Al Lucas: Go Work for a Chain

0:00I'm going to ask you a question that might sting a bit. How many holiday parties do you have booked for the month of December? Not like how many do you expect? It's how many are on the books right now with the deposits collected and the contracts signed. And for many of you, I worry that the answer is not enough. And here's why that matters. I think that the companies that are going to throw those parties are picking their venues right now. This is a sweet spot between August and September. And by the time you start thinking about December, the decision's already been made. You're not losing those parties in November.

0:34You're going to lose them this month. And that's why I built the Private Events Engine. It's a simple three-part system that leverages AI to do most of the work for you. And this month in the Marketing Masterclass, I'm going to walk you through it. It's going to show you how to package events, how to get in front of the people that are booking them, and how to close them without discounting. And you get the whole thing for free. So show up to this month's Marketing Masterclass. Go to restaurantbusinessschool.com today to sign up. Now here we go. I would get out of individually owned restaurants ASAP.

1:12I would either choose a high quality chain or an independent restaurant group such as ours because we do have fundamentals behind it. We are food driven or experience driven. We really layer on something that not necessarily a chain will give you day in and day out. Welcome to Full Calm, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators, served up on the house.

1:42What if the fastest way to become a successful independent restaurateur is to go to work for a chain? Al Lucas spent 21 years at Chart House, starting as a dishwasher and leaving as a vice president. Then he took all of that experience to Stephen Starr, and then to Defined Hospitality, where one of his brands just won Outstanding Restaurant for the 2026 James Beard Awards. When a young cook asked him for career advice, Al told him to get out of independent restaurants as quickly as possible. And in today's conversation, we get into the fundamentals that most independents are never taught. How Al and his partners choose who is worth building a restaurant around and why the room at the James Beard Awards is full of operators might be gone in a year.

2:24If you learn this business by figuring it out alone, this show will show you what you missed.

2:35Well, Define Hospitality, I'm partners with my two partners, Greg Root and Nick Kennedy, with Roland Cassis and David Rooter. Nick, Greg, and I are the operators. What led me here was my life in the restaurant business starting in 1979. But a pivotal moment is when I actually met one of my partners in 2002, Greg Root. I actually hired him and we were working together at Star Restaurant and he was working as a manager for me. And so at that point, Greg was, we had a business relationship that morphed into a friendship and, you know, sort of planted the seeds for later on when Greg and Nick actually got together and in essence launched the company with the opening of our first restaurant, Root Restaurant, which was a Mediterranean-inspired, or pardon me, a Spanish tapas-inspired wine bar, along with our partner, Roland Cassis, and David Reuter, who was an investor in that business.

3:33And so that was the launch of Defined hospitality that moment. I had a friendship, was sitting on basically the sidelines, was used for consulting purposes. What do you think of this idea? Here we go. And then we really sort of made this covenant that if the time was right, we would grow the company and look for an opportunity for me to join the company, which we did in 2018. And people asked you for your advice because of your success previously and kind of currently. Where did that success come from? Took time. There was some patience. No substitute. I think that the restaurant business gives you some time, the school of hard knocks.

4:13But it started right at the beginning, 1979. I started with an amazing company called Chart House Restaurants. I started as a dishwasher. I was immediately immersed in the culture without knowing the word culture. Using the word culture, That was the hook. And it was a culture company based upon some principles, most notably the Golden Rule and a whole bunch of others. But the Golden Rule was the baseline. And I was surrounded by great leaders. And that leadership team was forged by some of the greatest leadership training you could get non-restaurant business, which was the Navy SEALs and the underwater demolitions team of one and two through that era of 1959 through 1961.

4:57The first Chart House actually opened in 4th of July 1961. So that culture of where they came from, where checklists and operational systems and the day in the life of a Navy SEAL became the day in the life of a Chart House manager. Not life and death, but fundamentals. That's where it started for me. I think it's always nice to have like a proven model, a blueprint. is an independent restaurateur myself. I had only worked for independent restaurateurs, which by and large for me and my experience was like the blind leading the blind. I was learning as quickly as they were learning, right? And I was able to learn using other people's money, which was an amazing experience in my youth.

5:40But I didn't see a lot right. Like Chart House is this amazing behemoth of a company that started foundationally strong. What parts of that blueprint have you carried with you your entire career. I just have to interject a quick story. I met with a young man the other day. He loves the business, is pursuing this, and he's been bouncing around in independent restaurants and kind of getting paid well, like hazard pay though, with no mentor. And he asked, you know, and after this sort of interview, I asked him, hey, what do you have for me? What can I help you with? And he goes, what recommendation do you have for someone like me?

6:15And I said, well, you got two paths to pursue, in my opinion, but I would get out of individually owned restaurants ASAP. And I would either choose a high quality chain or an independent restaurant group such as ours, because we do have fundamentals behind it. We are fun to work with, but we are food driven, we're experience driven. And so that part of the business, we really layer on something that not necessarily the chain will give you day in and day out, but there's no substitute for that fundamental training where they're, you know, the regional managers calling for the numbers on Tuesday morning and you better know them and you better, you can't be making it up because that's what makes those places really tick.

6:59So that fundamentally is what I've brought along with me. And then how do you weave a culture? That also is what I brought with me, the importance of it, where people want to know the why of what they're signing up for. And I don't think there's any substitute for that. And I think sometimes the why changes every day in an independent restaurant where the leadership doesn't have significant experience in either of the two avenues that I'm speaking of. And so that never left me and it crept. And I grew on that. And I layered on building blocks, you know, as I matured as a manager, because I was still in the school of hard knocks, still making mistakes.

7:37But I was fortunate to be in an organization that if you showed integrity, you worked hard and you were respectful for others, they had a general safety net around you they wanted you to succeed and they would literally at times my career even then maybe seals would airdrop in and give you the help you needed to get you over the hump in some sort you're in some ways it could be anything from financial training to hr training to you know hey we need to write the ship on how the way the kitchen's being ran there was resources and people and and the structure that allowed you to bring that forward and that landed me in the lap i didn't always i didn't stay a dishwasher for 21 years there I actually became the vice president of the East Coast, vice president of operations.

8:19And when I left Chart House, it landed me into a lap of one of the best independent restaurateurs in the country, arguably, in Stephen Starr and Starr Restaurants. and all that training landed me into this wild entrepreneurial multi-concepted restaurateur where in his own way was a Navy SEAL but not with that sort of structure and so it immediately gave me the opportunity to test my mettle and see if I could bring my learnings forward and apply it to an organization that was on fire but was really lacking in that sort of systematic training and And even culture in a way, the culture was wild and wooly.

8:57So helping define culture and what was important to us at star restaurants, that's what I brought with me. And it worked. You know, Steven and I, we did some great work together. So I think that my 21, 22 years leading up to that, I dragged it along. It dragged me along and it worked at the time I most needed it to make an impact in a new organization. And it was scary for me. And it was scary. I'm leaving that safety net. And even though I was a leader in the organization, been through a lot, I hadn't worked for anyone else but them. And so to go in that office and make a difference and want to make a difference with Stephen and his team at the time, I'm super grateful for all those moments that that chain restaurant gave me.

9:37I was super excited to talk to you, mainly because, Al, you have a really wide aperture. I'll sit across from an independent restaurateur, single unit, relatively young, who just has a tiger by the tail, right? One restaurant that is just absolutely crushing. And I'll say, what do you think the secret success is? And they'll say, well, you know, I think it's if you serve great food and great beverage with consistent service, you're going to win. And I always think to myself, no, great restaurants go out of business every single day. As restauranteurs, I think we have a bias towards success, right?

10:18We have an optimist perspective in an industry where everything seems to go wrong every day and failure is hiding behind every corner. But you've seen a lot. And so like when I ask you, what are the intangibles? Assuming that great food and great beverage and great service and that all of that is done consistently, that those are table stakes today. Well, yeah, I mean, and you know how hard that triumphant is to get to anyway. But it's funny, I'll quote one of my partners, Nick Kennedy. He'll say, you know, we'll be sitting there, we could be talking business, we could be just, you know, talking story.

10:57And, you know, we'll be like headed out to the, well, we better head out to the restaurants. And Nick's quote would be, yeah, because something's going wrong somewhere. It's just a matter of fact how badly it is. So let's go find it. And it's true because there's so many more hats than food, beverage, and service and even culture and so many more learnings. Look at where we're AI. As we sit here and speak right now, there's this new dinosaur or the new monster in the room. And how do we wrestle with that? And what's it mean to us? So having the time to be well-versed in so many of the other things, labor laws, having great financial discipline, paying attention to the changing labor laws, for example, what's going on in the world of health.

11:43I mean, look at us right now. We have people getting sick because of lettuce. I mean, all those things are happening at any given time. And you have to be thinking about all the intangibles as well as the food and beverage. And so subsequently, what sustains your business is having the systems and developing your people and having training where the food, beverage and service, those people that working for you are embracing that. They're professionals. They love it. It's so important to them. They want to evolve and grow. So us as owners, us as entrepreneurs can spend more time working on our business.

12:21And that requires a lot of extra, you know, a lot of extra credit, a lot of like research, a lot of what's going on here. So I think that understanding that you have to have systems to support the grapefruit and beverage, because if they're solely contingent upon you, something really bad can be happening around the corner. As you're talking, I'm thinking about picnic because I think that it so speaks to like intentionality. intentionality. You spend a year just trying to make sure that the building doesn't fall down, then another year to restore it, a couple of million dollars down the pipe before even a dollar of revenue comes through the door.

12:59You put 200 plus seats in it. You hold half of them for walk-ins. And then you turn to people and you say, this is a low touch service experience. Those are all really critical decisions. You know, in marketing, one of the big rules is that you never mess with one variable at a time because you don't know which one could potentially break it or fix it. And it just seemed like with Picnic, you were making a bunch of really strategic choices. Can you tell me when we stratify all of these decisions, which many of them feel very counterintuitive to normal industry dogma, how it all made sense in your head and then how it all translated into like real service?

13:45picnic in so many ways is this giant juxtaposition, right? Who does what we did nowadays anyway, right? Take that risk on the building. But that alone, there's a lot of people that love us for it. They feel like we've kept this jewel and shined it up. And that jewel box is a fabric of a neighborhood and a fabric of the history of that street and that area. And so that alone was a strategic decision that required us to learn a bunch of stuff. It's been a long time since I had to go through preservation societies and historical societies to ensure that our facade was approved and things like that.

14:21Time, money, all these things, you know, every moment you make a decision like that, the clock's on and the meter's running. And then the bedrock of that, I'll go back again, my partner, Nick Kennedy, who really drives the culinary side of our organization. We wanted the simple food to be world class. And so what's that mean? Well, now you've got to get on your horse and start really sourcing. Another puzzle piece, other time, lots of R &D. No one's dropping off the chicken for three, that type of thing. We had these thoughts about how far reaching we wanted the oyster program to be. Another puzzle piece is more time, more research.

15:04So the wine program was, we wanted it to be this experience. We had inspiration from Bacchanal and New Orleans and other places. So we were putting together all these puzzle pieces while the meter was running and all these things. And we have this over 100, you know, 160, 70 bottles of wine that you enter this wine room and could feel daunting or it can feel special. And what makes it feel special is that we have someone there that's attending to you and really makes that moment come alive, matches it to the food. It's a live wine list with a human being. We made another decision. One of the things that we're really proud of in our restaurants is we have all display kitchens.

15:46And one of the reasons why we do that is we love the fear of it. But we also want our cooks to be able to look up from their station and see the fruits of their labor, the smile on the guest's face. And in Picnic, we actually took it another level. It's the only restaurant that we actually also show you the dishroom. And this is really the first time that every single team member of that experience can be seen by our guests and they can see the guests. We were trying to come up with a big why, but at the same time, you described it as a low-touch service experience. But we wanted it to be a well-informed, interactive experience from the time you hit the door to the time we say goodbye to you.

16:28It wasn't linear. You know, like, okay, we're doing Soraya. It's like, okay, we're doing Lebanese spirit. It's going to be this. And everything's on a string, right? We were doing puzzle pieces left and right. We had to develop a large party business. We had to do something for the mezzanine. We had to think about entertainment or no entertainment. So in this case, I think it was one of our, certainly our most challenging, but also incredibly fun because we had to pull on each of our own individual resources and experiences to kind of get that puzzle on the dining room table and start putting those pieces together.

16:59And then all of a sudden, somebody would bump into the table and we'd be missing a few pieces. And super fun, super rewarding, and a testament to all of our careers to be able to come together, put these people together, and make it happen in the fashion that it did and has. And it continues to evolve. I mean, our businesses, we're having an incredible time watching that business grow. Super fun. But we also have to program it. You know, it doesn't stop. We did a lot of things to make it more picnicky this summer with our menu and lobster night on Wednesday nights, which has been an unbelievable hit.

17:34Some other things that we've done. So restauranteurs by nature are tinkerers. You got to always be tinkering with it and kind of going back to the drawing board. And one of the things that I'll never forget about picnic is we have this bartender, seasoned guy. He's an artist. He's been around. He spent nine years in New Orleans working at some really cool places. and he said to me one day, I was excited about working for this company. He goes, and I'm really happy I'm here. But the thing that I am most impressed with by you guys is how quickly you change something that isn't working. And I said to him, well, thank you.

18:12I wish we didn't have to change so many things. And I go, but really think about it, Tim, that's because of you guys. And I promised you, when we sat there at the opening meeting and I 10 lineup. Remember what I said to you? And he actually did. He said, when I come in and ask you, how's it going? It's not a rhetorical question. Please don't miss your chance to tell me how it's going. So, you know, everybody likes to think of themselves as being incredibly attached to their customers and we go to great lengths to be, but there's no substitute for those people that are doing it night in and night out and it's their livelihood.

18:46And so when they want it to work, we want it to work. Then there's some magic that can happen. That's when you can pivot and do things that sort of make it come to life in a way that is incredibly meaningful for everyone. You know, more and more customers are, I mean, like they're our best marketing right now. I mean, we've seen all this engagement go up. We've seen all this reposting on Instagram there. It's incredible. We have active restaurants anyway, but this was a big swing for us and a lot of risk. We're happy to see it coming together the way it is. What's your relationship with risk? I mean, obviously, it's almost Elon Muskian, right, with seven restaurants and seven different concepts.

19:26Has your relationship with risk evolved over time? Has the way that you define risk evolved over time? Look, I would say when I think about the makeup of our team, I have a career of least risk because I'd spent so much of my time and raising my family, raising my little kids under the umbrella of Chart House, 21 years. They weren't fully grown when I left there, but we had a little bit of a start. My partners, Greg and Nick, were doing our first restaurant, two little families, each having two little kids, I mean, you know, like little kids and all those pressures. And our partner, Roland Cassis, is Mr.

20:07Risk. I mean, he's the one that went in a long time ago and started, you know, I went in working as a server, working as a waiter, doing other things to buy a garage in Fishtown. And then it became a dilapidated building. And so those were the real risk takers. My biggest risk was leaving something like Chart House and going with Stephen Starr. And then I got to see firsthand how an entrepreneur works. And Stephen never wanted to waste money. Once the restaurants were operating, we developed systems around P &L reviews and things like that. And I led from my Chart House days. But when it came to taking risks to get things right, I learned a ton there.

20:48And I remember we were opening this restaurant called Route 6, and I told him about these Portuguese rolls up in Rhode Island, in Providence, Rhode Island, that were known for lobster rolls. And he's like, well, we got to have those. And so we literally, it was early 2000, so time and travel and things like that were, but we basically hired a limousine to go pick up a case of these rolls, to get them back, like, in 24, you know, by the end of the day so we could taste the rolls. there was Stephen showing me what risk looks like, what entrepreneurialism looks like, because we know we're going to be over budget, even though we're going to yell at each other and say, you know, it's somebody else's fault.

21:28That prompted me for risk. And that got really exciting to me because that was fun to know, you know, that everything was on the line. And then what else happens? Well, the one thing with a career as long as mine, you also go through financial cycles and world cycles. And there are moments where you don't get to choose risk. Risk chooses you. You can be cruising along super cool, right? And then there's a financial collapse or, you know, we've all, we've seen it, you know, from Enron to COVID, you name it, it eventually you're going to get risk at your doorstep. And we think about that not in a fearful way.

22:08We think it, we try to think about it in a pragmatic way by you talk about, Again, once again, we go back to some fundamentals. Well, we've learned how to manage our cash flow a little different and how to set up accounts where we're automatically accruing money to deal with risk when it comes your way, which is different than versus measuring risk on, hey, let's do this business. Let's buy that old dreary that's falling down. That's a different type of risk. So both of them matter. Both of them are incredibly challenging. But I think coming through those experiences, the rewards are amazing. I really admire my partners because they took that risk early on when I didn't know if I was risk adverse.

22:50But I always was thinking, I didn't get the money. How do you do this? And until you have to go, until you just go do it, you got to just go do it at some point. It's the Nike ad because then you're going to ramp up your learning and you're going to learn how to deal with fear. Because when we're talking about risk, we're talking about fear. And fear, it can be just paralyzing. And you can make some of your worst decisions out of fear. So getting into the arena, making those mistakes, and once again, turn, react quickly. You know, that's how you sort of start melding off the tough, jagged edges of risk.

23:27At least that's what we've learned. I want to learn what else you've learned. I opened three concepts in three different tiers of dining. And the only thing that really translated from one tier of dining to the next, from one concept to the next, was my suffering. Ow. What did I take from nightlife that served me well in fine dining? Nothing. Ow. Nothing at all. And then it was literally, it was back to zero with fast casual. When we moved from fine dining into fast casual, right? Different set of expectations, different guests, different everything, different product, the whole nine yards. And so I became a different restaurateur as I did these things.

24:06What I'm hoping is, is that you opening seven concepts right across multiple cuisines. is that like, I'm going to ask you, is there a proven process, right? Because they're all successful in their own right. And I don't say that to be generous. I mean, they are objectively successful concepts. And so you're a man that is just kind of roped, cloaked in success between like what you experienced at Chart House, plus even Starr, plus all of the consulting work into your own restaurant group. And what I would argue, candidly, is a difficult market. And it's a difficult market, probably less because of the people and more to do with the economics and the weather, which both are shitty objectively.

24:55So understanding that you had a bunch of headwinds coming at you, you didn't do one thing and replicate it. What is it that you figured out? What's the proven process? Well, there's a couple things that are baseline for that. And there's another thing when people meet with me and I share, I'm not telling you what to do, but here's how I've done it. And here's how we've done it, is we all got to figure out in our own way, what we like and what we like to do. And so, for example, Greg Root started his restaurant career with Burger King. And I still call him Burger Prince. He learned a ton of stuff in there.

25:35He worked for Pizzeria Uno. He learned a ton of stuff in there. Our partner, Nick Kennedy, worked for some of the best chefs in the world. We know their names. But well before that, he did some local pizza places. He did other things that I didn't even know until much later on. And so we layered on some experiences because, you know, you bring up fast casual. There were several moments that some investors put in a lot of like, hey, there's a great fast casual concept within Soraya. Let's do it. And we start spending time with that. And we were spending like a significant time and we brought in some people to talk to and who's going to run that division.

26:12And then we just like stopped ourselves in the tracks and go, okay, it would be nice to connect with this investor group because they got the cash, but we stopped ourselves and said, this is not the market segment that we get excited about. Our baseline is we really established the fact that in every one of our concepts, there's one course then. We want to be able to have meaningful relationships with our employees and our customers. And I know that people can do that at Burger King, and I know that they can do it at Chipotle, and people love working for them, and there's great teams. But that is not the pace that we thrive at individually.

26:50So we really started to separate that out, and we spent a lot of time thinking about where are we at our best. That doesn't mean we're not going to take stretch and do something that maybe feels a little bit uncomfortable. Picnic is uncomfortable. There is a lot more puzzle pieces there than meets the eye. It takes someone like you and someone, you know, we get it from people that are done, you know, they walk in there, whoa, what were you thinking on this one, big boy? This is a big swing. So I think it starts there, having really good conversations with yourself about what you're chasing and why do you do things.

27:25One of the criterias for us is next is who are you going to do it with? So like we've let in some, we have some partnerships, but in some of our critical concepts, Pizzeria Badia and Calia, critical partners, Joe Badia at the pizzeria and of course, Chef Nook at Calia. That was another layer for us. Who do we love? Who have we met that we love? I mean, literally love because you got to. It's choosing another partner. Nook always refers to us and, you know, on some big stages is she thanks her husband and then she thanks her three work husbands. I think she thanks us first and then him. It seems more like she really means the part about him.

28:03But we literally delve into that, those aspects of what's the secret sauce. And then because the other part of that is with Joe and with Nook, we're going to share with him, hey, these are the fundamentals that you're not going to jog us off of. And Joe would be the first one to say, I don't even know what the heck you're talking about. He has a funny quote. And when he was being interviewed about partnering with us and they said, are you worried about them messing up your thing? And he goes, they should be more worried about me messing up the thing. I'm this guy that makes pizza. And he's much smarter than that.

28:41But we make it really clear what our roles is, what our expectations are, and what the company, Define Hospitality, will bring to that project because we'll be unrelenting about that. And those are the systems. Those are the way we train people. We're not penny foolish when it comes to training our newest person. We know that the person we hire today is our newest, weakest link. And let's wrap ourselves around them in a meaningful way because that's where the thing starts to erode very quickly. To this day, Greg, Nick and I, and I would say this is another foundational thing. We have great gentlemen.

29:17We have amazing teams. I mean, these people, I love them. I respect them so much. They do the heavy lifting, but we, Greg, Nick and I still final interview everyone that joins the organization, front and back of the house, everyone from dishwasher to hostess, everyone in between. And it's our moment to stand in front of them and think about what's important, learn what's important to them, share what's important to us, and make sure that they are part of that foundation that allows us to at least measure some relative sense that this is on track. This is how we're going to do it. I could point to that in every case as being totally recognizable as, hey, this is our system and we've stuck to it.

30:00I want to ask you about that because it was something that you said that stuck out with me from our last conversation. You were like 40 % of everyone on the leadership team came up through the ranks. And then we talked about that and the process through which that happens. And that was an interesting conversation. But I think an equally interesting conversation is one around the 60%. The outsiders that you bring in, that you've got to imprint with your culture, that you've got to figure out what their skill set is. You know, are a lot of people listening who are struggling to grow because they don't know who they need, right?

30:38They don't know. It's not even about the butt in the seat. They don't even know what seat they need to fill. Because I just, Al, and you know, we were talking about AI and all of this earlier. The model has evolved. The business model has evolved. I look as a 46-year-old man, And, you know, we can talk about general managers. I don't know if these businesses really need someone that manages generally. What it really needs is domain expertise, because the reality is you and I are the generalists. That's the magic, right? And then everyone else is an expert in whatever is the thing that they're saddled with doing.

31:18And so as you're building these organizations and as they're growing in terms of sales and capacity and headcount, how do you think about that organizational operational structure and how are you creating unique seats for people? I'd say, and I don't know if it was between the last time we spoke or leading up to, but we've been embarked on that trail in some ways because we're a DIY company and we're very visible in the restaurants. We're at every tasting. We're still doing final interviews for everybody. So that's still a lot, a lot to juggle because, and also at the same time, we've had our aspirations for some of our restaurants.

32:04I say this as humbly as possible, but, you know, we just won Best Restaurant in America, James. I'm aware. I am aware. And a 50-best ranking. I had to say it to remind myself. But there's a whole little, like, game plan and ball of wax that, you know, you have to wrap yourself around over there to even think about that. A lot of extra work. Never the goal, but that level of excellence is always the goal. that level of excellence, if we can drag along and pull out an award like that, that's super fulfilling. Make no mistake about it. Because you're in that room, by the way, you're up there in Chicago at the opera house, and you know that room is filled with all these people that are just DIYing it to death.

32:52And some of them have the secret sauce. And you said at the very beginning of our chat today, some of them might not have their it even a year from now. It's incredible. We've seen it happen. Why is that? How can they be in that room one year, all tuxedoed out and looking the best in the next year, their business is gone. And so it comes back to that working on your business part and filling those seats. And when we add the 60%, at some point I'm going to ask him, what are you really good at? You know, this is a floor manager position or, you know, AGM position. Those are just, that's what I can choose out of culinary agents.

33:30You know what I mean? It's a drop. Sure. But now that you're in here, I need to know what you're good at. What can you take off of your team's plate and really bring a level of expertise and not to mention a level of outsideness that we need that keeps us like on our toes. You know, it's always like when we hire somebody that is like, whoa, all of a sudden you look at it and go, this is some gold right here. Well, you want to rise to the occasion so your organization doesn't fail them. We've been plotting that very strategically, you know, over the last six months. And because we recognize for the brand purposes to really attract that level of people that allow us to grow it more than we have right now.

34:16We need some experts in the right seats. We need some people that, hey, your service training is producing this, but have you thought about this? We need these little extra 1 % a day getting better people that helps our organization get better. And they're doing it in a way that is equally humble, but equally enthusiastic is the way we go about our business right now. And we're spending a lot of discussion time on that. You know, we've had a couple of misses recently with our 60%. I mean, yesterday, Greg, Nick, and I were in the conference room discussing that in a very healthy way. Like, how do we fail that?

34:53How do we fail them? What do we miss in the hiring process? Because we're not accustomed to that in a way, the way the subject matter is, you know, right now we're talking about. So we have to dissect that and do better and be better because they lose, we lose. It's no bueno. And we want to get better at that. Or you just don't grow the company and you sort of say, okay, this is what we want to do. But we feel really passionate about growing the company because we need to create some space for some of our people that are our leaders. And they're chomping at the bit to spread their wings a bit more.

35:32And we're on the cusp of doing that with people in mind, our people in mind. while recognizing we still need to add some significant talent to our 60 % that will allow us to just break our own bolt. I fear that sometimes you just get into your system or you get into your way. You don't want to create a sacred cow. And you want to know what to hold on to, and you want to know what to be flexible with. I want to talk about not kind of as a microcosm for the conversation. I was trying to figure out how I wanted to end the conversation. And it's always about me, Al. Isn't everything just kind of every is always about you and your stuff.

36:14It's your podcast. Don't make no mistake. If it was if it was tables return, we'd be ending with me. Well, you know, it's a lesson that I've continuously taught myself because I keep making the same mistake is I'm not good at everything. and I should only do the things that I'm great at, the things that I was born on this planet to do. Even when I internalize that, what I struggle with is I struggle with giving that grace to other people. I don't know, not personally. I would assume she's a mediocre to terrible gymnast. She probably can't paint me a picture and she's probably dog shit on a spreadsheet.

36:51What I have found is that people that are truly excellent in one thing, It's almost always to the exclusion of almost everything else. And so when I look at my team, I used to get so pissed that my chef, who was incredibly talented, couldn't fill out a spreadsheet, couldn't figure out the schedule. Instead of saying, like, I will support this person with someone that will do the things that they're simply not qualified to do. And a lot of it comes from generationally. I sit on the cusp of the Bordianian-esque industry that we came up with. You're just going to figure it out. That's your fucking job.

37:33You go figure that thing out. But now with the advent of therapy and the evolutions in our industry, you know, you're able to turn to a chef and say, you do the cooking thing. You're doing a very good job with it, right? 50 best, beard awards, the whole nine yards. You just do you. And I'm going to have all of these other people around you so that you can only do that. For me and my own business, it was like giving myself the grace to do that, which I think is a big hurdle for most restauranteurs, and then giving other people the same grace. What was your approach to that for yourself and how has it translated to your teams?

38:11We definitely had this thought that you've got to figure it out. Not knock in particular. I'm talking about globally through our teams. And I think one of the really critical pieces is we have this discussion and we look for our grife is we got to get a little bit better at the puzzle pieces. Because if I got a great cook and he's putting out really good, amazing food and we're really excited about it, and he just stumbles at spreadsheets, that is really underutilizing him or her, because they're going to waste more time doing what they're not good at and get frustrated versus us allowing them to blow it out at what they're really good at.

38:50And so I think that we need to give that more consideration. And then also just not let giving the grace become a weakness. I have a tendency to, at this point, allow for a little bit more rope, you know, a little bit more, less micromanaging. I got to make sure that doesn't become a weakness for the organization. especially because Greg, Nick, and I still have to be tight in our overall leadership for the company. I don't think it really works or energizes the company. If here comes the bad cop, here comes the loose cop, we have to really talk about that and understand and be able to tell each other that, hey, you're pounding this guy today.

39:31Or conversely, hey, Al, we need more on you on here. You got to tighten the reins over here. We're seeing this. So I think that in the global aspect of things, having the three of us and having the ability to talk to each other about those things is really important because the whole organization was watching every single moment, every single day. Nook in particular is an incredible experience. And again, I think in a lot of ways I was prepped for it by working with Star. I worked for some amazing chefs, You know, Chef Morimoto, right out of the gates, we were opening Morimoto and he was a celebrity chef, Iron Chef on the Food Network.

40:09The Food Networks followed us for a year, the making of Morimoto, Morimoto Raw. One of the first food channel like big hits followed us from the day Stephen and I picked them up at the train station till the opening of the restaurant. And so I learned a lot from that. And Stephen was really good at talking about how you deal with someone that has those kind of aspirations and sort of stardom while maintaining control, not of the person, but of the business, of the fundamentals of the business underneath of them. How do you really rest, make sure that those things are going? And so fortunately, we have some experience with that.

40:44Back to the big thing though, is we really respect Nook. I say that individually. I love her. I think that each, I don't want to speak for Greg and Nick right now, they would say the same. We're happy for her. And one of the things is that you nailed it. Other than shopping, she is all in on this career, on this industry, on this, what it means to be an immigrant chef, honoring her mother, her grandmother, her culture. She is a champion of others, but she's doggedly determined and she's competitive as hell. And we admire all of that. And then so we just have to make sure that there is an opportunity to translate what she wants, to make sure that she has a stage because people want to hear from her, customers want to hear from her, our staff needs to hear from her.

41:38And then it's the greatest challenge to exactly what you said is we need to make sure our puzzle pieces, especially for the ones that aren't homegrown, really come in to fit a role and at the same time feel like they're contributing. So it's tricky, but those tricky moments are also, that's where you have the most fun. And she's a person that makes, it's one of those things like when I say, when we have a 60 %er come into the organization and you see, wow, they got some gear, you work hard not to let the organization fail them. So they feel a benefit in working with you. And so their toolkit, their experience, their life experience, and their passion is not only honored, but you're throwing something else on there that they weren't getting from their other places.

42:26And so it's something we talk about every single day, every day. That's Al Lucas. To learn more about Defined Hospitality, visit definedhospitality.com. Hey, it's Josh. I wanted to take a hot minute to thank you for listening to today's episode and to ask that if you are getting value from FullConf, please like and subscribe and be sure to leave a review. Those reviews matter and they help other independent owners and operators find the show. Also, if you want to take the stuff that we're talking about in these episodes from idea to execution, head to joshcopal.com. There you will find a ton of free templates and tools and all of the details on upcoming learning events so you can keep building momentum.

43:12I know you're busy, and so I don't take your time for granted. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.