Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have a special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is Cameron Mitchell. He is the author of
Speaker 1: a new book about his career in the restaurant industry,
Speaker 1: and he also happens to be uh, the founder and
Speaker 1: CEO and soon to be chairman of Cameron Mitchell Restaurant Group.
Speaker 1: I found our conversation quite fascinating if you're interested in
Speaker 1: the restaurant industry and what it's like to develop a
Speaker 1: restaurant concept and expand it from one restaurant too many
Speaker 1: across the country. Uh. They have five thousand employees and
Speaker 1: their restaurants of a variety of different names, probably best
Speaker 1: known as Ocean Prime Um, generate over three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars a year and revenue. Uh. You'll find this to
Speaker 1: be a fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado, my
Speaker 1: conversation Cameron Mitchell. My special guest today is Cameron Mitchell.
Speaker 1: He is the founder of the Cameron Mitchell Restaurant Group,
Speaker 1: now twenty five years old and employing five thousand people
Speaker 1: in sixty restaurants across the country. Cameron Mitchell restaurant group
Speaker 1: generates over three hundred million dollars in annual sales. Mr.
Speaker 1: Mitchell was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young,
Speaker 1: as well as Small Business Person of the Year by
Speaker 1: the U s. S b A. He was also named
Speaker 1: to fifty New Tastemakers by the Nation's Restaurant News magazine,
Speaker 1: and he is the author, most recently of Yes Is
Speaker 1: the Answer. How faith in people and a culture of
Speaker 1: hospitality built a modern American restaurant company. Cameron Mitchell, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: So let's let's discuss a little bit about your background.
Speaker 1: You didn't seem when you were growing up like somebody
Speaker 1: who was going to find his way into a chef's talk.
Speaker 1: How did you get interested in restaurants and cooking? It
Speaker 1: doesn't appear this is something you were very passionate about
Speaker 1: as a child. Now, I it depends on how far
Speaker 1: back you want to go. But I had a troubled
Speaker 1: childhood into troubled youth, and struggled in high school and
Speaker 1: ran away from my home and dropped out of high
Speaker 1: school when I was fifteen, and my folks were divorced
Speaker 1: and my mom didn't have any money. And so when
Speaker 1: I came back would have been my junior year, I
Speaker 1: didn't have any money for lunch money, and she couldn't
Speaker 1: give me lunch money. And I needed to work. I
Speaker 1: need to get a job. And so I got a
Speaker 1: job in es a local local steakhouse Washington dishes for
Speaker 1: two sixty hour and did that in bus tables and
Speaker 1: prepped a little bit through my junior and senior year
Speaker 1: in high school. And that's how I found my entree
Speaker 1: into the restaurant business. So, so let's talk about that,
Speaker 1: because you described in your book sort of being a
Speaker 1: terrible employee, constantly being late. You were suspended, you put
Speaker 1: on thirty days notice, and you describe an epiphany where
Speaker 1: you realized, Hey, this restaurant thing is really interesting. What
Speaker 1: explained what that moment was like and how it changed
Speaker 1: your whole life. Well, I was just turned ninety at
Speaker 1: the time. I've been out in high school for about
Speaker 1: a year, and I was living at home with mom,
Speaker 1: working for beer money, working for the man, not uh boy,
Speaker 1: but not yet a man, and um, just really squandering
Speaker 1: and UM I was working two jobs in the restaurant business,
Speaker 1: and I had trouble getting to work on time in
Speaker 1: the morning, and I got put on three days suspension
Speaker 1: in thirty days probation. So midway through that probationary period,
Speaker 1: and I'm just trying to fare what I want to
Speaker 1: do in my life. And then I just have been struggling,
Speaker 1: and so I don't want to go right after college
Speaker 1: because I don't want to go to college not knowing
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. So UM, I have suspended
Speaker 1: for three days, put on thirty days probation. And during
Speaker 1: the middle of that probationary period, it was a Friday
Speaker 1: afternoon and I was during shift changed, and I was
Speaker 1: working AM cook that day and a PM host at
Speaker 1: the same restaurant. Yes, and that restaurant was a very
Speaker 1: busy restaurant, would probably do a thousand people that day
Speaker 1: between lunch and dinner. And UM, four o'clock in the
Speaker 1: afternoon shift change the restaurant, the restaurant's half full, the
Speaker 1: bar is packed with happy are uh. The AM shift
Speaker 1: was trying to leave, the PM shifts trying to come on.
Speaker 1: The managers are barking orders, and it's kind of pandemonium
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, and time froze. I looked across the
Speaker 1: line in the kitchen and I said, I absolutely love this.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm going to do the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. I'm going to be in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1: So I worked my double shift and I went home
Speaker 1: that night and I wrote out my goals. I said,
Speaker 1: I was going to go to the culinary. It's two
Speaker 1: of America in Hyde Park, New York. I had heard
Speaker 1: about that. I'm nineteen years old, and I was gonna graduate.
Speaker 1: I was gonna become executive chef by the time I
Speaker 1: was twenty three, general manager of twenty four, regional manager
Speaker 1: twenty six, vice president oper as a thirty, and president
Speaker 1: of a restaurant company by the time I was thirty five.
Speaker 1: Those are those are ambitious. And I woke my mom
Speaker 1: up at one in the morning, so I know what
Speaker 1: I want to do with myself the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And she was quite relieved, needless to say. I got
Speaker 1: up the next morning and now I was working for
Speaker 1: my I did a complete hundred return. I was working
Speaker 1: for myself, for my future, for my career. I had
Speaker 1: the best attitude in the kitchen. I was the hardest
Speaker 1: working guy in the kitchen, and I the day before,
Speaker 1: I was the laziest guy in the kitchen, a lousy
Speaker 1: attitude and working for the man and working for beer money.
Speaker 1: So now you are change, Yes, I guess so for
Speaker 1: people who may not have ever worked in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and I was a waiter and a short order cook
Speaker 1: in college, there's really especially during a rush, there's a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of energy and sort of a controlled chaos.
Speaker 1: Is that exactly? That's a that's a great way, And
Speaker 1: for people who haven't experienced it, I could see how
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous lure there because it's always different every
Speaker 1: day and there's so much stuff going on. What was
Speaker 1: it about that moment in time that had you flipped
Speaker 1: from being the bum in the kitchen to the hardest
Speaker 1: working guy in the building. Well, I just needed to
Speaker 1: find my way. I need to have my goal and
Speaker 1: that was the key difference. That was totally the key difference.
Speaker 1: And once I I've been goal warning it ever since.
Speaker 1: I still have on my desk today my fourth quarter
Speaker 1: goals for my career for the next fifteen years. So
Speaker 1: I've been a goal center since day one and and
Speaker 1: it's worked well for me, and I'm still doing it today.
Speaker 1: So the Juvenary Institute of America is described has been
Speaker 1: described as the Harvard of food prep. You had written
Speaker 1: there are three kinds of c I A students, those
Speaker 1: gonning to be chefs, those who want to be in
Speaker 1: the restaurant business, and those who were lost. How did
Speaker 1: you know that you didn't want to be a chef
Speaker 1: but wanted to actually be in the restaurant Well, it
Speaker 1: goes back to my goals. I knew I want to
Speaker 1: be a president of a restaurant company, and I said
Speaker 1: to myself at nineteen, Yeah, So I said, if I,
Speaker 1: uh uh, if I'm any president of a a restaurant company,
Speaker 1: I'd better know about food. And I was already working
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, but I didn't know anything about food.
Speaker 1: So I said, I'm going to go to the CIA
Speaker 1: and learn about foods. And you they turn you into
Speaker 1: a chef even if you don't want to be a chef,
Speaker 1: and if you want to be in the management side,
Speaker 1: they still teach you how to cut. Oh, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Those fundamentals and those basics I still work with today
Speaker 1: and have been formed the base for my knowledge to
Speaker 1: build my career from. Let's discuss a little bit the
Speaker 1: process you go through in quote unquote finding great people.
Speaker 1: A lot of executives say that's the most challenging thing
Speaker 1: they do is hiring, and sometimes you never know who's
Speaker 1: going to turn out to be great or not. You
Speaker 1: think you came up with a solution, tell us about it.
Speaker 1: The two questions I could ask thousands of times is
Speaker 1: where do you Where do you get such great people?
Speaker 1: And how do you deliver such great service? And I
Speaker 1: tell people the answer to the same, to essentially both questions,
Speaker 1: we get the same people everybody else gets. I actually
Speaker 1: don't think it's that hard to get great people, uh,
Speaker 1: because I think everybody operate on the premise almost everybody's great.
Speaker 1: We just treat people great, and we inspire people to
Speaker 1: grow and learn and uh, and we care about them tremendously,
Speaker 1: and they in turn care about us, and they want
Speaker 1: to deliver great service, and they get excited about our
Speaker 1: company and they want to build their career. And it's uh,
Speaker 1: such a positive momentum that permeates the entire organization. So
Speaker 1: you don't hire great people. You hire people and allow
Speaker 1: them to become great. Correct. And that's exactly right. That
Speaker 1: seems like that's a challenge to do. How do you
Speaker 1: take a regular person in jobs that could be long, tiring,
Speaker 1: stressful and make sure that those folks always have a
Speaker 1: good attitude and always are you know, uh, striving for
Speaker 1: that the sort of greatness you describe, well, I think
Speaker 1: those long, hard hours not having a great attitude is
Speaker 1: a standard uh uh image of the restaurant business, if
Speaker 1: you will. But in our company it's not quite the same.
Speaker 1: Our company our number one value as our associates come first.
Speaker 1: I see. I tell people that our company is built
Speaker 1: by its people for its people. Were not built for
Speaker 1: our investors, were not built for me. We're built for
Speaker 1: our people. You describe in your book a book that
Speaker 1: you found very influential, which was the customer comes second,
Speaker 1: which is somewhat counterintuitive and very much not how the
Speaker 1: usual management books discuss treating customers. Explain what the customer
Speaker 1: comes second actually means to your corporate culture. Well, we've
Speaker 1: all heard of the customer comes first. That's preached almost everywhere,
Speaker 1: and here I am, as CEO of a restaurant company.
Speaker 1: I would say, our customers do not come first. Our
Speaker 1: associates come first. I'm even rasien enough to say we
Speaker 1: don't even have a direct relationship with our customers. We
Speaker 1: have a direct relationship with the people we work with,
Speaker 1: eight and day out. Our customers, who I call guests,
Speaker 1: come to see us once a week, once a month,
Speaker 1: once a year, sometimes once never gone forbid. But uh,
Speaker 1: we have the direct relationship with our people. So I look.
Speaker 1: I described it as a triangular relationship. We take care
Speaker 1: of our people, are people take care of our guests,
Speaker 1: and our guests take care of our company. So that's
Speaker 1: how we do it. So obviously corporate culture is a
Speaker 1: big part of that. How do you go about building
Speaker 1: a corporate culture that encourages staff members to try to
Speaker 1: get to yes? How do you ingrain that into the
Speaker 1: philosophy of a restaurant company. Well, it starts with us.
Speaker 1: You know, um, we say yes to our people all
Speaker 1: the time and they know that, and so, uh, yes
Speaker 1: is the answer. What's the question? Permeates every single corner
Speaker 1: of our organization And it might be as simple as
Speaker 1: a manager talking with some friends and hey, we're gonn
Speaker 1: a out of town in three weeks for a long weekend.
Speaker 1: You want to go? And he doesn't say or she
Speaker 1: does not say, I have to ask my boss, they
Speaker 1: say yes, I can go, no problem, and then they
Speaker 1: go tell their boss they're gonna be away for a weekend,
Speaker 1: coming up here. And so, uh, that freedom and that
Speaker 1: belief that it's it's good for me, it's good for you,
Speaker 1: and so our whole team operates on that. So my office,
Speaker 1: we don't have a vacation schedule, we don't have fixed hours.
Speaker 1: We we we initially when it was just a handful
Speaker 1: of us, called it big boy rules. Hey, you know
Speaker 1: what you work is, come in, do your work. If
Speaker 1: you've done it three and you want to go home
Speaker 1: in three, who cares? And we assume you're not going
Speaker 1: to be abusive on vacations. But one can imagine when
Speaker 1: we're twenty five people, your thousands of people, how do
Speaker 1: you make sure that people aren't taking advantage of being
Speaker 1: abusive of that? Well, our culture, in many ways, UH
Speaker 1: deals with that. But in particular I've always led the
Speaker 1: organization believing we lead the organization for nine percent of
Speaker 1: the people that are good, not the one or two
Speaker 1: percent of the people that are bad. And so, yes,
Speaker 1: do we have people to take advantage of us? Sometimes
Speaker 1: yes we do, but we don't let that affect the
Speaker 1: positive work environment that we have in a great company
Speaker 1: culture that we have for the other of our people
Speaker 1: to enjoy. And and you're one of the executives who
Speaker 1: feels that your job is to help everybody else correct
Speaker 1: do their jobs. And I'm gonna throw another quote at you. Uh,
Speaker 1: instead of worrying so much about how I did my job,
Speaker 1: I switched my energy to helping other people do their jobs.
Speaker 1: This was another epiphany moment you describe. Tell us about
Speaker 1: what triggered that that reversal and and how is it
Speaker 1: helped you in business since then? Well, it changed my life.
Speaker 1: One day as a younger general manager, I got I
Speaker 1: was working my tail off ninety hours a week, and
Speaker 1: I thought how successful the restaurant would be was how
Speaker 1: well I did my job and how hard I worked.
Speaker 1: And uh, my boss called me into his office and uh,
Speaker 1: so you just had a clandestine me with eight servers
Speaker 1: who were gonna have mutiny on the bounty and either
Speaker 1: I go or they go. And he said, listen, he's
Speaker 1: gonna stay, but I want you to stay and let
Speaker 1: me talk to him. And so he told me about
Speaker 1: this meeting and I was shocked. I thought I was
Speaker 1: doing a great job and but I wasn't even focused
Speaker 1: on new people. I wasn't even worried about the people.
Speaker 1: I was running around, falling around the restaurant, making sure
Speaker 1: they were doing their job right, etcetera, etcetera, with a
Speaker 1: fine tooth comb and driving them nuts. Basically, So I
Speaker 1: UH said to him, I said, I'll change my attitude.
Speaker 1: I'll change my way. And I read several books, and
Speaker 1: I thought, and I reflected, and I created, uh this
Speaker 1: leadership style of working UH through the people. We're here
Speaker 1: to support our people. And and then when I realized,
Speaker 1: it's not how well I do my job, it's how
Speaker 1: well everybody else does their job is what's important. I
Speaker 1: and all my focus was on support all of my
Speaker 1: fellow associates that worked in that restaurant, and the whole
Speaker 1: thing changed on it on a time. So, how do
Speaker 1: you spot talents when you're when you're looking to bring
Speaker 1: on executive chef or even even a sous chef, or
Speaker 1: or someone at the front of the restaurant, host or
Speaker 1: hostess or a manager. What are you looking for in
Speaker 1: that process? What do you think you could just pretty
Speaker 1: much take anybody and move them into that role. We
Speaker 1: pretty much believe we can take about anybody. So we
Speaker 1: don't really do much outside hiring. Ninety percent of our
Speaker 1: people come in from the hourly associate ranks and prove
Speaker 1: themselves at that point and and get promoted and grow
Speaker 1: with our company. Not to say we don't outside higher
Speaker 1: but very rarely. I don't want people to work and
Speaker 1: build their careers with the company and to have us
Speaker 1: outside hire someone on top of them after they worked
Speaker 1: for the company for years. So talent really identifies itself
Speaker 1: through their job performance. As we move along, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the book you wrote. Yes is
Speaker 1: the answer, And I have to start with the Milkshake
Speaker 1: story because it's got a little bit of five easy
Speaker 1: pieces to it, a little Jack Nicholson and then a
Speaker 1: little twist ending you and your wife are out with
Speaker 1: the family at a restaurant and you obviously can look
Speaker 1: at all the items on the menu, and if they
Speaker 1: have bread and they have cheese, you should be able
Speaker 1: to get a grilled cheese. Accept Some places say no,
Speaker 1: tell us about that that moment, which I found amusing
Speaker 1: it while we're dating ourselves that we know Jack Nicholson
Speaker 1: and five easy pieces, right, So it's the film buffs
Speaker 1: who are younger will certainly know of the of the
Speaker 1: movie and the famous chicken salad scene. You can find
Speaker 1: that on YouTube if you're not familiar with the of
Speaker 1: the movie. But you're at you're at the restaurant. What happened?
Speaker 1: So I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. I had my
Speaker 1: four year old, my two year old with me, my
Speaker 1: wife and my mother and father in law, and so
Speaker 1: I want to get a grilled cheese from my four
Speaker 1: year old son. And uh, the gal says, we don't
Speaker 1: have grilled cheese. I said, okay, So I end up
Speaker 1: ordering a club sandwich. Hold the turkey, hamlets, tomato, bacon.
Speaker 1: So they had the bread, they had the cheese, and
Speaker 1: they had the grill. How Hard said, if you can
Speaker 1: saute this on both sides, that be fabious. So I
Speaker 1: get that cheese turkey club. So then I asked her
Speaker 1: for a chocolate milk shake for my son, and she was, well,
Speaker 1: all we have is a Hoggandah smoke shake. It's like
Speaker 1: a quart of soft whipped ice cream. It's huge. It's
Speaker 1: way too big for your son. We just can't do it.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, I said, can I will you
Speaker 1: ask your manager. So she goes to ask her manager.
Speaker 1: I see the manager shake her head. No. She comes
Speaker 1: back says, we can't do it. I said, okay, well
Speaker 1: can you have your manager come over to see me?
Speaker 1: And my wife starts to kick me under the table.
Speaker 1: Don't do this, And I said, I just want to
Speaker 1: know why. Can I assume your wife has seen this
Speaker 1: movie before. I mean, this is not the first time, right,
Speaker 1: you've experienced what should be a yes and no, and
Speaker 1: you're just just miffed by the whole prod exactly, And
Speaker 1: I want to know why. So uh, she comes over
Speaker 1: and she says, well, uh, the thing is, we pre
Speaker 1: portion our ice cream, and we give your son a
Speaker 1: little bit of ice cream. What are we gonna do
Speaker 1: with the rest? Now, I've been in the restaurant business
Speaker 1: at this point in time twenty plus years. I know
Speaker 1: no one's in back pre portioning the ice cream. And
Speaker 1: I say, okay, I said, well, will you can you
Speaker 1: make a chocolate milk for me? She now, she's great hospitality. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'll get your chocolate milk and starts to turn away.
Speaker 1: I said, hold on a second. She had hot, too
Speaker 1: hot desserts on him menu It said a hot carrot
Speaker 1: one carrot cake and chocolate. Brannon is hurtess and all
Speaker 1: amode to? I said, what's all amode me? She's well,
Speaker 1: that's a scoop of ice cream. I said, perfect. Can
Speaker 1: I get an order of all a mode to go
Speaker 1: with my chocolate milk? And she said yes, but she
Speaker 1: chastised me. She said, this okay, sir, but it'll be expensive,
Speaker 1: and she was visibly upset with me and my wife.
Speaker 1: By the way, while you're all amoting this, hey run
Speaker 1: the whole thing through the blender, and now it's that
Speaker 1: milk exactly. So I get the milkshake. And a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, on the keynote speaker at aison lunching
Speaker 1: for our local business magazine, I'm telling the story how
Speaker 1: the answers, yes, what's the question? Or yes is the answer?
Speaker 1: What's the question? However you want to phrase it? Um,
Speaker 1: And I tell the story. And so about two weeks later,
Speaker 1: a gal comes up to me on the street. She said,
Speaker 1: my husband saw you speak at the Hyatt, thought she
Speaker 1: did a great job, and I want to take you
Speaker 1: up on your milkshake story. And so he went into
Speaker 1: one of your restaurants to the bar in order to
Speaker 1: try to order a chocolate milkshake, and they said no.
Speaker 1: And it's like she punched me right in the stomach,
Speaker 1: right there in the street. Tonight, I went into our
Speaker 1: Monday morning executive community meeting, fired up and said, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: our yes is the answer. What's the question? Is not
Speaker 1: permeating our organization well enough. We need to correct this.
Speaker 1: And so we started a brainstorm and we started, well,
Speaker 1: let's tell that story, Let's make a video of that story,
Speaker 1: and uh, let's do milkshake pins Let's make milkshake the
Speaker 1: icon of hospitality and CM are all great stuff, and
Speaker 1: people have little milkshake going on right now. And basically
Speaker 1: it says if someone asked for something a milkshake or otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you could deliver it the answer exactly. So I Uh,
Speaker 1: every new associated starts the company goes through a for
Speaker 1: our orientation into the company culture and philosophy and values
Speaker 1: and so forth, and we make every new associate that
Speaker 1: starts with the company of chocolate milkshake that day, and
Speaker 1: we take a lot further than that. We make thousands
Speaker 1: of chocolate milk shakes every year. We start every major meeting,
Speaker 1: every staff meeting with a milkshake, toast to everybody, celebrating
Speaker 1: great people, delivering genuine hospitality, and yes is the answer.
Speaker 1: What's the question? So how do you how do you
Speaker 1: make sure that the customer experience is consistent across all
Speaker 1: of those different locations, different suppliers, different regions, different managers,
Speaker 1: different staff members. If I walk into a camera Mitchell
Speaker 1: Restaurant here, there or elsewhere, am I going to get
Speaker 1: the same hospitality in the same meal or is it
Speaker 1: going to vary widely? But you're gonna get the same
Speaker 1: We are in UH coast to coast, were as far
Speaker 1: west as Beverly Hills to New York and everywhere in between.
Speaker 1: And we talked about our culture and values. You know,
Speaker 1: we have the same training programs across the company, we
Speaker 1: have the same standards, etcetera. But our culture and values
Speaker 1: UH is the backbone of what we do. And I
Speaker 1: look at it this way, Um, we teach our people
Speaker 1: our culture and our values. We teach them how to think,
Speaker 1: and if they know how to think, they'll know what
Speaker 1: to do. And so early in our earlier years, our
Speaker 1: culture and values as we spread out of town did
Speaker 1: not resonate as well as it did out of town
Speaker 1: as it does in town. Why what do you think that?
Speaker 1: Because we opened our restaurants without a town people and
Speaker 1: so forth, and we uh didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: transfer that culture and those vous. We didn't we brought
Speaker 1: people in. We thought if we hired it outside manager,
Speaker 1: then come in for eight to twelve weeks and train
Speaker 1: and and learn. And it's just not that way. So
Speaker 1: can you change twenty years of experience in ten weeks now?
Speaker 1: Now we take usually take six months to a year
Speaker 1: for an outside hire to really adapt and learn to
Speaker 1: our culture. So today we won't open a restaurant without
Speaker 1: a homewre own management team in that restaurant. And it's
Speaker 1: very important to inculcate that culture uh into that new property,
Speaker 1: no matter where it is. So restaurants are notorious for
Speaker 1: having a very high failure rate. You described the second
Speaker 1: restaurant you opened as, Uh, you're you're prepping, You're in
Speaker 1: the empty building. A police officer comes in and, uh,
Speaker 1: he's just checking on the building. What he's doing here? Oh,
Speaker 1: we're opening a new restaurant here. And at that point,
Speaker 1: after you already committed on the lease and you've already
Speaker 1: raised money and we're under construction. Yeah, hey, what's this neighborhood? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it safe? And he kind of surprised you with
Speaker 1: his answer, didn't he? Right there, there's been some some trouble,
Speaker 1: wasn't there. Yeah. So it was seven o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: you know, the construction team's gone. I'm just it's a beautiful,
Speaker 1: clear night, and I'm talking to the police officer. I
Speaker 1: look across, you know, a couple of blocks down the way.
Speaker 1: I see a lady dressed provocatively walking down the street.
Speaker 1: And I said to him, a lady in the evening.
Speaker 1: That's in the evening early And I said, uh uh,
Speaker 1: she prostituted. He was, oh, yeah, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: them down there, but there's some hotel dinner. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: is this a safe area? You know? Yeah it is,
Speaker 1: but you know, we had someone got killed. I was
Speaker 1: just seen two nights ago across the street here blood everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, my goodness, what have I done? So?
Speaker 1: And but you meanwhile, that restaurant was around for what
Speaker 1: seven years? Yeah, But generally speaking, when a new restaurant launches,
Speaker 1: that's that's a u The triumph of optimism over rationality,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Most restaurants don't even last two years, right,
Speaker 1: So how do you how do you manage that those
Speaker 1: challenging odds and continue to open restaurant after restaurant. Well,
Speaker 1: that particular restaurant I say, made enough to feed a
Speaker 1: cat for seven years. But anyways, and that was a mistake.
Speaker 1: And we've made mistakes and make lots of mistakes. And
Speaker 1: I look at his batting average. Um, I look at
Speaker 1: every five restaurants I opened, one is not going to
Speaker 1: do very well or might even close. The other three
Speaker 1: or what I call singles, doubles or triples, and then
Speaker 1: and the other one, the fifth one is a home
Speaker 1: run out of the park. And so you average from
Speaker 1: all together, I get five good ones. So we know
Speaker 1: we're gonna get mistakes, but we've we've gotten better our
Speaker 1: craft along the way. And you know, I go back
Speaker 1: to um when the high failure rate in the restaurant business,
Speaker 1: to me is a little bit of them in this
Speaker 1: misnomer simply put, Uh, a lot of people want to
Speaker 1: be in the restaurant business, and they it's kind of
Speaker 1: very relatively low barrier gentry as far as cash. Still
Speaker 1: a couple hundred grands to open any rest for your
Speaker 1: first one, maybe you can get away with that. You know,
Speaker 1: we spend millions of dollars today to open our restaurants,
Speaker 1: but certainly my first one was four hundred and put
Speaker 1: it that way. But uh, I always say, people don't
Speaker 1: walk around a grocery store pushing a grocery cart saying
Speaker 1: I want to be a grocer, but they do go
Speaker 1: to restaurants. Let's say I want to And so if
Speaker 1: you think if you take out the people that maybe
Speaker 1: really shouldn't be in the restaurant business, out of that
Speaker 1: equation and the success rates a little bit higher. But
Speaker 1: because of that um it creates a lot of failure rate.
Speaker 1: So assume you have access to plentiful capital, especially your shop.
Speaker 1: You have a good track record for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: What's the most challenging thing about launching a new restaurant?
Speaker 1: Is it the location? Is it? The theme? Is that
Speaker 1: the food? What? What's the biggest challenge? Well, you already
Speaker 1: took my first challenge out of the picture. Has capital
Speaker 1: access to plentiful capital? That's never been the case. It's
Speaker 1: it's a lot of capital. And you write in the book,
Speaker 1: how challenging. It was to constantly come up with every
Speaker 1: restaurant is four or five years ago, not not now,
Speaker 1: that's today. That's two million dollars right right, exactly so,
Speaker 1: and if you're in New York, it's five millions. We
Speaker 1: spent eleven million open New York. Really that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Was it worth it? Very much? So? And
Speaker 1: I'm assuming Beverly Hills isn't cheap eve okay, we're so
Speaker 1: that raises the question. You have a lot of restaurants
Speaker 1: in Ohio and Columbus. I would imagine that's much less expensive.
Speaker 1: And if you could attract as much of a crowd,
Speaker 1: are are those restaurants more profitable or are they not
Speaker 1: capable of doing the volume of a New York or
Speaker 1: l A both? I mean, it's it's it's a We
Speaker 1: talked about return on investment. It's about volume and uh,
Speaker 1: you know capital invested. So yes, there's less capital invested,
Speaker 1: but the lower the volume, so you might have the
Speaker 1: same return on investment as we have out somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So what are the other mistakes that that restaurateurs make?
Speaker 1: I have to assume being eneralized, we will take a
Speaker 1: break for dinner and we'll finish by midnight. Um, I
Speaker 1: under capitalization. I've heard from other restaurateurs. What what else
Speaker 1: is an issue? Obviously by the book, Yes is the answer.
Speaker 1: What's the question? Is all about your values and your
Speaker 1: beliefs and your philosophies. I think are very important. A
Speaker 1: lot of people start out. I don't even have any
Speaker 1: values written down, or any mission or anything. Don't even
Speaker 1: understand that. So that's that's first and foremost of my book. Uh,
Speaker 1: Understanding brand and brand development. Restaurant brand development. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna have a barbecue restaurant that's super healthy. Also,
Speaker 1: which is it? You're right, you can't have everything has
Speaker 1: to be congruent all the way across the brand. So
Speaker 1: an even restaurant branding itself has taken me years to
Speaker 1: really understand and and and maybe get a little good
Speaker 1: at it. Now here's mine naivete as a foodie here
Speaker 1: in New York. If the food is really good, you
Speaker 1: really have to go out of your way to mess
Speaker 1: that up. Am I wrong? Once you get to wow,
Speaker 1: this food is great? Is that sufficient or does that
Speaker 1: not get it done? Well? That's just I think one
Speaker 1: leg of the stool. What are the other likes well,
Speaker 1: sir service, and you can debate whether food or service
Speaker 1: is more important or there's different studies on both. I
Speaker 1: think they're about equal. Really, I'm surprised to hear that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember bead service, but you don't you know, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can tell you about a million spectacular meals, but
Speaker 1: I don't recall every saying this waiter. Usually they're unobtrusive,
Speaker 1: and when the service is really really good, you almost
Speaker 1: don't notice it. Right, unless you're in the industry, I
Speaker 1: can't help but notice it. You're not going to go
Speaker 1: to a place that's got great food even though the
Speaker 1: services loudy. Sometimes you have a bab But also you're
Speaker 1: not gonna go to a place with great service and
Speaker 1: lousy food. Correct. Correct, So that's why I say, Hence,
Speaker 1: I think they're both equally important. Then, uh come as
Speaker 1: the ambiance, which is a lot of that is the
Speaker 1: uh unobtrusive things that you may not even necessarily realize
Speaker 1: whether you like or don't like. You know, you might right,
Speaker 1: you might sit in the restaurant saidies don't really like
Speaker 1: this place. You may not know why exactly, but maybe
Speaker 1: the lighting is not right or the music is not right,
Speaker 1: all those intangibles to a certain extent, and then marketing.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, you can't really have a successful restaurant
Speaker 1: unless you also know how to market yourself because if
Speaker 1: you're you don't have a great location, people need to
Speaker 1: find you. So you have to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time and energy and tuning your horn to a certain
Speaker 1: extent in marketing yourself. So it's really those are the
Speaker 1: four legs of the stool in my book. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about another intangible. You mentioned the music and the lighting.
Speaker 1: I have some favorite places my wife refuses to go
Speaker 1: to on weekends because it's so crowded and it's so loud.
Speaker 1: It's not relaxing. You want to go on a Thursday
Speaker 1: or Sunday, I'm happy to, But Friday and Saturday night
Speaker 1: it's a zoo. Is that an issue you have to
Speaker 1: deal with or is that just my Uh? It certainly is.
Speaker 1: You know, noise and sound is certainly an issue. We've
Speaker 1: had to add soundproofing to restaurants along the way. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, little energy has got to
Speaker 1: be right. I say, people go out to be stimulated,
Speaker 1: not to sedate it. So, uh, in a restaurant tours
Speaker 1: nightmare is an empty, quiet nighting room, so we don't
Speaker 1: want those. So, uh, think about where we're coming from,
Speaker 1: and we we want loud. We want that energy. Energy
Speaker 1: breaves energy earlier. The staff is happier, the guests are happier,
Speaker 1: everybody's excited. Um. But you have to be able to
Speaker 1: talk at the same time. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to converse and enjoy yourself. That that's pretty reasonable. We
Speaker 1: have been speaking to Cameron Mitchell. He is the founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of the Cameron Mitchell Restaurant Group. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation, be sure and check out our podcast extras,
Speaker 1: where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all
Speaker 1: things food related. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, wherever your finer podcasts are sold. We
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my
Speaker 1: daily column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry Rehults.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Cameron, Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: I am a a foodie and I've gone out to
Speaker 1: Michelin Star restaurants all over the world. I'm very happy
Speaker 1: trolling my way through Chinatown finding random Malaysian restaurants or
Speaker 1: Shanghai soupi buns or someone someone on Lynnette Lopez from
Speaker 1: Business Insider on Twitter mentions that there's this restaurant in
Speaker 1: Flushing called Galaxy Dumpling House, which goes, oh, they're opening
Speaker 1: a new location, they're testing out a franchise concept. And
Speaker 1: I said to her, we, you know, have some people
Speaker 1: do a pub crawl to go to a bunch of cars.
Speaker 1: We did a dumpling crawl through Queen through my birthday
Speaker 1: year ago, through Flushing Queens. We went like a dozen.
Speaker 1: I got home, I didn't eat for two days. It
Speaker 1: was just that's a lot of dumpling. Galaxy Dumpling has
Speaker 1: like a hundred different dumplings on the menu. It's just
Speaker 1: and they're all, you know, individual hallmade. So I was intrigued.
Speaker 1: But when I saw your book and I saw your
Speaker 1: your history, um, I was kind of intrigued by it. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by the idea of taking a successful restaurant
Speaker 1: concept and expanding it elsewhere, be it franchise or or
Speaker 1: your own approach. And every now and then I'll see
Speaker 1: you a little restaurant and say, this is little place
Speaker 1: not too far from where I live called Cactus Cafe.
Speaker 1: It's just really good, simple Mexican food and grilled proving
Speaker 1: chicken in in a room smaller than we're sitting in
Speaker 1: right now. And I was saying, every time I see
Speaker 1: this place, some they could open a hundred of these
Speaker 1: if they were wanted to. The stuff is it's not
Speaker 1: there's a million of these little places like that. This
Speaker 1: is different, it's unique. I'm shocked nobody ever did that.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask you, when you come up
Speaker 1: with a concept that's successful, are some of these successful?
Speaker 1: Is just not translatable? It's just lightning in a bottle
Speaker 1: and it's that one location. And are you ever surprised
Speaker 1: when something that you thought, oh, this is pretty good
Speaker 1: but not spectacular, and then it has legs in it
Speaker 1: it keeps going? How do you How does that process
Speaker 1: go from hey, this is a pretty good restaurant idea,
Speaker 1: now they were a hundred of them. Well, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a multi prompt question. I think. You know, not
Speaker 1: every restaurant operator wants to build multiple restaurants. Not every
Speaker 1: you know, an under a restaurant operator wants to live
Speaker 1: on an airplane and travel all the time like we do. So, um,
Speaker 1: I personally wanted to build a national brand. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do that, so we we kind of looked for
Speaker 1: it and we worked it. And building a national restaurant brand, uh,
Speaker 1: takes a lot of time and effort, years years of
Speaker 1: time and refinement of that brand. So it's not as
Speaker 1: simple as just replicating you're right, there is Uh, there's
Speaker 1: certain regionalities of the country. You know, barbecue doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: travel all over the country. It's just different, especially different
Speaker 1: types of barbecue. So there's just a lot goes into it.
Speaker 1: And I think just having a individual successful one restaurant
Speaker 1: doesn't always mean as translatable to build across the country
Speaker 1: or across the town. So now, what is the rusty bucket? What?
Speaker 1: What is that? It's a corner sure foot hundred corner
Speaker 1: neighborhood tavern concept. It's uh, we put in affluent suburbs.
Speaker 1: It's a great place. We really say it kind of uh.
Speaker 1: Uh is the default vote? You know, you've got kids,
Speaker 1: you want to go out to dinner? Uh you don't,
Speaker 1: you know where wore the kids be happy? Where were
Speaker 1: mom and dad be happy? And that's where we're really
Speaker 1: basically bedroom pasta's, pizzas, that sort of thing, but good
Speaker 1: food from scratch, great environment. You know, the bar is
Speaker 1: right in the middle of it. You're gonna have people
Speaker 1: drinking at the bar and still walking with your kids
Speaker 1: and feel very comfortable. And it's that kind of place.
Speaker 1: So it's really those affluent suburbs were in six states
Speaker 1: right now around the country. So a chain like the
Speaker 1: twenty three how large can that get? Is that something
Speaker 1: you would want to expand to two hundred restaurants or
Speaker 1: is it you just have to find the right place
Speaker 1: where it's a good fit. Well, we're still working on that.
Speaker 1: You know, casual dining itself and is um probably one
Speaker 1: of the more challenge parts of the restaurant business. So
Speaker 1: fine dining where Ocean Prime brand lies is doing very well.
Speaker 1: We all know fast casual is doing very well. It's
Speaker 1: it's uh um competitive, that's the thing that's saturated, you know,
Speaker 1: And I've never wanted to get into that fast casual
Speaker 1: business because of that where do you draw the line
Speaker 1: on fast casual above, like, um, well, you know it's Chipole.
Speaker 1: You know everybody, everybody want to do the Chipole delivery model,
Speaker 1: and and everybody wanted the success of Chipotle, and you
Speaker 1: know you've had a lot of failures along the way
Speaker 1: with that too. And but you have everybody her brother
Speaker 1: throwing money on it, trying to get into it, and
Speaker 1: I've just uh tried not to do that. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do that. What about all the burger chains
Speaker 1: that are coming out to challenge McDonald's, some of which
Speaker 1: have really taken off very quickly. Sure, I mean shake
Speaker 1: Shack is actually a good example. Five Guys Burger is
Speaker 1: another good example. Uh this At one point, I had
Speaker 1: our vice president operations leave us because he wanted to
Speaker 1: do a burger joint and start to burger craze, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get involved with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a very competitive space and you have all the
Speaker 1: legacy McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, um go down the list,
Speaker 1: Arby's Summer margins. So that's a tough business that would imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just something I prefer not to get into. So
Speaker 1: Fast Casual is Chipotle and Higher. Yeah, you're not in
Speaker 1: the fast cast. That's that we would call that as
Speaker 1: limited service. There's counter service, etcetera. I'm we're in a
Speaker 1: full service space. The full service space is the casual
Speaker 1: brands like a Rusty bucket. You know, you can put
Speaker 1: Applebeas and Chili's in there if you want. There's others.
Speaker 1: Then there's upscale casual, and then there's the fine dinings.
Speaker 1: So we play in all three of those those segments.
Speaker 1: Are there any upstir scale casual restaurants that have managed
Speaker 1: to build more than just a local footprint, Well, sure,
Speaker 1: the uh the national standard bearer, gold standard is Houston's
Speaker 1: uh said, polished casual segments. You know, those are who
Speaker 1: really the rest of us aspire to be cheesecake factories
Speaker 1: in it and that genre, you know, not as good
Speaker 1: as Houston's. But on that genre there is respectable, huge,
Speaker 1: huge media. It's a little bit it's a different approach.
Speaker 1: But along those lines and and and those are the
Speaker 1: you know, then there's the fine dining brands like Ocean Prime.
Speaker 1: That isn't a major markets across the country. So New
Speaker 1: New York pass some rule on New York City about
Speaker 1: if you have more than five restaurants with the same
Speaker 1: name in New York, there was certain disclosure requirements of them.
Speaker 1: So the Houston's and some other similar chains in New
Speaker 1: York basically, well, we'll just change a couple of exacts
Speaker 1: and thanks for the silly rule. Yeah. Um, there's the
Speaker 1: national rule to that. Over twenty units, you have to
Speaker 1: label all your menu items with the calorie counts and
Speaker 1: all that. I think that's what the New York and
Speaker 1: you know that's UM. The jury is still out on
Speaker 1: really how that's affecting restaurants. I was talking to a
Speaker 1: CEO of another restaurant company that has done that, and
Speaker 1: and it's just shifted the way people order. It hasn't
Speaker 1: really affected their business volume. So what does it do.
Speaker 1: It affects the dessert order. Yeah, when they see lobster
Speaker 1: mashed potatoes or grotten at calories, they're ordering something else,
Speaker 1: but they're still ordering. So it hasn't really UM. And
Speaker 1: you know where you believe and that I believe in
Speaker 1: freedom of choice, and you know, people can do what
Speaker 1: they want. The problem is once you put the calories down,
Speaker 1: you're nudging people in one direction or another. I guess, Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about tipping. I that's a big issue some people.
Speaker 1: I was just in Iceland, where there is no tipping
Speaker 1: on the entire island, and when they told us that,
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked. Although everything is kind of
Speaker 1: expensive there, so it's obviously no free lunch, it's built in.
Speaker 1: That said, it was kind of nice not having to
Speaker 1: worry about it to think about it. Where do you
Speaker 1: land on the should we have tipped servers or should
Speaker 1: we just pay them a salary and build that into
Speaker 1: the price. Well, I definitely differ on that than our
Speaker 1: friend Danny Meyer, who's leading the charge on the note
Speaker 1: tipping program. And I understand what he's trying to do.
Speaker 1: He's trying to bridge that gamp and the disparity between
Speaker 1: front of the house associates and back of the house
Speaker 1: associates people and people in the dishwashers, the bus by
Speaker 1: people in the back. They're they're not making a whole
Speaker 1: lot of money compared to the bartenders, waiters, correct hostess.
Speaker 1: And I understand it. But uh, and again the jury
Speaker 1: is still out on whether it's really working or taking
Speaker 1: hold in his company, he's doing it, and he's making
Speaker 1: that decision and trying to change the way we do business,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of pushback. Um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reserve judgment on that. I'm trying to keep
Speaker 1: an open mind. But I don't really like that personally.
Speaker 1: I like the tip, I like gratuity. I like uh,
Speaker 1: great servers make more money than not so great servers.
Speaker 1: Think that's great. And now we on other hand, uh,
Speaker 1: tip of the hat to Danny. I mean, we're trying
Speaker 1: to take care of our back in the house associates
Speaker 1: more and and and still able to do that and
Speaker 1: giving them raises and paying them more along the way. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, not everybody's cut out to be in
Speaker 1: front of the house. Not everybody's cut out to be
Speaker 1: in the back of the house, and not everybody, uh
Speaker 1: makes the same amount of money across America. So it
Speaker 1: is what it is to a certain extent, and I
Speaker 1: do personally like to up and I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the great hallmarks and hospitality. So one of the
Speaker 1: questions we didn't get to during the broadcast portion was
Speaker 1: the different regions in the country. Um, you mentioned Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: what about further up the West coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle.
Speaker 1: Are you in in those locales or are you interested
Speaker 1: in going there? Well, Uh, they're tougher markets to do
Speaker 1: business in because of the regulatory requirements and so forth.
Speaker 1: But and we had a deal in actually Seattle, and
Speaker 1: we passed on that deal because of that. However, we're
Speaker 1: working on a project currently in San Diego, and we're
Speaker 1: currently looking up in northern California. So um. And there's
Speaker 1: lots of great successful restaurants in California. Portland is a
Speaker 1: fantastic food city, really good food city. Although people have
Speaker 1: told me that it's very difficult to move the needle.
Speaker 1: If you need any sort of local government waiver or approval,
Speaker 1: it's can And there's a lot of independence. There's a
Speaker 1: huge independent dining scene in too. So um. That's probably
Speaker 1: we might not be top of our list in terms
Speaker 1: of national destuls. So you started in Ohio. What about
Speaker 1: places like Chicago and Indianapolis and other major cities in
Speaker 1: the industrial Midwest, Sir, we're in uh we you know,
Speaker 1: we started building outside of Columbus in the Midwest. So
Speaker 1: we're in Chicago, We're in Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus. Um. Natural
Speaker 1: Movement from there in Florida. You know, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of those are where are you? Are you in Florida? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in Naples, Tampa, and Orlando, and we're looking now
Speaker 1: on the east coast, the Boca North Miami Palm Beach area.
Speaker 1: And which which concepts do you want? Really? So you
Speaker 1: want to go high up, high ends in all those places? Correct? Correct?
Speaker 1: Very very interesting. Yeah, Ocean Prime is the brand we're
Speaker 1: building for the time being. Um, you know, we're you know,
Speaker 1: we may build more Rusty Buckets. Like I said, we
Speaker 1: have two concepts within our our independent group that we're
Speaker 1: looking to maybe take outside. So I have to ask
Speaker 1: you a naming question, a brand new question. Ocean Prime
Speaker 1: it sounds very high end, you fresh seafood, Prime, Steak
Speaker 1: sounds great. Rusty Bucket isn't a name that comes to
Speaker 1: mind about a restaurant. What what's the concept? Like the
Speaker 1: branding concept? It's casual. That name kind of came out
Speaker 1: as a fluke and um and took off and it
Speaker 1: has legs. But yeah, when we go to new markets,
Speaker 1: people like what is that? And we have to explain
Speaker 1: a little bit more. And restaurant naming itself is very
Speaker 1: challenging because that name you want to reflect on what
Speaker 1: that brand is. It's just like Prime exactly, So how
Speaker 1: does rusty? Yeah, but there are there are examples to
Speaker 1: that that you know, have broken that mold to a
Speaker 1: certain to me easier or not to me. I hear
Speaker 1: Rusty buck and I'm like, do I want a Rusty
Speaker 1: bucket of food? It's it's so countintuitive, but I know
Speaker 1: that's been a very successful chain for you guys. So
Speaker 1: whatever that quirkiness is, it seems to catch ps. But
Speaker 1: but once people once it's in the neighborhood, people kind
Speaker 1: of it stays with them and it's like, oh, the
Speaker 1: Rusty Bucket, it's a very different Um. It's not McDonald's clearly,
Speaker 1: and it's not Ocean Prime, um, but it seems to
Speaker 1: have found a sweet spot right in the middle. Well,
Speaker 1: what you get is people say, let's just go to
Speaker 1: the bucket, and it's just the bucket that that's that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. So we went over tips um, and we
Speaker 1: went over branding. I have to just a little bit,
Speaker 1: just just put a toe into the con restaurant concept
Speaker 1: creation because you describe in the book, you describe the process,
Speaker 1: but it's very generic. You don't get into the specifics.
Speaker 1: So I for my own curiosity, how do you come
Speaker 1: up with the brand new concept that's different from are
Speaker 1: you going to other restaurants? Is it brainstorm storming? How
Speaker 1: do you come up with, Oh, this is a new idea,
Speaker 1: let's test it out, and now it's in fifty cities.
Speaker 1: How does that happen? Uh? Well, I'm not sure there's
Speaker 1: really a lot of new ideas out there. It's just
Speaker 1: your version of your artistic impression of someone else's new
Speaker 1: idea and the twenty people painting the fields out the
Speaker 1: window exactly. So I think, you know, in every restaurant
Speaker 1: we've done kind of has a story to it, you know.
Speaker 1: Um we have a restaurant called the Barn at Rocky
Speaker 1: four Creek and it was an old barbecue restaurant, and um,
Speaker 1: our guy said, they called us and said, hey, we've
Speaker 1: gone out of business. Would we like to put a
Speaker 1: restaurant there? And I said, no, we don't want to
Speaker 1: this barbecue replace this bar now, we don't want to
Speaker 1: do it. And I remembered, uh as I was saying that, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: the one of the top grocering restaurants in the country
Speaker 1: is called the Angus Barn in North Carolina, and it's
Speaker 1: the top restaurant in North Carolina. And I said, boy,
Speaker 1: this barn is perfect for that concept. It could be
Speaker 1: perfect is the concept of the they say, uh, upscale
Speaker 1: casual steakhouse, kind of a little little bit of a
Speaker 1: Ralph lauren Field. It's not fine dining, it's not all
Speaker 1: white tablecloth, but it's it's approachable and um, between cat
Speaker 1: fast casual and fine dining, well somewhere between fine dining
Speaker 1: and upscale cats just a little bit up there. But
Speaker 1: and and we did it. We have another restaurants site
Speaker 1: in our short north of Columbus that this location became available.
Speaker 1: And this is back when the gastropub craze was going
Speaker 1: on across the country. And and so we said, you know,
Speaker 1: I called the land ord up. He said, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna push? I said, I don't know, but I'd
Speaker 1: like the site. But they'll be fried chicken with street
Speaker 1: street tret shots sauce on it. And you're exactly In fact,
Speaker 1: I was just there last night. So um, you know
Speaker 1: it's just two pans now Ocean Prime. You know, we
Speaker 1: we wanted to build a high end steak and seafood restaurant,
Speaker 1: and we didn't want to necessary Botto Steakhouse, and so
Speaker 1: that's how that it was. Original name was Mitchell's Ocean
Speaker 1: Club and when we sold to Ruth Chris, I sold
Speaker 1: the name Mitchell's specifically, so we saw had Caram's restaurants,
Speaker 1: but it was Mitchell's Fish Market and I couldn't call
Speaker 1: Mitchell's Ocean Clubs. So that's when we rebranded and came
Speaker 1: up with Ocean Prime and we felt it fit the
Speaker 1: the concept perfectly. I know I only have you for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, So let's jump to some
Speaker 1: of our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests. Uh,
Speaker 1: nobody's gesturing at me yet, but sometimes they'll wave and say,
Speaker 1: we have Uh, you know, I get the bring bring
Speaker 1: the plane into the carrier. Um tell us the most
Speaker 1: important thing? People don't know about your background? Although after
Speaker 1: the book, I don't know if there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, that's a tough question because I am
Speaker 1: an open book and its talks about that, and yes
Speaker 1: is the answer. What's the question I would say? If
Speaker 1: what people really don't know about me? As I'm still
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, I'm still chicken little. I'm still scared every day.
Speaker 1: And uh, even with the national success we've had, I
Speaker 1: still wake up every morning and check our numbers and
Speaker 1: see how we're doing. And and I'm nervous all the time.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a surprising answer. You you mentioned the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter for a Cameron Mitchell. Really at this point
Speaker 1: I should ask you, what what are your plans for
Speaker 1: the fourth quarter? Well, two things one uh, and I'm
Speaker 1: working on this currently is to move to truly a
Speaker 1: chairman's role within the company, which is chief strategy officer,
Speaker 1: if you will, uh. And then really uh chief steward
Speaker 1: of the company and and legacy and stewardship of the
Speaker 1: organization and really about part and partial. While we were
Speaker 1: at the book, guess as the answer, what's the question
Speaker 1: is to share that knowledge and to tell that story. Uh.
Speaker 1: We uh were the lead donner. I'm opening and sharing
Speaker 1: the fundraising efforts to build new eighty thousand square foot
Speaker 1: Hospitality Management School and Columbus at Columbus State College. Um,
Speaker 1: we are opening to Bud Dairy Food Hall, which is
Speaker 1: uh takes ten restauranateurs, young buddy restaurateurs will be in
Speaker 1: this space. And our goals to help and we run
Speaker 1: the bars, and we run the food hall. We curated
Speaker 1: these restaurants, and our goal is to help take these
Speaker 1: restaurateurs to bricks and mortar restaurants along the way. Um,
Speaker 1: just all about the young leaders in our company, working
Speaker 1: with them and helping build their careers, etcetera. Tell us
Speaker 1: about some of your early mentors who helped guide your career. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't have really uh a lot of early mentors
Speaker 1: and who I talked with. I believe people could have
Speaker 1: mentors that they don't even necessarily know. Rich Melman and
Speaker 1: Chicago that's entertaining your restaurants was certainly one of mine.
Speaker 1: Norm Brinker from Chili's his book and he's been inspirational
Speaker 1: to me. Dave Thomas from Wendy's his story. Um, there's
Speaker 1: lots of those. Herb Color, CEO of Southwest Airlines. I
Speaker 1: think their story and how he ran a business is incredible. So, um,
Speaker 1: those are some of the people I looked up to
Speaker 1: as I was coming up the ladder. You mentioned a
Speaker 1: few books. What are some of your favorite books? Um,
Speaker 1: My all time great favorite book is good to Great.
Speaker 1: Jim Collins. I'm a Jim Collins disciple. I think he
Speaker 1: was instrumental in that book, was instrumental in helping turn
Speaker 1: our company around and ultimately resulted in the sale of
Speaker 1: the fish Market. It's been instrumental in the ability of
Speaker 1: the Ocean Prime brand itself. And um, so I love
Speaker 1: all the management books pat Lyncone. Uh, I've read every
Speaker 1: single Spencer to the Who Moved My Cheese? One Man Manager,
Speaker 1: all those leadership books, I've it too. I find it
Speaker 1: was very valuable. So and you you mentioned in your book, Um,
Speaker 1: the Customer Comes Second. Any other books from your book
Speaker 1: you wanna bring up a reference? Uh? Well, the Customer
Speaker 1: Comes Second was from how Rosen Booth that that was
Speaker 1: inspirational in helping me write the company Culture and Values. Uh. Um,
Speaker 1: I think yes is the answer. What's the question I
Speaker 1: think will be hopefully people. UM tell us about a
Speaker 1: time you've failed and what you learned from the experience. Um.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think I've never totally failed. I've been
Speaker 1: knocked down many, many, many times, and um the biggest Uh.
Speaker 1: But I would think failure in my experience was we've
Speaker 1: had restaurants fail, etcetera. I've made some mistakes there, but
Speaker 1: really after two thousand eight, we just sold you know,
Speaker 1: two thirds of our business for ninty two million dollars,
Speaker 1: and I in my humorists and my ego, and I
Speaker 1: ran out and signed a bunch more leases. I was
Speaker 1: gonna uh another twenty plus million dollars in development. I
Speaker 1: was gonna rebuild the even that we sold and uh
Speaker 1: it took ten years to build. I was going to
Speaker 1: rebuild it in three years. And and then the great
Speaker 1: crash happened, you know, eight, and these restaurants didn't perform well,
Speaker 1: and I almost ran a company off a cliff in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. It took some really lousy entrepreneuring to
Speaker 1: get us into that mess, and it took some really
Speaker 1: hard work and great entrepreneuring to get us out of
Speaker 1: that mess. So if a young millennial or a college
Speaker 1: grad came to you and said they were interested in
Speaker 1: going into the restaurant business, what sort of advice would
Speaker 1: you give them? First and foremost, anybody started a business,
Speaker 1: I would say, get some experience. You know, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of these young eighteen eight twenty year old
Speaker 1: two I wanted to just graduate from college, start their
Speaker 1: business and make a bazillion dollars, And I think people
Speaker 1: need to get experience first, first and foremost and work
Speaker 1: for some successful companies and understand what it takes to
Speaker 1: be successful. UH. Secondly, they better think about their values
Speaker 1: and their culture and what they stand for and get
Speaker 1: those identified right away. And thirdly, you had to be
Speaker 1: willing to UH work your tail off and be knocked
Speaker 1: down and get right back up. And entrepreneuri has been
Speaker 1: one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life,
Speaker 1: if not the toughest thing. And our final question, what
Speaker 1: do you know about the restaurant industry today? You wish
Speaker 1: you knew twenty five years ago when you were first
Speaker 1: launching Oh, sure, you know. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: I've learned really is the power of branding UH and
Speaker 1: how to develop restaurant brands and how important that is
Speaker 1: and that the brand, all the brand touch points and
Speaker 1: the brand DNA UH is congruant with everything across that brand.
Speaker 1: So that took us a long time to learn, and
Speaker 1: it takes years to really refine a brand and really
Speaker 1: to create a successful brand doesn't happen overnight. H quite
Speaker 1: quite interesting. We have been speaking with Cameron Mitchell. He
Speaker 1: is the founder and chairman of the Cameron Mitchell Restaurant group.
Speaker 1: If you and joy this conversation, we'll be sure and
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Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that
Speaker 1: helps put together these conversations each week. Medina Parwana is
Speaker 1: our producer, Attica val Bron is our project manager. Taylor
Speaker 1: Riggs is our booker. Mike Batnick is our head of research.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Ridholtz. You've been listening to Master's Business on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.