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Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building a Restaurant Brand with Chef JJ Johnson
00:25:05
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- [00:00]
Commercial Announcer
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- [00:30]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, chef J.J. johnson. J.J. is a James Beard award winning chef, author and entrepreneur. He's the founder of Field Trip, a rice bowl shop with locations across New York City and international location at Atlantis paradise island. And a new outpost coming soon to JFK Airport. It's also the host of Just eats with Chef JJ on Clio TV and was recently named to the Time 2026 closers list for his work in closing the racial equity gap. He also remains a dedicated advocate for food justice through his work as a board member with Rethink Food. J.J. what's up, man? Welcome to the show.
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Chef JJ Johnson
What's up, Travis? Thanks for having me.
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Travis
So let's go back in time, man. Tell me the first time you ever made a dollar that you were excited about something that shocked you, something that surprised you, that somebody was actually willing to pay you money for this thing.
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Chef JJ Johnson
You know, I started working at 14 years old, so in my household, you could only ask your parents from my parents for money. But for so long, if you really wanted to do what you wanted to do. And I wanted to have my own money. So my first time I ever made a dollar, I was a dishwasher at a country club. And maybe before that, I used to shovel driveways during the wintertime because I grew up in Northeast Pennsylvania.
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Travis
Yeah. So always doing something to make a dollar. Where along the way did you get an interest in food?
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Chef JJ Johnson
I always. I always loved cooking. I was cooking in my grandmother's kitchen. Food for me always brings people together. Something like one of the best things you can do to ignite conversation and. And it connects us all. It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from where you go, food is at the center of the table and it makes us all feel really good. And that's why I've been in, in the business my whole life. I never have done anything else. Very fortunate of that.
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Travis
And anybody else, anybody else in the family that did anything like that or were you the only one now?
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Chef JJ Johnson
I'm the only one that became a professional chef. You would hear like stories now. People would say, oh man, I used to think, tell your grandmother she should open a restaurant or you know, or your uncle this. But I'm the only one that really pursued the dream of, of cooking.
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Travis
At what point did you think, you know what, I've gotten some experience, I'm pretty good at this, let me start my own restaurant.
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Chef JJ Johnson
You know, I used to work at it for, I was about 28 years old, maybe 29 years old. And I was working for the X CEO of Time Warner and Citibank, Dick Parsons, rest in peace. And he owned a restaurant called the Cecil. And I said, if I really work this hard for this guy, what happens if I work really hard for myself? And then that's when I started to kind of position myself and trying to raise money to open up a restaurant. I did a little friends and family round. I was unable to raise enough money, was never going to this fast casual space, was always going into a full service restaurant that would have just been small, that I can maintain and cook out of that. You'd see me. But I wind up opening field trip because that's all I had in the, in the bank to do and it.
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Commercial Announcer
Oh, no way.
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Wow.
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Travis
So it was like a starting interrupt. So basically the field trip kind of came out of like a capital constraint essentially. And you were just like, well what, what can I do with the money that I've raised since I can't get the amount of money that I really wanted.
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Chef JJ Johnson
Yeah, yeah, no 100 capital constraint. I always asked my, I was asking my friends like, yo man, how'd you raise $4 million? How'd you raise $5 million? I could barely get 500,000. Like who are you talking to? And yeah, we raised about 500 thousands of friends and family money and, and that's how I was able to launch field trip. I opened the doors with not enough money. I think I just kept pouring in my own money as we kept, as we kept going to keep to keep it going. I don't think people, restaurant industry don't understand that. Like I tell people all the time, raise, when you open a restaurant, you got to raise money. Like the tech, tech world. You know, these guys make so much money in the tech world on an idea, it's not even freaking real.
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Travis
Yeah, right, exactly. And you have no idea if there's any demand for that thing that you're creating. Whereas in the restaurant space you do know, especially if you're a good chef. But yeah, it is crazy, bro. Like, we have, my wife and I have a small, it's a acai bowl shop. So it's a qsr. And even in a venture like that, I was surprised. It was just like, wait, how much, how much money is this cost? What? Like we need to move that sink over to that. Like, how much is that going to be? Oh, we got to get, we have to wait how many months for permitting and how, how many lease payments are we going to have to make before we can get the permit, Before I
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Chef JJ Johnson
can even get in there to do anything?
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Travis
Yeah, it just, you, it's, it's, it's a process of lighting money on fire until, until you can make anything coming in the door. You know, and I think, I believe,
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Chef JJ Johnson
I believe that that happens in a lot of other industries too. Right? I think, I think other industries are just like, oh man, it's going to take time. Don't worry, we're going to get our return on investment. Where restaurants are just such a blue collar business that, yeah, it's glorified now because of tv. But you know, a lot of restaurants just close because they just didn't have that rent payment or they just didn't have that one week of payroll. Not because it was a bad concept or it's a bad location. They just didn't have enough money to see this baby be birthed and grow. And that has happened. Unfortunately. There's been times that we've been short on cash in some areas. Not because early on I'm fortunate that, you know, I've been able to do some other things outside of the restaurant industry that gives me cash to fund, to fund things. But it's. If it's funded well, you, you could be around for a while. Especially if you're not being frugalist, just spending money on nonsense. Oh, let me get those tiles or let me do this or let me do that. Being smart about it.
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Travis
Yeah, yeah, Just take some time. And it take, it takes time to just establish a base of customers that know you're there, that depend on you for the type of food that you deliver on. It's like, even if it's really good, the type of Success that you're going to see is like, that you want to see is probably not going to come until like, what year three, year four. Being in business, like, you got to build a base.
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Chef JJ Johnson
And it's interesting watching, like all these tick tock kids opening restaurants have no idea what they're doing. They're hiring somebody that's, in my world, a friend of mine, to do operations, do this, do that, and then they open it and they have a line because they have a fan base. And now a lot of them, all of them are trying to get into it. It's kind of like the new Food Network chef star they're all trying to get into because they have a fan base. But then they're tapping into all these real chefs to help them come up with, you know, hanks, you know, prime rib dip, like these, these things where you don't really know how the operations of the business work. And it's good for our industry on the backside as we can help run these places. But you, I wish chefs would get more of a shot like that where they're like the real operators, cook really good food.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Chef JJ Johnson
And can do things, but they need the money.
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Travis
Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. What, what were some of the surprising, let's say, skills that you, that you were not expecting to have to learn? Because, like, obviously being a chef and opening in a rush, opening a restaurant to me is like being a plumber opening up a plumbing business. It's like, you know how to do the thing. But.
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Commercial Announcer
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Let's go.
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Chef JJ Johnson
You could say that again.
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Commercial Announcer
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Chef JJ Johnson
Now we party.
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Travis
This is incredible.
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Commercial Announcer
Wow.
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Travis
I am clearing the rest of the day.
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Commercial Announcer
Disney and Pixar's Hoppers now available on Disney. Rated pg.
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Travis
Being an entrepreneur is a wildly different skill set than doing the thing that you know how to do right. So what, what were some of the skills that you had to learn that you were maybe like baptized by fire in that you were like, oh, man, I didn't Even I didn't think about this. I have to learn how to, whatever, do payroll, do marketing, do hiring, do train, whatever. What were some of the.
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Chef JJ Johnson
Yeah, no, no, I, I, I would definitely say do payroll, do the books. You know, the accounting side of the business. Something really big to be paying attention to. Sales tax, like kind of all these things that you don't even know are taking place in a restaurant that, that make it run. Insurance. What, what's the right insurance to have? Do you have a $1 million, do you have a $10 million, $5 million umbrella? Why do I need this? What do I like? Those things add up. Those insurance things add up. So really know, do you have the right payroll? Do I use adp? Do I use this company that I saw on the commercial or I see on an Instagram, you know, ad? So you have to, you have to start to become not quote unquote, an expert, but you have to become knowledgeable in the spaces. And you can't rely on like AI to tell you what to do. You AI can help read the books and say, hey, look at this line or look at this line. But somebody has to execute it. But somebody has to put those books together. And that's a really important part of the business. Is money in, money and money out.
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Travis
Yeah, yeah. Especially in restaurants. I mean that, like I said, we, we have this QSR that we have. And that was probably one of the biggest things that, that I realized early on was like, oh man, like food margins are slim margins. And if you don't, if you don't keep a watchful eye on labor costs and cost of goods sold, like those things can just creep up and eat half of your profit margin in any given month. Especially if you're in sort of a
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Chef JJ Johnson
seasonal business and especially cost of goods right now. Like you're buying beef today, maybe briskets, $8 a pound, which is crazy to even say out loud. And then next week it'll be nine. And I can't, you can't go back and change your price. So you have to like hedge a little bit on your menu changes. You got to push your price up maybe a little higher than you want it to be, or you got to take it on the chin because you weren't prepared for it and hopefully something else drops down and make the menu mix work. But yeah, the price of food is not helping any restaurant right now. I don't care who you are unless you crazy price. I make people laugh and say, how is it more now than it was in Covid that's right. That doesn't make any sense.
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Travis
And especially somewhere like New York City where you're operating, you also deal with the rise of labor costs, right?
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Chef JJ Johnson
Yeah. The rise of labor cost is real. Labor costs increase every year. Minimum wage, you know, I was talking, you know, I got an email from the mayor's office talking about $30 minimum wage. And I said, you guys, I want people to have affordable. I want people to have, quote, unquote, whatever we want to decide affordable living is. Right. We have to change the model. I'm a firm believer of that. But if 30, if it, if minimum wage is $30, that means your best employee is a $42 guy. Now the $30 guy is a porter. Right. So we have to think about this in many different ways. It's not about minimum wage. It's about the collective workforce and looking at a number for the collective workforce. Because if I'm a very skilled line cook, I'm not taking $30 like the, like the porter. And everybody isn't going to take $30. Even if they tell you they are. They're going to want more.
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Travis
That's right.
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Chef JJ Johnson
They don't get it from me. They'll go find out somewhere else to get it from.
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Travis
And, and the person they're going to get it from is somebody who's got unlimited funds like the big corporations or a private equity funded restaurant line or something like that. That's the thing that, that's the thing that frustrates me about the conversation. It's like, I know something needs to be done about, you know, affordability and housing, all these other things. But it's also like, man, if you're forcing small business owners who are trying to make ends meet and figure out how to operate a business with a little bit of profit, and then you're requiring them to pay people all of a sudden $30 an hour, man, it's just like now all of a sudden the cost of a sandwich is going to be 26 bucks. I cannot sell this for 14 hours.
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Chef JJ Johnson
Yeah. And it doesn't matter if you make more money. It's all about the mental. Like, am I paying $26 for chopped cheese? Like, right. So, you know, we, I think collectively, it's like, what is affordability? What do people need? People need health insurance. Okay, let's get everybody collectively health insurance. Will that help the cost of living? Will that help people put more money in their pocket and chip away in so many other areas versus constantly just looking at minimum wage? Because it hasn't Solved any issue yet, correct?
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Commercial Announcer
Yeah.
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Travis
And like I said, it only. It only hurts the small business owner who, who just doesn't know what they're doing. And, and like I said, is trying. Is trying their best to make ends meet and build. Like, people just get this. There's a misconception that because you own a business, you just have unlimited money to be able to pay people more money just because they want more money or need more money. And it's just like. But there, the money's got to come from somewhere, man. Like, like, if. If you want to get paid this much, that means the cost of this sandwich is going to be this much. And then are people going to be willing to pay that or are they just going to go down the street to raising canes that can afford to keep their costs low or whatever?
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Chef JJ Johnson
I'm seeing folks doing, like, cooperatives now in restaurant industry, where the whole group is in a cooperative. They profit share, they margin share. And I think it worked, but only works for a certain type of owner. I want to get a little bit more down into the gritty of, like, affordability especially. I think for me, I think I'll speak for the country. I think the country's looking for some type of affordable, like a way to have health care. And that will drive down the price in your pocket because if you don't have it, at one point you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars because you need something.
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Travis
Yeah.
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Chef JJ Johnson
And that's chipping away from the savings account or that check you just got paid. So there has to be something else that we can do besides looking at minimum wage. Sorry on this.
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Travis
Yeah, no, I appreciate that, man. I genuinely love to hear different perspectives on this because I do think that there are real issues need to be addressed instead of just the like, well, this is the rate, so deal with it and. Or don't deal with it. And, you know, that's just. It is what it is. That's the way it's always been done. And it's like, well, the way it's always been done is a really bad reason to continue doing things that way. So, like, two things can be true at the same time where it's like, yes, this needs to be addressed. But also it's not as simple as just like, well, let's just keep raising the minimum wage because there's going to be a lot of downstream effects of that for small business owners for pricing of meals and of goods. So there's got to be something that can be done without, you know, completely Wrecking the P and L of a small business owner trying to bootstrap a restaurant business, you know? Yeah. What, what, what's your, what's your guys. Just outta curiosity, jj, what's your guys's best selling item so far?
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Chef JJ Johnson
Our best selling item is our roasted chicken bowl. It's 10 spices, 10 spice rubbed chicken thighs with jollof rice. Our wok vegetables will consist of cabbage and collard greens, avocado, cilantro sauce and pickled red onions. That's our cellar in New York.
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Travis
Making me hungry, bro.
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Chef JJ Johnson
It's a good bowl. It's a tasty bowl.
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Travis
What does your time allotment look like? You mentioned that you're, you know, learning stuff like HR and hiring and how to pay people and, and sales tax. And then you have insurance and then you have operating the business and leases and all that stuff. And then you have, you know, marketing and customer acquisition and getting people through the door and trying to make sure that there's a higher lifetime value baked into each customer. And then you have to think about the menu and how do we curate the menu and what items should we try out this month? Is there, is there a limited time offer we can throw in to test this new product? What, where are you spending the majority of your time these days?
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Chef JJ Johnson
I'm spending the majority of my time on all those things you just said, which I don't want to do.
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- [17:27]
Chef JJ Johnson
Spending my time on any of that shit. It is. It is. You know, when you're a founder, entrepreneur, you are, you're wearing many different hats. I don't think that's what makes a business successful. I've had to come down and say that I'm more, we're in the business now of like hiring experts in the space. I kind of call people like you need, you need like hound dogs. Like they, they're, they going fine. Whatever you're looking for, they're going to get it done. They're going to wear multiple hats in the early stage of the business. And then you get to a point in the business where you're Like I need somebody to wear maybe two hats. I'm a firm believer that people should wear two hats in a business. If you're trying to be a profitable business, if you are just burning capital and you don't care, you'll wear one hat and that's it. But I want my team to wear two hats and be experts in one of the two things and they can help assist in the other area. And we're trying to get to that point. I spend most of my time on operations, which consists of ap, ar, accounting, cash flow things. I do not. I'm not an expert in that. I've taught myself. So I'm an operator at heart, like a chef operator. And then marketing and food is probably second and third or third and fourth. And I wish it was a reverse. I wish I was able to work on food and marketing and you know, the other things and then cash flow, of course, and then the other, like ar, ap, the team could handle on their own, but those things are just important. Right. Like, I don't think people realize like the restaurant industry from like a cash flow perspective, especially if you're like the third party business. If you get paid from a third party today, you don't see that money until like 30 days later.
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Travis
Right. In, in a good case scenario.
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Chef JJ Johnson
Right. In a good case scenario. Or you know, so you have to. And then they take out all the margins, all the, all the fees, all the commissions, all those things. Right. And then you get paid. Right. And so your cash flow some, most restaurant businesses cash flow is like a 45 day kind of see their bulk of cash. So you have to learn your cash flow of the business. And I learned this from an accounting company that we worked with that we moved on from. But I would say that their strongest suit was that they knew the cash flow of the business very, very well on every dollar, where it was coming from when it would hit the bank. And that's how we would pay people. Right. We would pay certain vendors on that kind of like ebb and flow and we kind of lost that magic. So then I kind of used their method with our new companies over the last two years to try to implement that. Just taking what a guy Landry used to do and try to put that in place. But that's not my strong suit at all. And but you know, you're the founder of the business, you got to jump in where it's needed and rock and roll.
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Travis
Yeah. Nobody is going to care more about the cash in and cash out of the business. Than you as the business owner. So you have to have some level of competency or care to at least
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Chef JJ Johnson
understand somebody sees all the cash. Like, oh, yo, you know, like, hold on, slow down, slow down. What are the terms? Oh, 30. 30. These guys are 35. What are these guys? Oh, these guys are 26. What are these guys? Okay, so everybody's not on the same term. Just, you know, on the turn. You got to really know what's going on here.
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Travis
Yeah, that's right. On, on the marketing side, what do you guys, what are you guys doing? What have you found to work for the restaurant business and the marketing side?
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Chef JJ Johnson
I think for us we've retained, we learn how to retain customers. We're a value based business. People like their points, people want to come in, people talk to us. So we, you know, through and throughout. We might increase our sales 2 to 5% a year because a friend is bringing a friend. But for the most part we have folk, we have focused on retaining folks and the rest is referral business. I think as we get into the summer or the fall, we're going to lean heavily into some type of marketing business where it's going to be TikTok and newsletters or you know, something that we're going to be pushing really hard. My goal is how do we obtain new customers, new awareness and especially in New York City, in Harlem where one of the restaurants are located, people have, are, are in and out of Harlem a lot. So you know, we've lost a lot of our top selling customer, top spending customers because they moved to Texas, they went to Florida or they in Westchester now and then in Rockefeller center the same thing. We used to do a lot of catering business. That young lady who was manning the desk, I was in charge of canning orders, might have got promoted and somebody new comes in, they start ordering from their new restaurants that they like. So we are trying to figure out the ebb and the flow, especially in New York with the big boy competition of growth restaurants like Raising Cane comes in. Now all of a sudden you're getting chicken fingers for lunch, Right. I don't know why, but you are, you know, or you're competing against Chopped and Dos Toros and those guys or Sweet Green. So we're just trying to figure out where we fit in if we could become in the Rockefeller center area. You know, one, we're, we're your option one, one time a week. That's a win for us versus, you know, two time, two times a month.
- [22:31]
Travis
Yeah. Right now on the airport, you guys are Getting into JFK soon. Those deals are not easy to make. How did that come about?
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Chef JJ Johnson
That took me seven years to get done a bidding RFP after RFP. We're super excited again to T4 JFK Delta Terminal. I think for us talking about brand marketing awareness, I think it's going to really help people learn about the brand. I'm hoping it has the same effect Shake Shack had when it went into the JFK terminal. Yeah, no kidding about it, but yeah. No, it's a, it's a licensee deal. As our second licensee concept, it'll be good for the brand. They operate it. We, we, we manage it to make sure it stays consistent and we should hopefully be open. I keep saying that by the end of the month. So.
- [23:18]
Travis
Nice, man. Huge congrats on that. Like I said, I know those deals are not easy to do. Seven years in the making. Congrats on all the success you've been seeing, man. I, I wish you nothing but the best. Where can people go to get more from you and everything you're working on?
- [23:28]
Chef JJ Johnson
Jj, you can follow me on all social channels at Chef jj, You could pop them up. Pop up on my website, Chef JJ Co. Or pull up to the restaurants. Field trip in Harlem, Rockefeller center or the Atlantis in the Bahamas. That's where you always can get my food.
- [23:43]
Travis
Chef JJ over on Instagram, go check out some of the stuff that JJ has been cooking up literally and figuratively over on his Instagram. If you're in the New York area or if you're happen to be Paradise Island, Bahamas at Atlantis or you're traveling through the JFK airport anytime after this month, go, go give their food a shot. I know I will definitely be looking out for it next time. I'm out up on the in the Northeast myself. So jj, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show, man. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next time. Peace.