#83: The restaurant that made me
Extremely timely and universal business lessons from childhood
I rarely open up about this part of my life, not because I am ashamed or anything. Quite the opposite, actually. Despite how influential this story was to my upbringing, I never really thought it is mine to tell. It’s my family’s. This isn’t about our legacy, or what remains of it. This is solely about the hard earned lessons I’ve learned—and I’m still learning, unfortunately—despite being continents away.
I grew up in a restaurant—the first 16 years of my life, to be exact. My family owns this decades-old, chicken-and-ribs restaurant built by my late grandfather, a true entrepreneur, born and bred entrepreneur. He built a lot of things but this was the business that was handed to us. Growing up, it gave us everything: food, shelter, source of income, funds for the future. There’s a lot to love about the way we grew up. The restaurant was a huge part of that.
Today, as it stands, it has seen better days. It will still see better days, if only it’ll change and learn from its mistakes. That is not up to me, and that’s not what I’m writing this for.
I’m writing this because it is not everyday that you get first-hand knowledge of how the real world works, especially on the business side. You can read a lot of business books as I have. You can watch films and TV shows1 and pretend to harness lessons out of it (I see you, Burnt and Chef). You can even work for companies solving those same problems you’re curious about. I’ve done most of those, but nothing—and I mean nothing—beats being in it, being exposed to all of it especially at such a young age. The most painful lessons are the ones you are forced to learn, over and over again. They are particularly problematic when it involves your personal life. As far as skin-in-the-game is concerned, this is one I’ve been feeling like I was just born to have and to be a part of. Whether I like it or not, I am a part of that legacy. It lives inside me. Regardless how far I am from it, geographically, it will always be a part of me, as I am of it.
I can think of worst ways to honor that than by writing about the lessons it is vehemently teaching me.
If the product is not done right, nothing else matters. People come to our restaurant not because it had the best location nor ambiance. It was always because of the food. The food was the business’s unfair advantage. The competition can have a lot of those unfair advantages, as they should: better funding, loftier business goals, infinite resources and maybe even cultural and political power but they don’t have our chicken recipe. They don’t have our chicken recipe. You have no idea how prideful this makes me feel just by writing it.
Speaking of competition: It’s true. If the product is done right, people will pay a premium. It is also true that it’ll only be a matter of time until competition shows up. When that happens, everything will change. Nobody said that business is a fair game, and the restaurant business is not an exemption. The market is brutal. There’s a lot of loose ends. The retention and turnover is insane. The kitchen is not the place for the weak, and worst of all, it is a thankless job. To stay in this business, you have to love hospitality beyond anything else. You have to love every bits of it beyond your life.
The restaurant business is pure emotional labor. Everyone is the stakeholder: your customers, your employees, you as the business owner, your vendors. Hell, in certain cases, even the local government can be a part of it. Everything about the community you live in and planted your business on affects you, in one way or the other. Unlike a lot of other businesses, this is tied directly to the culture. And as I am sure a lot of people can agree: culture is constantly evolving. It changes everyday, for every generation. Even if you do everything right, in one swift change, the market can shift and it can be merciless, especially in developing nations where inflation is constant. There’s this undying fear of looking over your shoulder constantly for something to go wrong—and something will always go wrong. You have to be more than prepared for it. Actually, no matter how much preparation you make, the simple truth is that it will never be enough. If you’re looking at this as solely a place to make money, there are other, more pleasant ways to do so.
Effective and empathetic managers are great. Skilled contributors with real ownership is better. Restaurants should be ran by people who know how to cook. They don’t have to do the cooking itself, but if shit hits the fan, the owners should know how to take over the kitchen, just like a soldier in a battlefield. In a perfect world, every ingredient, dish and recipe should come from the owner or founder’s own creation. Otherwise, it will remain to be an extremely vulnerable spot for everyone involved. No one should know your product better than you. It is true in the restaurant business as it is in software. You do not want to outsource the creative thinking that is the soul of your business. You can teach others how to do it, how to scale it, how to make more of it. But at the end of the day, you are the creative. Everything that is important in the survival of the business begins and ends with you, for as long as you sit as the owner/operator.
Product may be king, but it is not enough. Relationships and networks can make or break your business. Who you surround yourself with is everything. People can either hurt you, or help you but rarely is there an in-between, in this business. Of course, it works the opposite: it is very much applicable to you as an owner as well. You can either provide value, or a liability, to your customers, vendors and employees. If there’s even an ounce of doubt of where you are, it is probably worth looking into. Otherwise, it’ll be terribly difficult to safeguard the business’s future—and yours by extension. Invest in the right type of relationships. For what it’s worth, it’s almost a guarantee it’ll pay off tenfold, now and into the near future.
Innovation can be tricky but status quo is an illusion. I suppose this is true for every business. Once you start acquiring customers, you’d want to keep them happy but to grow, you have to attract new ones. In the restaurant business, that is not an easy feat, especially in today’s times. People’s tastes are evolving but in a lot of ways, they stay the same, which is why personally for me, it is worth investing in the classics. The hard part about that is to get a solid hit of a product, you have to do it better than anyone in your town. This is where discipline and craftsmanship and passion can really, really make a huge difference.
Customers can tell, especially when it’s lacking significantly in those areas. This really should explain why so many restaurants die even before they get the chance to pivot. There’s not enough second, or third chances given for everybody. You would have to wonder, if this is the rule and this is just the nature of how the free market works: how can any mom-and-pop shop stand a chance? How can anyone who is not a big corporate ever stand a chance?
There’s a reason it is hard. It will always be hard.
Creative thinking and disruption alone is not enough when you are bleeding capital. You need as much stamina as you can humanly muster in order to thrive in this industry. It is infamous for its ever-growing graveyard, not too dissimilar from tech startups.
It’s a comforting thought to work on, this idea that it isn’t really about you, assuming you are legitimately good. It’s not even about your idea or your product. It’s about this how this world works, and how much it relentlessly tests us, and anyone who feels like they have something to contribute. There’s an infinite layers of bureaucracy2 and problems you have to comb through just to get a shot at success. They make you work for it.
I’ve seen firsthand just how rewarding it is to come to the other side, and see the fruits of your labor, of everyone’s labor. When a business supports lives, and makes them better, it’s a huge win. When it transcends a generation though and leaves a mark to the community and the people it serves, that is the stuff of legends.
Thank you for reading working title,
Nikki
The most influential for me on this department would have to be The Mind of a Chef, narrated by Anthony Bourdain. Most recently, I’ve grown to love The Bear. The problems they were facing as shop were too close to home for me.
Excuse my language - *bullshit