Latest / Masters in Business / Jon Taffer on Bars, Restaurants and Hotels on Lockdown (Podcast)

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Jon Taffer on Bars, Restaurants and Hotels on Lockdown (Podcast) · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:07
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have a perfect guest
0:11
Speaker 1: to help us understand what is going on during lockdown
0:15
Speaker 1: with bars, restaurants and hotels and what we can do
0:19
Speaker 1: to finally get out of it. His name is John Taffer.
0:22
Speaker 1: He is perhaps known best for creating the NFL Sunday ticket,
0:27
Speaker 1: which you probably know today as Red Zone. He is
0:30
Speaker 1: the star and creator of Bar Rescue, a nightclub hall
0:34
Speaker 1: of fame in Duct just somebody who has been incredibly
0:39
Speaker 1: insightful in understanding how to make bars and restaurants work better,
0:45
Speaker 1: not only for the owners and for the employees, but
0:48
Speaker 1: for the customers as well. He really understands the industry
0:52
Speaker 1: in a way that nobody else does. And he is
0:56
Speaker 1: very concerns that we are going to have a lot
1:00
Speaker 1: of problems keeping some of these restaurants and bars open
1:04
Speaker 1: once we finally come out of the pandemic. We have
1:06
Speaker 1: done a tremendous amount of economic damage and it is
1:09
Speaker 1: going to leave a mark. He has some ideas how
1:12
Speaker 1: to get out from behind that. So, with no further ado,
1:16
Speaker 1: my conversation with John Taffer, this is Masters in Business
1:22
Speaker 1: with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this
1:26
Speaker 1: week is John Taffer. He created the NFL Sunday Ticket
1:29
Speaker 1: before going on to star and create Bar Rescue. He
1:33
Speaker 1: was one of six inductees until the Nightclub Hall of Fame.
1:38
Speaker 1: He has created several apps for managing a bar or
1:41
Speaker 1: a nightclub, including bar HQ. His latest show, Marriage Rescue,
1:45
Speaker 1: is out. He is the author of Raise the Bar,
1:49
Speaker 1: an action based method for maximum customer reactions. John Taffer,
1:55
Speaker 1: Welcome to Bloomberg. Nice to be here, Barry. So you're
1:58
Speaker 1: the perfect guy to speak about restaurants and bars and
2:02
Speaker 1: how people are going to be able to come out
2:04
Speaker 1: of this quarantine. But before we get to that, let's
2:08
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your background. How does a
2:13
Speaker 1: kid who grew up in Great Neck end up on
2:16
Speaker 1: the West Coast in the hospitality industry. You know, it's funny.
2:20
Speaker 1: When I went to high school back in those days,
2:22
Speaker 1: a lot of us went west. You know, we just
2:24
Speaker 1: went to California, That's what we did. So I had
2:26
Speaker 1: taken music lessons when I was in high school. I
2:29
Speaker 1: was a drummer. I was very serious about it. Took
2:31
Speaker 1: lessons for nine years and went to California actually to
2:35
Speaker 1: pursue a music career. And in my pursuit of the
2:38
Speaker 1: music career, I started managing a nightclub. One day, the Troubadour,
2:42
Speaker 1: the very famous Troubadoor in Hollowood, California, which had opened
2:45
Speaker 1: in fifty seven, Lenny Bruce was arrested on a Troubadoor
2:49
Speaker 1: stage Barry for saying something I won't repeat. That's the
2:51
Speaker 1: kind of history that that place had. So I got
2:54
Speaker 1: a job at the at the Troubadour and started managing it,
2:59
Speaker 1: and one thing to another, and I've been in a bar,
3:01
Speaker 1: in hospitality management business ever since, but ever run bars, restaurants,
3:05
Speaker 1: resort hotels. I've really worked in every facet of the
3:08
Speaker 1: hospitality industry. So how does one transition from running a
3:12
Speaker 1: bar to running a consulting business to television? You know,
3:17
Speaker 1: in the mid eighties, tax code changed, barry, and it
3:21
Speaker 1: got to the point that hotels could no longer right
3:24
Speaker 1: off certain deductions. So restaurants and bars and hotels had
3:28
Speaker 1: previously been more amenities. They weren't run as profit center
3:32
Speaker 1: as they were run really a service, uh mechanisms to
3:35
Speaker 1: support guest room sales in the hotel. Well when those
3:38
Speaker 1: tax codes changed. My company was very successful. This is
3:41
Speaker 1: back in the mid eighties, and I created a company
3:44
Speaker 1: to teach the hotel industry how to make money in
3:46
Speaker 1: food and beverage, which, believe it or not, they weren't
3:48
Speaker 1: good at then. And these were all the hotel franchises
3:51
Speaker 1: around the country. I won't mention brands, but household brands.
3:55
Speaker 1: Twelve hundred hotels in one company, eight hundred and another.
3:59
Speaker 1: So we went in in. In those days, hotel restaurants
4:02
Speaker 1: Barry weren't exactly the greatest hotel bars you wouldn't even
4:05
Speaker 1: go to. So we we're the company that built all
4:08
Speaker 1: the outside entrances in and tried to create a position
4:10
Speaker 1: them for the local market. We're also the company when
4:13
Speaker 1: we got it hired by all the hotel companies. I'm
4:16
Speaker 1: the guy who flew around America closing almost every top
4:19
Speaker 1: four restaurant on every hotel and moving them from those
4:23
Speaker 1: things into into food and beverage operations that would be successful.
4:27
Speaker 1: We did that for many years, did hundreds of hotels,
4:29
Speaker 1: got very very good at it, Arry, and we opened
4:32
Speaker 1: my first restaurant, which I owned myself. I opened in
4:35
Speaker 1: a St. Louis let's go back to the top floor restaurant.
4:40
Speaker 1: You're saying there's not a lot of pedestrian traffic when
4:43
Speaker 1: you put the restaurant at the top of the hotel, well,
4:47
Speaker 1: it becomes what I call the dreaded special occasion syndrome.
4:51
Speaker 1: You'll go there on your anniversary, Barry, you might go
4:54
Speaker 1: there on your wife's birthday, but you're not going there
4:57
Speaker 1: more often than that. And when hotels would drop restaurants
5:00
Speaker 1: on the top four as, they inherently became that special
5:03
Speaker 1: occasion syndrome which knocked off all frequency and UH destroyed
5:09
Speaker 1: their potential day to day. So none of them were
5:11
Speaker 1: ever really successful, with very few exceptions. So how does
5:14
Speaker 1: one transition from being a consultant to name brand hotel
5:19
Speaker 1: chains to something like bar Rescue? You know, well, bar
5:22
Speaker 1: Rescue was interesting, Bear and all my hotel work. Over
5:25
Speaker 1: the years, I became a public speaker and I spoke
5:28
Speaker 1: at all sorts of hospitality and industry events are all
5:31
Speaker 1: of the country, thirty forty speeches a year to UH
5:35
Speaker 1: many companies, and many of those speeches were to brand
5:38
Speaker 1: conferences for companies like Marriott Holiday in back then Hilton
5:43
Speaker 1: And when I would go give a keynote speech at
5:45
Speaker 1: a brand conference. One day, somebody came up to me
5:48
Speaker 1: at one of those speeches and said, John, you should
5:49
Speaker 1: be on television. So Gordon Ramsey was on TV at
5:53
Speaker 1: the time, this is about ten years ago, eleven years ago.
5:56
Speaker 1: He had his show Kitchen Nightmares. So I sat out
5:59
Speaker 1: and I put together my own concept, Barry. It was
6:01
Speaker 1: a cross between Kitchen Nightmares and Mission Impossible, and I
6:05
Speaker 1: wanted to pick experts. Remember Mission Impossible, they picked the
6:08
Speaker 1: experts out of the file at the beginning of every
6:10
Speaker 1: episode and there could be different experts for different episodes. Well,
6:14
Speaker 1: that was the model I wanted to use. So I
6:16
Speaker 1: created bar Risk. You wrote it up on a piece
6:18
Speaker 1: of paper and it was originally called On the Rocks,
6:21
Speaker 1: and you like the story. So I take that's a
6:24
Speaker 1: fantastic name. On the Rocks. That's even better than Rescue.
6:28
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. But so I go to Paramount,
6:31
Speaker 1: And years earlier I had done a project for Paramount,
6:34
Speaker 1: the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, and I had worked on
6:37
Speaker 1: a restaurant concept, so I knew the president of Paramount.
6:40
Speaker 1: So I take my rite up On the Rocks to
6:42
Speaker 1: my friend that Paramount he reads it and I won't
6:44
Speaker 1: repeat his language, Barry, but he said to me, John,
6:47
Speaker 1: you will never blanking beyond television. You're too old, you're
6:51
Speaker 1: not good looking at enough. It will never happen. So
6:54
Speaker 1: I drive out of the Paramount gates a little little disappointed,
6:57
Speaker 1: and I say, you know what, I'm gonna do this myself.
7:00
Speaker 1: So I, when I shot my own sizzle reel, which
7:02
Speaker 1: is sort of a three minute version of the show,
7:05
Speaker 1: sent that sizzle reel to four different production companies in Hollywood. Unbelievably,
7:10
Speaker 1: I got four offers from four and one of them
7:13
Speaker 1: was at the television convention in France. They called me
7:16
Speaker 1: from Frances said, no side with anyone, so we come back.
7:19
Speaker 1: So now I have a deals on the table. So
7:21
Speaker 1: I look at the four production companies and I didn't
7:24
Speaker 1: follow anyone's advice. Everybody told me to take the money,
7:28
Speaker 1: picked companies that gave me the largest offer. I didn't.
7:31
Speaker 1: I chose the company I thought would make the best show,
7:34
Speaker 1: and it was a few few less dollars for me.
7:37
Speaker 1: So we put together the pilot. The show sold in
7:40
Speaker 1: two months, was on TV less than a year from
7:43
Speaker 1: the day that I went to the Paramount lot and
7:45
Speaker 1: was told I'll never be on television. The show premiered,
7:48
Speaker 1: and of course I got a beautiful phone call from
7:50
Speaker 1: my buddy who told me I'll never be on TV.
7:52
Speaker 1: But the show went through three different names. It started
7:55
Speaker 1: with on the Rocks, and when they tested on the Roxbury,
7:57
Speaker 1: they found that it came up with a marriage connotation
8:00
Speaker 1: and marriages on a rock, so so that brand didn't work.
8:04
Speaker 1: Then we became bar Rehab for a little while, and
8:07
Speaker 1: then we landed on bar Rescue and if show premier
8:09
Speaker 1: and of course we're in our tenth year. I'll be
8:11
Speaker 1: shooting my two hundredth episode in a few months. Have
8:14
Speaker 1: been quiet down and it's an act of a run.
8:17
Speaker 1: You know. There's an amazing book by William Goldman, who
8:20
Speaker 1: wrote screenplays like Butch Cassidy and The Princess Bride and
8:24
Speaker 1: his it's called Adventures in Screenwriting, and he has entire
8:30
Speaker 1: chapters about all the amazing movies from Raiders of the
8:35
Speaker 1: Lost Arc to Star Wars to Princess Bride that everybody
8:39
Speaker 1: passed on and said, this is a disaster, this will
8:42
Speaker 1: never be successful. You're another case study, I am, and
8:48
Speaker 1: there's something to be said in this There isn't any
8:50
Speaker 1: one person in the world who can tell you you
8:52
Speaker 1: can or cannot do something, and there shouldn't be a
8:54
Speaker 1: group of people in the world that tell you can
8:56
Speaker 1: or cannot do something. You know this when when they
8:59
Speaker 1: walked out, when I walked off to Paramount, a lot
9:01
Speaker 1: very because of that meeting, it became important to me.
9:04
Speaker 1: It was an idea on the way in, but when
9:07
Speaker 1: he said no, it became a vendetta on the way out.
9:10
Speaker 1: And I thank him for that meeting. That's quite fascinating.
9:15
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the early part of
9:18
Speaker 1: your career. You worked at the infamous Troubadour in West
9:22
Speaker 1: Hollywood in the late seventies. That place had a wild reputation.
9:26
Speaker 1: What was that era like when you were there. Well,
9:30
Speaker 1: I think wild is a good word. This was a
9:32
Speaker 1: very different time in our society, was pre aids. Sort
9:36
Speaker 1: of sexual revolution was still going on in those days.
9:39
Speaker 1: There was no gang activity, no threat of violence, so
9:43
Speaker 1: it's a very different time. I hate to sound like
9:45
Speaker 1: a hippie and say love and peace, but it was
9:47
Speaker 1: sort of a little bit of love and peace. Back then.
9:49
Speaker 1: People didn't fear each other. They were quicker to get
9:52
Speaker 1: intimate with each other and music was exploding. Then, all
9:55
Speaker 1: different types of music were exploding on the scene. Then
9:58
Speaker 1: the Troubadour was sort of the center of it. And
10:00
Speaker 1: so let me give a short list of some of
10:02
Speaker 1: the bands that either premiered or played there. Jackson Brown,
10:06
Speaker 1: The Birds, The Eagles, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morris
10:11
Speaker 1: and Bonnie Ray Red, Hot Chili Peppers, Linda Ronstat, James Taylor,
10:16
Speaker 1: On and on. The list goes. What was it like
10:20
Speaker 1: when you were there watching that talent go through that stage? Well,
10:23
Speaker 1: it was an incredible thing. Doug Weston, who founded and
10:26
Speaker 1: ran the Troubadour, would get these real tapes back in
10:31
Speaker 1: those days and he would listen to these tapes. There
10:33
Speaker 1: were no videos. He would listen to these tapes and
10:35
Speaker 1: picked the bands that he would book at the Troubador.
10:38
Speaker 1: All of those bands you mentioned played there when they
10:40
Speaker 1: weren't famous. That's the amazing thing of it. Doug's ear,
10:44
Speaker 1: you know, reacted to them and he saw potential. So
10:47
Speaker 1: they came and played in the Troubador. So I wasn't
10:49
Speaker 1: watching stars per se bad I didn't know it. They
10:52
Speaker 1: were going to be superstars in some cases, megastars. So
10:56
Speaker 1: to me, it wasn't as much about the star as
10:58
Speaker 1: it was the music. And when Elton would play or
11:02
Speaker 1: these people would play and they get off the stage,
11:05
Speaker 1: you were overwhelmed by the performance into music and you
11:08
Speaker 1: would say to yourself, this person is going to be
11:10
Speaker 1: a star. And in the Troubador you got to see
11:13
Speaker 1: many of them were in your chops and become stars.
11:16
Speaker 1: So the music and the performance side seems to be
11:20
Speaker 1: running on all cylinders. But the actual management of the
11:24
Speaker 1: restaurant and the bar was kind of a disaster. Employee
11:29
Speaker 1: theft was rife, the books never balanced. You take over
11:32
Speaker 1: in what do you do to change how the places managed? Well,
11:38
Speaker 1: a number of things. First of all, there were no
11:39
Speaker 1: rules in the Troubator, and everybody who worked there was
11:42
Speaker 1: a musician. I mean, that's just the way it evolved.
11:44
Speaker 1: So if if you were a musician and you needed
11:46
Speaker 1: a job, you worked at the Troubator. People would take
11:49
Speaker 1: a side of beef, throw in the back of their
11:50
Speaker 1: car and take it home Barry. I mean, people would
11:53
Speaker 1: take full bottles of liquor home, do it no controls whatsoever,
11:57
Speaker 1: and a half of beef that they took home the
11:59
Speaker 1: other half of it day ate while they were working
12:01
Speaker 1: that day, so there were no controls. The club had
12:05
Speaker 1: no money, and there was a floor safe in the kitchen,
12:08
Speaker 1: and at the end of the night we put the
12:09
Speaker 1: few hundred dollars we made in the for safe, and
12:12
Speaker 1: in the morning I had to come in as the
12:13
Speaker 1: manager empty the floor safe and used that money to
12:16
Speaker 1: buy liquor that morning. Because we were on C O. D.
12:19
Speaker 1: We had no accounts anywhere, and in those days the
12:21
Speaker 1: owner used to engage in recreational activities and he would
12:24
Speaker 1: go in there at four in the morning and take
12:26
Speaker 1: the money out of the safe. So I would come
12:28
Speaker 1: in at eight thirty in the morning hoping that money
12:30
Speaker 1: was there so I could pay for wicket too, every
12:32
Speaker 1: and it wasn't there. So it was a real battle
12:35
Speaker 1: running the Troubador. It turned into a system whereabout I
12:39
Speaker 1: took the money home with me every night and then
12:41
Speaker 1: came back in the morning with it so I could
12:43
Speaker 1: buy liquor and such. But here's a funny story. When
12:45
Speaker 1: I took over the Troubadour, we had about two inches
12:48
Speaker 1: of water in the kitchen a flood, and we did
12:51
Speaker 1: the tributor did not have the money to fix it.
12:53
Speaker 1: Was struggling at the time, so we put together the
12:56
Speaker 1: Troubadours twenty fifth anniversary events for a month. Everybody came back,
13:01
Speaker 1: very Linda Ronstad, Elton, John Jackson Brown, even bands like
13:05
Speaker 1: The Knack, they all came back. We made a fortune
13:08
Speaker 1: that month. We're able to fix the floor and the
13:10
Speaker 1: Troubador survived. So what you're describing in first taking over
13:15
Speaker 1: the bar and restaurant is effectively the basics. What sort
13:20
Speaker 1: of basics of business do People who go to bars
13:23
Speaker 1: have no idea is happening behind the scenes. Well, you know,
13:27
Speaker 1: when I took over at the Troubador, it was fascinating
13:29
Speaker 1: to me because I had never run any place before,
13:31
Speaker 1: so I didn't know how it should be. But I
13:33
Speaker 1: learned very quickly how it shouldn't be. I mean, everybody
13:36
Speaker 1: giving away drinks to their friends, overpouring like crazy, making
13:39
Speaker 1: themselves drinks, giving away food, taking food home, no standards.
13:44
Speaker 1: If there's your buddy, cut the steak thick. If he's
13:46
Speaker 1: not your buddy, you cut it thin. I mean, there
13:48
Speaker 1: was no standards, no rules. It was a complete flee
13:51
Speaker 1: for all. And I learned at a young age When
13:54
Speaker 1: I worked at the Troubador, I was in a legendary
13:57
Speaker 1: facility when it came to music, But I was in
13:59
Speaker 1: the worst run bar America. There was no question about it.
14:02
Speaker 1: Nobody could survive with the set of rules or lack
14:06
Speaker 1: of them as the Troubador had. So I walked away
14:08
Speaker 1: from the trouba or experience, with a very powerful knowledge
14:11
Speaker 1: that great places can be poorly run, great places can close.
14:17
Speaker 1: And I learned how type the margins are in the
14:18
Speaker 1: bar business, which is twelve percent if if it works,
14:22
Speaker 1: twelve eights of home run, so there's not a lot
14:25
Speaker 1: of room for error or employee borrowing of either food
14:30
Speaker 1: or drink or cash. How quickly when you walk into
14:34
Speaker 1: a bar, can you identify if this is something that
14:37
Speaker 1: could be rehabilitated and made at least break even if
14:41
Speaker 1: not profitable, or hey, this place is never gonna make
14:44
Speaker 1: it well. I walk in within about two or three minutes,
14:46
Speaker 1: I can scope the operation. I can determine what operational
14:49
Speaker 1: potential has literally in minutes, things like smell of music, pace,
14:53
Speaker 1: energy that set up behind the bar, how did the
14:55
Speaker 1: tabletops look? Are salt and pepper shaker sticky? Are they clean?
14:59
Speaker 1: I mean, it's eight or ten things that you can
15:01
Speaker 1: use is pretty good measurements to determine ability. But to me,
15:05
Speaker 1: the business isn't what's failing. It's the owner that's failing.
15:09
Speaker 1: And I've always look at taken a look at this Barry,
15:11
Speaker 1: and that the only way I could fix the failing
15:14
Speaker 1: business is to fix the failing owner. And every failing
15:17
Speaker 1: business has a failing owner. So I start there. I
15:21
Speaker 1: start on the owner. If I can't make the owner
15:23
Speaker 1: want to clean, if I can't make the owner embraced, change,
15:25
Speaker 1: if I can't make the owner uh change his life,
15:29
Speaker 1: day to day's processes, his procedures, that I cannot change
15:33
Speaker 1: the business. I could build him to taj Mahal and
15:35
Speaker 1: he'd still fail there. So that's why bar rescue gets
15:39
Speaker 1: so intense. Because I can build a bar with my
15:41
Speaker 1: eyes closed, Barry. I can put into computer systems the recipes.
15:45
Speaker 1: That's easy, that's logistics. The challenge is creating an owner
15:49
Speaker 1: who knows how to be successful and has the desire
15:52
Speaker 1: to be successful. That's always the biggest fight and bar rescue.
15:55
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. You remind me of something that
15:57
Speaker 1: one of the dog trainers at one of the dog
16:00
Speaker 1: show is once said to me, because I don't train dogs,
16:03
Speaker 1: I trained dog owners. The dog knows what to do.
16:06
Speaker 1: It's teaching the owner, and you're you're basically saying the
16:09
Speaker 1: exact same time. I am. You know, great employees know
16:12
Speaker 1: what to do, Give him an environment, let him do it.
16:14
Speaker 1: Train them, of course, But so many cases it all
16:17
Speaker 1: comes down to the owners, and it gets very conflicting,
16:21
Speaker 1: and it gets intense, as I know you know about.
16:23
Speaker 1: And here's why. Because of accountability. I forced them to
16:28
Speaker 1: tell me that they're failing because of them. I won't
16:31
Speaker 1: let them say they're failing because of the bar. The
16:33
Speaker 1: bar is them. I won't let them say they're failing
16:35
Speaker 1: because of the competition or the recession, or the whatever
16:39
Speaker 1: the case is. They always push an excuse. And my
16:43
Speaker 1: second book, which was a New York Times bestseller, Don't
16:46
Speaker 1: b as Yourself Cut The Excuses that are holding you back,
16:50
Speaker 1: identifies to me the single denominator of failure in business
16:55
Speaker 1: is an excuse. In almost every case. Make it. It
17:00
Speaker 1: is fascinating to think about it. What is an excuse?
17:02
Speaker 1: Barry and excuses a reconciliation of a mistake, you did
17:06
Speaker 1: something you shouldn't have, you didn't do something you should have,
17:08
Speaker 1: or you're screwed up somehow, and now you create an
17:11
Speaker 1: excuse which makes you feel good about the failure. It's
17:15
Speaker 1: lets you explain the failure to other people. So you
17:18
Speaker 1: go to sleep that night and when you look in
17:19
Speaker 1: the mirror and you don't blame that shortcoming on yourself,
17:22
Speaker 1: You blame it on the excuse. So in the morning,
17:25
Speaker 1: when you wake up and you say to yourself, why
17:28
Speaker 1: am I failing, Well, it's that excuse. It's not me.
17:31
Speaker 1: So you have no reason to change. But if I
17:34
Speaker 1: can get you to wake up in the morning and
17:36
Speaker 1: look in the mirror and say I'm failing because of me,
17:39
Speaker 1: you won't like that, barry that self accountability, then you'll
17:43
Speaker 1: start to change. So the ugly part of our rescue
17:46
Speaker 1: is when I'm forcing them to say that to themselves,
17:49
Speaker 1: I am failing because of me. They need to say
17:52
Speaker 1: that now they own failure. And once your own failure,
17:57
Speaker 1: I believe you have a chance of owning success. If
18:00
Speaker 1: you never own your failure, how the heck do you
18:02
Speaker 1: get to success. So finishing up this point back, I
18:07
Speaker 1: believe that when I go in and train people and
18:09
Speaker 1: I do this in my public speeches and my keynotes.
18:12
Speaker 1: I give keynotes all the time these days of doing
18:13
Speaker 1: v notes. We have a special camera to stage set
18:16
Speaker 1: up and we do V notes speeches and we do very,
18:19
Speaker 1: very many of them. And every speech I give I
18:22
Speaker 1: always started with the same premise. I don't want to
18:24
Speaker 1: change what you do. I want to change the way
18:27
Speaker 1: you think. You see, if I say don't do this,
18:29
Speaker 1: do that, don't do that, do this. When I leave,
18:31
Speaker 1: you'll go back and do it over again. Seventy chance
18:34
Speaker 1: you will. But if I can change the way you think, Barry,
18:37
Speaker 1: then I can't help but change what you do. So
18:40
Speaker 1: I'm very aggressive in that focus. Whether it's bar Rescue,
18:43
Speaker 1: whether it's of my educational or keynote programs, I am
18:46
Speaker 1: very focused on forcing people to assess, uh what they do,
18:52
Speaker 1: not how they do it, and by changing how you think,
18:55
Speaker 1: I can't help but change actions. So that's become my signature,
18:58
Speaker 1: and as I give my speech is all around the country,
19:01
Speaker 1: I'm very focused on shaking up the way people think
19:04
Speaker 1: so that they can begin to think differently. I love that.
19:07
Speaker 1: That's quite fascinating. You had a role in the creation
19:10
Speaker 1: of NFL's Sunday Ticket. Tell us how that came about. Oh,
19:15
Speaker 1: that's a heck of a story. Of years ago, I
19:17
Speaker 1: had one sports bar Operator of the Year in America,
19:21
Speaker 1: and I also had a consulting practice, and we consulted
19:24
Speaker 1: to not only people in the industry, but products looking
19:27
Speaker 1: to break into the industry. And I got a phone
19:29
Speaker 1: call one day from a company called com Sat. And
19:32
Speaker 1: com Sat is based in Maryland. They have a huge
19:34
Speaker 1: field of uplink dishes and they manage most of the
19:37
Speaker 1: satellites in space, including government satellites. So they're a satellite
19:42
Speaker 1: management company and they manage the signals coming up the
19:44
Speaker 1: signals coming down. So at the time, this is the
19:47
Speaker 1: mid nineties, they managed things like pay per view cinema
19:50
Speaker 1: for hotels went through their satellites, and most entertainment channels did.
19:54
Speaker 1: They came to me and said, John, we would like
19:56
Speaker 1: your company to do a feasibility study on out of
20:00
Speaker 1: market sports programming concept, being that you sitting in New York,
20:05
Speaker 1: Barry could watch a Dallas Cowboy game. You could get
20:07
Speaker 1: that signal on your home TV. So they asked my
20:10
Speaker 1: company to assess it. What could we charge for it?
20:13
Speaker 1: Would Bars want to buy it? What would be the
20:15
Speaker 1: fee structure, what support do they need to be able
20:18
Speaker 1: to sell it to their customers and promoted, etcetera. So
20:21
Speaker 1: they retained us to do this feasibility study. So we did.
20:24
Speaker 1: We did the feasibility study. We identified huge market potential
20:28
Speaker 1: for this type of product, and they paid us dearly
20:31
Speaker 1: for that work. And then they came back to us
20:32
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later and said, John, we really
20:35
Speaker 1: like this. Tell us what the product would look like.
20:38
Speaker 1: So then we did a second phase of work where
20:40
Speaker 1: we started design what Sunday Ticket would look like. And
20:43
Speaker 1: while we were doing that work, Barry something happened technologically
20:47
Speaker 1: called compression. And compression changed the satellite industry where now
20:52
Speaker 1: I could receive multiple signals on multiple transponders off one dish.
20:58
Speaker 1: Prior to that, you might remember Barry to watch seven
21:00
Speaker 1: football games at once. The bar how to have a
21:02
Speaker 1: half acre field behind it with those big analog dishes.
21:06
Speaker 1: It became sort of cost prohibitive. Since compression was created
21:10
Speaker 1: in that second document, we then created the premise of
21:13
Speaker 1: Sunday Ticket. You could watch seven or eight games at
21:15
Speaker 1: the same time off one satellite system. The technology worked,
21:19
Speaker 1: and then we started putting together the ad slicks to
21:22
Speaker 1: promo manuals, a marketing book or promotion book for the bar.
21:26
Speaker 1: We put it all together and then we delivered that
21:28
Speaker 1: to comp SAT. Compsat then came back a third time
21:32
Speaker 1: and said, this is great, Now give us a marketing universe. John,
21:35
Speaker 1: Who the heck can we sell this too? So we
21:37
Speaker 1: put together another document filled with the Fridays and Damon's
21:41
Speaker 1: Ribs and Applebee's and all of those brands and their
21:44
Speaker 1: corporate offices and all their contacts and essence a target
21:47
Speaker 1: market book and gave them that, and they paid us
21:50
Speaker 1: very well for each one of these. Comp Sat then
21:53
Speaker 1: took my three pieces of work brought it to the
21:56
Speaker 1: NFL to license the signal. The NFL had the three
22:00
Speaker 1: Pafford documents and said, you know, this is really good,
22:03
Speaker 1: let's do it ourselves. So they put me on the
22:06
Speaker 1: board of NFL Enterprises, and Sunday Ticket came to be. Wow,
22:10
Speaker 1: that's quite astonishing, and I imagine that that was as
22:14
Speaker 1: wildly successful as it sounds. The way you make it
22:18
Speaker 1: to this day, you still have an option of doing that,
22:20
Speaker 1: don't you. Well, you know, when Sunday Ticket launched, it
22:23
Speaker 1: was originally only in commercial licenses. You couldn't get it
22:25
Speaker 1: at home for the first two years, so it became
22:28
Speaker 1: if you wanted to watch that Dallas game in New York,
22:30
Speaker 1: you had to go to a bar to do it.
22:32
Speaker 1: You couldn't watch it at home. Of course, years later
22:34
Speaker 1: Sunday Ticket evolved into a residential product too, and now
22:37
Speaker 1: there's NFL Read and different variations of it. But when
22:41
Speaker 1: we did it, which was about twenty six years ago,
22:43
Speaker 1: it's still the model by which all sports leagues do
22:46
Speaker 1: their programming. Wow, twenty six years ago, that's a long time.
22:49
Speaker 1: So how does that then get par laid into bar rescue?
22:53
Speaker 1: Well it really didn't. So I'm back to my Paramount story.
22:57
Speaker 1: So I leave Paramount, they put together my sizzle Wheel,
23:00
Speaker 1: and I go to Paramount. Of course, I told you,
23:02
Speaker 1: and I'm told I'll never be on television, so I
23:04
Speaker 1: didn't accept that. I wrote it up, send it to
23:07
Speaker 1: four production companies, and the four production companies sent me
23:10
Speaker 1: four offers. I couldn't believe it. And these guys all
23:13
Speaker 1: now background with the NFL. They they saw the past
23:16
Speaker 1: success obviously not really honestly, all they did was look
23:19
Speaker 1: at me on TV honestly, that's all they did. These
23:22
Speaker 1: are television stations. Sure they cared about my background a
23:25
Speaker 1: little bit, but you know, I learned on television that
23:28
Speaker 1: you know a lot of television chefs can cook at dinner,
23:31
Speaker 1: They can cook one place to TV, but they can't
23:33
Speaker 1: run a kitchen. So there's a big difference, particularly in
23:36
Speaker 1: a hospitality space between TV hospitality people and operations hospitality people,
23:42
Speaker 1: huge difference, and I've learned that and Bar Rescue. So
23:46
Speaker 1: they did Nutch care as long as I could create
23:48
Speaker 1: a good TV show. They knew I had a background
23:50
Speaker 1: in it, so they knew I was a quote expert,
23:52
Speaker 1: but they didn't put much effort into learning my background
23:55
Speaker 1: in a hospitality business. They were more interested in what
23:58
Speaker 1: I could do on camera. So we created a sizzle
24:02
Speaker 1: reel and the network picked it up. In four days
24:05
Speaker 1: the show launched. You'll get a kick out of this.
24:07
Speaker 1: First season was ten episodes, second season was ten third
24:11
Speaker 1: episode was season was forty episodes. Fifth season was fifty
24:16
Speaker 1: episodes in one year, and it takes a week to
24:19
Speaker 1: make one, so you can imagine, uh, the amount of
24:21
Speaker 1: work that year. But you know, Bar Rescue was successful.
24:24
Speaker 1: I think for one main reason and one reason alone.
24:27
Speaker 1: It's real. I never met these people before. I get
24:31
Speaker 1: a sixty second briefing before the show starts. Barry, that's it.
24:34
Speaker 1: I've never been in the bar before, so bar Rescue
24:37
Speaker 1: last because people know real, they know fake, and I
24:40
Speaker 1: don't know anything about these people at the bar. When
24:43
Speaker 1: I find out, the audience finds out at the same time.
24:46
Speaker 1: So I've worked very, very hard to keep the show authentic,
24:50
Speaker 1: sometimes at odds with the network to do so, because
24:53
Speaker 1: you know, in the television business they want to know
24:54
Speaker 1: what they're getting before they read a check, and Bar Rescue,
24:57
Speaker 1: you're not gonna know what you're getting till after your
24:59
Speaker 1: right the check. It just doesn't work that way in
25:01
Speaker 1: my show. You have to trust me. So it took
25:03
Speaker 1: some time. Now, of course, we had the level of
25:06
Speaker 1: trust with the network. We never had network executives on show.
25:09
Speaker 1: The network really has very little to do with what
25:11
Speaker 1: we produced. We do it all ourselves, deliver the show
25:14
Speaker 1: to the network, and we operate very autonomously of the network,
25:18
Speaker 1: which enhances the reality of the show. Let's talk a
25:21
Speaker 1: little bit about what's going on with Shelter in Place
25:24
Speaker 1: and working from home in lockdowns. The bar and restaurant
25:28
Speaker 1: industry has been pretty decimated by this. I spoke to
25:32
Speaker 1: Pat la Freda, a meat purveyor in New York City,
25:35
Speaker 1: who said about half of his restaurants are just shut totally,
25:41
Speaker 1: and of those that are open that are doing curbside
25:45
Speaker 1: service take out to go, they're running about a third
25:48
Speaker 1: of what they traditionally run. What is the world of
25:52
Speaker 1: bars and restaurants gonna look like coming out of this quarantine? Well,
25:56
Speaker 1: I think decimator is the right word, Barry, And obviously
25:59
Speaker 1: I'm heartbroken to for this, and many restaurants are running
26:02
Speaker 1: a closer to uh off ten percent of what they
26:06
Speaker 1: did and many of course haven't opened yet. And making
26:11
Speaker 1: a couple of points, I'm very concerned about the difference
26:14
Speaker 1: between sustaining and opening, and all we've gotten government stimulus
26:19
Speaker 1: hours We're all spending our money sustaining ourselves when we
26:23
Speaker 1: have no revenue potential, and I'm terrified we're not going
26:26
Speaker 1: to make it and have the resources to open properly
26:29
Speaker 1: when we do have potential. That's what's horrifying me about
26:32
Speaker 1: the industry. And every week more go down that don't
26:36
Speaker 1: reopen again because what we're doing, we're causing them to
26:39
Speaker 1: bleed to death slowly. Now. I'm not saying every restaurant,
26:43
Speaker 1: but I think in many cases I wouldn't open now.
26:46
Speaker 1: I would stay closed. I would retain my resources for
26:49
Speaker 1: a real opening. I would open in a few weeks
26:51
Speaker 1: when people are more comfortable, open with a bang, with
26:55
Speaker 1: a little marketing. I wouldn't just open quietly with everyone else.
26:58
Speaker 1: And I'm just very are concerned. And in our government
27:02
Speaker 1: stimulus package, Bear, they gave us money for payroll, rent
27:05
Speaker 1: and utilities, but there's no inventory allocation. Now when these
27:09
Speaker 1: restaurants really open to a capacity down the road three
27:13
Speaker 1: four whatever months from now. Keep in mind they've been
27:15
Speaker 1: running into deficits, so they don't have resources. Now they
27:18
Speaker 1: have to fill their refrigerator, really feel it because everything
27:21
Speaker 1: is bad. They even have to change their beer kegs
27:24
Speaker 1: because those are bad barry. So now they need the
27:26
Speaker 1: resources to create a completely new inventory to open properly.
27:31
Speaker 1: They don't have those resources, which means they don't order
27:33
Speaker 1: from the food distributor, the manufactory doesn't make it, and
27:37
Speaker 1: the farmer doesn't grow it. So if we don't get
27:40
Speaker 1: American Americans restaurants to refill their refrigerators. We're going to
27:44
Speaker 1: have an impact right down the whole supply chain that. Yeah,
27:49
Speaker 1: they really need a new line of credit so they
27:53
Speaker 1: could ramp up. Correct, we need some type of an
27:56
Speaker 1: inventory credit so that we can spend dollars on product.
28:00
Speaker 1: Then it should be structured the saying that the money
28:01
Speaker 1: spent on product, it's not repayable. If it's not, it is.
28:05
Speaker 1: But we must get these refrigerators full against the restaurants
28:08
Speaker 1: can get to real capacity levels as far as having
28:11
Speaker 1: the products to sell so that The other thing that
28:14
Speaker 1: terrifies me, Barry is the separation between bars and restaurants.
28:18
Speaker 1: The industry doesn't separate them. We talk about them in
28:21
Speaker 1: one glide, and they're not bars. For example, if you
28:25
Speaker 1: look at the regulations around restaurant openings, you're not allowed
28:29
Speaker 1: to walk up to the bar. You're not allowed to
28:31
Speaker 1: sit at the bar. There's no standing room allowed. You
28:34
Speaker 1: have to be sitting at the table. So by effect,
28:37
Speaker 1: the regulations to open a restaurant has closed the bar.
28:40
Speaker 1: Now you can order a drink at your table, but
28:43
Speaker 1: the bar itself is closed for walk up or sit
28:45
Speaker 1: down customers. Now that to me, I get it. But
28:50
Speaker 1: the bar in fact is being clustered. Are the restaurant
28:53
Speaker 1: is open, It's no, the bar is at zero. We
28:57
Speaker 1: must remember that. So all of the as far as
29:00
Speaker 1: across the country, particularly ones that don't have food, people
29:03
Speaker 1: can't walk up to their bars, can't sit at their bars,
29:06
Speaker 1: they can't have standing rooms barry. That's almost every small
29:09
Speaker 1: neighborhood bar in America. So the bar industry is far
29:13
Speaker 1: more challenged than the restaurant industry is, and I'm very
29:17
Speaker 1: concerned we're gonna lose about them. Wow, that's a giant number.
29:21
Speaker 1: My understanding of profitability at restaurants is that the bar
29:26
Speaker 1: plays an enormous part in that. If we reopen restaurants
29:30
Speaker 1: and the bar portion of a restaurant remains closed, does
29:34
Speaker 1: that mean we're dooming these restaurants to uh not be
29:37
Speaker 1: profitable for the foreseeable future. Well, yes, that that's in
29:40
Speaker 1: many cases. The numbers that you're talking about is product cost.
29:44
Speaker 1: Food costs in a restaurant can run, beverage costs can run,
29:49
Speaker 1: so you're making considerably more dollars per revenue dollar off
29:52
Speaker 1: of liquor. You also can sell liquor without the burden
29:55
Speaker 1: of the kitchen staff, so your labor costs connected to
29:58
Speaker 1: liquor and to rinks is a little lower as well.
30:01
Speaker 1: So yes, when you take the beverage sales out of
30:04
Speaker 1: a casual dining operation, let's say where it's beverage sales,
30:09
Speaker 1: now it's a food sales, lower profit item, and it's
30:12
Speaker 1: only at potential. There's no way it can make money.
30:17
Speaker 1: It's barely sustaining itself. And when it runs out of
30:20
Speaker 1: the resources, the same itself. Very how does it reopen
30:23
Speaker 1: when the pandemic is over? So here's one of the
30:26
Speaker 1: questions that I keep hearing from economists. They are saying,
30:30
Speaker 1: it's not so much that we're forced into lockdown that's
30:34
Speaker 1: preventing us from going out and about to these places
30:37
Speaker 1: that a lot of people on their own are afraid
30:40
Speaker 1: to go to restaurants and afraid to go to bars
30:44
Speaker 1: or concerts or shows or whatever. So two questions for you, First,
30:49
Speaker 1: how long is it going to take for people to
30:51
Speaker 1: get over their fears? And second, can restaurants and bars
30:57
Speaker 1: wait that long? Are we basically gonna be stuck in
31:00
Speaker 1: a slow circle the drain situation. I'm worried about the ladder,
31:05
Speaker 1: but if I can, I made this pretty simple all right,
31:08
Speaker 1: let's cut it up in thirds. I believe the third
31:10
Speaker 1: of the population, the younger third, the invincible third, they're
31:13
Speaker 1: gonna go out right away. They're gonna go out there
31:16
Speaker 1: in the party. We've seen a bunch of them out
31:17
Speaker 1: the past weekend or two in states that are allowing it.
31:20
Speaker 1: The second third I called the reserve third. They want
31:23
Speaker 1: to watch and see for a couple of weeks what's happening.
31:25
Speaker 1: You know, there was there any spike in illnesses that
31:28
Speaker 1: the restaurants look safe? Are people wearing masks? Okay, if
31:32
Speaker 1: it looks good, it feels good. That second third will
31:34
Speaker 1: start to come out in a few weeks. The third
31:37
Speaker 1: third I called a certain third. They're not going out
31:41
Speaker 1: to there's a vaccine and they can be absolutely certain.
31:43
Speaker 1: These are people who are a little older, demo, maybe
31:46
Speaker 1: pre existing conditions, but Barry, that's the sector of the
31:49
Speaker 1: audience that has the highest disposable income. It's going to
31:53
Speaker 1: impact the luxury sector, and nobody's talking about this far
31:57
Speaker 1: greater than the casual and other sectors in the restaurant
32:00
Speaker 1: the bar industry. They're the last ones to come out.
32:03
Speaker 1: And that's why I worry about brands like Neeme and
32:05
Speaker 1: Marcus and luxury brands, and how they're going to be
32:08
Speaker 1: impacted during this whole thing because of the certain third,
32:11
Speaker 1: as I call it. So that's what's happening outside. But
32:14
Speaker 1: here's the interesting part. I have great confidence in the
32:17
Speaker 1: restaurant business. BART We've been dealing with invisible enemies since
32:21
Speaker 1: our inception. We call it bacteria, and bars and restaurants
32:25
Speaker 1: deal with bacteria every day. We know how to clean
32:28
Speaker 1: our surfaces, we know how to wash our hands, we
32:31
Speaker 1: know what chemicals to use to clean those services. We
32:34
Speaker 1: know to separate raw product from cook product. We are
32:37
Speaker 1: really good at this. A good restaurant operator manages bacteria
32:41
Speaker 1: in his kitchen every single day and people don't get sick. Well,
32:45
Speaker 1: now we have a virus. It's a different invisible energy enemy.
32:49
Speaker 1: But the chemicals have to change a little because it's
32:52
Speaker 1: viral rather than bacterial. But the processes don't change that much.
32:56
Speaker 1: We still have to wipe our surfaces all the time,
32:59
Speaker 1: we still have to wash hands all the time. Now
33:01
Speaker 1: we're adding masks and other ppe to the process. But
33:04
Speaker 1: make no mistake, unlike the retail business, or the car business,
33:09
Speaker 1: or the furniture business, restaurants know how to do this.
33:12
Speaker 1: We've been doing it our whole lives. Here's my fear.
33:16
Speaker 1: I am scared more about the customers than I am
33:19
Speaker 1: the restaurants. So let me give you an example. We
33:21
Speaker 1: talked about that first third, that second third, and that
33:24
Speaker 1: third third. If that first third goes out, doesn't wear masks,
33:29
Speaker 1: doesn't employee social distancing, so that we are the news.
33:33
Speaker 1: That second third, all they see is images of people
33:36
Speaker 1: being irresponsible in restaurants. Nobody's wearing masks, they're hanging together,
33:40
Speaker 1: there's crowds in front. That second third is not going
33:43
Speaker 1: to go. So I suggest that the actions of the
33:47
Speaker 1: customers these first few weeks, more than a restaurants, are
33:52
Speaker 1: going to determine whether this works or not. And think
33:55
Speaker 1: about it. About if you're driving by a restaurant and
33:57
Speaker 1: there's four people standing in front space and they're wearing masks,
34:02
Speaker 1: your immediate impression is, Okay, they got their stuff together.
34:05
Speaker 1: That must be a safe place to go. Drive to
34:07
Speaker 1: the next restaurant. Crowd in front, nobody wearing masks. Are
34:10
Speaker 1: you going to go in that restaurant? If I'm twenty two, yes,
34:13
Speaker 1: if I'm fifty two, now, So My point is this,
34:16
Speaker 1: those customers that are saying I refuse to wear a
34:19
Speaker 1: mask because of vanity, are risking all of these businesses,
34:23
Speaker 1: not just the health of the person standing next to them.
34:26
Speaker 1: And it's a powerful point. The only reason why somebody
34:30
Speaker 1: would not wear a mask today is because of vanity,
34:34
Speaker 1: and that makes no sense. Vanity shouldn't come before safety.
34:38
Speaker 1: Vanity shouldn't come before the safety of the person next
34:41
Speaker 1: to you. Vanity shouldn't come before destroying the local business.
34:45
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to communicate the people that if we
34:48
Speaker 1: don't behave in these ways, we're gonna lose more of
34:51
Speaker 1: these businesses. People are not going to come. So I
34:54
Speaker 1: put the burden equally on the customer as I do
34:57
Speaker 1: the restaurant. I know that will do what is supposed
35:00
Speaker 1: Will the customers do what they're supposed to, and if
35:02
Speaker 1: they don't, that restaurant is doomed. Today, we're living in
35:06
Speaker 1: a culture of accountability, Barry. If you go out to
35:09
Speaker 1: dinner and have a bad dinners on yelp, in a
35:11
Speaker 1: matter of seconds, if we have infections in any of
35:14
Speaker 1: these restaurants, and we have crises to break out in
35:17
Speaker 1: any of these businesses, it will go public and it
35:20
Speaker 1: will destroy that business. So think about it, and restaurant
35:25
Speaker 1: operated does everything right by the book PPE procedures, processes,
35:30
Speaker 1: A bunch of customers come in, very irresponsible, people get sick,
35:34
Speaker 1: and now that restaurant is shut down. I have two
35:37
Speaker 1: questions about how we come out of this. One is
35:40
Speaker 1: sort of short term and the other is long term.
35:43
Speaker 1: Let let me start with the shorter term one. So,
35:45
Speaker 1: if we're doing social distancing and some of these restaurants
35:49
Speaker 1: are are running at half capacity, can these guys break
35:54
Speaker 1: even with every other table and every other seat pulled
35:58
Speaker 1: out of the restaurant? Is that is that really be
36:00
Speaker 1: a viable financial option? No, it's not at all. And
36:05
Speaker 1: you know, I've said to myself, if we can't do
36:06
Speaker 1: a hundred lunches in an hour, because I'm the thirty
36:08
Speaker 1: percent capacity, you know, now I have to do those
36:11
Speaker 1: lunches over three hours. Okay, So I can do early
36:14
Speaker 1: bird lunch specials, late bird lunch specials. I can spread
36:17
Speaker 1: the business, but now I'm doing the same revenue for
36:19
Speaker 1: three times the labor costs. Barry, that doesn't work either.
36:23
Speaker 1: So if I recover the revenues over more hours, that
36:27
Speaker 1: doesn't solve the problem. I have to recover the revenue
36:30
Speaker 1: in the same hours to make my numbers work. That
36:33
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. And then the second question.
36:35
Speaker 1: I keep hearing people saying, this is going to change
36:39
Speaker 1: us forever. Everything is going to be different. Fast forward
36:42
Speaker 1: two years. We have a treatment, we have a vaccine.
36:46
Speaker 1: Does the restaurant industry return to normal or are we
36:50
Speaker 1: forever altered by this experience. I'm I'm of the belief
36:54
Speaker 1: that we do return to normal. You know. I think
36:56
Speaker 1: we're social animals and we need social interaction and six
37:00
Speaker 1: be the part isn't gonna work for us long term.
37:02
Speaker 1: Once we have a vaccine and people feel safe, I
37:05
Speaker 1: believe we go back to normal activity and and I
37:09
Speaker 1: think that there might be some adjustments to society. I
37:11
Speaker 1: think kitchens will never quite be the same, and I'm
37:13
Speaker 1: all for that. I'm opening a restaurant in Atlanta in
37:15
Speaker 1: July called Taffer's Tavern. We've created the kitchen of the future.
37:19
Speaker 1: It's all robotic cooking. There's no human touching of food
37:23
Speaker 1: as it goes to the cooking life process. And if
37:26
Speaker 1: you look at the kitchen today and we'll send you
37:28
Speaker 1: pictures when it opens back, you can see what the
37:30
Speaker 1: kitchen looks like. But but we're changing the industry. You
37:34
Speaker 1: look at a kitchen today, it almost looks more like
37:36
Speaker 1: an operating room than it does a kitchen. You know,
37:38
Speaker 1: we can't have street clothes and kitchens anymore. We can't
37:41
Speaker 1: let people wear their ball cap from home in a
37:43
Speaker 1: kitchen anymore. You know, we have to have gloves, we
37:46
Speaker 1: have to have uniforms in the kitchen. We have to
37:48
Speaker 1: have hats that we issue, not hats that they wear
37:51
Speaker 1: from home. It's a different style of operating now. They
37:54
Speaker 1: have to have masks, they have to have gloves, but
37:56
Speaker 1: we have to have less contact in the kitchen. So
37:59
Speaker 1: I think it's there's mind the way. It's going to
38:01
Speaker 1: change the way future kitchens are designed, and it's changing
38:04
Speaker 1: kitchen equipment hugely. Companies like Middleby, who owns about sixty
38:09
Speaker 1: professional grade ovens and cook they're focused on all these
38:12
Speaker 1: robotics and everyone is focused on how to do this
38:16
Speaker 1: without people. What's interesting art is six months ago we
38:20
Speaker 1: all were doing this. We were all trying to create
38:22
Speaker 1: robotic kitchens without people in them because we had no
38:25
Speaker 1: labor pool back then. Remember just a few months ago
38:28
Speaker 1: we couldn't find any people. We had fifteen dollar minimum wages.
38:32
Speaker 1: Many of the hires we had with New Americans, they
38:34
Speaker 1: didn't speak so well, so we had to simplify and
38:37
Speaker 1: reduce the labor burdens and kitchens. So it's interesting when
38:41
Speaker 1: I started that process two years ago, because we had
38:44
Speaker 1: so much labor in the market we didn't have labor
38:46
Speaker 1: in the marketplace. I wound up with a kitchen that's
38:48
Speaker 1: perfect for post COVID, but that wasn't what we built.
38:52
Speaker 1: We just tried to build the most sanitary kitchen that
38:55
Speaker 1: would be the most efficient kitchen in America, and we
38:57
Speaker 1: wound up with a COVID nineteen kitchen. It interesting, that's
39:00
Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating. So I know I only have you for
39:03
Speaker 1: a couple of more minutes. Let's jump to our speed
39:06
Speaker 1: round where we're gonna find out a little bit about you,
39:09
Speaker 1: uh personally, And let's begin with the question that's on
39:13
Speaker 1: everybody's mind. What are you streaming these days? Give us
39:16
Speaker 1: your favorite Netflix, Disney plus Amazon Prime shows. What are
39:20
Speaker 1: you watching or listening to? Well, I've been I've been
39:23
Speaker 1: watching Ozark, of course, which which I love, and I
39:26
Speaker 1: just finished the new season, so I'm a little bummed.
39:28
Speaker 1: I got no more Ozark for a while. There's another
39:30
Speaker 1: show on Netflix called Stranger, which is a British show
39:34
Speaker 1: that I've been watching, which is really great. It's a
39:36
Speaker 1: mystery show. Um. And then of course on Disney, I
39:40
Speaker 1: must confess I'm a classics guy. I've watched a little
39:42
Speaker 1: Star Wars, but I must confess I watched Beauty and
39:45
Speaker 1: the Beast the other day. Yeah, nothing like a little
39:49
Speaker 1: cheerful escapism to forget the mess we're dealing with. A
39:52
Speaker 1: cartoon works pretty well in the middle of it. Really,
39:55
Speaker 1: it really does. Tell us. By the way, the cartoon
39:58
Speaker 1: I'm watching on Disney plus us is um after I
40:01
Speaker 1: went through the Mandalorian is a Star Wars series called Rebels,
40:06
Speaker 1: and it's surprisingly good plot lines for an animated series.
40:11
Speaker 1: Tell us about your early mentors who helped guide your
40:15
Speaker 1: career and turn you into the television powerhouse you are. Well,
40:19
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. I didn't really have any television idols,
40:23
Speaker 1: uh per se. Gordon Ramsey of course was out before me,
40:26
Speaker 1: sort of created the genre. So watching Gordon, of course, uh,
40:31
Speaker 1: the way he works and has impacted me. But you know,
40:34
Speaker 1: I have strange mentors. I mean, Thomas Jefferson is a
40:37
Speaker 1: huge mentor to me. I know everything about his life.
40:40
Speaker 1: I have huge respect for Jefferson. He's a real mentor
40:43
Speaker 1: to me. Believe it or not. Howard Hughes, I've read
40:46
Speaker 1: every book ever written on a man who's been a
40:48
Speaker 1: huge mentor to me. The fact that he stepped from
40:51
Speaker 1: one industry to another, uh was huge. It was hugely
40:54
Speaker 1: powerful to me. Uh. You know more locally, Uh, there
40:58
Speaker 1: are people. Uh. Youngman by the name of Stillman who
41:01
Speaker 1: created Friday's was a mentor to me. He redefined the
41:04
Speaker 1: whole dining segment. But I tend to be more motivated
41:08
Speaker 1: by global figures more than smaller industry figures. And of
41:11
Speaker 1: course the greatest motivator of all to me was my grandfather,
41:15
Speaker 1: who taught me that the only way you can become
41:17
Speaker 1: a millionaire in life is to be the smartest guy
41:19
Speaker 1: in the room. And the other thing he taught me
41:21
Speaker 1: was John, if you don't have a big check book,
41:24
Speaker 1: you better have a big idea book. And those are
41:27
Speaker 1: the things he taught me when I was young. But
41:29
Speaker 1: he was probably my biggest mentor. Speaking of books, what
41:32
Speaker 1: are you reading? What are some of your favorites. What's
41:34
Speaker 1: keeping you occupied these days? Well, you know, I've been
41:38
Speaker 1: uh looking at a number of books. It's interesting. I
41:41
Speaker 1: just read one of mine again the other day. Don't
41:42
Speaker 1: be yes yourself. But there's a book that I love
41:45
Speaker 1: that I've been telling friends to read that I read
41:48
Speaker 1: years ago. When I pulled it out again, it's called
41:50
Speaker 1: The Myth Revisited and it's a book about the entrepreneurial myth.
41:55
Speaker 1: And it's a short book. It's a quick read, and
41:58
Speaker 1: it really makes us think about ourselves, whether we truly
42:00
Speaker 1: are entrepreneurs, businesspeople, administrators. If counts us into categories of
42:05
Speaker 1: business through personality and helps us to understand ourselves. It's
42:09
Speaker 1: it's a fun book. It's called The Myth Revisited. It's
42:11
Speaker 1: written by Michael Gerber. I will definitely check that out.
42:15
Speaker 1: Tell us the sort of advice you would give to
42:17
Speaker 1: a recent college grad who was thinking about going into
42:21
Speaker 1: either the hospitality business or the television industry. Well, you know,
42:25
Speaker 1: both industries are are somewhat of a metamorphosis, if you will,
42:29
Speaker 1: or a fork in the road. The hospitality industry is
42:32
Speaker 1: not going to go away. We need hotels, we need restaurants,
42:34
Speaker 1: We need bars. It's an important part of our society.
42:37
Speaker 1: But those who go into that business today are going
42:39
Speaker 1: to be the instruments of change. Great marketers are going
42:42
Speaker 1: to bubble to the top. Very great promoters are going
42:45
Speaker 1: to create revenue. Great operators are gonna find new systems.
42:48
Speaker 1: So I personally see this as a time of rebirth.
42:51
Speaker 1: You know, it's almost like when it's a forest fire
42:53
Speaker 1: and those new sprouts pop out of the graud. Certainly
42:55
Speaker 1: one grow quicker than others. I really believe that. I
42:59
Speaker 1: believe there's going to be an exciting time as soon
43:01
Speaker 1: as that vaccine comes out in the industry. So I'm
43:04
Speaker 1: selling the people that want to go into this space,
43:07
Speaker 1: don't not don't hold yourself back. Think of the greatness.
43:10
Speaker 1: Think of the amazingly powerful ideas and programs that are
43:13
Speaker 1: going to read, define and relaunch the industry. So I
43:17
Speaker 1: would not divert into a different way. I would remember
43:19
Speaker 1: for every person who's graduating this year that great marketers
43:24
Speaker 1: are going to market really well, great promoters, great operators
43:27
Speaker 1: be one of those. But if there's anything that this
43:30
Speaker 1: pandemic has taught us, it's mediocre is not going to
43:33
Speaker 1: work coming out of this We need energy to come
43:36
Speaker 1: out of this. We need ideas to come out of this.
43:39
Speaker 1: We need those young minds, those young ideas that understand
43:42
Speaker 1: social media so well, grew up living these things. They're
43:46
Speaker 1: going to be the biggest contributors to this change, I believe.
43:49
Speaker 1: I love that suggestion. I think you're you're dead on
43:51
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
43:54
Speaker 1: world of hospitality today? You wish you knew back in
43:58
Speaker 1: the late seventies when you were first started at the Troubadour. Well,
44:02
Speaker 1: you know, I think the world of hospitality today is
44:05
Speaker 1: we didn't appreciate loyalty like we did today. You know,
44:08
Speaker 1: we didn't have loyalty programs and frequency cards and all
44:11
Speaker 1: of those things. We used to look at guests as transactions.
44:15
Speaker 1: We didn't look at them as relationships. It was only
44:17
Speaker 1: in the later years of the industry that we all
44:19
Speaker 1: started to understand the power of frequency and building guest relationships.
44:23
Speaker 1: And that's when all the software programs created, in the
44:26
Speaker 1: tracking programs and the frequency programs. The one thing that
44:29
Speaker 1: I didn't know when I started in this business, and
44:32
Speaker 1: I learned my financials, I learned my operations, I never
44:36
Speaker 1: learned what really marketing was till much later years. Marketing
44:40
Speaker 1: is only three things, Barry, And in the hospitality industry,
44:43
Speaker 1: I didn't know when I was younger. I don't think
44:45
Speaker 1: they did. Marketing is new customer programs, frequency programs, and
44:48
Speaker 1: spend programs. That's all we got there. I gotta get
44:51
Speaker 1: you to come the first time, I gotta get you
44:53
Speaker 1: to come more often, and I gotta get you to
44:55
Speaker 1: spend more while you're there. That's all we got. Most hospitality,
45:00
Speaker 1: the operators don't cut marketing into those three things. They
45:03
Speaker 1: just spend the money generically. And if ever, post pandemic,
45:06
Speaker 1: we need to isolate our dollars into new customer programs,
45:09
Speaker 1: frequency programs, and spend programs. Now is the time to
45:13
Speaker 1: do that. But I didn't know any of that. I
45:15
Speaker 1: was just spend the money and trying to fill buildings. Today, Uh,
45:19
Speaker 1: these types of knowledge of frequencies and customer loyalty is
45:22
Speaker 1: what's made our industry so successful. And candle Bebarry, that's
45:25
Speaker 1: what's built the brands that we have today is those
45:28
Speaker 1: loyalty efforts. John, let me throw one more question at you,
45:31
Speaker 1: because you kind of tickled something in my memory. If
45:35
Speaker 1: you are a customer today, and you want to help
45:39
Speaker 1: keep your local restaurant in business even though we're under lockdown.
45:44
Speaker 1: What could an individual do to help out that restaurant. Well,
45:47
Speaker 1: a number of things. One, gift cards are a great
45:49
Speaker 1: way to do it. There's a website anybody can go to.
45:52
Speaker 1: It's called shift fur cares dot com. S H I
45:56
Speaker 1: F T four the number cares dot com. If you
45:58
Speaker 1: go to that website, you can buy a gift card
46:01
Speaker 1: for any restaurant in your local town, and they pay
46:04
Speaker 1: them five percent more than the value of the gift card.
46:07
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna buy a gift card, go to
46:08
Speaker 1: shift four cares dot com getting the extra five I
46:11
Speaker 1: think that's very very important. I think calling restaurants and
46:15
Speaker 1: trying to do some catering programs. If you're having any
46:17
Speaker 1: kind of family over, if you can order dinner for four's,
46:20
Speaker 1: I think that's very very important. I think bars should
46:23
Speaker 1: start selling deconstructed cocktails. You know some of us out
46:26
Speaker 1: to kill avatia rum and stuff at home. Sell me
46:29
Speaker 1: the cocktail without the booze. The government can't regulate that
46:32
Speaker 1: they are currently regulated. When there's booze in it, I'll
46:35
Speaker 1: put the booze in at home. So we have to
46:37
Speaker 1: be innovative as restaurateurs to offer packages to people that
46:41
Speaker 1: they can buy. But I really think, look, the second
46:45
Speaker 1: public building ever built in American Barry, was a bar.
46:48
Speaker 1: The first public building built in America was a church.
46:52
Speaker 1: Those bars were called public houses. State boarders were built
46:55
Speaker 1: were discussed in those bars. Our Constitution was originally discussed
46:59
Speaker 1: in these bars all across the country. So bars are
47:02
Speaker 1: in the fiber of America. Our first distiller was George Washington.
47:08
Speaker 1: So bars have a place in our society, that coveted
47:11
Speaker 1: third place. Barry, you go home, you got to work,
47:15
Speaker 1: and then there's that coveted third place. To some people,
47:18
Speaker 1: it might be a country club. To other people it's
47:20
Speaker 1: their local bar. But that third place is an important
47:23
Speaker 1: place to our society. It's where we all converge. It's
47:26
Speaker 1: the place of community. So they can't go away. And
47:31
Speaker 1: as people, we want to fight for this industry and
47:33
Speaker 1: protect it. And I'm asking the government to step up
47:36
Speaker 1: and look at some inventory credits to help get us
47:38
Speaker 1: over this hump. Quite interesting. Thanks John for being so
47:42
Speaker 1: generous with your time. If you enjoy this conversation, well
47:46
Speaker 1: be sure and check out any of the previous three
47:48
Speaker 1: D plus prior ones we've had over the past six years.
47:52
Speaker 1: You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast, Overcast, Stitcher,
47:58
Speaker 1: wherever your final podcasts sold. We love your comments, feedback
48:02
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48:06
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. Give us a review on Apple iTunes.
48:10
Speaker 1: You can check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot
48:14
Speaker 1: com Slash Opinion, Follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts.
48:17
Speaker 1: Sign up for my daily reads at ridhlts dot com.
48:21
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I did not thank my
48:23
Speaker 1: crack staff who helps us put together this conversation every week.
48:27
Speaker 1: Tim Harrow is my audio engineer. Michael Boyle is my producer.
48:33
Speaker 1: Michael bat Nick is my researcher. Batica val Bron is
48:37
Speaker 1: our project manager. I'm Barry Hults. You've been listening to
48:41
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.