ASPEN COLO. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Those were the main themes for chefs and restaurateurs who attended the trade seminars at this year’s Food & Wine Magazine Classic, held here earlier this summer. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
In a series of lively panel discussions moderated by award-winning television host and media consultant Steve Dolinsky, successful entrepreneurs from the foodservice industry and elsewhere shared the personal histories that had taken them on unexpected paths to innovation. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“Our trade program is really about information and business insights, but also we want to be entertaining,” said Curtis Wilson, vice president and general manager of the Restaurant Industries Group of American Express, which sponsors the seminars, now in their tenth year. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“The most dangerous man is the one with nothing left to lose,” said David Chang, chef-owner of the Momofuku restaurants in New York City and winner of this year’s prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for the Best Chef in New York. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
He was on a panel titled “The masters: How I became me” with fellow New York celebrity chefs Marcus Samuelsson and Bobby Flay and Boston chef Barbara Lynch. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Chang explained that once his business was failing, he had the freedom to do what he wanted. You have to take risks, he said later, when the topic of finding business partners came up. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“Sometimes it’s going to work; sometimes it’s going to bite you in the ass,” he said. “The history of Momofuku has been a progression of accidents.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Even his hottest restaurant, the tiny Momofuku Ko, had a rough start as Chang envisioned it as a place with no servers, “which was a complete failure,” he said. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Similarly, fashion designer Marc Ecko said he started out so naïve that he had a high tolerance for pain and wasn’t afraid of risk. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
He was on a panel titled “Taking it to the next level: How I grew my brand,” with Tom Colicchio of the New York-based Craft restaurants, who also is head judge of Bravo TV’s reality show “Top Chef,” Roy Yamaguchi of the Roy’s restaurant chain and wine merchant Joshua Wesson of Best Cellars. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Ecko dismissed the conventional wisdom of the supreme importance of location. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“A good idea will succeed,” he said. “You don’t need to analyze the location to death.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Colicchio said he took a page out of the clothing designers’ book when expanding his Craft restaurants, which include high-end Craft and Craftsteak as well as more casual Craftbar and the ’wichcraft sandwich shops. He said, like many designers, he has tried to offer the same brand at different price points. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Wesson also went to the clothing world for inspiration. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“I thought of [Best Cellars] as The Gap of wine,” he said. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
He initially capped the prices at $10 per bottle and categorized the wines by taste, thus changing wine-buying decisions “from an essay question to multiple choice,” he said, meaning that even people who didn’t know anything about wine could still shop at his store. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
The importance of finding good partners was emphasized. Yamaguchi, who teamed up with Outback Steakhouse to expand his chain, said his original business partnerships were based simply on handshakes. He said drawing up legal documents is a good idea, but finding a good partner is more important than paperwork because legal wranglings can tie up a business and ultimately render the paper useless anyway. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
A panel titled “Customers are always opinionated: Controlling your brand in a digital age” featured
The fourth panelist, Chuck Porter, chairman of advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, said that although the Internet in general and blogs in particular make it harder to control a brand’s overall image, online media sources aren’t given much credence by the public. He said that point had been driven home to politically active Web surfers, who have read falsehoods about their favorite candidates and causes on blogs. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Dufresne agreed, noting that print media can “sometimes trump the quality of what’s happening in a restaurant,” and articles in major print magazines and newspapers can really drive traffic at restaurants. He said he hasn’t seen that from mentions of his restaurant, WD-50 in New York, from any sources on the Internet. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Symon, who runs Lola and Lolita restaurants in Cleveland, said that the Internet can be a useful marketing tool, noting that his website gets 5,000 to 7,000 hits a day. But he expressed annoyance at bloggers, who often have an “uneducated opinion that they send out to the masses.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Symon, who won a recent television contest to be the next “Iron Chef,” said he finally learned not to read blog comments about him. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“I work 14 hours, go home and read comments that I’m fat, bald and goofy,” he said. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
He also asked Leventhal if he realized the negative effect of being put on eater.com’s “Deathwatch,” which is that blog’s way of predicting that a restaurant will close. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Many restaurateurs and publicists in New York, where
Leventhal said his responsibility was not to restaurants but to readers. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“We want to entertain and inform,” he said, but he added that he happily runs rebuttals from restaurateurs explaining why they shouldn’t be on “Deathwatch.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Porter pointed out that all new media start out without credibility, including radio and television. But if eater.com’s reporting proves credible, “people will come to rely on it,” he said. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
But he added: “I think it will be a long time before anything online will have the credibility of the other media.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
The trade program also included a wine seminar and a chance for attendees to practice a three-minute television spot under the supervision of Dolinsky, Symon and “Top Chef” season two winner Ilan Hall. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
The final panel discussion was among New York-based restaurateur Danny Meyer; chain restaurant veteran Dick Rivera, who currently is chief executive of Rubicon Enterprises; Julia Stewart, head of DineEquity, which owns IHOP and Applebee’s; and celebrity chef and restaurateur Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Mass. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
They were supposed to make five-year forecasts of market expectations for the audience. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“I think a quarter out at a time,” Rivera said. “Maybe a year out.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Stewart, whose IHOP is 100-percent franchised and who hopes to make Applebee’s entirely franchised as well, said she works on five-year plans to help franchisees anticipate what investments they will have to make. But she also revealed that she was working on forming a purchasing co-op between her two brands. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
She asked Meyer if he achieved benefits by combining purchases among his 12 single-concept restaurants, and he said that they were starting to by making group purchasing among his restaurants available. In fact, he said, thanks to those measures, food costs this year have been better than last year, despite the sharp jump in prices nationwide. He added that independents and chains were now borrowing from each other, with food being borrowed from the indies, which are inspired by chains’ systems. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Tsai added: “The dirtier, smaller restaurants sometimes have the best ideas.” —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Rivera criticized chains for tending to wait and see as trends ranging from consumer activism to a desire for better food quality overtake them. He said chains should move proactively to get ahead of trends instead. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
Hans Lindh, vice president for the restaurant industry for American Express, said his company sponsored this and other programs to create forums for open exchange. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.
“It’s a notion that all boats rise,” with a rising tide, he said, noting that AMEX and the restaurant industry have a similar agenda in that they both want customers to spend more, as opposed to credit cards, which are focused on lending more. —Break the rules, take risks and don’t worry too much about what they say about you on the Internet.