Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / How Alec Gropman Built Bodega Brunch Empire After 120-Hour Week Breakdown at Age 25

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How Alec Gropman Built Bodega Brunch Empire After 120-Hour Week Breakdown at Age 25 · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Codispote,
0:17
and today's guest is Alec Cropman.
0:19
He grew up on Long Island and in Fairfield, CT, earned his degree
0:23
from the Culinary Institute of America in 2017, moved to
0:27
Charleston and joined Uptown Hospitality Group as the opening
0:32
sous chef at Uptown Social. Six years later, Alec is senior
0:37
partner and director of culinary operations at Uptown Hospitality
0:40
Group. They have created lively bars,
0:43
brunch, cafes and event spaces across Charleston, all built to
0:47
bring friends together around great food, cold drinks and
0:51
upbeat music. Under Alex's guidance, the group
0:54
serves thousands each week at venues like Uptown Social, Share
0:58
House to Bodega Locations and Waverly.
1:01
And we're going to find out about a new location that just
1:03
opened up too. His pandemic pop up version of
1:07
Bodega grew into brick and mortar sites that now sell more
1:10
than 1000 New York style sandwiches per day.
1:14
In 2024, star chefs named Alec a Charleston Savannah rising star,
1:20
praising his creative menus and smart kitchen leadership.
1:24
Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
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Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:19
today, Owner and director of culinary operations at Uptown
2:22
Hospitality Group, Alec Grotman. Thanks for making the time to
2:26
Share your story today. Yeah, of course.
2:28
Thanks for having me. So Alec, where did you get your
2:30
first taste of the restaurant industry?
2:33
So my, my first ever taste of the restaurant industry comes
2:38
from a, a personal story. I was, you know, 5 or 6 years
2:41
old and my, my parents, you know, come to me and say, oh,
2:45
what do you want for your birthday?
2:47
And I think most kids of that age are thinking about a new TV,
2:50
an Xbox, something. And I said, please take me into
2:53
Manhattan. Please bring me to the nicest
2:55
restaurant we can afford. And I just want to have dinner
2:58
for my birthday. And they took me to WD-50 wile E
3:02
frames restaurant. And I was fortunate enough to
3:05
actually step into the kitchen, you know, after my parents
3:07
pulled the whole, Oh my, my kid, he wants to be a chef, all that
3:11
stuff. And, you know, walking around
3:13
this incredible kitchen, seeing them, you know, do literal
3:16
witchcraft, turn shrimp into noodles and foams and
3:21
verification and things that were just, you know, mind
3:24
blowing to me at that age. And from that second on, I I
3:26
knew that, you know, I was hungry for the industry.
3:29
And then, you know, beyond that, my first job ever was really at
3:33
this restaurant called Tomato and Basil.
3:35
It was a little local mom and pop Italian joint in Fairfield,
3:38
CT. So how does a 5 year old already
3:42
think he wants to be a chef? Were you were your parents in
3:45
the business? Where did you have other
3:47
relatives? What was the?
3:49
Draw I think I was a genuine Food Network baby.
3:53
You know, I, my, my dad was a griller dad.
3:57
No, no industry history, just, you know, passionate about food
4:01
and cooking and making things delicious for dinner seven
4:04
nights a week because my mom was certainly not a cook.
4:08
So that definitely fell on my father and myself.
4:11
But yeah, I mean, my, my parents have little scraps of paper that
4:16
they save for me at, you know, 3 or 4 before I even could write
4:20
legibly telling them that it was a menu and telling them that,
4:24
you know, I I would come up and show them a paper filled with
4:27
scribbles and say, this is my sushi menu.
4:28
And, you know, this is my, my restaurant that I'm going to own
4:31
one day. So yeah, I don't know who
4:34
convinced me at such a young age, but this is just kind of
4:36
always, always what I was destined.
4:38
To do it sounds like you were pre wired at birth for this.
4:41
I think so. So you graduated from the
4:44
Culinary Institute of America in 2017 and then very quickly
4:48
joined Uptown Social in 2018 as a sous chef.
4:53
How did that opportunity come about?
4:55
How did you get connected with this group?
4:57
So my wife and my business partner, Keith Benjamin might
5:00
might not want me to share this story, but it is a personal
5:03
favorite. My, my, my wife, girlfriend at
5:07
the time, Lindsay, she was a student at CFC, had recently
5:11
graduated. That's the College of
5:12
Charleston, by the way, but I'd recently graduated.
5:16
She was hanging out 4th of July, I'm on a boat with a couple of
5:19
friends and she bumps into this gentleman, Keith Benjamin, who
5:22
is the senior operator here in Charleston, but was affiliated
5:25
with our parent group, Eat, Drink and Be Merry up in New
5:28
York. And he was down here scouting
5:30
out locations for a Charleston restaurant.
5:33
And the two of them are, you know, drinking, hanging out on
5:35
the 4th of July. And, you know, he says, oh, I'm
5:37
opening up a bar. I need a chef.
5:39
And she says, oh, my goodness, you know, my boyfriend is about
5:42
to graduate from CIA. He's the best chef in the world.
5:45
You should hire him. And, you know, I get a 2:00 AM
5:48
text after a double from, you know, a less than sober
5:53
girlfriend saying, hey, I got you a job in Charleston for
5:55
after you graduate. And I was like, all right, yeah,
5:57
maybe drink some water, get some sleep.
6:00
You know, we'll talk in the morning.
6:01
Not thinking that it was, you know, serious.
6:03
Totally solid. And lo and behold, I woke up the
6:06
next morning to an e-mail from Keith.
6:07
And the rest was kind of history.
6:09
I interviewed later that month and was in Charleston five days
6:13
after I graduated to help open up Uptown Sofa.
6:16
Best girlfriend ever? Yeah, I mean, we high school
6:21
sweetheart to married, you know, the whole thing.
6:23
OK, Is she in like recruiting or she was just doing her boyfriend
6:27
a solid here? At the time doing her boyfriend
6:31
a drunken solid. Currently she's actually our
6:33
director of events and works for the company as well and runs the
6:36
Waverly. OK, fun stuff.
6:38
Yeah. So, OK, So what was it that
6:41
attracted you to this group? What did you like about?
6:45
So I mean, you know, to be quite candid, right out of culinary
6:50
school, it was a job, you know, it was, it was security.
6:52
It was knowing that I would be able to move directly to where
6:56
my girlfriend was living, where I wanted to be.
6:58
Charleston is an up and coming food Mecca, especially in 2017.
7:03
You know, it was the the talk in the nation.
7:05
You know, there was incredible talent here.
7:07
And frankly, I thought I was going to move down with my big
7:10
shiny CIA degree and land a job and work there for a little bit.
7:14
And then, you know, bounce around and do the thing that
7:17
most young chefs do. And, you know, just try and work
7:20
for as many different mentors and in many different kitchens
7:23
as you can to kind of learn your stripes and gain experience.
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But, you know, after working with this group for really a few
7:31
weeks to months, I realized that they were so different than your
7:35
typical restaurant group. And, you know, they, they had a
7:38
certain level of dedication and care and it felt like a mom and
7:42
pop, but they also have 30 years of industry experience.
7:45
So it almost had a little bit of that corporate side to it too.
7:48
It just, it just felt right. And you know, I I worked my butt
7:52
off and the accolades and opportunities just kept on
7:56
coming and I've just kind of never looked back.
7:58
Yeah. So you mentioned that they do
8:00
things differently. And one thing I heard you say is
8:03
there's sort of this combination of being big enough that they
8:06
have kind of the corporate structure kind of figured out,
8:10
but they still take kind of a mom and pop approach to things.
8:14
Can you say more about what that combo looks like?
8:16
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of it stems from,
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you know, our partnership opportunities.
8:21
I was extremely fortunate enough to be offered investment and
8:24
ownership after one year. And a lot of that comes from,
8:30
you know, drive and dedication. And I am a little bit of an
8:32
outlier. There aren't many others in the
8:34
company that were offered partnership in such a short
8:36
stent. But essentially, when they see
8:39
people who are committed and really giving themselves to this
8:43
opportunity into this company, they want to, they want to show
8:47
you the worth of your efforts rather than, you know, just a
8:50
raise or a bonus. They say, you know, become a
8:53
part of this, become a bigger part of this and help us with
8:55
our other concepts and help us grow and help us with your
8:58
ideas. And the way that I was entered
9:01
into the company and through partnership, finding a way to
9:05
help inspire others who don't think they would have to be able
9:08
to have those opportunities creates this mom and pop dynamic
9:12
where, you know, rather than the owner being this person who kind
9:15
of breezes through the restaurant once a month and
9:18
takes some free food and yells at a couple of higher ups and
9:20
then disappears for another month.
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You can't step into one of our operations for a full day
9:26
without bumping into at least one or two of the operating
9:29
partners who are there, talking to the staff, talking to the
9:31
guests, creating SO PS and just making the establishment the
9:35
best it can be. For listeners who maybe aren't
9:38
familiar with the industry, CIA in this context is not Central
9:41
Intelligence Agency, it's Culinary Institute of America.
9:44
So it actually is Central Intelligence.
9:47
Yeah. I'm, I'm a covert spy.
9:49
No, it's the Culinary Institute of America.
9:52
So quick ascension here, right? You know, very short period of
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time you were offered partner ownership came director of
10:00
culinary operations. What was something that you
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learned about yourself during this rapid rise, Alex?
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So I really think it just comes down to, and it's, it's hard for
10:11
me to kind of compliment myself in this way, but I, I think it
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just comes down to work ethic. You know, I, I learned from an
10:18
early age, both of my parents being business owners, that if
10:22
you, if you want opportunities and you want the ability to do
10:25
cool things with your life, a lot of it comes from yourself
10:28
and a lot of it comes from your own dedication and
10:30
determination. And, you know, right out of
10:33
culinary school, especially CIA, which is an, an extremely, you
10:37
know, high credited culinary school, a lot of people are on
10:40
the Michelin trail. And a lot of people find
10:42
themselves caught in this kind of like fine dining spiral where
10:46
they think that the the highest and most valued food that they
10:50
can serve is the highest and most valued purpose that they
10:53
can serve. And very quickly I realized that
10:56
I would rather work really hard to do something that's
10:59
significant to me personally and special to me.
11:02
Because whether you're serving someone $150.00 wide use steak
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or an $11.00 bacon, egg and cheese, the reaction can be the
11:10
same, the love can be the same, and the way that it makes you
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feel fulfilled as a business owner can also be the same.
11:18
Oh, interesting. I like that.
11:21
Let's talk about some of the concepts under the Uptown
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Hospitality umbrella. How many?
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First of all, how many different concepts?
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How many total locations around the country?
11:29
Oh, so we, we have Uptown Hospitality Group, which is our
11:33
Charleston specific sector where we have Uptown social share
11:37
house, two Bodegas, Waverly and by the way, so I guess 5
11:42
concepts, 6 locations. And then we also have a handful
11:45
of locations in Chicago. And then kind of our flagship
11:48
locations that have been around for 30 years started by Mitch
11:51
Manchuk and Michael Ash. We have 8 locations in New York.
11:56
OK. So let's focus on the concepts
11:59
there. In Charleston, 5 concepts, 6
12:02
locations. What's kind of the common thread
12:05
amongst these different concepts?
12:09
I like to think, you know, a certain sense of nostalgia.
12:12
The greater partnership are all from the New York area.
12:16
So, you know, a group of New York restaurant owners come down
12:19
to sweet southern Charleston, SC.
12:23
You know, we definitely weren't as brazen to start a shrimp and
12:27
grits biscuit shop. You know, I think we, we knew
12:31
that we wanted to do something that spoke more to us and spoke
12:34
more to our upbringing. And for a lot of us, that was
12:37
the pizza at Uptown social. For me specifically, that's the
12:40
egg sandwiches at bodega. But even still, I I think there
12:45
is enough transplants from Connecticut and New Jersey and
12:49
New York that have found their way down to beautiful South
12:51
Carolina, as well as enough locals who, you know, see these
12:55
new flavors or even maybe nostalgic flavors for themselves
13:00
pop up in their town and and they're drawn to it.
13:03
But yeah, so I really think nostalgia and just a certain
13:06
sense of kind of like childlike atmosphere really is kind of a
13:11
through line for all of our concepts except for Waverly,
13:13
which is our, you know, most buttoned up wedding venue.
13:16
And you know, I guess you could say by the way, to a certain
13:18
extent being our, you know, our our slightly more fine dining
13:21
concept. But even both of those have a
13:23
certain sense of just, you know, New York energy to them.
13:28
OK, so tell me a little bit more about Waverly.
13:32
There's a buttoned up wedding venue is how you described it.
13:35
Yeah, so I mean, this was really my wife's passion project, so I
13:39
I can talk about it forever. You know, she she started out in
13:43
nonprofits, segueed into the wedding industry after really
13:47
just falling in love with watching people fall in love is
13:50
the way that I like to put it. She hasn't had a single wedding
13:54
at the Waverly where she hasn't texted me, you know, sobbing
13:58
about, you know, the the beautiful couple, you know,
14:01
getting married on her wedding venue.
14:03
It's really special. But yeah, it's just a beautiful
14:07
blank canvas. You know, it's, it's more than a
14:08
wedding venue. We've had birthday parties,
14:10
their corporate functions. But it is really just a blank
14:16
canvas is the best way to put it.
14:17
And you know it can be whatever you want it to be.
14:20
OK. And let's talk about Bodega,
14:24
because as I understand it, this first started as a pop up
14:27
concept during the pandemic. Correct.
14:30
Yeah. So, you know, it's August 2020,
14:35
business is tough. You know, where wherever you are
14:38
on the planet. And we got to a point where at
14:42
the time, all we had in Charleston was Uptown Social,
14:45
which is predominantly known for its nightlife.
14:47
You know, it's beer, it's pizza. You know, it is a happening
14:51
spot. And in 2020, most happening
14:54
spots weren't really happening all that much.
14:57
So, you know, me and my business partners are sitting together
15:00
and troubleshooting and throwing out any idea that we can.
15:04
And it was actually one of my business partners, Cara Graves,
15:07
currently Cara Hammond. Congrats on the second baby.
15:10
She's a brand new second mother. But she, she threw out the idea
15:14
and was like, what, what are we doing in the morning?
15:16
You know, like we're opening up at 4:00.
15:18
Maybe there's some, you know, revenue to be found in these
15:22
early morning hours. And, you know, the entire team
15:25
kind of pivoted and looked at me like, all right, food guy, you
15:28
know, like what, what do we do? No one wants pizza, you know, 8
15:31
in the morning. And I said, well, I mean, we're
15:33
the New York group. Let's, let's do bacon, egg and
15:35
cheeses and let's just start a little hole in the wall bodega
15:38
and see what happens. And, you know, about four weeks
15:41
later, we had the branding together.
15:42
We had the recipes together. You know, it was really like
15:45
that came to our pants, you know, throw it together.
15:47
We need to get something in motion.
15:49
And, you know, we had a line of about 200 people waiting for
15:54
bacon, egg and cheeses a few weeks later.
15:57
And we were serving everything individually wrapped through a
15:59
window. It was very COVID friendly.
16:01
You know, order a hedge, snag your bag and leave.
16:04
And I think it was just lightning in a bottle.
16:06
It was just the right concept at the right time and it just took
16:10
off like crazy. So being New York guys, for
16:13
people who haven't experienced what bodegas are, particularly
16:17
in New York City where they're everywhere, can you just quick
16:20
summary what, what is that for people?
16:23
Yeah, so I mean I also shout out, as I always do, my local
16:26
bodega in Fairfield, CT. The Country Cow.
16:28
Can't miss it if you're ever in the area.
16:31
It is. A bodega to me is just as much
16:33
as it is a convenience store as it is a deli, as it is a meeting
16:37
spot for friends and family. Every single time I am back home
16:40
in Fairfield, CT, a mandatory Country Cow trip is on the
16:44
docket. And when I am there, I bump into
16:47
old teachers, old friends, parents of friends, coaches.
16:51
You know, it is. It is a community spot that just
16:54
happens to be disguised as a breakfast sandwich shop slash
16:58
convenience store. I used to do some business in
17:01
New York City. I was there on a regular basis
17:03
and my mind was just blown by best sandwiches in the city were
17:08
found inside of these little convenience stores.
17:11
And my business partner first took me into one to get some
17:14
food. I'm like, no, I don't like, you
17:16
know, want like chips or crackers out of a bag.
17:19
Like I he's like, I don't know, like.
17:21
And so, yeah, for people who haven't experienced before,
17:23
super cool concept. So you guys were like, hey,
17:25
let's bring an element of that. You weren't doing the
17:27
convenience store part of it, but just like.
17:30
Or were you So our second location has a small market.
17:34
I, I wouldn't go as far to say that we're a convenience store,
17:36
even though we do have like an, an occasional, you know, like
17:39
toothpaste purchase, it is definitely not high up on our P
17:42
mix. People are mostly coming here
17:44
for the sandwiches, but our, our original location was purely
17:48
just deli sandwiches. You know, I, I think we had
17:51
three different deli sandwiches on the menu and three different
17:53
egg sandwiches on the menu and that was it when we started as
17:56
Papa. So how was it that you guys had
17:58
200 people waiting at the door on your first day open?
18:01
So I think a lot of that I, I have to give credit to our
18:04
social media team, you know, the, the photos of people
18:08
opening up the sandwiches and the cheese pull and the runny
18:11
local egg. And, you know, it had a very
18:14
dramatic effect on social media. And that was definitely what
18:17
caught the attention of Charleston, especially at a time
18:20
where most people didn't have anything to do other than scroll
18:24
Instagram and be on their phones.
18:25
You know, again, this is peak COVID.
18:27
So I I think, you know, you're a young 20 something year old,
18:31
you're in Charleston, you probably recently moved here
18:34
because it's the happening town in southeast.
18:37
And then bang, COVID happens. Now you're bored sitting at home
18:40
looking for anything new and exciting and all of a sudden
18:43
this really cool, fun, you know, deli pop up, shows up and it's
18:49
like, yeah, why not go try it out?
18:50
You know, you can wait up, wait in line outside, you get your
18:53
food individually packaged and you can go eat it on, you know,
18:56
a bench or find somewhere secluded.
18:59
And yeah, I, I think it was like, I know I said it before,
19:02
but just lightning in a bottle like it was, it was the perfect
19:05
moment for a concept like Bodega to arrive in Charleston.
19:08
But what gave it longevity? So lightning in a bottle for
19:12
that moment, but then how did you continue that momentum and
19:15
build it into permanent locations?
19:17
So longevity wise, I I really have to give again, credit to
19:22
just the team that was around me.
19:24
You know, I was slaving away in the kitchen working, you know,
19:28
insane hours cooking bacon with my, we had a team of three
19:31
people plus myself, you know, so a lot of the baking bread,
19:36
cooking bacon, you know, like the, the prep work was being
19:39
done by myself for hours and hours and hours a day to try and
19:42
save on labor. And, you know, it's really my
19:44
team in the front of house that was building it as a brand and
19:47
explaining to people what bodega meant.
19:49
You know, frankly, a lot of people thought we were a Mexican
19:51
restaurant and we're expecting tacos when they might have first
19:54
arrived. You know, just educating people
19:56
on what bodega culture and bodega lore is was problem one
20:01
to solve. And then problem 2 came in the
20:04
essence of when COVID finally began to slow down a little bit.
20:07
Restaurants are reopening, you can actually dine in.
20:10
How do we take this fun pop up that was really invented to be?
20:15
A source of quick, safe food for people at a time when it was
20:19
difficult to find that into something where people want to
20:22
hang out. And that's when we started
20:23
introducing DJs and a little bit more of the party brunch
20:26
atmosphere. And we became known for our
20:28
signature Bloody Mary served with an insane amount of bacon
20:32
and incredible espresso martinis and mimosas.
20:34
And, you know, made it less of a grab and go experience and more
20:38
of a sit down, have fun, get back to almost the roots of what
20:42
I was explaining about bodegas being really a community spot
20:45
where you go and hang out with individuals or bump into friends
20:48
that you haven't seen. And we really were able to kind
20:51
of infuse the concept with that at that time.
20:54
It also helps that we were operating out of Uptown Social,
20:56
which was already just kind of this known experience in
21:00
Charleston for just a great atmosphere and a great vibe and
21:03
great drinks. And there's an insane amount of
21:05
TV's. So, you know, operating
21:07
Saturdays and Sundays. Football is king here in the
21:09
South. So being able to come and eat a
21:11
bacon, egg and cheese, have a Bloody Mary and watch your
21:13
favorite game amongst friends in a safe environment at the end of
21:17
2020 really carried us through into, you know, the decision to
21:21
open up a brick and mortar location in 20.
21:23
OK. So at this point, you were
21:24
operating operating out of an existing restaurant?
21:27
Location, correct. Yeah.
21:29
So we we had utilized that space, Uptown Social, which was
21:32
really only open from 4:00 PM to 2:00 AM and essentially created
21:37
it into a bodega Uptown Social hybrid for a certain amount of
21:42
time. But now does it operate in its
21:44
own stand alone locations? It does, yeah.
21:47
So in 2022, we found the location, 23 Ann Street.
21:51
It's a very long old train depot.
21:53
So it's, it's a very long, slender building.
21:56
And the kitchen is right smack in the middle of it.
21:59
And we were looking at it and we're like, we don't really know
22:01
what to do. We have one gigantic space and
22:03
we have one slightly smaller space and that's when, you know,
22:07
the team said, well, bodega has been operating out of Uptown
22:09
Social for six to eight months. We really think this has legs.
22:13
Let's take the smaller concept, turn that into a proper brick
22:16
and mortar bodega dedicated to solely bodega items.
22:20
And then we turn to the other half of the building into Share
22:23
House, which is our slightly more kind of like Jersey Shore
22:26
boardwalk inspired beach bar. Say more about that.
22:32
About share house specifically, yeah.
22:34
Yeah, that didn't. Hit on that one yet?
22:36
Yeah. So share house is it's really
22:38
fun. We have these, again, like I
22:40
mentioned, it's kind of a longer narrow building.
22:43
So we put these beautiful garage doors along the entire facade so
22:47
that on these beautiful Charleston days, which we tends
22:51
to be more beautiful than not here in South Carolina.
22:53
I don't know exactly where you're recording from.
22:55
I'm not trying to, you know. Columbus, OH and it's cold in
22:58
January 2026. That bad?
23:01
But yeah, we, it was 70 and sunny in Charleston yesterday.
23:04
Again, not to not to add insult to injury, but we, we roll those
23:08
garage doors up and, you know, it just really elongates the
23:10
space and it feels light and bright and airy.
23:13
And, you know, we're serving kind of the boardwalk classics
23:15
that I remember growing up with, you know, soft serve ice cream,
23:18
gigantic pretzels, chicken fingers, French fries.
23:22
And again, you know, tends to be with this company, wherever we
23:27
are located, we are going to have a lot of TV's and there's
23:29
going to be a lot of sports. Nice, and then today you're
23:33
sporting a hat with a giant BTW on the front of it.
23:38
Oh, yeah. By the way, Yeah.
23:41
By the way, this is our our most recent concept.
23:44
It is the best way that I can explain it.
23:47
Or at least when I walk into the location, it feels like 1950s
23:51
New York. It, it feels very leather
23:54
banquette, almost like a little like it.
23:56
Maybe it would be like the set of like, you know, like a mob
23:59
movie. You know, it feels like very
24:01
dark woods. Very it's just a very sexy vibe.
24:05
You know, I think that's the only way that I can really
24:08
harness the energy. That is by the way you walk in
24:11
and, you know, you're like, whoa, like this is a cool spot.
24:14
And then you sit down and you start to realize that it's not
24:17
just the ambiance. We have incredible cocktails and
24:19
incredible food program. It was a lot of fun for me being
24:23
ACIA grad with fine dining background to really be able to
24:26
kind of shake off some of the rust and, you know, get back to
24:30
my roots in fine dining. You know, after, you know, about
24:33
7 years with this company of producing, you know, high volume
24:36
bar food. And it's delicious high volume
24:39
bar food, but it's definitely not the caviar and truffles that
24:42
were serving it by the way. So it was really fun to kind of
24:45
just have some new, new ingredients in my toolbox to
24:48
kind of flush out and and cook. But yeah, by the way, it's a lot
24:51
of fun. Was there any hesitation about
24:55
opening a location like this at a time when the economy is kind
24:59
of a little uncertain? Yes, and I, I mean that all came
25:04
into play. You know, as we sit in our
25:06
meetings, my, my group, as I've mentioned, is 30 years old and
25:10
you know, makes partners after a year like myself and occasion.
25:13
So there's, there's a lot of us, you know, when we're, when we've
25:16
honed in on new concept and we're all trying to decide what
25:19
it should be. That's a table with 18
25:21
individuals at it, which can often be difficult.
25:24
You know, there was a moment in time where by the way, was
25:27
almost a Mexican restaurant. There was a moment in time where
25:30
we are even discussing, you know, it just being like a basic
25:32
kind of like wine shop with cheese and charcuterie to keep
25:35
costs low. You know, we, we bounce every
25:38
idea off of each other for the space to decide what we really
25:41
wanted to do with it. And all of that said, the
25:45
previous location was an amazing bar called The Warehouse, which
25:50
I used to frequent all the time. And it was really a local spot.
25:55
You know, it's just off of King Street, the major kind of like
25:58
thoroughfare here in Charleston. And we knew that we didn't want
26:02
to lose that. And we knew that we wanted to do
26:03
something a little more buttoned up and a little out of our
26:05
portfolio. But we wanted to make sure that
26:08
we didn't lose the locals on it and lose the people who loved
26:11
warehouse such as myself. So we kind of wanted to hit this
26:15
middle of the road where, you know, maybe you don't go out to
26:19
a restaurant every day or even every week and you're looking
26:23
for your special occasion. Dinner for the month, by the
26:26
way, can be approachable enough for that individual and feel
26:30
special enough for that individual that they're not
26:32
wasting their one night out a month.
26:35
But we also wanted it to be friendly enough and cost benefit
26:39
enough where if you are an individual and you're, you know,
26:42
mid to late 20s, early 30s, who's going out for a drink two
26:46
or three nights a week or even going out to dinner, you know,
26:48
four or five nights a week. It's a spot that you can come
26:51
and know that you're not going to completely blow the bank and
26:54
blow the budget for the week. But you still have the
26:56
opportunities to get a steak free, to have a little caviar on
26:59
your food and you know, have it feel celebratory in that way
27:01
too. What was one of the items that
27:04
you had a lot of fun creating? Oh man, I mean the entire menu,
27:08
it was just so much fun to me. It really like, you know, like I
27:13
said, after years and years of not being able to flex certain
27:16
culinary muscles, of just having truffles around, you know, the
27:20
entire menu creation process was just so much fun.
27:24
But really one of the dishes that stands out to me is our
27:29
airline chicken breast, which I go out to a restaurant and even
27:33
for me personally, when I see chicken breast on the menu, it's
27:35
like, I don't know if I'm going to order that.
27:37
You know, that's kind of, you know, something I can cook at
27:39
home. But our airline?
27:41
A lot of times it's dry when you get it.
27:43
Yeah, exactly. You know, like it's, it's, it
27:45
can be a little it's, it feels risky, you know, like go for
27:48
something that seems less, you know, safe.
27:52
But yeah, the airline chicken breast, it has a Marsala cream
27:56
with bacon lardones, comfy leeks, roasted mushrooms and
28:00
with potatoes. And it sounds mundane, but it's
28:03
just the technique that goes into it.
28:05
It just reads and eats like the most picture perfect chicken
28:09
dish you could ever ask for. It's homey, it is savory.
28:12
It's everything that you want, especially when it does
28:14
occasionally get a little cold here in Charleston.
28:16
It just fits the atmosphere by the way, you know, you're
28:19
sitting in your sexy leatherback head diving into like some steak
28:22
frites and like a beautifully prepared chicken dish with
28:25
crispy skin and it just, it just hits all the right downs.
28:28
It's called airline chicken. What?
28:30
Why airline? So that's, and it's funny that
28:33
you mentioned that it, it's, it comes from an old, old, old, old
28:39
airline where they used to serve this form of chicken on planes.
28:43
Because Once Upon a time when people used to go on planes,
28:45
they used to wear suit jackets and it was a fancy occasion.
28:49
But it's just slang for kitchen that kind of like stuck.
28:53
But really it's just the chicken breast with the skin on with one
28:56
of the bones attached. So it's just a bone in chicken
28:58
breast? Interesting.
29:00
And what's special about the technique you said the the
29:02
technique that you use allows all these flavors to come out
29:05
and. So pretty much we take the
29:07
chicken, apply in a cold pan, skin side down, and then we put
29:11
a weight on top of it and cook it in the oven.
29:14
And the between the cold pan and the weight on top of the
29:17
chicken, it allows for all of the fat to render out between
29:20
the skin and the breast, which is not only going to create a
29:23
perfectly moist, delicious chicken breast, but allows for
29:26
that chicken skin on the outside to get like crispier than you've
29:30
ever had. Like we'll take KFC and take
29:33
them, give them a run for their money.
29:35
But so it just like it's one of those humble dishes that you
29:39
would just kind of go in and not expect it to be your favorite
29:43
bite of the entire meal. And you're walking away and
29:45
you're like, I can't believe the chicken was the best thing.
29:47
Ever. That's wild to me.
29:49
Like, how do people figure this stuff out?
29:51
Cold pan, put a weight on it, then put it in the oven.
29:54
Like, I don't know, it's sort of like you're pulling things out
29:56
of the air. But yeah, I I haven't studied
29:58
the chemistry or the science behind food, so maybe this is
30:02
like old hat to you. I I can promise you it, it's
30:06
worth it. Give it a try at home.
30:07
OK, so you earned a you and the restaurant.
30:12
You earned a a 2024 Star Chef's Charleston Savannah Rising Stars
30:17
Award. Yeah.
30:19
Tell us more about that the significance of it.
30:22
It was very cool, you know, it was it was significant for me,
30:25
especially with you know my name attached to it.
30:28
But it was very cool to see bodega.
30:30
You know what was Once Upon a time this little kind of like
30:33
shoot the moon. Hey, we need to put together
30:35
some ideas. Maybe we can sell bacon, egg and
30:38
cheeses to now being, you know, 2 locations supporting Staffs at
30:42
both. To just see it turn into
30:45
something that is so important to people enough so that it can
30:48
be accolated for the concept itself was just really
30:52
fulfilling for me. As I've mentioned before, bodega
30:56
bodega culture is super important to me.
30:59
It's where I had my first date with my wife.
31:03
It is where I hung out with all my buddies.
31:05
You know, it was, I used to walk to my elementary, middle and
31:09
high school and I would pass this one same bodega every
31:12
single day. So I was there five days a week
31:14
getting a bacon, egg and cheese. So to see a concept and a
31:19
culture that is so important to me specifically now reach not
31:23
just the Charleston area, but be so significant that it can get
31:27
an accolade on a national scale was just really, really cool.
31:33
And is that award given for the taste and the quality of the
31:37
food, the way that you're running the operation, Like what
31:39
are they sort of evaluating here?
31:42
So they, they have a bunch of different awards.
31:44
Some are, you know, bartending, some are specifically for food.
31:48
We we won the concept award. So that is all-encompassing.
31:52
So it's the food, it's the drinks, it's the atmosphere,
31:54
it's the management style, it's the culture, it's the
31:57
everything, which again, significant to me because a lot
32:01
of the business practices that we've put in place at Bodega are
32:05
not intentionally breaking down certain barriers and certain
32:09
walls that you see in, you know, the industry at large.
32:12
But you know, for example, we we don't have a front of house and
32:15
we don't have a backup house at Bodega, everyone comes on and is
32:19
trained as a team assistant. You learn how to run food, you
32:22
learn how to wash dishes, you learn how to run coffees, you
32:26
know, handle guests and you know, interactions.
32:28
And you know, it kind of gives you like a good blanket on
32:32
understanding the entire concept as a whole.
32:34
And then we have a transparent pay higher so that for every
32:38
item that you learn, you get an additional dollar on your hourly
32:42
wage. Everyone is in the same tip
32:43
pool, including the back of house.
32:46
And it just kind of creates this one Team 1 dream atmosphere
32:51
where, you know, certain restaurants tend to clash a
32:53
little bit between from house and back of house or, you know,
32:56
even back of house and back of house.
32:59
And what we've been able to do here is create just one, one
33:03
family, one goal, one operation. It makes scheduling a breeze,
33:09
and it also makes coverage a breeze.
33:11
You know, when so and so has a life crisis and they need
33:14
someone to cover their coffee shifts, you're not just looking
33:17
at the other employees who know how to make coffees.
33:19
You can reach out to the entire staff because the person who was
33:22
on Dish Pit yesterday was on coffees the day before that and
33:25
was making sandwiches the day before that.
33:28
And yeah, you know, so I think the concept itself is really
33:31
special. I often like to tell people that
33:33
it should feel like Saturday morning cartoons, not just
33:36
because we literally have my favorite childhood cartoons on
33:39
the TV in our Mount Pleasant location, but because it's
33:42
colorful and bright and there's graffiti on the walls.
33:44
And when you walk in, all of your responsibilities of the
33:47
Monday through Friday grind should just sort of melt away.
33:50
And you should just be able to like have a bowl of cereal and
33:54
enjoy yourself and have no responsibilities.
33:58
So for people who have never worked in the restaurant
34:01
environment, explain what that typical friction can be like
34:05
between back and front of house. Yeah.
34:08
And I, I mean, I, I like to think that all of our other
34:11
restaurants also have incredible cultures because they really,
34:14
really do. This is a company that has
34:16
always taken culture seriously. It speaks in our turnover rate.
34:21
Most people that find this group never leave.
34:23
And that goes from dishwashers all the way up to people like
34:25
myself who are part owners. But it's, it's kind of a
34:29
dichotomy as old as time, you know, the friction between a
34:33
server and a cook and a server, you know, wants their food
34:36
faster and a cook wants more time.
34:38
Or a server makes a small mistake and a cook blames the
34:41
front of house and you know, there's so many opportunities
34:45
for people who work in the front of house to blame the back of
34:48
house. You know, a server messes up a
34:50
ticket and this kitchen does exactly what they were supposed
34:54
to and sends out the right food. But the server has a knee jerk
34:56
reaction, says, oh, I'm so sorry.
34:57
The kitchen must have messed it up because I can't really blame
35:00
them. I've been in their shoes as a
35:01
server. Why blame yourself and affect
35:03
your own tip out when you can blame the, you know, guys behind
35:06
the door who they're never going to meet anyways and vice versa.
35:09
You know, the kitchen has so many opportunities to blame the
35:12
front of house for the pacing of the restaurant or, you know,
35:15
ridiculous requests on tickets. And, you know, it's just created
35:18
this friction over time that most restaurants really have to
35:22
work to avoid. And, you know, I, I think it's,
35:27
it's difficult to avoid the friction, but restaurants do it
35:32
and you find ways to mitigate it.
35:34
And I think a lot of that comes from just an understanding of
35:38
other people's work and an empathy for the people and what
35:41
others job descriptions require. And that's why at this bodega
35:45
location, having people trained on both sides of the fence, all
35:49
of that animosity just disappears.
35:52
Because when a server has a really difficult guest, they
35:56
understand, you know, they've been in their shoes.
35:58
They've been at the counter or at the table taking that order
36:02
from a difficult guest who wants it a very specific way.
36:05
And now when that individual comes into the kitchen and says,
36:08
please make sure that there's no color on this person's eggs.
36:11
They want their scrambled eggs, but they don't want any brown.
36:14
In some kitchens, the cook might be like, I'm going to cook the
36:17
eggs how I always cook the eggs and I don't really care because
36:20
that's my job. But now the cook who was in that
36:23
same exact, you know, that same exact experience yesterday is
36:27
going to say, yes, of course I got you.
36:29
I want to make sure that your guest has the best experience so
36:32
that you can have the best experience so that we as a team
36:35
can get the best tip out. Because not only is that tip
36:38
affecting that server, but it's also going to affect that line
36:41
cooks pocket. So on paper, this approach
36:44
sounds simply brilliant. In practicality, I wonder, is it
36:50
a lot harder for your team to get up to speed?
36:53
Because it's one thing if you're getting trained and how to be a
36:56
server, you're getting trained and how to be a cook here, but
36:59
when you have to learn every individual thing, it takes
37:05
longer to get to some level of competency or mastery.
37:10
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean that's, that's the
37:12
kind of risk reward of the model.
37:16
You know, having individuals that need more training and more
37:19
time is more expensive. I mean training costs the
37:22
business money. You know, having somewhat having
37:24
two people on payroll doing the same job so that one can be
37:28
cross training the other. It's it's dollars and cents, but
37:31
it adds up over time, especially when you're running your
37:34
business with this model start to finish.
37:37
But at the end of the day, what I've come to learn is that it's
37:41
going to reduce your turnover. And the more people that you can
37:45
retain a, the better they're going to be at their jobs.
37:48
More consistency your guests are going to have.
37:51
But more than anything, you're just not training new faces
37:54
every other day, which is also going to save you money, you
37:57
know? So I would rather put that time
37:58
and effort into training the same individual that I trust to
38:01
make sandwiches, because I'll also eventually trust them to
38:05
make coffees, then bring some entirely new face in and just
38:09
try and get them to learn coffees.
38:12
With that said, it also just creates just AII like I'm I'm
38:20
struggling for the best way to kind of get it across.
38:23
But it's almost this fabric between all of the employees
38:27
where really that empathy and the understanding of what's
38:30
going on allows the cross training to also be stronger.
38:33
You know, when you understand what the kitchen is doing and
38:37
the shoes that they have, it makes you a better server and it
38:40
makes you better at your front of house job than having no
38:43
foundational knowledge of how the kitchen operates.
38:46
And that can only come with the cross training that you achieve
38:50
by letting your employees learn everything that they can.
38:53
Yeah, like you're playing a long game, which creates a much more
38:56
cohesive team. Where did the idea for the
38:59
structure come about? So a lot of it came from my own
39:04
personal experience being a traditional backup house
39:07
employee coming up in kitchens, only working in kitchens and
39:10
then being given the opportunity where they said, hey, you know,
39:13
you're really good at the whole bodega thing.
39:15
We want you to run the entire store.
39:17
And I said, OK, well, I'm going to have to learn how to front of
39:21
house. I'm going to have to, you know,
39:23
really get a mastery of touching tables and bartending and floor
39:27
managing and everything that goes into running the business
39:29
start to finish. And what I realized very quickly
39:32
was that learning how to floor manage and learning how to serve
39:35
and bartend made me better at my back of house duties as well.
39:39
And that is what really inspired me to create this process for
39:43
everyone. Step one and then Step 2, it
39:48
really came down to me being a back of house guy at heart and
39:52
seeing the disparity and pay between the front and the back,
39:56
you know, really being a line cooked forever at a base hourly
39:59
rate. Even when I was hired as a sous
40:01
chef, I was making $35,000 an hour, you know, annual.
40:06
But I was salaried and I was working 100 plus hours a week
40:10
and doing the math, you know, I was making a little bit below
40:13
minimum wage and I'm seeing, you know, 20 to 25 year old.
40:18
You know, servers and bartenders walk away with my week's
40:21
paycheck from one really good tip out or one really good day.
40:25
And that disparity creates again, some of that animosity
40:28
that I spoke on before. You know where it's, it's
40:32
difficult to kind of bridge that gap when you know that the
40:34
servers are making X amount and the cooks are making Y amount.
40:37
And having everyone in the same tip pool and kind of levelling
40:41
the playing field means that there's no more awkwardness
40:44
about what people make. And even beyond front of house
40:48
and back of house, you know, there's plenty of kitchens where
40:51
you come in and you get hired at an hourly rate based off of your
40:54
experience or how long you've been with the group or how well
40:56
you can kind of talk the talk, You know, and you run into a
40:59
situation where one Cook's making X amount an hour and
41:01
another cook is making Y. And now that first cook comes to
41:04
the boss and says, why? Why am I not making the same
41:07
amount that this person's making?
41:08
I do the same job. I've been here longer and it
41:11
just creates this fail of mistrust from employee to
41:16
employer that they don't have any structure and they're just
41:19
kind of paying people, however they feel, to retain them or
41:21
make them happy at that moment. And with this structure that
41:24
we've created at Bodega, everyone's hired at the same
41:28
rate and the only way to make more money is to learn more
41:32
stations. And like I said, every single
41:34
time you learn one of our new departments, you get an
41:37
additional dollar on to your hourly rate.
41:40
And it just creates this very transparent nature where you
41:43
know exactly what everyone in the store is making, regardless
41:46
of who they are, because it all comes down to what they know.
41:51
And it creates this environment where I have younger high school
41:54
kids on my staff who, you know, are making $12.00 an hour,
41:57
$14.00 an hour plus tips because they're comfortable.
42:01
You know, they learned how to do 3 or 4 departments.
42:03
And some of the other ones are a little bit more high, high value
42:05
and a little scarier. They're not as comfortable
42:08
taking orders. And they'd much rather just be
42:09
running food or, you know, washing dishes.
42:12
And that's fine. You know, that's their comfort
42:13
level. And then you also have, you
42:15
know, slightly more seasoned and veteran people who come in who
42:18
are like, I want to learn everything, you know, like I
42:20
will cross train until you. So how many different service
42:23
departments are there? So we break each kind of, you
42:26
know, like back of house has three, you know, you learn the
42:29
deli station, then you learn our protein station and then you
42:32
learn our egg station and then we also have an Expo
42:36
responsibility, a prep responsibility.
42:38
So All in all, there is pretty much 10 different runs you can
42:42
kind of climb up to get to the point where and then once you've
42:45
learned all of them, you're a key holder and we consider you a
42:48
manager. You get your key.
42:50
And now I have a manager that doesn't just know how to do
42:53
their one department. The only way to become a manager
42:55
with this group is to know everything and I can trust you
42:59
to be scheduled in any place that I need you.
43:03
So, Alec, in my experience, some of our greatest lessons in life
43:06
come from overcoming big challenges.
43:10
I would like to take a moment and explore a big challenge that
43:14
you've overcome in your life, how you got through it, and
43:17
understand what you learned going through the other side of
43:19
it. Yeah, I, I mean, this is a
43:22
challenging industry. I think if you met any chef,
43:26
regardless of their age and, you know, ask them the same
43:29
question. Anyone who says it's all been
43:32
Peaches and everything's easy and rainbows, I I think they're
43:35
probably lying. It's it's a grueling industry.
43:40
And the first thing that comes to mind for me to be, you know,
43:45
completely transparent and a little vulnerable with you, You
43:49
know, I was 20, I was 25 at the time.
43:53
We were opening up our first brick and mortar bodega
43:55
alongside Share House, the locations at 23 Ann St.
43:59
Graduating culinary school a few years back, you know, felt like
44:03
the world is my oyster. I was an executive chef and
44:05
restaurant owner far before I ever thought I would be.
44:08
And it kind of felt like I could do anything.
44:10
And I made two menus that felt like anything.
44:14
It was a lot of work. Everything was house made.
44:17
You know, there was a laundry list of prep tasks, a laundry
44:20
list of menu items. It was overcomplicated.
44:24
And I said, yeah, oh, yeah, I got it, you know.
44:27
And my business partners say, oh, how like, you know, it
44:29
wouldn't be so cool if we can do this.
44:31
And I was like, oh, I can do that.
44:32
And then, you know, you say that 20 times and all of a sudden you
44:35
backed yourself into a corner where really the only solution
44:38
is burnout. I was at a point where I was
44:41
working 100 plus hour weeks consistently, week over week
44:45
over week until it it finally broke me.
44:48
Oh, and I was also getting married.
44:51
I had gotten married two months after the restaurant opened.
44:54
So I was also in, you know, the final, final lap of planning a
44:58
marriage and realized very quickly that I wanted to take a
45:02
week off surrounding my wedding and wouldn't be able to at the
45:05
rate I was going because there's no way to successfully run a
45:09
business with 100 hours of yourself and then strip it away
45:12
to 0 hours of yourself. And I had to pull all my
45:16
business partners together and, you know, have a very open and
45:19
honest conversation about the fact that I, I promised too
45:22
much. You know, I, I can't keep doing
45:24
this. It's killing me.
45:25
We're not serving the quality. We're not serving the
45:27
consistency. We can't hold on to employees
45:30
because we're throwing too much at them too quickly.
45:34
And, you know, rather than I think the voice in the back of
45:39
my head saying you're going to lose your job, you're going to
45:41
lose your partnership, you know, people are going to look at you
45:44
differently. My partners were receptive and
45:48
they said, yeah, we we know, we can tell we've been doing this a
45:51
lot longer than you. We see what you're going
45:53
through. Frankly, if you hadn't come to
45:55
us, we were going to come to you and say we need to make some
45:58
changes because what you're doing isn't healthy to your
46:00
body, to your mind. But more than anything, it's not
46:04
good business practice. You know, we're not we're not
46:06
going to get the return on this that we want.
46:07
And we need to find a way to maximize our returns and
46:10
maximize your longevity. So what eventually LED you to
46:17
actually have that conversation? My guess is that there was this
46:21
build up, right? It's like, oh, this is wearing
46:23
on me more and more and more. But was there like a trigger
46:26
moment where it's like, OK, this is finally too much a straw that
46:28
broke the camel's back? Yeah, absolutely.
46:31
You know what I mean? There is so much adrenaline
46:34
around opening up a restaurant and really I would imagine any
46:38
business. But you know, speaking on my own
46:40
experience, it's only been restaurants and I've opened up
46:42
six concepts now. Every time you open up one, it's
46:46
gas in the tank. You know you are ready to go,
46:48
you're ready to achieve. You're ready to be there day in,
46:51
day out. Talk to every cook, talk to
46:53
every dishwasher, talk to every server, talk to every guest.
46:56
You want. You want to experience it all
46:58
because it's been something you've been dreaming about and
47:00
thinking about for so long, and it's finally there.
47:01
And you have that adrenaline. You have that gas, but what I
47:04
realized is you can deplete that tank very quickly when you were
47:08
literally there from sundown. You have sun up to sundown and
47:12
some every single day. And you know, I like to think
47:16
that I'm a good manager and I'm a good leader who likes to get
47:20
into the kitchen and be there with my cooks in the trenches.
47:24
And I would do that and I would also do the admin and I was also
47:26
doing the bill pay and payroll and the scheduling and all the
47:29
things on top of it trying to do it all.
47:32
And I felt myself getting shorter and shorter and shorter
47:35
with my cooks, you know, so and so it's 2 minutes late and now
47:40
it's me writing them up and giving them an extremely stern
47:42
talking to you rather than, hey, why were you 2 minutes late?
47:45
Is everything OK? You know, how can we make sure
47:48
this doesn't happen in the future?
47:49
So I felt myself becoming a person that I don't recognize
47:52
and a leader that I certainly don't recognize.
47:55
And then that compounded with some failures in my department.
48:01
And I'll never forget we opened up a round Super Bowl Sunday,
48:05
and it was a big football day, and the restaurant filled up
48:08
like that. And all of a sudden, we had 40
48:11
tickets on the board, and I had a cook call out.
48:13
So I'm trying to expedite. I'm trying to run the kitchen.
48:16
I'm trying to also cook some of the food.
48:18
I'm yelling at other employees because they're not moving fast
48:20
enough. And it just turned into this
48:22
spiral where I looked at one of my business partners and I was
48:25
like, it's going to take us forever to get out of this hole.
48:27
You know, there's going to be guests out outside that ordered
48:30
their food and aren't going to see it for an hour and 15
48:32
minutes. And the weight of disappointing
48:36
myself personally in the way that I was representing myself
48:40
and my company, as well as the weight of also failing my job.
48:46
That was the first time that it ever really felt like I, I
48:49
wasn't achieving my goals. You know, I could always, I
48:52
could just work through the pain as long as what I was putting
48:55
forward was still correct. And that was the first time in
48:58
my career where I really felt like I was failing myself.
49:00
But I was also failing all of my business partners, all of my
49:03
employees, as well as the people that I was serving.
49:06
And it was that moment where, you know, cleaned up the kitchen
49:09
and I immediately sent out a mass e-mail to all my business
49:12
partners and was like, we need to get on a call first thing
49:14
tomorrow morning because we can't do this again.
49:18
So after you have that meeting with your partners, which you're
49:20
understandably nervous to go into, right, like not sure how
49:24
they're going to react. And sounds like the reaction
49:26
could not have been any better or more supportive, right?
49:29
They, yeah, they, they saw it. They recognized that they were,
49:32
you know, probably in the process of coming to you about
49:35
it. What changes did you make going
49:38
forward to alleviate that situation to correct it?
49:43
So I, I mean, yes, of course they were.
49:45
They were absolutely exactly what I needed, you know, both in
49:50
the sense of mentors who have been where I was, but also
49:54
family who just wasn't there to say I told you so or wasn't
49:58
there to blame me. But also frankly, I'm the back
50:02
of house guy. You know, I am the culinary
50:04
school grad. Most of the other people in my
50:06
company come from, you know, backgrounds in marketing or
50:10
business management or just a more front of house oriented
50:13
mindset. So really the best thing that
50:16
they did for me in that moment was rather than take the wheel
50:20
away from me and, you know, say, all right, we're going to tell
50:23
you what we want on the menu. We're going to tell you what
50:25
you're going to do. We're going to tell you how to
50:27
fix this. They still let me control.
50:30
They still said, hey, you haven't lost our faith.
50:33
You haven't lost our trust. We believe in you to tell us
50:36
what is right for this space, take the lessons that you've
50:39
learned from the last however long since we've been trying to
50:42
do this and fix it, and tell us what you need from us.
50:47
So they allowed me to rewrite the menus.
50:49
They allowed me to rewrite the schedules.
50:51
They allowed me to reduce the size of the menus in half.
50:54
They allowed me to buy new kitchen equipment that I thought
50:57
we'd better utilize the space. And they trusted me to right the
51:02
ship even though I had just taken us into an iceberg.
51:06
And I think that is really the reason that I was able to not
51:11
only steer us in the right direction, but also feel
51:13
confidence coming out of it that it wasn't my mistake.
51:18
And someone else fixed it for me and now I have to play by their
51:20
playbook. It was my mistake.
51:22
I learned from it and then created a new playbook that
51:25
allowed us to thrive underneath my leadership, still with my
51:28
confidence. So powerful.
51:30
How long after you had that meeting did you start to notice
51:35
the effects of the changes that you were putting in place?
51:39
Instantly, absolutely, instantly.
51:41
We we closed the restaurant for two days so that we could
51:44
recalibrate, retrain, talk to the employees, give me a day off
51:49
to rest, and the next day back into work.
51:52
My employees saw a new version of myself, my business partner
51:56
saw a new version of our restaurant.
51:58
And it was it was instantaneous. Two days.
52:03
You took two days to reconfigure everything?
52:06
Yeah. New menu, new approach.
52:09
Wow. Fascinating.
52:11
So yeah, I, I mean, like I said it, it was far from just me.
52:15
It takes a village. You know, we had 12 business
52:19
partners locally at the time. And you know, this was pulling
52:22
business partners from our other locations.
52:24
You know, the business partners from Uptown Social who were
52:26
supposed to be at work that day got coverage and came over and
52:28
helped us. And, you know, we reorganize.
52:31
We printed new menus. You know, it was, it was a full
52:34
family effort to to make it happen.
52:37
So it was certainly not just myself.
52:39
But you really stepped into a leadership role at that point.
52:42
I mean, you had been clearly since you'd open the concept and
52:45
the idea had largely been born of, you know, your experiences.
52:49
But wow, you know, you, you shepherded this into a a pivot
52:55
that was greatly needed. Yeah, big time.
52:58
And then right before you and I started recording, you told me
53:02
that one of the great things that you got to do this past
53:05
weekend was take a day off for a, a brunch establishment that
53:09
does the majority of its business on the weekends.
53:11
That's, that's saying something. So clearly these changes have
53:15
had a a lasting impact. Yeah, absolutely.
53:19
You know, I've, I've learned a lot over, you know, again, that
53:22
was more or less 2 years into my career, three years into my
53:26
career with this company and you know, I'm now at year 8 with an
53:30
additional 4 concepts opened behind it.
53:33
So I, I like to think that I'm a little bit wiser than I once
53:35
was, know my limits a little bit more.
53:38
But really, a lot of that comes from just, you know, an
53:40
expectation of setting personal boundaries and realizing that
53:45
the people around you, the people above you, the people
53:47
below you are going to respect you more when you actually set
53:51
those boundaries and you can actually create systems that
53:54
allow for you to take those days off.
53:56
You know, if it wasn't for my long time friend and fellow CIA
54:00
grad Marissa Lee, who's currently running the floor at
54:02
Bodega for me, I would never be able to take those Sundays off.
54:05
And if it wasn't for the rest of the team underneath her that has
54:08
gone through our systems and learned and cross trained and
54:12
become superlifin. Prolific.
54:16
Prolific at all of the responsibilities here, maybe.
54:21
Yeah, we'll go with a little bit of both, all right.
54:24
But yeah, you know, having having employees that can run
54:28
the full operation gives me the confidence to be able to step
54:32
away on our busiest day of the week and know that even if a
54:35
dishwasher calls out or a coffee, you know, barista person
54:38
calls out for the day, there's other people who will be able to
54:41
jump in and will help and do it willingly.
54:44
What's your superpower, Ally? Oh.
54:48
My superpower, really. I would love to fly, but sadly
54:52
that's not my superpower. My current superpower, I would
54:56
say, is really organization and creating systems that allow not
55:04
only myself to be my best, but also allow the people around me
55:08
to get the most out of themselves.
55:11
I've met so many incredible individuals who are driven and
55:13
passionate and make the best food you've ever tasted, but do
55:18
not know how to answer an e-mail or create a timeline for
55:21
themselves and stick to a calendar.
55:23
And really, I found that the best thing I can do for those
55:27
people around me is to be the person who's sending out the
55:30
reminder e-mail or be the person that is helping us all work
55:34
towards the common goal and stay on the same page.
55:37
So I would like to say that the my my system making habits are
55:40
really really my superpower at this point in my life.
55:44
What is on the future horizon for Uptown Hospitality Group?
55:48
What's coming? So we did just open up 3
55:51
concepts and 14 months, which was a lot, you know, I, I mean,
55:57
took a lot out of this team. But really where I'd like to say
56:01
we are right now is in the process of just kind of enjoying
56:06
where we are. You know, it's been five years
56:09
or I guess six years since COVID now.
56:13
And it's insane to think what we've accomplished in the time
56:16
since. And I like to think that where
56:19
we are right now is just kind of reaping the benefits of all the
56:22
hard work that we put in since that time and being able to step
56:25
away and take a day off and just enjoy the beautiful concepts
56:29
that we've created and be able to interact with all the people
56:32
who love going to our spaces. I like it.
56:35
Alec, I've just got one more question for you today.
56:37
But before I ask it, I want to do 3 quick things.
56:40
First of all, if you want to get in touch with the brand, find
56:43
out more about them, learn how to contact Alec, you can go to
56:47
theirwebsite@eatdrinkbodega.com. Eat, drink BOD, ega.com,
56:54
eatdrinkbodega.com and we'll have that link in the show
56:57
notes. Also, as a reminder, if you want
56:59
to get more restaurant employees access to therapists, doctors
57:03
and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems,
57:07
actually increases your company's net profits, reach out
57:10
to us at Add back benefits.com. And if you're enjoying the show,
57:14
a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a
57:17
long way towards helping others discover us.
57:20
So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now.
57:23
So last question for you, Alec. A year from now, what is 1 very
57:28
specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?
57:32
A year from now, I will be almost 32, so I would definitely
57:37
love to celebrate a 32nd birthday in style.
57:41
But really I would love to just continue to celebrate my
57:44
employees who continue to grow. You know, we have so many people
57:47
in this group that started as dishwashers and are now
57:50
currently sous chefs and head chefs.
57:52
And I would love to continue celebrating the just the entire
57:57
culture and family that we've created here with Uptown
57:59
Hospitality Group. We have our holiday party in a
58:02
future or weeks and each each owner and operator gets up and
58:07
kind of hands out some accolades.
58:08
And, you know, just like some pivotal, pivotal mentions to
58:12
employees who maybe don't get the spotlight nearly as much as
58:16
they should and don't get to do super cool podcasts like myself.
58:21
So yeah, I and I look forward to that every year, just being able
58:24
to kinda shine a light on the individuals who make this entire
58:29
thing possible and give me the opportunity to take the
58:31
occasional Sunday off. Alec Grotman from Uptown
58:35
Hospitality Group, I want to be the first to thank you for
58:38
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
58:41
I really appreciate you. Yeah.
58:42
Thank you. Folks, that's a wrap on another
58:45
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
58:46
Thanks for learning with us today.