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Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF
The Financial Recipe for Restaurant Success with Mario Carbone
00:47:59
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- [00:00]
Mario Carbone
Rich and I met the very first day of culinary school. There was a financial crisis of 2008. We're like, listen, if either one of us wants to be an entrepreneur right now, we pool our resources together. His family had a little bit of money saved and my family had a little bit of money saved. A nerve wracking amount like all of it. We're a couple of kids that have no proven track record. I remember a few landlords taking less money from somebody else to not take a chance on us. Finally one day he called me and he's like, I'm standing in front of it. And I was like, where are you? He's like, I'm on Mulberry and Prince. I was like, the most bastardized Italian American street possible. That's where you want to make this break. We're going to fail.
- [00:45]
Vivian Tu
What's up, Rich friends? Welcome back to another episode of Net Worth and Chill with me, your host, Vivian Tu, AKA your rich BFF and your favorite Wall street girly. And there is nothing I love more in this world than food. Eating a good meal out. And a lot of that stemmed from a weekly tradition with my husband. When we first started dating each other, we were also just beginning our love affair with New York City. And every single weekend, we'd pick a spot in a new neighborhood we'd never explored before. We'd walk around, we'd get to know each other and share a delicious meal. Meal. And over time, we developed a few favorite spots. Places that would become, you know, our friends favorites. And also growing up, a good meal out was always a way to reward great work or a celebratory moment. But now that I have my own money, sometimes just making it to Friday is reason for celebration. As a Miami and New York City girly, there is no staple bougie restaurant for more iconic than Carbone. I can literally taste the cheese and meats that I get before all of my food shows up. Right now, I'm starting to salivate. It is one of the hottest reservations and has some truly incredible food and you can't beat it. But the restaurant industry is incredibly cutthroat and challenging. So a major success story like Carbone isn't super common. What makes a good restaurant? How come so many restaurants don't work out? What dishes are worth the money and what should you skip? Because you could maybe make it home? We're about to find out. Today, I'm so excited to be chatting with the chef and mind behind Carbone, the namesake, the co owner of Major Food group and the founder of Carbone Fine Food. The man, the myth, the legend himself, Mario Carbone.
- [02:36]
Mario Carbone
Hi, how are you?
- [02:37]
Vivian Tu
So good to have you here.
- [02:38]
Mario Carbone
Thank you for having me.
- [02:39]
Vivian Tu
I want to start with a really quick icebreaker. It can't be anything you make. What is your favorite food? Support for this show comes from Nordstrom. Summer's here, and Nordstrom has everything you need for your best dress season ever.
- [02:54]
Mario Carbone
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- [02:57]
Vivian Tu
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- [03:01]
Mario Carbone
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- [03:05]
Vivian Tu
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- [03:08]
Mario Carbone
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- [03:11]
Vivian Tu
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- [03:19]
Mario Carbone
It can't be anything I make.
- [03:20]
Vivian Tu
No. It has to be another restaurant or something you can buy somewhere else.
- [03:25]
Mario Carbone
Donuts.
- [03:26]
Vivian Tu
Donuts?
- [03:27]
Mario Carbone
Yeah. Really love a donut.
- [03:30]
Vivian Tu
Okay. What kind?
- [03:31]
Mario Carbone
Donuts.
- [03:33]
Vivian Tu
What do you mean?
- [03:33]
Mario Carbone
I love all donuts.
- [03:34]
Vivian Tu
All donuts. Jelly filled, cream filled, like crullers, even count.
- [03:39]
Mario Carbone
Oh, yeah.
- [03:39]
Vivian Tu
What do you. What? Why is that? Like, there's like, a childhood story there?
- [03:42]
Mario Carbone
I love sweet pastries. Not that I eat them often, but things that I love. I love sort of the sweet breakfast pastries.
- [03:47]
Vivian Tu
Okay.
- [03:48]
Mario Carbone
It's definitely an Italian thing that you sort of start your morning that way, which is horrendous.
- [03:54]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. Glycemic index immediately shoot through the sky.
- [03:57]
Mario Carbone
Love a. I do love a breakfast pastry. And I love donuts.
- [04:01]
Vivian Tu
Wow. I never would have guessed that.
- [04:03]
Mario Carbone
Yeah.
- [04:03]
Vivian Tu
But I love to know that about you. I want to rewind the tape just a little bit. These days, you are this super accomplished chef and restaurateur, but I want to know what was your very first job in the food industry and how much were you making at the time?
- [04:21]
Mario Carbone
My very first job was minimum wage. Minimum wage. This is the year was probably 1995 or 1990.
- [04:30]
Vivian Tu
I was 1 6.
- [04:31]
Mario Carbone
That's cute. 1995, Queens, New York. I was making minimum wage, which I think at the time was 525. Maybe an hour, something like that.
- [04:44]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [04:45]
Mario Carbone
$5 an hour. And my first job was actually at a local restaurant, not that close to my house, but on the Queens, Long island border. So I had a little bit of commuting to do. Um, and it was on the raw bar. So my job, which I had no idea how to do, the first job they gave me was kind of shucking clams and oysters and working this, like, raw bar section of. Of what Was kind of a buffet part of the appetizer section of the menu. So I had people coming up to the raw bar, and if you ever tried to open a raw clam, it's really difficult to do. So I've. I've been shown once. I'm trying to figure it out, and you've got, like, this big guy in front of you just waiting for you to put one, and you're, like, struggling, and it takes, like, 10 minutes to get one open. You finally open, and you put it down and eats it immediately. And it just stands there. You're like, this is going to be a long night, you know.
- [05:38]
Vivian Tu
Oh, no.
- [05:39]
Mario Carbone
But work in the raw bar in Queens, New York, on Northern Boulevard for five bucks an hour.
- [05:45]
Vivian Tu
Did you ever get hurt? Because shucking oysters and clamps?
- [05:48]
Mario Carbone
Yeah. Scar here, actually, from years later driving an oyster knife into my hand. One of the few scars I have. This was many years later, but opening an oyster and it slipped and drove the knife into my hand. Yeah.
- [06:02]
Vivian Tu
Oh, man. Did you at least get the rest of the day off?
- [06:05]
Mario Carbone
No, I just kind of like bandages up and kept going and just kept going. Definitely got infected, but, you know, just kind of rub some dirt in it and keep going.
- [06:14]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. The guy standing in front of you wanted more clams. Hurry up.
- [06:17]
Mario Carbone
Don't bleed my clams.
- [06:18]
Vivian Tu
Yeah, don't bleed in his clams. Amazing. And growing up in New York, obviously in Queens, New York is so diverse. Obviously, you've got, like, the billionaires living south of Central Park. You've got these communities of immigrants, Parents, like, what was your family's relationship with money and New York City like? Like, what did your parents do?
- [06:39]
Mario Carbone
My dad worked seven days a week for most of the year. He had two jobs. He was a foreman in a company that was called Brooklyn Union Gas Company, which is now, I think, National Grid, a gas supplying company. And he was a foreman in the street. So I remember, you know, I remember vividly as a little kid watching him, like, super bundle up for these winter days because he worked outside and thinking, like, he's gonna stand outside all day. That's crazy. And. And then on the weekends, him and my uncle had a landscaping job. So the truck was in the driveway all week. And then on the weekends, when. When I. When myself and my cousin were old enough, which was still really young, they started taking us to work. So I think my very first job was probably working landscaping on the weekends with my dad and my mom, aside from both raising myself and my sister was also a secretary at A, like, local chiropractic office. And she would bring me to work also, and I would work and, like, do, like, really annoying, like, filing jobs that I hated doing. So I worked with both of them a little bit when I was young, like, pretty young.
- [07:48]
Vivian Tu
Did you learn anything from their jobs that you didn't want to do boring desk jobs, or that you didn't want to do something that was outside?
- [07:57]
Mario Carbone
I never looked at their jobs in any sort of consideration of it being something that I would do. It wasn't like something that I thought about. I think what it was was. I think I was always. I always wanted to be somewhat self sufficient about money and I wanted to have my own money and I wanted to get things and go out and hang out. And I think really early on they instilled the idea that, well, you gotta do something for that. Like, you don't get that. So I was always like, okay, cool, what do I gotta do? Rake the leaves? Take the garbage out? Like, what do I gotta do? Go to work with dad? Go to work with mom. And then when I was old enough, I. I actually probably wasn't old enough, but I started working and, like, I knew that I had a love for restaurants and I started working at restaurants, like after school and on weekends. So I was always a busy bee because I was. I guess I kind of wanted to be somewhat financially self sufficient.
- [08:48]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. So you mentioned you worked in a couple of these small kitchens, but then you get a degree from the CIA, which everybody should know, stands for Culinary Institute of America. There are no, you know, there's no. Yeah, there's no guns happening here. But you're probably best known for being the chef and co owner of Carbone, because it's your last name. But that's not actually the first restaurant you guys open. You and your business partner, Rich Teresi open Teresi Italian specialties. Um, one, did you guys rock paper, scissors on whose last name got to be the restaurant title? And two, like, how did you do that? Did you go and, you know, shake down the money tree from friends and family? Did you go to investors?
- [09:29]
Mario Carbone
Yeah. So Rich and I met the very first day of culinary school. We were 18 years old in 1998, and we were at orientation and we just happened to be close to each other in a room full of kids. And I think we knew that he was. I knew that he was from New York and I was from New York. And we just wound up meeting. And so we met the very first day of culinary school and through the Years, you know, friends and, you know, different circles. And we would hang out. And then ultimately we wound up both working in New York City post graduation together and then eventually becoming roommates. And that's where we sort of became really tight. I had an apartment and I needed a roommate. And then through living together, we both were sort of heading towards the part of our careers where we, we had, we had spent probably 10 plus years working for other chefs, great chefs. Rich had worked all through France, I had worked in Italy. He had worked for Danielle, I worked for Mario. And we were both getting really antsy about being our own entrepreneurs. And when we lived together, the idea was that we, what we were doing when we were living together was we were constantly bouncing ideas off each other because we assumed that he would do something and I would do something and he'd be like, yeah, I'm thinking about this. I'd be like, yeah, I'm thinking about this. And at no point did we consider working together.
- [10:50]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [10:50]
Mario Carbone
And then there was a sort of financial crisis of 2008 where anything that we had thought of doing or getting capital or investors dries up really quickly. But we were still really ready to not have a boss. We were ready to take that next step. And I think we were having like lunch or something one day. And I don't know who came up with the idea, but we're like, listen, if, if either one of us wants to be an entrepreneur right now in this climate, I think the only way we're going to do that is if we pool our resources together and do this together. Because neither one of us is really in a position to make this happen right now. So we sort of agreed on that. And his family had a little bit of money saved and my family had a little bit of money saved. Like a really nerve wracking amount. Like, yeah, all of it. Like whatever, like whatever we have saved, we're going to roll into this to our child's dream. And then we found a couple of investors, they were like friends of the family or a friend that Rich grew up with to give us a little bit of money. So we had a couple hundred grand and then we started looking for spaces and we looked all over New York for spaces and we knew enough that we, we wanted something that told a story, weren't really sure what the exact story we were telling, but we knew it needed to be something that felt authentic to us. So we looked at a bunch of, a bunch of places. We had a few near misses. I remember a few landlords giving you know, taking less money from somebody else to not take a chance on us.
- [12:31]
Vivian Tu
Why?
- [12:32]
Mario Carbone
Because we're a couple of kids that have no proven track record, and we're gonna fail.
- [12:37]
Vivian Tu
Okay.
- [12:39]
Mario Carbone
And then finally one day he called me, and he's like, I'm standing in front of it, and I was like, where are you? He's like, I'm on Mulberry and Prince. I was like, mulberry street, like, the most, like, bast. Bastardized Italian American street possible. That's where you want to make this break. And he's like, this is it. And I ran from our apartment, which wasn't far, to. To that space, and it was a g. It was a jean shop, a really ugly jean shop. But it had been a restaurant in prior life, and it was across the street from where John Gotti had his social club, and it was just north of that Little Italy to where we're like, maybe we can just kind of make our own thing here. And. And we. We. The landlord took a chance on us, and we had no idea how to build a restaurant. And one. We just sort of took it one challenge at a time. I think ignorance is bliss there. You know, had we known how difficult it would have been, it wouldn't have stopped us, but it was better not knowing. And just one sort of hit one wall at a time and break it down and figure this thing out. And his best friend's father was a contractor, and he came in and he helped us build this thing. My dad built the shelves on the walls. Everyone pitched in. That's until we finally got it open.
- [13:58]
Vivian Tu
What do you think was the most challenging thing you were unprepared for as a business owner?
- [14:05]
Mario Carbone
I think that there's a. There's a. There's a weight of taking somebody's money that. That hits you. Because I was actually. We were actually, like, also the cashiers. So we were doing everything. I was answering the phone. I was making coffee. I was. I was making change. And I remember making. You know, going through the. The transaction of the first few sales, and I remember almost being embarrassed to charge somebody, you know, for making this food and being like, oh, it's $6 a pound, you know, like, why? I don't know. There was always, like, a feeling of there was a weight to taking somebody's money that I don't forget. But we knew enough that. And to Rich's credit, he. He always said, like, let's just start as a sandwich shop. Let's do something really, really simple and humble. It'll It'll. It'll get enough traction to keep the business coming. We. We knew we had to keep the lights on. Just keep it going for long enough, and good things will happen. And then after a couple of months, we introduced dinner, which was just a chalkboard menu, because we didn't. We didn't have the space or the money to bring in enough ingredients to hand out a whole menu. So we were like, okay, let's just do one menu. We only have to bring in a few ingredients, and if no one comes, then, then. Then we didn't lose that much money. So it was a chalkboard menu where you basically only. You only chose meat or fish, and everything else was predetermined. And that's how Theresi started.
- [15:33]
Vivian Tu
I love that. And from there, you actually go on to open my husband's favorite fast casual sandwich spot, Parm. When we first started dating, we lived directly next to Rubi Rosa. So, you know the block.
- [15:50]
Mario Carbone
Yeah, busy block.
- [15:51]
Vivian Tu
We could literally, like, look across and be like, how long do you think the wait is going to be? And then run down and get sandwiches. Um, it's the most delicious chicken parm.
- [16:00]
Mario Carbone
Thank you.
- [16:01]
Vivian Tu
And ultimately you decide to close Teresi Italian specialties and then opened your now probably most famous restaurant, Carbone. Like, what was the calculus of opening Parm, closing Theresi, opening Carbone. Like, what was the decision behind, like, what restaurants are we going to keep open and what are we going to close and what are we going to new open?
- [16:23]
Mario Carbone
So Theresi didn't really close. It closed to close to customers for a while. We had the space for a decade. It was open, I don't know, probably three or four probably. It was open in probably at least four years to the public. And then it closed, and it became basically our test kitchen and lab. It was like a little Wonka. Little Wonka space where it seemed closed to the outside world, but it was very busy inside with Jeff's, um, so. And that was a big. A big boom period for the company, where not only was Carbon opening, we had just gotten a bid. We just won a bid for a project on the High Line, and we were doing that, and we were about to open Dirty French. So we had. We had. We had more than we could really handle. So we decided to turn to Resi into the test kitchen. And that's. And it had kind of run its course in a really, like, fast and hot way. It had gone from this very, like, simple thing to this really elaborate tasting menu. And it kind of burned us out for A little while. So that's how, that's what that space became. And it spawned like all. I remember all the Carbone R and D happening there, all of our early, all of our early dishes. The first time we made, you know, veal parm and rigatoni and all that was there. But we had always dreamed of building the restaurant that would become Carbone. Sort of love letter to the, to the old school Italian American restaurant that we had, we had grow. Both he and I had grown up with Jeff also. Jeff grew up with that style of restaurant too. So that was always something we talked about and we found the perfect space for it and we're like, this is it. It's the time to do it.
- [18:05]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. So you mentioned R and D. Obviously, when it comes to high end restaurants, fine dining, it's a lot more than just, okay, let me circle A through D and pick a thing. And then suddenly we have a menu. Can you explain to me like, so there is a farm somewhere that is growing tomatoes. And then somehow I walk into your restaurant, I sit down, there is a certain type of music playing, the waiters dress a certain way, there's a certain plate put in front of me, and then they hand over a plate of pasta that has tomato in it. How did that tomato get onto my plate? Or like, what is the process of, like, thinking about the restaurant R and D process.
- [18:44]
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- [19:34]
Mario Carbone
So it's, it's theater to me. It's. It's a very elaborate story that's played out in real life. It is a stage that is set. You start with the script. What's the story we're telling? What's the style of restaurant? If you're using carbone, the script would be this is this Italian American fine dining restaurant set to the late 1950s. It's a first generation Italian American story. And as you put those things down on paper, it's going to start to define some of the decisions you're going to make. Okay, well if it's set to that period, then what would the music be? Okay, well if it's set to that period, what would the uniforms look like? Okay, well if it's set to that period, then what would, what would. And you start to, you can start to answer those questions as you sort of elaborate your script. And then the show when, when the space is finally done, then the show is ready to be put on. And it's the closest thing to theater in the sense that every night at the exact same time, we put on the exact same show for a different audience. And you want it to be as believable as possible. And I think believable comes in all those details. If you, you know, inundate the guest with all of those decisions. If you, if you've, if you've asked that question through that script of hundreds, if not thousands of choices that you've made to put this thing together, including the food that you've chosen. I think at the end what you have is a really transportive experience. You believe you're in 1958 on Thompson Street.
- [20:56]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [20:57]
Mario Carbone
Because we've gone through the work and the effort to put it all through that prism.
- [21:04]
Vivian Tu
Through the process of crafting that story. Was there any part of the story that was so much more expensive than you thought? Just like surprise wine glasses or something.
- [21:17]
Mario Carbone
Expensive? I mean, it is, it is an ex, it is a very expensive business. I think that it's, it's difficult for people that are not in the industry to wrap their brains around all of the line items, all of the variabilities. It's a very old business in the sense that it needs, it needs a huge amount of manpower. It hasn't really been disrupted by technology or AI or any of that. Right. You need about a hundred people to work in a restaurant, one restaurant. So we have well over 5,000 people that work at major food group. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a person intense business. And then you start to get into the hundreds or thousands of things that, that go into the setting of the stage. And all of those things cost something. Some of them can be reused and some of them cannot be. Like food.
- [22:14]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [22:16]
Mario Carbone
And then trying to order appropriately, making sure that there's no waste in the restaurant, buying of the best ingredients, especially if you're talking about fine dining, then you add a whole nother layer of, of cogs that go to fine dining that don't exist in a regular restaurant. So Carbone was our first real taste of fine dining. You know, we got three stars from the New York Times. And to do that, you need to add a certain comfort, a certain level of lux to the experience. That costs more than it would if you had a trattoria style, bare table, wood table restaurant, which was kind of close to what the original Teresi was. So that was our first taste of the cost of fine dining. But we had come from fine dining. We were, we were familiar with it. It wasn't, it wasn't new. It was new to us as entrepreneurs. It was not new to us as, as, as chefs and being, you know, through osmosis of all the years, of all the fine dining, knowing what, what this room needs to feel like your formal, educated chef. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:21]
Vivian Tu
And speaking of expensive, speaking of costs that go into things that people do know about, eggs are now $8,000. Yeah. Talk to me, like, with certain foods and inputs, just publicly headlines like, we know eggs are very expensive right now. Certain ingredients are getting more and more expensive. Like, how do you guys manage for that?
- [23:43]
Mario Carbone
So I think that we've made a pledge to our customers, certainly in, in, let's call it the, the fine dining portion of the portfolio of the restaurant group. I believe that we've made a pledge to them that we're going to always fight to have the very best ingredients in the world every day. Yeah, I believe that they understand that. And what we are not going to do, in a moment of inflation, tariffs, whatever's about to hit us, what we're not going to do is start making compromises. I'm not going to say, okay, well, I really want to buy that egg, but we're going to buy this egg because the pasta's got to be this cost. That's not what we're going to do. Right. We're going to continue to go after the ingredients that our customers are familiar with, making the quality of dishes that we are. And we're going to wind up passing along that cost and things are going to get more expensive. But I believe if I had to interview all of my customers, that by a wide margin, they're going to say, I want the dish the way it is. Yeah. So that's the pledge that we continue to make to them.
- [24:41]
Vivian Tu
There's nothing more hateful for me than when I go somewhere and I have a dish that I'm obsessed with and I love. And then I go back and I'm like, they changed the recipe. I know they changed the recipe. Like, I'm not, you know, a chef. I'm not even a professional food taste tester, but I'm like, I know you changed the recipe.
- [24:55]
Mario Carbone
Consistency is the most. The single most difficult thing that we battle. Not just us, but restaurants battle every single day.
- [25:01]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. All right. You hear that, guys? We're not losing the Parmigiano Reggiano.
- [25:04]
Mario Carbone
No, no, no.
- [25:05]
Vivian Tu
Oh, we can't never. So I think I heard a rumor on some cooking shows that restaurants actually notoriously do not make as much money on food as people think, but they make it up in other ways. So often in beverage, often in, like, desserts. But, like, is that true?
- [25:28]
Mario Carbone
Desserts? No desserts. Desserts are expensive.
- [25:30]
Vivian Tu
Okay.
- [25:32]
Mario Carbone
And often desserts are something that are given away sometimes if you've waited for a table, if you're celebrating something, if you've. If you're a regular. So desserts is. Is often very low on that list. Alcohol is great, right? Alcohol is a great business to be in. One, it's non perishable.
- [25:50]
Vivian Tu
Oh, I forgot about that.
- [25:51]
Mario Carbone
Yeah. Two, there's very small amount of labor involved in it. Right, right. You have a bartender or you have a sommelier or you have a waiter, but you don't have prep cooks and dishwashers. And, you know, you don't have ingredients that are going to go bad. You don't have nearly as much variability in that business. So certainly the margins are better on something like that. So alcohol is a great business to be in. And thankfully, we are in that. In that game. And we do look at where regionally we can, we can. You know, you want to look at sort of the analytics behind dining out and what cities, what are those check average look like? You know, a city like I get. I get inundated with requests for Los Angeles, but Los Angeles traditionally has a lower check average because they're lighter drinkers, because they're drivers. They're super health conscious. They don't drink as much, they're driving most times. So the alcohol sale portion of that check in Los Angeles is smaller. So that's always. You have to look at that in the equation of, okay, can I afford the rent on this restaurant if my check average was here? But it's going to be there.
- [27:01]
Vivian Tu
I never thought about that. That's crazy. Yeah, you're obviously thinking about a bunch of Things that I'm not thinking about. And frankly, a lot of newbie restaurant openers are not thinking about. The restaurant industry is notoriously challenging. A lot of restaurants go out of business, people lose money. Like why? I know that's kind of like a loaded question.
- [27:23]
Mario Carbone
Yeah, it is a loaded question. But a few assumptions I would make. It's. It's a very fun business, as difficult as it is. So all too often I think you wind up with restaurateurs that are not lifers. They're there because they love to host. Maybe they have some money to invest and they've decided that they want to expand on their hosting at home and they're going to create a restaurant. Those two things are wildly different. And I think sometimes we get as. Because the restaurant industry looks as fun as it is, and it is an amazing, amazing and fun industry. It can be misleading to those who are not totally prepared to enter it. Certainly it's an industry that has a huge amount of comps and like, choose your genre, choose your cuisine, choose your price point. You're gonna have, you, the customer are gonna have. In a city, especially in a city like New York or Miami, you're gonna have a million choices, right?
- [28:28]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [28:28]
Mario Carbone
I'm an Italian American restaurant serving meatballs. Do you know how many of me there are?
- [28:33]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [28:33]
Mario Carbone
You know, so what's going to make you special? Where are you going to stand out? And then, so, so then as restaurateurs start to think that and ask themselves those questions, sometimes they wind up trying to latch on to things that are fads. I'm going to stand out this way. And those are not sustainable. They're not, they're. They're. In all likelihood, they're not going to last. You're going to sign a 10 or 15 year lease. How can you possibly stay relevant for that long? Yeah, these, these are, these are really. They're very heavy things to take on when you, when you take them on. I'm gonna. I'm gonna rent this giant space for the next 10 years.
- [29:11]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [29:12]
Mario Carbone
And it's gonna be just as busy when I open as it is in 10 years from now. Like, that's, that's almost an impossibility.
- [29:17]
Vivian Tu
Right. Wow. All right. I do wanna pivot. We've talked a lot about your restaurants, but for the folks who don't live in New York or Miami or Vegas, um, you also make some really incredible food staples at grocery stores, your sauces that people can then go home and create the Carbone experience, no matter where they live. What made you want to do that? Because you've sold an incredible. I'm looking here, 20 million jars of Carbone Fine food sauce since launching in Covid. Like, with 10 million in 2024 alone. Like, what made you want to jar your secret sauce?
- [29:55]
Mario Carbone
Well, we thought we had something. I mean, we. When we realized we got to a place where we were starting to affect or the brand, the Carbone brand was starting to permeate pop culture, we thought that we had something that could not only be successful on store shelves and cities that we were present in, but we thought that we could actually. We were actually going to start to make some dividends, some. Some dents across the country. Because, of course, there's only going to be so many restaurants, right? So we can only feed so many people. Only so many people can experience Carbone. So how do we bottle something up and give them even a small taste of what happens in these restaurants? And I think when we got to the point where we were confident in how long we had been around that people were beginning to hear this and know this brand, and we could. We could actually maybe make a thing of this across the country. And then we had, you know, the blessing that we got there was we were able to hire an incredible CEO who had run Rails for many years, and. And there was the last piece of confidence we needed that was like, okay. When we found Eric, we were like, okay, now we definitely have to do this because we probably didn't have enough of our own time to tackle this on our own with all the restaurants going. But as soon as we met Eric, now we have something. We should definitely do this.
- [31:10]
Vivian Tu
What would you say, like, were the financial lessons you learned from scaling that business versus the restaurant business? Obviously, it sound like, you know, manpower, hiring an expert was important, but any other good lessons?
- [31:23]
Mario Carbone
I mean, yeah, the. I mean, having the expert was the linchpin of this entire. This entire thing. Because, you know, watching Eric work, watching the way that he considers buying glass and futures, making sure that the olive oil price is where it's going to need to be this whole coming year, making sure that we're stocked up on. On X, Y and Z, just in case that this tariff hits or that happens. So watching Eric work and having somebody who's a lifer in this industry has helped us avoid mistakes that we certainly would have made, because it's just. It's just a discipline that's just so foreign to us. Right. Even though we make sauce. Of course, even though it's the Carbon brand, it's It's a completely different discipline. So we've. We've been blessed to have him help us navigate through what would have been a very difficult learning. I mean, we would have gotten through it, but I don't think at the speed that we're operating, the speed that we're growing, no chance we would have been able to do that without Eric.
- [32:24]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. These days, what's more lucrative, running the actual restaurants or having your carbon fine foods, jars of sauce, and other, you know, store shelf items?
- [32:35]
Mario Carbone
Well, we're still definitely a restaurant company first. Yeah. And that portfolio is still first and foremost for us, but at the pace that sauce is growing, it's pretty remarkable.
- [32:48]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [32:49]
Mario Carbone
And now that it's in as many stores as it is, it's 25,000 stores, it can compound itself. So the speed. Speed's really going to exacerbate now that we have the scale and the buying scale that we have. So to watch it grow, it's. It's certainly grown a hundred times faster than anything brick and mortar. So that's a really amazing thing to watch happen now that it, you know, the first few years, you know, getting our name out there, getting the slotting, you know, getting all the stores to take us, and now we're at this great place where we. We're basically at mass. We're in almost all the stores. And now you can now worry about velocity or work on velocity and marketing and all that. So the speed of sauce has been incredible to watch, but it. We're still a restaurant portfolio.
- [33:36]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. Well, I feel like that may answer my next question. But aside from your restaurants, you've got members clubs like ZZ's Retail, Our lady of Rocco Publishing. You created an Asylum book and real estate villa Miami.
- [33:51]
Mario Carbone
Yeah.
- [33:52]
Vivian Tu
Which I would. I'm gonna ask you of the things that you've created, is your favorite kid?
- [33:59]
Mario Carbone
Well, I would say the restaurant that I'm. I'm most proud of is the Grill in. In the Secret.
- [34:06]
Vivian Tu
I've been trying to get in, like.
- [34:08]
Mario Carbone
My own personal pride.
- [34:09]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [34:10]
Mario Carbone
I think that it's not the one.
- [34:11]
Vivian Tu
Where your last name is the title.
- [34:13]
Mario Carbone
No, I mean, I. I love that. I mean, of course, I like, you know, you're choosing children now. But there was something about that moment and the difficulties of taking over this. This legendary place, us being really young still at the time. Definitely some. Some questions out there from industry leaders of whether or not that was the right choice. Did they put it in the right hands, you know, to go through that whole process and put Forth what I think was, was at the time. And I still look back at it as probably our, our tightest product, you know, the best, I think the best restaurant we've ever built in the face of all that. So every time I look at that restaurant, I walk in that restaurant. I have tremendous pride in it. So if I had to choose a favorite child, I would choose the Grill, the secret building.
- [35:05]
Vivian Tu
Wow. Not the kid, I thought. But that's a great answer. Yeah, I love that. Major Food Group has now expanded your restaurant empire to 50 locations worldwide, with 10 more coming this year. You mentioned, you know, having to be really thoughtful in LA because the check size is smaller. People have to drive, they don't drink as much. How do you go about choosing when and where to open another location?
- [35:31]
Mario Carbone
So sometimes we're like just looking at a few of the opportunities that are coming up this year. Like we're building our third and fourth restaurants in Las Vegas. So we, we have all the analytics from our existing places in Las Vegas that say this is a great. We're doing incredibly well here. We have the best partners at mgm. The restaurants are run really well. New spaces have become available. Of course, of course, of course, of course. We can't say yes fast enough. We love that market. Then there's markets like London. We're going to, for the first time that we've always dreamed of being at. And it's taken this many years because we, we knew that we only had a really small bullseye of where this restaurant could be within the Mayfair section of London. So we had some near misses. But finally a space became available inside the new Rosewood Hotel in the old American Embassy. That was just a dream come true. So we fought hard to get that space and now it's becoming a reality. And I think that that'll be the Trojan horse that will lead a London growth. You know, carbon will go first and then through that, you'll see more of the portfolio come over in London because that's been a city that we've always wanted to be a part of. Then as you continue to kind of go east, we're opening in Dubai for the first time this year. We know that that's, you know, we're very confident that's going to be successful because we, we have colleagues in that city that do really well. We have a lot of friends in that city. We do business in the Middle east already. There's tons of connectivity to our existing database of VIPs and things like that. So we're really. And it's again, just like being part of the MGM family. Choosing partners when, when, when it's going to be a managed restaurant and not an owned and operated restaurant. Choosing partners that you believe are going to uphold the standards as well as if you did it yourself. And that's certainly true at mgm and in Dubai you're in a, you're in a hotel which is the Royal Atlantis. That could not be any nicer. It could not, it cannot be run any smoother. The level of detail that they operate at, you're like after, after spending time with them and at the property, like, of, of this is the right answer. So sometimes the answers reveal themselves and sometimes it's something that we're, you know, it's on our board. Like London, someday we're going to get there. Someday we're going to get there and then finally, you know, it finally comes true.
- [37:44]
Vivian Tu
You say it's important to find a good partner. What's like your top three things you look for in a partner?
- [37:50]
Mario Carbone
I think you want, you want like mindedness. People that are running places in their home districts, whether it's our partners in Hong Kong or MGM that run them in ways that are spiritually aligned. They, they treat the restaurants in a similar manner. And then you go, then I think it would go to kind of personnel. What is, what are their existing staff look like? What's their infrastructure look like? Can they handle taking on our product? And I would say those are, those are the, those are the two big ones. What are their existing properties look like? How are they run? Are they run in a similar manner that we would, we would be proud of? And can their personnel withstand taking on our brands? Do they have the bandwidth and our, and, and do they have their hands on spaces that are desirable for us? Right. So then it's that whole Venn diagram of like, can we meet in the middle here? And thankfully we've had amazing partners so far across the globe.
- [38:47]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. So we're sort of coming to the end of our time. But you know, I can't let you go without asking. Give me the story of the spicy rigatoni. Everybody has to ask you this, right? Like this is, this is the thing that when I went to Carbon, I was like, don't you dare let me without getting this and putting it on my Instagram. Everybody has to know I ate here. That's like the signature.
- [39:09]
Mario Carbone
Yeah, right. So spicy rigatoni was one of the last dishes to be put on the menu. We had zero idea that we were doing anything of great note at the time I remember talking to Rich and Jeff, we were finalizing the menus. We had gone through tons of tastings of all the. Of all the things we thought were really critically important to making great. And I looked at the menu. I remember looking at the menu and feeling like the pasta section needed, like, it wasn't totally balanced. It needed another vegetarian pasta. That was my first thought. So then I started working backwards. Okay, well, what would be a vegetarian pasta that would fit with the rest of them on this menu? And then I think as a bit of a joke, I said a la vodka, because that's. The dish is kind of a bit of a joke.
- [39:55]
Vivian Tu
Wait, why?
- [39:55]
Mario Carbone
Well, it's just kind of one of those things that's been bastardized and it's just. It's kind of this. This creamy pink sauce. Yeah, that was really for kids and like pizzerias and. But it was such a popular and well known name that I liked looking at it on the menu. So we're like, okay, well, whatever. You know, we take flyers on ideas all the time. Make it, make it. See what happens. And we went about making it, and I think it. I don't know if it was the first time, but I don't think it took very many times before we made something that we thought, this is really tasty. It's good enough to be on the menu. It rounds the menu out really well. I'm happy with it.
- [40:32]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [40:33]
Mario Carbone
Cut to. We opened the restaurant, and I guess that dish fell in a really popular place because it was vegetarian, it was spicy, it played really well. If you were getting seafood pastas or meat pastas, everything is very shareable. So it wound up getting on a lot of tables early. And there's, there's, there's definitely something to the chemical reaction of the dish. Not just that dish, but like creamy, spicy. Like think of like Nobu rock shrimp. Like, yeah, there's something. There's some. There's a chemical reaction, a creamy, spicy. Think about like your halal cart and white sauce, white sauce, hot sauce. There's something there. And it, it is an addictive thing. The noodle is not a dry pasta, and it's not really a fresh pasta. It's somewhere in between. It's, you know, the category is kind of called extruded. So it's this chewy pasta that. That almost gives you like, like a Korean dumpling dove kind of reaction to it. So the chewiness, the creamy, the spicy, the sweet onions, like, it was a chemical thing. But at the time when we Made it. We didn't think much of it. We just thought that this was good enough to fill out the menu. Let's. Menu done. Check. Let's. Let's open this restaurant.
- [41:50]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. So it wasn't going to be your headliner.
- [41:52]
Mario Carbone
Well, I had no idea. I mean, why would it be?
- [41:54]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [41:55]
Mario Carbone
Like, all the things we put all this effort into, like, why would this be the one? Like, I think it'll be good. It'll be good on the menu. Be good for vegetarians. Yeah, that's what I thought.
- [42:03]
Vivian Tu
Wow. And then it ended up becoming one of the stars.
- [42:07]
Mario Carbone
But you just, you don't know. You don't, you don't get to know.
- [42:11]
Vivian Tu
Well, speaking of, like, getting to know, like, if you weren't a chef, what would you do?
- [42:16]
Mario Carbone
I don't know. I'm not very good at anything else. I was definitely not scholastic. Formal education was not for me. Major university was not for me. I. I'm not quite sure what I would have done. And I think that that really motivated me once I. Once I realized as I was heading toward culinary school that this might be your only chance at something, you know, like, yeah, you don't have a lot of things to fall back on. There's no great grades. You don't really have any other interests, you know, Certainly now I have more hobbies. But as an 18, 19 year old, there was a. There was a scared straight that, like, you should probably put everything you got into this.
- [43:03]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [43:03]
Mario Carbone
Because if this doesn't work, I'm not sure what it's going to be.
- [43:07]
Vivian Tu
Sometimes you make the best decisions when you only have one decision to make.
- [43:10]
Mario Carbone
100. Had I been even 10 smarter, I might have gotten into a. I might have gotten into a school after high school that would have been compelling enough to not take culinary seriously. But I didn't. So I was like, what do I got to lose? Might as well. Might as well take this shot.
- [43:26]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. Might as well be a chef. Become a celebrity chef and it'll be easy.
- [43:32]
Mario Carbone
What could. What could happen?
- [43:33]
Vivian Tu
What's the worst.
- [43:34]
Mario Carbone
What's the worst that's gonna happen?
- [43:37]
Vivian Tu
Well, it's obviously very clear that you love your job, you love what you've built. You've created a really amazing life for yourself that you're very passionate about. Do you think you'll ever retire?
- [43:49]
Mario Carbone
I don't know. What? I don't know. Restaurateurs don't really retire. That's the thing. I don't know of any that have ever returned.
- [43:57]
Vivian Tu
You don't ever Want to kick up and, like, sit by the pool and, like.
- [43:59]
Mario Carbone
Well, the thing about restaurateurs is that either they all closed and it's over.
- [44:04]
Vivian Tu
Yeah.
- [44:06]
Mario Carbone
Or they've been lucky enough to pass it on to another generation. There's not a lot of examples out there for just kind of a. You know, it's. It's time. Let's have a retirement party and let's call it so. I'm not sure. I don't. I don't think about it really that often. I think we're lucky enough to be at the point in the company where. Where we all get to do just the things that we're really passionate about. It's. It's a beautiful process. And if I didn't do this, I would be a pretty restless, intolerable human being, just alone with my thoughts. I don't. I don't know if retirement is. Is for me, but maybe ask me in 10 years.
- [44:50]
Vivian Tu
All right, we'll. We'll circle back in 10 years. Last question. What can people expect next from you, and what are you most excited about for the next five years?
- [45:00]
Mario Carbone
I want to see how we can affect the word hospitality. Not only does that mean traditional sort of four walls of restaurants, but I think we're at a place where we're old enough as a company and as a team, but still young enough to take chances and see what's out there for us in. Within the world of hospitality. So that's to your point earlier. Residences, it's clubs, it's hotels, it's communities. I'm not sure what it could be. I like the fact that I'm not totally sure, but I'm really confident in us as a team, and I think that we should continue to sort of take chances, keep building restaurants, because that's the core of the business. But I think looking at the word hospitality and asking ourselves, where can we touch this and can we affect it in a great way? And if the answer is yes, then let's give it a shot.
- [45:59]
Vivian Tu
I feel like that's the perfect way to end our interview. Mario, thank you so much for being here. Tell everybody listening where they can find you, find your food, and visit your restaurants.
- [46:10]
Mario Carbone
I'm hard to find. I'm intentionally hard to find. So don't try to find me the restaurants we are the. I have on social media, but don't reach out. I'm there for research purposes only. And we have restaurants. Yeah. Across the globe. I mean, come see us. When I'm in New York, you can find me often at these days at our club ZZ's in Hudson Yards. I spent a great deal of my time there with the, with the team there. And when I'm in Miami, you know, we have our test kitchen here in Miami where I work with the chefs every day and, and then you'll see me often as a customer in the restaurants. I think at this point that's one of the most important parts of my job is to, is to be on the other side, let the team do their thing and then go in and be a customer and see if I have any notes sitting on the other side.
- [46:55]
Vivian Tu
Do you wear like a fake mustache or something to pretend so they don't. They're like, oh my God, that's the boss.
- [47:01]
Mario Carbone
No, but maybe I should look into that.
- [47:03]
Vivian Tu
Yeah. Glasses, mustache.
- [47:04]
Mario Carbone
Glasses and mustache.
- [47:05]
Vivian Tu
You gotta hide. Thank you so much for being here.
- [47:08]
Mario Carbone
Thank you for having me.
- [47:09]
Vivian Tu
Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media podcast network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcastourrichbff.com follow Net Worth and Chillpod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast related news. And you can follow me at YourRichBFF for even more financial know how. See you next week.
- [47:36]
Mario Carbone
Bye.
- [47:38]
Unknown
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