Hey there, it’s Roger. And this is another episode of the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. I often talk about running a business, not running a restaurant, building a strong brand and having a vision, not being reactive, but being proactive and thinking ahead and staying relevant. So today’s guest, David Steele is the chairman of two really dynamic hospitality groups, Great Gold Hospitality Group and Flower and Water Hospitality Group.

Now we’re going to talk all about strategic planning thinking ahead what systems are vital training staff and onboarding, leadership, accountability, marketing, tech stacks, you name it, we cover all the bases here. And these are the foundational systems that are necessary and required. any super successful restaurant business.

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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. This is the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. David, welcome to the show. How are you? I’m great. Thanks for having

me.

You are what many people would call a prolific restaurateur and an inspiration to many of us. Tell us about your restaurant journey and as a young person starting your first restaurant and how it led to everything you’re doing now.

Interestingly, I worked in restaurants. We grew up pretty poor. I worked in restaurants all through high school and college, started as a dishwasher, worked my way up to, got out of the kitchen after seeing the front of the house people having an easier life. And after doing garde manger, I moved to busboy, waiter, then eventually a manager, moved, got myself through college.

Didn’t have confidence I could have food. And that’s where I got my first economic security opening restaurants, and so I got a job on Wall Street, started a finance practice, did that, only that, for 15 years, and then had written a business plan for my first restaurant 20 years ago, and finally, 16 years ago, I got the gumption to

opened a restaurant with partners as a side hustle for my finance practice. And the first one ended up being one of the more successful restaurants in the history of San Francisco and saw an opportunity to turn into a company rather than just one restaurant.

So you obviously have a passion for this business because you started, you just mentioned moving through multiple positions in a restaurant, not really seeing a future in it and changing your course of life

finance, but now you’re back in the restaurant game amongst other things. But it’s like it runs deep, for you. Would you say the passion is really deep within

it? It is. I had a, when I was working in restaurants as a younger person, I had, I saw a bunch of very talented artisans that really, as I, in retrospect realized, were running around.

unprofitably because their focus was on the craft at the expense of business principles. And I had a hypothesis as I moved through my professional life in the early stages of my finance practice, started seeing a bunch of different clients succeed and fail in different businesses and realizing, there’s a set of business principles here that I think could be applied to any business and be successful.

And. I was very passionate about eventually opening a restaurant, so I brought a bunch of what I’d say pragmatic Universal business principles to restaurants. And I tried to create a healthy tension between my chefs and the artisans and business principles, and always having a push pull between those ideals.

So when we talk about business principles, similar to my own approach, this is not a traditional business run by MBAs. It’s running a restaurant is not necessarily running a business, but clearly you saw it. differently, as did I. What are some of the systems that were vital to your success or continue to be vital to your success?

It starts with strategic planning, right? Now we have a big company that we can do OKRs, objectives and key results, and we’ve got division leaders, and we do strategic planning every year, and it’s very organized. How many, there’s a belief that the majority of restaurants that start fail, and I think it’s a good portion of them is because they’re started with actual, without actual business plans.

legitimate, thoughtful, analytical business plans. So it’s, to me, it starts there. And in the business planning process, inevitably, if you’re contemplating opening a restaurant, you’re going to probably have a projection for what you think this size restaurant with this price point check average, number of covers, profitability, what it’s going to project to be for maybe 10 years.

And you would build an IRR calculation to be able to pitch investors. And now you’ve got this P& L that has yet to happen. That’s projections. Okay, so when you open, how about actually having a reliable monthly P& L with The accurate data that you, wait for it, actually look at every month, and the data is accurate, and you’re confident of that, and you can make strategic and tactical decisions based on that P& L every month.

So the number of, when I do any restaurant consulting, the number of businesses that I see that don’t have consistent, reliable P& Ls, Let alone it started with a proper business plan. So these are the types of very basic fundamental things that I think are often missing from restaurant.

If we put that mindset in place when you first started the very first concept, however long ago that was, what were some of the biggest challenges that were pitfalls perhaps that you had to overcome in order to make that place successful?

I think you said it was the very first. Concept that you did was very successful. Were there anything that stand out that really got in your way that you thought at the moment, this is really monumental, but then you look back on it and you can laugh at it now, like what are some of those challenges to someone who wants to systemize their business?

The biggest challenge that I had as a business person who had a concept and was confident in the creative aspects of the concept was to get buy in from my team who came from the restaurant business and had worked in restaurants that maybe weren’t quite as organized as I aspired our businesses to be, to get buy in from them on the importance of these.

Executing in these systematic types of behaviors, like consistent, reliable P and L’s, like making sure your HR files are properly filled correctly when you hire people, when you terminate people, just these basic things to get my, Early on to get my team members to buy into the importance of those things.

And so there was, that wasn’t an easy process. Once we had a successful restaurant and we opened more, it became obvious that the only way that we could scale is if we had reliability for each restaurant, that although the concepts may be different, they were run in the same way. So now it’s easy. If we open a new restaurant, the team’s okay, we have a playbook, if you will, and we know we’re going to execute it.

But in the early days, it was getting buy in from very talented, creative people that these Practical things really matter.

And range of personalities in restaurants and back of house, front of house, push, pull sometimes, and conflicts. And how do you establish accountability so that everybody knows clear expectations, they can perform to those and they’re held, to a certain standard.

And then there’s a review at some point about, Hey, how well are you doing or where are you falling short? That’s gotta be a piece of your puzzle as well, right?

It is. And I think, again, How many restaurants are created or operate now without written job titles, without an org chart, without job titles, without job descriptions, without a plan to scale.

That is to say, okay, these are the jobs we know we need now with the job descriptions we know we need. Now you could build key performance indicators around a job description, but if you don’t have a job description, you can’t really build that. KPIs, build bonus plans, etc. And then having the foresight and the planning process to think about growing the company and what are the future job titles and job descriptions.

I have in the first restaurant company I started chef Tom McNaughton, who’s the CEO of our company. It’s a 250 person company with. five restaurants, two more opening this year, and a consumer packaged goods business. He was a 24 year old chef when I hired him. The evolution of Tom to go from chef to a CEO of a multi restaurant company with a lot of different, a very multi dimensional restaurant company, that’s a real journey for him.

So his job description today had to have been imagined and imagined. 10 years ago. Not that we could give it to him 10 years ago. It had to have been imagined 10 years. And then there’s a training process that he had to go through. Every team member we have, my team has been together for 14, 15, 16 years.

My chief people officer, my CFO, our director of operations, all of these people have been with us for a long time. They didn’t, Have these roles 10 12 years ago. These are, this is an evolutionary process as we thought about scaling the company. I’m being long winded. I’m sorry if I No,

you’re not.

No, this is really vital. And now I’m hearing leadership is coming into play versus management. There’s two different things in my book, but true leadership is recognizing talent, promoting from within, giving the additional responsibility, And a chef that goes to CEO of a 250 person company, that’s an extraordinary leap forward, but that’s a testament to your framework, but it’s also a testament to the people and their passion and their drive to get somewhere else and to take on additional responsibility.

That sums up leadership right there, but there’s so much more to it. Do you want to add to that?

No, what you just said is exactly right. That’s it. But the, we aspire for our company to be not 250 employees, but someday maybe 2000 employees. We’re thinking about what, who Tom is CEO, and he’s a founding partner of the company.

So the probability is, and we have a board of directors, by the way, we’re a C corp, we have a board of directors, we have outside investors, we’re going to seek institutional capital someday. It remains to be seen, what, With me as executive chairman, if I’m qualified for the job in five years, don’t know I will be.

We have to answer to shareholders. If Tom will be qualified for the job, but we are imagining that now. And the only way that we’re going to be able to go into those positions is if we realize that in fact, being leaders is the only way that we’re Damn near 100 percent of our job and doing tasks becomes ever increasingly close to zero part of our job.

There’s a huge nugget there because now we’re talking about being proactive, not reactive. And so much of our business is putting out the daily fires and just trying to put out good food and deal with whatever happens versus Having the crystal ball, seeing around corners, anticipating future trends, staying relevant, and somehow moving this business forward, even though it might be 10 years from now before it happens, we’re thinking about it now.

I can’t think of any other real restaurant group or independent restaurant that really can. Think things through to that level. There’s such a learning there. Wow. And that goes back to your thought about strategic planning. It’s not just about running a restaurant. It’s running a business and then planning for the future.

And where’s this place going to go? And how do we stay ahead of the competition? There’s so much to unpack there. That’s huge.

Part of it also is if you look at, I read something recently that said your calendar doesn’t lie. And it followed by saying your calendar is who you are. And okay, so take, I imagine listeners, there may be a chef owner who works 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week listening to this saying, yes, deal.

Thanks very much. Appreciate the advice, but I don’t have time for this. My response would be go down and write down all the stuff you do. Look at your calendar, look what you’re doing with your time. You should be delegating. 100 percent of your tasks away. What? It’s not possible. You’re right. But if you aspire to delegate 100 percent of your tasks away, and you delegate 20 percent of your tasks away, you just freed how much of your time.

Now, you’re going to then say I’ve got a team and they’re not to the level of my capabilities of getting it done, which is what I call the disease of non scalability. That is to say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Wrong. Train people. Yes, they’re not going to do it as well as you in the beginning, and they may never do it like you, but you give them agency and equity in what they turn that job into.

And the more you free your time, the more you elevate yourself to be able to do the types of things I’m talking about. I’m in the most luxurious position one could be as it relates to this, because I have two restaurant companies. One. That has Tom McNaughton as CEO, and really it’s his job to run the company, and it’s my job to help him, coach him, to work with him and work with our board to give him an opportunity to run the company.

And then I have a second restaurant company that is two restaurants that I started with a different chef. And he, that company is like more a teenager right now. And watching chef Brandon, who’s an amazing chef, go through some of the early stages of realizing he shouldn’t be picking parsley and chopping onions.

Oh, he shouldn’t be behind the line making pasta in the pan. Oh, he shouldn’t even be expediting. Oh, he shouldn’t even be physically in the restaurant during service at all. Oh, I’m not in the restaurant during service at all. Look, I can open. I’m A third restaurant. Look how that happens. And to watch these guys go through that evolutionary process is so fun.

Do they at all miss the chefing part of things and the culinary excellence and like being in the kitchen and working with teams and developing them? They’ve moved so far in their careers, but it all started with a passion for food and creation and creativity. It’s Oh my God, it takes a special person to leave all that behind for future, potential and greater good and all that, and have a bigger picture look at the business versus just the kitchen.

Roger, how many chefs do you know that love their life working in the kitchen physically at the age of 60?

Yeah, this is true, but those are old habits that die hard, aren’t they? I

understand, but what I’m arguing for is, I always tell, I told Tom this one, started when he was in his late 20s, I said, Tom, I’m gonna race against time.

You will age out of the current job you have. You won’t be happy doing this. You’re going to age out of it.

Yeah.

And you’re going to quit. You’re going to do whatever. So we got to get you into an executive level position by the time you physically need to be there. And I tell Brandon that also, and they ultimately agreed.

There’s more to it than that. It’s not just your body breaking down and you naturally aging, but this is a business of high stress and alcoholism and cigarette smoking and all this other kind of stuff that is a negative influence. It’s such a huge part of our industry and you are such an advocate for wellness and you own a yoga studio.

It’s like, where do you instill this in your teams to find that balance between work and health of your life?

Yeah, if the chef is working I don’t think a business is worth having if you’re working 90 hours a week. Now, all startups require crazy amount of effort in the beginning, it’s fine. But the goal is to build a system, a model, that allows you, ideally, to have some work life balance.

So I’m a, I’m not a fan of people seeking work life balance as entrepreneurs when they’re in their twenties. I’m also not a fan of people not having work life balance when they’re in their forties and fifties. And it’s between your twenties and your forties and fifties that you damn well better figure it out.

And that’s the stuff I’m arguing for here.

Let’s switch gears. Let’s jump into finances, because it’s such an important part of the business. You started talking about P& Ls and monitoring, but there’s so many KPIs that are important. There’s prime costs, there’s taking inventory, which doesn’t mean placing the order.

It’s like calculating true food and beverage costs, of course, monitoring labor. And in the times of inflation and crazy labor costs, so many restaurants are neglecting this. Where’s the system there? What’s the template that your organization uses? And what are those KPIs?

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We want food costs to be below 25%, ideally.

We would like our labor costs all in to be below, we’re in San Francisco, a lot of our restaurants may be below 37 or 38%, believe it or not it’s pretty expensive to operate restaurants. It is

in San Francisco, for sure. Yep. Wow.

Especially. And so you can eat, listen, it all points to one cold, hard number, which two cold, hard numbers in my mind, and you can reverse engineer a good business from a bad business.

We all know you should have 10 percent cashflow from operations or EBITDA on the Public market space, at least 10 percent cashflow from operations. So if you have 100 percent of sales, that means you get to have 90 percent of costs. Work it out, back it out. We will not do a real estate deal that has our occupancy costs above 6 percent and we prefer all of our real estate deals these days to be 5 percent all in, including triple net as a percentage of sales.

And in fact, we go to landlords now and basically back out. Because we have a reputation, we can demand these types of terms. Negotiate. We give them 5%. Occupancy costs all in and take it or leave it. And by the way, if we do double the revenue because you think your location is that great, you’re going to get double the rent.

Everybody’s happy. Like we’re okay with that symmetrical risk between operator and landlord. But if we’re shooting for at least 10 percent cash flow from operations, and ideally it’s closer to 15, right? Ideally it’s closer to 15. And we know we’re going to do 2 million in revenue. You could do the math.

That’s 300, 000 of cash flow. Guess what? Do not spend more than 900, 000 to open your business. You want a three year payback of CapEx. There’s your math. If you’re going to do 2 million in revenue, you’re going to do 15 percent cash flow, and that means 300, 000 of cash flow. That means you don’t get to spend more than 900, 000.

How many operators go, I just have to have that chandelier? I just have to have this French cooktop.

Yep, the ambiance and the yeah, the aesthetic is so important and everything has to be perfect and everything has to be brand new and state of the art and all that other stuff when, yeah, the risks are there.

Turn the lights down, turn the music up, put more candles out, paint is cheap.

There you go. That’s solid advice. You’re also a consultant. Now I coach on a limited basis, but when I do, what I really have specialized in lately is menu profit analysis. And I’m not talking about where to place things on the menu, because your eye goes there.

I’m talking about, showing where the spread is in every category and how big that difference is and how low profit items are taking sales from high profit items and you’re filling your seats, but your bank account isn’t growing. And so many restaurants haven’t costed out their menus. Are you.

Implementing those types of ideas in your restaurants?

Yeah, we do we do recipe costing for every dish. We make sure that the food costs out of the gate are not going to be more than 20, 25 percent across the menu. But it’s also important to know that if you have a steak priced on the menu for two at 120, where in San Francisco it’s expensive.

Of course. You have a steak for two at 120 and that steak costs you more than 25 percent, but you sell it. instead of a lamb shank that may be 45 on the menu with better food costs, you still make more dollars from the sale of that steak. The difference between percentage costs or profit margin and absolute dollars.

And I think It really is as much art as it is science to try to get to the sweet spot of between what’s a good menu mix for, that’s gonna have the customer feel like they got the greatest possible experience they can, while spending as much money as possible, while having the highest profit, absolute dollars possible, while also having margins be healthy as well.

And that is art and science.

That is exactly where I’m going with this, and this industry has had such an obsession with food costs, and although that’s important, it’s basically a byproduct of, efficient processes, efficient ordering, no waste and spoilage and theft and all that kind of stuff, and you’re right, it’s like you take profit to the bank, you don’t take food costs to the bank.

So I’m really glad that you pointed that out. How about we talk about Onboarding and staff training and instilling that company spirit or company culture versus a mission. It’s like where does that all fit in? You bring in brand new people, whether they’re experienced or not, and you want to instantly instill in them what you’re all about.

What’s this company stand for? What are we all about? What do we want the guest experience to be? And the teamwork and the respect piece. All of that is part of the culture. What’s your culture like?

I have a philosophy and ideology that privileges hiring at the early stages of somebody’s career and promoting from within rather than hiring from the outside.

The number of times we’ve hired from the outside where we’ve been really impressed with the person’s CV, And how they interviewed and ultimately they didn’t fit with us culturally or their CV really misrepresented what their capabilities were. It’s just the list is so long. The number of times we’ve promoted from somebody from within and move them up.

Through the corporation, through the companies we’ve grown and had successes. Oh my goodness it’s 95 percent of our leadership team are people that started with us. Our CFO started as an admin, she was an artist. Started as an admin 15 years ago. She’s amazing. Our chief people officer started with us as a server and then a manager.

She’s now our chief people officer. And I can go, I already talked about Tom at 24, now a CEO. Yes. It’s really important. And so I tried, I really did to the extent that I deserve credit for this. It’s instilling this ideology around promoting from within. So that way people, it becomes this.

culture thats completely embraced by everybody in the organization. People feel empowered and excited about their future. And so now we’re a 250 person company and I’m executive chairman. And so the truth is I’m not really heavily involved in the onboarding of. a server, or a porter, or a line cook, but I can tell you that the philosophy that I was involved in starting when we were much smaller is now being executed by our chief people officer, who was a server, who is now a chief people officer of the big company, and it comes from her, and so forth and so on.

Excellent philosophies there. It’s like recognizing talent, nurturing, developing that talent and getting the best out of your people and giving them reasons not to want to leave because the grass isn’t greener. This is a place with a culture that cares about its people. We want to give you opportunities to be your best part of yourself.

I love that. That’s terrific. How about marketing? We keep jumping into categories, but marketing is a huge thing. You talked about strategy, strategic planning. Obviously there’s a strategy or a marketing plan that, that works for you. And what would that look like for your different companies and locations?

I really think it depends upon if you’re talking about some scaled, whatever quality product type company. I don’t want to name restaurants, but we, there, there’s lots of restaurants that maybe you’re not inspired to necessarily eat at but they, they fill a, satisfying need for the moment.

The restaurants we’ve created, at least up until now, we think are a little bit more involved in the conversation of culture and are a little bit more gastronomically interesting. I think there’s a problem when restaurants try too hard to get customers that are also, that are, trying to be gastronomically significant.

PR works really well. Earned press, if you will, where, I believe that with media in this day and age reporters are paid less than they’ve ever been paid. They’re more overworked than they’ve ever been worked. And they really want stories. And so we have a full time PR firm.

And she is heavily involved in crafting stories that we can then make the reporter’s lives easier and actually deliver the stories to them. so storytelling is a big part of our so called marketing, which is we really want the press to write about us. We are very active in storytelling through social media, Instagram, especially.

We’d like to think we have really good restaurants. I’m on this podcast. I would possibly can say that there’s, that’s not. Totally that, that’s not totally directed towards marketing of a restaurant, but it’s not directed towards marketing of a restaurant. So yeah, we have a big

listener base in San Francisco, so you might get some play out of this.

Okay, cool. Yeah. And I, we do restaurant consulting. We’ve done we’ve done, I think six projects now as well. So

Terrific. How about influencers? Is there still a place for that and does it work? Is it relevant to your concepts or is that just a whole different realm?

We don’t pay for that.

We, um, it’s not our style. I’m not I’m absolutely, first of all, I don’t know much about it. Instinctively, it doesn’t feel good to me. It’s not to say that we haven’t invited influencers in to say, Hey, have you checked this out or check that out? Because if some dinner we’re doing or some product we’re launching or whatever, but we as far as I know, and I’d have to talk to my director of marketing, I don’t think we’ve ever paid anybody.

It’s more incentivizing. Can you incentivize an Uber driver when they pick somebody up? And the first question is, so what’s a good restaurant? What do you suggest? It’s you come first to mind because you’ve incentivized Uber drivers or hotel concierges or people in a position of influence that aren’t paid to do it, but they’re there’s some perks along the way.

That worked for me forever.

Yeah, and in May I, first of all, I’m not qualified to give a detailed answer from my company because we do have a director of marketing, and she’s wonderful. She may be listening to this at a replay and say, what the hell is he talking about? We do this, and this. He should have said that.

So I probably just ignorant to the details.

Alright, technology is taking on a greater role with restaurants, and there’s new tech coming out all the time, and it goes so far beyond the basic point of sale system with online ordering, it’s like there’s everything under the sun. What is your necessary tech stack that you can’t live without?

What’s really important?

We part, first of all, Toast and Rezzy. a big part of what we do. I’m drawing a blank now. We also use an overlay on top of our P& L reporting software that helps us analyze data. And I’m frankly, I’m drawing a blank on the name, but we, I look at the reports every month and basically takes the reports that come out of QuickBooks and then helps us analyze the data.

And Those are very very important from my perspective. Our partnership with Rezzy has been amazing. They’ve been incredible marketing partners. And I think they’re more interested in urban very dense restaurants that are in very urban sort of dense areas. So I’m not sure they would necessarily be a great partner in suburban.

Rural areas, but if you have a company like Resi, a reservation company who will do marketing with you, that’s been incredibly positive for us.

So that’s very interesting because so many restaurants do take reservations. And of course, in a metropolitan city, such as San Francisco, everyone takes reservations.

Me, I always thought it was so inefficient based on downtime and waiting for people to show up late for reservations. And six people show up when it’s a party of 10 and it’s first come first serve and get them in and serve as many covers as possible while delivering a great experience was more bottom line oriented for me.

But I understand that you have to do it because people, guests expect it. It has a certain, cachet to it. If you don’t take reservations, does that create an intrigue where people roll their dice and try to get in at seven o’clock on a Saturday night? Good luck with that. You know what I mean?

But at least you’re filling your seats all the time efficiently.

There’s a lot of restaurants that are very popular. And if you’re, first of all, if you’re privileged to have a radical imbalance between supply and demand, that is to say, there’s way more demand for your seat than there’s supply available.

You can do whatever you want as it relates to taking or not taking reservations. With that said, I want to ask you a question and turn it around. Do you like going to restaurants that don’t take reservations as a consumer?

I mix it up. We go to those restaurants that take reservations, but then we know the places where they’ve got reserved tables for walk ins, and we always seem to get lucky.

We try to go on off times that aren’t 7. 30 on a Saturday night. It’s a mix. It’s depending on the occasion. Obviously, if it’s a special occasion, we’ll make a reservation. If it’s an impromptu thing where my wife and I just say, Hey, let’s go out to dinner tonight. It’s we’ll just show up somewhere.

And if that doesn’t work, we probably have two or three choices in the neighborhood that’ll all work for us in one way or another. We like to roll the dice.

As a, I live in New York City part time also. I lived there three months of the year. And part of why I do that My family’s from the East Coast, so I get to see my family, of course.

That’s my main motivation. But the other motivation is, man, the food scene is great in New York City. I just love going there and eating. And try going to a good restaurant in New York City without a reservation on a Sunday at 9 30 p. m. Doesn’t matter what day it is. You’re probably not getting in. And so it, it’s, I just I don’t know.

As a consumer, I really like getting a reservation somewhere knowing that I’m going to come in. And even if they’re going to see me late, I’m going to get a table. So it may be, maybe it’s driven by my own personal preference as a consumer. But I don’t, I know that my team is in alignment and taking reservations,

yeah, for us, we were at a ski resort, which you’ve been to lots of ski resorts, you understand what that is. And everybody wants a table at seven o’clock on a Saturday night. And people used to throw ridiculous, offers at my hosts we’ll give you 500 bucks if you give us a table for 10, like right now, it’s really?

This stuff happens, but it created a. A sort of cachet or demand unto itself. This is the most popular place in town. They don’t take reservations and you’re going to show up and you’re going to have a good time. Even if you wait an hour for a table, you’re going to go into the bar.

You’re going to be entertained by this person. And, we made sure that entertainment was a big part of our business because I’ve always believed the restaurant business is show business and every person was trained to be an actor on stage, not just a host, a busser a server. You get the idea.

I totally agree and I do think in our era 50, 70, 100 years ago, supper clubs were a big thing and performances. I remember that. With dinners, etc. And, people would, if you look at these old movie theaters, they’re beautiful. How do they, Spend the money on building out these ornate movie theaters.

And it’s because that was the main form of, these were the main forms of entertainment. The main form of entertainment people now, the show people go to see is the restaurant they go to, especially in places like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Paris, London, etc

well, David, you’re a huge inspiration to our industry and we’ve covered a lot of ground today.

Thanks so much for being a great guest on the show.

I really appreciate you having me. I’ll come back anytime.

That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. We can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Thanks to our sponsors this week. Thanks to you for tuning in. Stay tuned, stay well. We’ll see you there.

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