1244: Philip Bollhoefer, Vice President of Food and Beverage at Parks Hospitality Group

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast Ep. 1244: Philip Bollhoefer, VP of Food & Beverage, Parks Hospitality Group

Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Guest: Philip Bollhoefer

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Episode Overview

In this engaging and insightful episode, Eric sits down with Philip Bollhoefer, Vice President of Food and Beverage at Parks Hospitality Group, for a deep dive into the unique world of hotel-based restaurants. Philip brings a rare perspective—having climbed the hospitality ladder from line cook to executive leadership across major branded hotels—blending corporate discipline with a passion for creativity and locality. The conversation is rich with management wisdom, industry truths, and practical advice for current and aspiring restaurateurs.

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Main Theme:

Bridging Corporate Structure and Local Flavor – Succeeding as an Independent Mindset within Branded Hospitality

Philip shares his journey through the hospitality industry, emphasizing the importance of people, process, and finding balance between brand standards and creative, chef-driven concepts. The discussion explores big-picture strategy, evolving restaurant culture, lessons learned from corporate giants, and how community and conscious capitalism play crucial roles in the future of hospitality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hospitality vs. Service

• Quote: "Service is a monologue and hospitality is a dialogue. That goes for your guests, that goes for your team." (Philip, 04:17)
• Philip credits Danny Meyer and stresses that true hospitality is constant conversation—with both guests and staff—which builds loyalty and success beyond just meeting brand standards.

2. Hotel Restaurant Operations Demystified

• Ownership Structure: Parks Hospitality is a family-owned company that operates branded hotels (Hilton, Embassy Suites, etc.) but also develops independent restaurant concepts within hotels.
• Franchise Dynamics: The hotel company owns the building and licenses the "flag"—the brand, e.g., Embassy Suites—from corporate, operating both required and independently conceived restaurants.
• Brand vs. Independent: Soprano Rooftop Cucina is a fully independent concept—demonstrating how hotel settings can foster chef-driven, local-driven restaurants apart from brand requirements.
  • “Eatery is Hilton-branded. Soprano is entirely ours—no brand standards, just Hilton’s quality assurance for basics. The creativity is all us.” (Philip, 10:04)

3. Building Loyalty—From Guests & Teams

• National hotel brands provide built-in customer bases and brand standards to start from; success is built by exceeding those standards.
• Employee Investment: Long-term staff retention (Philip has been with only 3 companies over his career) is an example of what results when companies “show up” for employees.
  • “Their success is our success as a company.” (Philip, 04:42)

4. Mentorship and Leadership Lessons

• Crucial Leadership Advice:
  • "Don’t eat your young. You have to let people fail in a supported way so they learn and grow.” (Philip, 21:27)
  • Learn to let staff find their own boundaries, strengths, and weaknesses by allowing them to approach (but not cross) their limits.
• Celebrating Growth: Good leaders celebrate when their staff are ready to move on to new opportunities—even if it’s outside the organization.

5. Career Trajectory—Hotel Life vs. Independent Restaurants

• Philip’s biography:
  • Started as a pantry cook, advanced through Hyatt and Omni hotels, accumulating wide exposure to varied concepts within one corporate structure.
• Major Lesson:
  • Large hotels force chefs to master systems, relationships, and process—allowing more focus on food and guest experience, and preparing them to lead and eventually run more agile, smaller operations.
  • "You can't do it by yourself… it takes a village. You have to lean on process." (Philip, 39:16)

6. Finding Work-Life Balance

• Burnout is Real: Large resort and hotel operations demand intense hours and personal sacrifice. Philip’s decision to join Parks Hospitality was rooted in personal well-being and a desire for healthier work-life balance.
  • “I realized my identity couldn’t just be being a chef. I needed balance.” (Philip, 46:51)

7. The Business of Hotel Restaurants: Profit, Quality, and Community

• Hotel restaurants rarely depend solely on F&B to carry the business—room revenue is central—but a great restaurant is essential for talent retention and guest satisfaction.
• Staffing Struggles: With rising costs and labor shortages post-pandemic, restaurants need to find ways to deliver high-quality, approachable food at fair prices.

Notable Business Strategies:

• Invest in people before anything else—community, mentorship, and opportunity drive sustainable growth.
• Maintain emergency financial reserves for resilience during crises (e.g., Hurricane Helene).
  • “If we hadn’t had cash reserves, we’d have had nothing to come back to after the storm.” (Philip, 67:32)

8. Community, Sustainability, and Responsible Growth

• Local Synergy: Asheville’s restaurant scene is characterized by collaboration, not competition—chefs and operators routinely help each other, “a rising tide lifts all ships.”

• Conscious Capitalism: Prioritize responsible profitability—balancing margins, quality, and team welfare.

  • "You should be able to explain all your decisions. You need to have reserves and support your team, especially after disasters." (Philip, 66:58)

• Affordable Excellence:

  • “How do we bring a quality meal and experience at an affordable price? We have to check our egos—bring approachable, wholesome food to everyone.” (Philip, 103:36)

9. Industry Trends & Technology

• Outsourcing as Leverage: Use specialized external partners for branding, PR, and fractional C-suite support to let operational leaders focus where they excel.
• Tech Stack: In hotels, options are limited by brand requirements; favorable shoutout to Agilisys POS for service and reinvestment.
  • “For hotel groups, POS choices are limited by integration needs—but service and support are what matter.” (Philip, 90:43)
• PR over Social Media: The noise of social makes authentic, local PR more impactful for community-based restaurants.

10. Rethinking Tipping & Compensation

• Advocates for pricing food appropriately and fairly compensating staff, rather than relying on tip models and kitchen tip-outs.
• Quote:
  • "Just charge what it costs to run your business. No one needs a line item for kitchen appreciation." (Eric & Philip, 88:03)

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• Success Mantra:
  • "Service is a monologue, hospitality is a dialogue." (Danny Meyer, quoted by Philip, 04:17)
• Leadership Wisdom:
  • "Don't eat your young... You don't need to shout. Show your team a way through." (John Brand, as cited by Philip, 21:27)
• On Staff Growth:
  • "If someone wants to grow and leave, celebrate it. That means you've prepared them for the next thing." (Philip, 27:19)
• On Community:
  • "After Hurricane Helene, the community is closer. We help each other more than ever." (Philip, 98:30)
• Defining Personal Growth:
  • "I define my success by other people’s success." (Philip, 108:34)

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Suggested Listening/Timestamps

• Opening Mantra & Hotel Structure: 04:17–10:30
• Career Journey & Corporate vs. Independent: 15:03–30:35
• Leadership & Letting People Fail: 21:25–25:26
• Burnout & Work-Life Balance: 43:21–48:05
• Branding, Community & Pandemic Adaptation: 62:52–73:32
• Value-Driven Hospitality & Collaborating Locally: 74:22–76:32
• Rethinking Tipping, Tech Stack & PR: 87:40–106:49
• Final Wisdom Nuggets: 108:56–109:06

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Hosts’ Biggest Takeaways

• People Over Systems: Put staff first—support their ambitions, reward growth, and engage in genuine dialogue.
• Balance Brand and Local: Branded hotel concepts can successfully support independent, chef-driven restaurants—if leadership allows space for creativity and local roots.
• Community Resilience: The power of collaboration over competition accelerates recovery and growth.
• Conscious Capitalism: A successful operation must be both responsible to its staff/community and financially prudent to survive external shocks.
• Process Not Finish Line: Focus on making every day, every experience, better—not on awards or accolades.

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Closing Note

Philip’s approach—balancing the discipline and resources of corporate hospitality with the soul and innovation of independent restaurants—offers a blueprint for sustainable, people-first growth in a rapidly evolving industry. Leaders at all levels will find actionable insights and inspiration here.

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Final Wisdom from Philip Bollhoefer:

1. Lead with kindness.
2. Be relentless in the pursuit of your values.
3. Have fun.

(108:56–109:06)

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For more info:

• Soprano Rooftop Cucina
• Parks Hospitality Group
• Branding by [Outline, Charleston SC]
• PR by [One For The Books, Asheville NC]

Other restaurants referenced: Tall Johns, Owl Bakery (Asheville, NC)

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Listen, share, and get Unstoppable!

Transcript

[A]

A couple things before we get started today. First, thank you so much for showing up week after week making my vision for restaurants unstoppable come true. Your downloads are allowing me to do this show the way I've always wanted to do it. Boots on the ground, word of mouth, leaders, referring leaders, giving the industry an uncensored, no BS platform to share their perspectives and truth. That's on you. Thank you so much. And we're just getting started. So if you're enjoying what we're doing here and you want to help us do it even better, please subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice. And if you do that, I promise to do everything in my power to continue to improve the show. I'll deliver the restaurant tours you want to hear from and we'll continue to make everything you love about this show better.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant technologies services over 45, 000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. This episode is made possible by Restaurant Systems Pro and beginning in January 2026, Restaurant Systems Pro is Day Mastery Program. This is valued at $4,000 and if you head over to go.restantassistancepro.net profits. You can, for a limited time get this for only 97, but there's an even better deal if you sign up for a Restaurant Unstoppable network by heading to restaurantstoppable.com live. You can get this 30 day mastery program for free when you join the community and you also get access to this in perpetuity because they're going to be popping it off every month. Go into 2026 with all the knowledge and resources and tools you need to be unstoppable. In partnership with Restaurant Unstoppable and restaurant systems Pro Again Restaurant Unstoppable.com Live Join the community get access to this training this episode is made possible by US Foods and one of the pillars of the US Foods we help you make it promise is more tools which provides resources design to make running your food service operation easier and more efficient. From the all in one food service app Moxy which goes beyond order placement to help manage every part of your operation 24. 7 to the digital solutions like check business tools and vitals, US Foods delivers smart time saving tools built to simplify operations and support your success. To learn more visit www.usfoods.com expect more with excitement.

[B]

Allow me to introduce to you today's guest vice president of Food and beverage for Parks Hospitality, Phillips Bolhofer. My man, Phillips, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[C]

I am feeling unstoppable.

[B]

Yeah man. I'm stoked to have you here. It's, it's. I'm really excited because I don't get to touch the topic of host hotels often, especially somebody who's the vice president of food and beverage. I don't think I've ever had a vice president of food and beverage on the show. So you're going to offer a really unique perspective today and I can't wait to learn more about this path that you've taken in the world that you're in. I can't wait to dive into that before we find out who you are and how you got to where you are today. Let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?

[C]

I'm stealing Danny Myers. It is. Service is a monologue and hospitality is a dialogue that goes for your guests, that goes for your team. You have to be on your guest side, you have to be on your team side and you have to have that conversation with them every minute, every hour, every day.

[B]

How do you, how do you keep that constant gentle pressure up to steal another line from Danny Meyer? Like they do it every day.

[C]

Every day. I'm here all the time. Our team's here all the time. And they know what their expectations are. So their success is our success as a company. So we want to make sure that they have all the tools that they need to get to that finish line and they know that if something's wrong, we're going to say something. We're going to make sure that they get that on the spot coaching, on the spot training. Because again, our success being their success is hugely important. And they know that we're on their team through that model or through that dialogue that we have with them on a daily basis. The pre shifts and post shifts. Yeah.

[B]

I think you're an example of what showing up for your employees can lead to. You know, your, your path. You have an incredible path. You started in Orlando, you spent much of your career with the Omni Group, and they've given you multiple paths. You've seen the country through Omni from Chicago to San Antonio. Now you're Asheville. And when you show up and you exist to serve your staff. And when you were with Omni for how long?

[C]

So I was with Omni for six and a half years, and prior to that I was with Hyatt Hotels for another six and a half years.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, so all in. You've been with three organizations for your entire career.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Like, that's pretty impressive. But I think that's an example. What happens when you show up? People stick with you?

[C]

Absolutely, yeah.

[B]

Awesome. So before we dive into your story and we really kind of unpackage the path you took, what is Parks Group? Parks Hospital Group. Like, like paint the picture of what that is.

[C]

So Parks Hospitality Group is a family owned hospitality company out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Okay. When I started almost 10 years ago, they had six properties. Now we have 12. So we've doubled in size in about 10 years.

[B]

Okay, so develops, operates and owns hotels.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So are they like a franchisee of the Hyatt in Marriott? How's that work?

[C]

So the way it works is the ownership company kind of will approach a brand and say that, hey, we're interested in making or building an Embassy Suites or a Hyatt Place or a Hilton Garden Inn. So most of the hotels that people are staying at, unless it is a large flagship hotel like the Marriott World center in Orlando, are owned by third party companies. So we, as the management company, own and operate the hotel under the brand of Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden and True by Hilton.

[B]

Okay. So what have you learned about that business? I mean, it's like there's so many moving parts to it. I feel like just dive into that big picture a little bit deeper for me.

[C]

So the nice thing is it gives you a footprint so you can have multiple different brands within an ownership group. Because all these different brands we work with are going to provide you with a set of standards. So we take that at Parks Hospitality Group as kind of our minimum set of standards. As you walked into the Embassy Suites last night, I'm sure you saw this isn't Your typical Embassy Suites.

[B]

No, it's beautiful.

[C]

We actually just had the brand manager out here and Hilton kind of showing a lot of national media like hey, this is the direction that Embassy Suites is going. So to go back is they give us a footprint of, you know, we need to offer complimentary breakfast to all of our team members or sorry, all of our guests. We need to offer, you know, this evening reception or this amenity and then we get to kind of go above and beyond that. So a lot of that kind of base work is done for you to where you have the opportunity to build off something that's already established, already has brand loyalty and surprise and delight by going above and beyond what is traditionally offered at these brands.

[B]

Yeah, I mean to your point, there is a lot of loyalty. There's literally like, you know, like, like the Hiltons, like how many people like are in that world where they just want the points, like there's so much loyalty to that brand and then you can take that loyalty and then you can just like tee it up, right?

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

Like blow their, their, their socks off, like.

[C]

Exactly. It gives you expectation, a nice built in market, it gives you that customer base. I mean there are quite, I mean tens of thousands of Hilton honors members. Same thing with Marriott. Marriott's the largest company currently. But you know, Hilton's creeping up on their same amount of loyal members, which is great. And we operate within, you know, multiple different brands and multiple different ownership groups. So it's pretty cool to be able to see what Marriott does, what Hilton does and what each brand brings to the table. Because it's all a learning process every time we start working with a new brand and we get to take that knowledge and apply it to other properties and future projects.

[B]

So Parks Hospitality Group owns the hotel.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

They're licensing out basically the right to use the Embassy or how's that would be called licensing?

[C]

Franchising.

[B]

So it is franchise.

[C]

Yeah, so we, we would call it in the franchising industry the flag that we fly under.

[B]

So, so Embassy Suites owns the brand, you're operating as a franchise. But what about the restaurant we're sitting in today?

[C]

So the restaurant we're sitting in today is outside of the brand standards of Embassy Suites. So Embassy Suites is required to have a restaurant available, which we have Eatery, which is a Hilton branded concept downstairs. But Soprano Rooftop Cucina is a fully independently owned and operated concept. It doesn't really have anything to do with a Embassy Suite or Hilton brand standard. We do have some checks and balances for QA which is quality assurance audit from the brand to ensure that, you know, we have clean bathrooms and the space is, you know, clean, beautiful. But beyond that, this is, this is our concept that we built from the ground up.

[B]

Okay. So the restaurant downstairs eatery is. How's that different? One more time from Soprano.

[C]

So that is a Hilton branded concept. So that is under the Hilton flag.

[B]

But you operate it.

[C]

We operate it. But they're like, here are the standards. These are, this is the beverage program. You have an opportunity to kind of do what you want or buy into theirs. We utilize part of their beverage program and then make all of our own signature cocktails.

[B]

Okay, so are there multiple eateries across the country that are in built in? Embassy Suites.

[C]

Embassy Suites mainly. We were actually the last eatery to officially open before they. They didn't sunset the brand. They transitioned that more to the retail market. Now it's Brickstones.

[B]

Got it. So how is that agree? Is it a, is it an operating agreement? A light like how do you guys do that?

[C]

It's just a part as when you develop the brand, you're like, hey, we're going to operate this concept. So then they give you all the brand resources and material. They tell you which to go container you should use, which plates you should use.

[B]

They give you consistency across.

[C]

Correct. So if you go to an Embassy Suites, you can expect the same thing at most of those concepts, but they're basically you're.

[B]

You're operating their concept in their restaurants, but you also own the rest the hotel.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So it's just like this is like it. I don't think a lot of people in the restaurant industry fully understand the intricacies of hotel dynamics opportunity there.

[C]

It's very interesting at Hyatt Hotels I can speak for, when I was there, you would have your own independently branded concepts, but you had the same Caesar salad at every single of your three meal restaurant. And then you could have completely independent fine dining restaurants and things like that. But you did have to have a concept that offered that multiple of their core menu values. Same thing at Omni. They do promotions where they'll say we're going to focus on Chile and then they'll do a Chilean menu menu for 2, 3 months during the season that one of your outlets has to offer that. So there is some. There is a lack of free independence sometimes when working within a larger hotel group. But with that you get the trade off of having a lot of brand support, which I've always been in this world. I've spent a very Small amount of time in independent restaurants, and I prefer the hotel model, personally.

[B]

Yeah. And I think that's a good segue into getting into your career. But real quick, a little. Let's pay a little homage or homage to homage, however you want to say it to the folks that the family that owns Park Parks Hospitality Group, like, what is that backstory?

[C]

So Ramesh Patel started this company. I don't remember the exact date, in the 90s, but he is the current president's father, Shanak Patel. And they have been in the business since the early 90s, and they have been focused on smart, sustained, slower growth. Not super, super aggressive.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And really great family to work for. I actually started with Parks when I was exiting my last place of employment, and Shoenik had reached out to me on LinkedIn, and it was right at the time I was at Burnout, and I was Shoenick.

[B]

Is he the son or the father?

[C]

That's the son. He's the current president of the company. Really super smart guy. Really, really enjoy working for him. But he reached out to me on LinkedIn when I was reaching Burnout at my previous employer's place, and I was playing pool with a buddy of mine in a brewery down the street. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to go work for this. At the time, it was a Hyatt place that was being built.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And I'll say my ego was getting in the way a little bit. I'm like, I don't want to go work for this. And my buddy's like, dude, you're miserable. Just go have a conversation. So I responded. I'm like, hey, I can show up at this time only on this day. He's like, great. I'm in town. I show up in a T shirt and jeans. We chatted for. For two and a half hours. He's like, hey, can you open this concept for me? I'm like, if I can do it my way, if I can focus on local food, local cuisine, build the team that I want to build, yeah, I'll come do it for you.

[B]

He's like, yeah, sure, take more. Take work off my plate.

[C]

Exactly. He's like, you got a good track record, so, yeah, let's do it. So that became the Monford Rooftop Bar, our sister restaurant across the street.

[B]

Cool. I love that. And how many total hotels do they own and restaurants within those hotels?

[C]

So we have 12 hotels. We have four restaurant concepts. We have Soprano Rooftop Cucina. We have the Montfort Rooftop Bar. We have the Garden Grill, which is another one of the Hilton branded concepts. And then we have Park Bar and Grill in one of our Doubletrees and the Cary. So actually it's five with eatery. And then the other hotels are a smaller footprint brand where they don't necessarily have a large food and beverage footprint. They have your complimentary breakfast retail markets. So a little bit smaller on the food.

[B]

And that's your domain, correct? Food and beverage director, like you're covering?

[C]

Yeah. So anything that has to do with.

[B]

Sorry, not director, vice president.

[C]

So anything that has to do with food and beverage meetings and events, banquets and catering and audio visual is within my domain. So anything outside of the rooms and operations side.

[B]

Got it. Cool. We had a lot to unpackage there. So where does it make sense to start sharing your store?

[C]

Let's go before that. We'll rewind before that just a little bit. So I actually went to, I dual enrolled during high school and I was very fortunate that my school had this program where you could, you know, take community college classes during high school. I was a little bit of an awkward kid, didn't have a lot of friends. And I was really excited to get out of the high school scene, which was great for me because I got to go to college for two years before I graduated high school and realized this is not for me. You know, it's kind of crazy that we are supposed to pick our careers when we're in 9th, 10th, 11th grade and go on that trajectory.

[B]

Tell me about it.

[C]

So I was going to.

[B]

That's, that's how you get colorblind, dyslexic, adhd, commercial pilots.

[C]

That's right. So I was going to, I'm like, I'm going to go into chemical engineering because of a report I did in like ninth grade. And fortunately, after trying to go through organic chemistry, I'm like, this is not for me. And I was kind of waffling on what I wanted to do next. And my, my brother Adam was like, you love cooking. Have you ever thought about going to culinary school? There's a great culinary school here in Orlando. He's like, you can live with me while you go to school if you want. I'm like, let's check it out. So where are you from originally? I'm from Northwest Florida, so Navarre Beach, Pensacola. Destiny.

[B]

Got it.

[C]

So, yeah, I was very fortunate that I didn't go down that full college path. And before realizing my passion, as many of your guests are, I am definitely add, adhd, fully diagnosed, took the medication as a kid during school. But, yeah, I went to culinary school and everything just kind of clicked. I didn't have to sit in a classroom and. Yeah, so that was. I'm forever grateful to my brother, and he reminds me often. He's kind of one of the large reasons that I went to culinary school.

[B]

I've noticed that a lot of people in this industry tend to be in that realm or have that label of, like, ADHD or also. So I mentioned earlier colorblind, dyslexic and adhd that. That was me and I was a commercial pilot, you know, and, like, we gravitate to this world and, you know, it's. It's just so go, go, go. And I think that we're like, I think we forget that the. The school system was built to pump out employees. Like, that's what it's designed for. It's, It's. It's created to pump out employees and to, like, be cogs and wheel. And I think that a lot of people in the restaurant industry tend to be more creative, be more go, go, go. They don't want to sit at a desk, you know, And I just think it's such a great. If you're that kind of person that can't be still that ha. That gets distracted easily. That's very curious and that wants to learn, wants to be creative. Like, there isn't a lot of outlet for that. I feel like, in other verticals. But in the restaurant industry, there's so much for that.

[C]

It's endless.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So, yeah, I moved to Orlando. I went to school. There was a sushi place I love going to when my. I visit my brother when he was going to college in ucf. So I got a job there with no experience. For the first six months, I was paid under the table because I was making less than what minimum wage was because the owner's like, oh, I'll teach you how to make sushi, but you have to learn how to make it before I'm going to pay you. So I didn't last that long because, you know, you got to pay your bills, but I got to learn how to make sushi, which was really cool. So I thought it was a worthwhile investment.

[B]

Yeah, as do many young people. They're like, oh, I get to go work at this fancy place and tie my name to it, and I'm going to work for free. Like, I think there's something to be said in stage where you go and you learn. That's that. But if you're working for an Extended period of time, like you got to pay your people.

[C]

Absolutely. That's, that's another conversation later in our discussion. Yeah, but yeah, after that, I got a job at Hyatt Orlando International Airport. And as you mentioned before, I've only been at three companies in my career, but I've worked with over 20 different restaurant concepts. Because within this hotel group, my first job was a pantry cook at a bar and grill in this airport. But within that hotel, I held multiple different positions from pantry to grill, saute, entremet, all the different positions in that outlet. Then went up to be the lead cook in their fine dining steakhouse concept. Then to the chef Torno for the entire hotel, then to the garden chef, then to the banquet chef. So five positions within that hotel.

[B]

So and that was from 05 to 2011.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

And just real quick, I'm going to get in the airplane, we're going to zoom up to 30,000ft. 2011 to 2013, you were on the Hotel of San Antonio 2013 to 14 year Omni Chicago. 14 to 16 year Omni Grove park in Asheville. And that's what brought you to this part of the world right here.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

Where do you think you grew the most during this, this time?

[C]

100%. I mean, there was a huge amount of growth being my first job in Orlando, but it was in San Antonio. I was unable to transfer with Hyatt. There wasn't a opportunity for a job there for me. So I ended up at La Moncion del Rio and Omni property. And I got to meet who I consider my personal chef mentor, John Brand. Really talented guy who worked at the Little Nell in Washington. Super talented chef. I still call him to this day just to check in and say hi and get advice from him. And I learned so much.

[B]

What were the biggest lessons he taught you?

[C]

Don't eat your young.

[B]

Don't eat your young.

[C]

Don't eat your young.

[B]

What does that mean?

[C]

Well, I think it's no secret that the chef culture can be a little fiery sometimes and not always the most friendly. And, you know, you get frustrated if people aren't holding things up to your standard. And there is this one incident where I was assisting the property across the street, and I came back and my lead was, like, completely in the weeds. Instead of jumping in and asking him, how can I help? I took over. And, you know, he complained about that the next day. And, you know, at the end of the conversation, he just finally had to say, he's like, you're eating your young. You're not taking care. You're not leading your team. You're shouting at them. Do you think that's going to be successful? And that was probably the. The most important lesson that I've learned in my career is you don't need to get mad. You don't need to get angry. You don't need to shout. You need to show your team a way through. You don't learn as much through success as you do through failures, and you have to let them fail. And that's still something hard for me to do this day.

[B]

But how do you. How do you do that? How do you let, like, when do you know? Like, you don't want to let them fail and have it ruining the experience for your guests. So how do you find that, that balance of letting them kind of figure it out, but also having a, like, a fine line of like, you can't let it go too far.

[C]

You can't let it go too far. You have to pick and choose kind of the circumstances. So if you have one that comes up time and time again is one of the chefs or F and B directors or food and beverage managers pushing themselves to the almost the brink of a full burnout? And then that's where you have allowed them to kind of make the decision to try to do too much or not have a system in place to help manage their time so they can get close to that brink, and then you can bring them back without impacting service or the team too much. And that's kind of that. The litmus test is you have to be present to your team. I don't work on property, but I'm on property a lot of these hotels and in these operations, because you have to evaluate, because if they get to that point of full burnout, then it impacts the guests, it impacts the team. But then you can pull them back right before they're there and then show them the way that you've already tried to show them. Everyone has their process of their way of doing things, and they don't want to be told what to do all the time. But sometimes they have to get to that brink and be like, I can't do this anymore. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if I can keep going to say, like, great, so let's revisit this conversation from six months ago. Go. And let's try this way now.

[B]

Right. I. And I. I think letting them reach that brink, that. That the edge of their envelope, not everybody has the same envelope. Not everybody has the same breaking points. And you want to let people kind of explore how they can go where. And, like, everyone's different, so you got to let them figure that out. Maybe that. That brink in a certain vertical within the job is, you know, they can go so far in that vertical, but in other areas of the job, they can go way beyond where most people can go.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you have to let them find those edges, find the corners of the envelope. Right. Let them explore that and find out where their breaking point. You can't just treat everybody the same. So. But the only way to find out is by letting them go.

[C]

Absolutely right.

[B]

And get to that edge. And then you learn, okay, this is where you're strong. This is where you're weak. But the only way to know is to, like, let them go.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Absolutely. Because like you said, everyone is different. Everyone else is going to have a different point that puts them at the brink. It could be the amount of hours they worked. It could be a employee that they were really investing a lot of time and ends up, you know, getting fired for stealing. And it really just depends on each person.

[B]

Yeah. And that's. That's how you really learn who your people are and, like, how you can put them on a path that lets them excel with the. The areas that they're strong.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. There's a. There's a thousand different ways to get to where they're wanting to go. And my. My personal belief is that my role in that is to help them get to where they're going, but they have to kind of find their own way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And hit me with the name of this chef again. Who taught you this?

[C]

John Brand.

[B]

And where was he? One more time.

[C]

He was in. He is still currently in San Antonio. He was at Omni Overseeing two properties there.

[B]

So that was your first Omni job.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

In 2011, this is where you kind of. And what was your role when you were at the Omni San Antonio?

[C]

So I was the chef de cuisine at Las Canarias. That's a fine dining restaurant on the Riverwalk. Really super cool concept. And then I ended up leaving there to go to Chicago.

[B]

Got it. You were there for two years. Why did you leave?

[C]

I was looking for growth. And. And, you know, I grew up in rural northwest Florida. San Antonio was great, but it was really similar to Orlando in the fact that it's a big city, but it's sprawling, it's spread out.

[B]

Cities are different out there.

[C]

Absolutely. And I knew I didn't want to go through my entire career without living in a big city. And my wife felt the same way, my girlfriend at the time. And, you know, an opportunity came up at a restaurant that John knew, the executive chef really well. It's the 676 Restaurant in Omni Chicago. And said, hey, their exec Sue's leaving. This position's open. I'd hate to see you go. Our execsu might be opening soon, but I know you've talked about wanting to transfer. So again, there's where that leadership training comes in without him ever having to say something. He taught me, then it's okay that your people want to learn, leave, and grow, whether it's with you or somewhere else. And I can't tell you how many times I've had a cook, a chef, approach me like, hat in hand, like they're terrified to say that they want to go do something else. And I want to celebrate that because it was for me, and that was another pivotal moment. It's like someone wanting to learn and grow and move. That's great. That means you've prepared them for the next thing. Nothing should make you happier.

[B]

It's a literal human need.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

We need that, and you can't get in the way of that. And if you get in the way of that, they're gonna go find an opportunity somewhere else.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

And we. To your point, we need to celebrate it. We need to say, yes, you're growing. You have an interest to. To go learn to get different perspective. That makes the group more. I mean, this is the Omni. This is all connected. Right. That makes us better.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

When you want to get that perspective, did he tell you or ask you what you wanted? How did he know that you wanted to leave?

[C]

Just open conversation all the time. He. My. My previous executive chef and, you know, my other job was a little bit more old school. So just having someone that was willing to have a conversation to ask what you're interested in, where you wanted to go, and actually put effort into getting you there was a change.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Yeah, that's so.

[B]

I mean, say his name one more time. Just because I feel like this person needs acknowledgment.

[C]

John Bran.

[B]

John Brann. Like, that's how it's done. And you gotta take. You gotta probe, you gotta investigate, you gotta find out people. People aren't gonna just tell you exactly what they want. If you want to serve somebody, you have to understand who they are, what their desires are, what their vision for themselves is. And if you can be that for them, not wait for them to come and demand it, but to be proactive in giving them the opportunities they want. Like, that's what it's all about. Service.

[A]

That's service to others.

[B]

That's. That's warmth. That's generosity. That's hustle, hospitality.

[C]

Going back to what I first said when we started is that's that dialogue. It's not a monologue. Too many leaders want to have a monologue with their team and tell them what they should do and what they need to do.

[B]

Command and control.

[C]

Exactly. Which never works. Not in my experience, at least.

[B]

Yeah. So you spent a year in the city, the big city. You got what you wanted. How did you feel about Chicago?

[C]

Chicago was great. We talk about all the time how, like, we really got cut short. We really wanted to stay there longer. It was such a cool operation. It was a culinary playground. We weren't the busiest restaurant in the Omni Corporation, but we had a lot of latitude. We had a charcuterie program. We did all of our own whole animal butchery. But, you know, one of the things that hotel restaurants have to deal with is especially in a city like Chicago, there's a lot of great restaurants out there. And most people don't generally travel to a food city to eat in the hotel that they're staying.

[B]

Right. But I feel like you guys might be figure. You might figure something out here at Soprano because what you got 4.7 reviews, over 500. Or sorry, 4.7 stars on Google. Over 500 reviews. I think that's hard to do as a hotel, and you've only been open for a year. I want to point that out.

[C]

Coming up at 2 in March.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But still.

[B]

And you just were recognized by Michelin Bib Gourmet.

[C]

We did not get the Bib Gourmand. But we did get the recommendation.

[B]

Okay. So, I mean, as a hotel restaurant, I think that, that, I think that we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but we can get into that. Why do you think restaurants in hotels struggle with getting that local business and that. Why was that happening here in Chicago? Was it a time, a product of the time, do you think?

[C]

It's. It's a product of the time and it's a product of the amount of layers you have to go through to even get to a restaurant. So you have to subway in or drive in, you have to valet park, you have to go through a lobby. You have to hit a hotel, Then you have to hit a host stand. You might have four or five touch points before even getting to your table.

[B]

How did you even know that restaurant was there?

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

So did you guys have, like, frontage or was it only with it, like, buried in? Like, was there a separate door to get into the. The restaurant?

[C]

That one specifically. There was no specific separate entrance, just based on it being in Chicago in a high rise building. So that, you know, how old was this building that I do not know the answer to.

[B]

What floor was it on?

[C]

It was on the fourth floor.

[B]

Okay, that. So it doesn't help.

[C]

Yeah. So, you know, we had glass windows looking at the city and had a really good product. And, you know, we would get busy. There's a Christmas parade. So we were able to get people to come up for those special events. But, you know, it's a challenge when you have all those other great places you can just walk into off the street that have that, that storefront, that face that you see when you're walking past.

[B]

Yeah, and that's one of the things, like, when we start getting into, like, P. Ls and, you know, like, it's different for restaurants in a hotel because you're really there to serve the guests. You're not, like, you don't. You're not supporting. You're not depending on the revenue from the restaurant to pay the bills, Correct?

[C]

Yes, yes and no.

[B]

We'll get into the yes and get into the no. And relative to the Omni in Chicago.

[C]

So Omni in Chicago, the restaurant wasn't there to pay the bills from a dinner service, but our breakfast service did really well. We served the guests that way. And that same culinary operation did pretty decent in banquets. But yes, technically, you can pay all your bills. Could you have room revenue coming in?

[B]

All right. Room service. Right.

[C]

Well, I mean, just room revenue from the hotel, since it's all Owned and operated by the same company is that's where the lion's share of any hotel is getting its revenue is from its rooms. Revenue.

[B]

Right, right.

[C]

And it's a much lower, you know, cost per room to sell a hotel room. You've paid for the room, but then it just needs to be cleaned and maintained. Yes. The development company or ownership company has to build the building and, you know, pay off that loan or, you know, account for those dollars that were spent. But after that, you know, you're making more money on a hotel room than you ever will on food and beverage.

[B]

Right. So what? So to my point earlier, the hotel, the rooms are making the money. You're not necessarily depending on food and alcohol sales in the hotel to really be your primary source of income. So. Yes and no. So why do you disagree with that idea that you don't have to lean on the restaurant to make money? What's that?

[C]

No, the no of why you do need to is you have to have a team there. There are guest expectations for an amenity. So you have to offer breakfast at a lot of these brands and have a dinner available. So to have a quality team, quality cooks, quality chefs, you need that restaurant to be busy and successful in order to have a quality team, to be.

[B]

Able to get an executive to attract onto yourself.

[C]

Exactly. So it is. While a hotel can operate without the restaurant, part of the reason people book rooms here and at our property across the street and the Omnis and other hotels is they do have an option to grab food and beverage, and it's.

[B]

Going to be good. It's going to be a talented team. They're working to serve you if you.

[C]

Can, make sure that it's busy, and that's where you'll run into. Not everyone has found that success formula. So there are a lot of hotel restaurants that are. They're fine.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think there's a little bit of a stigma because all of us have probably eaten at a restaurant in a hotel, and we're like, okay, it's here just because there's hotel guests.

[B]

Well, I mean, it's a real challenge for those hotels to be able to staff and to put people. Like, not every hotel can have somebody working in that kitchen that knows how to break down an animal and create charcuterie. And, like, that's a skilled position.

[C]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[B]

So what were your biggest lessons at the Omni?

[C]

Be patient. The OMNI, Chicago, specifically OmniChicago, is that one was try to have more fun. I took myself too seriously. Even in San Antonio, after working for John Brand, why? Wanted to prove myself. Definitely an approval junkie like a lot of people out there. And, and you know, I wanted to be the best at what I did. I wanted to show everyone I could work harder, faster than them. I'm a middle child so I want some attention. And my best way to do that in the culinary field was to show that I could work harder, faster and be more creative than anyone else I was working with.

[B]

We're going back 12 years ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How old are you now?

[C]

I am 39, so almost 40.

[B]

We're looking at 26, 27, 28. That's around that time that your frontal lobe is starting to kick in.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Become self aware. Like what was your vision for yourself at this point? Like what, what did you want to become? What was your goal?

[C]

I wanted to be a hotel executive chef at a larger hotel. I knew that I wanted to be able to help people grow in their careers. And at that time I wasn't sure which direction I was going to go, but I was leaning more toward luxury brand. I thought I might try to switch over, over to a Ritz Carlton or Four Seasons at that time. And you know, that's kind of the impetus of Omni Grove Park Inn, which is a much bigger resort property with multiple dining outlets and a really great reputation. Which takes us why I am in Asheville. My wife's actually from here. We actually had a trip planned to come to Asheville and instead I interviewed and got a job.

[B]

Happened.

[C]

We moved here.

[B]

Did you guys stay at the Omni Asheville when you came to visit? Was that one of the perks of being in the Omni Group?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the reasons I chose hotels is because you get to move around and you can go to these different properties. You get discounts all over the world. All over the world.

[B]

I've been able to go one way ticket to anywhere. Continuously moving around if you like, to.

[C]

Travel, if you like freedom and yeah, we actually lived in the Grove park for over a month when I took the job as we were looking for our housing.

[B]

Oh, wow, that's cool.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So you came here to visit family and you end up getting, I mean like why did you want to leave Chicago? Like it was a short lived trip. Like I'm a little confused as to why only one year.

[C]

So we knew we wanted to end up in Asheville. We knew we wanted to give it a try here. The city life was awesome. We thought we'd be there for two or three years. But Grove Park Inn was kind of like a very attractive place for me to want to work. Just kind of that growth again, going into a luxury brand, I wanted something that was busier, something that was going to be a little bit more challenging. And, you know, that's a challenging place.

[B]

What makes it challenging?

[C]

$36 million in food and beverage a year when I was there. Wow.

[B]

And what's the name of the restaurant that was at the Omni? Or are they standalone restaurant brands or the just a part of the Omni? Well, yeah, because 676 was the. The brand.

[C]

So Omni Omni's kind of philosophy is we aren't chef owned, but we're chef driven. So the majority of their concepts are independently concepted restaurants for each hotel. So I mean, Grove Park Inn, the restaurants I was over was Sunset Terrace, which is their Steakhouse View 1913. Eventually, as I became executive sous chef. When I started, it was just Edison Craft deal and kitchen and Sunset Terrace and Great Hall Bar. Three concepts coming out of one kitchen.

[B]

Which was so you speak fast. Sunset Terrace, Edison Craft cocktails. And what was the other one?

[C]

And Great Hall Bar.

[B]

And what. Where were you working at at the Sunset Terrace?

[C]

I was overseeing all three as senior chef de cuisine of all three concepts.

[B]

Okay, what was the. So you wanted the challenge at this point? This is only a year after, you know, we're talking about your ego and your ambition and you want to be seen. And was that still was. Was moving here a part of. To feed that?

[C]

I'm sure it played into it a little bit. It was more of a calculation of Omni had just purchased the Grove park and it was independently owned by the Sammons family before that. Okay, so it was purchased in a big deal where three large resorts were purchased by Omni. And I kind of held off even a little bit waiting for them to fill that executive chef position. Because I had been in a job before where I interviewed with someone who wasn't actually my boss. So I kind of waited till they filled that executive.

[B]

Because you want to see who you're going to be working with.

[C]

Exactly. And so once they did that, I knew they were going to build a brand new team. So if I didn't hop at it, then I assumed there was a 2, 3, 4, 4 year waiting period before a senior culinary leadership position was going to come up. So while the timing was quicker than I wanted to leave Chicago, we wanted to get here and we didn't want to have that big of a time limit put on it.

[B]

Got it. Got It. So you ended up taking the job. You find yourself in Asheville. You're here for two years. How. How did you grow during this time?

[C]

I mean, really leaning on process. I've always kind of been a process guy, being in hotels, working in large events and banquets, but with the amount of volume you're doing there, you really have to switch over to managing systems and leading your team. If you don't have a good system in place, you're going to fail.

[B]

What'd you learn about how to manage systems and lead teams during this time?

[C]

I learned you can't do it by yourself. I learned that the amount of time, effort and energy up front to put together a smart order guide and to build a smart schedule and learn the numbers and develop relationships with your support departments, accounting, sales, purchasing and receiving, is, in my opinion, your only way to success. Because it really does truly take a village when you're in an operation that big.

[B]

I mean, at the end of the day with restaurants work the similar way. But how is this world different relative to the numbers? What are the numbers that are? I mean, like, how, how? Like, help me understand the difference. I don't really know the world of restaurant hotels really well. Like, like, are there differences? Are you doing it exactly the same way?

[C]

They are very, very similar. I would say one of the biggest difference is you have in these larger properties, you have all the supports that you necessarily wouldn't have in an independent restaurant unless you're a pretty large restaurant group. So having a full purchasing receiving department that orders, inspects, and receives all your food and then delivers it to your kitchen, having an accounting department that figures out your food cost, you know, by taking your daily sales and the products that came in that day. So you have a accurate food cost every single day, a labor report generated for you every single day. So in the hotel world, you get to learn that stuff, but you get to focus mostly on the food.

[B]

Okay, so you're not there receiving the food.

[A]

You're.

[B]

You're getting it from a department within the hotel that says, here's what you ordered. Do you pay? Are you paying attention to the cost or are they. Are you just saying, this is what they need, this is what I need, and they go out and they procure it.

[C]

Yeah, we, we as the chefs at these larger places, we cost out our recipes still. We definitely make sure that we have everything figured out from a cost perspective. And then they will go out and shop through different vendors to try to find the best price possible for us. And then as we get our deliveries, we inspect. If it's a case of frozen French fries coming in, we're not so worried about checking that the purchasing department, but all of our meats, seafoods, and things like that then become more of a traditional receiving process where the chefs are checking, bouncing stuff back if it's not the right quality.

[B]

Got it.

[C]

Got it.

[B]

So you were in the role of senior chef de cuisine for a year before being promoted to executive sous chef. How was that evolution for you in that environment? Omni Hotel? What was that evolution like?

[C]

It was taken on a full new two concepts. So as I said previously, all I'm trying to do is be the fastest, smartest one in the kitchen. And I started to learn that it doesn't matter if I am. Because of that volume, you can't do it. So the evolution was, again, building a new relationship with another chef that's now reporting to me, learning another restaurant concept, being able to hop on that line with the cook and pick up the trout dish if they're in the weeds, and just showing that I have the knowledge to support them instead of saying, hey, where's this at? What are you doing? So that's where that kind of support and service leadership really started coming into play.

[B]

Got it. So you're with the Omni park in our Grow Park Inn for two years and three months, and you were on this trajectory. You're growing within this organization. How many total Omni Hotels are there?

[C]

There was 56 when I was there. I don't know the total count. Somewhere in the 60s now.

[B]

Okay, why get. I mean, you're building rapport. You're building a name for yourself within this organization that has a great reputation. Why would you leave?

[C]

It was a personal decision. I had been working in these big operations that demanded quite a bit from its leadership and its team members. And I had been with my wife that then. We had been married for a couple of years. We had been together for a number of years, but we didn't really get to spend that much time together. It was a situation to where, you know, I didn't want to go to work at 9 o' clock in the morning and get home at 11:30 at night six days a week during season.

[B]

And what was that in season? Like, when is the in season for you here?

[C]

End of March through the end of October. It's. It's a long season.

[B]

That's a big season.

[C]

Yeah, there are a couple of drops after school starts and things like that, but it is an extremely busy place. People want to visit here. And I mean, it's beautiful here, of course, but it was at the point I. I needed to make a decision whether my full identity was going to be being a chef or do I want to have a balanced life. And I chose that I wanted to have a more balanced life.

[B]

Yeah. How would a different hotel group provide that? Because isn't the hotel bar, restaurant game just a hustle no matter where you are?

[C]

Absolutely. And I work some long days since I've been with Parks. There's no question there. But going from having seven outlets under my belt to doing one, I got to focus in on every detail, every ingredient. And a small rooftop bar with not even a full commercial kitchen. It's a galley style kitchen that doesn't have a hood system. And that was its own unique challenge to figure out how to bring super high quality food with very limited equipment and space. So it was a great challenge, but we weren't doing $30,000 nights. It was a much smaller operation, so it didn't require as much.

[B]

Okay, so what was your breaking point with the Park Grove Omni? Omni. Park Grove. Sorry, I'm getting this backwards. Park in.

[C]

The breaking point for me was just like I said, it was at home not being able to take time off and being at work so much and being, you know, frustrated and burnt out. Like I said, it's a difficult labor market, and I have so many great things to say about, about that place. And I think it's run extremely well.

[B]

Clearly there's a great people who are mentors that provide opportunity that look out for you. Like you shared before, was it. Was it climbing into this more. This executive role? That was where it gets more challenging?

[C]

Yeah, it's. If you have to get the operation running, there's just, you know, there's 565 rooms, I want to say. So if you have a cook, call out. Guess who's the next on the phone to get there if you can't find it?

[B]

Right.

[C]

I spent, you know, I worked hundreds of shifts on the broiler, which I should never be on the broiler as the executive sous chef. And we made a game out of it. We had fun with it, but again, just getting back to that life balance.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think in the industry, there's a kind of a pride of being there 70, 80, 90 hours a week, which I can do it, but should I do it Right.

[B]

How back, you know, you shared how the vision you had for yourself when you were coming up within the Omni, but at this Point after kind of getting more of a taste of it, did you start to wonder if this is what you want?

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

What was that narrative like?

[C]

I don't know if I can do this. I need more balance in my life. It is like, I don't know if it's worth it anymore. I love cooking and I love food, but I would also like to have a home life. I would like to get to know my wife better. I would like to be able to have mental space and energy to be present at home. As someone with adhd, I think a very common thing is you hold it together so well at school or so well at work, but when you get home, you just fall apart. Yeah. And you kind of like, let it all out. And that's. That's not being a good partner.

[B]

Right. It's not fair.

[C]

It's not fair. And I was just like, I don't think that my identity can be wrapped in this one thing to where I put a hundred percent of my effort and energy into it. I need more balance in my life, and I owe that to myself and to my partner, my friends. And, you know, we, you know, go down the road of numbing ourselves by having shift drinks and partying when we're off. And I'm like, I'm starting to get into my 30s now. I don't know if that's kind of the lifestyle I want to lead anymore.

[B]

Right. So you make this decision to depart the Omni Group. You didn't have a job lined up, you just stopped working?

[C]

No, this is when I was, when I mentioned earlier, I was playing pool with a buddy of mine at a brewery and I got a message from the president of Parks Hospitality Group saying, hey, I'm opening a bar concept in Asheville. Would you be open to a conversation?

[B]

Oh, so you were still working at the Omni at this point?

[C]

Absolutely. And I'll say this to everyone, if you can bear your job now, do not leave it until you find another one. You have so many more options when you're still getting a paycheck to where desperation won't set in.

[B]

Right. Yeah. So how did he know? Was he just kind of sticking stabs in the dark to see if he could recruit?

[C]

He has done a great job. I've been pretty impressed since joining the company. Some of our, you know, top level managers, be it hotel level or in the corporate office, he just kind of cold called on Biltmore folks here. I noticed on LinkedIn, I'll get to that. Yeah. But yeah, he's reached out to a bunch of people just like, hey, if you're ever interested or you ever want to have a conversation. And I was very much so ready to have a conversation at that time.

[B]

Yeah. So you're talking to your buddy playing pool, and you were kind of like, oh, no. And he was like, bro, like, throw your ego out the window. What was it about what he was offering that didn't make you feel like it was good enough for what you had to offer?

[C]

It was more so that it was a Hyatt place. I had been at, like, these really large luxury places. The Hyatt place is a select service hotel. There's not necessarily good or large food and beverage operations there. It just felt like a step didn't.

[B]

Really serve your ego.

[C]

It didn't serve. Yeah, it did not serve my ego whatsoever. But, you know, after meeting with Schoenik and him saying, like, you can do whatever you want. Be successful, be financially responsible, go. I'm like, that was a level of trust and faith from someone who did not know me that I hadn't seen since, you know, John Brand.

[B]

Yeah. So you. You got here. What was it like? How is this organization different from what you were used to?

[C]

First and foremost, it's a smaller organization. It's not this giant conglomeration of hotels. So it was a baptism by fire of becoming my own hr, my own purchasing. And it is kind of the opposite of what I expected. I thought it'd be a little bit easier going from a full service, large operation to a smaller one, but you have to wear so many more hats.

[B]

What were your challenges?

[C]

Challenges setting just purchasing and receiving in general is, you know, because you weren't doing that before. Yeah. You fill out an order guide and you'd call in some orders for your specialty stuff, but for the most part, you know, you hand your clipboard to the purchasing department or put it on the computer, and then it's just, now you are responsible for absolutely everything. Previously, food cost was my only metric, but going to a food and beverage director and executive chef, it's like your china, glass, silver. Your cost of goods across the board. How much are you spending on advertising? What are you spending on paper goods? These are things I never had to think about before because it was all handled by other departments.

[B]

Right. So how did you find that balance? How did you get better in that vertical?

[C]

Lots of failures and lots of learning opportunities. And that's one of the things I really like about the culture of our company, is we're a little smaller and nimble. So we're able to try things and they don't always work and then move on to the next thing.

[B]

So what were some of the failures relative to purchase that you made?

[C]

Oh, just being overly aggressive of thinking how successful we would be. The biggest one was trying to learn how to order for a bar, which I had never done before. And we did bring on a beverage manager, which helped and, you know, got it taken care of. But like just trying to understand the volumes and working with limited storage space in the smaller property, it was extremely challenging to switch over from the biggest place I'd ever been to the smallest place I'd ever been.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I just. I don't even know what questions to ask you relative to this world. If you are in my seat and you're trying to get a good interview. What kind of things do you think my listeners would want to know relative to the world of restaurants in hotels?

[C]

I would. One of the things I proselytize for restaurants and hotels and why people should try it is, like I said, I've been with three companies and I've worked at over 20 different concepts is you have the ability to really kind of have almost your own culinary school without having to pay to go to culinary school. I got to work at five different concepts within the first six years that I was in a hotel. And then having that knowledge and that support of an executive chef approaches the department accounting and get to stay in your lane.

[B]

You don't have to be everything.

[C]

You don't have to be everything, but you have the opportunity to learn everything. I spent a lot of time with our controllers and purchasing managers just because I was curious. So I would say if you want to open your own independent restaurant, go work for a hotel group for a little bit because you have to learn the office side pretty quickly, especially if you don't have all those support departments.

[B]

Yeah. So what is it that you think you're doing here at this. Like what, what. What is it about this hotel group that has found like that. That special rub where they're having success with the restaurants, but they're also getting a lot of accolades, a lot of attention with their. With their. Sorry. With the hotels, but they're also getting the accolades and the attention with the.

[C]

Restaurants because we want to come at our food and beverage opportunity preparation. Very similar to what I said Omnidu does is we're not chef owned, but we're chef driven. And that was our success at Montford. The beverage manager over there, Paul Peffer, when we first Opened super. Great pedigree. Really great guy. He's one of our beverage reps now, but he worked at, like, really nice places in New York, including Mineta Tavern. Then our beverage manager after him also worked at Grove Park Inn. So we really focused on finding quality people and giving them the latitude to be creative and kind of try things with the bigger groups. You kind of have your lanes. You have to fit within these parameters. And at parks, it's like, why do we have parameters if we can, you know, color outside the lines a little bit.

[B]

Right. Try a little more mobility, a little nimble. A little more nimble. When you're tiny, you can. You can do those.

[C]

And as you mentioned, we got a lot of people here from luxury background, MSC Suites specifically. Almost all of our leadership group comes from a luxury background. Our food and beverage director, Brian Sherwood, was the food and beverage director at the Inn at Biltmore Estate, which is a very fancy, nice, triple A, five diamond kind of property. Our restaurant general manager comes from the Biltmore Estate as well. Our assistant outlets manager came from there. Our executive chef, John German, the gentleman who's been driving Soprano Rooftop concept since he joined about two months after we open. He comes from luxury background. He was at a property in Nantucket, worked in California. Really big names. And we've invested in the people because the people are. Who are going to kind of carry us forward. Who, not how, exactly.

[B]

Yeah, they.

[C]

They've done it at scale and at luxury. And now we've brought all this talent to create a concept where the people who work there can also afford to eat there, which is kind of something that all of us got a little bit burnout in our career, too. We were serving, you know, the top 10% of the population. And now we're at a place where.

[B]

I would say the top, like, 1%.

[C]

Okay, the top 1%.

[B]

And increasingly in that direction, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, you know, there are fewer people that can go out and eat like that.

[C]

Yeah. When John and I went to the Michelin ceremony, we were reminiscing a little bit about our past and thinking we both had chased these big places, these big titles, these big companies, and never had any awards, accolades, or distinctions. And that's not what we're chasing. But then we're like, you know what? We want to work with local farmers. We want to provide the best food for possible. The same ingredients we would be using to serve in a fine dining restaurant, but at a pizza concept.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And it's. It's interesting because you said, you know, we never got these awards and these accolations. We've done all the worked at all these amazing restaurants and because you're, I was curious about that because you're, you're in the world of hotels, not necessarily independent restaurants. But at the same time, like, I think that there was a real issue within the industry, industry where we put so much emphasis on our, we tied so much of our success to accolades and I think we just really lost our way. And I think to this day we still put so much emphasis on accolades. What do you, what are your thoughts on that?

[C]

I could not agree more. We are so grateful and humbled to be included with the other, I want to say 14 restaurants in Asheville that were recognized by Michelin. But that's never been our intention. Our intention has been to provide good food with local ingredients to as many people as possible.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And you know, during another conversation I've had with someone post Michelin, they're like, what's next? What's the next award? I'm like, we don't know. But we're not actively seeking anything. We are just trying to create this ecosystem for our team and for our community to provide good people and you know, an amazing view, which is a perk.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But if we get an award, that's gravy, that's great, we appreciate it, we're so grateful. But the process, not the finish line, is what we're focused on.

[B]

I think for there was a real period of time where, you know, the, the James Beard, the Michelin's, you know, I mean, obviously Michelin, if you're a four star, like, like, you know, that was the goal. But at the same time it's like there can only be so many of those restaurants. There can only be so many winners. And I think when these companies were really kind of building up momentum BY like the 90s and 80s, there was, there wasn't as lot, there weren't, there were not a lot of restaurants doing really great food at that time. But since over the past 30, 40 years, the amount of people that are doing really amazing food, there's not enough awards to go out, you know, and I think that you have all these people that are shooting for the stars that want to do, be the best, do the best and they kill themselves trying to get there. And we all can't serve the top 1% of customers. We are the top 10% of diners. Like, there's not enough marketplace to get into like. And I think For a period like in the early 2000s, like everyone was trying to build that restaurant restaurant and there just wasn't enough market for it, you know, and like, places were going out of business. Like, the operational costs are crazy with those restaurants, the labor is crazy with those. They're not profitable business models. And we're all shooting for that and failing because it's just not enough market to support that type of restaurant. Am I wrong in seeing this pattern or no, Absolutely.

[C]

It is definitely a little bit sunnier.

[B]

Yeah, we can pivot. We can just pause real quick if you want.

[C]

Yeah, let's pause.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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[B]

Expect more. All right, so we are out of the sun. What do you think you have your experience, your knowledge, your perspective, what this hotel group offers that would most serve my listeners?

[C]

I would say that your listeners tend to like they're looking for information on how to be successful, how to run a business. Correct?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

That is the focus of this podcast and it is people, people, people. As you said, we have a lot of people from the Biltmore and investing in the right people to do their job and figuring out a way to pay them and put a concept behind them that can be successful. That's how you scale and that's how you grow. We have grown as a company. We've doubled in size since I've been here because we find the right people. And then within that, you have to have growth because you have to have a place for those talented people that you develop to go.

[B]

You got to make more room.

[C]

You got to make more room.

[B]

I would say two things determine growth, people and cash flow. You prioritize the people and if you prioritize the people, the cash comes, right? And as that cash comes, that, that is your, your governor. You know, like, okay, we have the cash flow. Let's go do the next thing. Only after we have the people. You're that cash is going to, to the people and creating the opportunity for the people, right? So when I started this podcast, going back almost 13 years ago, I remember thinking to myself, like, corporations are the devil. Corporations are the. Like, I want fewer corporations in the world and more independent restaurant owners. How do I decentralize and democratize knowledge to get into the hands of these independents so they can compete with the corporations? And then over time, I started to realize, you know, maybe not all corporations, corporations are evil. Maybe we can learn a lot from these corporations. And I started talking to Bigger restaurant groups, bigger corp, like corporate groups. And now I'm kind of like, okay, there's a balance, you know. What does that balance look like, you think? You know, like Biltmore is a very local like hotel.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's a one off, right?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

What's the history of the Biltmore Hotel? Is that, am I getting it right? Is that the name or.

[C]

Yeah. The Biltmore Estate is. That is the largest home in America that was part of the Vanderbilt empire and that family. So as far as it being a hotel, the hotel, I don't know how long it's been in operation, but it is also, it's serving a luxury client.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So, but they do some really cool programs too because they raise up their own beef, they have a farm, they have a vineyard. So again it just goes back to that kind of serving that luxury client. And they do have some other hotel options now on the estate to where it's a little bit more cost friendly so more people can go there. But it is, you know, there's a.

[B]

Sad reality that it takes money to do all those things.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

And it's sad that only the, the top 1% can, can afford to get that kind of quality of food, you know.

[C]

True. And as far as the Biltmore though, I do want to say they are nice in that they're in their community. They give free passes to a lot of their partners. So all of our team members get one, one pass per year to be able to go visit the Biltmore. So they do get to experience.

[B]

So I'd love to see that property.

[C]

Yeah, they, they are you know, serving a higher end clientele, but they are part of the community, which is great.

[B]

Well to, to, to support something like that. I guess my point is like you have to focus where, on where the money is because it, it's a, it's a hungry hungry hippo.

[C]

Oh yeah. I mean just maintaining the estate, I can't imagine the amount of dollars that goes into maintaining.

[B]

But my thought like originally was like you, I would want to see more built mores be successful more places that.

[A]

Are of that, the, that place of.

[B]

Of the history of that place. I want to see those places rise to the top. But at the same time, to your point, like it's not that simple because that's a very expensive like lot going on there. To raise your, to be fully integrated, vertically integrated like that, raising your own beef on site like that all takes resources. So you need to tap into that 1% to pay for it. But what does that balance look like? You know, and that's kind of where my mind is going with what you're currently doing here. You know, like, is this better balance?

[C]

I think so. I heard in one of your previous episodes the term responsible capitalism. And I think that's kind of one of the other points I would say to any of your listeners is you should be able to explain all your decisions, but your team isn't always going to agree with them and they may want a new oven or new equipment or raises for all the team, but you have to have cash reserves. We've been open for just under two years and within our first two years of operation, we had a once in a generation hurricane hit Ashley.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And had we not been financially responsible and had cash reserves available, we wouldn't have had anything to come back to after that storm.

[B]

Right. So getting, putting money aside, having that cushion, being like having a safety net.

[C]

Absolutely, yeah. Just like you as a person, if you can, should have a small emergency savings, you have to have that as a business owner as well.

[B]

Right. So I'm thinking about what you're doing here in Parks Hospitality Group. It's a combination of corporate and local. Right. Where you know, there's a local family that's, that's running this, this hotel group. They're creating opportunity for local talent and they're using the, the national corporate brand to, when people are coming to Asheville to say, hey, when you land here, like, like support, like, like use this corporate money. Use this corporate influence to inject into local business.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

So like, like how do we crew mimic, like, how do we take that business model and how do we find that balance across the country? Like, what does that look like? That's what I'm curious about.

[C]

Well, the, the hard thing across the country is the reason it's so successful in this market is we're in the middle of, you know, the Blue Ridge Bridge Parkway and the mountains, and it's a very desirable place to go. The challenge on the other side though is the more tourism that comes in, which we are a tourist town. It creates all of our revenue, it brings more people in, and then investors start buying up homes, which makes it more challenging, more expensive to live here. So at some point it becomes unsustainable when you know, your cooks and your servers can't afford to live in the city that they're working.

[B]

Yeah, that's another big issue that I, we need to create awareness, like I say it all the time, the restaurant industry. This podcast is to inspire empower and transform the industry. But I believe that if we transform the industry, we transform the world. And, you know, part of hospitality isn't just food, but it's also lodging. It's also, you know, understanding. Like, you know, we. It's community. It's finding that balance. It's making sure your home doesn't become so expensive that the people that are in it can't afford to be here. Like, when you get the. To your point, investors, like, do we regulate that? Like, how do we. How do we control people from China coming over here and buying all of our, you know, property in like, as assets? We don't want that to happen.

[C]

I don't know the answer, but I think it starts at local government having ordinances and, you know, enforcement to make sure that development is smart development. And, you know, driving through the outskirts of any city, you see all these abandoned buildings just there. And, you know, where we're sitting right now was built on top of an abandoned building. So how can we make sure that instead of cutting down a bunch of trees in the middle of a urban area, can we utilize something that already exists?

[B]

Right. Well, I had a train of thought and I lost it, but. Oh, I mean, this idea of the properties getting more expensive directly affects the restaurant industry too, because one of our. As cost of goods are going up and labor going up, also rent is going through the roof.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

And it's like, it's becoming to this point where you. You need a corporation to come in and to pay the rent. So you can, like, because you, you can't. You as an independent, can't. Can't compete with just the cost of rent. You can't even own the property in your own community.

[C]

Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a very delicate balance in a lot of cities and a lot of markets. Whereas we need tourism in Asheville to sustain us, we are a tourist destination. However, at some point it, like you said, it makes it more expensive to live here because it's more desirable. But we need those people here to help bring in business. We've seen a few places close, unfortunately after Hurricane Helene, because our tourism was down 20, 30% this year.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, man. I like, I like, want to make a note right now, like, I wanted, like, boomerang myself a note to like, because I don't want to forget because I'm trying to, like, I'm doing it right now. How do we make it possible for local people to own local property and to not necessarily over regulate, but to make it Fair. I'm putting that. So I use this app called Boomerang so I have reminders to look into things because I want to like, do more journalistic work. So like, how do we fix that problem of like what communities out there are doing it right? Like what they're putting regulation into place to make sure that other like money does that from outside the community comes in and buys everything up. Do you know of any communities that are doing are proactive to like protect their property, their. Their culture?

[C]

Well, I know at one point Asheville did have a new build hotel moratorium. So there's some effort to do that. I believe that is now gone. As far as other communities, none come to mind. But I think there is a nice balance of thoughtful, sustainable development that is supporting the community.

[B]

That's a good way to put it. Thoughtful. How do we create more thoughtful sustainable development?

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Supports the community, doesn't strip resources out of the community.

[C]

Yeah. And I think it's really important for any ownership group, restaurateur, or any business operating in a community to be a part of that community and to support that community through charity, through providing a livable wage to your team. There was a reckoning after COVID 19 and we lost a lot of our.

[B]

The great exodus.

[C]

Yeah, the great exodus. And you know what? That really created a supply and demand. Line cooks are now unicorns in most cities, which is great until the cost of everything has gone up so much. So there was this huge when, when I first started here in Asheville, you know, a cook might be making 12 or 13 bucks and now they're making 22 to 25, which I don't think.

[B]

Is a horrible thing because we weren't paying people.

[C]

We were honest. As someone who came up in the industry, I'll remember all my line cook jobs where servers were talking about like going on these trips and walking with 350, 400 bucks in a shift. I'm like, well, I'm making $9 an hour. I worked eight hours, so I didn't even break a hundred dollars. So yeah, it has not been equitable.

[B]

Can you blame people for leaving?

[C]

Absolutely not.

[B]

I can't.

[C]

I can't.

[B]

But you mentioned something like we need to be here for our community. We need to, we need to give back to our community. We need to support our community. And I would argue that the community hasn't really been great about supporting restaurants. They haven't been great about showing up to support local business. You know, we are more loyal to convenience and perceived value, low cost than we are to relationships and the people in our community.

[C]

I will say you have found a city in the country that. But that is not fully the case.

[B]

So maybe I go deeper into Asheville and to figure out, what is that relationship? How do we have those. Those ties with our community to get that support?

[C]

Yeah, this is such a cool community San Antonio had. This was nice, too, and so was Chicago. But there was more of a competitive mindset. This is definitely a rising water lifts all ships kind of mindset. I know a lot of chefs, restaurateurs, and people in this town, and we're all friendly with each other. If someone runs out of pizza flour, they'll pick up the phone and call to say, hey, can I borrow a bag of flour?

[B]

We have to go further together. It's the only way.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

And I will say this. You were at the. You were in San Antonio 2011, 2013. I would say that across the nation. That's around the time I started this podcast. Across the nation, things are changing in my experience. Maybe it's because I only talk to the best, the leaders across the industry. And I think that this is a shared quality among the best, is that they choose to go further together. They know that if I. If I talk, if I communicate with other restaurant owners, if I support. If we support each other, we will rise to the top. And people are so generous with their knowledge and their experience. And I think that it is a movement happening in the restaurant industry, and I could not be more proud of the industry. I think about when I started this podcast in 2013. I started it because I couldn't find. I literally could not find a restaurant business podcast where people were sharing information. Today, man, I've lost count. There are hundreds of restaurant business podcasts where leaders and owners across the country are just pouring it out. There's no shortage of information right now. It's a really special time.

[C]

It is. And that's one of the. I'll say one of the few positives I see in social media is everything's a little bit more democratized now.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

This whole. I'll never forget working for some chefs and like, oh, a guest wants a recipe. They're like, no, you can't give that out. I'm like, that seems so crazy. You think the success of this restaurant is keeping your recipe for this sauce secret?

[A]

It's not the recipe.

[B]

It's how you execute it every day.

[C]

Right. It's the experience. It's how you make someone feel when they're in your space. Right. And so any, anyone who comes into any of our concepts and wants a recipe, by all means please share it with them.

[B]

Yeah, I feel weird about trademark and copyright sometimes or if something's patent, it's like, you know, like I'm not like, I don't think I'm like have a communist mindset necessarily where like, you know, China like will take our patents and just like recreate them. But at the same time there's a part of me that's like listen, if it's human knowledge, if it's human information, if you found a way to do something better, doesn't it make us all better if we take your new approach and doesn't that just spur inspiration? But if we safeguard and lock that information, like didn't we figure out how to like didn't like Tesla figure out how to like basically make an energy free. And then like the corporate world was like we're going to buy this and lock this behind vault and key be because we don't want that information get out there. Doesn't that stifle growth and progress?

[C]

Absolutely. That's the non conscious capitalism, right?

[B]

So like there's a part of me, it's like yeah, I get intellectual property and I get you know, having like those people who find breakthrough should get rewarded for that. But at what like what's that bounce look like? Because like if we're safeguarding and holding information, we're, we're holding back progress. And guess what? In a, I'm not very, I don't know how, how the worlds work. I know it's very complicated but in a, a communist country where the people at the top control all the information, but they do. I mean there's pros and cons, I'm not being completely ignorant here, but that idea of sharing ideas, sharing knowledge and making sure and leveraging that, I feel that like I don't know too much about this, this topic but I feel like China's kicking her ass right now. You know, is it, you know what I'm saying? Like they're like, there's a good chance that it could, this could be the United States of China real soon. Like and it's because they're, they're. I, I don't know, like, is it because they, they just democratize and like I like what does that look like? Why is that happening? You know, is it because they take a community or. It's debatable. And I realize as I'm talking, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. But like, you know what I'm saying, like, what are you thinking as I'm sharing this?

[C]

I don't want to get too much into geopolitics, but I think that having more of a community mindset is what's important. And I think unfortunately, we are in a time in our country where we don't trust each other or even want to give someone who doesn't agree with our opinion the benefit of the doubt to even have a conversation. I think the lack of people being able to have a conversation without getting heated or emotional is one of our biggest downfalls right now. I have friends and family on both sides of the political spectrum, and while I don't agree with everything all of them say, I have relationships with people who I know are good people and they may believe some different things than me, but I'm willing to try to find a way forward together. Because you need conservative ideals and you need liberal ideals. You need balance. You can't go in either direction. And what I have found recently is if you're not on the far end of any spectrum and you don't agree with, if you're not on the far end, if you're not on the far end of the spectrum, you're not not doing enough for that side.

[B]

Right?

[C]

And I think the term going around right now is radical centrist, because it's radical to maybe hold a couple of different truths.

[B]

It's harder to do that. It's harder to think for yourself. It's harder to take the big picture and to make your own opinions based off of what's out there.

[C]

So going back to your question, I think the challenge is because we have some far extremes and some distrust of each other right now, it makes sense, it difficult to have a conversation and move forward together as 340 million people, right.

[B]

You know, we're kind of at the part of the conversation right now where it's like, where are we and how do we go into the future? Right? And like, what have we learned? How do we become conscious capitalists? And I think that was the term you might have heard me use earlier. We're, we are in a consumeristic, capitalistic like world. And I don't know if capitalism is the issue as much as consumerism is the issue where it's all about just making more for less and giving the customer what the customer wants because the customer wants more for less. You know, and if we're all just trying to make more for less money, we none of us win because it's like that that props up a world for corporations to excel.

[C]

Exactly. That props up a system for more billionaires to be minted.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

And, and what we do in our restaurant concepts and here is we want to also elevate our community as we grow within them. And we're not going to put on a mass produced crappy piece of pepperoni onto our pizza here. We're going to find something that is made locally or made in Italy and is a high quality product. And people are so focused on the factory farming aspect and they don't think about it, like, where their meat's coming from, what it does to the environment. We do. And I think what you're saying is correct. We're getting into a food system and a restaurant system where people are so concerned about perceived value and getting more for less that you're losing these local farms, you're losing these talented chefs, we're losing these cooks and servers who think that this isn't a great career. Hospitality has been an amazing career. I love it and I'm super passionate about it, but we have to fight for it because it's changing and not changing for the better in a lot of places. And that's why I'm super happy to be in a market like Asheville, because we do care about our farmers and our producers and our local community. And I think that's becoming more and more rare, unfortunately, unless you are eating at these extremely fancy, extremely expensive restaurants that are charging a huge premium.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't. I don't have the answers, but I'm in pursuit of them. I want to learn, like, how do we overcome this? I do think simply being more conscious about where we put our money is a big part of it. You had a gentleman here last night, and I told you the story already. And before we hit record forward in part. So, I mean, the story goes like this. He came up, he's like, oh, I used to be a bartender. And he's like, hey, I know that, you know, when you pour heavy, like, you get good tips. I'm a good tipper. When I get taken care of. Can you give me a, you know, a, A heavy pour on my whiskey double? I think it was like angels. And what's that, that brand, that Whiskey Angels.

[C]

If they.

[B]

What's that?

[C]

Angels Envy.

[B]

Yes, Angels envy. So not a cheap, Not a cheap pour. Yeah. And he's asking for a heavy pour, and he's like, literally bribing her with a heavy, like, with a heavy tip. Like, if you don't do what I Ask. I'm not gonna tip you. Well, I'm gonna. I'm asking you to steal from your employer, and I will. I'm holding your. Your livelihood over you right now. And I was sitting right next to this guy. He was. He was at the. He was standing right here, like, right. Right next to me. Had to bite my tongue. I was so pissed off at this. Dude. Your server handled it so well. What's going through your mind as I say this?

[C]

This is why you have to take care of your team. This is why you have to be a people first company restaurant tour operation is our servants, bartenders and cooks do well. They make a livable wage here for Asheville. And they know that we're going to take care of them. And we have taken care of. And to that gentleman or anyone else who wants to try to hold someone's livelihood hostage to get something cheaper, that's absurd. And you told me before we were recording that they said they were a bartender or worked in the industry. And all I can think there is they've worked for some really bad ownership.

[B]

Yeah. And then it shows the progress. Progress. It shows the evolution of our industry and how we're moving away from that. Because there. That was how you did things when this old probably bartended is you stole from your owner so you could make money. You know? And like, we don't do that anymore. The other part of this is that he turned over to me and he was trying to get me. He was trying to recruit me to be like, this is ridiculous. And I was like, buddy, you're barking up the wrong tree. Like, I'm biting my tongue right now. You're an. And then he started. He's like, $30 for like a. I don't know if that was an accurate statement. Is it a 30 for a double?

[C]

A double. 3 ounces of Angel's envy. It could be. I don't know.

[B]

I wouldn't be surprised. But that's also a very expensive.

[C]

You don't have to get that. You can also get old granddad for half the price.

[B]

He was a very privileged. You know, and like. And that was. But my other thought of it is like, this guy is like, you're. He's in a. A local spot. Maybe it's in a corporate. It's tied to a corporation, but it's owned locally. And it's a local concept, local talent. And he's bitching about having to pay what it takes to support local business. He was also not. He was in town. I could tell he was in town. He was with the sports group. You know, like I think he was a dad or something like that. So like, what are you thinking right now?

[C]

I, I think going back to one of your questions about, about the difference between a independent restaurant and a hotel restaurant you just brought up is you're serving people not just in your restaurant but in your lodging as well.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So unfortunately you're going to deal with some guests that have some entitlement. That one, they're paying for a room here and that entitles them to special treatment in the restaurant space, which we do try to take care of our hotel guests. They've chosen to spend extra money with us and dine with us. That's great. That does not entitle, entitle you to be rude or unprofessional to our guest.

[B]

Or to encourage you to be a.

[C]

Thief or to encourage you to be a thief and break North Carolina law by pouring over 3 ounces.

[B]

You know, I was very proud of her and, and she handled it really well and the guy ended up throwing a dollar up on the, on the table afterwards.

[C]

And we work in a tip pool system and this is part of the reason we do one. I think every team member in the front of house should have a vested interest interest in every guest. Not just through section having a great experience, but when you have that person who wants to come up here and be rude and try to manipulate to get a little bit extra of a pour. In fact, take that tip and just pay for your drink.

[B]

Right?

[C]

You don't have to tip. Well, no one needs to have that conversation. But it also means that when you have that guest, it doesn't ruin that bartender's night because Instead of a $6 7, $10 tip, they get a $1 tip. But guess what? What? All the other tables were, you know.

[B]

It inspired me to give a little something extra too. It bounced out, you know, because I saw that go down. I was really proud of how they handled it. I was really proud of myself for not calling this guy an asshole in front of, in front of your entire team too.

[C]

I have a question for you. What do you think about all these restaurants now adding a kitchen appreciation percentage?

[B]

I believe we need to abandon the tip model and I do think that we should charge charge for. To in. In order to compensate our staff. But I don't think that we should keep it as a line item that we disclose to the consumer. We just need to charge what it costs to run a business.

[C]

Couldn't, couldn't agree more. That's, that's one of the things I've seen at restaurants quite a bit. It's like we're adding a kitchen appreciation tip and it's like talk to the manager if you don't want to put it on there. It's like adding an additional tax. It's like put 50 cents extra on each dish.

[B]

Else in the world of business, do we line item the bill?

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

You know what I'm saying? Like, we, I think I, I tend to lean in the school of thought where we need to do away with tipping and we just need to be. We just need to charge what, what it costs to support the people that work for us. They don't need to know where the money is going or how you ended up at that bill. Yeah, that's silly. We're the only industry that does it. I think tip pooling is a step in the right direction, but it's still not the solution. Yeah, but on that note of tip pooling, do you guys share it with just a friend of the house or does it also go to back of house?

[C]

We do. We pay a straight hourly rate to the back of house. We do try to keep it in. If you are providing a service, you are responsible or you, you're responsible for what that tip's going to be. So we try to keep that separated and we pay our back of the house. In my opinion, in and for the city, they, they do well. But if we have say a buyout or a private event where the cooks are doing just as much heavy lifting the service by preparing food and our servers are more maintaining a buffet, then the kitchen goes onto that tip pole. But you know, they make a significantly higher hourly rate than our servers do.

[B]

This makes sense to talk tech stack and how much is being a part of a hotel group effect tech tech stack. You're still using pos, you're still using reservation. All those platforms.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Are you. Do you influence those decisions on what tools or technology to use or is that a different role?

[C]

Yes and no, in that we have a limited selection operating under a certain flag. So Hilton specifically may only have three approved point of sale systems.

[B]

What is your tech stack?

[C]

So we use Agilisys for our point of sale system.

[B]

I've never heard of that.

[C]

So Agilisys. I like Agilisys. They're. We had previously used another and their customer support was like two hours.

[B]

What it was. I mean, this is why the podcast exists, so we can give testimonials real time. This is one of the reasons why I don't partner with POS companies because I want to be able to talk shit and not have to worry about my income.

[C]

Micros, Oracle, okay. I think they have some good enterprise solutions but when we would have issues I'd be on hold, hold for two hours.

[B]

Yeah, well that's what happens with corporations. They try to focus on the technology, the systems and the reason why they can offer those rates is because they don't put the money into customer support.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

They try to automate that too.

[C]

Agelysis has been pretty good. I can get someone on the phone within five minutes. So as one of the enterprise solutions, it's the one we've chosen to go to because of that customer support that we get.

[B]

How do you spell that?

[C]

Agilesis A G, I, L, Y.

[B]

And is this a new company?

[C]

They've been around for a while and I actually went to one of their conferences a couple of years ago and they reinvest 30% of their profit into developing new technology and customer service which is pretty, pretty big for that industry.

[B]

Yeah, I do think Oracle. Micros. Oracle purchased Micros and I do think that they're kind of giving up on the restaurant industry. I think they're trying to find other markets that have a little bit like, like venues, like long large venues I think becoming their specialty. The number one and number two recommended POS systems on the show are Toast and Square. And I do want to say that I think that their technology is great, especially Square for restaurants is really doing some cool stuff. I just think that it's not good for the industry if we have two companies that are our options.

[C]

I agree. And for from the hotel side there, that is a limitation is because it has to talk to your PMS software, your room management software to do room charges and things like that. A lot of companies have not approved that technology. They also have to go on their dedicated protected Hilton system. So they have to do a lot of vetting to make sure that no malicious activity can come through their system to get kind of to their information hubs. So that is a little limiting when it comes to selecting a point of sales for a hotel group.

[B]

I kind of assumed you were going to say toast and then I was curious. I wonder if they're using tip pulling with Toast that feature or what are you doing for.

[C]

So we have our own internal, so we have our own IT department. Our director of strategic insights is Nolan Osborne and he has built a tip pulling system that ties in with our ADP system. And then we have Power BI that Microsoft Makes. But we have our own internal system that he created as well. So we've been able to create our own internal tip pull system. System based on a point system of a half point to a full point, depending on which position you're working, the amount of hours worked and pretty traditional setup. But yeah, we handle all of that internally.

[B]

Okay. So if I type in Soprano Rooftop Bar, you have your own standalone website that's different from the hotel.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

So for SEO searchability. And it looks like you guys are using WordPress. WordPress for your website.

[C]

Correct.

[B]

Okay. It looks beautiful.

[C]

Thank you. I'll give a shout out to Outline in Charleston, South Carolina. They're our branding agency that helped us bring this. I love the brand market. Yeah, they did an amazing job. That was probably the funnest process I've gone through, maybe in my career is we started talking about Soprano Rooftop Kachina on January 1, 2017. I went to a New Year's lunch with the ownership and we started talking about what we're going to do on Embassy Suites. Then we had a big pause because of the COVID 19 pandemic and then really started hitting the ground with Embassy Suites in 2022. Soprano, and it's called Outline Outline.

[B]

And if you could give a testimonial or to share what it is about this company, what they do really well, what you like about them.

[C]

It was fun. The entire time, it was fun. They're super creative. We started with, hey, we're gonna open a pizza concept in Asheville. We would like some Italian influence, but we also really want to stay true to the Appalachian region that we're in. So they came up with the Appalachian meets Alps kind of concept. We started playing around with words and they helped us sort through to come to the name Soprano, which is a play on the word soprano, which means elevated or up. Just like a soprano singer's got that high voice.

[B]

And you're up on the seventh floor.

[C]

And we're up on the seventh floor.

[B]

You have a view of the album Appalachian Mountains. Or is it Appalachian? Sorry, we're in the south right now.

[C]

I don't, I'm not getting involved in that.

[B]

I am from New Hampshire. We call it the Appalachian Mountains, and I'm pretty sure it's the same stretch of mountains. But I should, I should call it the Appalachian to respect the local culture.

[C]

I, I, I say Apple Appalachian Mountains as well. But yeah, they were really fun. They were really fun to work with. The branding portion of it from the merchandise side, I did not think I'd be that into merchandise, but yo, your merch is fire.

[B]

I'm leaving with the sweatshirt.

[C]

We work with another design agency for the interior design. But like the concepting, like down to the wax paper we put underneath our pizza, they helped us come up with it. But yeah, that's cool.

[B]

I mean, I think it, I think outsourcing is a big part of the solution to restaurants going forward because there's just so much. And when I say the solution, I think, think, don't try to do everything in house. Find partners. I'm really excited about the world of fractional CFOs and CMOs and getting those specialized people on your team. Sir Bony is a supporter sponsor of the podcast. Right now they're a fractional CFO all in one financial service. I just had Elizabeth Tilton from Oyster Sunday. Are you familiar with what she does?

[C]

I am not.

[B]

That's another. She kind of. They're like an all in one, like support work group. Like, like, they kind of help with like the details from like branding and HR and concept development and fundraising. And they do some financial too, but they don't do bookkeeping and taxes and like CFO stuff like Sir Boni does. But it's, it's, it's paying a low. It's having specialists and having clients and, and then going to the specialist. So you can focus on what you do best. Because there's just way too much on the restroom restaurant owners play today.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

Way too much. You have to outsource.

[C]

Yeah. And I was listening to a previous episode and you're talking about that fractional CEO and it's kind of funny. That's kind of what my position came with this company. As we grew and opened more concepts. I, you know, I'm a chef by trade, but for the past three years, I've been in an office.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's been an interesting journey to figure out going from the go, go, go, go, go to like long term planning. But, but that's another thing about this hotel path that I highly encourage is I've been able to learn a lot of that stuff to write our P&Ls or review our P&Ls, write our budgets, critique and kind of teach the next generation of these chefs and food and beverage directors and managers. This financial acumen.

[B]

Numbers of the business. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. It's hugely important. So if any of them want to come through here and then open their own place, they have a much more solid foundation.

[B]

Yeah. What hasn't come out of today's conversation that you think needs to come out.

[C]

I. I just want to talk about Asheville as a city briefly, please. It. This is my home. I love it here. My wife's from here. And post Hurricane Helene, this town has gone through the ringer. We've lost, I would say, 30% of the restaurants that were here and the community that we have here that has come together, together post Helene and some of the nonprofits, like Beloved Asheville Bounty and Soul Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, Asheville Greenworks, and, you know, a dozen others have really helped bring this community back to fighting weight. And it's been really something special for our team to be a part of that recovery effort.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy. You don't realize what happened in this part of the country until you drive through. Through it and you just see anything close to a body of water. You can just see the devastation that ripped through. It's. It's wild bridges just gone.

[C]

Gone.

[B]

Yeah. I was trying to get to the Appalachian Trail. Sorry, the Appalachian Trail. And there I couldn't figure out how the heck to get to the spot. And it's because a bridge got washed out. So the. The. The navigation was all confused on how to get. I get. How do I get to that side of the river? So it's just like. You don't realize how. It's. It's just totally like. So how. How is the community better now? I'm curious about that.

[C]

The. The community just closer. We're. We're. When I said we support each other as restaurateurs and business owners before, that's just been so much more solidified. We are here to help each other in any way possible. We are trying to. To be prepared for the next disaster. We want to make sure that we know if something happens again that we're going to be there for each other. And we are. It is the friendliness of our guests who are locals to our restaurant workers has gone up. It is. It is such a better experience working in the industry in this town now. Post the storm.

[B]

Yeah, sometimes it takes. Takes disaster to realize what's the most important thing. It's the people. And when. When you need people more than ever, that's when they show up. Right. That's when we realize, oh, crap, we need each other.

[C]

Politics were not in anyone's mind post the storm. And, you know, that returns a little bit. But I think that it gave an opportunity for maybe someone that you might not have talked to your neighbor who is on a different political spectrum than you are. They were also there helping you cut trees on. Off your house.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's sad that it takes a disaster.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I think it also kind of opens our eyes to how privileged we are that we don't have to struggle day to day to survive.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

You know, but when you are faced with that struggle to survive like you, I think that's when you start to see people the most and we start to appreciate people the most. We have. It's too easy almost sometimes. And that, that easiness makes us like, we. I don't, you know, I don't want to. I don't know. What are you thinking when I say that?

[C]

Is it a stretch? No, I don't think it's a stretch. I think we get an autopilot. I think we get comfortable in our own thoughts, our own routines, and, you know, we don't give people the benefit of the doubt. We don't. We're not curious. You said this off camera before we started recording. You like to lead this conversation with curiosity, and I think people are losing curiosity to looking at their cell phone.

[B]

Right.

[C]

When you've got a world that is actually, actually real in front of you that you can engage with, that you can see, smell, touch, and taste, and we're so worried about what a celebrity is doing or a politician is doing. Just get off your phone.

[B]

And, you know, I struggle with that because a lot of my colleagues, other people in the space will. A lot of people in the space are marketers. You know, they're, they are selling their marketing services and they tend to echo, Echo the importance of being on social media and posting every day. And, and I tend to say the complete opposite of, like, listen, like, I'm here to inspire, empower, and transform the industry, and we're not healthy right now as a society. Like, yeah, do you need to be on social media? Yeah, you probably do. And if that's a true statement, then how do we fix that? Because we shouldn't. That shouldn't be a true statement. It, it's not good for us. It does more damage than good.

[C]

Yeah. And I think we've all been like, as restaurateurs, we're very excited to see someone taking a picture to post on Instagram on their food, but they're not experiencing it. It's not the same when they're on their phone taking a picture.

[B]

Yeah. The part of what I have to do that I hate the most.

[C]

Yeah, I, I, you know, I'm very grateful that people are excited about what our food and our drinks look like at any of Our concepts and hope that they want to share it with their friends and family. But what I would implore people to do is take a picture, put your phone away. If you want to share it, share it when you're in your room or you're a passenger driving home. Don't actively be engaged with social media while you're at a dining experience. Maybe then we will see more of a value in paying for a good ingredient and having a bartender who is a craftsman preparing a drink in of front of you. Instead of looking at your phone, watch what they're doing. And then maybe we will start seeing more value in this restaurant space because that's your entertainment, that's your connection, is having these experiences. And they don't have to be super expensive to be that way. But I think if we could maybe rewind a little bit to stay off of our phone while we're paying to do something. Why are you going out then? Why are you spending hundreds of dollars on a meal experience or $25 on a meal experience if all you're trying to do is show someone where you're at?

[B]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, man. I've really enjoyed today's conversation. A couple questions before we wrap it up and I ask all my guests, what is one thing about your business? A value process, a system that's truly uncommon and that makes you unstoppable.

[C]

The relentless pursuit for trying new things and being better.

[B]

Is there an organization that you've recently started working with, maybe outsourced services to that's really had an impact on your business?

[C]

No, we try to keep everything in house, actually.

[B]

And we'll give another shout out to that. That marketing company that you work with.

[C]

That's true. Talking out of post accident out there, but yeah. Outline out of Charleston, South Carolina. They really did help bring this concept.

[B]

For a little love to outline. What is one conversation that you think restaurant owners need to start having?

[C]

I think they need to start focusing on what we did when we went through the 2008 financial crisis is how do we bring a quality meal and quality food and experience to people at an affordable price. Right now, everything's so expensive. I think we need to check some of our egos when it comes to the food that we're putting in out and bring approachable, wholesome food to everyone.

[B]

I think part of that goes into the amount of money that people put into the physical space. It's like what's important, the food that's on the plate, the relationships with the people that you're sourcing from or making an impression on somebody.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know, like we, I think we just kind of lost our way for a while. Like we'll spend millions of dollars on a build out, but to buy from a local farm, you know, like, I don't know, it's, we got things backwards a little bit.

[C]

Absolutely. You're paying that, that mortgage or that loan back and you have to operate at X profitability percentage. So you're just looking for the cheapest ingredient that you can pass. It's good food.

[B]

And we're only making the person that owns that property even more filthy rich. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, there's an imbalance.

[C]

Yeah, it's, it's pretty great being at a company where a lot of the other hotel groups I work for, you were beholden to P and L and budget to a fault. In my opinion, if something broke and it wasn't in the budget to fix it, you just had to make do. And I was at a restaurant space where we were a hugely financially successful restaurant and we were serving our food off of three different china patterns because there was an accident where a bunch of plates broke and they wouldn't replace them. And I mean this was, this was a huge operation. So if that happens here, they pick up the phone and call me. I'm like, yes, let's fix the problem.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What is one thing you've done recently that has really moved the needle on profit in terms of a system, a technology, a new way of doing things that has increased revenue or profit? Maybe some marketing technique.

[C]

We have engaged in PR recently instead of social media. I think there's so much noise in the social media world that it's not the same tool it once was. Eight years ago you could have an Instagram account and grow it and get business coming in. You have to have some kind of public relations to engage with your community to have any kind of, of real authenticity to say I operate within the market I'm in and am I part of my community?

[B]

Yeah. Well, Kathryn did a great job getting me.

[C]

Yeah, Catherine, there you go. There's another person I'll give a shout out to is one for the books. Catherine has done a great job. I've known her for 12 years as well.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And yeah, it's like we want to support her as a local business and she has in turn been able to support us and you know, communicate out to people while we're not chasing an award. The Michelin recommendation is huge. That we were As a pizza concept, one of 66 in the world recognized by the Michelin Guide. We are on an Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Asheville, and hopefully more people will, you know, make that leap to say, hey, I'm going to try a hotel restaurant.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's Catherine. One for the. One for the books.

[C]

One for the books.

[B]

One for the books. One for the books. Dot com, if you're interested. And I will say this, I usually don't work with publicists because I want to be journalistic. I want to be. I want it to come from the. The community, because you know this marketplace way better than I do. And to your point, I think you can buy media if you have a publicist. I will say I. I try to read every email that a publicist sends me, because every once in a while, there's a dime in the rough. And I was like, ooh. And that's what happened with this road trip, is she reached out with you and Eric Scheffer as. As an offering. And I was like, oh, wait a second. I was like, this could be really good. Like, these are really. Every Once in a while, you do get a real quality lead. And I don't want to be closed off to those opportunities because I want to come back to Asheville. And I'm hoping that by having two people that I met, they can open up. Up the market to me and help me find new people, you know, And I need. I needed a seed to spread, you know, pressure. Phil, I hope that you become that seed, and I hope Eric Scheffer becomes that seat, too.

[C]

So, yeah, you're talking to another really talented restaurant tour in town. One of my favorite spots. One of the. We stay at home most for home bodies, but when we go out, there are three places. Places we go to, and Jetty Rays is one of those three.

[B]

Yeah, I can't. I can't wait to talk. I'm actually gonna be talking to him in about an hour and 10 minutes, so we got to wrap this up. The mission statement is to change the world by inspiring, empowering, and transforming the industry. How have you personally transformed. How are you a better man today than the men you were when you got started in this industry?

[C]

By defining my success by other people's success.

[B]

Yeah. If you got the news, you'd be leaving this world tomorrow. All the memories of you, your work, and your restaurants would be lost with your departure, with the exception of three pieces of wisdom you could leave behind for the good of me, for the good of humanity, and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be?

[C]

Lead with kindness.

[B]

1.

[C]

Be relentless in the pursuit of your values.

[B]

2.

[C]

Have fun.

[B]

3. This has been so much fun, Phil. I like to find the majority of my guests through word of mouth. Who do you respect and admire in the industry? Somebody who's doing it right, making an impact and making money while they do it. Who are the people I need to talk to in this city of Asheville?

[C]

I'll give you two of my other favorite places in town. You need to talk to. Owl Bakery. Owl. It stands for Old World legend Bakery. Been in the market for quite a while and makes the best croissant I've had. Maybe even outside or inside of France.

[B]

Damn.

[C]

And I was listening to an episode yesterday where you were talking about the loss of neighborhood feel restaurants. And we have one of those here that's doing it right. They're called Tall Johns. They also are recognized by the Michelin guide recently. And it is an old house in the Montford neighborhood about five minutes up the road from here. And it transforms you to feel like you're in a neighborhood, but also maybe in New York.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And it's approachable food done well. And there's always, like, a small surprise. Like, I've never had mint put on my beef tartare, and it's good.

[B]

Nice. And who are the people I should be talking to at Tall John's and Owl Bakery?

[C]

Tall Johns. I don't have a super strong relationship with anyone there. Just an admirer. But Susanna Gerhardt's the owner of Owl Bakery.

[B]

What's her last name again?

[C]

Gerhart. I'll. I'll give it to you offline. Got it.

[B]

Look out, Susanna and Tall Johns. I'm coming after you guys. I'd love to get you on the show and how to queen connect with you. If we really enjoyed today's conversation, we want to come to Asheville and get some amazing pizza. Guys. You. If you are in Asheville, you gotta check out. This spot is gorgeous. The. The view. I don't know if I can do a little. I don't know if this will come up on the camera, but I'm gonna do a little pan.

[C]

If you're watching our.

[B]

If you're watching our YouTube. If you're not watching our YouTube, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can see the pan of this physical space. It's a little bright out there.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It is a beautiful view. It's a beautiful location. It's been a great conversation, my man. Thank you very much. Very much. For taking the time to share your story, your knowledge and your values. There is no questioning, my man. You are unstoppable.

[C]

Thank you. It's been great.

[B]

Cheers.

[A]

There's another episode wrapped up here at Restaurant Unstoppable.

[B]

Special thanks to our guest today, Chef.

[A]

Philip Bulhoffer, for coming on. And you know, this is a unique perspective. The world of hotels has tons of opportunity for restaurant professionals.

[B]

If this is a career path you're.

[A]

Interested in, then be sure to join us for coffee with eric. Or on February 16th, Philip will be joining us live to engage you and head over to restaurantunstoppable.com CWE, which stands.

[B]

For Coffee with Eric.

[A]

If you're not a member of Restaurant Unstoppable Network, I'll get you the zoom.

[B]

Link to join this conversation.

[A]

This one's on me.

[B]

We'll see you there.

[A]

And if you are looking to join the community, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com live via access to all of our live events. They're happening all the time, at least once a week, and there's some great feedback we're getting. We want you to be a part of this. You are the average of those you surround yourself with, and we're. We're bringing them to the table. All you gotta do is show up.

[B]

We'll see you there.