take your time. Tell us your stories. I am from Miami, Florida, born and raised. I got started in the, restaurant business, actually not too far from what you were talking about earlier I guess Arby’s, when I was very young 15 or so.

And that parlayed my career into a dishwashing job at a real restaurant. Down in Florida, and from there, I just started becoming interested in food and interested in the way kitchens operated, and one thing led to another ended up in Washington, D. C. To open up the Mandarin Oriental there in, in Washington, D.

C., and worked there for a few years, and then transferred up to New York, and I’ve been here for about 20 years I worked at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington in Columbus Circle in New York. And from there, I went to a restaurant in the West Village called Commerce, which was an amazing restaurant where I really learned a lot and I guess I learned how to operate.

A restaurant. And then from there I opened up the Arlo hotel in Soho the first Arlo Hotel, and that’s where I met Gary and. Then we formed a hospitality group. Here we are. Fantastic. Tell us your story, Gary. My name is Gary. I have been in New York City my entire 36 years on this planet.

I was pursuing music in my late teenage, early twenties, and I needed a job that would was able to give me time to do that. So I picked up a server gig at a TGI Fridays in South Brooklyn, which today is still there. And I tipped my cap too. And I’ll never forget as I was serving, I noticed that the bartenders were having a lot more fun.

So I decided I’d try to go that route. And on my interview process with the manager, the first thing I did was drop a glass right in the ice, just bang. So after that, he laughed at me and gave me the opportunity because Why not give people a chance, right? From there, I was able to move into New York City and work for the Mondrian in Soho, which was one of the original Morgan’s Hotel Group’s properties in the city.

From there, I was hooked up with some really wonderful bar hospitality people Andy Seymour, Leo DeGroff, and Steve Olson, who were just icons. At this time, I was very unaware of the talent around me and I was very lucky, but they took me under their wing and taught me a lot. I kept my job at this hotel, but from there did a lot of projects in and out of hotels and bars.

Really just learning and studying everything about restaurants that I could. I was lucky enough to work several jobs along the way, including a sushi spot in Midtown, which was my first opportunity to run a bar program. We had a whole dancing and singing factor to it, so it was a very interesting Broadway esque show along with quality cocktails, so showing up and cutting ice at one o’clock and at nine o’clock dancing down the aisles, which was fun.

And from there I was very lucky to get an opportunity to work with Soho House when they expanded in New York City. They opened up Cicconi’s in Dumbo Brooklyn, which was their Italian concept, and I was able to run their bar program under the guidance of some really wonderful people. From there, I was very lucky.

I received a message from someone who was a part of Arlo Hotels looking for someone to help work on some projects in their Soho property, and I was able to come in there in 2018. And that is where Carsten and I met and joined forces into creating this, that was the start of what Renwick Hospitality Group was, and, here we are today.

Wow, that’s Six years later. Both very interesting histories in how you combine restaurants and hotels that Also, combine hospitality. Very awesome backgrounds. Mondrian, Famous, Mandarin Oriental. Of course, we’ve heard those names and the experiences along the way. Before I ask my next question, I’m just curious, you mentioned Dumbo.

Not so long ago, I interviewed the guys from a place called Gare that’s in Dumbo. Are you familiar with a restaurant called Gare? I can’t say that I am, but I’ll be honest when we opened our restaurant down there in Chaconese, we were like one of three places. It has exploded in a matter of three or four years, where there’s just so much more there.

And what’s interesting is it is a very small area of Brooklyn. I’m sure it’s a lovely spot because it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful town. Definitely heard that. So let’s talk about some of the key learnings perhaps from your varied careers and how that made a difference in both your lives and how you apply that today to Renwick Hospitality Group.

Sure. So I think for me, it was becoming a more mature person through the process of being in hospitality that I think developed the way I look at what we do today. When I first came on, I was, So driven by money. And then I realized that money was driven by experience. And then I realized experience was driven by understanding what our goals are.

So really, for me diving into the bar world and understanding that I’m not just pouring liquor, but I’m telling, A hundred stories that are all labeled behind me was a huge proponent of that, and becoming a better storyteller at the table and explaining those concepts and experiences, I think, were really about how I was able to develop.

I think we all go through these egotistical moments in our careers where we think we know more than we do, and then we get an opportunity that we haven’t had yet, and we all of a sudden realize, you know what? This is an eye opening move. For me, that was, I think, definitely going to, to Soul House’s programming, which was so much larger than anything I had ever done at the time, and realizing wow, you can do incredible quality at a high level.

And that was something that I think Karsten and I really focused on when we started creating our own concepts, knowing that we want it to be high volume, yet not cut corners to do so I think those steps on really developing as a bartender and a server made life easier as we got into management, because as we are probably all aware, managing things, it creates so many different obstacles.

Makes sense. Carsten, you want to add that? Yeah, a similar take, working through every single position in the kitchen, from the bottom all the way through to the top, you, you get to experience what it’s like in every single aspect. And you learn to appreciate all of those things and learn that every single part of the restaurant is a vital part.

Every single employee is a vital part. Everybody plays their role. And just really learning how to respect everybody and knowing that everybody plays their part, no matter what their salary may be, or there’s just no, there’s no spot in the kitchen that is looked down upon. It’s a level of empathy that you build for everybody and what they have to do and deal with, not just professionally, but personally, and how that all comes together under that roof.

And you’ll hear a lot of me talking about the kitchen and Gary talking about the front of the house. That’s because I am the kitchen part of it. And Gary is the front of the house part of it. Yeah, what really made our partnership just, skyrocket was when we met, he was running, everything, kitchen, back of house, and I came on, and I was really focusing more on bar programs, and what I had learned is that it does not matter how great your cocktails are, it doesn’t matter how great your food is, if one or the other is lacking, You’re not going to be able to showcase anything to its truest ability.

So when Carson and I got together, we knew that we had finally found that, that other person who could focus on something that, they were truly passionate about and good at. And Although I know how to cook an egg, I certainly cannot cook on a line or do anything to the quality that Carsten could do in the kitchen.

And I would certainly leave Carsten in charge of our front of house operations any day of the week, but that was always my passion and where I had experiences. So we had a really great balance between the two of us. I wouldn’t leave myself and charge a front of house operation, so thanks for that, Gary.

Okay, so you guys stay in your lane. I’m hearing a symbiotic relationship, which is so vitally important to your success, but let’s take that down a level to the line staff on front of house, back of house, where traditionally there could be conflicts and different clicks and all that sort of thing. And there are often times when the kitchen staff and the heat of battle, it’s Saturday night at seven 30, the tickets are on the floor.

And a server has a little issue with something that didn’t come out perfect. And she needs something recooked immediately. And now there’s that balance. She needs to strike between tactfully asking for something. And these guys like just trying to get the food out and maintain quality. Do you have a challenge with that or how do you deal with that between front of house, back of house?

Any operation that tells you that they don’t have a challenge with that is I would say either fantastic for them or maybe they’re fibbing a little bit, that is, that’s just how the restaurant business works, everybody shows up at the same time. Everybody wants their food and they want it now and they want their drinks now.

And the reality of it is we’re humans and we all make mistakes and mistakes happen, especially, with the younger staff mistakes tend to happen a little bit more with maybe inexperienced people. You always figure out a way to make it work. At the end of the day, it’s all about the guests.

For sure. Yeah. I think there’s a, like a people side to it and then a financial side to it as well. When Carson and I started when we had our first restaurant, Linden’s, he was in the kitchen and I was on the floor every night. So when we ran into these issues, it was usually him and I having those conversations, which made it a lot easier because we had full, control and autonomy and it was very little questioning.

Now within our recent growth of operating four properties and seven concepts, we’re trying to teach. Our team members, our leaders on the ground now, have patience, realize that at the end of the day, we’re going to make it right. Which I think is, might end up being our slogan, make it right.

Because we’ve, we’re saying that all the time. And finding opportunities to really just. Always make up for any mistakes, because as he says it’s impossible to not have it. But also to, to look for them and learn from them. And we also do our really we try our best to make sure that there is not as much separation and that naturally happens between front of house and back of house, where we hold our pre shifts, making sure the community as a team is connected through our technology, so that We don’t run into these fighting issues where there’s, difficulties with back of house or front of house and utilizing it as one team.

We’re talking about company culture now, where your team front of house, back of house, they organically and authentically understand what your culture is all about and they contribute to it and they either get it or they don’t. And that’s something that can be created, but it’s got to be created organically.

Do you do any team bonding? And outside the restaurant, inside the restaurant to get the two groups together so that it’s really a team. It’s not I’m in the kitchen and I’m out on the floor, what do you do there? Yeah, we absolutely do. And we are looking at new and improved ways to continue that.

From an educational standpoint, we utilize online platforms to give everyone the information front of house or back of house we have, we’ve done the typical parties that. Celebrate our teams. We have award programs that are set up so that people realize there’s more than just, it’s more than just a paycheck and more than just a job, but there’s other ways to do that.

And, we are very much a praising public and, speaking private about these other, those littler issues. So that people can realize that as a company, we do like to celebrate it. I’ll never forget when we were building our company, we sat down with a core group of people to create our core values.

And we literally said to them you guys are our five core people. These were people that have been with us for five to seven years in different capacities. And to this day, those core values are. What we rely on to get every message across the board. And I think those lead towards the celebratory moments of success, whether a big day in sales, a wonderful review.

We’re not afraid to pride ourselves, pride ourselves on our team. And although Carson and I want to grow this business as big as we can, we do not want to do it on our names. We want to do it with the people around us.

So in terms of team bonding and all that sort of thing and getting people moving in the same direction, making it right every single day, how do you recognize and perhaps reward your people for outstanding performance? Do you have any specific programs that call attention to someone’s outstanding performance going above and beyond making a difference, you might say?

Yeah, we do. So we have something where literally every mention in a review, they are given like a small financial reward just to help build them up. We will post those rewards on our platform so people can see when they have been written, calling them out. And I think, technology is, as I’ve mentioned a few times already now, has been a huge thing for us because our company has been built from Carson and I, and we’ve used those technologies to grow.

And, one of them is our employee scheduling platform, which is also communications. And what’s wonderful about it is it has built in ways for them, not only to communicate with us, but for us to praise them and be like, Hey, John had an amazing shift, check this out, from a grander scale of things, there’s always those bonuses and whatnot, but I actually think growth is the real answer to this question.

Our directors and our properties were people who were servers and bartenders. Our executive chefs were line cooks with Karsten. Yeah, two of our executive chefs were at one point line cooks within the company. And like Gary said, growth is important to us. If it. We would much prefer to hire from within, which most of our leadership is than to hire from out.

Yeah. I think it’s respect, right? We’re not a tech company, so we have to find ways to show people that we truly appreciate them. And there are a lot of people who have helped us create what Runway Cosmetology Group is. I’m getting the sense you guys are both real true leaders here and mentorship perhaps really plays a huge part here.

So to have two executive chefs move up from line cook position says a lot about how Karsten runs his kitchen. And I’m sure you’ve promoted people front of house as well. Tell me a little bit about that sort of, nurturing, mentoring, shadowing, and how much it plays a part in your operations to really move people to the next level.

As far as the kitchen goes, I think training is one of the, probably one of the most important things to do. I’m a firm believer in the chef, not just standing on the other side of the line, expediting service, telling people what to do, but the chef should be behind the line, showing people how they want the dish cooked.

Leading by example, I find it. As we’ve grown and I spend a little bit less time in the kitchen, my favorite times, which I still get at least two or three days a week, is I like to go allow the chef of each property to expedite and do their thing and we need to jump back behind the line and like actually cook and actually train and work with all the cooks and just work with everybody.

Yeah, 100%. I very much follow that same philosophy with the front of house. I think Personally, I was always trying to collect mentors, people who could teach me things and as I got older, I learned, I realized, I was like, wow, I don’t know anything, so I better listen to these people. As a leader myself, my goal is to just always be honest and always be forthright with the people that I had around me and where I saw their capabilities and asking them what do you want to know?

What do you want to learn? We had a gentleman who’s our director of food and beverage now at one of our properties. We put him in every role, because we saw that there was just a level of kindness and leadership in him that He was going to be someone if he got the opportunity to hit these jobs and learn from them.

And, we always watched from above to make sure that he had all the support he could do that. But now, as a director, he was a bar manager for a moment. He was a floor manager. He managed one of our rooftops. He managed one of our restaurants. And that gave us the ability to feel that he would have all of the tools he needed to be successful and hopefully, pass the torch down the road.

And we did that same thing with other people. And I also think, finally, it’s about investing. We don’t live in a world where people want to do things for free anymore, but time is the true value. So if someone’s willing to come in and learn how to do inventory, pay them. If someone’s willing to come in and learn how to run the floor, pay them.

Because that small amount of money that you’re offering to them, I think will make such a difference in a, Them knowing you’re committed to them, and B, their willingness to show if they truly want to do the job. Because it comes down to finding good people. We can, we could train anyone to do anything, but finding someone who is pure at heart is the hardest thing.

You bring up an excellent point and a lot of restaurants only hire for experience and a flip side of that coin is restaurants that really look for personality and approach and the right attitude and we can train for the rest. Do you fall into one camp or the other? Do you find a balance between the two?

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Yeah we 100 percent hire the person, not their skill level, in both aspects of it. You can train somebody how to cook. You can train somebody how to wait tables. You can’t train somebody how to be a kind person. Yeah, caring is such an important part of this.

One of the things we talk about at pre ships constantly is respecting our guests. Not just their their money or their time, but more their time. They are just, they’re choosing not only to come and spend time and money, but they want an experience with us. And it’s our job.

opportunity to realize that we have to be there for them. And only people who truly have like hospitality in their heart can really do it. It’s hard to fake. And if you try to fake it sooner or later, even if you’re good at it, it comes to that surface and that causes issues within your team because In today’s world where people are sharing tips, working on the floor together, you want to see consistency from your team members.

And we really, approach, we take a different approach of our teams are more important than anybody else, but that means that they have to treat our guests as one of the most important things around them so that they could show the same value that we feel for them. Foundational elements of any successful business.

How about accountability? Now you mentioned earlier, I heard the word performance reviews, which is excellent, not every restaurant has job descriptions that are accurate for each job that set expectations that need to be followed, therein lies the accountability, and then to have a performance review, which is.

Extra time on somebody’s part to sit down with someone and really let them know how they’re doing. It’s talk about that. Do you have any challenges with accountability or people really know what the expectations are? They have high standards themselves and they don’t want to let anyone down. Our rule of thumb and is basically your, the expectation is that you’re going to do the job that you own, that you have and every job that is below you.

yours. As far as the executive chef goes, the expectation is they’re going to, and this isn’t, obviously every day. Sure. But the expectation is that you will do everything in the kitchen. There is no job that is off limits to What is under your job description, and we always want also all leadership to have a part in the front or a part in the back, because there has to be that synergy.

That’s, yeah, it’s one of the, one of those things where it’s managers being accountable for their teams being accountable for their guests and understanding clearly what those jobs are. I feel like I’ve been writing a handbook for 20 years at this point in my life. I’ve redeveloped and redeveloped our SOPs and handbooks and to better fit and better suit the changing times and our businesses as they go.

Ensuring that everyone has those and I think it’s just clarity, I think if there’s anything you could say about me when it comes to a pre shift meeting is I’m relentlessly repetitive because If, A, as Carson said, the people who lead should know all the jobs, but B, the people who lead should know the responsibility of those jobs as well, because it’s very easy for Carson and I to walk in the door and pick on things and point things out, but we tell our leadership, we want you to manage our expectations so that you can manage theirs.

And that is such a useful tool it becomes, instead of us walking in and saying why is this window not wiped down, why is this table not set up, it’s more of a hey, Gary and Karsten, here’s the list of what’s being worked on right now to set your expectations of what’s being done. That’s an everyday task, and that’s something that we’re all learning as we learn to manage our time better.

Yeah, a lot of managers make the mistake of having expectations that aren’t clearly communicated, and then when those expectations aren’t met, it’s the team member’s fault versus manager. And those managers are really failing those people. And I hate the word manager and I hate to say it. Manager and management is way overused in this industry as opposed to leaders.

And you both mentioned we lead by example and that’s a huge difference because that means you recognize talent in others. We’ve already talked about how you move them up. The mentoring part is so powerful and getting the best out of your people by hiring for personality first and then we will train to the experience level speaks volumes.

And then having the recognition rewards, it just ties it together and creates that. That’s symbiosis. Great segue. Let’s talk about Renwick Hospitality. Let’s talk about the concepts. Let’s talk about the properties. Give us an overview. Sure. So Renwick Hospitality Group operates four hotels in New York. Within those, there are seven different concepts.

So we operate inside Arlo Soho, which is the Downtown New York City. Linden’s, which is our seasonal American restaurant, a very neighborhood driven space, greenery all around, wonderful food cocktails, and a beautiful outdoor space that is available essentially year round. And we also have Foxtail, which is our very sneaky, cheeky cocktail bar.

Nice. Probably, 30 seats are left. We do jazz twice a week, and it’s very much a mid century inspired space. And then we have Art Soho, or Arlo Rooftop, which is the, one of the original ones that we developed and was one of the first projects that Carson and I did together. From there, we opened up Altair on 38th and 9th Street inside Arlo Midtown.

They were generous enough to offer another property, so we created an element inspired restaurant. And we, at Altair, we look at earth, air, water, and fire, and through food, cocktails, and wine, we say, how do these elements effectively shape the world? We have an incredible green room. It’s very much an oasis away from the busyness of Midtown Manhattan.

We also have Art Midtown, which is our sister property to Soho’s rooftop, as well as a seasonal rooftop. Really beautiful, recently renovated, has perfect views of the city So instead of going to the top of Hudson Yards, you can just come and see us and get the same view, which is awesome. And then we were very lucky.

Hilton got into the game of lifestyle brands and created something called Motto. So they were looking for someone who understands lifestyle hotels, which has really been the niche of Carson and I’s company of Renwick Hospitality Group. So we opened Lula on 24th and 6th, which is our, Italian comfort food restaurant.

It has a humongously beautiful bar and about 40 seat restaurant, a second floor bar and lounge as well, and a, essentially, a seasonal dining space outside. Which we are excited to expand this coming spring and summer. And then finally, as part of our partnership with MATA, we’ve recently opened The Alderman, which is our ode to old New York.

The Alderman was actually the group within the mayor’s office, essentially, that renamed Times Square what it is today. So it was renamed from Longacre Road to Times Square. So we wanted to give that a tip of the cap and be this luxe hideaway. That people can come and try really beautiful drinks and incredibly unique food menu and wines to pair.

I like to say that our company specializes not in, in casual, not in fine, but refined dining. I like that. Come in a tuxedo, come in a swimsuit. We really don’t care. The level of service we’re going to offer is the same across the board. We want it to be valuable enough to celebrate your large moments but also a place that you feel like you could visit every day.

And developing these concepts have been an incredible experience. Renwick’s been very lucky to get these opportunities. And not to mention, we do run events in all of these properties and some of them also have small cafes and general stores that run to support not only the neighborhoods, but of course the hotel guests.

I can’t think of a city more diverse than New York City in terms of cultures and races and nationalities and all those things. It’s truly an international city. Do you have much diversity in your different concepts and do you encourage that sort of thing? This is a business where, you know what I’m saying?

This business really encourages people to be who they are, use their personalities, and everyone is different and they’re, they all add to the guest experience. Do you have an international team as well? 100%. 100%. Yeah from the top down, there are people from all over the place. We have seasonal workers who have literally come back and forth from South America to work for us.

We have people, New York is a melting pot. The level of culture is just so crazy. And honestly, the level of culture per neighborhood, people tend to forget. Manhattan alone, slice it up into all of its neighborhoods and just the emotional vibe that you get from those melting pots, from those cultural, that cultural input to the town is humongous.

And we see it across the board through guests staying at the hotels, locals coming in, and of course, all of the people that we hire. Now, what’s really interesting is And I don’t know if this is still a thing, but when people visit a new city and they stay in a hotel, their main idea generally is to get outside that hotel, explore the city and find different experiences.

Yet you have restaurant concepts within the hotels and it comes down to the branding and the marketing and the vibe you create and the visibility to really encourage people in that hotel to stay and try that restaurant. Are you able to. Find that balance. What do you see? Because people come in from all over the world and it’s they want to get out and about, but you want to keep them in your hotel and in your restaurants.

Is that a challenge? Yeah. Our goal is definitely to change the old mindset about hotel restaurants. We. Things have come a long way since, the 90s or the 2000s where it was just the hotel restaurant was an afterthought. We put a lot into kind of thinking out the brands and like you said, branding, we work with a great company called Isometric that actually does all of our branding and works with us for every concept to make every concept, pop visually.

Because that’s such an important aspect of it. I think a lot has changed with the lifestyle hotels, I think that was a large part of kind of the change. Whereas, back in the day, the only kind of good restaurants were in The higher end hotels, the Ritz Carlton’s, the Four Seasons, the Mandarin Orientals but now that that the lifestyle hotels have, become a thing, more approachable, high quality food and beverage operations have started to operate inside of those spaces.

And that’s, that’s what we’re trying to achieve, a very high quality, approachable food and beverage inside of a hotel. Excellent. That’s fantastic. Now, as your company grows, do you have chief marketing officers, chief finance person, someone who has an overview, or do you both get involved in, the finances and the marketing and all those things?

Sounds like Gary perhaps has more influence on that. I can’t speak for you, but tell me how that works because these are foundational elements of a successful business. Sure, we are very lucky to have an incredible director of finance and some other just financial team members that we’ve worked with for years who I’ve stayed on.

It’s honestly one major person who, let me say, is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. We also are blessed to have a marketing director who oversees all of our social media. Carson and I learned very quickly that we are pretty good at running the floors and kitchens and building teams, but you don’t want to see my personal Instagram.

do you any good. So we needed some people who really understood how to mend Art and design, like the art and design with the overall goals, Carson brings up Isometric. What they did so was they took these ideas that we had, these concepts, and they said, okay we’re going to dive deeper into them.

One of my favorite things is Linden’s, which is our first restaurant, is named after the linden tree. And the linden tree has represented good luck and good fortune and been been like a pillar of communities across the world. And they were the ones who found out that bears live in these trees.

So on our menu is this bear, which I call her Lyndon, and she’s like our little mascot. And it’s like these little elements that we are able to take and then say, okay, we can also utilize this from a marketing standpoint as part of the art. Scope of what we’ve done and then tie that into the food and beverage of it as well.

So our marketing director, Sue, is, she’s done a really wonderful job. And, we are lucky enough to partner with great hotels who also have some strength and They obviously want their properties to be go to spaces of New York, so the question always becomes, how can we activate? How can we market, everything from incredible happy hour deals, which are obviously the low hanging fruit of the marketing world, to God, we’ve done so many things.

We used to have cabins in our backyard that we did private dinners, and we’ve turned that into A garden at one point in partnering with a very popular gin company and did a whole tea tea service kind of thing. We’ve looked into ice rinks and we’ve looked into all these other measures, but it’s just more of finding ways to develop the concept and figure out the, really the question of that everyone’s always asking, which the big one is what do you want?

What do you want as a guest? And that’s something that I think we’re learning. And I would say the most interesting part is we have four hotels. They are in four different parts of town and they are completely different. The people who stay at one are very unique in comparison to the others. So developing our brands around what not only brings the hotel guests downstairs, but the local inn is, has been a a challenge within itself.

You’ve almost answered my next question, but I was curious in terms of marketing, if you cross promote the properties, the restaurants within each location, and if there is crossover between the clientele amongst those different concepts and try to keep it in the family sort of thing. 100%. High tides raise all ships.

Someone asked me, where do you want to go for Italian food? Lula. Amazing restaurant. I might not take credit for it in that moment when I’m talking to that guest because I want them to take me as a, In the middle kind of, observer of it, but always promoting, renwicknyc.

com has everything listed together as well. So people can see this and then really there’s only so many large platforms for reservations, but our reservation platform connects all of these platforms. So we could see, Roger, if you made a reservation at Linden’s and you go to Altair the next day, we could see that you just joined us.

And, again, coming back to the strength of technology, trying to utilize that to say, Oh, Roger, welcome to Altair. I see you joined us at Lyndon’s yesterday. How was your time with us? Those are the moments that blow people’s minds and change the game. Everyone has an Instagram.

You want it to be great. You want it to drive revenue. You want it to drive interest. But really it’s once you’re at the door that’s where things really go up or down. New York is known as an influencer city. And, I guess it goes back to even the early club days with Studio 54 and some of those other clubs and you’re hot one minute and out the next, but it really determined whether it was celebrities or people of influence would suggest certain things and then suddenly it becomes a place to go.

Do you use any of that for marketing? And I guess at its lowest level might be cab drivers bringing people into the city. Are they, Recommending your properties? Are they incentivized to do concierges in other hotels? Do you have those type of relationships or do you have a whole different strategy?

There’s definitely the PR strategy that we put out and that we try to get into these larger publications. But there’s also, like you said, influence and these days and age, the influencer. Or the social media influencer is a pretty important part of it. Getting people in that have larger followings, specifically that are geared more towards food and beverage, and getting them in, having them shoot content, putting it out there is actually a very large driver.

Nice. Yeah, I almost feel bad for people in the media world. The amount of content you have to produce is so insane and it’s it’s honestly, it’s commendable because there’s so much out there and for us to stay at the top of that list when you have so many other places doing it, it’s, it is such a difficult task and I think when it comes to these influencers who are basically the new, this century’s promoters is, A, do they match, does their values match your values?

B, is it worth it? Are these people that are going to truly give you some kind of credibility or capability? Not everyone wants to bring in thousands of dollars, but they might take content that could be used for six months and really add value in the long run. So I think there’s a level of measurement that you have to do.

And I, we certainly leave this to the marketing and public relations professionals to tell us what’s bad. But it is certainly a route you have to take. Now, I don’t think it’s a, we don’t do this. We don’t do that. If you’re lucky enough to be successful and not be in these places, then that’s an incredible feat, but it’s certainly the exception, not the rule.

And. This is a role worth playing by at this point in time. Is there a marketing strategy that is really trackable, that’s really proven in all your properties to work? Loyalty programs, social media is a given obviously, but what really drives new traffic, repeat business, that sort of thing that you can track where, there’s an ROI, if we spend X on this, it’s going to return so much back to us.

Bonus programs, I think is what people, especially, the 20 year olds to 40 year old age are really looking for there are multiple platforms now that we’ve put ourselves on where you book a reservation, they are a part of it, and whatever you may spend on your dinner, you will receive some points back, and you can go buy Starbucks or go shopping at some place, and these, we see a lot of return on investment overall.

We do it through investment. Our reservation platform and other subsidiaries of it, and that’s black and white, because we can literally see either a dollar amount or a cover cap, and it’s you saw a thousand more people, and here’s the reason why. I think It’s a little bit harder in the ad structure of things, because you can see clicks and you can see other items, but as a company that doesn’t sell anything online, it’s, you can’t really say I generated X amount of revenue.

However, I think the cover count is where you’d have to do your math. That’s your deep dive. How many people am I seeing when it says, a thousand people clicked on this ad? But bonus points have been huge. And honestly, we recommend anyone trying them because to me it’s a mark. If you’re not in that market, why not spend a little bit more per person to be a part of it?

Sure. How about consistency of product and service? When you two have this top level, do you have the time? Do you make the time? Take time on a weekly basis to visit the different properties and see for yourselves what’s going on, interact with the staff. Do you have any secret shoppers that you send in?

Tell us about that, just to maintain consistency. Consistency is probably the hardest thing to accomplish as operators. Tough. A large part of the reason why Gary and myself have only stayed in New York and the city is that all of our properties are within a few miles of one another and it is very easy for us to go from one property to the next.

I also think it’s important that we are both actively. working in the properties, like we don’t just go and Sit down and order some food and, oh, this wasn’t right. That wasn’t right. Gary gets behind the bar and he bartends. I jump in the kitchen and I work a grill station for service.

I work a pasta station for service. I can see what is being done right, what is being done wrong from the back end of it. And it’s just a lot easier for me to correct, to visualize what’s going on. wrong or right because I’m there doing it and seeing it and being involved in it. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Couldn’t agree more. I also think as we continue to grow in our roles that are, that is somewhat further away than before from the, from the line we want to have bigger arguments with our people on the ground. We want them to come to us and say, Hey, this isn’t working anymore.

Let’s do this. And unless we spend our time with them. We can never really argue any other side to it or have a better advice, give better advice towards that. Oh, hey, we want to put this bottle over here instead, or we want to start setting up the line this way. We can take people for their word and there’s a certain level of trust that you have to have in your team.

But as people who are not far removed from working, the floor every day and working in these areas, we want to be involved to give our best advice and our best. And offer our best selves. I’m working at the Alderman tonight on the floor and we’re looking at every which way to continue to develop how we can make it better.

And sometimes it’s simply from moving a chair from one side of the room to the other times it’s redeveloping an entire part of the menu, you never really know unless you’re there. And Carson and I think both pride ourselves on not being disconnected and meeting and being there for the team.

Fantastic, guys. What a dynamic operation that you both share. I love the relationship that you have, staying in your lane, the crossover, the brainstorming that must happen, how you both super get involved in, your team members lives and in their experiences and in the training, and then keeping that consistency.

You’re doing it all. It sounds like you’re doing it well, and I wish you the best of success for the future. Appreciate that, Roger. Thank you. Thank you. Fantastic. It’s been my pleasure having you both on the show. Thanks for being with us. Thanks so much. Our pleasure. Thanks for having us. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast.

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