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STORYTIME (9) - How Chef Greg Baxtrom Put Stories Front and Center
00:19:46
#572 - STORYTIME (9) - How Chef Greg Baxtrom Put Stories Front and Center ***** Tickets are available now for the Restaurant Profitability Summit! This is our biggest event of the year, but attendance is capped at 200 people. Get your tickets now. LEARN MORE: https://go.restaurant-strategy.com/summit-2026 ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: MARQII VISIT: https://marqii.com/ This week's episode is brought to you by: POPMENUVISIT: https://popmenu.com/restaurantstrategy ***** Human beings are storytellers. It's how we make sense of the world around us, give meaning to the things we experience. Today I want to talk about putting kids front and center. I promise: it changes everything. ***** If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/ If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/p3-mastermind-program If you want a free 30-day trial of o...
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- [00:01]
A
Why do people go out to a restaurant? I honestly don't think it is to eat because certainly they could eat for much cheaper by going to the supermarket, shopping for ingredients and just preparing the meal at home. No, I think people go out to get taken care of. I think people go out to mark an occasion. I think they go out to connect. And the way that humans connect is through stories, right? That's the way we connect with our companions. Certainly we're telling stories across the entire meal, and that is how we connect with our community. That is not right now. That is how humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. We are story driven people. I think stories are at the heart of what we do. And I certainly think when it comes to running a profitable business, I think stories give people a way to talk about you. They give them context and a reference point. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about stories. And on today's episode, I want to introduce you to chef Greg Backstrom and his first restaurant in New York City. It was a place called Olmsted, where he put stories front and center. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking. Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. I am your host here of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two new episodes every single week, all about helping you level up, building more profitable, therefore, a more sustainable business. I give talks. I write books. I run a coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. You can find information on all of that in the show notes if you want to connect with me further. But I also host one big live event every single year. It's coming up October 18th, 19th and 20th. The restaurant profitability summit happens in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We move it to a new city every single time. Two days in a room with me and my team where we teach you actionable how tos playbooks to help you reduce costs on cogs, to get labor under control, to grow revenue through marketing, through operations. Right? How do you increase check average? How do you grow your catering and private dining? How do you use AI to get new people in the front door? All of this we're going to teach you over the course of two days, two ways to join us, either general admission or vip Tickets for the very first time, we have a headliner. Chef Gavin Casen is joining us on Monday afternoon as our keynote. He's going to join me on stage. We're going to talk about him growing his restaurant group, Soign hospitality. He's got three restaurants. He's also closed restaurants, grown restaurants. He is going to talk about profitability and what success means to him as he's been setting out to grow his fledgling restaurant group. Again, he's a two time James Beard award winner. He knows a thing or two about about success in our industry. Two ways to join again, general admission or VIP. This event is capped at 200 people. It sells out every single time we do it. I'm talking it up so that if you want to be there that you get your tickets quickly. You get your tickets by clicking the link in the show notes. You'll go to the website, you learn more about the event. You can see I'm going to be joined on stage by my other coaches, Rev Ciencio, Chris Hughes, Sal Ro and again, Gavin will be there. We're going to have P3 members taking the stage, sharing what they know, what they've learned, tons of reasons to come out there. The way you do that is by clicking the link in the show notes, learning more and securing your spot today. Go do that now. Avi, you love to go out to eat. So as a guest, what's your biggest pet peeve when you're trying to choose a place to eat?
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B
Yeah. As the father of two children, I can't leave the house for less than 30 an hour. My wife has celiac. So when we're going to make a dining decision, I live and die by that menu. I'm in there researching what's available. What can my wife eat, what can we share, what do I get to eat off of her plate? Um, and so that menu is just a crucial part of all decision making for me as a consumer. It's why at Marquee, we focus so much on our menus, our menu integration, so that as operators, your menu that lives in your point of sale that you want customers to see is available and up to date everywhere.
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A
To learn more about Marquee, go to marquee.com m a r q I I.com to learn more about this and all of the incredible features they have. Okay, so we're in the middle of a 20 episode arc. We're talking all about stories and, and if you've been listening for any length of time, you know that I do this every summer. I pick one, one idea, and I sort of, like, build a whole arc of episodes all around it. So I've been thinking a lot about stories. Stories are how we connect. And I've been giving you all kinds of stories, again from restaurants I've worked in, restaurants I've worked with, from restaurants I've dined at, from restaurants that I've only heard about. My job is not to tell you what to do. My job, I think, is to inspire you, spark a little bit of creativity through these stories. I'm telling you the stories that I tell all the time because it talks about the impact that stories have, not only on our communities, but specifically on our businesses. Chef Greg Backstrom has an incredible pedigree. He worked under Grant Achatz at Alinea, so certainly he knows a thing or two about craft and cooking at a very high level. He's got numerous restaurants in New York City, but his very first one that he opened was in Prospect Heights, right on Vanderbilt, which is in the heart of Brooklyn. He opened a place called Olmsted. Now, what you have to know about Olmsted is that it was a casual neighborhood place, but they were cooking at a very high level. So he took all of the technique, all of the craft that he had learned, and he put that into the menu, poured it into what he did every single night. There was only like, I don't know, 14 tables in the restaurant, and then a bunch of seats, maybe 20 seats out back in the garden. They were doing really quirky dishes, really unique, inventive stuff, but again, casual. It was a neighborhood place. You ordered food and then it came out as it was prepared. So nothing was coarsed. There was no, like, individual dishes. Everything was just served for the table. It was meant to be communal. And their number one dessert, their most, Their signature dessert was s'. Mores. They literally gave you a tin of hot coals, sent you out to the garden, and gave you store bought graham crackers, marshmallows, and, you know, hershey bar. And then you went and had your dish out there. I'm going to finish by talking about s', mores, but we're going to work up to that. The interesting thing about what Greg did is that he built stories for everything on his menu. Everything was thoughtful and deliberate. Nothing was on the menu by accident. So what happened is that when he would build his menu descriptions, it'd have a picture, it'd have a description, all the components, it would talk about the allergens, any substitutions they could or couldn't do. And then every single item had at least one story. Sometimes they had two or three. And by stories, it was like a talking point. This is why this dish is important, right? This is something interesting to know about the sauce or. Or the produce we're sourcing or. Or the dish or the inspiration behind the dish, right? And everything was like, so chef is. Chef had traveled a lot. And so it was like, oh, this is a sweet and sour sauce that he learned directly when he was in China. Hey, this is a dish that took inspiration from the time he spent in Vietnam. Hey. This chocolate mousse came from the time he staged in France. And it's literally the exact recipe that he had to do every single day. Not change, not tweak, nothing. Just presented. Would have had it in Paris, right? Everything in a story. And the whole idea was that the average diner doesn't understand anything about cooking, really doesn't understand all that much about food or beverage, for that matter, Right? Anybody who's ever sold wine. So wine director, sommelier knows that when, you know, you get pulled over to the table and a guest says, so I'm debating between wine A and wine B. The sommelier who says, well, wine A is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and talks about all the technical specifications. Oh, Mallory. Malolactic fermentation on this rests on its leaves for 14 months. And this is barrel aged or barrel fermented, or this is stainless steel. Blah, blah, blah. Maybe it tells some people something about the wine, but it's pretty dry, it's pretty flat. It's pretty boring. And most people have nothing to hook into because they don't know what malolactic fermentation is. They don't understand what lees are, why resting them on their leaves, what that would do to a wine. Maybe some diners, but not most. So what most wine directors, what most sommeliers will tell you is that you've got to have a good story. A story about the label story about the winery, the winemaker, about the pedigree, about their history, about what they're trying to do. Oh, this winemaker spent the early part of his career in Bordeaux, so he's trying to emulate that style in Washington. Ah, got it. This label features, you know, an old man and a boy, and that's his grandfather and his son. That's where the label. That's where the name comes from. And what he's trying to do is blah, blah, blah. Most people will not understand all the technical specifications you lay out, but they will remember a Story that's really important to hang on to. So I talk about this a lot, but I say, oh, I went to a restaurant, xyz, and my friend says,
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oh, how was it?
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A
I said, oh, it was great. If. If that's where the conversation ends, there's a good chance I'm never going back, and the person I'm talking to will never go try it. But the very best restaurants in the world, the conversation goes like this. Oh, I went to restaurant X, Y, and Z. My friend says, oh, how was it? And I said, oh, it was great. But you know what? Comma, but I believe every restaurant, the best businesses all have this. The best products all have this. And I believe the best restaurants have a comma, but, comma, but, oh, it was really great. But you'll never believe what they did, comma, but do you know what really blew us away, comma, but you'll never believe what the server did for us. The very best restaurants in the world understand that great food, great service, great decor is no longer enough. They need a comma and a but and something that comes after that. And so back to chef Greg Backstrom. He created Olmsted with the understanding that great food is only going to go so far. People have to say, oh, it was really great. But you know what? He did this dish that was inspired by his time in Vietnam. Do you know he spent time in Vietnam almost two years by making that up. I don't know how long he was in Vietnam. Everything had a story. Everything had a quirk to it. And the whole idea was not that servers were telling stories all night long about every single dish. The idea is that every single dish, every single, single martini wine was thoughtfully curated, and everything had a story. So if somebody asked, well, we're debating between A and B. You could say, oh, well, A is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know what's really interesting is this. And dish B is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so something interesting to note about that is that. So that dish A and B both had a story. And the idea is, over the course of a night, guests aren't going to hear 30 stories, but they're going to come away with 2, 3, 4. And that was enough to kick across the footlights, as they say. It was enough. So the next day, when they say, oh, you know, we went to this place in Brooklyn. It's called Olmsted. And the other person says, oh, I've heard about the place. How was it? They said, it was really great. But you know what? That There's a comma, but that they've got something to say. Chef Backstrom understood. And again, if you go back to Alinea, So Alinea out in Chicago, three Michelin stars. Chef Grant Achatz. Certainly dining at the highest level, not only is it great food, not only is it very expensive, but if that's what you said, oh, it was a great restaurant, it was very expensive, then that wouldn't be enough necessarily to get people to go. You'd have to talk about the helium filled sugar balloons people would talk about. People do talk about the dessert smashed on the table. They talk about the dish on the, you know, in the bowl, served on the pillow. They talk about the sculpture of forks where you take one fork off at a time and eat that bite, and then the next fork and you eat that bite. They talk about all the little quirks. They talk about the course that happens in the kitchen. They talk about coming back out into the dining room and that the entire dining room is rearranged, that the art that was on the ceiling is now in the walls. There's a comma. But all through the meal at Alinea, and again, you can say, well, at a very high level, very expensive fine dining, three stars. Yes. But Chef Backstrom did it in a casual neighborhood restaurant in the middle of Brooklyn. He understood the power of stories, and he understood that in order for something to get talked about, nobody talks about something that's just good. They talk about something that's unique, that stands out, that has a story. That is how human beings connect with each other. So if we agree that word of mouth is powerful, then let's agree. Then let's agree that we need to give people stories so that they can go tell our story. Pop Menu has reimagined the restaurant. They're breaking the mold of the menu. Take the kitchen doors off the hinges, serving up their most comprehensive solution yet. It's called Pop Menu Max. So it's got everything you've already heard me mention, right? Websites, SEO, marketing tools, all of that. But now we get phone answering. Now we get third party online order aggregation. We get first party ordering. We get waitlisting. All of that is now in the. Is now in the. In the bag. Pop Menu is phone answering, for example. That technology gets your ringing phones covered, right? AI AI helps the simple questions get answered. So your phone line's not tied up right. So you don't have a staff member just answering the phone. They can actually be there for your in person hospitality. No more missed reservations. No more missed orders, no more people asking for hours, anything. And that's just the beginning. You have a passion for food. Pop menu is a passion for technology. Together, it's a recipe for restaurant success. Listen, if you're a restaurant owner, you need pop menu. It's going to take your business to the next level. For a limited time only, get a hundred dollars off your first month. Plus you get to lock in one flat unchanging monthly rate. Go to popmenu.com restaurantstrategy to claim this offer. Again, that's a hundred dollars off your first month. And yes, you're gonna find that link in the show notes. I started off by talking about the s' mores and I said we would circle back to it. All of the dishes were unique, quirky, well thought out, deliberate. Very unusual in the best possible way. Very delicious, but very unusual. Like the carrot crepe, right? It was unusual. There was all kinds of unique things on the menu. But then the s', mores, right? It was this weird juxtaposition because the s' mores was pedestrian. It was basically what you had when you were at summer camp. They literally give you a tin of hot coals. They give everybody a stick. They serve you a plate full of marshmallows, store bought graham crackers and Hershey bars still in their wrapper. And they said, go, enjoy. Now a couple of interesting things happened. Number one, it was an upsell because most of the other desserts were 8, 9, $10 and that was like $18. So it got you to spend more. It was fun, it was experiential. Number two, number three, you had to go out back, right? So you, they introduced you to the garden and they could turn the table if they said, well, two thirds of our tables are going to have s', mores, so they're going to have to go out back. Then we know if the average dinner is two hours, we know we can turn the table in 90 minutes because the last 25 to 30 minutes is going to be out back having dessert in the garden so they can manicure their reservation book to get more covers in. Especially for a restaurant, small storefront, 14 tables, right? Maybe eight or 10 seats at the bar. They knew the importance of turning tables, so again, they got you to spend more. Two, it was experiential. Three, it was that weird juxtaposition of high end and low end, right? They turned the table faster and then if you didn't know there was a garden out back, they were introducing that to you. And the number of people that said, oh, my God, it's beautiful. I didn't know this out here. Then the servers would say, yeah, you know what? A lot of people, once they discover it, the next time they come, the next time they come, they end up coming early. You have a cocktail out here, and then you go back inside to have your meal. And so what you find, a lot of times, once the restaurant was around for several years, people would come early, have a drink out back, come inside, have their meal, and then go back outside for s'. Mores. It was a no brainer. They found ways to increase check average, provide a better experience. And guess what? At the end of the day, that became a story people talked about. So, oh, I went to olmsted the other night, and then the other person says, oh, my God, I've heard a lot about it. How was it? He said, oh, it was really great. The food's so inventive, so creative. Do you actually. But you know what they do at the end? They serve you s', mores, and you have to go out back to this beautiful garden. And again, they grow their own produce and herbs and all of that. It's a way of telling that story, and it's a way of saying what was really unique about it. People say, oh, my God, really? So I could, like, bring my kids? Like, oh, yeah, kids actually love it there. They'll definitely find stuff they love. And then at the end, they get to go out back and have s', mores, and there's a little bathtub with goldfish swimming around in it. You know, the kids get to feed the goldfish. All of this, all of this, everything about them, there was a story to it. My point to all of this, my point for the 20 episodes and certainly my point here is not only can you do it, you should be doing it. And it's not just reserved for the fanciest of the fancy, but also very normal, pedestrian, casual neighborhood restaurants. If you go out of your way to do something different with your pizza dough, talk about it. If you source a certain cheese for your pizza in a certain way, if you do something unique with your carnitas for your tacos, talk about it, it is a story. So most of the time, carnitas are done this way. X, y, and z. But I also add a, b and c. That's what makes our carnitas different. Whatever it is, you have to highlight it. Don't expect for people to get it. That's the story of olmstead chef Greg Backstrom. Listen, guys, I Hope you're appreciating all of these stories again. I said in the very first episode in this arc, it's not my idea. It's not my job to tell you what to do. I think it's my job to tell you what people have done, what I have done, what I've seen people do, what I've helped people execute. So that you can get inspiration, Right? Little spark of creativity. But make no mistake, you absolutely have to do it. And really, it's about telling your why. Why do you exist? Why should people come out to a restaurant at all? And why your restaurant as opposed to any of the other great restaurants in town? Don't kid yourself. Don't pretend for a second that that's not your job every single day. And, yes, you can do that through your marketing, but really, we do it through the operation. That's what these are about, weaving this into what you do. Great food, great service. It's no longer enough. It's table stakes. You need a comma. But after that, Olmsted was built on this idea of a comma. But as always, I appreciate you guys making time for this show again. The restaurant profitability summit is coming. Tickets are on sale now. Only 200 spots. A little bit more than half of them are already filled as of the time of this recording. I appreciate each and every one of you guys. Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you in Minneapolis.