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Gibsons Restaurant Group's Steve Lombardo on Hospitality as a Craft, Not a Slogan · 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
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. As you listen today, let one
0:17
idea shape what you do next. Today's guest once spent his
0:21
first semester of law school producing A nationally
0:24
syndicated college football TV show, editing highlights through
0:27
the night, then showing up to class the next morning like that
0:31
was normal. That kind of just figured out
0:34
wiring shows up all over his story.
0:37
He watched a family business rise, fall and rebuild.
0:41
Then he built his own parallel track and high stakes corporate
0:44
M&A before stepping into the arena where reputations are won
0:49
or lost one table at a time. Steve Lombardo is the CEO and
0:53
General Counsel of Gibson's Restaurant Group, the team
0:57
behind Chicago institutions like Gibson's Bar and Steakhouse,
1:01
Hugo's Frog Bar, Lux Bar, Cortino Restaurante, Gibson's
1:06
Italian and more. GRG is built around 4 core
1:10
values, hospitality, quality, value and family with an engine
1:15
built around the customer. GR GS purpose is that every
1:18
customer must leave happy. This episode is a master class.
1:23
And what happens when you treat hospitality like a craft, not a
1:26
slogan. But before we get into all that
1:29
good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
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back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:20
today, the CEO of Gibson's Restaurant Group, Steve
2:23
Lombardo. Thanks for making the time to
2:25
Share your story. Thanks for having me.
2:28
So Steve, you grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs in a blue
2:32
collar to white collar town. What's a childhood moment that
2:35
made you think, oh, this is how business really works?
2:39
Yeah. And you know what, it's funny
2:40
because I didn't think of it like that growing up.
2:43
It's just you're around what what you grew up with seems like
2:47
normal, right? And so I in my graduating class
2:51
had a number graduated class of grade school had half the kids
2:56
dads were entrepreneurs and they could have been electrical
3:00
subcontractors or had a little meat packing company or
3:03
independent truck driver or a even a doctor with his own
3:07
physician practice that he, you know, a few doctors.
3:10
And of course, I grew up with my father in the restaurant
3:13
business. One of his good friends who was
3:17
in the restaurant business, who lived in the town, had a, had an
3:21
invention, an idea that he had a, a, a, a ice cream cone shaped
3:25
like a baseball bat. And he was selling it to Dean
3:29
Foods. And, and, and I was probably 9
3:32
or 10 years old. And I said, how did you do that?
3:34
Like, how did you get this big company to buy your thing?
3:36
He said, well, I called him up. I said, oh, and a light bulb
3:40
went off in my head. Like there are no rules.
3:43
You know that our education system trains you to think a
3:46
certain way and and it's very kind of, you know, in the box
3:50
here in the box and and you know, that idea of like being
3:53
outside the box. You know, that was the first
3:56
kind of light bulb moment that oh, you just there are no rules.
3:59
So I can just call somebody up and have a conversation about
4:02
something. Exactly this.
4:03
This is accessible to me as well.
4:05
Kind of a thing. Yeah.
4:07
Yeah. So I understand that your dad
4:10
used to challenge you when you said what all kids say, right?
4:14
I can't, right? I can't do that.
4:16
I can't do that, right? And he would challenge you with
4:19
what if I paid you $1,000,000? Could you figure it out?
4:23
That's what he figured out and he would do that a lot.
4:25
And and then, you know, I, I would respond, being the smart
4:30
ass kid that I am, you know, well, you know, you asked me to
4:33
to fly. I can't grow wings and you go,
4:36
you said no, but you could spend money and take flight classes,
4:39
fly, you know, pilot lessons and and learn how to fly like that's
4:43
you know, so it was just also force you to, you know, always
4:46
ask that question to force you to think outside the box, like
4:49
is it a matter of can't or won't?
4:51
Right, So. So really helping you focus on
4:56
putting in the extra effort to figure something out, not kind
4:59
of being lazy. And copping out.
5:01
Yeah, it sounds like your dad had a big impact on your mindset
5:05
and the the way that you grew up.
5:07
For sure, for sure. And that that spills over into
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our business. I mean, one of our business
5:13
superpowers is the, you mentioned it before, just figure
5:17
it out or even just sort of brute force get it done, you
5:21
know, and that's a that that there's pluses and minuses to
5:23
that, but we just figure out ways to figure it out.
5:27
And that that directly comes from him not not accepting no
5:32
for an answer. Yeah.
5:34
I think we're going to see that spirit kind of recur here in our
5:38
conversation as we we get through more of your story,
5:40
Steve. So before you studied law, you
5:44
studied accounting? Yeah, what happened in that
5:47
season of life that made you decide that Law was actually a
5:50
better arena for you? So this is a this is one of
5:54
those who's the author, John Grisham wrote about American law
6:01
schools as being the Great American babysitters for 20
6:04
somethings that don't know what they want to do with their
6:06
lives. I haven't heard.
6:08
And I fell into that bucket for sure.
6:11
And my my father pushed me towards law school.
6:14
And I in hindsight, I, I understand why he did so.
6:18
He's very, he doesn't like lawyers.
6:21
He doesn't trust them. He wanted someone he could trust
6:25
who could speak their language and who could, you know, not,
6:29
not get the runaround from. So law was something I was, I
6:35
was, you know, I was good at it, but it was not, certainly not my
6:38
calling. So.
6:40
Not your calling, but you've followed through with it
6:42
anyways, yeah? Yeah.
6:45
So I want to talk about that first semester when you were at
6:48
Georgetown Law. Talk about this sort of not
6:51
being your calling because at the same time, you're also
6:54
producing A nationally syndicated college football TV
6:57
show. Yeah, tell me about that.
6:59
How did that come to be? So it came out of my last
7:02
semester of college. There was an entrepreneurship
7:05
class that I had taken and one of the students, we had a team
7:10
that came up with this idea. And one of them was working with
7:13
the local regional sports channel, which was home team
7:20
sports in Washington, DC. And if you think of like Madison
7:23
Square Garden Network in, in New York and Nessen in, in Boston
7:29
that there's there were these regional channels all over the
7:31
country at the time. And it was fairly easy to get
7:36
on. They were desperate for content
7:38
and so to put a show together was not very difficult.
7:43
We actually hired a former NFL player to be the host, which we
7:48
paid him a couple grand a week. We actually had Melissa Stark,
7:53
if you're familiar with her on ESPN, she did our pilot.
7:56
She then got hired by ESPN and so we, we didn't get to have her
7:59
on the show, but, you know, it was very simple to get access to
8:05
the, the the players and the coaches because it was based
8:10
around college football. You just reach out to the sports
8:14
information departments and they would set up interviews no
8:17
problem. And so our only limitation was
8:19
actually physically getting to the campuses.
8:22
So we were on the East Coast. So we were, you know, sort of
8:25
heavily, you know, focused on the East Coast, SECACC, New
8:31
England and, you know, we, we some of the Big 10 because being
8:35
from Chicago, I would come back and forth occasionally.
8:37
So, but we had, you know, Lou Hall.
8:40
And So what was the content? It was like an interview style
8:43
like. A interviews we would look at,
8:46
you know, we would it, it was just informational about the,
8:50
the, the best plays of the week and, and interviews with players
8:54
and coaches and, you know, just some sort of slant on, on in
8:58
opinions on, on the various teams.
9:02
It was, it was weekly. So we would have to write the
9:06
show kind of midweek planning it out.
9:11
We would watch all the games on Saturday.
9:14
We would have total access to the studio on Sunday from about
9:19
11:00 PM till 4:00 in the morning where we had total free
9:23
reign over there, editing equipment and and what not.
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And then we had to and then we would film I think the next
9:31
Monday or Tuesday and it would show on Wednesday.
9:34
So it was it was about five days after the the previous week's
9:38
games. So you're stretched thin time
9:42
wise, but it sounds like you're loving it.
9:44
So you're putting in these extra hours, getting access to the
9:47
content. Not a problem.
9:49
Yeah. What was the hard part about it?
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Hard part was selling advertising.
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This was because it was a regional channel.
9:57
They required you to get your own sponsors and and sell your
10:00
own commercials. Even though we were on, they
10:04
didn't have the cable channels, didn't have the Nielsen ratings
10:07
at the time. They just had the number of
10:10
households you had access to. And so we were in reaching 66
10:15
million households in the country, but we had no idea how
10:19
many were actually watching our show.
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So and and we were also 22 years old.
10:23
We had no contacts. We had no idea what we were
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doing. So, you know, I was picking up
10:27
the phone and calling people. I mean, I had, this is very
10:32
early Internet. There's no video on the
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Internet, there's no streaming. So I'm sending VHS tapes, you
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know, in the mail to people, you know, are they going to watch
10:43
it? Are they, you know, it, it's so
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we, we got a couple of sponsors, not many.
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And again, those were actually relationship driven.
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But other than that, you know, we, we ended up showing a lot of
10:56
Psas. And so how did that affect you?
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You're calling these folks up, you're trying to get sponsors
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and they're saying no. What's the impact on you and
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your your psyche? I mean, it was a learning
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experience, you know, you, you force yourself to learn how to
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sell even though I had no idea what I was doing.
11:18
You know, in hindsight, it's one of those things where I'm very
11:21
happy we did it, but I, I ended up having to take some of my
11:24
school loans and to fund the company, you know, so to fund
11:29
the shortfall, but it, it's, it sounds crazy.
11:33
We, we produced an entire season worth of shows for about
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$50,000. And you know, it was something
11:44
that we'd probably had about 4:15 to 20,000 of revenue.
11:51
So, you know, we lost 30 grand and that was I had to pay that
11:55
back, you know, out of my, my, my law firm earnings, you know,
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later. OK.
12:02
So what was the driving point? What was the decision factor?
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And OK, it's time to shut this down and move on.
12:09
Well, we it wasn't our decision. So the, so the whole premise
12:13
behind our show or the, the idea behind the business premise was
12:18
there's this lack of content. And by going through these
12:22
regional channels, you could syndicate.
12:24
They're so desperate for content and we could get national
12:26
access, right. And So what happened the
12:29
following year was Fox bought up most of the regional sports
12:33
channels around the country with the same thesis, but from a
12:37
network level instead of a, a television, a single program
12:39
level that they were going to buy all these regional channels.
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And it became Fox Sports, It later became Comcast Sports.
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And we tried to sell the show to Comcast or get, I mean, not even
12:51
sell it just to get it on the air.
12:54
The whole what they, they decided was they were going to
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keep all regional local programming.
13:01
You know, in that this case, they, they featured the
13:04
Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Wizards.
13:07
You know, those, those programs stayed with the local network.
13:12
Fox did all the national stuff. And so, you know, I'm, I'm a 22
13:16
year old kid calling up Fox, trying to say, trying to talk to
13:19
somebody, anybody. And I couldn't even get to
13:21
something, you know, I didn't know who to talk to, so.
13:25
OK, So this kind of fades into the background.
13:28
I guess the silver lining is it gives you more energy to focus
13:31
towards finishing out law school and then you move into corporate
13:36
MNA for a couple of decades. Yeah, Yeah.
13:40
That was, you know, just doing deals and representing some
13:44
companies, you know, from a corporate standpoint and boards.
13:48
But for the most part it was just, you know, you're, you're
13:50
buying or selling companies. I wasn't doing the buying or
13:53
selling, but I'm representing the buyers or the sellers.
13:56
You know, can you pull out an early career moment that trained
14:00
you and your judgement under pressure in a way that you still
14:03
lean on and think about today? Yeah.
14:05
So, you know, I was thinking about this, you know, early in
14:10
the career, you don't have a lot of judgement.
14:13
You know, you're just doing what you're told to do.
14:16
But I did have a few moments where I had, you know, there
14:21
were two learnings, big learnings. 1 is just, again,
14:23
sort of the brute force. You just work and work and work.
14:26
And the expectation is, you know, you got to get it done no
14:29
matter what the, the, the how much time it takes to do it.
14:33
You just got to do it. And I had one partner tell me
14:37
one time, there's 24 hours in a day.
14:39
I suggest you use all of them. But now the other lesson was a
14:45
lot of these clients that I had and I, I, we represented a lot
14:49
of entrepreneurs that sold their businesses.
14:51
There was a lot of psychological handholding with these guys.
14:57
You know, they weren't just selling their business, they're
14:59
selling their legacy and, and that sort of thing.
15:02
And sometimes you had to, I will tell you, I was a young
15:05
associate and there was a guy who's selling his business.
15:08
He had built it up over 25 years.
15:10
He was, you know, going to sell it and make a few money, right?
15:15
And he was, we had to close it by year end.
15:19
And the holidays are coming and he's in Florida and he is
15:23
literally counting the money before it's in his hands.
15:27
And I had to call the guy up and I said, Mike, you built an
15:32
amazing business, didn't you? He goes, yeah, you know, I said,
15:35
do you remember those long nights when you first started
15:38
it? And you were, you're just
15:39
burning the candle at both ends and you're doing everything
15:42
possible to just make sure this you can meet the next week's
15:45
payroll and etcetera. And he goes, yeah.
15:46
And I said, run through the God damn finish line.
15:50
You need to get your ass back to Chicago if this deal is going to
15:53
close because there's stuff you got to do.
15:55
And he was, you know, and I, I'm half his age.
15:58
I'm 26 years old. I'm telling him this and he's
16:02
like, oh, OK, you know, and, and he did and, and we got the deal
16:07
done in in time. And there was, you know, all
16:09
sorts of tax reasons why we need to do it before year end.
16:11
But there's a few times I had to have those types of hard
16:15
conversations with clients and you know.
16:18
Did you ever run into a situation where either
16:22
consciously or subconsciously, an owner is actually trying to
16:26
sabotage the deal because they don't know what they're going to
16:30
do next? And but the thought of not
16:33
having their legacy, their company, their baby, you know,
16:37
under their wing is too disturbing to them.
16:41
Now that that that never came up, I will say there were a
16:44
couple of occasions where I thought the deal was a bad one.
16:52
You know, that they were getting into bed with somebody where it
16:54
wasn't just a clean break, right?
16:56
There was one deal in particular.
16:58
I remember counseling the, the, the, the buyer actually that the
17:04
seller was no good. This was, this was a bad deal.
17:07
And you know, lawyers generally get paid when deals close,
17:11
right? You, you eat a lot of fees when
17:12
they don't close. And it's rare to find a lawyer
17:15
saying this, this is not a good deal.
17:17
And, and he went ahead with it anyway and it blew up, you know,
17:21
a couple years later, so. And how did how did they receive
17:25
that news from you at the time? They didn't.
17:28
We didn't know what we were talking about.
17:31
You know, we didn't. We didn't know the full story,
17:33
right? Yeah.
17:33
So that was his his thinking. Yeah.
17:37
Where do those, I'm going to use the word scruples.
17:39
Where do those scruples come from?
17:41
Like you said, lawyers not making money unless the deal
17:43
closes, right? You know, I, I would say not
17:46
just as an attorney, but any sort of consultant advisory
17:50
role, if you are going to be good at it, you need to be more
17:56
than just the lawyer or the accountant or the banker.
18:00
You know, you, you have to get yourself to a level of being a
18:02
trusted advisor where you can have those conversations with
18:06
them. Like the one I had with the
18:07
earlier story, which is, you know, get your ass back here
18:11
even though I'm a 26 year old kid and you're the one paying me
18:14
to do what you tell me to do. This is, you know, you have to
18:17
get to that level of trust. And it I'm kind of, you know,
18:22
following the trail here a little bit and I can see how
18:26
your bravado, your confidence, your skin is getting a little
18:32
bit thicker as you, you know, not very old, but you know, it's
18:36
a 22 year old kid. Let's go back to the early days,
18:39
right? The somebody makes the deal.
18:41
And you know, it's like, well, how did you get that?
18:43
You know, that ice cream cone sold, Like how did you get them
18:46
to buy it? Well, I just called them, Oh,
18:48
this light bulb goes off. So the 22 year old kid trying to
18:50
sell the advertising, you know, for the TV station, you know,
18:54
I'm, I'm calling folks up. I'm trying, but I don't know
18:57
what to say. I don't know how to get to
18:58
folks. But now by the time you're 26,
19:01
you're talking to guys that are twice your age and you're laying
19:04
down the law with them. Like it sounds like there is a
19:06
pretty quick maturity process that took place there.
19:13
I probably didn't see it at the time.
19:16
I probably consider myself pretty immature.
19:18
And, you know, there's always the, you know, the imposter in
19:21
your head that's telling you that you're, you're not good
19:24
enough for this, that, you know, that sort of thing.
19:26
What I will say is that what served me well was, you know, I
19:29
did work in the restaurants when I was a kid.
19:32
And, you know, I believed in that customer service and the,
19:38
you know, that that translated to when I was practicing law,
19:42
right? It's not just, you know, it's
19:44
easy and and we've all, you know, you in your business, I'm
19:47
sure had lawyers tell you, you know, you've asked them a
19:50
question that oh, no, you can't do that.
19:52
No, no, that's not the answer. It's maybe we can't do it that
19:55
way. Let's come up with a solution to
19:57
get you where you want to be. It may not be the way you're
20:01
thinking, but we'll figure it out.
20:03
As opposed to just a straight no, you know, I mean, all
20:06
business, forget about lawyers, restaurants, it doesn't matter.
20:11
Customers don't want to be told no.
20:13
Right. That's not what they're paying
20:15
you for, so. So you got to find a creative
20:19
solution to get from point A to point B.
20:21
Exactly. So let's go back to this
20:24
conversation years ago where your father calls you up one day
20:27
and says, hey, Steve, figure out how we form our own import
20:33
company. Yeah, Yep.
20:35
So he was in the process of opening a restaurant still
20:39
around today called Cortino. The whole concept is based
20:42
around good, inexpensive wine. And the idea was borrowed from,
20:47
you know, what you see in Italy with the carafes on the table.
20:50
And you know, it's good, inexpensive wine but very
20:54
drinkable with the food. And he went out and talked to a
20:58
lot of different importer distributors and the wine that
21:02
was the right price wasn't good and the right wine that was good
21:08
enough was the wrong price. It says how we find, how do we
21:10
how do we do an import company? So I don't know anything about
21:15
the laws surrounding alcohol at the time.
21:16
It's just not my area of expertise.
21:19
But for the just shorthand, with some exceptions, you can
21:24
basically either make booze, you can import, distribute booze, or
21:28
you can sell at retail. And never the twain shall meet.
21:31
And the whole idea is, and that's all post prohibition.
21:34
And it's you get taxed every level of the way.
21:38
And so you know it, it's a system that won't go away
21:41
because the government makes too much off it.
21:44
And like I said, there are limited exceptions, but I didn't
21:46
know this at the time. So I look it up and it's very
21:51
apparent. My father's in the restaurant
21:53
business. He's retail.
21:54
You can't do the importing distributor.
21:57
So, but I talked to a few liquor attorneys and literally it took
22:03
this all about 10 minutes of it was not it was not a long deep
22:08
dive. And because you probably had
22:10
some contacts, some lawyers and friends that you knew that were
22:13
special to, you know, the. Family business had liquor
22:16
attorneys and so talk to them. And so you know what, what's
22:21
common in the industry is you have family members that
22:24
represent the different pieces of the, the, the tears.
22:27
And so, you know, there are families that May 1 member owns
22:31
a vineyard, another has a distribution arm, and another
22:34
has a restaurant. And that that actually does
22:37
happen in the business. And so I said it's totally
22:40
illegal. You can't do it.
22:42
But you know, here's the end around.
22:44
And he just turns around and goes, OK, go start the company.
22:49
And I'm working, you know, 60-70 hours a week.
22:52
I've got 3 little kids. But you know, it's also the,
22:56
there's an element of duty and responsibility.
22:58
It's your father telling you to do something.
23:01
You just, you know, so, so he did it.
23:03
And it was one of those we just and had, you know, you said I
23:08
practice law, you know, for a couple decades and I did.
23:10
Had this not happened, I probably would have left a lot
23:13
sooner because I was exercising this entrepreneurial gene, you
23:17
know, while I was practicing law.
23:20
So you get to scratch that itch while you were still doing the
23:23
corporate M&A stuff? Exactly.
23:24
So we just, and this was literally just dialing up Italy,
23:29
the Italian Trade Commission, the Chamber of Commerce.
23:31
I had, I knew a couple of other importers unrelated to wine, but
23:37
did some stuff with imported other goods.
23:39
And, you know, you'd call somebody and they'd refer you to
23:43
somebody else and refer you to somebody else.
23:44
And all of a sudden we had 2300 samples of lime to taste.
23:50
And you know, we just did what was a focus group.
23:55
We weren't calling it a focus group.
23:56
It was just a bunch of people in the business that we would taste
23:59
the same. You know, we'd taste like 5 or 6
24:03
whites of the same varietal, like 5 or 6 Chardonnays and then
24:06
5 or 6 Chiantis at a time. And then just, everyone just
24:11
said which one you like best. And it's shocking how much
24:15
people coalesce around the same one, even when we were doing it
24:18
blind. And so we start bringing stuff
24:20
over and it was just, you figured it out.
24:24
You learn by doing it. I mean, it's one of the things I
24:28
think that a lot of people can get hung up on is trying to get
24:30
all the answers and to try and perfect it before actually
24:34
moving forward. And if you do that, you you'll
24:37
never move forward because there's no such thing as
24:39
perfection. Yeah.
24:42
So were you bringing in wine just for your restaurants?
24:46
Were you distributing to other? Restaurants that way, yes, we
24:48
started that way. The first year it was just
24:51
bringing wine just for that one restaurant.
24:54
And great story was the house red and house white, which were
24:58
amazing. We were selling 3.
25:02
We sold 3000 cases of this wine in one year.
25:07
And that's an enormous number. And and we don't know, we don't
25:11
know it's an enormous number, which is OK, this is, we're
25:13
doing business. This is we go to Italy that year
25:18
for their big trade show and the producer of that wine meets with
25:21
us and goes, so you have conquered the state of Illinois
25:27
in distribution. What is your plan to go
25:29
national? And I, I said, I don't, I don't
25:35
understand, you know, no, no, no Capisco solo Uno restaurante,
25:40
you know, one restaurant. And he literally said in
25:44
Italian, you know, bullshit. And like, no, no solo Uno
25:48
restaurate. And he, he ended up flying over
25:51
to, just to see it. And he was, you know, blown
25:54
away. And so we, we've since you know,
25:58
that we actually, they, they expanded their platform
26:03
nationally. We couldn't grow with them, but
26:05
they they carved us out because we were doing such huge numbers
26:09
so. Amazing.
26:12
So in those early days, I want to go back to something that you
26:15
were saying, sort of this idea of, you know, perfection is the
26:18
enemy of good, right? You're figuring something out.
26:21
A lot of folks make the mistake of saying you got to have it all
26:23
figured out before you actually, you know, pull the trigger and
26:26
do something you're a little bit more of a fan of, OK, let's do
26:29
some research. And at some point, we just got
26:31
to go. And so taking that mindset, what
26:34
were some of the things that you ran into along the way that, you
26:38
know, surprised you from a logistical standpoint, some of
26:41
the the hurdles you had to figure out?
26:43
Yeah. I mean, we probably went through
26:46
three different warehouses and storage issues within the first
26:50
two years. You know, you want to get it
26:53
temperature controlled is important.
26:56
I think we used two different shipping companies at the
26:59
beginning. We switched fairly quickly to
27:02
get better pricing. And, you know, we did talk to a
27:06
lot of people who were in the industry to learn, you know, and
27:09
sometimes it's just, you know, it's certain times of year you
27:13
want to have the wine shipped up to a northern port because then
27:17
it comes over rail on a, you know, when it's cool, right?
27:21
You don't want to ship to the southern states where it lands
27:24
in Norfolk, VA, for example, and it's going through 100° heat on
27:29
the way to Chicago. You know, it's just you figured
27:33
it out by doing it. You can't anticipate all the
27:36
little details right that that come up.
27:38
So. So 3000 cases a year.
27:43
You didn't know this was a huge number, but you're for one user.
27:47
You know, we we were selling for.
27:48
A single wine. Yeah.
27:49
We were selling about 10,000 cases a year overall.
27:53
How were you guys going through that much wine like?
27:57
Was. It the only wine you were
27:58
selling. It was, no, it was we probably
28:03
only the wines we brought in probably were only about 1/3 of
28:05
that menu. But it was just the whole
28:08
concept was driven around wine. And so you know the where is the
28:13
typical, our typical restaurants probably have a 45% wine, 45%
28:18
spirits, 10% beer. It it was 90% wine in terms of
28:23
the sales. Because you guys were pushing
28:26
that or it was just. Sort of the concept was built
28:29
around that and it was you know, it they would, you know, they
28:32
would pair it with the food and it was just that was the whole
28:35
gems. And then the wine was
28:37
inexpensive. It was very easy to, to get And
28:39
it, it was one of those, one of the other thoughts behind the
28:42
project was behind the restaurant was to make the
28:45
restaurant, the wine at the restaurant inexpensive enough so
28:48
people wouldn't feel afraid to make a mistake.
28:50
You know, when you, when you're a young person and you're buying
28:55
a $60.00 bottle of wine at the time, you know, that's a hugely
28:58
expensive outlay and you don't know if it's going to be good or
29:01
not. And instead they're serving it
29:03
by an 8 oz carafe and you're getting it for 15 bucks.
29:06
And so, OK, that's or, or at the time that that house wine was
29:10
only $5.00, so. Well, so those more affordable
29:14
prices, people are going to drink a little bit more too,
29:17
right? Exactly.
29:18
Let's get a second round. So you're doing all this, you're
29:22
building up this import business at the same time that you're
29:25
working 70 to 80 hours a week. You've got 3 little kids.
29:30
Was there anything during that time period that you had to say
29:35
no to that you wanted to say yes to?
29:40
You know, you just, you burn the candle.
29:43
I burned the candle at all ends. I probably wasn't home enough,
29:48
you know? But, you know, I think that
29:53
that's probably a regret, you know?
29:56
Yeah. Yeah.
29:57
Is that something you still carry with you today?
30:00
No, not too much. I mean, I think I've spent
30:02
enough time with my children. I did coach them a lot, you
30:08
know, in, in various sports and didn't make time for that.
30:10
So you know. So let's shift to Gibson's now,
30:15
right the What was behind the decision for you to eventually
30:18
get a lot more involved with the family business?
30:21
Sure. So I was outside counsel to the
30:24
company. There was a group of three
30:28
decision makers, my father, the founder, his partner who was
30:32
really the operating partner and then the CFO who were the
30:36
decision makers in the organization.
30:38
And fairly early on in my legal career, I was at the table for
30:43
all the big conversations, opening a new restaurant or
30:48
raising money. I ended up getting involved in
30:50
the fundraising as well. And so I remember and, and they
30:56
were all the same age and they're all probably 8384 today,
31:03
so 20 years ago, they're in their early 60s.
31:06
And I'm advising them not with myself, you know, at the, in the
31:11
thought process, but like, you guys have to start succession
31:14
planning. You know, like, like a lot of
31:17
entrepreneurs, they're, you know, the first generation
31:20
entrepreneur is just not very good at succession, right?
31:22
It's it's I'm going to, you know, and my father's response
31:26
to my bringing this question up was to work out an extra hour
31:29
every day. So he's just going to live
31:31
forever? Right.
31:34
And I was pounding him on it for a while, especially his, his one
31:38
of the, the operating partner was making noise about retiring
31:43
at some point. I mean, they ended up spending
31:45
about 10 years trying to negotiate a buy sell deal
31:48
between them that never ended up being coming to fruition.
31:51
We ended up buying him out ten years later than that and after
31:56
that, but it was, you know, that was what they were focusing on.
31:59
They weren't focusing on who's next and training who's next at.
32:06
But I was on him for quite a while.
32:08
And then finally, he had done a lot of thinking about it and
32:12
said, and, and earlier in his career he had had relationships
32:18
or his, his partnerships in his prior restaurant business were
32:21
with guys he grew up with all, all good friends.
32:24
And it went very sideways, causing him to have a lot of
32:28
trust issues. And he said to me, I, I can't
32:32
trust anyone else other than family to do the business.
32:35
So I want you to come in to take it over someday.
32:39
So a year goes by, another year goes by and finally I, I look at
32:44
him and I say, dad, you know, you've got this great plan.
32:47
He's probably 70 at the time, 71 and say, you know, how much,
32:54
when, when do you think you're going to bring me in?
32:56
And, and he goes, he goes, oh, I figured out another 5-6, seven
33:00
years at the law firm and I go and, and his, his, and his
33:03
mindset was, you know, because my brother had joined the
33:07
business at this point, my sister had joined the business.
33:11
My other one had sister had not joined the business at that
33:13
point in time. And in his mind, it's like
33:16
there's this concentration of risk in this one business and
33:21
that's supporting the entire family as opposed to, you know,
33:24
I think that's what he was thinking.
33:25
He never said that, but that's, that's his, his, it was his
33:28
mindset, I believe. And he got, I turned around and
33:33
I said, he got, I think he got six or seven more years.
33:36
I go, so you're the man, you're the boss.
33:39
You get to decide these these things.
33:42
I said But if you think it's in the best interest of the
33:44
shareholders, the family, the employees and the business for
33:49
your successor to come in after you're dead, said fine.
33:55
It's a very blunt conversation. And I said if, however, I said I
34:01
may or may not be the right guy, I said, you may after six or
34:05
seven, you know, six months or 12 months, you may decide, you
34:08
know what, I made a mistake. We got to bring somebody else,
34:12
you know, So I, I said you might want to do that sooner rather
34:15
than later. And he brought me in about six
34:18
months later. OK.
34:20
And so how did that initial transition go?
34:23
Bumpy, smooth, fit perfectly from the beginning.
34:26
Bumpy, I mean it, it was here, you know, you other than bussing
34:31
tables as a kid, I wasn't in the operations.
34:35
And so, you know, to build credibility, you know, I spent
34:39
the, the 1st 90 days, I didn't do anything other than just talk
34:43
to me, you know, didn't make any orders, didn't tell anybody what
34:48
to do. And, and you know, at the same
34:50
time, my father's still in the picture.
34:51
So it's not like it was this sharp cut off and I took over
34:56
immediately. And he's pointing to me, Don't,
34:59
don't bring your problems to me. Go to him.
35:01
So it wasn't this neat, you know, ending.
35:06
But I went through our management training program in
35:11
the restaurants to, you know, more to build credibility.
35:15
I mean, he has to understand a lot of what is going on in the
35:19
specific day-to-day. So you guys have an internal
35:22
training program for your own employees and you went through
35:25
that yourself? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
35:29
Although, you know, my father kept trying to make me into a
35:33
mini me of him, right. And he is a phenomenal
35:36
restaurant operator. He is I, I mean, I'm very
35:39
biased, but I would consider one of the top five restaurant
35:42
operators in the history of restaurants in in America.
35:45
OK, but that's I'm, I'm his kid. I'm biased.
35:49
I, I give him AC on a good day as Aceo of a company.
35:55
And so, you know, he kept trying to make me a restaurant operator
35:58
and I said my job is different from yours.
36:01
We are I'm, I'm running a company that runs restaurants
36:05
and that's a different thing. And so you know that that took
36:10
some time for him to get. Explain that difference.
36:13
Explain that difference between a restaurant, a good restaurant
36:16
operator and a good CEO, I mean. The restaurant operators in the
36:19
restaurant, you know, I mean the great ones live in the
36:24
restaurants. At the time I joined, we had 10
36:27
restaurants. Now we have 15.
36:29
And so it's not possible to be in the restaurants all the time.
36:33
And you know, one of the, I'll tell you a story here that
36:41
defines sort of why he wasn't a good CEO, but also the
36:44
importance of the role, which is we opened up 3 restaurants.
36:48
Literally the, the moment I had come into the company, like
36:52
right as I had come in, we had just opened three restaurants.
36:55
All three were management deals, meaning we were just getting
36:58
paid to operate then we didn't own the restaurants.
37:01
And the way my father had set up the compensation structure with
37:05
the senior executive team was they got 100% of those
37:10
management fees. And so we went from 1000
37:15
employee company to a 1500 employee company, $100 million
37:19
revenue to $150 million revenue overnight.
37:22
And we didn't spend one money, $1.00, excuse me, $1.00 in the
37:26
back office. And it almost tore the company
37:30
apart. And everyone's pointing fingers
37:33
things balls are getting dropped, everyone's running
37:35
around with their hair on fire. And it is Elaine's day is
37:38
obvious to me what happened, but nobody else can see it.
37:42
And I had to bring, we had to do an off site meeting, bring an
37:46
outside advisor to say what I would have said.
37:49
But that was the, you know, it was to build the credibility,
37:53
you know, you. Felt need to come from a third
37:55
party. Exactly and said, Oh yeah,
37:57
here's here's the founders kid coming in and telling us what to
38:00
do. He, he wrote a list of it was
38:05
funny. He wrote a list of about 10,
38:08
we'll call them symptoms on the board, you know, lack of
38:11
communication, micromanagement and you know, half a dozen
38:15
others. And he asked everybody in the
38:16
room, where did that come from? Where does this list come from?
38:20
They, every one of them said, well, you talked to all of us
38:23
before the meeting. You interviewed us and, and this
38:25
is, this is, comes from the conversations.
38:27
He goes, no, this is from a textbook that every company hits
38:31
these points, these thresholds where if they don't change the
38:35
way they operate, they they, they fail.
38:39
And he said you're already way past the breaking point.
38:43
And the fact that you haven't blown up yet is a testament to
38:46
the brute force that is in our culture, right.
38:50
But it was about to blow up. And so, you know, that was that
38:55
was the. So what were some of the big
38:57
things that needed to change as you guys were going from 100
39:00
million to $150 million so? You know, the entrepreneur
39:05
starts the business, it's founder driven, everything
39:08
revolves around the founder. If the founder dies, the
39:10
business dies, right? A business gets to a point that
39:14
then it becomes a person business where they've cloned
39:17
themselves, usually with a few people that are like minded or
39:20
think like them and they can get to another size.
39:23
And then it's you have to become systems and process based.
39:26
And we are not, we were not systems or process based.
39:30
I would say we're 7580%, you know, down that journey of
39:35
becoming a systems and process based company, but you can't,
39:40
you cannot leverage your culture, your your yourself
39:45
without without systems. Yeah.
39:48
So that's that's what we've spent the last 10 years doing
39:52
since I. And you feel like you're about
39:54
80% along that path. Yeah, and there were things like
39:58
I mentioned the. You know, the, my father and the
40:01
other two people are in their 80s now.
40:03
Our CFO who's wonderful, he only retired at 80, so 81 maybe.
40:09
And so none of the finance and accounting thing stuff was going
40:12
to get fixed until he was gone, not fixed, upgraded.
40:16
And, and the better way to say it is, you know, the things that
40:20
we did at the times we did them were the right things for that
40:23
time, but they're not the right things today, right?
40:27
Just because of size, scope, everything else.
40:30
You know, and for folks who haven't been a part of
40:33
significant growth like that, I, I, I think it's easy to, to miss
40:37
exactly the point that you've made here is that what gets you
40:41
from A to B is not always what gets you from B to C, right?
40:46
You're, as you go through these different stages of growth, you
40:50
need new tech, you need new process infrastructure, you need
40:54
new management infrastructure. And that can be really hard to
40:58
do, right, because you've got a team in place.
41:01
They've been really great at getting you from here to there.
41:03
And now sometimes you have to upgrade that team and A addition
41:06
to the tech and the processes and all that.
41:08
The there were 10 people in that original room, but we had that
41:13
meeting that first year of that 10, there's three people left.
41:20
Yeah. So, and the people that were in
41:24
that room were great. I mean, there's nothing it
41:27
wasn't, you know, some went on to do other things, some
41:30
retired, but and I, I can't say anything bad about them.
41:34
It's just they're, they're not what we needed right now.
41:38
Need a different skill set? Yeah, that's all.
41:40
Yeah, that's exactly. Right.
41:42
So Steve, let's talk about Gibson's restaurant group today.
41:45
Paint a clear picture for our audience.
41:48
What are the core experiences that you're trying to create
41:50
across all these different concepts?
41:52
Sure. As you said in the introduction,
41:54
every customer must leave happy and that's our, that's our
41:57
mantra, our, you know, core of, of being, so to speak.
42:04
You know, I tell people in our met new management orientations,
42:07
if you don't get off on the idea of serving other people, you are
42:11
in the wrong business. Like this is about making other
42:14
people happy. And that's a cool thing, right?
42:16
I mean, people spend their, some of their best moments and, and
42:20
really create memories in our restaurants.
42:23
And that's a, that's a really awesome thing.
42:24
And so you have to treat it with that kind of respect and
42:27
reverence. But in terms of the hospitality
42:30
that we try to provide, it's that concierge level of it's not
42:34
just food on the table. It's not just what's there.
42:38
It's, I mean, we've got people who will call us and they're
42:41
going to another city. And they said, you know, do you
42:43
know this restaurant, you know, can you help me get a
42:45
reservation there? And of course we do like we go,
42:49
you know, I'm, I'm going to be over here and, you know, looking
42:54
for tickets to this game. Well, we can figure that out.
42:56
We'll help them try to connect them to some, you know, like
42:58
it's it's a concierge level of service.
43:01
Wow. So.
43:03
Is there? We try.
43:04
I mean, I'm not saying we succeed all the time.
43:06
That's the goal. Yeah, tell us about the food.
43:09
Are all these Italian concepts? No, no, no.
43:11
So we have steakhouse, a seafood restaurant.
43:13
We have a, you know, hamburger bar, pizza and wine concept.
43:22
We have a high end Italian steakhouse and it's our we, we
43:27
have actually and we have several partnerships.
43:30
We partner with Jose Andreas with one of two of his concepts
43:34
here in Chicago, Bazaar Meat and Bar Mar.
43:36
We partner with Ralph Lauren. We operate their restaurant RL
43:40
here in Chicago. We actually open to their
43:43
restaurants for them also in New York, the Polo Bar, which we
43:47
operated for six years and then their restaurant in Paris.
43:51
We helped them open years ago. And then we have a partnership
43:55
with the founder of Rainforest Cafe, Steve Schussler is his
44:00
name is great guy and genius. We have a restaurant the boat
44:05
called the Boathouse at Disney, which is our largest restaurant.
44:10
And I think and I I we won't know until probably the end of
44:14
the year. It was probably the highest
44:17
grossing independent restaurant in the United States last year.
44:20
Wow. Yeah, we were number.
44:22
Two, let's talk about that. How what are you guys doing
44:26
there? So I mean, to be very frank, if
44:31
you go back, you know, 10-15 years ago, you know, Disney's
44:35
not was not known for having good food.
44:39
People went there, they spent what they spent the restaurants
44:42
that were there, I think even the ones that were operated by
44:46
outsiders treated it like a concessionaire, right, That
44:50
they're they're going to come rain or shine.
44:52
So we can cut on the cause here. We can, you know, skimp on the
44:56
quality there. That's just not who we are.
45:00
And you know, by providing a better level of food and
45:05
service. And by the way, there's since
45:07
have a number of good operators have now come to Disney and have
45:12
opened there and are doing a great job.
45:15
But, you know, to treat people not like they're just a, you
45:20
know, like they're just a concession customer walking
45:23
through the door really went a long way.
45:27
And, you know, I think our culture there is very, very
45:30
good. Is there a specific hospitality
45:35
story that you can share with us?
45:37
Maybe you even tell internally because it sets the bar for your
45:42
employees better than like any kind of written policy could.
45:45
Sure. And we tell lots of stories.
45:48
And you know, there's a book that came out about two or three
45:52
years ago, Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Wodera.
45:57
It very much describes what we believe.
46:00
And I got to meet him shortly after he wrote the book and he
46:04
knew our restaurants. And I told him that after I
46:07
finished the book, I was angry and he started laughing at me.
46:09
And he goes, I know why you were angry.
46:11
You go, why he goes because you wish you would have written it
46:13
yourself. That was it.
46:16
And so the but here's a story. So it's, it's the level.
46:21
So the idea is we want to make sure every customer leaves
46:25
happy. We know in our business that
46:29
it's impossible to be perfect. You know, the idea of like 6
46:32
Sigma and manufacturing where you reduce the error rate to one
46:35
part per million. You know, widgets manufacture
46:39
it, it we can't even do one per hundred, right?
46:41
It's it's just there's too much of a human element and too many
46:45
other variables going on. So and, and there's things that
46:48
are just outside of your control.
46:49
Like you could have 100 people sitting outside and all of a
46:53
sudden that the clouds open up and it rains and it, it, it's
46:57
not your fault. You didn't make any mistakes,
46:59
but the customer's not happy, right?
47:01
So what are the lengths you we will go to?
47:04
And so the story just happened during, right at the tail end of
47:08
COVID. We had a group that came in from
47:12
Wisconsin. We found out later they traveled
47:14
about 3 hours to Chicago during COVID.
47:19
We had reduced our menus. We had to in order to survive,
47:22
right? She had wanted a particular
47:25
dessert that wasn't on the menu. And, you know, most of the time,
47:31
if it's something we can do, we'll whip something up even if
47:34
it's not on the menu. I mean, we'll get ingredients.
47:36
We'll borrow them from the other restaurants.
47:38
We'll send a busboy down to the grocery store, like whatever we
47:41
can do. This particular thing required,
47:43
you know, a full day's worth of prep.
47:45
It's not something that could be done in an hour.
47:47
It was she wanted a banana cream pie.
47:49
OK. And we didn't have it.
47:53
The manager recognized it cop dessert, you know, try to do
47:58
everything to make them feel good about it.
48:00
She goes upstairs to the restroom the and she's saying
48:03
everything. Oh, it's fine, it's fine, you
48:05
know, but her table mate tells the manager, you know what she
48:10
is just you know, she all she wanted was that banana cream
48:15
pie, you know, we came from Wisconsin, you know, she just
48:18
had her heart set on it. She's really disappointed.
48:21
And so when he he took down her information, got her address
48:28
from the friend and his next day off, he had told the chef to
48:33
prepare a banana cream pie and he drove it up to her place.
48:37
Now, our desserts are, you know, a single slice feeds about 6 to
48:44
10 people. So it's like, it's like, you
48:47
know, 8 inches long. The whole pie is like around,
48:51
you know, it's got a you know, 18 inch, it's like a pizza size,
48:54
but you know, 8 inches, 10 inches tall.
48:57
So he went up to her house and she actually owned a bed and
49:01
breakfast. And he comes, he not, he rings
49:03
the doorbell and has this giant box.
49:06
And she immediately knew what it was and it was this, you know,
49:09
it was the pie and she was just blown away.
49:12
And so when we talk about it with our new hires, it's, you
49:17
know, think about the what that creates in her, right?
49:20
When she comes back to Chicago, is she ever going to go to
49:23
another restaurant? Right.
49:24
She's going to come back to our restaurant when she hears her
49:27
friends, oh, we're taking a trip to Chicago.
49:30
What's she going to? She's going to tell that story
49:32
100 times. And think about the and, and
49:36
more importantly, she was just amazed by it.
49:39
So that's the kind of thing that we want to do.
49:42
Now, those opportunities don't always present themselves.
49:45
You can't do that with every single table, but every single
49:49
day there are opportunities that come.
49:51
And it doesn't have to be such a grandiose gesture.
49:54
It has to be tailored to what the customer wants and, and to
49:58
show them that you care. That's really it.
50:01
That's a phenomenal story. Now I'm curious, is there a
50:06
finance or a CFO person in the company who hears that story and
50:09
pulls their hair out? Because like you gave a whole
50:13
pile away and there was 3 hours of drivetime each way.
50:16
What I will say is yes and no in that people join our company and
50:24
they come from other places and they don't.
50:26
It takes them a while to a while to get it and to understand that
50:31
that's OK like that that we don't we would rather them do
50:36
that. One other and very short story,
50:40
our first Mother's Day for one of the new for one of the
50:44
restaurants, they overbooked it. They weren't ready for it.
50:47
The kitchen crashed. People were on an hour plus wait
50:50
for Mother's Day. We ended up comping $60,000
50:54
worth of meals and didn't blink an eye.
50:59
And you know, that was the right thing to do.
51:03
And so, you know, obviously you don't want to do that.
51:08
You don't want to put yourself in the situation to do that.
51:11
But those situations happen. And we tell our people, buy your
51:14
way out of it. Just buy your way out of it.
51:16
And new people don't always get it.
51:20
We had a COO here for about 4-5 years.
51:24
It took him a year before he fully understood that.
51:28
You know what, it may not make financial sense in the short
51:31
term, but in the long term, you know, we're playing the long
51:33
game. We're we're going to be here.
51:35
We're now in the second generation.
51:36
Hopefully many generations be odd so.
51:40
It's your reputation and it's those stories that get told and
51:43
retold and retold, like delivering this pie to somebody
51:47
3 hours away. You love it.
51:51
Steve, what's 1 of the hardest things you've ever had to
51:54
overcome personally, and what did it teach you?
51:58
So I talked a little bit before about the TV show law school
52:04
that first year. I also happen to flunk the CPA
52:06
exam that year. I didn't do very well in in that
52:09
first year and my grades weren't that great.
52:12
The show was a failure by all measures, right?
52:15
Other than I was a 22 year old kid and accomplished, you know,
52:19
put this stuff on the air. And so that was a real set back
52:23
and it that the, the, the lesson there was about focus really.
52:28
But the other lesson, I would say I other thing that I think
52:32
was probably the most difficult for me was COVID, where, you
52:38
know, we were existentially at risk, right?
52:41
The, the whole world was against us at that point in time.
52:47
And you know, it was, you know, had to fire 2000 people by Zoom,
52:54
you know that that'll do. So you know that that does
52:58
something to you. The I think we did a lot of
53:02
really good things during COVID to help take care of our
53:05
employees and and other things. But at the same time, and even
53:09
though there was nothing I could do about it, still one of the
53:12
hardest things I ever had to do. But the learning there was I was
53:20
fanatical about. And this goes back to the figure
53:24
it out, do whatever it takes mindset.
53:29
When the PPP was first announced, before it was even
53:32
before it even became law. And now, of course, I have the
53:35
legal background. So that helps.
53:37
I was reading the bill that was going before Congress.
53:41
I called our banks and was telling our banks, listen, you
53:44
need to get out in front of this, learn about it because
53:47
this is coming. You know, we bailed out that the
53:50
United States bailed out the banks 12 years ago in 2008.
53:54
I said, I don't know if it's going to be the banks, Oregon,
53:56
the insurance companies, but one of those industries is going to
53:59
end bailing out the rest of the the country.
54:00
This this go around or be the conduit.
54:03
I mean, is the, the government did the bailout.
54:05
But and so I, I learned everything I could about it.
54:11
I had, so the bank got involved and actually two banks and we
54:19
were doing it with both of them and I had all of the
54:22
information. It wasn't clear how the
54:25
information was going to be processed or presented.
54:28
And so I think I had it about 10 different ways at my like at my
54:34
hand, at my fingertips. So when the portal opened, I
54:38
would be ready to do it. And I remember my controller
54:42
saying, well, you know, why don't we wait until we
54:45
understand what the, the, you know, how they're going to want,
54:48
how they're going to want the information.
54:50
I said, because it might be too late then We didn't know that
54:52
they were going to extend it and add to it and add to it, right.
54:55
And so I remember it was a Friday night and it was the
54:59
portal's opening at 7:00. And do you remember as a kid,
55:02
you know, dialing up for like concert tickets where you just
55:06
hang up and dial, hang up and dial.
55:08
That's what I'm doing on my computer.
55:11
You know, refreshing the screen 10 minutes before the portal
55:14
opens it like 655 and I have 7 applications in before 7:00 even
55:24
happens. I found out we were the through
55:28
our banker. I found out we were literally
55:30
like within the first five applications in the entire, you
55:34
know, of their entire client base.
55:36
And so we got our money. You know, the idea was you might
55:40
not get your, the longer you waited or where you were in
55:42
line, you could get the money later.
55:43
So we got our money right away and that was, you know, we
55:47
became, and then like the banks became the bailout, we became
55:51
the unemployment office for the, you know, the, the, our people.
55:55
So that's that's what it was. And so had your people been let
55:59
go in between? Yeah.
56:01
And so now you were able to bring them back, brought them on
56:04
that. Payroll, although we couldn't
56:05
really operate, so we were paying them.
56:08
We did do a little bit of, we did do a vocational survey and
56:13
we, because some people, some people didn't want to work.
56:16
Some people based on their age, we didn't want them to work,
56:20
right. Because the older people were,
56:22
you know, had had higher risk. There were a few of our people
56:26
who were in their 60s and, and even 70s and I, I, I mean, they
56:29
were saying, well, you don't want us to work.
56:31
I said, no, I want you to live. So, you know, sorry, tearing up
56:37
a little bit about that, but so we did this vocational service.
56:42
So we did get people to do things like paint the insides
56:46
of, you know, tend to some of the gardening or do some
56:49
administerial stuff, things that needed get done.
56:52
Like we took it as an opportunity to refresh the
56:54
restaurants. And so if anybody had any skill
56:57
set, I mean, we had people who were refinishing furniture for
57:02
us. And so, you know, that's, we
57:07
tried it and, you know, some people just wanted to be feeling
57:09
useful. So.
57:11
And of course we're paying them regardless.
57:13
But yeah. When was the moment where you
57:19
felt like we're going to make it through all this?
57:26
You know, I would say it's hard, it's hard to, to gauge the when
57:33
and you know, it all sort of flows together.
57:35
Looking back, I do remember, you know, we made a lot of, it took
57:42
us about two or three weeks to make all of the important
57:45
decisions that we wanted to make.
57:47
And we were, you know, aligning with our core values and, and
57:51
everything else. And then I was bored.
57:54
I had, you know, and so now I'm thinking there's opportunity.
57:56
What am I going to do? Is there opportunity to hire
57:59
good people, gain market share even though we weren't really
58:01
open? Is there opportunity to for real
58:05
estate? Because although that never
58:07
really came to fruition because the PPP sort of bailed out the
58:10
landlords too. The we did get one really good
58:15
hire out of it, a senior person who was, you know, a lot of
58:19
people took the time during COVID to re evaluate their own
58:24
lives, right, what they wanted. And we we got a guy who was
58:27
probably we out kicked our coverage in terms of his he was,
58:31
I think the number three guy at Hard Rock and he took a pay cut,
58:36
significant pay cut to work for a smaller business because he
58:40
enjoyed the idea of our brand and and you know, the idea of
58:45
being a little bit closer to the restaurants that he had been in
58:49
his previous role. So, but gosh, I would probably
58:54
say it had to be at the tail end of 2020 that I thought like, we
58:58
might be OK. Oh.
58:59
OK, still relatively early. Early 21 COVID.
59:02
Debacle. Yeah, yeah, OK What's the future
59:07
of Gibson's look like? What's coming?
59:10
Your guess is good, no? The what can what can you?
59:13
Share with us, we've got one, we've got one restaurant that is
59:16
definitively opening at the end of this year in Chicago.
59:20
We are actively looking in other markets, working on deals in
59:26
Tennessee, in Florida. You know, we have, like I said,
59:31
these partnerships that exist with that also provide some
59:38
opportunities and we may have some things with them going
59:40
forward. You know, we want to, I, I talk
59:44
about it as the, the Gibson's gospel, like we, we take care of
59:49
people. We do, we serve people and we
59:51
treat people well. And so why wouldn't we want to
59:54
do that in more locations and more places, right?
59:57
People, the number of people who I said this before, celebrate
1:00:01
some of the most important moments of their lives with us.
1:00:06
And that's really cool. So want to want to bring that
1:00:09
out to more people. So how do the partnerships work?
1:00:13
Yeah, like I you mentioned, was it Ralph Lauren?
1:00:16
Yeah. So you do a partnership with
1:00:18
them, is it basically licensing the name and then you guys kind
1:00:21
of take over all the operational aspects?
1:00:23
It's actually the other way around.
1:00:25
They pay us to operate the the business.
1:00:29
So we, we take a management fee for that.
1:00:32
In the case of the operation at Disney World, it's a
1:00:35
partnership. We're both equity owners as well
1:00:39
as we both, you know, we, we get paid a management fee for that.
1:00:44
And then our other operation partnership with Jose Andreas is
1:00:48
a joint venture. So it's a 5050.
1:00:51
So these partnerships can take lots of different structures and
1:00:55
flavors. Yeah.
1:00:56
And we're talking to somebody else about a license deal where
1:00:58
we would be the licensee and pay them, you know, so it could,
1:01:03
could be a lot of different ways.
1:01:05
Oh, fun stuff. OK, I think I've just got one
1:01:08
more question for you today, Steve.
1:01:10
Sure. Before I ask it, I want to do 3
1:01:12
quick things for the audience. Anybody who wants to get in
1:01:15
touch with Steve Lombardo got his e-mail address right here.
1:01:19
Steve, 3 #3@grgmc.com. steve3@grgmc.com.
1:01:27
We'll have that in the show notes, in case you missed it.
1:01:29
Yeah, and and by the way, I had a different e-mail address early
1:01:32
on and everyone was confusing my father and me.
1:01:35
So I had to do the Steve three. OK, make the distinguish.
1:01:38
Is your dad Steve too? Yes, but that's not his e-mail.
1:01:44
He doesn't even look at e-mail anyway, so.
1:01:45
All right, fair enough. And also for the audience today,
1:01:49
if you're enjoying our show, please take a quick moment to
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subscribe wherever you're listening.
1:01:55
It sends a signal that helps others to discover our podcast.
1:01:58
So thanks for taking a quick moment to do that right now.
1:02:01
And as a reminder, you can get your restaurant employees access
1:02:04
to therapists, doctors and prescription meds that counter
1:02:07
intuitively, actually increases your company's net profits, real
1:02:11
gains that can change how a business is valued.
1:02:14
So contact us today at AD back benefits.com.
1:02:17
So last question for you, Steve. A year from now, what's 1 very
1:02:21
specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?
1:02:24
Yeah. So I, I would say I would really
1:02:28
hope that that our restaurant in Florida is the number one
1:02:33
highest grossing independent restaurant in the United States,
1:02:35
which would be great. And then the other is a
1:02:38
successful opening of the, the location here, which is going to
1:02:41
be called the Gibson's Tavern that we have, you know, our
1:02:46
opening restaurants are always difficult.
1:02:48
It's never, never easy. And there's always, you know,
1:02:51
hurdles. But, you know, we, we figure
1:02:54
them out. But I it's it's good to figure
1:02:56
them out sooner rather than later.
1:02:58
You know, actually I lied. I have one.
1:03:00
I have one additional question for you because you brought up
1:03:02
before and early in your career how you know you had these
1:03:05
doubts kind of it. And I mean, you know, this
1:03:07
imposter syndrome kind of thing. Now here you are, you know, and
1:03:13
you guys are kicking butt. And I wonder, do you still have
1:03:16
some of those doubts or are you fully confident in everything
1:03:19
that you do? No, of course, you know, this is
1:03:25
a very people intensive business and people are both imperfect
1:03:31
beings and I, I, you know, the older you get, the more I think
1:03:35
I, I, I can understand people, but at the same time,
1:03:39
everybody's unique and it's easy.
1:03:41
I screw up all the time. I mean, I'd like I said, I, our
1:03:45
employees, you know, they're going to make mistakes.
1:03:47
It's OK. How do you recover from it?
1:03:49
How do you learn from it? Same thing I, I, but I, as I get
1:03:54
older, I don't dwell on them as much other than what did I,
1:03:57
what's my take away with it? What I learned from it, you
1:04:00
know, I don't like living in the past too much.
1:04:02
Yeah, well, lots of exciting things on the horizon.
1:04:05
I think Steve, we're going to have to schedule a follow up
1:04:08
interview for a year from now just to check in and see how all
1:04:11
those things are unfolding. That'd be great.
1:04:13
Yeah, Steve Lombardo from Gibson's Restaurant Group, I
1:04:17
want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time
1:04:20
and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being
1:04:22
here. Thanks so much.
1:04:24
Thanks so much. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:04:27
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:04:29
Thanks for learning with us today.
1:04:31
And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.