Sava Farah: Value Pricing Is Killing Your Restaurant

0:00Joseph E. D'Amore: I'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.

0:34Joseph E. D'Amore: You'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.

1:08Sava Farah: I don't know how restaurants providing a value are making payroll. And my guess is that they're not. But we have to charge a lot more. And then we have to create the value behind that. And there is a big numbers game behind this. If you want to stay afloat, only there can I really have the breathing room to approach my work with such gratitude and abundance.

1:28Joseph E. D'Amore: Welcome to Full Comp, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators, served up on the house.

1:42Joseph E. D'Amore: What if the reason you can't make payroll is that you're still trying to compete on value? Today's guest flagged communist Albania at five years old, landed in the Bronx, and opened her first Ann Arbor restaurant at 23 years old, with no degree, no investors, and no plan beyond her own work ethic. Nearly 20 years later, she runs the Pulpo Group, four restaurants and 400 employees, each one funded by the profits of the last. In today's conversation, we get into why she charges more and builds the value behind it, how she reads momentum instead of chasing problems, and why staying out of the investor game gave her the speed capital was supposed to buy.

2:22Joseph E. D'Amore: If you're working harder every year and keeping less of the money you're making, this one is going to show you where the leak is.

2:35Sava Farah: When people want to hear about the trajectory of my career, I have to start with my origin story because to understand my career path and the choices that I've made without understanding that, it just really does not give it context. So my family fled communist Albania when I was five. and it was like an overnight journey through Montenegro. We walked for about eight hours being chased by the communist government, and that is literally my first memory. I have some faint memories of my childhood before that, but that's the moment that I was really awakened, and something like that really leaves an imprint.

3:14Sava Farah: And then, of course, throughout my childhood, we kept hearing about the story, the escape story. We came to America eventually. Eventually, we lived in a refugee camp in Belgrade for a year, finally made it to America, to the Bronx. I grew up in the Bronx. And when we got here, it's just like everybody wanted to hear the escape story and everybody wanted to hear how we got out and everybody wanted to hear about the refugee camp. So that was like my identity as a kid. We'd be at like weddings or, you know, community gatherings and we'd always hear people whispering like, oh, that's the family. That's the refugee family, which was like so crazy.

3:45Sava Farah: It was an identity that I was kind of ashamed of because it just seemed like we were foreigners, we were outsiders. But one of the things that that really woke me up to is risk and opportunity. My family risked our lives, 17 of us, to get out of some really treacherous circumstances in pursuit of the American dream. And that was embedded in my identity and my worldview immediately. So I wasn't going to waste this opportunity. and I think that's really carried me through my life. And just like you were saying about your wife, it's not just my work ethic, it's in every aspect of my life. It's like, what's the opportunity here?

4:26Sava Farah: And hell yes, I always joke with my husband who's more analytical, he's an attorney. And I always tell him like, that's what you get baby for marrying a hell yes wife. Like I just live a hell yes life. And if you look at the 16 other people that were on that journey escaping the country, each and every one of us carry that in our own unique ways and like gratitude it's like you know we know that we're so lucky to have made it out and to be here and we ain't wasting this

4:55Joseph E. D'Amore: opportunity i want to talk about your first entrepreneurial leap i was in nightlife i got burnt out and i decided i got a bug in my ass so i wanted to start a clothing line and shockingly it did really well you know i had this advantage of running nightclubs in hollywood so i know all these celebrities. I was able to get them to wear the clothes, which got us the earned media that we needed to get the right placements in the right stores. It's like this Cinderella story, right? This guy that didn't know anything about anything was able to do this thing. And two years later, all of these doors and then the great recession and all of these big boutiques that I had done business with, they all canceled their orders last minute.

5:31Joseph E. D'Amore: I was left with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of orders. And it's, uh, and that was, I think we learned so little from success. I think you learn a lot from failure. And like right around the same time, you know, you had that restaurant in Hazel Park. And so I want you to talk to me about like what you took away from that experience.

5:51Sava Farah: Yeah, that was just kind of jumping in the fire. You know, that was my my first restaurant that I actually started with my family, my siblings and my dad. You know, I was sort of the restaurant person in the family. My dad had never worked in restaurants. my two little brothers had a little bit of restaurant experience, but I had made a career of it by this point. And back then, 2005, it felt like one in three restaurants was like sitting vacant in the state of Michigan. We'd been hit super hard during that recession. And again, like, you know, seeing all these vacant restaurants through my opportunity goggles, I thought to myself, heck, somebody's got to want to hand me one of these restaurants so I can at least run it and pay the rent and take a stab at something.

6:34Sava Farah: So we found this restaurant that had been out of business for some time and took over the lease of this, like it was a truck stop diner, took over the lease. And I say that's where I got my feet wet on entrepreneurship. Family business is very, very challenging, especially when none of us had any business experience. And in my culture, the women would never go off to open their own business even though I was obviously running the show like you know I had two little brothers my dad in the business and I had to defer to them on everything so we got that restaurant off the ground and a few months later I mean we were profiting right away everybody was getting a paycheck we were living what we thought was our American dream but it was crowded between the four of us so that's when I decided to open I literally opened a paper map.

7:23Sava Farah: I remember I used to smoke Marlboros back then. Yuck. I can't imagine smoking a cigarette now. But I'm sitting there smoking a Marlboro at the counter at this truck stop diner. And I just look at a paper map. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go to Ann Arbor. I had a girlfriend who went to college in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. And she would always talk about how much traffic there was in Ann Arbor and so many international students. And there seemed to be a lot of money in Ann Arbor. And we didn't come up in those types of neighborhoods. so it really stood out to her. So I drove to Ann Arbor one day, a place I had never been, and thought the same thing, which was there's got to be a lot of vacant restaurants there, and I'm going to find the shittiest restaurant on the block and convince the landlord to lease it out to me.

8:07Sava Farah: And I did. On that same afternoon, I found this little galleyway of a restaurant. It was a 20-seat restaurant on the second floor of this dead-end road, and it was a rotating door for about 20 years. And I see, I run into a neighbor there who's running another restaurant down the street. And I say, Hey, what do you know about that pita pit restaurant over there? He's like, Oh man. He's like, that's been empty for like two years. And it's just been a rotating door before that. And I was like, perfect. That is exactly what I was looking for. Cause I didn't have any financial backing. I didn't have any business experience.

8:41Sava Farah: I didn't go to college. So like, I knew that all I had to bring was like my work ethic and my hospitality. so I you know I was staying within my means so that same day I found the landlady Mrs. Lee I'll never forget her she terrified me and I convinced her to give me a month-to-month lease on this space in downtown Ann Arbor and it was my first the first shingle that I hung in downtown Ann Arbor and I started Saba's which was a 20-some seat cafe and ran that for about two years and like really like learn how to run a restaurant there. Like I remember I would like close the restaurant during like afternoon break and like walk down to the library and pull out cookbooks and like write down a recipe and then run back to the restaurant and like cook these recipes.

9:29Sava Farah: Like I had to teach myself everything on the ground. That was like it for me. I was like, whoa, I've got this like restaurant with my name on it and I get to cook whatever I want. I get to design it how I want. And I felt like I had reached the level that I'm like, this is it. Lo and behold, that was not it for me, though.

9:47Joseph E. D'Amore: Well, I want to talk about that really quick. So the pessimist in me would tell you what I told myself when somebody had told me and then it just kind of it plagued me. He was like, you know, you're not an entrepreneur. You bought yourself a job. You're a restaurant manager with equity. Right. Sure. Right. Which is just a shitty thing to say, Sava.

10:07Sava Farah: And unfortunately, like kind of true for at least in the beginning for all of us.

10:11Joseph E. D'Amore: Yeah, it hurts because it's true. Because it was true. Right. If he had said you're a Nazi, I wouldn't have been offended. I would have been like, well, that's just not true. But he's like, you bought yourself a job. You're just a manager with equity. And I clutched my pearls and I was like, oh, he said the truth out loud. And I think that for so many of us, that is where the story stops is that we can't get out of day-to-day operations. Like we're trapped in this thing. And that's not where you find yourself today. And I think part of it was through circumstance and capitalizing on opportunities.

10:46Joseph E. D'Amore: But, you know, you opened Savas and you were like, what, 22, 23 years old? 23. So I don't know how much you knew about life at 23, but I did not know much.

10:55Sava Farah: Jack shit. Right.

10:57Joseph E. D'Amore: I was not as wise as I am today. So, you know, and we're always learning But walk me through, let's call it like the end of that two years into like the move and the transition, right, when the building was sold.

11:11Sava Farah: Yeah. So I'm driving to work one day, reading the news, stuck in traffic, scrolling through the news on my BlackBerry. Remember those? Oh, I do. And it's like, oh, Ann Arbor, downtown Ann Arbor building gets sold to CVS, which like when I got to Ann Arbor in 2007, seven. It was like primarily local businesses, like quirky little mom and pop businesses. So for a CVS to come to town some almost 20 years ago was like unfathomable. So like a CVS, where the heck would they put a CVS? And I scroll a little further, I'm like, oh, that's my building. So I'd been in this space for about two years on a month to month lease, which the landlord, like, I'm sure if she was like hedging bets, she would have given me three months.

11:54Sava Farah: So I'm there for about two years. Like finally, right around this time, I'm actually like making a little bit of money. I'm like, wow, I can actually like pay my vendors on time. I can actually give my staff raises. I can actually like reinvest in the business and maybe eventually give myself a paycheck. So I'm like, finally like have made it. And then the building sells to CVS and I'm like, oh, now what?

12:16Joseph E. D'Amore: Right.

12:17Sava Farah: So I spent the rest of that summer, like maybe May of 2009, I spent the rest of that summer just like knocking door to door, trying to figure out if I could like partner with somebody or rent a part of their kitchen. And by this time, I've like sort of built a name for myself. I had base clientele. I was really tapped in with some of the student groups. And I felt like there was still more gas in the tank there. So I'm turning over every single rock in Ann Arbor. And like, again, really young, scrappy, rough around the edges. nobody like I remember I sat with one guy who I was literally right across the street from him for those two years he's like wait what what's your restaurant and I left him my business card he was like thank you for the visit I'll let you know he gets up walks away and like leaves my business card on the table I'm like you prick all right next door knock knock knock you know just trying to like think outside the box of like where I could just a landing zone for myself and my team

13:15Joseph E. D'Amore: can I ask you a question really quick about that please did you ever think about just quitting did you ever think about just saying this is beyond me right like you right you can leave on a w saba like it's not you it's the building's being sold I would assume that you would probably hit a point and I everyone listening has and I did too where like I had hit a point in my career where like things were trending in the right direction but in this moment what I thought to myself was I could get a job working for someone else, not giving a fuck, making way more money, doing mediocre work every day.

13:54Joseph E. D'Amore: But when I clock out of the hours, I'm out. Right. What is that old adage that entrepreneurs give up working 40 hours a week for decent money to work 80 hours a week for no money, you know, but you're working for yourself. And so did that thought cross your mind? Were you like, I mean, I could just like, it's like dated reference, but like I could just hop on Craigslist, just see what's going on out there.

14:19Sava Farah: Totally. Like then I didn't, but as I went into the next phase of things, I sure wish I had. Cause the next few years were way more painful than the first few when I moved into that much, much larger restaurant. Yeah. I mean, I was open to it. I was like, if it's meant to be, I've always felt really guided. And I was like, if I find this spot, then it's meant to be. And if it's not, like I have marketable skills and like you can always go back to waitressing. I grew up waitressing. I started waitressing when I was 14, busting tables at 13, waitressing at 14. If you're a good waitress and a good bartender, you can make money like cash in hand tomorrow.

14:57Sava Farah: So I always had that to fall back on. So I never felt like I and I would have probably made more money waitressing than I was in my first restaurant, like no doubt. But yeah, I was I gave it like a fair shake. So looking around, trying to find a spot. And in that meantime, the guy who I had gone to see who left my business card on the table who I wanted to because he had he had two kitchens in his building. And I asked the prick. I had a lot of catering business. I was catering for fraternities and sororities and I had quite a few contracts and I could have like just earned a living running these contracts.

15:34Sava Farah: So my proposal to him was, would you let me rent your basement kitchen, which I understand is not being utilized right now. And he did not give me a second of his day, walked away, left my business card and table. So May, I find out the building got sold, is getting sold. July, another news article drops that the restaurant across the street is going out of business. And they have a closing day of like two weeks from today. So they were just going to close. I was like, wait, why didn't that guy let me come in here and pay him like the$7 ,500 in rent that I was offering him? Cause I was paying that in my restaurant.

16:11Sava Farah: So I was like, I'll pay you the same amount. Let me rent your basement kitchen. I'll work for you when I'm not doing my events. And I could have saved that restaurant. No question. Well, he goes out of business. I find this guy, Bill, Bill Milken, never forget him. I find out who runs that location. So he had a bunch of investors that were owed a ton of money. He was there like 13 years, restaurant goes out of business, investors are pissed. They want their money back. They're looking for a new operator. And I'm like, I'm that operator. Meanwhile, like this restaurant's like 10 times the size of my restaurant.

16:45Sava Farah: So I find Bill and he's the head of this investment group. And I pitch Bill on letting me take over the restaurant. He's like, wait, how old are you? like that doesn't matter I was like 25 at the time I have a couple meetings with Bill and somehow Bill's like sold on me but then he's like look I like it I could see it I love your hustle I love your drive I love your passion he's like but you got to sell yourself to the rest of the investment group who's lost millions in this restaurant and it's like the largest footprint restaurant downtown Ann Arbor and it was supposed to be like the Mecca it was built for that but they never really reached that level.

17:24Sava Farah: So I put together a little PowerPoint presentation, get in front of this investor group. I was so nervous. I'd never done anything like that in my life. And somehow I sold myself to them and they handed me the keys to this like massive restaurant. And they're like, good luck, kid. And I'm like, you will never find anyone that will work harder to make this a go. And I will figure it out. And I definitely had to work my ass off to figure this restaurant out because I went from like a 1400 square foot restaurant to like a 12 ,000 square foot restaurant. Had a dozen employees to now the restaurant employs like 120, 130 in any given season.

18:03Sava Farah: And so ill-equipped. So just did not know what I was getting myself into. Didn't even think about like SOPs or like training manuals or anything like that. And then we opened this like 300-seat restaurant, and it's freaking gangbusters from day one. I always joke around with people in town where I'm like, I think that my early success was a result of all the locals coming in just thinking, what the hell is she doing in this space? Like, what makes her think she can run this restaurant? And in fact, I had plenty of people say that to my face.

18:35Joseph E. D'Amore: So that was like the first

18:36Sava Farah: three, now we're like year three, four, I finally start learning how to run this restaurant, building a management team, learning how to lead. I'd never been led before. And I'm also like doing business in a town where most of the employee base are U of M students. So their expectations of leadership are so high. And it took me a while to even understand what they were looking for, like communication and process and hierarchy and like things like, I mean, I grew up working in Coney Islands, like slinging Coney's and burgers and like coming up. I remember like one of my first restaurants that I went to work at was with one of my uncles and it was a restaurant Detroit.

19:15Sava Farah: And it was like, we were working like behind bulletproof glass. So we didn't have a leadership structure in these kinds of environments. And then I was like, shit, girl, you got a lot to learn. And went back to the library, started checking out entrepreneurship books, leadership books, business books, restaurant books, and like just learning the topic that like I had dove in and now I'm like, I've got to figure this stuff out. And I think like I got a lot of education in those years, quite a few near death experiences, as we were talking about before we got on the podcast here. And the restaurant's been successful since the very beginning.

19:52Sava Farah: So one of really great perks of that restaurant is because it's always been so gangbusters. I was able to take the capital from that restaurant and invest it into all my other properties. So all these years I've been so fortunate to not have to bring in investors or partners or have to take out like exorbitant bank loans. And we've just kind of rolled the success of one operation into the next, into the next, into the next. So it's allowed us to like really move quickly. We don't have a lot of red tape and I've never been really picky. You know, I tell there's a lot of people who come to me and they say, I want to open a restaurant.

20:28Sava Farah: What's your advice. And one of the first things I tell them is don't, especially if it's your second career or something like that. This is not a hobby. This is not a passive sport. This is like dedication on a whole nother level. So if we get past the don't piece, we're like, no, I'm going to do it. I'm like, then try and find a space that's a second generation space that's got a built out kitchen. It's got the infrastructure. It's got the ventilation. It's got the sprinkler system, the plumbing and so on and so forth, because the investment that one has to make to start a new restaurant is almost always crippling.

21:06Sava Farah: And to operate under that type of financial pressure, especially if you're a new restaurateur while learning a very nuanced business, there's nothing black and white about what we do. So if you can reduce that financial pressure and really focus on the operations, you might have a chance.

21:25Joseph E. D'Amore: 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. I want you to reimagine loyalty. No points, no apps, no blanket discounts, just better hospitality that drives more visits and measurable revenue.

22:05Joseph E. D'Amore: Restaurants using Guestology are seeing traffic increases of up to 5%, and at scale, that can mean millions in incremental revenue. So if you run 10, 20, 50, 100 restaurant locations,

22:19Sava Farah: you need Guestology.

22:20Joseph E. D'Amore: 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 was good at raising money and it was one of those things where people like me, I was like known in the market and people were in, they wanted to be part of the success, right? At least the perceived success. And so like people were super excited to give me money so that they could say they owned a part of this thing.

23:03Sava Farah: They love giving restaurateurs money.

23:05Joseph E. D'Amore: They do, right? Especially the people that just want, you know, want to use it. It's like a toy for them. And there's the benefit to that is that there's less of a vetting process. Almost anyone that I think invests in a restaurant, like they're just kissing that money goodbye. There's enough out there now, especially in 2026. The people know like the statistics are not in your favor as it relates to ROI. And when I think about like investor capital versus like, let's call it traditional institutional money versus self-finance. Bootstrapping. Right, bootstrapping, which is exactly what you did.

23:42Joseph E. D'Amore: I think that the hurdles around, my concern around, And again, I never tried to get like a traditional SBA bank loan or anything like that. But if I could do it all over again, I think I would have tried. And I think I would have tried because I think that I am incredibly persuasive. I think I am very charming. And I think that I wear success. I can attest to that. Very well. And I think a loan officer could give a fuck about all three of those things.

24:10Sava Farah: Amen. That's it.

24:12Joseph E. D'Amore: You know what I mean? They're going to be like, look at all this success. Look at these numbers. What about the numbers for the thing I'm going to give you money for? And I think it would have been a really useful exercise, whether I chose to take the money or not, to try and go the traditional financing route just to see if this would have survived critical analysis by someone who expected to get their money back. And I bring that up because I was able to get investor capital easily. So you're investing your own money in these projects. So you're investing your money in things that you think have a high likelihood to succeed.

24:48Joseph E. D'Amore: But like, what is your lens? Who is the one providing that lender perspective into your own organization so that, you know, like with an objective third party, like this is an opportunity. It's not a distraction.

25:01Sava Farah: Yeah. You know, it's such a great question because I don't have like a board or a group of investors or people that I report to on the financial side. I've never had to really develop that muscle. And I think the voice I listen to the most is my intuition. And my husband, who's a lot more risk adverse and analytical than I, when we first got together, he felt like he was on a roller coaster ride, like whether we're investing in a restaurant project or real estate or all the other various things we do outside of the hospitality portfolio. He would give him pause. and he's come to the realization that he no longer questions where I want to put my time and energy and our money, which is really a relief because that's really the person that I need buy-in from because he's my partner in life.

25:54Sava Farah: But yeah, I think I really trust my gut. I'm very, very calculated about when I move and how I move. And I've been a slow grower. I've been in business over 20 years, but we really only have four locations. And I think, you know, there's a lot of people who'd love to see us keep expanding. And I've got people in the Detroit market that are always like, when are you coming to Detroit? But size is important to me. And it's not necessarily like I have to get to a certain valuation or a certain annual revenue or a certain restaurant count, but scale just to me means impact. So I want to be able to make a greater impact on the food scene in my community, on beautifying spaces, on restoring properties, on bringing in business partners.

26:36Sava Farah: Like I have a handful of business partners that run my locations now and majority of them are people who were in roles. I saw a lot of potential in and I wanted to invest in them. They were investing in the business and put them on a path to partnership. Two of them are now owners of the restaurants where they've invested their own money and now they have like full buy-in in the restaurants. And so much of our growth has to do with like, who's on the boat? It's like, who's hungry? Who's looking to do more? What talent do we have that we haven't tapped yet? And then what markets need to be served?

27:11Sava Farah: What markets are underserved? Real estate opportunity definitely plays a big role in this, is finding opportunities that feel right at this exact moment. And I'm not saying I bet 100, but I haven't been wrong yet. So it's just, I got to listen to that. That's what, you know, it's just kind of guides me. And I always say I'm like a really good listener. Like I really listen to my guests. I really listen to my team. I really listen to the market. Like when I'm working on a restaurant space, whether it's like a remodel or we're building a new space, this might sound a little corny, but like I do these like listening sessions where I'll go in and I'll spend like some quiet time in the space where it's like, what wants to happen here.

27:53Sava Farah: And I'll listen to the space and just really get a feel for it. And I feel in a lot of ways, like I'm channeling what needs to happen in a particular location or a particular site. So it's very organic for me. There's nothing scientific about it. There's nothing scientific about what I do. It's all really feeling based and it's backed in science. And I have a lot of people that contradict that, but you can't argue with success. I have unorthodox ways. I didn't go to college, so I don't have all these formulas like, hey, and then you find investors and then you do it this way and then make sure you don't.

28:29Sava Farah: And here's the guardrails. I don't have any of those preconceived ideologies or notions. You're persuasive about getting money. As you were saying, I don't think anyone would give me money.

28:41Joseph E. D'Amore: Like maybe now that like, and now, yeah, I have people wanting to throw money at me all the time,

28:46Sava Farah: But like for the first like decade of my career. So I didn't rely on that. And I also really love freedom. I love the freedom of not having to answer. And while the investor path is so attractive for so many reasons, because you go in well resourced, like you're getting the restaurant of your dreams right away. You're mitigating a lot of risk. but there I would imagine and I'd love to hear from you Josh like how was that relationship with your investors because for me like I have such an intimate relationship with my restaurants and partially because I've invested all the money into them right so I wonder like how it was for you to like have this outside group that had some say or maybe not I'd love to hear from you

29:33Joseph E. D'Amore: it's complicated. So my primary investor was my best friend.

29:39Sava Farah: Let's turn this into a therapy session.

29:40Joseph E. D'Amore: So my primary financial investor was a very close friend of mine. Very, very close friend for years before we opened the first concept. And then throughout, he invested in all three, but he wasn't a restaurateur, right? He was outside of the industry. And so that created this inherent friction. And I think that this was true of him. It was also true of other investors that either I work directly with or indirectly through other people. It can be seen as a toy, right? It's my career. It's my future. It's my reputation, but it's your toy. You know, so if you want to come in and get shit faced and hang out behind the bar or whatever it is, it's your toy.

30:24Joseph E. D'Amore: The biggest hurdle I'll tell you is this. And I think it was a unique situation for me that was rooted in love and positive intentions and ultimately resulted in hurt feelings was there were things that I would have told just an outside investor that I didn't give a fuck about personally, things that I did not tell the people that invested in my brands because I love them, because I wanted them to be happy, because I didn't want them to be disappointed with the thing that they had invested in. So I would manipulate the things, you know, I would adjust the brand or the tier or this or that or adjust service or, you know, they don't like this thing on the menu.

31:08Joseph E. D'Amore: You're appeasing, you're appeasing them. For sure. Whereas like if it was just some guy that gave me money, I would say like, you don't know anything about anything. Like shut the fuck up and just take your check. So I think what that led to was probably resentment on my part, which I don't think was healthy for the relationship. I want to get back to something you said, though, because you made it sound really woo-woo, and I think it's less woo-woo than one would think. You said that you listened. One of the other things you said earlier in the conversation is that you felt drawn, right? That you were drawn to this, that you had felt, I believe that the term you used was directed, that you felt directed.

31:43Sava Farah: Guided. Guided. Guided, darling.

31:46Joseph E. D'Amore: Which I love. I absolutely love. I would say very much the same is true of me and my life. I do this marketing masterclass. I do it every month for free for the industry to try and help independents make money. And one of the contrarian things that I say within it, and it's a deeply held belief, is like, I'm not here to fix the problems in your business. Like restaurants are fucking problem factories. So like, it's just right one after the next after the next. And everybody spends all of their time trying to fix the problems. Whereas if you just double down, if you just 10x things are working in your business, magic happens.

32:19Joseph E. D'Amore: And so I share that belief, that ideology, because I think that you exemplify it. You talk about listening. And I think that the act of listening is less important than what you're listening for. And what you're listening for is momentum. It's positive motion. The big moment. In the right direction, for sure, right?

32:39Sava Farah: Yeah.

32:39Joseph E. D'Amore: So I would ask you, when you are evaluating the tough times, and then also, God willing, in the good times, why are things working as well as they are? How do you critically analyze where the momentum is?

32:52Sava Farah: Critically analyze where the momentum is. I would have to say it starts with being like really tapped in. I'm really tapped into my locations, my teams. Year after year, as we continue to expand, we've got 400 employees. We've got four very busy restaurants right now and a couple side projects. We've got some Airbnbs and a farm going and things of that nature. But so we're pretty spread out. So my listening has to get a lot better. and I need to be able to recognize patterns and really pay attention to the things that do matter. And momentum, gosh, that's such an important one. And it's one of the things that I teach my leaders all the time.

33:33Sava Farah: We call it the big mo. I got that from John Maxwell. And he says, with momentum, things look a lot better than they actually are. Without momentum, they look even worse than they actually are, right? So good momentum covers a lot of blemish, right? But yeah, it's really paying attention to the things that matter, which vary from season to season and location to location, which you got to be tapped in. Like I said earlier, like restaurant touring, at least the way that I understand it, is not a passive sport. You've got to be active on all points. Now, that doesn't mean I'm living in my restaurants.

34:11Sava Farah: I'm not working 70, 80 hours a week, which I did for many, many years. As you hone this listening and hone this ability to recognize and discern momentum, the better of a listener you are, I believe the more quickly you can analyze these situations and redirect momentum or reignite momentum in certain situations. I rely heavily on my partners and location leadership to be able to really manage that momentum. And yeah, it's staying tapped in. It's coaching, which we all know one of the hardest things to do is coaching other leaders and managers, right? And like, if we don't find a way to do that as beautifully as possible, we're never going to get the results that we want.

34:58Sava Farah: And so lots and lots of therapy later, like I found my voice in inspiring this momentum. One of the things I always say is we can never require anyone to do anything. We can only inspire them. And then, you know, then there's the overarching culture. It's all about culture. It's like, how do we create a culture that is active, that is rooted in action, that has follow through and follow up? because restaurant folks, we're really busy running restaurants, but there's so much that has to happen behind the scenes to keep that momentum alive and creating space and also resources. One of the things that we learned when I moved probably into my second location is centralizing resources so we can take as much of the administrative load off of the locations as possible.

35:52Sava Farah: So we've got like a marketing team, an HR team, an accounting team, a maintenance team. So we've got like a really fully loaded back office to like actually keep all of the gears in order, however you would say something like that, you know, to keep everything working. We have a really robust back-end team to make sure that everything is working behind stage so that what our leaders are focused on is experience, dining room service, kitchen operations, team development, and so on. And it's like, it's a never-ending battle, though. It really is. It's like I take my eye off a location for a little bit or, you know, even recently I was in Europe for a couple of weeks and, you know, I come back and we're working on this like massive project.

36:39Sava Farah: And I come back. We're actually wrapping up construction on a bakery that we just opened last week, actually. And I come back and like the site was a mess and all the timelines were missed. And it was like construction hadn't wrapped up. All the furniture and equipment got there. So it was like, you know how that like collision.

37:00Joseph E. D'Amore: I do know exactly how that is. Oh my God. And like, you know, I'm in Europe and I'm calling in every day and checking in.

37:05Sava Farah: How's it going? Good. Good. Yeah. Good. Yeah. We're excited to have you back. I'm like, all right, cool. And I get back and I'm just like, what in holy hell happened here? Like, did we not hear like the alarm bells ringing when all of this like collided? so yeah and like I took a trip right before an opening because we plan this family trip every year and like I put my family matters first and foremost it's like my family matters and my self care come before anything business because if I can't fill those cups I will be a ratchet bitch at work and it's not gonna help anybody so but how do you rebound from that you know like what

37:48Joseph E. D'Amore: did you take so you get back from the trip and it's a shit show and like what's worse is it's one of those things where people are running around with their heads on fire and somebody walks up to you their hair's on fire you're like how's it going they're like oh my god so good so good right so like right the alarming thing is that they don't even know that this shit has hit the fan and so like what do you take away from that did you walk away from that experience

38:12Sava Farah: thinking this is what i should have done different no no i walked away from that experience thinking they didn't ring the bell because they didn't realize how f they were until i walked in and i was like and you could just see it in my eyes i was like okay okay over all right i see where we're at okay and then like i know not to react in those situations because then everybody's like in panic mode and like operating out of fear right so you know okay i see where we're at All right. Let me circle back later today. Needed a couple hours to process where we're at. And then for myself, I'm like, look, girl, like you had this trip planned.

38:53Sava Farah: I'm never going to blame myself. I'm never going to blame anybody else either. Blame is not sexy. So I wanted to take this trip. I knew it was an inopportune time, which introduced additional risk on the timeline. I had a lot of faith and I knew we couldn't open late. so then what I did was I established a new coalition a group to help me get the space organized because I was like I can't go to these people and undo all this fuckery because by the time I get there and some of them are going to be listening to this they're going to know exactly what I'm talking about by the time I'm trying to clean it up

39:32Joseph E. D'Amore: you know what you did and

39:38Sava Farah: yeah so it was like just roll up the sleeves type season. Like I remember coming home that night and I was like, guys, to my kids and my husband, I'm like, the next week is going to be hell because it was just like so much catching up to do. Like permits hadn't been pulled and approvals hadn't been met and furniture came in that was broken. And like, it was just a clusterfuck. But it was like, again, I wanted to take this trip. I had it planned. I wasn't going to back out of my trip because then that's and we get like resentful and then we feel like we're like trapped in our businesses and that we're like giving away all of our freedom to meet deadlines and like there's never a good time there's never a good time to take a trip there's never a good time to have a baby there's never a good time to open a restaurant you just somehow have to try and integrate all of these parts of your life and hope for the best and then when shit hits the fam like that's on you like it was like every time I mean, I was like, that's on you, dog.

40:36Sava Farah: Like, you got to clean this up. You were the one that took the trip and time to clean it up. And we did. And we opened on time. And we had a line around the block like the first week we were open. And it was just glorious and delicious. And now they're running smoothly. But yeah, those oh shit moments happen often.

40:54Joseph E. D'Amore: What about the great moments? You know, one of the things I like to do at the end of the episode is try and steal as much as I can from you. I don't know if they're successful people as much as they're just successful tactics, tools and strategies that, when implemented consistently, have really positive outcomes consistently across many different people. And so you're able to look back on your career, look at the ups and the downs. And I'm sure that there are some things that you consistently go back to that seem to serve you really well. What are those things?

41:24Sava Farah: I know I need to do a better job reflecting because I built an extraordinary career and extraordinary businesses in an extraordinary town with extraordinary people. And like I recognize that every day. But I don't really sit back and look at the big picture and think, man, these are the real highlights. It's, I'm more so like that person that's like gratitude in every moment in small doses. So much gratitude for like good lighting. Like I'll be in a restaurant and be like, God, this lighting is incredible. I'm so glad I put a window up there. I knew we needed a window up there. Or like, you know, an extraordinary meal where I'm like, I can't believe I'm able to eat food this good in Ann Arbor, Michigan out of one of my joints.

42:10Sava Farah: or, you know, people who've come up the ranks in my company, people who, you know, started as dishwashers and now they're chefs at one of the restaurants. You know, my longest running employee, Jamar, who's been there almost 17 years, actually 17 years this month. I find gratitude and appreciation in those little moments, like walking in one day after the cleaners have left and the restaurant is spotless and the bathrooms are exactly how I want them. Like that's the shit I relish in is just those really little moments. And we're coming up on our 20th year here in Ann Arbor. So I've been thinking a lot about reflecting more broadly on what has been accomplished here and, you know, the careers that have been built, the celebrations that have been shared with guests and employees and, you know, just we've got some accomplishments.

43:03Sava Farah: But I tend to overlook those and then underlook those and then like really appreciate the little things. When I'm watching a server at a table giving like awesome table side service and I'm observing that and I'm like, fuck yeah. It's a little things for me because I don't need like I've never been one to chase like accolades or recognition or validation. Like I don't need any of that. Like I give that to myself every day. I'm like, girl, you are so lucky to be here. You are so lucky to be alive. so I don't really need all these big you know I like making money I like full restaurants you know I like stuff like that like that's important to me like you were saying earlier that you know how a lot of restauranteurs we work so much and like we're always broke I haven't had that experience I've been broke and had and not had and had and not had but like revenue and bottom line is like really important to us and it's something that we don't play with like if we're here.

43:58Sava Farah: We're here to make money. So we've been very fortunate in that respect. And then not having investors to share it with is like great because then I get to like pour that right back into my businesses and my teams and able to like, you know, it's amazing to me to watch somebody's life transform because of what they earn in one of my restaurants. Like you see the cars, the car collection improve every year the like the threads are improving like that's the stuff I love to see is just those little signs of man we got it right we got it right it's those little things but that is only possible if you're making money when you're under the gun and you're running behind on payroll and scratching your head about food costs and it has gotten harder you know and the way that we've really tackled that is we just have to charge a lot more like and that sucks it's like you want to be able to provide a value it is not possible i don't know how restaurants providing a value are making payroll and my guess is that they're not and they're like hanging on by a thread but we just we have to charge a lot more and then we have to create the value behind that we work off the p &l so it's like we start at the bottom and we work our way up and then we know how many guests we have to serve and what the guest check average is and what every server should be selling.

45:19Sava Farah: And there is a big numbers game behind this if you want to stay afloat. And only there can, I feel like at least for me, can I really have the breathing room to approach my work with such gratitude and abundance and appreciation.

45:36Joseph E. D'Amore: That's Sava. To learn more about The Pulpo Group and her restaurants, visit thepulpogroup.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 Full Comp, 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.

46:16Joseph E. D'Amore: I know you're busy, and so don't take your time for granted. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.