Welcome to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Hard to believe we’re over 420 episodes now. So thanks for tuning in. Today’s guest, chef Mark Bolchoz, is the culinary director for Indigo Road Hospitality Group, large restaurant group down south. Now, Mark is a self admitted wild child, but that shaped his career, and he’s going to tell us all about

 how he now leads his kitchen and leads his team. He’s going to tell us why family meal in his restaurant is non negotiable with his team. We’re going to talk about his military background that led to what he calls servant style leadership and how to get the most and best out of your people.

We’re going to talk about key performance indicators and key finances. And inventory and costing out your menu and all the important things that you need to do to maximize your profit and so much more. So stay tuned. Speaking of profit, I have a mini course called the Restaurant Profit Maximizer. Now check that out.

It’s 40 minutes long, but it’ll give you immediately actionable ideas to put more money to your restaurant bottom line. Very inexpensive. So check that out at restaurantrockstars.com/profitmaximizer. Now on with the episode.

You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

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Welcome back, everyone, to the Restaurant Rock Stars podcast. Glad to have you here. And Mark, welcome to the show today. How are you? Thanks. I’m good. Good. Glad to be here. Excellent. This is terrific. So we’re going to talk all about running kitchens and great kitchens, and you’re with Indigo Road Hospitality Group, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that, but tell us about your culinary journey and maybe early inspirations and how you got into the restaurant industry and, where’d the passion come from?

Tell us that whole thing.

Yeah. So I started as a dishwasher at around 15 in South Florida. I was working at a country club. I was fortunate enough to work at a country club with a lot of chefs who had gone to school and done, done the right thing, worked hard from the bottom all the way up and learned every station and all that good stuff.

So I was instilled early on that was the route to take. So I, I washed dishes at the country club. I prepped food, moved onto the line, cold side, hot side. And along the way, that year and a half, two years, I think is when I really fell in love with cooking and decided that I was going to try to make a pass at it.

Worked some other jobs, through South Florida, through high school, finished up high school and went to the Culinary Institute of America up in New York. And that was that was the beginning of the rest of it, really,

that is such an inspired story, and there’s more to it than that, but first of all, CIA needs no introduction.

That is like the foremost culinary education here in the country, of course. And you’ve got a broad education set there from that, and that obviously inspires you. But we have some things in common. It’s so interesting because my first job was a dishwasher at a private country club. And that’s where I literally got exposed to that word hospitality for the first time.

And I know I’ve told this story before in the podcast, but within three months of being a dishwasher, they saw something special in me and I got promoted to be the bartender. And then that’s when hospitality really kicked in. who knew id ever be in the restaurant business , so thats one piece but I also have to thank you for your service because your also a United States Marine Corp veteran.

Veteran.

I’m in the Marine Corps Reserves. I’m actually currently still in. I have another half a year left end of my contract. Yeah, I appreciate the support. Haven’t really done anything too exciting yet, just a lot of training, a lot of, staying ready, but, It’s still

service, and our country appreciates that.

I have a special place in my heart for the Marine Corps. My dad was a Marine Corps corporal in the Korean War, and, he had You know I remember his funeral to this day with the 21 gun salute and presenting my mother with the flag, and it was all such pride, and he didn’t talk too much about his service, but I knew who he was as a guy, and the Marine Corps had a lot to do with forming who he was as a man and as a person, and I’ve tried to inherit a lot of those characteristics, so I know what you’re doing now and your service, so we do thank you for that.

Let’s talk about some of the early influences and. What restaurants you started to work at and how you formed your skill set. And if you had any mentors along the way that shared certain things that you now carry on with Indigo Road.

Sure. Yeah. So I think the biggest lesson I took away from Jonathan’s Landing, other than a base level of cooking skill, because they were very fringe traditional and made everything from scratch was that Jay Alfez, the chef there at the time.

Who was a CIA grad from like the late seventies. He was the one who told me, you’re a sharp kid. You have a lot of potential, potential to be, something. If you really put some effort in. So he suggested that I go to school versus, I was like, a kind of wild child, if you will.

So I was ready to, throw it all away and, backpack the country, cooking my way through life or whatever. And he advised against that, which I think probably was helpful. I decided to pursue school, went to the CIA. And then while working there, I got a job as a sous chef while I was in school, I was working as a sous chef at a busy restaurant called Shadows on the Hudson.

And it was busy Anthony Bourdain’s rainbow room stories, like that chapter of Kitchen Confidential. It was like that, like 20, 20 people on the line, 40 dishwashers. The dish machine was 300 feet long.

So it was, but it was at that place that I worked with this this chef, Nick Brower, who had been a CIA grad earlier earlier on, had gone and done some stuff and then came back to Poughkeepsie.

To settle down. And he just had a very interesting way, Long Island guy learned a lot about American Italian from him, but also, that kind of played into the food we were doing. We had this new American, I don’t want to say catch all, but, we had a broad spectrum and it was a huge, the restaurant at 280 seats, I think.

Mother’s day we did 940 covers so we could get, you could put anything on the menu and chances are you’re going to sell 25 if it tastes good, so we got a lot of. We covered a lot of ground there and he had an interesting ethos, which was unyielding. He was not, he was never going to let the volume of that restaurant or the busyness of that restaurant dictate what he would put on the menu.

So we made everything from scratch. We made stocks, we made sauces, we made, it was one of those places that had a soup of the day, soup on the menu that was, chef selection. We were making, 10, 15 gallons of soup every two days. It just stuck with me cause I learned a lot there.

I learned how to cook fast and hard on the line, right? Busy services tight quarters, all that good stuff. But it also taught me that you didn’t have to like, resign yourself to like opening boxes or, that whole kind of negative connotation that sometimes busy restaurants can take.

And the more I reflect on that in the last four or five years, the more I realized that was like a hugely influential thing that I didn’t really even realize in the moment how much that would affect me, now, later on at a, a higher level of dining, but still trying to chase a little bit of that volume.

Cause that’s where obviously there’s money to be made.

So I worked there with him for a long time. I was, it was cool. I was really young. I was still in school. I had obviously experience from high school, but not not a ton of managerial experience.

So I was getting that there, but I was getting paid a lot cause it was a huge busy restaurant. And I just was nervous about getting sucked into that young and Nick sat me down and was like, look, you’re young and you have, you have three roommates and no bills and you’re still half a college student.

Now is the time to take the pay cut and go work the job that you want to work and start over again. Or you’re going to be at this level of. Financial, pay that you’re not going to be able to come back. You’re going to always be going to the next thing and you’re going to get into, you’re probably going to get into some stuff that you’re not super thrilled with culinarily because you’re having to make X amount of money, so that was, I took that as a sign and I left and went to work for Gianni Scappini and that was where the Italian thing really took over going to ask

you about that.

So is that your biggest influence now? You love Italian food and you’re just so adept at that genre of, or cuisine and. Everybody loves Italian food. It’s my favorite cuisine to eat for sure.

Yeah. I don’t, growing up, we not, we’re not Italian. My family we’re from Charleston originally.

I grew up eating kind of low country, Americana. I would even say, ham and peas on Tuesdays, meatloaf on Thursdays, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Comfort food too. Which was

awesome and very, very fortunate to have experienced that life, eating dinner around the table with a family five days a week.

I can’t Can’t under, can’t overstate that, the gratitude for that. But I never, we never ate Italian food. We moved to South Florida. And we had a family friend who had a Sunday dinner every Sunday and he would invite us, my, my parents were young, we were a young family with a bunch of kids, so he would host us every Sunday, every other Sunday at times.

And his name was Fa, Father Frank Lashare. He was a priest super Italian. And so he made. Every, third one of those Sundays or every other one of those Sundays was red sauce, something or another, real deal like they call it, they argue over whether it’s gravy or sauce.

And those Sunday nights there were very like, Sopranos esque. He had a huge kitchen range. He was always cooking for the church and that kind of thing. So he cooked in these massive quantities, regardless of whether there was 12 of us that night or six. And That was the first time that I was like, whoa, like as a kid, at 12, 13, like not even thinking I was going to cook yet.

That was the first time that I remember being like, wow my mom’s pasta is not very good. Like it was You didn’t tell her

that though.

I have told her that since. And ironically, I thought it had been long enough, but it was not. It was still too soon for her. So I had to back down on it a little bit, but it was cool.

So that was where I first. Saw that. Then Nick Brower at Shadows gave me a look into this kind of Long Island this deep seated Long Island Southern Italian heritage, American Italian which I had never experienced anything like, because I hadn’t, at that point, I’d never even worked in the North.

I’d never worked for, an American Italian joint, and That was a pretty cool thing. And then the CIA has a restaurant called Caterina, where you go through an Italian programming. And so Chef Gianni Schiappin was actually the teacher, the chef instructor there. And so I went through that class and that was when I was like, whoa, like this is, it was the highest echelon of cooking Italian food, this very rustic.

cuisine, but as clean as possible, as simple, refined. And I was just like, in the back of my head, I was like, this is what I need to do. And so that was a kind of a few months internal battle working at shadows, but going through that class. And then, knowing Gianni and Gianni offered me a job, of course it was, I don’t even know if I could legally say how much I was making at this point.

That was 2013, 2014. I took that job for experience. We can just say that. And that’s when I really got into it. The guy is a genius. Obviously he’s a culinary genius. He’s a wealth of Italian knowledge. The guys that I was cooking with, the guys and girls there at Market Street and Kachina and Kingston, we just all were we were like minded individuals.

And that was the first time that I had cooked with like fellow professionals who were pushing each other. And reading cookbooks was like our idea of fun, with a bottle of wine and pushing and more. And that was that whole, year and a half for me. So that was really, Awesome.

And then I did a three week semester abroad in Italy through the CIA as part of my bachelor’s degree. And that was the, that was it for me.

Where were you in Italy? Did you move around a little bit? Did you move in a specific restaurant? We flew into, we,

we flew into Rome and then we went to Sicily and did a loop all around Sicily from Marsala.

Huh. So we, we got to see. The effects of Moroccan influence, Middle Eastern influence in Southern Sicily. That’s

amazing. Great experience.

Huge seafood. And then we went from Sicily to Campania and then Puglia as well. So we went inland. We saw,

you

know, the buffalo mozzarella production, all that stuff.

So it was, obviously it was a well thought out trip on behalf of the CIA, but it was really Well rounded. Yeah. Yeah, rounded and a Full scale view at what Italy had to offer. And just, this, the space that’s the size of the Southeastern United States basically.

Yeah. That was it. I came back, worked for Gianni for a little bit more, but it’s, I’ve pursued Italian. For the most part, ever since, to some degree. I broke off when I went into Charleston a little bit, but, I came, I’m back,

you can come to my house this weekend and whip up something Italian.

I’d be very happy about that. Let’s let’s talk about leadership because I’m a huge believer in leadership versus management, which I think is the old school way. It’s about so much more than, being the boss or holding that title. And you’ve got a term that you follow. It’s called servant style leadership.

Can you explain what that’s all about? What that means?

Yeah. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s not, it’s more the difficulty I think is more in the practical adaptation of it, just like actually engaging in it and doing it versus understanding what the concept is.

It’s. It’s really just leading from a point of service. Leading by example and doing what you can for your people, knowing that if you take care of your people and serve them, they’re going to treat the guests and each other the way that you’re shooting for, that’s fantastic.

Maybe oversimplify it a little bit, but

No, I totally get it. Thank you for explaining that. You’re absolutely right. That’s collaborative, that is mentoring, that is recognizing talent, giving people additional responsibility, like all those things are really powerful to build any organization, a kitchen, a restaurant, or whatnot.

Let me ask you, do you do you rotate people through different stations to give them a broad skill set and also a backup plan, Plan B if something goes sideways, if someone gets sick, can’t make it. It’s people are versatile,

yeah, we do. I believe pretty firmly in rotating a rotating schedule, if you will.

Like you said, there’s, we marry the two. The old school way is that, you work your way through a station. You work it well, you do it for six months, a year. Some people are going to say it’s really, it was really three years, at some point in history, but obviously we’ve adapted with the kind of the staffing crisis is the stuff that went down through COVID, we probably shortened up these timelines a little bit, but.

Three, three to six months, depending on the person’s skill coming in, working a station, we check in with them constantly. How are they feeling? Are they learning? Are they still feeling engaged? And around the time that we see pretty consistent, successful execution of a station for service.

It’s usually around the time that a person will be like, I’m feeling a little, not, not super challenged or a little restless. And so it works hand in hand. Then we start cross training on another station. Here’s another batch of stuff for you to learn. Still run all my places with the pocket notebook.

concept, which is that every, every cook is responsible for their own recipes and their own, station notes. The chefs and the sous chefs will have collaborative discussion with the cooks, but ultimately the chefs and the sous chefs are going to come together on a dish, get it on the menu, get the recipes written out, and then they dole them out to the stations.

And from there, the cooks have copies on their notebooks. And so what you’re doing there is building this like wealth of knowledge and a little bit of like recipe confidence in younger cooks, because, at my, in this stage of the game with 16 or 17 years experience, you could say, hey, throw together an Italian vinaigrette or, throw together some ginger soy vinaigrette.

I’m going to do this Asian slaw and I could just go throw something together that would be pretty pretty all right, I would imagine. But that experience of knowing those ratios and knowing those flavor profiles that’s what comes with just doing, and so giving them the ability by making it like, semi mandatory for them to take notes on all that stuff.

They don’t realize in the moment, but looking back, they’ll go, wow, I’m so glad that I have, this book of everything I’ve done, thus far, I have a book that I, opened, a Moleskine book that I cracked open in 2015 upon arrival to Endoco Charleston the first time.

And then, used the entire time I was at the grocery and Peninsula Grill. It’s got literally now almost nine years worth of recipes and notes and charcuterie and all kinds of stuff in it that is people text me from Peninsula Grill from 2017 and they’re like, what was the escargot method again?

Cause they liked that one that we did. We thought. The whole team had come together and we really nailed it. That’s just one of those things. It’s, you don’t think about it too much in the moment, but it is crazy how much effect you can have on someone going forward, I don’t think that Nick Brauer realizes that I still use his Vodka sauce based recipe, I don’t know if he knows that.

That’s well, maybe if he listens he’ll be proud to hear that, that you say that, but you know what, that’s inspired and that’s best practices and that’s something that you learn that made a difference in your career that you continue to use and that you pass on to other people. So this business is a legacy, not only the key learnings, but.

But just that leadership style. It’s you learn something from someone and it means something to you. And then you pass that on to others. And that’s, what’s up leveling our industry. So I’m really glad you share.

Yeah. Kevin Johnson at The Grocery was like the first one who was like he did, I guess it’s just, it’s that old school thing.

He worked at the end at Little Washington with Michael Gottlieb, who I worked with in New Orleans, which is how I got connected with him. So when I took over the charcuterie program there at The Grocery, it was like, A lot of transcribing his recipes and, passing them down and getting, and I was like, curious, what do what if somebody runs off with this?

And he was like, that’s, there’s no, a lot of it’s in the execution, right? So they, people can take recipes and do what you want with them. But also there was this old school notion that you earned, through your service at the restaurant and through working, maybe long hours and for less than ideal pay at times, you were earning, the right to go on with this knowledge.

That was what you were working for. So it’s definitely a beautiful thing. I don’t know that it’s as prevalent as it is, as it once was, which is a shame. I try hard to maintain it. And I try to instill in all of the chefs that work with me, that’s something very important as well, because I feel like it is the future of the industry is like in, in the now, I’m at this point where I realized we’re like you can be the guy who sits in the corner and Complains about today’s youth.

Oh, woe is today’s youth. They don’t work. They don’t know. They don’t try. Or you can, hire people, try to impact them positively and then work even further on the ones that, that are clearly taking to it, and that’s where, that’s where we end up like we are here at Endoco Charleston.

I have four people I can see right now that have worked with me for over three and a half, four years, and they’re promoted and they’re moving up through the ranks and that’s. That’s the thing, really.

See, that’s the key to strong leadership. It’s building longevity and up leveling skill sets, which up level the industry.

And not to mention the cost savings of not constantly seeking new people, but if you can lead and motivate and inspire others, then That is such, such an impact over time for your own organization and the industry as a whole. You hold the position of culinary director. Can you give us an idea what that role entails?

And obviously Indigo Road Hospitality Group has multiple restaurants in Charleston and in that area, but do you rotate? You must travel between restaurants and you’re leading influences and you’re overseeing and. Do you still get a chance to cook? But give us an idea of your role and what you do day to day if that’s possible.

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Yeah, sure. So one of the big things I do is one of the bigger things that has taken a lot of my time this year has been openings because of the way COVID fell and some deals were structured and construction, et cetera. We had some stuff stack up. I spearhead openings, kitchen design general restaurant layout to a degree.

And then we’ll go in and assist the executive chef that we hire with menu design and and then the execution, right? Two weeks of training leading up to the opening, getting it open, and then running it for a few weeks. in tandem with the chef to make sure that the indigo road, level of operation standards, hospitality employee staff culture is what we want it to be.

Cause if we can put all of our effort into that in the first month, then we can go out. I can go on to my next thing, rotate back to wherever I was knowing that, that chef and that manager, that general manager, that bar lead, they’re going to put their spin on the ingredients and the dishes.

And the drinks, but the product that we’re presenting as the indigo road will be intact because the people are portraying the values that we, that we instilled in the beginning. So that’s a big part of a big part of it is the openings. Obviously we opened four restaurants. We’ve opened five basically since I took the role, but four in the recent history.

Outside of that, I do a lot of events, a lot of, I pick up a lot of events and public, not appearances, charity events, auction dinners, that kind of stuff.

Yes. And then I spend a lot of time traveling. Yeah. I

drive about 4, 500 miles a month.

Unbelievable.

Yeah. So I drive, I do a big loop up, I’ll go to my furthest thing, which would be Coletta and Cary, North Carolina, which is the Raleigh Durham area.

And then I’ll trickle back down through Charlotte and then Greenville or Asheville and then Greenville. And then when I go into Georgia, it’s just Atlanta, both spots, and then back through Athens on the way back to Charleston, which is my home base. I live in Charleston. Generally speaking I have spent a bulk of my time probably at Indoco Charleston and or our home office in the city here, but yeah but that’s my deal.

It’s three days stuff. And then four, four or five days traveling, depending on, what’s going on.

Do you still have the time to fuel your cooking passion? When you travel to different locations, are you jumping in the kitchen?

Yeah I generally speaking, I’m hands on.

So I’ll do stuff like this during the day, right? A little bit of computer work, admin work. And then we’ll prep with the crew and either run service, either expedite so I can oversee, that the chef is, things the way that we hope they are and that people are functioning and the cooks are all happy and everyone’s working together and all that good stuff.

I might fill in, they might, a chef might call me and say, Hey, the last week of August, I got a sous chef going on, paternity leave because his wife’s having a baby. Can you come up and cover? So I’ll go up there for five days and just, function as a sous chef. In that restaurant in the moment and then just, my this kind of stuff will either take a backseat for that week or I’ll have scheduled around it or whatever.

But yeah, I still, I still cook a good bit. I’m not ever really going to stop cooking. I don’t really see I don’t have this desire to not, when am I going to get off the line? I don’t really get that. I’m pretty outspoken about that on Instagram. Be about that being a misguided mindset.

If you’re gonna, if you’re gonna do this, I don’t really understand like the mentality of being like I I’m a cook, I want to be a chef so that I can become a guy who doesn’t cook and stands around and then and by the way, subsequently all of your cooks will hate you and you’ll never retain any staff.

So I don’t really get that. That’s not really what I’m looking for. I actually have, I’m called an official timeout on my gig as culinary director so that I could spend two weeks just cooking at Indacco Charleston, which is like one of my favorite things to do.

I’ve done that in the past. Certainly the openings give me plenty of

Oh, yes.

Plenty of cooking outlet because there, there’s a lot of training and a lot of preparation and

stuff. Sounds very gratifying. It sounds like you’re striking a really great balance, between the leadership part, but also, keeping in touch with what’s happening and working side by side with your team in multiple restaurants and passing things on.

That to me is very fulfilling. So I’m glad that you have that opportunity. Let’s talk about What you look for when you hire somebody new, and I hate using the word hiring because I’m a big believer in recruiting, but when somebody new comes in, what would you expect them to bring to the table? Is experience important or is attitude more important?

But what are those key characteristics that you look for where you just know this person is going to bring something special to the table that is going to add and up level the experience in this restaurant?

Sure, so we we as a company use, I can’t take credit for it because it was in existence when I got here and I learned it along the way, but we use the 51% characteristics mentality, which means that, there’s a certain amount of things that you can’t You know, theoretically teach someone.

So if they have those characteristics, we’ll teach them the rest. I think it’s adopted from Danny Meyer. I’m pretty sure originally, I think it was, I think it’s laid out in setting the table. I, and I’m going to be embarrassed. I’m going to be yelled at for not knowing the original, but but that’s what we use.

And yeah, that’s basically we do a multi step interview process as well as a stage and tasting for any. Management rules, certainly, but usually a stage, at least, for any employee.

Okay.

And that is based on the principle that if this person has the character traits that we seek and seems like they’re compassionate and they’re willing to work collaboratively and have some curious intelligence and have, these things that we look for of those

things

that we, that we could, I could teach this person, the indigo road way of counting inventory or of reading a PNL or of.

Writing a prime cost summary as a general manager, those are things that we can teach. But you can’t teach someone that, that this is not the type of place that a chef is going to yell or throw stuff. You can certainly, people can change, of course, but there’s not, there’s a certain level of person, I think, that when that is the way that you feel you should be there’s not a, there’s not a ton you can do to get that out, right?

There’s only so much. Like almost pretending that a person could do until eventually it’s going to rear its head. And cause some sort of issue. And for us, for me personally, in my role, and then I know for, the rest of the leadership team at the Indigo road, my, my biggest fear is getting a call from a line cook or a sous chef and them saying, you told me that we were a company like this.

And now my boss is not like that. And why did you lie? Why did you lie? Or why did you, why, losing the trust of the people that work for us because we’re not who we say we are is like the number one It’s the, that’s the worst case scenario, so that’s a big part of my role even, again is, being an ambassador of the indigo road and a defender of the, of our culture while I’m on the road traveling and just being in the restaurant.

So that’s a big part of my role. There’s a whole senior leader team here, area directors culture. Director of culture, directors of operation, other culinary directors that are all, tasked with the same kind of side quest through our travels. And that’s just, goes to show that it’s, it is that important to us for sure.

Can you speak to culture? I’m really glad you’re bringing that up as well, because there’s a difference, a huge difference between just having a mission that may be old and tired and forgotten, that hangs on the wall, versus a true culture that It comes in many ways. It’s the leadership piece, but it’s also the team spirit and the teamwork and the camaraderie and the way people feel in a restaurant that the guests can then feel based on the experience delivered, but it might be succinct, it might be three words, it might be a sentence, but how would you describe the company culture of Indigo Road Hospitality Group?

We definitely believe that the, if we take care of our staff, if we take care of our people they’ll push that outward to our guests. We have our core values on a poster, ironically, not a forgotten poster, not a dusty poster by any means, those are posted.

Those are part of our training package when we open a new place. And they are important, in daily lineups. We talk about a, different restaurants do it different ways. We talk about a core value of the week, a core value of the day. In some cases in Docko Greenville, their back of the house lineup that they have, they do a core value of the day every day.

And that’s a way to get the staff in the kitchen to look for examples of that core value. And that I think is. is huge. Steve Palmer, our founder then the conference, it might’ve been last year, but it struck me pretty seriously. And he was like, this to to your point about the forgotten mission statement, he was like, this culture thing is alive.

And so if you don’t speak to it, if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t display it through your actions, there’s no belief behind it. And then that’s when you get staff, Oh yeah. Scoffing at the. The old board there in the back versus people really actively engaging and being like that.

And I think the restaurants that we have that nail it a hundred percent, it shows through. Their guest feedback, their guest engagement their reviews, certainly the P& L the, it’s funny when it’s firing on all cylinders and the culture’s right, and the GM and the chef are hand in hand, the team and the front of the house and back of the house are, Enjoying their time.

That restaurant is the top of the pile. And we get a ton of feedback from guests that say there’s no restaurant in their specific area or whatever that feels like an Indigo road restaurant when they walk in the smiles, the staff engagement, the laughing, just the general vibe is it’s palpable.

You can, you’ve, everyone’s walked into a restaurant and noticed like a scared look on everyone’s face and not really a lot of Welcoming love at the host stand and that’s that, that is a direct relation to our culture, for sure.

Thank you for sharing. Tell us about Family Meal.

Yeah, so we do Family Meal. That’s like an indigo road, non negotiable. In all of our restaurants, hotels, I think have the restaurants that are in hotels have like a, maybe two a day thing or something. But we do Family Meal every day. The restaurants do it differently. Some do it right before lineup or in tandem with lineup, but usually it’s in the afternoon, towards the beginning of, or before service starts rather me, it’s always been a non negotiable.

It’s been, it’s also a non negotiable that it’d be good, that it’d be, delicious and fulfilling and maybe even well rounded, you could say. I don’t believe in plates on the menu containing starch, veg, meat, sauce, Because that’s just not the way that we cook. But family meals should always contain starch, veg, some sort of protein, a salad, and a lot of cases we have a little dessert, a brownie cake or something, it’s, it needs to be something that everybody should look forward to and that everybody should want to eat because.

It’s like the most important part of the day, bringing everyone together, instilling that trust between back house and front of the house. We got you we’re taking care of the food. We understand its importance. The front of the house, cleaning it up, breaking it down, wiping down the pass.

Hey, we appreciate the food. We’re we’re going to tidy it up and thanks for making it, that I think is, It’s always been a non negotiable, when I took over at the beginning of, at the end of COVID, quote unquote, the end of the first round of COVID, whatever you want to call it, December of 2020, I took over here and, they weren’t doing family meal, to be honest with you the culture in this restaurant, Endoco Charleston specific, I’m saying this restaurant because I’m sitting here.

Yes.

The culture was a little less than, COVID obviously had a lot to do with that. Not, Looking for somewhere to put blame, but just came in and there was just certain things I wasn’t going to, we weren’t going to not do. I wasn’t going to accept and, to call back Nick Brower, I was unyielding.

I was not going to accept not doing Family Meal because we were tight on staff or people were all sad because of COVID or whatever. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t going to go down like that. And I think through that, we inspired some people that were with us who were maybe feeling a little less than to kick it into high gear and get with it.

And that is what started the rebirth, if you will of Endoco Charleston, which we just celebrated our 11th year. And I think last year was the busiest year on record for the restaurant. So that’s crazy in the 10th year to do I think we were, I think my second year here, we were like 35, 40 percent up year over year in revenue.

Skipping 2020, of course, we don’t count 2020, but.

All these things make a huge impact totally on the guest experience. One, it’s a team and a morale builder, but I really love the balance and bringing front of house, back of house together, and just connecting and bonding that team, because there are a lot of restaurants out there that there’s that conflict and that delicate balance you have to reach when the tickets are on the floor and the kitchen’s in 900 degrees.

And those guys are under incredible pressure and something goes sideways and a server has to get a recook and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, cool under pressure and just that communication, that mutual respect, that’s a hard thing to achieve. And I think you’ve got one of the keys to doing that with Family Meal.

I’m glad you shared that.

Yeah, and it’s not always, it’s not to say that it’s always perfect or that it’s like this, blissful euphoria at all 36 of our restaurants, right? It’s, and that’s why I say it’s a, culture is a living thing. It’s not something that we can just, I don’t get to hang my hat up at my house and say it’s that, like everybody’s where they’re supposed to be, it’s dynamic.

It has to be all the time and constantly watched and, uplifted when need be, interjected with a little bit of happiness, some donuts, that kind of thing. Hank Holliday, the owner of Peninsula Grill, I worked for three years before coming back here. He once said to me for less than for different reasons, right?

Then the culture piece and the camaraderie, but he said that the servers are the salespeople. And so if you lose the faith of the servers as a chef you, Your toast. If they don’t believe in you, if they, for some reason, dislike you if they don’t have the confidence in the product that you’re putting together, then they’re not going to sell your product.

They’re certainly not going to sell anything off menu, but I’ll also not really going to put forth any effort to get food on the table. And that stuck with me. It was, like I said, it was not exactly for the exact same reasons, but that I think played a big part coming back to Ndako and having to rebuild that relationship.

Cause it was The front and back was a little split up, or whatever. So rebuilding that, it definitely stuck with me. If you don’t have, if you don’t have their back, they’re certainly not going to try to have yours if that’s what it comes down to.

This is terrific.

Let’s talk about recognition and rewards for outstanding performance. Or someone that just goes above and beyond and does something unexpected that either helps a team member, solves a guest problem. That’s part of the culture, but it’s innate with people to really please. And that. That lays on the foundational element of what hospitality is really all about, but there must be some programs where you recognize people.

Tell us about that. Yeah,

so we do, the internal hospitality is we, is what the term we use for the way we all treat each other, the staff. And so obviously that’s hugely important just in general, holding the door, the behind, the corner calls, all that good stuff. But also as a company, we do surveys every year for all the employees and management as well, like in different tiers, so that we as a company can hear feedback.

And so we were doing employee of the quarter, company wide per like region almost. And two years ago, we received a lot of feedback that year as we had grown pretty big as well that, they felt like that wasn’t enough opportunity to reward or even just recognize. It wasn’t really even about the monetary level of the award.

It was really just the frequency. And we took that feedback and switched to employee of the month per restaurant. So 30, 36, 38, soon to be, 40 properties all doing employee of the month. individually, which is, carries a significant monetary reward per month, and then puts you in the drawing for employee of the year, which is an even bigger reward.

That’s one, that’s one kind of standardized thing that we do across the company that I think is very important. We also have as managers and leaders, we’ve empowered the management teams on site to do employee surprise and delight. So just, Little tokens of gratitude, not always a monetary thing, maybe a gift, maybe a special dessert, maybe, organizing with the chef to make this person’s favorite family meal or family favorite meal for family meal.

And we see those we have an Instagram page, that’s like a internal Instagram page where they, where those are shared and posted. We see a lot of positive return on that, just these small tokens, notebooks for cooks and. Cool aprons for rising sous chefs and hats and, just little things.

It’s never this huge big thing, but it’s just people want to be recognized, people want to be, they want to be, they want to feel appreciated. They want to feel like they’re noticed. And so that’s why we have taken that to task and some restaurants, again, like I said, some restaurants go above and beyond and they’re absolutely crushing it.

And it’s very obvious in their retention rate. Statistically just straight up facts. It’s very obvious. And some restaurants don’t have it going quite as well as we would like. And we’re working on that. Like I said, it’s dynamic, it’s all the time.

This is all great stuff.

Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about finances. You talked about inventory. So it sounds like you’re taking regular inventory. How about what, how has inflation. Impacted pricing and value and maintaining margins, if not increasing them. Are you costing out your menu regularly as the volatility of the markets shift?

It’s let’s talk about what you, as a financial director as well what role you play there and what those key performance indicators might be at Indigo Road.

Yeah, so we have, we have a huge accounting team. I shouldn’t say huge, they’ll yell at me for saying huge. They probably could use a couple more people.

Fair enough. We have several accountants on staff at the home office who each oversee the book, the general accounting of, five or six restaurants, maybe at a time, depending, someone in charge of just, Purchasing someone in charge of accounts payable, that sort of thing. So those people will work in tandem with the chef and GM doing inventory, processing invoices. We are fortunate enough to use a program called Margin Edge, which Oh, yes. Basically, it’s a live scanner of your invoices.

It keeps your weekly inventory exactly to the accurate dollar amount on, on items. It has a ton of different features, which I won’t bore everyone with but one of the big things, price movers, price changers you can set alerts for chefs to see when their high price items are climbing or dropping.

So again, it’s, it also is very dynamic and alive. The menu certainly, is costed out as it goes into effect on and off dishes change and things maybe increase or decrease a little bit in general. I will say, we’ve definitely had a general sweeping kind of price increase over the last two or three years.

Of course, everyone has, the cost of goods has been on an insane climb. Absolutely.

Yes.

Just trying to do what we can. We’re not trying to immediately pass all of that off to our guests because, for starters, we see it as a little less than hospitable. But also we think through responsible management of our own costs and.

Operation expenses and stuff. Maybe we can try to, work in tandem to keep the guests from feeling the brunt of that.

That is so vital. I’m really glad you shared that as well, because, it’s not just about putting out delicious, amazing food in a comfortable atmosphere and maintaining loyalty of guests.

It’s also about providing value, but being really bottom line oriented and making sure that you’re dialing. Everything in so that there isn’t a lot of waste or spoilage and that it’s very efficient that your food and your beverage and your labor costs and all those things that are the biggest expenses in restaurants.

So that’s really great. And it also helps to have a team behind you because that’s just one more responsibility. But whether you got one restaurant or 40 locations like yours, I think you pointed out that it is really vitally important. So you’ve got it. We have a responsibility.

No, you’re good.

Sorry. We just we have a responsibility as well. We have a responsibility to our guests. To provide this indigo road standard that we’ve, we’ve developed and built over the last 15 years. But we also have a response, a responsibility to our investors, and to each other to to be sustainable and continue to make money and make make it all keep ticking basically.

So that’s, yeah, again, that’s just another thing, another, kind of level of responsibility that we have.

Let’s talk about the new concept, Luminosa, and what’s that planning process like? For those that want to open up new locations, you might have one successful location, not to mention 40.

That’s incredible. But moving into a new location, there’s a process there. There’s a timeline. There’s key steps that you can’t miss. And there’s also the vision that you have to follow, the roadmap to what you want this to be when it’s, when it opens, what you want guest experience to be when they first walk through the door.

And you’re right in the thick of that right now, are you not?

Yeah, Luminosa is open. They’ve been open for two months now. Oh, it’s been open. Yeah, it’s open. It’s open now. two weeks? Two months. Oh, two months. Maybe even a little over two months now. I opened Osteria Olio in Athens in the Ribbit House Hotel after Luminosa.

And that, I think is, Just passing two months. But both and both places to your point, a new market where we’re not there. The Indigo road is becoming more of a household name if you will, in the Southeast but still, not to the level that you can just blurt it out on the street in Asheville and have people go, Oh yeah, of course I’ve been, I’ve been there.

You start naming restaurants and people start to, string it together But yeah, in both places we were, I believe the way it came about is we were tapped by a development group or, a group that in the case of Luminosa was trying to revitalize and historically restore the Flatiron Hotel. Or the Flatiron building into what is now the Flatiron Hotel.

And so we through careful, curation and design and many Zoom meetings with tons of people involved worked through that restaurant. I think I revised the kitchen plans and sat in the first Zoom call. About it. I think literally in 20, the end of 20, the beginning of 2021, maybe the middle of 2021.

.

And there was, some construction snags and that sort of thing. But it was still, it was a year, I think a year almost past the target date. So that can happen, that’s tough. RIA Lio in the Athens Ho the hotel there, the Riv, the Rivet House hotel went a little bit more according to plan, just from, it not being as historical of a building.

We we saw what we wanted to do. We put it together and went into that market delivering an indigo road product that we feel confident, those guests that are new to our brand will. We’ll fully embrace and love. And so far in both cases we’re pretty well received in both cases.

We also are managing both the F and B throughout the hotel, as well as the hotel operations, front desk, room sales room service, housekeeping, et cetera. Both of those hotels were, were huge learning experiences for us, but obviously I can’t say enough about the planning The market research and the design elements being, hugely important to like portraying an indigo road level experience for sure.

That’s great overview as well because I know a lot of our audience listening are growing their businesses and it always helps to hear from other successful operators what they do to really make that dream come to fruition. So thanks for sharing. It’s been tremendous having you as a guest on the podcast.

Thanks so much, Mark.

Yeah Absolutely

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