Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Starting with Vibe: How bartaco Flipped the Restaurant Playbook | Restaurants & Franchises Series

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Starting with Vibe: How bartaco Flipped the Restaurant Playbook | Restaurants & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:18
  the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
• 0:20
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:24
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:26
  My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Anthony
• 0:30
  Valletta, President of Bar Taco. With two decades of executive
• 0:35
  restaurant experience, Anthony is passionate about creating an
• 0:38
  unforgettable experience for their guests.
• 0:41
  He is overseeing the strategic operations, planning, revenue
• 0:44
  and profitability, growth and market penetration of multiple
• 0:48
  concepts. Presently, he is focused on Bar
• 0:52
  Taco, their upscale street food concept which has a relaxed and
• 0:57
  stylish atmosphere where you can enjoy speciality cocktails, beer
• 1:01
  out of a bottle, and handheld foods delivered on metal trays.
• 1:05
  Founded in 2010, they have 34 locations in 13 states.
• 1:10
  AMDC. And don't let the name fool you,
• 1:13
  they've got a lot more to offer than just tacos.
• 1:15
  Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:18
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• 1:21
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• 1:24
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• 1:27
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• 1:45
  All right now back to our guest today, the President of BARTACO,
• 1:49
  Anthony Valletta. I appreciate you making the time
• 1:51
  to Share your story today now. Thanks for having me, looking
• 1:53
  forward to it. So if I understand correctly,
• 1:56
  Anthony, you joined Bartaco back in 2021, which is several years
• 2:02
  before the company was founded. Before we get into the path that
• 2:06
  led you to Bartaco, can you just tell us a little bit about how
• 2:10
  the company itself was first founded?
• 2:13
  Yeah. So we we turned 15 this upcoming
• 2:15
  year in 2025. And the original 2 founders,
• 2:19
  Andy and Sasha, had a restaurant called Barcelona.
• 2:22
  So it was a Spanish tapas restaurant that started doing
• 2:25
  tapas before it really became big in the US And they had
• 2:29
  always been kind of infatuated with coastal culture, Uruguay,
• 2:34
  South America, Southern California.
• 2:36
  And at that point, no one was really doing tacos in a full
• 2:40
  service environment. And they kind of speculated and
• 2:43
  talked about what a restaurant might look like if they brought
• 2:46
  that world to life. And their CEO at the time, Scott
• 2:49
  Lawton, who's our CEO and Co founder today, the three of them
• 2:52
  got together and opened a location that actually started
• 2:55
  because they were trying to sign a lease for the other restaurant
• 2:58
  and ended up falling through. And they said, you know, this
• 3:01
  would be a good spot to try out this Taco concept.
• 3:03
  And we opened up what we thought was going to be more of a kind
• 3:07
  of casual, fast casual counter type perspective.
• 3:11
  And we found lightning in a bottle and the restaurant
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  literally just took off. The chefs from Barcelona all
• 3:17
  started the menu. And we had something that we, we
• 3:21
  didn't quite know what it was at the beginning, but it evolved
• 3:23
  over the 1st. I mean, still evolving only 15
• 3:26
  years later, but over the first year it evolved into something
• 3:29
  that was really incredible, a full service restaurant catering
• 3:32
  to families in late night and cocktails.
• 3:34
  And it was really everyday was a new challenge for, for the team.
• 3:38
  And we, we grew from Port Chester, NY, our first location,
• 3:41
  which is on the border of Connecticut, did a few more in
• 3:44
  Connecticut, then prove the concept by going to Atlanta.
• 3:47
  And then from there kind of the rest is history.
• 3:48
  We, we filled in from, from there all the way South.
• 3:51
  And now at 34 locations, it's been a, it's been a good run.
• 3:55
  What? What was the lightning in a
• 3:57
  bottle? What do you think?
• 3:59
  Was it because the the small plates was novel at the time?
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  I think it was a little bit of everything.
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  I mean, the small place was novel.
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  I think no one at that point tacos were known as Taco Bell or
• 4:11
  Chili's. I mean, that was just, it was
• 4:12
  one of the two and and I think people were looking for
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  something a little bit different and they provided that.
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  We also provided really culinary focused menu.
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  We opened, we were doing things a little bit more obscure than
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  we're doing today. When you take chefs from a a,
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  you know, true chefs from a tapas style restaurant, you get
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  some really creative ideas. But I think more of it was the
• 4:33
  way that they designed it. You know, Sasha, one of our
• 4:34
  founders is it created at heart and we designed the space.
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  They actually started originally with it being a lifestyle brand.
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  They didn't know what we were going to do for food or for
• 4:44
  drinks. They just said we know what we
• 4:45
  want to feel like. We want to feel like that beach
• 4:49
  culture again, Uruguay and Southern California.
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  And they kind of created more of the feeling of what this place
• 4:56
  was going to be. And then everything with the
• 4:59
  concept kind of came after it. So when you look at a lot of
• 5:03
  the, the touch points and things we do in the restaurant, it all
• 5:06
  supported the initial thought of what is this feeling and vibe
• 5:09
  and lifestyle brand that we want to build and what makes the most
• 5:13
  sense for it. And, and bartaco was kind of the
• 5:15
  baby of that thought. So I think it was more because a
• 5:18
  lot of brands come out and they say, I want to open a
• 5:21
  steakhouse, I'm going to make a menu, then I'm going to see how
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  it feels. They kind of have this, this
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  typical playbook and we flip the the playbook in reverse and
• 5:29
  said, what do you want it to feel like?
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  And, and what's going to be different about this place when
• 5:32
  you walk in or for that matter, when you walk out?
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  And we've always still kind of used that same filter today.
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  But it's not just about what walks into the restaurant.
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  It's about how you feel when you leave.
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  And our menus derive from that. The music is derived from that.
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  The design is derived from that. So I think that was the
• 5:49
  lightning is that most people weren't weren't doing it that
• 5:51
  way, you know, many years ago, 15 years ago.
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  I was going to ask, in the, you know, couple of decades
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  experience that you've had in the restaurant space, have you
• 6:00
  ever seen that approach be taken before?
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  Not, not completely like that. I mean, knowing you're going to
• 6:05
  start a brand but not know what the brand is at all, you.
• 6:07
  Don't know what the food is? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's wild.
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  So I I think it's really interesting.
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  But when you think, especially now, I mean, you know, hindsight
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  15 years ago, we think now people are looking for
• 6:19
  experience, looking for vibe, they're looking for environment.
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  It's not just a great plate of food.
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  They want the whole thing and value really has to do with that
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  whole package. And I think that foresight 15
• 6:30
  years ago is paying dividends when the brand is being able to
• 6:32
  grow so well and why it's very well.
• 6:34
  Today. So Anthony, you've been involved
• 6:38
  in the restaurant industry for over 2 decades, right?
• 6:41
  Yep. What was it that first drew you
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  into the hospitality space? You know, I was I was young and
• 6:48
  need to save money for a car and said, you know, there's what's
• 6:51
  what's quick, fast money and got into flipping pizzas at this,
• 6:56
  you know, dive sports pub type place.
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  And there was something about it out of the gates that just hold
• 7:04
  me it it's the excitement, it's the rush, it's the engagement
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  that you're you're really you're taking care of people all day
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  long, both your staff and your guests.
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  But when you go up and realize that food and booze make people
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  happy, like most people always feel better after they're eating
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  or drinking or both. So I got infatuated really young
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  with this really kind of cool feeling of hospitality.
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  You know, I'd always, my house was always a revolving door of
• 7:29
  people coming in and out in a good way, like visiting family
• 7:32
  and friends. And I just grew up with my, my
• 7:34
  parents always entertaining. So to me it just felt very
• 7:36
  normal. But I kind of got the hook.
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  And then I went from there and worked at a full service
• 7:41
  restaurant for a guy named Joey Krignally, who's original
• 7:44
  founder of Bertucci's, which is a brand up in the northeast.
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  And he opened a place called the Naked Fish.
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  It was a seafood Cuban restaurant, it's behemoth
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  restaurant back when they were smoking and non-smoking sections
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  and all that kind of stuff. But I worked for him and he
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  really taught me the ropes of the restaurant business, you
• 7:59
  know, the kitchens, the bar, music, all of it.
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  And I worked just put every position in that restaurant of
• 8:05
  my time with them and I just fell in love.
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  It's just something about it. No two days are the same.
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  You get to be a Jack of all trades but master of none.
• 8:13
  You know your marketing at one day and your HR cap the next day
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  and finance the next day. And to me that was that just
• 8:19
  excited me and I just kept kind of going from there and
• 8:22
  expanding my career in the industry.
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  All different sides before. Finding the The Bar Taco
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  experience. What do you think was your most
• 8:30
  favorite stop along the way? You know, I worked for De Frisco
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  Steakhouse for seven years and I was a director of operations for
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  them. It was when we were went from
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  private to public to private during my time there.
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  So that's probably a whole other podcast of itself.
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  But but the time there, we had an incredible team, you know,
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  really just an amazing concept, an incredible growth, great
• 8:54
  cities, got to really be a part of so many incredible events
• 8:58
  across the country, from sporting events to celebrity
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  events to just, you know, big nights in the restaurant.
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  And it was just the people I was surrounded by with a brand that
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  was in such a cool phase. But I think outside of my time,
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  today was probably the best and most favorite time in my career.
• 9:14
  And so were you actively involved in that process of sort
• 9:16
  of public to private back and forth?
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  I, I got to be kind of like the secondary realm of, you know,
• 9:21
  my, the executive suite was the one that was taking care of the
• 9:24
  thing. But we we got to see the
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  difference of what companies are when they're privately held and
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  growing well to when they're publicly held to why we went
• 9:31
  back to being private. I mean that that process is
• 9:33
  really interesting and kind of a wild world.
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  And you know, when you're on on the ground, trying to make sure
• 9:39
  that the culture and the guest experience and our staff is
• 9:42
  always taken care of during that process is it's a big challenge.
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  You know, there's pros and cons to each.
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  Just at the time it made sense for us to go public at the time,
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  it made sense for us to go back to being private at the time as
• 9:53
  well. Did you feel like you were under
• 9:54
  a microscope when it was public? You know, it's not a microscope,
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  but it's every every quarter of a year, you've got to find a way
• 10:03
  to get better and better. And if things aren't in your
• 10:05
  favor, whether that's labor going up or commodities going
• 10:08
  up, you got to find a way. So I think it forces you to be
• 10:11
  creative. But when you're not creative,
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  you are under a microscope, right?
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  And the reality is you got to increase earnings per share.
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  You got to take care of your shareholders.
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  And it's the same when you're privately owned.
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  You got to take care of your investors.
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  But privately owned, there's a little bit more understanding
• 10:25
  for, you know, trial and error. You have more conversation about
• 10:29
  what's what's realistic and what makes more sense strategically.
• 10:32
  It's hard to go to the street and say you're going to reduce
• 10:34
  your EPS and expect your stock stay up.
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  So, you know, there's just a little bit of different
• 10:39
  forgiveness, I guess is a better way to put it than than
• 10:41
  microscopic. And So what was it about the bar
• 10:45
  Taco experience that drew you to it?
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  You know, I was always kind of watching the brand from afar.
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  The the CEO that took over from the founders and and helped them
• 10:55
  sell. Our first big transaction was
• 10:58
  one of my old mentors. So when he left, I was actually
• 11:00
  working with Da Frisco's and he came over to run both brands.
• 11:04
  I kind of always watched from afar, but I was always really
• 11:06
  infatuated with the way that they did things.
• 11:08
  So they were again doing tapas. Before people did tapas, they
• 11:11
  bought this Taco restaurant that no one really had thought of in
• 11:14
  this capacity in, in, in the old days, the, the GMs ever saw P
• 11:19
  and LS that the brand was insanely profitable, just like
• 11:21
  they, they just kind of defied all odds.
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  And and I always like to use expression.
• 11:26
  If it's not broke, break it. Like find your own way.
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  And these guys did the same thing.
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  So I always had watched from afar.
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  And when the opportunity came up, you know, my previous mentor
• 11:36
  had sold, oddly enough to the Frisco's restaurant group after
• 11:39
  I'd left, but sold to DAF Riscos and then changed hands a few
• 11:43
  times until our current P firm got us.
• 11:45
  And when they took us back, they wanted to get the sole back of
• 11:47
  the brand. They brought the Co founder
• 11:49
  back, Scott, our CEO, to kind of get the lifeblood back and all
• 11:53
  those great things that made us grow.
• 11:55
  And they were looking for someone to run, you know, the
• 11:57
  data operations and kind of lead the brand of the future.
• 12:00
  And when I heard the opportunity, I said, this is
• 12:01
  incredible. This is a brand I've watched for
• 12:03
  a while. It's a brand that I believe in a
• 12:04
  lot of the values, the way they've approached things.
• 12:06
  And now I get to sink my teeth in and kind of be at the helm.
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  So it, it was kind of just like it was a perfect culmination of
• 12:13
  everything I've done. I've worked everything from QSR
• 12:16
  to Michelin star dining and this is like the perfect hybrid
• 12:20
  everything I've done, which I think is is a great way for me
• 12:22
  to kind of continue my career. Yeah.
• 12:24
  For somebody who hasn't been to Bar Taco before, can you kind of
• 12:27
  paint a picture? What is the customer experience
• 12:30
  like? Yeah.
• 12:31
  So you know, the big part of us, like I mentioned earlier is, is
• 12:34
  the vibe in the field when you walk in.
• 12:36
  The best comment we get is someone says it feels like a
• 12:39
  really high end beach house. It's got this indoor outdoor
• 12:42
  culture, beautiful plants everywhere, friendly, not
• 12:46
  familiar music that you listen, but you're not quite sure
• 12:48
  exactly what the song is, but it feels like you know it.
• 12:52
  We fresh squeeze all of our drinks.
• 12:53
  So you're going in and getting this beautiful smell of citrus
• 12:56
  and fresh fruits being kind of squeezed at the bar.
• 13:00
  It it survived. Like you go on, you're hearing
• 13:01
  the tin shake from margaritas and you've got these beautiful
• 13:04
  basket lights that were inspired by a trip to South America so
• 13:09
  that it feels like you've been kind of transported as our goal.
• 13:13
  And, and the feeling is, if you were to, you know, if you and I
• 13:16
  were to drive our truck to the beach or the mountain and kind
• 13:19
  of hang out, watch the sunset on a Friday night, have a fire, how
• 13:22
  would you eat? Eat on trays because they're
• 13:24
  easy and your silverware would be in a tin can and everything
• 13:27
  would be relatively simple, but really fresh.
• 13:30
  And that's where we get all of our inspiration from, you know,
• 13:33
  dining experience. We've, we're developing one of
• 13:36
  the first we call Omni channel dining experiences.
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  So when QR codes became popular in COVID, we leaned in even more
• 13:44
  than most people. Most just, you saw in the menu
• 13:46
  and it was APDF and you're trying to scroll in, you know,
• 13:49
  to look at the one thing you, you wanted to see.
• 13:51
  And it was a little arduous of a process.
• 13:53
  We actually made it a full digital ordering platform where
• 13:58
  the guests now can control their experience on their phone.
• 14:02
  And they also have what we call a service leader, someone that's
• 14:05
  actually taking care of them. So we've we've blended the
• 14:07
  convenience of tech where there's nothing worse than
• 14:10
  setting a table and wanting to refresh your beer and you're
• 14:12
  looking around because you can't find the server or you got kids
• 14:15
  that are screaming and you want to pay the check but you can't
• 14:17
  find the server. We put those friction points
• 14:20
  back in the guest's hands at ease of access, click of a
• 14:22
  button, they can now do it instantly.
• 14:26
  But by doing so, the fact that the guest now has a little bit
• 14:28
  of the ordering on their side, we have more time for our staff
• 14:32
  to engage with the guests. The process actually, we monitor
• 14:36
  our success by guest sentiment. That's number one for us.
• 14:39
  And our sentiment coming out of COVID, we rake on a scale of one
• 14:41
  to five was in the high threes when we switched this model.
• 14:45
  We're now running like a 462463 guest sentiment for about 18
• 14:49
  months straight. So it really helped take the the
• 14:54
  mundane part of a server's job away and we replaced it with
• 14:58
  just sheer engagement with the guests and it worked.
• 15:01
  The guests are now feeling better experience, better
• 15:04
  sentiment, you know, better overall time in Bartaca, which
• 15:07
  you know, pays dividends in the long run.
• 15:09
  OK, so let me dive into this a little bit.
• 15:11
  I want to understand this better because when you're telling me
• 15:13
  that you're using the tech so that customers can place their
• 15:16
  orders, I'm like, oh, like that's really fiscally prudent
• 15:19
  like that. You know, probably, especially
• 15:21
  when there's a labor shortage, you know, you aren't relying on
• 15:23
  so many servers, but you're like, no, like what it allows us
• 15:26
  to do is it allows those servers to spend more time interacting
• 15:32
  with the guests. So what does that interaction
• 15:34
  look like if they're not doing the order taking?
• 15:39
  So they're still guiding them through and they still greet you
• 15:41
  when you come to the table and welcome you in and kind of give
• 15:43
  you your opening spiel. The only thing they're really
• 15:47
  not doing is it's the order component.
• 15:49
  And some guests want them to. And we do like then guests can
• 15:51
  kind of, yeah, they can pick their path.
• 15:54
  But those guests that like the ability to just go in and say,
• 15:57
  because it's tapas style. So you, you order more
• 16:00
  frequently than if we went into an Italian restaurant and said,
• 16:02
  I'll get my salad, my pasta and so on and so forth.
• 16:06
  So it's convenient for the guests because you're thinking
• 16:08
  about like, I could eat one more Taco because our tacos are only
• 16:10
  two or three bites. They're small St. style, so it's
• 16:13
  convenient to them. So during that time there's
• 16:16
  still service in the table, you know, clearing plates and
• 16:18
  filling water and bringing drinks out.
• 16:21
  But the additional time is really just meant to get to know
• 16:23
  our guests and that's what people go out for.
• 16:25
  It's the old cheers philosophy, right?
• 16:27
  You want to go, everyone knows your name.
• 16:29
  We've really pushed that into our staff's minds that their job
• 16:34
  is to truly get personal with the guests and, and some guests
• 16:37
  don't want to because they're maybe on a business meeting or
• 16:40
  and that's fine. You read the table and you
• 16:42
  provide the service they want. But most of our guest base comes
• 16:45
  out is looking for an experience to looking to have fun.
• 16:49
  Like we sell, we always, our expression is we sell fun, not
• 16:51
  tacos. That's the first thing that we
• 16:53
  do. So to have fun, you got to be
• 16:55
  able to get the table and kind of joke around and understand if
• 16:58
  it's a family of, you know, family with kids.
• 17:01
  We give out like full coloring books, not the little crappy
• 17:03
  pages you see where else. It's a little.
• 17:05
  You got my attention. Yeah, right.
• 17:07
  But. But parents always look, because
• 17:09
  I got three kids too, and they're like, do I just tear a
• 17:12
  page out? Like, no, the whole thing's for
• 17:13
  you. It, it gives us a chance to
• 17:16
  create these little tiny moments that really make a big
• 17:19
  difference. And, you know, we stress doing
• 17:23
  things that the restaurants might not do.
• 17:26
  You know, I, I, we have a story I'd love to share that we had a,
• 17:30
  an employee came in a restaurant or I'm sorry, guest came in
• 17:32
  restaurants and she had a custom cake made for a birthday.
• 17:36
  And when the woman walked into the front, she tripped and fell
• 17:39
  with a cake in her hand, hit the ground and the cake topped like
• 17:43
  it smushed was a mess and she was like in tears.
• 17:47
  So I said, let's take the cake out back.
• 17:48
  Let me see what we can do. And this assistant manager tried
• 17:52
  like hell and just no matter what, the cake was just.
• 17:56
  There's no save in it. So on the box was the name of
• 17:59
  the bakery. So the manager called the bakery
• 18:02
  and said, listen, I have a little bit of an issue.
• 18:04
  Told her the story, was able to leave, pick up a replacement
• 18:08
  cake before they finished and brought it back and presented
• 18:12
  the cake to the guest. And the guest, of course, you
• 18:15
  know, there was tears, smiles, nothing.
• 18:18
  But in a typical, you know, serving environment, you don't
• 18:21
  have the time to do those things necessarily.
• 18:24
  And if you do, it's it, it pulls you so much away.
• 18:28
  This has given us opportunities to do though.
• 18:30
  And that's obviously a very extreme circumstance, but
• 18:32
  there's so many things between a coloring book and that that
• 18:35
  happened every day in our restaurant that I don't think
• 18:37
  would happen if they had so many other things billing their time.
• 18:42
  So to us, we most people said, oh, you must save a ton of
• 18:44
  money. We actually reinvested all that
• 18:46
  money. The money we save, we reinvest
• 18:48
  either in in more like higher end labor in terms of engagement
• 18:52
  and managers or we reinvest reinvested in benefits for our
• 18:55
  team. So we didn't see it as savings.
• 18:57
  We saw it as an investment in our people and then taking care
• 19:01
  of our guests, which is really helping grow our business.
• 19:03
  Yeah, this leads me into a question I always like to ask my
• 19:06
  episodes because I know that it's tight labor market for
• 19:09
  everybody. Some people say it's loosening
• 19:10
  up a little bit here and we're recording this early December of
• 19:13
  2024. But I, I'm curious, you know,
• 19:17
  it, somebody who's you want to take those savings and reinvest
• 19:20
  them into your team. What what are some things that
• 19:22
  you have tried in terms of recruiting and retaining folks
• 19:27
  that has worked well for you? Yeah, You know, we've been
• 19:31
  fortunate when everybody came out of COVID, at least in our
• 19:34
  industry, 1/3 of the workforce left and and decided they
• 19:37
  weren't really going to come back.
• 19:38
  And it's starting to change to your point now we're seeing
• 19:40
  almost pre pandemic levels today.
• 19:43
  But for us, we came out we were like 92% staffed about six
• 19:46
  months after COVID, which was wild.
• 19:49
  I think there's a few things that we did differently.
• 19:51
  You know, one, I think the service model really changed
• 19:54
  things a lot because if people wanted to be a part of something
• 19:56
  new and different, it's not the same thing.
• 19:58
  So I got to come in and experience something different.
• 20:01
  The big component that we really worked on is we've learned more
• 20:03
  and more as we're, you know, we hire a lot of millennials and
• 20:07
  Gen. Z in terms of our kind of hourly
• 20:09
  and salaried managers and more of them want to go to a place
• 20:13
  now that they align with it, aligns with their values.
• 20:15
  They're proud to say the brand stands for something.
• 20:18
  So we've worked on, you know, our, we've worked the company
• 20:21
  called Green Places in terms of our environmental impact, we've
• 20:24
  gone carbon neutral. We've shifted the compensation
• 20:28
  package, which you know, when I started it was just what's my
• 20:31
  salary and bonus. And the rest of the stuff is
• 20:33
  like, yeah, I don't care about that, just just want my
• 20:35
  paycheck. And it's now turned more into
• 20:38
  this total comp of what else is being offered in terms of
• 20:40
  creative plan time off, in terms of vacation, in terms of
• 20:44
  benefits. You know, we have headspace
• 20:47
  great for, you know, some kind of personalized psychiatric
• 20:50
  components. We've got help with a company
• 20:53
  called Peanut Butter, funny enough, that helps with student
• 20:55
  loan forgiveness. Even little things like we pay
• 20:58
  for Duolingo for our teams. And it's, it's all this kind of
• 21:02
  little ancillary things that we found people got excited about
• 21:05
  because for a while it was a, you know, kind of blanket
• 21:09
  approach of here's the package we offer to everybody.
• 21:12
  And we've tried to get more personalized and say, well, here
• 21:15
  are a variety of options you can have as an employee with us.
• 21:18
  And I think that really helped us because we were thinking very
• 21:21
  differently. So our, our compensation has
• 21:23
  always been, you know, 75th percentile up is where we try to
• 21:26
  be. Some markets are high, some
• 21:28
  might be a little bit lower depending where we are.
• 21:30
  But we want to make sure they're taking care of the job they're
• 21:32
  doing. But we want to make sure
• 21:34
  internally that they have all these other benefits that let
• 21:37
  them know we're investing in them.
• 21:38
  Part of the reinvestment that we did post COVID in the savings
• 21:43
  that we found in labor, we actually invested in a a
• 21:45
  leadership development module where every salaried employee in
• 21:50
  our company was given executive coaching of some sort, which
• 21:54
  normally is reserved for just C suites.
• 21:55
  We brought it all the way down to a 22 year old manager and
• 22:00
  really wanted to work on the soft skills that a lot of
• 22:02
  companies train you to say, here's how to be a good
• 22:04
  restaurant manager or a good, you know, analyst or whatever it
• 22:07
  may be. We wanted to train them on life
• 22:10
  skills on things that allow them to transport to a company or or
• 22:14
  go to a different industry and still move those with them.
• 22:17
  So I think that type of environment got people really
• 22:20
  excited and said they're doing something different.
• 22:23
  During a time when most companies were pulling benefits
• 22:25
  back, we were adding benefits. We're adding a four O 1K match
• 22:29
  when companies were pulling away on learning and development and
• 22:32
  you know, pulling away on on growth.
• 22:34
  We were growing faster. We were investing in leadership
• 22:36
  and development. So we similar to our story.
• 22:39
  I guess you're kind of seeing a trend like we did the opposite
• 22:41
  of what most were doing. And I think that helped us get
• 22:44
  some really star players when most were starving for them.
• 22:49
  And then the environment, you know, our job there was to make
• 22:51
  sure we took care of them fair on out.
• 22:53
  So how how many locations did Bartaco have when you first
• 22:57
  started with them? Anthony 1919 And now you're up
• 23:00
  to 34. So when the restaurant first
• 23:04
  started, you guys were doing some different things.
• 23:08
  You, you started with the, the idea of what's the vibe that we
• 23:12
  want and then sort of backfilled the, the menu to, to fit with
• 23:16
  that, the fact that you guys were doing tapas and like nicer
• 23:20
  tacos than, you know, Taco Bell. Like these things were different
• 23:23
  and novel at the time, but here it is many years later and you
• 23:28
  guys are not losing steam. You're picking it up.
• 23:32
  We'll talk about, you know, growth plans here in a moment.
• 23:35
  So clearly, like the novelty, if there are folks listening who
• 23:40
  don't know what tapas are, who, you know, kind of haven't been
• 23:43
  out in a restaurant in a while. It's just this rather than sort
• 23:46
  of like ordering like one big entree and a salad that, you
• 23:50
  know, it all comes out a little bit later.
• 23:52
  Like you order lots of little plates and, and you share them
• 23:55
  and they come out more quickly and you don't have to order them
• 23:58
  all at once. And so you're kind of there for
• 24:00
  a little bit longer and you're hanging out.
• 24:01
  It's, you know, it's a more casual set up.
• 24:03
  So, but the, the novelty of the, the tapas and, you know, the,
• 24:07
  the nicer tacos is it's kind of worn off now.
• 24:11
  So what do you attribute your continued ongoing success to now
• 24:17
  that those things are not as unusual as they were when you
• 24:20
  first started? Yeah, I mean, when I think back
• 24:22
  to when we started, you think about timeless style
• 24:26
  restaurants, Italian steakhouse pizza, maybe you're like, you
• 24:31
  know, Chinese type restaurants, like ones that are that just
• 24:33
  kind of seem to, no matter what, they're always around, they've
• 24:36
  always lingered. And I really think over the past
• 24:39
  few years, like Mexican culture and and Mexican food has become
• 24:42
  one of those staples. It's become kind of the same as
• 24:45
  those. So I think that's the that
• 24:48
  exposure has helped. I think the fact that people
• 24:50
  really have, you know, the joys of having yourself running, I
• 24:54
  guess at all times. They really understand food a
• 24:56
  lot more than they did even 10 years ago and they care where it
• 25:00
  came from. They care that it's specially
• 25:02
  done. They understand the difference
• 25:03
  of a quality versus non quality Margarita or you know, how pork
• 25:08
  belly might be made or something of that nature.
• 25:10
  I think for us, we've kind of been ahead of our time, but
• 25:13
  we've continually tried to innovate ways that we can be
• 25:16
  better and better. You know, when this cocktail
• 25:18
  culture came out big in the past decade, it was all about these
• 25:22
  craft cocktails and, you know, frilly things and smoking and
• 25:26
  all this kind of stuff. And it still exists, but there's
• 25:28
  fads that come in and out. And we've always stuck by the
• 25:32
  principle that keep it simple, give great food, be nice to your
• 25:36
  guests and have, you know, a really cool experience.
• 25:39
  And that becomes almost timeless.
• 25:41
  And they go out of these brands that we've seen over our our
• 25:44
  tenure. They try to keep up with the
• 25:47
  Joneses too much. And it's they're always.
• 25:49
  Chasing the next trend? That's right, and it's hard.
• 25:52
  There's only certain restaurants that can continually change the
• 25:56
  fact that our menu's tapas helps because we can.
• 25:59
  When Asian flavors became big, we pulled Asian flavors into our
• 26:02
  menu. The traditional Mexican
• 26:04
  restaurant, you know, we, we all can name the menu, It's
• 26:07
  enchiladas and all these things. Well, people call us a Mexican
• 26:11
  restaurant because we sort of tacos.
• 26:12
  We don't call ourselves a Mexican restaurant.
• 26:14
  We call ourselves a Taco restaurant because that just
• 26:17
  means it's a vessel that has a Taco shell that we're putting
• 26:20
  something in. But we use Mediterranean
• 26:22
  influences, Asian influences, South American influences of in
• 26:26
  food. I think that helps us not be
• 26:29
  kind of pigeon holed into one category where we kind of
• 26:33
  constantly say, what's your competition?
• 26:36
  It's a long list 'cause there's no one doing exactly what we're
• 26:39
  doing. Which I think is why we've had
• 26:40
  such a good run. Is there are Mexican restaurants
• 26:42
  that do some of what we do and there are great bowl restaurants
• 26:46
  that do some of what we do, and there's Asian restaurants that
• 26:48
  do some of what we do. Think the fact that we can be a
• 26:51
  lot of things to a lot of different people.
• 26:54
  We tend to cast a wider net than most.
• 26:56
  People do so 34 locations, presently 13 States and
• 27:00
  Washington DC. What are future growth plans?
• 27:03
  What does it look like? Yeah.
• 27:05
  So we we're going to be doing, you know, seven or eight in 2025
• 27:09
  it looks like. So about, you know, 20% growth
• 27:12
  the next year and we're going to continue somewhere around that
• 27:16
  trend maybe 8 to 10 for the following years to come.
• 27:19
  We're in from Boston to Miami. We've got one in Chicago, one of
• 27:23
  the most constituent in Colorado, so mostly East Coast
• 27:26
  and, and we've been, even though it seems like big growth for our
• 27:29
  size, we've really been very specific on real estate.
• 27:33
  I think that the downfall of downfall for the industry, but
• 27:37
  good for us. I guess a lot of these small
• 27:39
  restaurant groups are closing and it's it's sad because of,
• 27:41
  you know, a million different things that have happened in the
• 27:43
  past few years. But what's helping us out is
• 27:46
  there's some great real estate out there, and we've really
• 27:49
  tried to make sure that it's not just the same carbon copy in
• 27:52
  every restaurant. A lot of brands, when they get
• 27:54
  to our size, you walk in and they all look the same, they
• 27:58
  feel the same. Economies of scale, it's easy.
• 28:01
  We got a blueprint, we just rubber stamp it over here.
• 28:04
  And we just, we, we don't like that approach.
• 28:06
  So that's we, you know, could we open up 20 next year the same
• 28:10
  way? Sure we could.
• 28:11
  We don't want to, we want to look at it and say we want to be
• 28:14
  part of the community. We want the restaurants to
• 28:16
  really feel like the environment they're in and we opened in
• 28:19
  Charleston, SC this past year and we pulled reclaimed iron
• 28:22
  from around the city to build part of our bar.
• 28:26
  The building itself was from 1896.
• 28:28
  The rafters are from 19 O 4 original wood.
• 28:30
  We left the rafters up like these pieces that really let you
• 28:34
  know that we're not just a a typical and I hate the word
• 28:37
  chain restaurant that we're really a lifestyle brand that
• 28:40
  wants to be part of the community is important.
• 28:42
  So when we're picking real estate, we're really specific to
• 28:45
  how the brand fits in the community, how it fits amongst
• 28:48
  the Co tenants that are in whatever market that we're in
• 28:52
  and how the restaurant's going to look and feel.
• 28:54
  Does it feel like we make this restaurant feel like it belongs
• 28:57
  in Charleston or Coconut Grove, Miami or wherever it may be?
• 29:01
  And if we can't, you know, we have that question because a big
• 29:04
  part of who we are is feeling like we're a local restaurant to
• 29:07
  everybody. I get the funniest comment.
• 29:09
  I get like, I live in Connecticut where we started and
• 29:12
  people are like, oh, you're the president of the brand.
• 29:14
  That's cool. Like so you just go around to
• 29:16
  your 4 locations because we have 4 in this, in this market.
• 29:19
  Like 3-4, you're like, you're out of Connecticut.
• 29:22
  And then I go to Atlanta and they say the same thing.
• 29:24
  So all of these markets, we've grown.
• 29:26
  They feel like it's their brand. They feel like it belongs to
• 29:29
  their city. And I love that because that
• 29:31
  means we've done a good job being a part of the community,
• 29:34
  being a part of the culture and not just building, you know,
• 29:37
  these carbon copies across the the country.
• 29:40
  Now all 34 locations as well as the new ones coming, they're all
• 29:44
  corporate owned, no franchise opportunities here.
• 29:46
  That's. Correct.
• 29:47
  It was. Has there ever been a
• 29:48
  consideration of that or Nope? There hasn't been, you know, at
• 29:52
  this point we're so fanatical about quality and vibe and
• 29:55
  experience. And the second you relinquish
• 29:58
  that to a franchise that might, you know, depending on how the
• 30:02
  the franchise agreement is written up could sway some of
• 30:06
  those. It's really challenging at this
• 30:07
  time. You know, never say never.
• 30:09
  Things could happen in the future or or maybe it's
• 30:10
  international franchising. But for us right now, we want to
• 30:14
  be company owned. We want to control our destiny.
• 30:16
  At this point, we don't fill out that size that we need to be at
• 30:19
  economies of scale and just start blowing this thing up
• 30:21
  across the country and get into 100 units that fast.
• 30:24
  We want to do it the right way. So you mentioned the number of
• 30:26
  100 units. Is that a magical number for
• 30:28
  some reason? No reason, just just just sound
• 30:31
  like a round Number. Came off the top of my head but.
• 30:34
  As as a business owner, you know, I've been asked this
• 30:36
  question before, like what's your five year plan?
• 30:38
  What's your 10 year plan? And it's like, I don't, I'd be
• 30:41
  curious to hear your take on this.
• 30:42
  It's like, man, it's hard to say.
• 30:44
  Like I don't know what's going to happen next year.
• 30:45
  Like I, I know like what my growth like where I want to get
• 30:49
  to, but to ask me to project the future 5 or 10 years out is
• 30:53
  pretty tough. Same in your boat or do you feel
• 30:56
  differently? About 100%.
• 30:57
  I mean, I've been asking you similar, yeah, same question.
• 31:00
  It's like, sure, I could give you where I'd love to be in five
• 31:02
  years, but the reality is I don't know what happens
• 31:05
  tomorrow, little next year, little 2 so I can spend time
• 31:07
  building A5 year plan, but I'm going to rewrite it five times
• 31:11
  the next five years. So why bother?
• 31:13
  I think it's important to have a North star, right?
• 31:15
  It's important that you at least say, Hey, I I whether it's I
• 31:18
  want to sell or I want to be 100.
• 31:21
  You throw some number out there like 100, like I think it's fine
• 31:24
  to to put out some pie in the sky thing.
• 31:26
  At least you're reaching for something.
• 31:28
  But the changes so frequently that we just like to make sure
• 31:31
  our our goal is that we're better today than yesterday.
• 31:34
  That's, that's if you do that every single day, your five year
• 31:38
  plan will look 10 times better than it does if you wrote down
• 31:40
  on paper. And that's just kind of the way
• 31:42
  we look to approach the business.
• 31:44
  I'm curious to hear, Anthony, how you think about building a
• 31:47
  company culture across so many different locations in so many
• 31:52
  different states across the country.
• 31:54
  Yeah, it's it's a challenge. I'll tell you, we spent since I
• 31:58
  came on trying to recover from something as big as code in our
• 32:01
  industry was tough. It was a it was a cultural head
• 32:03
  for so many different reasons. And you know, I believe firmly
• 32:07
  in the waterfall effect that things just fall from the top
• 32:10
  down and that you've got to really kind of model the
• 32:13
  behavior and set the way. So, you know, we came in, it was
• 32:16
  about building a good coalition in terms of our directors and
• 32:20
  our operations field and, and really making sure that they're
• 32:23
  if a place that their voices heard that we're being very
• 32:27
  transparent, they're being very introspective.
• 32:30
  Those things are a big part of our kind of ethos and we commit
• 32:35
  to that all the time. So I think a big part is you got
• 32:38
  to put down what you really believe in and then show them.
• 32:42
  So a lot of companies write a mission statement or values and
• 32:45
  they put them up on a wall and they talk about them and then
• 32:48
  you look and like it's not really a filter.
• 32:49
  It's just a cool thing to put on paper.
• 32:51
  It sounds great. We we don't do it that way.
• 32:56
  Of course you don't. You guys do everything.
• 32:57
  Differently, yeah, I mean. How do you approach it?
• 33:00
  The difference between us is we always say we do what we say and
• 33:03
  say what we do. We're not going to provide lip
• 33:04
  service. The the original video of the
• 33:08
  two founders, they start off and somebody asks a question like,
• 33:11
  what's the difference between you and everybody else?
• 33:14
  So the difference between US and everybody else isn't we don't F
• 33:16
  around and and they kind of laugh, but they're like, sorry.
• 33:18
  I I didn't quite catch it, the difference between you and
• 33:20
  everyone else. We we don't F around.
• 33:21
  I don't want to curse in your podcast, but yeah, but but the
• 33:24
  but the point was is he's like we do what we say and say what
• 33:27
  we do and we always will. A lot of companies will sit down
• 33:30
  and have a meeting and talk about our meeting and other like
• 33:32
  and they do a lot of talking. We do a lot of acting like
• 33:37
  great, go do it. And, and I believe that that
• 33:40
  speed is really important, that I would rather have done
• 33:45
  something faster, maybe not as clean by the time we fail three
• 33:50
  times. My competitions only failed
• 33:53
  once. And that failure, I believe that
• 33:56
  failure is an important part of success that you have to we've
• 33:59
  all seen the books on them. I fail fast, fail, forward, all
• 34:01
  these things. I believe that I asked my team
• 34:04
  often in my conversations, what have you failed at since we last
• 34:07
  spoke? And at first people will give
• 34:09
  you this look like I don't want to tell my boss where I fail, so
• 34:12
  I'm going to get fired. But we embrace it.
• 34:14
  If if you're not failing, you're not actually trying hard enough,
• 34:17
  that means you're not pushing the limits.
• 34:18
  And to really create a culture that people feel that they can
• 34:22
  try new things and that we want to continually innovate and that
• 34:25
  we want their feedback. We promote that culture a lot.
• 34:29
  And then on the backside, you have to reward and recognize
• 34:32
  people. They have to make sure that they
• 34:34
  understand that as hard as we push and as high as the
• 34:37
  expectations may be that we set that when they hit them, they're
• 34:41
  they're well rewarded for it. They're taken care of.
• 34:43
  And we've taken a lot of feedback from our team directly
• 34:48
  and that's changed most of our culture.
• 34:50
  Honestly, they say this, this isn't landing well, great.
• 34:52
  How would you suggest we do it? And when we pull people into the
• 34:55
  solutions, you, you start to create all of these soldiers in
• 34:59
  the field that are now singing the same dance that we are in
• 35:03
  the executive field. And it's never perfect.
• 35:06
  Like you hear it all the time that, you know, the senior
• 35:08
  leadership is detached from the bottom.
• 35:10
  And, and unfortunately, it's almost impossible to not ever
• 35:14
  have that come around. But we do our best to be in the
• 35:17
  field all the time. Like I'm in restaurants every
• 35:19
  single week, talking to my team, making sure I understand what
• 35:22
  the impact is for them. And I think those are the
• 35:25
  moments where culture is created.
• 35:27
  It's not a class, it's not a conversation, it's not a a
• 35:30
  podcast, right? It's like it's actually living
• 35:33
  it every day. And we hold ourselves to a
• 35:36
  really high accountability of the fact that if we're going to
• 35:39
  say we're going to be introspective, then we have to
• 35:41
  be that way seven days a week. And if we're going to be
• 35:44
  intolerant of anything less than our best, then we have to be
• 35:47
  intolerant 365. And I think we've really done a
• 35:51
  good job sticking to a simple message.
• 35:55
  And it's kind of our filter for everything we do.
• 35:58
  I'm curious, Anthony, how often do you actually use that
• 36:01
  question? What have you failed at today?
• 36:03
  Oh, all the time, yeah. Because.
• 36:05
  Multiple times. When you said that, like a light
• 36:08
  bulb went off in my head because I hear this talked about all the
• 36:11
  time and, and I've done it in my own companies where it's like I,
• 36:14
  I want to promote that same culture of don't be afraid to
• 36:18
  make mistakes, like don't make sloppy ones, right?
• 36:21
  Because you weren't thinking or, you know, you weren't careful.
• 36:23
  But if if you went into it with a plan and the plan just didn't
• 36:27
  go the way that we thought, that's OK.
• 36:29
  Like we learned something, we move on.
• 36:32
  You know, we try something, we, we pivot.
• 36:33
  We, we, we, we modify and, you know, we try something new.
• 36:37
  But it's really hard to get that into people's brains because,
• 36:43
  right, everybody is on the defensive.
• 36:44
  I don't want to do something wrong.
• 36:45
  I don't want my job at risk. But when you mention that
• 36:48
  question the way that you asked it, what have you failed that
• 36:51
  recently? Like that just flips the script
• 36:54
  on its head like you're inviting that.
• 36:57
  And, and we celebrate it, we talk about it.
• 36:58
  We have a monthly call with all of our operators and I'll share
• 37:02
  conversations of hey, you know, I, I, I talked to Jane Doe and
• 37:06
  this is what they tried and what they failed.
• 37:08
  And now look at what they're doing again.
• 37:10
  It's, it's the, and that changes it because it's hard when you,
• 37:14
  when you speak to a failure of hey, I failed, I did this, it,
• 37:18
  it brings you down. But then it's, it's the next
• 37:20
  piece of and OK, so then what? Like that's always my, that's
• 37:25
  typically a follow up question. I use a lot of OK, great.
• 37:28
  So then what? We failed, we tried, what were
• 37:31
  you trying to do? So then what did you learn or so
• 37:33
  then what are we doing next? It's it's about constantly
• 37:36
  going. And when I think, when people
• 37:37
  understand that you're supposed to fail, most of us have failed
• 37:41
  countless times. And I mean, I have a long enough
• 37:44
  time to go through all the failures you've gone through.
• 37:46
  But when you embrace the fact that that's part of it, it's
• 37:49
  huge. Like I, I, when I first brought
• 37:51
  this up, I, I used the Elon Musk story when he brought the cyber
• 37:54
  trap. We've probably all seen the
• 37:55
  video where it's like, oh, this is impenetrable glass.
• 37:58
  It won't break. And he throws a thing against
• 37:59
  it, I think shatters. And it's interesting.
• 38:02
  Like there's actually another video that I've shared same
• 38:06
  thing with with Musk that when they were launching a SpaceX,
• 38:10
  one of when they were all blowing up in the beginning, it
• 38:12
  blew up and the whole place erupts in celebration.
• 38:16
  And they're like, they celebrated their failure because
• 38:18
  they, they failed less than last time and they know why they
• 38:21
  failed this time. And they create this environment
• 38:24
  of like, that's part of this process because every failure we
• 38:27
  have is something we're never going to repeat again.
• 38:30
  We're going to learn from that. Versus a lot of people I've
• 38:33
  found that are successful, not highly successful, but people
• 38:36
  that have success within departments or even companies.
• 38:39
  Sometimes you ask them and they don't have a good answer.
• 38:42
  It's probably because they've stumbled into something, but
• 38:46
  they don't know how to recreate it.
• 38:48
  And that's always the challenge. I think of economies of scales.
• 38:51
  I tell my team all the time, hey, that's great that your
• 38:53
  restaurant is number one for whatever metric.
• 38:56
  Fill in the blank. How did you do it?
• 38:59
  And if they can't give me an answer, I said, well, then
• 39:01
  you're not really number one. You just happened to be there.
• 39:04
  But you can't teach someone else how to do it.
• 39:06
  You can't recreate it. Therefore you're not trying hard
• 39:09
  enough. Whereas the ones at the bottom
• 39:11
  might be failing time and time again, but I'll tell you what,
• 39:14
  when they rise, they're going to stay there because they've
• 39:18
  they've learned all the things they.
• 39:19
  Learned 100 ways not to do it, and they finally figured out a
• 39:23
  way to do it. And they've got they've got a
• 39:25
  stack of things to contrast it against.
• 39:28
  Yeah. And I just, I, I, I think when
• 39:30
  you, when you see the process and you make it part of your
• 39:32
  process and when they get success and you say you're not
• 39:35
  successful yet until you failed. It.
• 39:39
  That kind of encouragement of good failure all of a sudden
• 39:43
  just becomes normal. And then people laugh it off of
• 39:47
  it's great, yeah, I, I screwed up.
• 39:49
  Here you go. And it's, and then it, it's more
• 39:50
  ownership too, because the fear of, of failure and
• 39:53
  accountability, people always ask, well, who was responsible?
• 39:58
  What they're really asking is who screwed up, right?
• 40:01
  Rarely are you asking who's accountable for achieving a
• 40:03
  result? Who's the one that's actually
• 40:05
  going to go out there and get it done.
• 40:07
  So when you flip those scripts, I think that really drives a
• 40:10
  culture. It's very different.
• 40:12
  And we believe it helps us stay innovative and and stay top of
• 40:15
  mind, but it's not easy to do. It's taken a long time and
• 40:18
  people that come from the outside still don't believe it
• 40:21
  at 1st. And we promote a lot internally
• 40:23
  because our culture is very different and people from the
• 40:27
  outside just have a hard time accepting that we're actually
• 40:30
  going to celebrate them screwing up.
• 40:33
  It's very strange. They need, they need to see some
• 40:35
  social proof first. So they need to be on the inside
• 40:38
  and see that it's for real. That's right.
• 40:40
  I'm curious, Anthony, to hear about a particular challenge
• 40:42
  that you've overcome, personal or professional, and how you got
• 40:46
  through that and maybe some lessons learned coming out the
• 40:48
  other side. Yeah, you know, when I when I
• 40:50
  was first running multi unit in restaurants, you know, I was
• 40:56
  still younger and and probably a little, little too cocky at the
• 41:00
  time and I was running a handful of restaurants that were making
• 41:04
  incredible money. We were, you know, top of the
• 41:06
  charts for everything. The restaurants were just
• 41:08
  absolutely gangbusters on paper. So everybody from the outside is
• 41:12
  looking in saying whatever's happening there is great.
• 41:15
  And, you know, internally I failed to understand what that
• 41:20
  success meant on my team is that I was never satisfied where we
• 41:25
  were at. And I drove my team's literally
• 41:29
  nuts to the point of where I was losing people, good people to
• 41:34
  competitors, to other industries.
• 41:37
  And I constantly just told myself it was because they
• 41:39
  couldn't, they didn't, they couldn't hack it.
• 41:41
  They couldn't work hard enough. They couldn't keep up with me.
• 41:44
  And I did it for a long time and the success kept coming.
• 41:48
  So I said, well, it can't be them.
• 41:50
  It can't be me. It's got to be dead right?
• 41:53
  Like the numbers are year after year.
• 41:55
  I'm I'm beating projections that I'm making more money and we're
• 41:58
  growing the business. And when I finally had two
• 42:02
  managers the same time that left me and both collectively gave me
• 42:07
  the feedback and just said, the day you realize that you have
• 42:10
  people that would literally lay in front of a bus for you but
• 42:13
  don't want to anymore is the day you're going to be 10 times as
• 42:16
  successful as you are today. And I took it really hard
• 42:21
  because I never, no one ever given me that direct feedback.
• 42:25
  And I started spending a lot of time on 360 evaluations on I
• 42:31
  brought in an executive coach and asked them to do
• 42:33
  confidential feedback from all my team one-on-one.
• 42:36
  And when I received my first report, I almost fell out of the
• 42:40
  chair. I was a highly respected person
• 42:44
  and AI don't think hate it is the word, but like just, you
• 42:49
  know, there was no loyalty to what I was doing, but they
• 42:51
  believed that I could build that.
• 42:53
  And it took me a number of years to to really digest this and
• 42:58
  understand that you can achieve amazing results while having a
• 43:03
  great environment and you don't have to just, you know, drive
• 43:06
  people to the bitter end. And it was a really big change
• 43:10
  in my career. And shortly after I moved into
• 43:13
  an executive role, CEO role in our company and, and it's stuck
• 43:15
  with me ever since. But that that challenge was, it
• 43:21
  was a painful process. It's hard to hear that kind of
• 43:24
  feedback. I think people will ask general
• 43:26
  feedback, but when you ask for really specific feedback, you
• 43:29
  get really specific answers. And the challenge with that is
• 43:33
  that if you really take that feedback seriously, you have to
• 43:36
  actually do something about it. That's why most people don't
• 43:38
  have specific feedbacks. It's like, how am I doing?
• 43:39
  Oh, well, you're pretty good. OK, great.
• 43:41
  If I give you specific feedback and say this is something
• 43:44
  specifically that you are failing at, right?
• 43:46
  I don't like the way you're doing it.
• 43:48
  Well, then that means I have to either do something about it.
• 43:50
  I have to change or communicate differently or just have a tough
• 43:53
  conversation of, Hey, let me just explain the why.
• 43:56
  And I did a lot of that for a number of years.
• 43:58
  And I've, I've tried to do my best now to get ahead of it with
• 44:01
  my teams. And it's it's an ongoing
• 44:06
  challenge. Like it was very serious at the
• 44:08
  time and luckily I was able to turn it around.
• 44:10
  But it's always something that I have to remind myself every, you
• 44:14
  know, we get a tough times and my God, I know what my instinct
• 44:17
  is. We've got to pull back and use
• 44:19
  the power of the team. And I've been able to build, I
• 44:21
  think some really world class teams because of that.
• 44:24
  But it was, it was a rough couple years.
• 44:26
  It was really tough. I, I want to peel back some of
• 44:29
  the layers of the onion here, Anthony, because I, I think
• 44:32
  there's some real gold in here. You're high driving, you know,
• 44:36
  restaurant professional, been in the industry a long time.
• 44:39
  You're having lots of success numbers just keep improving.
• 44:43
  You know that, whether you realize it or not, that that
• 44:46
  builds the ego, right and builds confidence.
• 44:49
  And like, I know what I'm doing. I'm good at this.
• 44:51
  I've I've, I've, I've learned a lot along the way.
• 44:55
  Like, Hey, if you can't keep up, then you know, you're on the way
• 44:58
  out. And for you to kind of have this
• 45:01
  like hang on a second moment, like let, let me go and check
• 45:07
  myself here. I've I've lost some good folks.
• 45:10
  I'm gonna go and I'm I'm gonna ask my team, you know, what do
• 45:13
  they what do they think of me? Did did you have a sense in that
• 45:16
  moment what that feedback was going to be like?
• 45:19
  I don't think he did because the comments you sorry, sorry to cut
• 45:23
  into your answer is it almost fell out of my chair.
• 45:26
  You know, I had a sense, but not to the severity of which it was.
• 45:31
  Yeah. I felt like I just needed to
• 45:33
  change an approach, but the intensity was fine and I just
• 45:39
  need to understand how to communicate externally better to
• 45:42
  my team. I expected that answer.
• 45:47
  What I received was very different was in fact the things
• 45:50
  I thought I need to do. I was doing well, but it was the
• 45:54
  messaging and the intensity and the lack of being able to to
• 45:58
  pull people up with me. It was here's the mark.
• 46:02
  If you don't hit it, you're either going to be squashed down
• 46:06
  or you're going to be squashed to the point where you're going
• 46:08
  to take twice as long to get back up.
• 46:10
  And I just ran at such a fast rate that the mentality was I'm
• 46:14
  going as fast as I can keep up because all I'm going to do is
• 46:18
  just keep pulling and pulling until, you know, you're either
• 46:21
  like you see a dog, you know, with the leash getting pulled
• 46:23
  from behind and at some point it doesn't become motivated.
• 46:27
  I think the biggest fall of the chair moment was I thought by
• 46:31
  driving people, you know, I was an athlete my whole life.
• 46:33
  So to me, I'd, you know, put in the old school day is not today
• 46:36
  where, you know, coaches just they beat you up.
• 46:38
  It was like you don't get the job done, run sprints, you're
• 46:41
  not fast enough, get faster, you're not tough enough.
• 46:42
  Get like, I just kind of used that same sports ethos that keep
• 46:47
  raising the bar and push them. They will call themselves up
• 46:50
  because they're here to play. They're in the big leagues.
• 46:52
  And I think that worked in previous generations, but as new
• 46:58
  generations came in, they're like, absolutely not.
• 47:01
  That's not, that's the hard way to do it.
• 47:04
  There's a smart way to do this. And that expression we always
• 47:07
  heard works more and harder. I thought I was being smart
• 47:10
  because that's how I was brought up, but was actually working
• 47:12
  harder during that time in my career than I had to be.
• 47:14
  And making that shift really help.
• 47:18
  But seeing the feedback and how specific and, you know, calling
• 47:21
  out certain circumstances, I was like, oh, I thought that was
• 47:24
  fine. The one that got called out, I
• 47:26
  still remember like it was yesterday, I was running a, one
• 47:29
  of my steakhouses in Boston and we were trying to achieve,
• 47:33
  achieve an annual sales mark. We're going to have $20 million
• 47:35
  for the first time. And I was like, we were pushing
• 47:37
  it like 3 days left in the, in the year.
• 47:40
  And we hit it. And I was next to my managers.
• 47:43
  We read the report and he's like, we hit 20 million and he's
• 47:46
  jumping up and down. And in my mind, I was like, I
• 47:48
  have 36 hours left of the year. I'm not done.
• 47:51
  And I immediately walked away and got back to work and I
• 47:53
  pushed the team like, let's go, let's go.
• 47:55
  Like, and everyone kind of gave me this look of you didn't even
• 47:58
  take a moment to recognize how far we came and the fact that we
• 48:03
  hit a major milestone. You immediately were on to the
• 48:06
  next goal. The next goal was how far beyond
• 48:08
  it can I get? And that moment really stuck
• 48:11
  with me that I don't need to celebrate myself.
• 48:14
  Like I'm just not that type of person, but people around me do.
• 48:18
  And the power of a position becomes more and more real that
• 48:22
  when you know, the president or the VP or whoever takes the time
• 48:27
  to recognize the success of those that are working hard for
• 48:30
  them and does it really well and genuinely, that carries
• 48:34
  emotional weight. Forever like.
• 48:37
  And it's those moments that I constantly have to do a better
• 48:40
  job of. And I've tried my absolute best
• 48:43
  to do that. I was never a rainbows and
• 48:45
  butterflies type of guy. Not that I am now, but I need to
• 48:49
  be more of a cheerleader for the team and and celebrate their
• 48:52
  small wins to get the big ones. And that those are things that
• 48:55
  like, I fell out of my chair thinking, man, we hit a mark.
• 48:57
  What are you talking about? Like, you know, we don't need to
• 49:00
  celebrate this. Keep going.
• 49:01
  The celebration was hitting it. So it's it was feedback like
• 49:05
  that that I'm very thankful that I had a team that was open with
• 49:07
  me and cared enough. And it's amazing the team during
• 49:12
  that time that worked for me. A handful of them worked for me
• 49:16
  today at Bartaca. They've left, they've moved with
• 49:20
  me from company to company because I think they saw the
• 49:23
  fact that I took feedback seriously and made a really big
• 49:26
  change in my leadership and I think they appreciated that.
• 49:30
  And now I've got amazing loyalists that I I wouldn't go
• 49:34
  anywhere without so. What you're describing is
• 49:37
  classic. Like I, I hear this from a lot
• 49:38
  of entrepreneurs, a lot of business leaders.
• 49:41
  We're always moving the goal posts.
• 49:43
  Here's the goal. It's, you know, man, it's big,
• 49:45
  huge rock. We want to get to.
• 49:46
  We get there and immediately. And, and that's exactly what you
• 49:49
  did. Immediately, without delay, you
• 49:52
  move the goal post again. That's right.
• 49:54
  It's classic. I'm curious, when you first got
• 49:58
  that feedback, was there a part of your ego that kicked in and
• 50:02
  became defensive, or were you immediately receptive and
• 50:06
  realizing I have to make big changes?
• 50:08
  So the helpful part is, is I, I had an executive coach at the
• 50:12
  time, if it was not for that, I know like my mind mentally
• 50:16
  immediately went to defense. But he had done an amazing job
• 50:21
  helping me understand, you know, what it's like to be on the
• 50:24
  other side of me and kind of knowing what my my opportunities
• 50:28
  are. So I give a lot of credit to him
• 50:30
  because without him, I guarantee I would have been in defense
• 50:34
  mode and the hands would have gone up and wouldn't that fight.
• 50:37
  But he really helped me understand why it's important
• 50:41
  and to not get defensive. And I think I've carried that
• 50:46
  since then, which has been really important that, that
• 50:49
  typically when you know, especially when you're at the
• 50:50
  top, your person making all the decisions and paving the way for
• 50:53
  the future of your company, you typically think you have those
• 50:56
  answers or you're like, Hey, I know I have this idea.
• 50:59
  We're going to push it forward. And sometimes you have to.
• 51:02
  I think it's important to not do it defensively and to take the
• 51:04
  feedback along the way that I might paint a great picture, but
• 51:08
  someone else finds a brush stroke I missed or someone else
• 51:11
  finds a new way to add a color that just makes the picture look
• 51:14
  that much better. And being able to check the ego,
• 51:17
  like I, I, I believe now very much so.
• 51:19
  Like ego and jealousy are two words I don't believe should
• 51:22
  exist in in leadership, which we take out of the dictionary
• 51:25
  because they get you nowhere. I wouldn't have said that 15
• 51:29
  years ago, but I believe it wholeheartedly now.
• 51:34
  What did that path look like for you?
• 51:37
  You mentioned a business coach. Was there anything else that was
• 51:39
  kind of helpful to you? Because you don't just flip a
• 51:41
  switch. You don't come up with the
• 51:42
  realization like, oh, I'm going to be a different person.
• 51:45
  Like that takes work to kind of undo old habits and patterns and
• 51:49
  replace them with new ones. Yeah, I mean, I had him involved
• 51:54
  in every part of my my work routine.
• 51:57
  I would I would BCC him on emails to my team.
• 52:00
  I would have him sit in on one on ones quiet like I tell my
• 52:03
  team this is this is to benefit me.
• 52:05
  I'd have him sit down in Group meetings.
• 52:06
  I would do quarterly meetings that he would lead on feedback
• 52:11
  sessions where I wasn't allowed to talk.
• 52:12
  It was a lot to be in the room, but we would do full feedback
• 52:15
  sessions on like a Start, Stop, continue type component.
• 52:19
  He really increased my vulnerability in a good way.
• 52:23
  Like there's, there's good vulnerability and bad
• 52:24
  vulnerability, right? The good one is, is being
• 52:27
  vulnerable to saying, I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong.
• 52:30
  And I actually want to hear it. So much so that now, and I
• 52:32
  actually just scheduled my end of year 1, funny enough
• 52:34
  yesterday, but twice a year I have a call with my direct
• 52:39
  reports and I asked them for feedback on how I'm doing.
• 52:43
  I said, I'm, I'm just going to be quiet.
• 52:45
  The price of admission is participation to this call.
• 52:48
  And I want you guys like carte blanche, like what's going well?
• 52:51
  What's not going well? What would you want me to
• 52:53
  change? And the first time I did it, I
• 52:55
  did it a lot of my directors was like 3 years ago and it was,
• 52:58
  they were like tiptoeing because it's, it's, it's abnormal,
• 53:01
  right? It's abnormal to be on a call
• 53:03
  with 10 other people. And, and the, the community
• 53:05
  helps because when one person talks, then you feel like, Oh,
• 53:08
  I, I can speak up because they did.
• 53:10
  And then once the ball gets rolling, it it rolls, it's
• 53:13
  almost like, OK, pump the brakes for a minute.
• 53:18
  But I continue to do that today, even without my coach present,
• 53:22
  because I just that muscle I think is so great to build.
• 53:25
  So I think most of it to me was just creating good vulnerability
• 53:28
  and good habits from that and and communicating the team of
• 53:32
  here's what I plan to change. Hold me accountable because most
• 53:35
  times we're managing up right and we're at the top.
• 53:38
  There's no one managing your day-to-day.
• 53:40
  They just look at the over operation.
• 53:42
  But my job is to keep the health of the operation intact for
• 53:45
  years to come so we can build our business.
• 53:47
  The only way to do that is the people that work for me need to
• 53:49
  feel like they're invested, they can speak up.
• 53:52
  So I think those tactics that I worked on during that time, I
• 53:55
  still execute today. And I think that's made a huge
• 53:59
  difference in allowing me to build great high performing
• 54:02
  teams and and great companies and, you know, great cultures
• 54:05
  that drive them. Yeah, Anthony, you mentioned a
• 54:08
  few minutes ago about how you were an athlete, you know,
• 54:11
  younger growing up. Behind you, I see quite a bit of
• 54:14
  sports paraphernalia. I'm going to guess this is all
• 54:16
  from, you know, different activities that you've been
• 54:18
  involved with. Can you talk a little bit about,
• 54:21
  you know, how those athletic experiences were formidable for
• 54:24
  you? Yeah, I mean, since a young age
• 54:27
  I was in sports year round. Just it was whatever I get my
• 54:31
  hands on, I played. I just enjoy competition.
• 54:35
  I'm a very competitive person just by nature.
• 54:39
  So sports was always a great outlet, you know, for me just to
• 54:42
  be competitive and fuel, you know, energy as a kid.
• 54:45
  And I continue to play and play. And when I was in, I was in high
• 54:48
  school, I ended up having multiple knee surgeries and it
• 54:53
  was brutal because I missed. I was a baseball player at the
• 54:55
  time and I missed tryouts every year.
• 54:58
  So I ended up switching to play lacrosse because it was, I could
• 55:00
  make the tryout because it was after.
• 55:02
  So picking up a sport, you know, later in, in life is
• 55:05
  challenging. I wanted to play a little bit in
• 55:08
  college and then I switched from playing lacrosse to boxing in
• 55:12
  college. Seemed like a good idea at the
• 55:14
  time. But but you know, to me, sports
• 55:19
  was always a part of like what grounded me.
• 55:21
  Like being able to get out there and whether it's aggression or
• 55:25
  speed or just challenging yourself to be at the next level
• 55:28
  was always great. Like I, I always wanted to go
• 55:30
  against the guy that was better than me.
• 55:33
  I was never the biggest guy. I was never the fastest guy was
• 55:36
  pretty quick, but but I always wanted to go against them.
• 55:39
  I remember playing when I, when I went to school my first year,
• 55:43
  there was a kid that was an all American that towered over me
• 55:45
  like, you know, 50 lbs and looking up and I was like, I, I
• 55:49
  want to play against that guy. And I think to me, it just, it
• 55:54
  shaped the mentality of like there's always someone out there
• 55:58
  working harder than me. I think sports taught me that.
• 56:01
  I like even teach my kids that today of, you know, there's
• 56:04
  always someone out there that's training harder, that's doing
• 56:07
  it, you know, that's doing it better or that's want to put in
• 56:10
  more time than you. And if you really want to be the
• 56:12
  best, that's the mentality. You look at Olympic athletes and
• 56:16
  world champions. And to your point earlier on,
• 56:19
  it's like it doesn't just happen on accident.
• 56:20
  These things are years and years of build.
• 56:24
  And we see that one moment when they get a gold and their
• 56:26
  necklace, like, oh, it's got to be cool.
• 56:27
  Like you didn't see them at 5:00 and 6:00 and seven years old,
• 56:30
  probably doing this seven days a week.
• 56:33
  And not that I expect this to be that intense, but I think the
• 56:36
  mentality of what athletes have is really impressive.
• 56:40
  I think they have something that most people don't, which is why
• 56:42
  they're professional athletes. But I like to apply a lot of
• 56:46
  what I think drives sports into our business.
• 56:50
  I used the example from the Olympics on the call, the
• 56:52
  earliest year, if you saw the guy that won the pole vaulting
• 56:56
  the gold medal, I looked him up and he'd already won gold, but
• 57:01
  he wanted to go again to break his own world record.
• 57:05
  And he's like, and it took him three tries and he and he ended
• 57:08
  up doing it. And you look at his history and
• 57:10
  most guys in public like hit and they kind of plateau.
• 57:13
  This guy is literally .1 point like every time he's just gone
• 57:17
  up a tiny bit. And to me, I think that's the
• 57:20
  mentality I try to push my team is like sports is if you're
• 57:22
  really a good competitor, you just got to be 1% better than
• 57:27
  yourself. And that's what we push in our
• 57:29
  restaurants. So I I just love the the
• 57:31
  parallel to to sports and to work.
• 57:34
  Anthony, do you think it's a father of young children, that
• 57:37
  your kids are also benefiting from the professional
• 57:42
  transformation that you put yourself through?
• 57:45
  I, I believe, I mean, I'd like to believe so.
• 57:46
  Well, I guess we'll find out, You know, when they're 18, they
• 57:48
  go off on their own. But, but no, I, I really do.
• 57:53
  I, I spend a lot more time talking, listen to my kids, even
• 57:56
  though they're young, You know, I came to the realization my
• 57:59
  oldest is 10 and when he turned like 6, I was working for a
• 58:03
  company, I was travelling a ton. I was on the road like 240 some
• 58:07
  odd days that like last year, the company.
• 58:10
  And as a six year old, you don't realize, you know, how much
• 58:13
  impact you have on them at that young age.
• 58:15
  And he hated when I travelled and used to give me the cold
• 58:19
  shoulder when I came home. And I said, there's something
• 58:21
  here, there's feedback here that he can't tell me, but I have to
• 58:25
  be vulnerable to hear it and end up leaving that job.
• 58:28
  And I, I moved jobs because of that.
• 58:31
  So I think it's allowed me to be a better, hopefully a better dad
• 58:34
  to them and, and appreciate it. And I also explained how he's a
• 58:37
  bit older. He knows I travel, but I
• 58:39
  explained to him like, here's why I travel and here's what it
• 58:42
  means. And here's what we're going to
• 58:43
  do when we're home. And I think that dialogue
• 58:46
  process I do with my team helps me like stay close with my kids.
• 58:52
  Anthony, I just have one more question for you, but before I
• 58:54
  ask it, I want to do a couple of things.
• 58:56
  Everyone listening today, you like today's content, please hit
• 58:59
  the like, share or Subscribe button on your favorite podcast
• 59:01
  app. Anthony, I also want to let
• 59:03
  people know the best way to get in touch with you.
• 59:05
  What would that be? Yeah, my e-mail is the best way.
• 59:08
  It's a my last name Valletta. Valletta at bartaco.com.
• 59:13
  I'm also on LinkedIn. Feel free to hit me up.
• 59:15
  It's a good spot as well. Those are hands down the best
• 59:18
  two ways. Love being able to open new
• 59:20
  connections and meet new people. So.
• 59:22
  All right. Last question for you, Anthony.
• 59:24
  I'm curious how you see the restaurant industry evolving in
• 59:27
  the next couple of years. What do you think some of the
• 59:29
  big changes are that are coming? Yeah.
• 59:31
  I think the big thing mostly with how rapidly evolving
• 59:36
  technology is that you're going to see a lot more
• 59:39
  personalization in terms of, you know, things even that we're
• 59:43
  working on of, you know, we're trying to find ways where if
• 59:46
  you've got analogy, the menu pops up automatically for you
• 59:48
  that you've got historical, you've got suggestions based off
• 59:51
  order history. When you looked at the past 10
• 59:53
  years, a lot of the, the personalization was broad
• 59:57
  stroke. Like you and I both got the same
• 59:59
  e-mail, even though our tastes and habits might be different.
• 1:00:03
  I use the analogy a lot like it's for shopping for a washer
• 1:00:06
  and dryer. All of a sudden you get all
• 1:00:08
  these ads everywhere. But then after you buy the
• 1:00:10
  washer and dryer, you keep getting ads for like 6 months
• 1:00:13
  after. It's the same thing.
• 1:00:14
  And, and I think about in restaurants is the tech needs to
• 1:00:17
  catch up to the point of where there's an event that triggers
• 1:00:19
  something and really starts to cater.
• 1:00:22
  Every message should be more and more catered towards the
• 1:00:25
  individual person and your individual preferences.
• 1:00:28
  And it's not one e-mail that goes to my e-mail list.
• 1:00:30
  It's one core e-mail that gets distributed 1000 different ways
• 1:00:35
  to the right, different people and segments.
• 1:00:37
  I think that's really going to change people's connection with
• 1:00:40
  restaurants. I think ones that don't evolve
• 1:00:43
  it and still use the blanket, here's your deal and it goes
• 1:00:46
  across the board will eventually feel disingenuine and people
• 1:00:51
  will start to see through that. Whereas the brands that are
• 1:00:54
  really like taking tech on the right way and evolving their
• 1:00:57
  technology, I think you're going to allow guests to feel so much
• 1:01:00
  more connected and appreciated and heard.
• 1:01:03
  I think when people are heard in, in any business, whatever
• 1:01:06
  business that may be, I think they become very loyal and
• 1:01:10
  frequency will go up and spend will go up and all those things
• 1:01:13
  will happen. So I think traditional loyalty
• 1:01:15
  programs will die in this new wave of of loyalty, which is
• 1:01:19
  personalization will come in. I think it's going to completely
• 1:01:23
  reshape the way that guests engage with brands.
• 1:01:26
  What do? You can you give me an example
• 1:01:27
  of what that personalization might look like?
• 1:01:30
  Yeah, I mean, I, I think about, you know, we send out, we, we
• 1:01:33
  run a, a secret Taco. So it comes out and it's a pork
• 1:01:36
  belly Taco. Well, if you're a vegetarian, I
• 1:01:39
  shouldn't be sending you that e-mail because now I'm, I'm
• 1:01:41
  actually not listening. You've told me you're a
• 1:01:43
  vegetarian and I'm sending you a pork e-mail telling you to come
• 1:01:46
  in and you look at me saying you're nuts.
• 1:01:48
  As a matter of fact, I might not come back in.
• 1:01:50
  So, and that's a small example, but there's a zillion of those
• 1:01:52
  every day that happen. And we have all this data that
• 1:01:57
  tells us about our guest being able to personalize that out and
• 1:02:01
  say these people should not get that e-mail.
• 1:02:04
  We should send them something different that pulls into their
• 1:02:07
  own personalization and preferences because then they're
• 1:02:09
  gonna be like, wow, I've never, I didn't get that pork bell
• 1:02:11
  e-mail. Why did you get that?
• 1:02:13
  Oh, well, because I don't eat pork.
• 1:02:15
  That's really cool. They're doing something special
• 1:02:17
  for me. They're not doing for you.
• 1:02:19
  And I think enough that over time, those moments guests
• 1:02:22
  realize and they will start to appreciate the effort that goes
• 1:02:25
  into doing that. I think it is the small things.
• 1:02:27
  I don't think there's a big, you know, nugget defined here.
• 1:02:31
  I think this is a random acts of kindness, if you will, done 1000
• 1:02:35
  * a month. We'll, we'll pay dividends huge
• 1:02:39
  over the next couple of years. And you have that data because
• 1:02:42
  you either they fill out a form that indicates their their
• 1:02:46
  preferences or if you notice the things that they word around the
• 1:02:49
  menu on a regular. And everything that we've got
• 1:02:50
  now that people are on their phones, we have profiles that
• 1:02:53
  they make on their phones. So we have all that customer
• 1:02:55
  data. So fault us for not using it.
• 1:02:58
  That's that's the biggest mistake people have is with all
• 1:03:00
  the tech and everything that's going on, we have more
• 1:03:02
  information on our guests than we've ever had.
• 1:03:04
  I think companies are are slow to use that the right way.
• 1:03:07
  And the ones that'll be fast are the ones that are going to take
• 1:03:09
  off. And where are you in that that
• 1:03:12
  adoption curve like still kind of figuring out how to plug it
• 1:03:15
  in or or we're? Doing it we're, we're way, I
• 1:03:17
  mean we're way we own our own data we're already starting to
• 1:03:21
  run these personalized campaigns and testing them out.
• 1:03:24
  We're not all the way there. We, I always say we're 25%
• 1:03:26
  because I thought we got a long ways to go, but I think we're
• 1:03:29
  we're much further along than almost anybody else in our kind
• 1:03:33
  of sector of the industry. So.
• 1:03:35
  Well, Anthony, I wouldn't be the first one to thank you for
• 1:03:37
  sharing both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:03:40
  I'm grateful. Yeah, folks, that's a wrap on
• 1:03:43
  another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:03:46
  Thanks for learning with us today.