Johanna Hellrigl: The Expensive Way Is Cheaper

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1:08Johanna Hellrigl: I mean, at the end of the day, I'm price comparative to mostly everybody in the city, except I'm serving certified ingredients that are organic or regen, and I still can make the math work. I've never used Cisco. I've never used U.S. food. I've never used any of those major broad liners. Welcome to Full Comp, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators, served up on the house.

1:38What if the ingredients you're afraid to buy are actually the cheaper option? Today's guest opened Ama in Washington, D.C. in June of 2024 and built it without a single broad line distributor. She's never placed an order with Cisco or U.S. Foods, and she still prices competitively against restaurants across the city. In today's conversation, we get into why her sustainability decisions show up as savings at each year's end, how getting loud about her mission grew her business after a PR firm told her to stay quiet, and why the health of your team and your guests is now a business metric. If you've written off better sourcing as a luxury that you can't afford, this one is going to take that excuse away for you.

2:27Johanna Hellrigl: My name is Johanna Helrigal. I'm the chef and owner of AMA. It's a mission-driven restaurant in Washington, D.C. We're about four blocks down from the capital, and we believe that health and sustainability go hand in hand. And when you look at things from an ecosystem perspective, rather than in silos, you're able to really see that systemic change happen for our food system and our industry. We're a northern Italian restaurant. Everything's really rooted in that slow food movement. And my goal is really just to be a case study for the systemic change that we need for our food system. I love all of that.

3:01As a guy that's probably been more of a marketer his entire life and less of a restaurateur, even though it was always through the lens of that. Something that I picked up on really early in my career was that nobody cared. Nobody cares about me and my shit or my mission. Like the only people that that resonates with are people that are exactly like me that have my exact mission, right? It's everything is through this very Freudian selfish thing. And so you've got this beautiful restaurant that is busy and is successful on a variety of levels. Is that because most people believe what you believe or that few people believe, but you've been able to pull out enough of those people to cobble together a beautiful business?

3:48What do you think makes Ama work?

3:50Johanna Hellrigl: I think it's a mix, right? I mean, Ama means love. It comes from a poem saying, Ama fachokevoi, love and do what you will. If you do things from the root of love, only that will transpire. And for a while, it felt very lone wolfy, some of the things we were doing. And I felt like I was being very naive to think that it was possible to do the things that I'm doing. But when I first started, the PR firm that I hired was like, don't talk about the mission, just be the Italian restaurant. And something in me like ached about it, you know, it was like, this isn't right. And so obviously moved on from that PR firm and started just doing it myself.

4:30Johanna Hellrigl: And the more I got loud and the more I got vocal about my mission, the more I was able to actually see more and more people respond to it. And that's when I actually started seeing the business increase. Part of it was people coming in because my mission resonated with them and they felt like they were having somebody who heard them and saw them. Then other people were just coming in because they wanted a really nice pasta. The thing that started getting people to continue to come in, even if the mission wasn't exactly what they came in for, was actually the people who would come in, they'd feel good in the space, they'd enjoy our service and our hospitality, but they would also feel good the next day.

5:08Johanna Hellrigl: So that was kind of actually why we started to see people come in seven days a week, people come in breakfast, lunch, and dinner, people come in to town, and they will eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner for four to five days straight, solely at AMA. And so what we started to realize is that when you make delicious food, but you also are really, really conscious of the ingredients and the sourcing and how you're cooking, people might not feel like shit the next day. And so ultimately, that's what's driving them is like, why would somebody want to go out to dinner and then eat at that same place for breakfast the next day?

5:43Johanna Hellrigl: It has a lot to do with how your body feels from eating that food. And so what's been the most interesting thing is the customer lifetime value. So we just have really cultivated an amazing clientele, word of mouth, people continuing to find out about it, and then continuing to keep those guests and retaining them and also creating relationships that are less transactional and are more about building community. And it goes against the things that are supposed to be standard and how you operate a restaurant. But I don't know, I feel like in In today's world, especially post-COVID, people are yearning for connection and community.

6:22Johanna Hellrigl: And they also, a lot of people started caring about their health more and caring about what they're putting in their body and what they're eating. And so how can you make restaurants be part of that bandwagon instead of just being what you do at home? When 60 % of the meals are happening outside of the home, we need to realize that we're either going to directly contribute to some of the issues we're seeing with disease or be part of the solutions. You know, I'm of a generation that you just shut up and cook. What the world wanted from us was my opinions are your opinions. Whatever it is that you like, I like.

6:57It was this very kind of banal, benign restaurant ownership experience where, you know, we are community stewards, right? In food and in beverage and in almost nothing else. So I would ask you, knowing that that's what I came up in, there was no muse like you out there. And so I'm wondering, was there a muse for you? Was there an independent restaurateur that you looked to and said, well, if I build it like this, I could achieve that level of success?

7:26Johanna Hellrigl: I think in silos, yes. But in terms of the full ecosystem, no. And that's what actually felt like so daunting, kept me up at night, made me cry significantly, because I was worried that people wouldn't understand it. But in terms of silos, you know, you've got the Alice Waters of the world. You've got the Nora Pouillon who had Restaurant Nora, which was the first certified organic restaurant in the country. You've got examples of mostly women who have pioneered some of these conversations forward. But I did feel like the sustainability movement, while there were bits and pieces to it that made sense, there was a lot of greenwashing happening there.

8:11Johanna Hellrigl: Right. So you could make things from zero waste initiatives and food scraps, but then you're cooking it in plastic or storing it in, you know, BPA containers of cambros and you're not really thinking through the full point of the sustainability. And so that's what I mean when I say looking at the full circle is how do we look at everything from the environmental toxins we're exposed to, to the ingredients we're sourcing, to the soil health of those ingredients? You know, there's more to the story than just what's on the plate. And how does it get from the ground and the farm to the plate? And what are we doing in that process to think of all the little things that need to happen to make it as nourishing as possible for people and planet?

8:58The whole time you're talking, my breaths are just becoming like progressively more shallow as I get overwhelmed through the conversation.

9:07Johanna Hellrigl: And the reason is like I did it for a living, you know, and like it's hard, like excluding everything you just said. It is nearly impossible. and then you add all of these constraints into it and it's like oh my god and so like you know you talk about crying at night like i get that i totally get that how do you even approach something like this and not even from like a chef's perspective but from like a business person's perspective were you patient with yourself and said listen we're going to work towards this over the next two years and we're just going to start with status quo to begin with since it's nearly impossible to open a restaurant today?

9:51What did it look like?

9:53Johanna Hellrigl: I mean, it was hard, right? I opened post, I opened in June of 2024. I also opened in D.C. in an election cycle. Then I entered into this current administration. Then we had all the issues of like people losing their jobs with Doge and then the National Guard. We had like a full circle of like everything you could imagine going wrong for a restaurant in year one. definitely were part of our history here. But I started with a manifesto of like what I really believed in and what I really was trying to say with Ama. And then from there, I had my like, with my mission, I had my principles. And so the first principle that we have is we question everything.

10:34Johanna Hellrigl: And I grew up in the restaurant industry. My dad owned Palio, which was in the equitable center where La Bernadette is. It was a very fancy restaurant. At the time, they were still using like sterling silver silverware and white glove service and real brass plates. And I mean, just things that now you're like, oh my God, how many people would steal that from the restaurant? And so there was just like a totally different time of growing up. But I also grew up watching the stress of my father. And then when he passed away from pancreas cancer, my mom taking over, fully growing up in the restaurant and seeing a lot of things that I didn't want for my life.

11:11Johanna Hellrigl: And that's why I actually didn't start my career in restaurants. And so I think coming from a non-restaurant life in the middle, I was exposed to just some things that I'm like, hmm, if I go back to restaurants, I want to take some of these best practices with me and what works and what doesn't. And so I think when I opened AMA, having my number one principle be we question everything was like, have we always done things the way that we're doing them because it's really the right way, the most efficient way to do it? Or is it just like the societal norm of like trends? Like when did deli cups literally become our water cups and our coffee cups and everything else?

11:51Johanna Hellrigl: Like it's just this industry thing of like how we cut our tape and like how we drink out of delis and use cambros. These are all learned things. And sometimes some of these things became conveniences that were created. And some of them are toxic conveniences. And so asking those questions really made me go down some rabbit holes. And unfortunately, I am a little bit of a perfectionist. perfectionist. And so it became like, if I'm going to source the best coffee beans, if I'm going to source the best milk, if it's going to be in glass, then what am I doing with that to go coffee cup? Right. And so I had to start asking the full circle question instead of just stopping short at one point of it.

12:32Johanna Hellrigl: Right. And so we didn't necessarily start with everything. I think I'm always learning and I'm evolving and science is evolving and there's more things that we're learning. But I definitely held myself to a very high bar to make sure that I was holding to a standard that I truly felt comfortable opening with. And then from there, as money came through, it was also like, what are the investment things that I could now buy or do that I wasn't able to do when I opened? And that is the stuff that, you know, I can also talk about that, you know, you can't maybe start with everything right away from an expense perspective.

13:10Johanna Hellrigl: But I made priorities of what made the most sense. And still the solutions that were more bare were still better solutions than what currently is the societal norm in a restaurant. You know, I would think for an outsider or someone that's like dipped their toe in the water, it all feels very expensive. So understanding that, I would ask you two questions. The first would be in opening, right? In operating initially, how do you make the dollars make sense when like top line is uncertain? And then number two, how do you price accordingly? I mean, I ran a restaurant that was sustainable in nature and it was very expensive to run.

13:50And we did hit a ceiling where like we had only charge so much for that beef rib before, you know, people were just going to stop buying it. And so during this period where cost of goods has never been higher and labor has never been more expensive. How do you make the math math?

14:07Johanna Hellrigl: I mean, at the end of the day, I'm price comparative to mostly everybody in the city, except I'm serving certified ingredients that organic or regen org. And I've got to say, like, I still can make the math work. You know, I think that what is the biggest hindrance to doing what I do is the time that it takes because the system doesn't exist. when you go in and you're buying from Cisco as your broadliner, you get to pick, pick, pick, pick, pick from that same person. And then it just shows up in one shipment. I've never used Cisco. I've never used U.S. Food. I've never used any of those major broadliners.

14:43And so my purchasing

14:45Johanna Hellrigl: means that I'm working off of farm seasonality and I'm having to really make makeshift decisions from it. But at the same time, in today's crisis of health scares and food outbreaks, I've never for one second had to worry about it. Not once, right? When there was the egg crisis, my eggs stayed consistent in pricing because I was buying from these farms that I've not only visited, I I knew, I trusted, and we had a lot of those things already in play. So I think that the only real big hindrance here isn't really actually money. Because in today's world, one, when you've done cost comparisons and calculations of some of our sustainable initiatives, we actually save money, right?

15:32Johanna Hellrigl: Deli containers, as an example, you're buying those every month. At a certain point, you might be buying them multiple times a month. Those cost money. Even if you're reusing them, you're buying them all the time. I'm purchasing something once and in today's world, there's a lot of different payment plan options You can pay over a month's time, right? So you're able to actually space out those payments and put them on your pnl for you to be able to space out And then it becomes part of your monthly cost But a lot of those things that i'm buying you buy once and you never buy again And so when you actually look at year-end, I save money versus actually having to spend more And so I think sometimes the cost of goods, it's about the relationships.

16:14Johanna Hellrigl: And, you know, I grow hand in hand with my farmers. So we'll plan out the growing season together. And that's really what it is. If I say to my farm, I'm going to go through my pars are this. This is what I need for the season. They not only can be more efficient with how they're growing, but they've got the real information of what the demand is. And then if a lot of people kind of coalesce together with me, guess what would happen from there? We would get purchasing power, we would shift the demand, and then we'd shift the supply chain. And so that's kind of what really needs to happen is more people need to jump on this bandwagon in order to get these better quality ingredients at a better price and also help have a more sustainable and healthy future.

16:57Johanna Hellrigl: And that's kind of where I'm at is like, I can be your case study for an independent restaurant. But if I can also shift a national chain or I can get 60 % of restaurants being independent, more and more of them to kind of get within this scope, not only can we create that purchasing power, but I could also find ways to create the actual systems that help us order a little bit more efficiently than how I'm doing it now. And that's just really what I want to leave people with is it's dedicating that upfront time to create the SOPs and the way that you do things. But then it's just like it's a well-oiled machine.

17:33I've got this 16-year-old nephew.

17:35Johanna Hellrigl: I promise there's a point here. He wants to be an entrepreneur and he doesn't want to go to college. And I think college is a tough argument these days for a variety of reasons, just as quickly as the world is moving. So, you know, he and I were talking about it. And what I told him was this. my whole career would have been different or probably the same, but better. Had I just thought about a few different things. Number one, how much money I wanted to make personally. Number two, what I was willing to do to make that money in terms of scope of work, where I wanted to do that work and how many hours a week I wanted to spend doing that work.

18:12And then I look at you and I think, you escaped. You got out. You saw your parents tied to this restaurant, this beautiful, amazing albatross, which is what it is, I think, for so many people. On the outside, it looks like this amazing thing. And then on the inside, it is very much like a prison of our own design. And you were out. And then you chose to get back in. And so I'm curious to know, How did the mission relate to how much money you want to make personally? How many hours a week you wanted to work? What did you want to spend that time doing? Where did you want to do it? Because like you also weren't 19 going, fuck it.

18:55You're an adult with a ton of life experience and a great professional background. And so I'm just wondering if this was the choice that you made, what was the expected outcome?

19:04Johanna Hellrigl: I think that I believe that you can do good in the world and also make money and not completely die trying to do it. Right. There's got to be a way for it. And so, yeah, there was a lot of input here. But I'm also trying to do it, as I said, as a case study to not gatekeep for my industry, but to actually share best practices and lesson learned and case studies, because I do believe in the ripple effect, the multiplier effect that can happen when people are able to see real change that works. Right. And so I'm grateful that I had investors that believed in the mission and can see like the bigger thing that I was trying to do because it wasn't just an immediate like here's your check back the way that they were in pre covid for other restaurants they had been part of.

19:59Johanna Hellrigl: but I did see a profit and I was able to take some of that money and be like, Hey, I need to put it back into the restaurant. Are you okay with that? Because of the fact that I wanted to think about the bigger mission and what we're trying to do here. So I believe that this will have a huge ROI. I believe that this is the way that we have to go forward as an industry. And I'm willing to put in the extra hours and the extra work to really impart this information and wisdom to other people. I also have a son. He's five years old. I want him to grow up in a better food system. And I'm also inspired by the families that I work with across the bridge and people that I'm seeing that don't have access to affordable and accessible, healthy, fresh food.

20:47Johanna Hellrigl: So something's got to give. So now I just think that like, I'm a mom on a mission. And I'm willing to sacrifice in order for greater good. But at the same time, I completely believe in there are voids and issues that need to be solved. And there is money to be made on those issues. And I will never apologize for wanting to not only point out the issues, but make the solutions and then profit off of it. you know, conscious capitalism, soft power, you know, these are all purpose pledge. You've seen all these businesses, these B Corps and everything else. Like there are other like-minded entrepreneurs out there who want to do good and yet also make a profit from it.

21:32Johanna Hellrigl: And so I believe that you can do both. And I've worked for plenty of assholes and I just feel like it comes around, You know what I mean? And so ultimately, owning Ama was my ability to be in a position of control that affects change, because I think sometimes the hardest thing is you might be in a leadership position, but you have absolutely no control to affect change. And so that's the only thing I would say is like the biggest takeaway of owning Ama is that I am in that position to fail to make mistakes, but also to affect change. So how does that evolve over time? You know, I would assume that the day that you opened, you cooked on the line.

22:13You can tell me if I'm wrong, right? And then eventually you kind of pull yourself out of it or around it. The role evolves over time. And so seeing yourself as a restaurateur, as a chef, as an entrepreneur, as an advocate, how do you spend your time and how does that time serve the financial goals of the business?

22:34Johanna Hellrigl: I mean, I spend a lot of time now speaking about the mission and being in positions of thought leadership. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group. I am on the Hill like once a month talking about the things that I need to for legislation to change. I believe that using my voice is my superpower and something that I also use in my restaurant to bring people together and find connecting points because, like I said, I just feel like so much of our systems are broken from being in these silos. so a lot of my time is spent doing that but I'm still the person changing out the roll of toilet paper because people don't have bathroom etiquette at a restaurant yet they do at their own home so that's still my life but it's not beneath me it's part of owning a restaurant I think that ultimately I like to be the example and set the example but I also don't believe in snapshot management.

23:31Johanna Hellrigl: I believe in really empowering individuals and giving them the tools necessary to succeed. And so that means delegating and empowering them and then delegating off to people to be able to make some of these changes themselves. I really believe that that's so important and critical to the success of a restaurant. And don't get me wrong, I've had really hard times in the restaurant. This is not something to like sugarcoat. But I've also believed in boundary setting and being like, hey, I can have radical compassion for you. But also, I need to run a business. And so ultimately, my decision right now is off of running a business.

24:12Johanna Hellrigl: And I hope you can understand that. And so part of also the solutions here is I've let people in to what is actually happening here. Hey, I have this investment to pay back. This is what's happened this month. This is the problem. This is something that needs to change. You're part of the solution. That buy-in of transparency allows people to feel responsible and then yet empowered to make the solutions and also be really honest about the skill sets they do not have, yet they are in a position to learn and change, you know, and that's something that happens a lot of the the line cook becomes the sous chef, he's never really worked in Excel.

24:52Johanna Hellrigl: So those are the things that I think are so important to creating a sustainable restaurant. And when I say sustainable, it's not just like the mission, it's how to sustain the operation. That's really important to creating a well-oiled machine. Your restaurant's next growth opportunity may already be sitting in your dining room. The problem is your team may not know who it is. I talk a lot on this show about getting more revenue from the guests you already have. Gastology is built to help multi-location restaurant groups do exactly that. It connects to the systems you already use, identifies your highest value and highest potential clients when they arrive, and then it tells your team how to recognize them while they're still in your restaurant.

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26:01Johanna Hellrigl: you need Guestology. And for full comp listeners, Guestology is offering a complimentary invisible guest assessment to show you how much opportunity exists inside of your existing guest base. Go to guestology.com slash full comp to redeem this offer. That's guestology.com slash full comp. Stop chasing every new guest and start recognizing the valuable ones you already have. I think the bottleneck in any business is the founder. The business can only grow and thrive and succeed as far as your own limitations. And for so many of us, I think the delegation, which you brought up, it's a real hurdle, mainly because everything is urgent, everything is important.

26:47I delegated this thing. I probably did it poorly and I didn't communicate effectively, but now it's your thing and you have to do it perfectly. Did I do it perfectly? Probably not, but I'm more tolerant of my own shit than I am of your shit. And so it becomes this whole thing. Delegation is an art, right? As much as it is a science. And so it's not something that you see done well, repeatedly within this industry for all of the reasons that I listed in so many more. What is your process to delegate?

27:17Johanna Hellrigl: I think first starts off like hiring the right person and also knowing when to quit it when it's not the right person. I think sometimes we can be like, oh, shit, I don't want to be without this. Like, let's be honest, like person just because I physically don't want to be able to like be on the station or do this thing. Like a lot of times, restaurateurs will keep the thing that's not working because it means another thing that's getting put on their to-do list. And I promise you, you are always rewarded for trusting that intuition when something is not working or you've had multiple employee complaints about like you need to listen to that and not just keep the shortcut or the temporary solution and dragging it out.

28:01Johanna Hellrigl: So I think that's really important. And then from there, being a little bit more meticulous in your hiring to make sure that people match some of the things that you're looking for. It doesn't mean that they're going to have all the skills, but are they a quick learner? Are they a good communicator? How do they handle stress? People project and then people take things personally. The first thing I say to any employee in this restaurant, I'm like, I will reimburse you for the Audible book of the four agreements if you want to read it. I really believe that people need to learn some of those skill sets to be impeccable with their word to not take things personally and not make assumptions.

28:38Johanna Hellrigl: And that perception versus reality sometimes are actually what creates the conflict. And it's actually not that big of a deal if you actually talk it through and work it out. So that kind of stuff is really important, those like life skillset things. And then from there, it's like, how do you set them up for success? How do you give them the tools necessary to ascend into the leadership role to handle the things that you're saying. And I know we're so busy, so it can feel like daunting to think about another thing. But if you create more of like the SOPs and infrastructure, it can do some of the work for you.

29:13Johanna Hellrigl: And then also creating with your team, the captain or the supervisor or the people who are exemplary examples of what you have trained. And then it becomes, as I said, that multiplier effect. So I do believe in TOT, like training of trainers, because that's actually how you can make sure that you're not an octopus, you cannot do everything, how do they become an extension of your voice and what you believe? And really, like, as I said, letting people try to do it, maybe sometimes make the mistakes. If you've given them the tools necessary, they should be able to succeed. If you then go back and realize that you didn't and you do it again, and then they're still not succeeding, like, then at a certain point, you might need to, like make those questions or set those boundaries or take things back.

30:01Johanna Hellrigl: But a lot of the time we kind of like stop at point one and don't realize where we might have contributed. So I do believe like self-reflection accountability is really important there. And yeah, I mean, it's not always perfect, but I think intuition is a really big part of it. And a lot of times, you know, and you're just not really listening to it because it's another hurdle or another burden. And I I don't know. I learned that early in my career when I was like on a walk station. There was this cook and he just he needed to go like he was a great walk cook. And walk is one of the worst stations to work.

30:37Johanna Hellrigl: It is so hard and consuming. But he was being an asshole and it was like, you got to go. And so what happened? I had to work walk, you know, and I had to deal with it. But I don't know. Then I also showed my cooks like your girl can get on walk. And so like follow suit, make it happen. And I think that's important to lead with. It's leading by example. And then things from there will inspire other people to keep following you. one of my coaches gave me great advice many years ago that felt like a gut punch. She said that your ability to succeed professionally is exclusively tied to your ability to have difficult conversations.

31:16And I was like, that's not true. And then I hung up. And then I was like, that is totally true. I'm going to have to apologize. But it's hard. I think it's hard in our industry. I think that one of the reasons I was excited to chat with you is because there's all of this institutional knowledge, all of these limiting beliefs that are just baked into the cake after 2 ,000 years.

31:38Johanna Hellrigl: You know, and it's the behavioral issues, substance abuse, a general lack of respect for oneself and others, tardiness. Like we could go on, like there are all of these bad things. It's like, oh, well, that's just what it's like being in the restaurant industry. And it's so exciting to see, you know, a new generation coming up, not just like challenging those, but like having the courage to like question all of these industry-wide norms that aren't really normal in any other industry. I would assume that there have certainly been times, especially prior to the opening of AMA, where like, you've got to wonder, like, is everybody right and I'm wrong?

32:17Am I the crazy person here? You know, that thing where, you know, if you're standing in a room and everyone's crazy, they're probably okay and you're the crazy person.

32:26Johanna Hellrigl: No, yeah. I've felt fucking crazy. But at the same time, I'm seeing chefs get diagnosed with colon cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreas cancer. I've seen chefs in their 30s having a heart attack. We got to take care of our industry and we've got to do better for them. And at the same time, I know too much about what's happening to farmers. And without those farmers, we don't have the food. And ultimately, we can't keep going the way that we're going when it comes to our topsoil and everything else. And so I know too much to look away. And it's not to then fearmonger people and be like, oh my God, the world is ending.

33:07Johanna Hellrigl: It's not that. It's, hey, anytime I've gotten loud, I've seen things move the needle. I've seen myself flip votes on bills. I have been loud and unapologetic for it when everybody else is like, oh my God, don't talk to a member of Congress that way. what's going to happen if nobody says what they're really thinking or what's really happening or why have we stopped having hard conversations and rigorous debates and the ability to agree to disagree with each other and maybe learn something new instead of thinking that the 90 second clip we watched on instagram is the all or nothing of of truth right we question everything applies to a lot of things.

33:52Johanna Hellrigl: And I felt like it was time to really have these conversations, especially the plastic, right? Giving my TED Talk on plastic in the restaurant industry was not easy, especially when I was calling out some of the most well-known chefs for lobbying against the nonstick pans in California. That's hard. Those are the people that everybody looks up to. When I got nominated for James Beard, I was quite surprised because all the things that I'm saying are very much not the things that maybe I should be saying for a lot of people. But if I don't do it, who is? And I think people deserve to get more information about what's really going on.

34:35Johanna Hellrigl: And when you have these conversations, I've gotten educated by so many farmers, by so many individuals. I am constantly a sponge learning from other people and then doing the research, asking the questions and seeing more and more. And all I want to do is translate it so it's accessible and easy for people and then also empowering for them to make more conscious decisions for them, themselves, their restaurant, their families, you know? How do you not lose the plot? I think about everybody listening. I think about myself and my own career. And, you know, we have all, like everybody has ambitions the day before the restaurant opens.

35:13Everybody has this like life, I'm going to be a restaurateur and I'm going to touch this table and these people are going to clap for me. And it's going to be this whole thing. Right. And this is this is my love letter to the South was my thing. Right. I'm going to show I'm going to be an ambassador of my culture. You know, and then you open the doors and it's a shit show. Right. And everything is urgent and everything is important. And it costs way more than you thought. You know, when I opened that fine dining restaurant, we found out about a weekend that we needed a second walk in cooler.

35:41Johanna Hellrigl: Think about it. Like, oh, a second walking. Well, is it built? No. Are you going to have to build it from scratch? Yeah. Should we close? Definitely not. Definitely not closing. We're just going to have to figure it out. And then you think about like all of my goals and all of my dreams and all of that goes out the window because it's just about survival. It's about like, can I get through this service without hyperventilating in the employee restaurant? And so you think about that and you think about like, that's not some TV show on FX. Like that is really real life for me, for you, for everybody listening.

36:20And so here you are far enough along the process that it could have been really easy to focus on. Well, you know what? We're going to do all of that. But what we're going to focus on right now is just getting through one service without apologizing, right? Or we're going to really refine our recipes or we're going to get down to the basics and then we'll get back to the big ideas. How did you not lose the plot through all of this?

36:42Johanna Hellrigl: Well, one thing that was amazing was I listened to your podcast when I was opening, Amma, and you had one episode where somebody was talking about making sure that you have tools in your toolbox for when those crazy moments happen. And I really took that to heart. They didn't say what the tools are and everything else, but I just kept going back to the tools in the toolbox and being like, okay, I need to have the tools in the toolbox for when these crisis moments happen. And not all is perfect. And I've made a lot of mistakes. And I had some, you know, even hiring mistake, like all those things happen, just like any other restaurant tour.

37:23Johanna Hellrigl: But transparently, we've already lost the plot. And so I needed to figure out how my mission could be the North star for fixing the fact that we've lost the plot. And that's really what it is, is that I care too much about what the future looks like for our society, for our food system, for our industry, to not want to get us back on track. And there's a lot that needs to happen to do that. But I see so much good in our industry. I mean, hospitality workers, we are nurturers. We are people that do this profession, even though there is so much that's wrong with it, because we care. And somewhere along the way, there has been some disillusion, there has been resentment.

38:12Johanna Hellrigl: Then there's also the distrust of the customer towards the industry and thinking that we're always out to like scam them or get them. And so we've created a significant divide, especially like COVID. There was some like heartfelt moments. I gave away 900 sourdough starters to make sure that People would donate to restaurants in exchange for it. Like I have cute cards from it. Like people were wholesome and good and there was community. But post-COVID, there was definitely these tension points that started to surface. And especially, as I said, when people became more conscious of what they were eating because they were forced to have to cook more.

38:47Johanna Hellrigl: They were forced to have to grocery shop more. They had to learn more about the ingredients. you know people started being like well why the hell am I paying all this money for something that is from Cisco or like this tastes exactly like the other place and now I've started to understand why I mean I opened up this bakery right and this guy was from the south of France and he was like I'm French and like I'm gonna make all these you know tartre pizian like everything from scratch and I had lived in the south of France I was so excited I was churning my own butter. I was making my own jam. I was doing everything from scratch to then get an invoice.

39:24Johanna Hellrigl: And I'm seeing he was literally buying all frozen pastries and then just like reheating them. And I only discovered it when like the leek pastry that he had with like the X marks. I went to another place and I was like, wow, this looks exactly the fucking same. And so I started to realize, oh shit, like not only did I just get conned, like, you know, this is what's happening. Like shit's starting to all taste the same. It's not because people don't want to try. It's just because so much is stacked against us. Right. And that nurturing and that thing that really set us to want to do this has become more disillusioned, harder and harder.

40:06Johanna Hellrigl: But like I said, when I opened Onlet, I was more honest and transparent with my team, with our guests, going on podcasts and talking about how hard it is doing thought leadership, opening up people's eyes about it. I felt like that honesty was getting us somewhere with people. And they might not have always agreed with me. There's plenty of times I've answered to a Google review and I have given an explanation. And I know that that's like 101, do not do that. but I'm sorry like the guest isn't always right we need to have more empathy and we need to lead with more love and that means sometimes setting boundaries and being transparent where the guest also has no clue what they're saying and they need to not be able to feel like they've got a soapbox to go off of every single time they feel righteous about something right we need to lead with love and we need to come from a place of love and we need them to come back into restaurants and have trust and love to us as well.

41:10Johanna Hellrigl: And I think that that's kind of where this whole like focus on health and nourishment is extremely much like a way forward because not only does the cook need to feel better, the chef needs to feel better. Like we as an industry cannot be taking shots, you know, and smoking cigarettes and doing lines of cocaine and all of Anthony Bourdain time anymore. Like it's just not it. We've got to take care of ourselves, especially because it is grueling hours. And we've also got to take care of our customers. And we need to recognize that they need to be nourished. They need to be taken care of. Chronic disease is on the rise.

41:46Johanna Hellrigl: And we've got to be part of the solution. What should we steal from you? When you look back at your career and all of the different facets of it, what are the through lines? What are the things that you have committed to consistently that you think have directly attributed to your success? I think it's important to ask the question of like, how do you feel every day? If you're in the industry and you're tired, you don't feel well, you're exhausted, you feel burnt out, you wake up groggy. if you don't feel good or you think you feel good or like, you know, you eat the same stuff all the time and like you don't even know what feeling as good as you could feels like, then that's the time to be introspective and recognize that you cannot fill other people's cups if you're not filling yours.

42:34Johanna Hellrigl: And so I think that's the biggest takeaway because I'll see chefs that had a medical scare or had, you know, the wake up call. And then they get on the health train and they start to take better care of themselves. But then they're doing a lot of the things for themselves, but then they feel like it might be impossible to then do that for the customer. And that's where we, I think, make the mistake is to not recognize that all should be one. You know, I heard about a farmer who was raising cattle and he originally was raising one cow for him and his family. And And then the rest was, you know, grown in a not the greatest way for everybody else.

43:15Johanna Hellrigl: And it's like, then he started realizing, well, that's not right that I have to like keep one for myself and then everybody else gets the other. So he made the changes necessary to feed all the way that he would want to feed his family. So as I said, I think I feel better at 37 than I did at 27. And I entered the industry at that time. and I love feeling good. I love being in a good place health-wise for my son. I love feeling my best. And so I just wish more people would be able to take care of themselves instead of sacrificing their own health for their customers and everybody else. It's literally like lead by example and you will see that people will respond to it.

44:04Johanna Hellrigl: I've seen, I can't remember that girl as like the woman who has cafes in California, no, Las Vegas, right? And she has Hashimoto's and an autoimmune disease and she's done a podcast and she's talking about all these decisions she's making, but she owns donut shops and like cafe, you know? And it's like, let us actually inspire people or find ways to make delicious food because chefs were so good at cooking, right? And we can make nurturing food. And I'm sorry to say it, but a lot of people in the health food movement have created terrible cardboard tasting food, right? So like imagine if the skill set was applied to making absolutely nourishing, delicious food, but with better quality ingredients, maybe a little less sugar, maybe no ultra techs being added and finding ways to make more food with whole ingredients.

44:55Johanna Hellrigl: I think you'd be surprised how well you might actually surprise yourself and what you could create if you challenge yourself with some more restrictions. So, yeah, I think that's kind of where I would start with people is start with yourself and then the rest will follow.

45:34and 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. I 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.