Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Cooking Up Community Connection with Tim and Lara Boyd of Mustard Seed Bistro
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Food does more than just tantalize your taste buds—it can also weave communities together and ignite change. In this episode, host Donna DiMaggio Berger is joined by Tim and Lara Boyd from Mustard Seed Bistro in Plantation to explore how simple community cookouts can spark vital conversations and foster collaboration. They discuss how providing refreshments at gatherings like board and membership meetings often cultivates a more positive atmosphere.
Many community associations feature amenities such as restaurants, cafes, breakfast bars, and barbecue stations near pools. Even in communities without these services, dining out remains a cherished social activity. Tim and Lara share insights from their experiences in the restaurant industry, discussing how they balance family life with business demands and address post-COVID challenges reshaping the dining scene. From adapting lunch routines to managing increased expenses, they delve into the strategies that keep their restaurant thriving. Whether you're a culinary enthusiast or a business professional, this episode promises a hearty dose of inspiration for your next community or corporate gathering.
Conversation highlights include:
- What inspired Tim and Lara to open their first restaurant
- Challenges in dealing with outside partners and finicky customers
- Where they draw culinary inspiration
- Challenges in running a restaurant together as a couple
- How Covid changed the restaurant industry
- Yelp and other reviews
- Strategies for keeping talent
- Sustainability practices
BONUS: Find out if you have what it takes to open your own restaurant!
Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Berger and this is Take it to the Board where we speak condo and HOA. What does great food have to do with community associations? Well, food can be a conduit for communication, and a running theme for the last three years on this podcast is that healthy communities are the result of a lot of communication and cooperation. In many community associations, the common amenities include restaurants, cafes, breakfast bars, barbecue stations near the pool and other food services. I have personally witnessed that the board and membership meetings where food and beverages are provided are often much happier gatherings. In fact, in one instance, a client of mine finally passed a much-needed document rewrite project after numerous failed attempts, by having a cookout. They left that cookout with half the votes they needed to get the document rewrite passed. Even if your community does not have any food service, everyone enjoys a nice meal out at a restaurant. So I have a dynamic duo with us today to talk about their wildly popular restaurant, the Mustard Seed Bistro in Plantation Florida, and give us some insight into the restaurant industry.
Speaker 1My guests today are Tim and Lara Boyd. Tim grew up in California and started working at restaurants as a high school job. He enjoyed the craziness of it and went on to culinary school in San Francisco, where he gained much of his experience at top-notch restaurants, working under famous chefs. He then worked on a yacht where he cooked for high-profile people and celebrities. He eventually decided to settle in Florida to be close to his brother and was fortunate to meet Lara in 1999 when she was working next door to a restaurant on Las Olas where he was the chef. Lara's experience was in the spa and salon industry, where customer service was her specialty. She is also an excellent baker, by the way. I can personally attest to that after eating way too many of her specialty cupcakes at the restaurant.
Speaker 1Tim and Laura were married in 2002, and they somehow find the time to run a busy restaurant and have a large family. We're going to figure out how they do that. So, laura and Tim, welcome to Take it to the Board. Hi, donna, thank you for having us so happy to have you guys. I mentioned in the intro a little bit about how you both met and got into the restaurant industry, but, tim, can you give a little more depth to what you experienced working your way up in the industry and, if you feel free, to name drop some of the famous chefs you worked with. Just kidding, I'm just kidding, but how did you work your way up and what?
Speaker 3does that look like? It's kind of like in this in the restaurant business you, you start off just as a lower end cook, let's say, and it takes time to get to a certain degree of skill level. So you can go from restaurant to restaurant, you know, put a couple of years in one, couple of years in another and you can start learning the players in the restaurant business there's not a lot of players, there's only a few like top-notch chefs in each city. So once you learn who's the mover and shakers, you can kind of gravitate towards when you're younger, you know, and you can go work under some of the best chefs doing it that way. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1It seems like a real specific culture, people who work in the restaurant industry. It seems like, yeah, you know, look, I watched the Bear. I don't know if you know that show that. You know that's my hometown, but there's all the frenetic activity in the restaurant. Do you watch that show, the Bear? Okay, so I got to ask you first of all, is it, is it true to life?
Speaker 3Is it close to real life as a show about the culinary world? So far, Okay.
Speaker 1So given what I've seen as an outsider, it seems crazy, but it seems like the people doing it love it. Has that been your experience?
Speaker 3Yes, it is a bunch of misfits back there, just like the show, but they all come together and they kind of sing this kind of music back there which to the normal person not so much, you know, to the normal person it seems like misfits and chaotic and all that. So the people back there like they thrive on that. So it's a different type of culture. Not saying it's good or bad, I would say lean towards bad. But that's how it is.
Speaker 1You know, it's just the way it is, and you've been in so many different restaurants. Have you found that to be consistently the culture of just high energy?
Speaker 3For the last 20, 25 years we've had our own restaurant. So I tried to get away from that. I kind of just went underground a little bit and just decided to just do food not put my name out there and just kind of do it with food on its own, because I didn't want all that chaos. I didn't want all that chaos and so for quite a few years I got away with it. And then once people start to figure out that you do nice food, it can turn back into that and you have to deal with that.
Speaker 2It's so funny. You know, in the kitchen and I don't know if I told you this, donna they have a TV in the kitchen and they play the show the Bear, and Tim loves it. Everybody asks me do you love it, do you watch the show? I'm like, no, it's my life, it's real life. I don't want to watch that Like. I want to watch something that's not my life, but it's funny.
Speaker 2A couple of years ago there was a show on I think it's still on Netflix and David Chang, who you know owns Momofuku and all those restaurants I've never heard it said so perfectly. But he said I fell in love with the restaurant business because he had been to school and he's an educated man. And he said I walk in this kitchen and these are people who, who really, for the most part, can't do life, like they really are a mess, he said and you put them in a kitchen and all of a sudden there's magic, like all of a sudden, these people who can't figure out how to get from A to B are making masterpieces and it just flows. And you it's. Nobody understands being in a professional kitchen. You wouldn't get it unless you go back there. And it's like I mean every it's. It's like a symphony of things just go, go, go, go, go, go go. And it's crazy.
Speaker 1I've never heard it put that way, but that makes so much sense, Especially, by the way, I don't watch the show suits. I didn't watch LA law back in the day, but Suits, I'm like. No, I live that I don't want to watch Suits. Everyone's like do you watch Suits?
Speaker 2Right, we binged the Lincoln lawyer last night Like that's for us. We're like, oh, that's so cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, you always want to see how another industry, you know, manages all the craziness, but you're a happy couple.
Speaker 3So I'm a little bit more like passive, I would say. But when it comes to the kitchen, that's my area and I'm kind of strong in that area. So, being a strong woman that she is, she sometimes tries to get into my area of expertise and we'll have our fights over that and I appreciate that she tries. She sometimes tries to get into my area of expertise and we'll have our fights over that and I appreciate that she tries. But you know, there's certain things that maybe I'm a little better at, you know. So we just have to, laura, okay.
Speaker 1Rebuttal, please Rebuttal.
Speaker 2You just sugar-coated that Like you can't even imagine. So front of the house and back of the house are naturally opposing sides. You'd like it to be one, but it's never so. Front of the house and back of the house are naturally opposing sides. You'd like it to be one, but it's never one. Front of the house is they're always in dispute. So I'm front of the house, he's back of the house.
Speaker 2Everybody who works for us over the years will tell us it is. I mean, it gets great Like we are screaming and yelling and whoever sits at the bar gets a front row seat to sometimes hearing us screaming and yelling. And then the shift is over and it's like okay, I love you, I'm going to get the kids. Okay, bye, I'll see you later. And it's like it never happened. But it's that heat of the moment you're waiting on your food, or this isn't coming out, or this, you know, whatever it is. We're representing the guest, he's back there representing the kitchen and it it's always going to be at odds. We have somehow found a way, I think. Naturally, maybe I'm a little more combative than he is, but he does shut me down. He says he, he, yeah, listen, it works, whatever it works.
Speaker 1But I mentioned in the intro, laura, that you were doing customer service in spas and salons, so was it difficult to then encounter the unique challenges presented by restaurant customers? I've got to imagine there's a big difference between somebody coming into a spa to get a massage versus somebody coming to a restaurant, or maybe not. I mean, what have been the different challenges?
Changing Expectations in the Restaurant Industry
Speaker 2with the customer. I think people are the same. I think inevitably they're the same, and in both arenas you are serving people. I mean hospitality. There's service and there's hospitality, and one is just kind of the A, bs and Cs of it. You order something, I bring you your drink, I bring you your food, and that's it. And hospitality is I make you feel at home, I make you feel like we're so excited that you came in and we're so happy you're here and you've come into my home and now I'm serving you and it's completely different and in a spa atmosphere, if you do it right, it's doing the same thing. People have changed throughout the years. I blame Starbucks, but no, no, not really.
Speaker 3COVID, covid, well, covid made a big difference.
Speaker 2But once you get into when everything started to change, where you can eat your entire meal and send it back, or you can, in stores, do the same thing. You can wear an outfit 12 times and return it, and we'll take it back. You can can in in stores, do the same thing. You can wear an outfit 12 times and return it, and we'll take it back. You can eat half of your food from Publix and Publix will take it back. We've we've kind of developed this culture and it and it pours into restaurants also, you know where. Oh, you didn't love every bit of it here. We're going to give you all your money back and a gift card, you know. So in that sense, those kinds of things have changed a little bit.
Speaker 1So you're saying maybe the expectations have become a little unrealistic.
Speaker 2I would say yes. I would say big corporate companies cultivated a I don't know how to say the customer's always right the customer's right Exactly it's.
Speaker 2It's if you're not happy, you're right. We'll give you everything to make it right. And so that has changed since I was in the spa business. But I love I genuinely love people. I genuinely love to talk to people. I like to serve people. If you came into my house, it would be the same thing. I immediately pop up what can I get for you, what can I do for you? It's what made me good in the spa business, because there was a different level of, I would say, customer service, or I tended to our guests a little bit more than an average spot and I think we did well because of it. But it transferred well into the restaurant business, because that's what I like doing that.
Speaker 1So I've been a customer of yours for years. Okay, back with Milk and Honey, and then when you had Mustard Seed in Cooper City city and then this one. And you're right, the experience has been and I want to talk about this a little later but I always felt like it had a really nice homey feel. Okay, it just felt like you were in really, you know, not so much even a restaurant, but just like your friend's house. That was like a gourmet cook. It just had that great feeling. Tim, I want to ask you when did you open your first restaurant? What year was that?
Speaker 2I think Lily was. I would say 2004 or 5.
Speaker 32004, 2005.
Speaker 1How did you know you were ready to open your own restaurant?
Speaker 3When I used to work in these nice restaurants, I used to always like talk to myself, basically, and I'd always tell myself you're going to own your own restaurant, you're going to get your own restaurant.
Speaker 3And everyone around me kind of knew me that I was going to have my own restaurant. You know, getting the money for a restaurant, that was a different story, you know. That was in my head. And then an opportunity came up and I jumped at it and it was uh, I'm glad I did. It turned out to be great, and so that was the start of it.
Speaker 2We've been very fortunate in the sense of, especially when we first started. It was, like you know, to start a restaurant from the ground up you to do the buildup, put in the grease trap and the hood system and all of that. The electrical and the plumbing is a is a huge expense right off the bat, before you even think about ovens and decorate. You know all. So I ran a charm school and the restaurant next door opened up. I am the gloom and doom. Everything's going to be bad, everything's going to fail. You know, and he has this optimism that he just really what did you call it Like delusional confidence? I think is something to that effect, where it's just going to be great. It just is. And so when this restaurant came about, it had everything in it. We had to redecorate and buy tables and chairs, but for the most part the stuff that you really needed that cost the most was there, and it was right next to the charm school and it just seemed like the perfect opportunity. One could feed the other.
Speaker 1No pun intended, you've had several restaurants where you've had outside partners who were not necessarily, you know, knowledgeable in the restaurant industry. Are there challenges associated with having outside partners who really don't live and breathe restaurants?
Speaker 3I would say, looking back on it, absolutely. You know there's such a I don don't know the workload needs to be divided up if you're just a passive investor or whatever or you're going to be part of the restaurant. You know there's two different types, the um. You need to clearly identify what each party is going to be responsible for. You know, and so we had a couple partners that we didn't define those very well and so a lot of the work fell on the two of us and we were equal partners, you know, financially and all that kind of stuff and great people and all that kind of stuff, but they didn't understand the restaurant business and that made it very difficult, you know. So over the course of time, you know, we just had to go our separate ways.
Speaker 1My father-in-law was in the restaurant business, not as a chef but front of the house and I remember always hearing him say that you know you had no holidays. It was so much time away from your family. It's a rough business.
Speaker 3Yeah, we just, I would say, within the last three years we've closed an extra day at the restaurant so that we can actually have two days off in a row. You know, and my dream was always to have a restaurant where I had a life and all that. And yeah, you get it for a little pockets of time and then things change and then you might get it for a couple of years and then it switches back to where you're working like crazy, you know. So you have these little pockets where it's nice, these other pockets where it's just, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah, Our kids like. The idea was maybe your kids want to go into the field. Our children do not want any part of this away.
Speaker 2It's a lot of work and it is. You can step away for a minute. I micromanage, so I am not able to step away. Tim is better at delegating than I am, so he'll step away. But then things start to fall. Customers start to go oh, it's not the same, oh, is Tim back there? You can tell Tim's not back there and then it is. It's a full-time job and I will have lots of people ask me my advice on opening something and I have a partner and I say no. No, I would say a hundred percent. No, I'm partners If you can fund it yourself, which really, other than the first time we really could, we had the money to do it ourselves. Every time we just thought you know. The second time it was friends of ours and he was really into food and wine and kept hinting about it and we said, well, maybe you know if you want to be a part of it, and that unfortunately ended the friendship. But the first one was with family and that was not good either.
Speaker 1Oh, family. We've talked about that on this podcast before. Family businesses are tough too. But you know, I can feel. When I go into a restaurant I feel bad sometimes because that a new restaurant, so many of them fail, right, and somebody, this was somebody's dream, they put so much money into it, you can see it, and yet they're not there. And so there's employees there and you can kind of tell that there's a lot of disorganization. It's just not. It's just not coming together the way I think the owners would have wanted it to come together. I really think you can tell the difference. Like you said, when you've got Tim in the back of the house, you in the front of the house, I think customers can tell the difference.
Creative Menu Planning and Culinary Inspiration
Speaker 3Oh yeah, they can definitely tell. In the like I explained is, the restaurant has its own heartbeat. You can tell when you come in here that there's just something different. You know, and so it might be different. The food might just be a little bit better. The services on top of you, they're doing a great job and it's just different. You know and you can. People notice that nowadays they are expecting something a little bit better, and so I want to talk about the food right Cause I started out.
Speaker 1By the way, I'm Italian, so you know food is somewhat on the mind constantly. But how did you Tim? How do you decide on the menu? Okay, and where do you draw your culinary inspiration?
Speaker 3I would say yeah.
Speaker 1Yes, yes, lauren's pointing at herself for the source of the culinary inspiration.
Speaker 3Explain Over the years that I've been working in restaurants I've kind of picked up a few things that I know that are tried and true and so I can put a little spin on it and, you know, basically call it my own. But as time has gone on I pay more attention to what the guests want and not so much what I want. So if I hear him talking about something over here I might do that with my twist, but I don't try to do as many crazy things that I used to do. You know, people are not that receptive to that in today's in my at least, in this restaurant. So I've turned it back a little bit, but do it very well to accommodate more people. We've broken him.
Speaker 2We have, I did, we did. You know it's funny. Every morning he comes in and I've made a list of all the specials I think he should make today and he says, OK, that's a good idea and doesn't make one of those specials for the record. But he started out when we first started out. Do you remember like if somebody wanted dressing on the side, you could not have dressing on this, like he was. You were so strict with your rules.
Speaker 1Oh, tim, that's like the movie big night, where they come in and they order the pasta and then they order another carb. I'm sure you've seen that movie too. Oh, and sounds like the chef from big night when he went crazy. I think it was. Uh, what's Tony Shalhoub? I think was the actor in that.
Speaker 3Yes, yeah, I, I was trained where the kitchen was the final say and that was it. And over the course of time it's not real. That's not reality anymore. People want things on the side, they want to change things and do all these things that they wouldn't do in the past. I guess I might be getting older and wiser, I don't know. But I think chefs good chefs. They have an idea of how they want to do things and it works. So it's know. But you know, I, I think chefs one good chefs. They have an idea of how they want to do things and it works. So it's a little like it's almost a slap in the face when people change things that you do.
Speaker 1You know, like I don't trust you and so you know my, my husband Michael, who you you definitely know, laura, and I don't know Tim. You may as well. He's probably he's going to be chuckling when he hears this because he's going to go. That's you, donna? Asking for extra avocado, or can you put the sauce on the fly? It is, but can you give us some tips? Okay, so this is a big thing. I'll go out and he'll go. You don't know how to order. You just don't know how to order in this restaurant. You're ordering fish on Wednesday. I mean, is there truth to that? Are there things when you go into a certain restaurant where you go this? No, you don't order steak at this kind of restaurant, or you order fish between you know these on these days?
Speaker 3I don't. When you come into a restaurant you can kind of tell their vibe it's. Some places are steakhouses and you kind of gravitate towards going to a to a steak. Some of them are eclectic, where maybe the steak is like the secondary thing. You know where they're putting more effort on appetizers. So all restaurants are different.
Speaker 3You know we've tried to do like the freshest fish we can do in which we sell a lot, a lot of fish here. So I kind of assume people trust us because fish is a scary thing. So we sell a lot of fish and I say steaks here are secondary. They're great steaks. I buy the best so I don't really have to put much into it. It's like good quality stuff. And I also buy the best because I don't like guests saying something's wrong with the steak. It wasn't quality or anything. You never would hear that in this restaurant that the quality was bad or any of that. So that takes a lot of the guessing out of it for disputes at a certain point, because you get them all the time. Whether you're right or wrong, people have disputes and I can kind of stand on that. We have these products that are top of the line.
Speaker 1I can tell you that fish is scary, especially for the home cook like me.
Speaker 3Chances are it.
Speaker 1Well, that's true.
Speaker 2We. I mean yeah, but we have 80 billion spices back there. I mean it's. You have so many more things accessible to you that an average cook doesn't have.
Speaker 2But I'll tell you, I feel like, from the front of the house standpoint, ordering is different now and those things we're very used to. I'll often go to a table and get ready to take their order and they'll say I'm going to be really difficult and my idea of difficult and your idea of difficult are two very different things. No, there's very few difficult people anymore, because we're very used to people wanting this on the side or this or this and it's OK, it's not, it's really not a bad thing anymore. You're so used to it that every, every computer system you have has all they have all the different modifications in there for the kitchen. It only gets hard when you have a large party that wants every. Every item is has 12 substitutions on it. But I would say, for the most part you're yeah, depending on the restaurant. But you want to go to a good restaurant and and you do want to go to a restaurant that's fairly busy because you know they're turning their product quickly.
Speaker 3I was always taught, like if you had a salad and you ate the salad and there was nothing left on the plate like no dressing or anything, that would be that it was done perfectly OK. Now everybody's dressing on the side, that was like a way to judge yourself whether you did the correct amount of seasoning and all this and that's how you judged it. Now it's on the side, so it kind of takes away from the creativity side that you've mastered. Something Sounds pretty small a salad, but there's a lot of little salads going on. And so the guests now I think they just like more control. So control thing.
Speaker 1Social media is definitely playing a role in all of this. Have you ever had a customer ask if you use GMO ingredients or really dig into like? Is the salmon wild or farm raised?
Speaker 2We get a lot of. We get a lot of. Is it wild? Where's the salmon from? How did it? We don't get a lot of GMO. We do get a lot of. Is it farm? Is it wild? And it's funny because people don't want wild salmon you think you want wild salmon. You asked for wild salmon years ago. We only served wild salmon and people would say it was too fishy. Wild salmon is fishy. It's not the same. So we don't do farm. Farm is gross. But they have other techniques. They have other ways of having the fish where it's in the ocean. But it's in nets, but it's not. You know, there's, there's fresh water moving in and out. So I feel like that's kind of more of what they're using?
Speaker 1Do you use a lot of local vendors for the to source your products?
Speaker 3I sell a lot of Snapper and Grouper. That all depends on what boats that have gone out. You know like we went down to the Keys one time and we wanted to have fish and you couldn't even get any fish down in the Keys because all the stuff is caught and shipped all over the world. So we try to get you know, we get, like I do at least little memos what fish came in, local fish and I'll try to purchase from that lot of fish.
Speaker 2He's pretty particular because I'll say, you know, I kind of bored with the snapper and he lets me know quickly that this is what I can get in. We'll get something in and immediately he'll send it back. He's like no, I don't like it, I don't like the color of the tuna. I don't like this, so he's on top of it we appreciate that.
Farm-to-Table and Restaurant Dynamics
Speaker 1Tim, we appreciate your pickiness on these issues. Can you explain what farm-to-table really means? I think that term sometimes gets misused I think it's um local like.
Speaker 3So you're in the. It could be here in plantation, but you're sourcing, like, your tomatoes within. I think it's a hundred miles, I think it's the I'm not sure what the distance is, but it's um, so you source your tomatoes from there. You get your um herbs from the herb guy. That's like a mile away, and it's all sourced in a small vicinity and that's how I believe it came to be. So your cattle I mean there's cattle that are grown here and then shipped up north and then brought back, which I think defeats the whole purpose, and there's a lot of games that go on.
Speaker 1So does that mean if I'm dining in a Chicago restaurant in December, I should not be getting strawberries, because there's a lot of games that go on? So does that mean if I'm dining in a chicago restaurant in december, I should not be getting strawberries because there's no strawberries in december?
Speaker 3right. Yeah, that's what makes like the, the food of france and all those places, like it's so much better because it's just seasonal, it's strictly seasonal. Here you're, you can get asparagus year round, you can get you know everything year-round. So, quality wise, it's not the same. It's not the same as just having one growing season.
Speaker 2You get this and that's it when I think farm to table it's. You're not going through the purveyors, it's going right from the farm right to the restaurant. You're not dealing with all your different people that do your deliveries. We had a doctor that came in one time, Dr Strain. Dr Strain and he walked into uh, we had, it was mustard seed in Cooper city and he had this box of tomatoes and he's like here's the chef here and I said no, he's not here, he goes here, I'll leave him this.
Speaker 2Now I don't know who this guy is and I bring it back to Tim, Cause he was there and, um, I said some guy just dropped off these. Now, I'm the type of person you couldn't pay me enough to eat one of those tomatoes. I don't know who this guy is. I don't know what he's giving me, Like there's no way. So Tim, of course, pops one in his mouth like nothing, and he's like this is the most delicious. I mean, I think we had to like run after the guy and he ended up being an orthopedic surgeon who was very, very, very successful in his craft of, you know, being a doctor but love to tinker with stuff, and he had this beautiful farm in the back of his house and he would grow. I've never in my life tasted a tomato like he would. I mean, it was unbelievable, but those things are hard to get, he. I think he stopped doing that, I was going to say thank God.
Speaker 1Thank God, tim was a little more adventuresome than you. Get rid of these. I'm not eating this. Yeah, you know, I've noticed when I go out to dinner a lot, or lunch, you know, the people I'm with will ask the waiter or waitress what do you recommend, what do you like? Is that a reliable? I mean because I've actually said to people how Is that a reliable? I mean because I've actually said to people how do you know their taste or anything like your taste. That's like me saying what do you think I should wear today? I mean, I don't know how you feel about that, but I'm always a little. I always find that question to be a little not as useful as you might think, because how do you know that the person you're talking to has similar tastes in terms of food.
Speaker 3I believe if you ask that question, you're going to get one of the most expensive items. I believe that I believe waiters push the highest, most expensive thing, whether it's the best or not, and that bothers me as a chef. Give them what's your favorite on the menu. If you're a waiter, someone asks you something, what's your favorite, tell them your favorite. This is what I think is not the most expensive.
Speaker 2So I'll tell you from a server standpoint that it's it. I hate to say that the question almost kind of doesn't annoy me. I and people ask it. Every other table asks me what do you recommend, what's your, what are you known for or what's your favorite on the menu? It is, it's like my favorite I eat. So my favorite is dessert. I would say everything on the menu and just go for dessert, like what I like to eat is so different and I will.
Speaker 2If it is not something that sells equally on the menu, we get rid of it. You also know it's. You can almost, when you've done it for long enough, you can almost look at the person and know what they're going to order. So you, you know you're like, well, you might. You know, maybe you'll like this or maybe you'll like this. I can go through every item and tell you what's good about this and what I don't love about this. But for the most part, if it doesn't sell equally, we get rid of it and it and it's a personal preference and I do not upsell at all.
Speaker 2In fact I feel bad.
Speaker 1I see Tim's point as well, but in my mind I just think it's impossible for somebody to recommend an item to you without knowing you, without knowing if you like beef or you like fish or you're okay with or you prefer chicken or veggies. I mean, I just don't even know, unless you say I like everything. What do you recommend? I think it's a hundred percent right. Yeah, difficult question to answer. Do you guys read your Yelp reviews and your other reviews? I do not.
Speaker 2Wait, so he doesn't, because he's just when he's not working.
Speaker 3I don't believe them when they're good. I don't believe when they're bad.
Speaker 2That's the healthiest perspective to have. We have Jordana who works with us. That is miss social media. I'm not a big social media person and if I get a bad review, I'm done. I'm done for two weeks. I don't want to get out of bed. I'm devastated. I'm so upset and even if it's a situation that I know, that is not at all how that happened. I was present in this situation. That's not what happened. I can't. It's too much for me. So she will answer the negative ones. If it's something she thinks that I need to know, then she'll let me know and then she'll tell me the good ones. And that is the little bubble that I live in listen, I'm there.
Speaker 1You know they even review lawyers, so we've got reviews out there too, and so I feel your pain. Okay, and it's probably good not to read them Right.
Speaker 2We laugh in the restaurant business. Karen and I were like we're going to start our podcast or we would like our own Yelp review. We would like to review guests that come in.
Speaker 1Well, I was going to ask that because, like, would you like to review some of the guests that come in? This is what this person did.
Speaker 2I would say 90% are amazing and you and you really genuinely make a connection with each of your guests. We love our customers that come in. We really do. There's probably a handful that are not regulars that will come in. You know there's always going to be somebody that's going to give you a hard time, but for the most part we're very fortunate that we have great people.
Speaker 1You do have regulars, you do.
Speaker 2I see them all the time. Oh, every day, yeah, every day. I guess that makes me a regular you are a regular absolutely.
Speaker 3I think it's hard now, for if a new restaurant opens up, it's a younger crowd that's going to go try it and it's social media driven. But once they go there one time they move on to the next thing, where we're fortunate enough to have people that continue to come over years, which makes it like a heartbeat. We have a heartbeat here, so I understand. For a new restaurant it's got to be terribly hard to open up right now.
Speaker 2But I feel like people want to be heard. There's something about social media and I'm not that sweet. Even when I post stuff on Instagram or Facebook, I never go back and look at the comments, and it's not that I don't want to. It doesn't even occur to me to go back, and that's why Jordana will look and see what people because sometimes people will ask questions that need an answer but I feel like more and more people want to be heard. They want to be validated.
Speaker 2I came in and I was upset about something and I need the world to tell me that I'm right, because on most of the I've read a few that the backlash was pretty harsh. But we have this one guy. He came in and, unfortunately, because we are known for not being greedy in the sense of there is not a wait for the restaurant. I could be a whole lot busier if I told everybody just to come in and there not a wait for the restaurant. I could be a whole lot busier if I told everybody just to come in and there was a wait. But your table, when you have a reservation, will be ready for you when you come in, so sometimes you can come in at six 30 and the restaurant looks empty. But what you don't realize is in the next 15 minutes every table is going to be full, or within the next half an hour. I can't give that table away.
Speaker 2So this guy came in and unfortunately we were full that evening. We couldn't seat him, but it looked like we had tables open. And I think I mean I read it so long ago and after he reposts it every couple months just for fun, I guess I don't know why, but he does just, and it bothers me so much because it happened so long ago and he was upset that we didn't give him a table. And I think, if memory serves me, he was upset because he had his kids with him and he thought that it had something to do with his children, but it didn't. We have toys for your kids when you come in, like that's not it, lara.
Speaker 1You need to resist reading going back. You know this is going to happen, but I will tell you. Listen, I, if I've ever had a negative experience, I don't post, I just don't go back. But when I post is when somebody's blown me away and I really want to draw attention to the food and and that particular restaurant. What do you guys think most customers focus on? Is it the food, the service, the ambience, all of it? Like what do you think their main?
Speaker 3focus is Food, the food. What do you think?
Speaker 1I don't know, though, but I think you're great food, but there's something terrible going, there's a bad smell in the restaurant or there's a table next door that's too boisterous. I can't hear, I can't speak, I don't know.
Speaker 2I'm not sure I will tell you that, of the ones I've read, um, very rarely are they criticizing the food. Usually, almost nine times out of 10, they're either upset because there weren't cupcakes when they came in. They're upset. A lot of times it's they didn't feel like they got treated the way they wanted to, and eight times out of 10, that way they wanted to. Is you misread? The situation we go about like? I think the guy with the kids was saying we were snooty now or something. I don't remember what it was, but it was like what? What are you talking about, people? The service is good. I think the service is great and I think when you're in a surrounding where you feel good, you feel the buzz, you're able to focus on how great the food is.
Speaker 3Well, I think the food and the service here are on equal terms. The service here is great, you know. The food's not above it, they're equal, whatever the number would be, If it's nine, eight, they're both eights, you know they're equal. So for that I think we're we're doing very well.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think when you have that balance between the service and the food, that's what makes a memorable restaurant, that's what makes for a restaurant that you want to keep going back to. I wanted to pick up on what you said at the outset, tim, about COVID, both of you. Covid changed the restaurant industry. We know it changed it during that time period. For sure, with the shutdowns we have seen since a lot of New York restaurants coming down to Florida because Florida had a more open COVID policy than New York did. For sure. Do you think any of those challenges that COVID presented have continued to this day or once? Covid was in the rear view mirror? Do you think that's behind you? Do you think those challenges?
Restaurant Challenges in Post-Covid Economy
Speaker 2continue. I can speak on that in the sense of what I see in the front of the house. Forget how food has tripled and quadrupled in price, because that happened during COVID and I can't tell you exactly why. But what we've seen is what the front of the house sees is a lunch. Business is different because people don't work in an office anymore. People work at home. You're not as inclined to go out to eat. If you do go out to eat, a lot of business meetings happen here. So it it. It does lock down the table a little bit longer. You're still busy. Like you would walk in and say it's really busy, but it's not the same numbers because you're not getting the turn. People aren't eating and going back to the office. That has changed a lot.
Speaker 3Yeah, it hasn't come back from COVID.
Speaker 2No well, people realize they can work from home. Right Office is closed A lot of people. You know you'll go into the office once a week instead of every day, or, but you still want to get out of the house.
Speaker 1That's another thing. Now the house has become a drag. When you're working from the house, you think you'd want to go out and grab lunch to at least break up the day Right.
Speaker 3So for dinner, what's happened is due to the you're putting yourself into a box of where you're a destination restaurant for like holidays, birthdays and all that kind of stuff, because the prices are getting so high, which never. We never wanted to be. That we wanted to be something where you can come at any time, grab a quick meal it doesn't have to be expensive and be on your way. But now it's getting up there where it's like a destination spot, which drives both of us crazy.
Speaker 2Well, you know it's nice, it's lovely, it's like what a blessing that people want to celebrate their birthday with you or their anniversary or or whatever it is. It's wonderful. But you do, you. You see these, I can't even tell you again from pre COVID. We were actually looking at numbers today, and you look at pre COVID and you look at butter that has quadrupled in price and and it's different.
Speaker 2We even pay more and I think I probably told you this we even pay more than what you see at the grocery store, your purveyors, because restaurants have to buy it. We don't have a choice. You can go to the grocery store and choose not to get steak this week, or choose not to get. We can't choose, we have to buy it. And so they really stick it to restaurants. And so when you see these costs go up considerably, you don't realize that minimum wage has taken huge leaps, even for servers, for everybody. Well, that costs something. And when and you see rate increases, I mean now all of our purveyors charge us. If you use a credit card, you have to pay for the credit card fees and you have to pay for this and you have to pay for this. And as a restaurant, delivery fees like that.
Speaker 3Everyone's trying to get their piece of it, which drives everything up.
Speaker 1And I believe it shrinks your margins.
Speaker 3Consider margins are small to begin with. We were fortunate enough that our margins were kind of high before COVID, so we are able to lose some in this process. But you don't want to, even though you know you have to give some up. But it's hard to give it up. You know it's hard to give employees that aren't worth what you're paying them and feel good about it because you know what paying them in the past was. That got you the same results. So it's difficult. It's a difficult spot to be in.
Challenges in Restaurant Staffing
Speaker 1I wanted to ask you about labor costs and how do you find talent? How do you keep talented servers? Because, again, we just all concluded that service is a significant part of the customer, the satisfied customer experience. So you've got a lot of long-term servers in your restaurant. Has that always been the case for you guys?
Speaker 2The people followed you from place to place. They have, because we're a family here, like we genuinely enjoy working with each other. We have such a good time. There are little fights, but I mean this weekend it's like you fight, like siblings. You know where and mom and dad are here, and for a couple of weeks I tried to take off a Saturday night and it's. It's true, we work with all adults. We're all adults, we're all mature adults. But there's something about when mom's not home and now everybody's bickering. But there's a genuine love and the servers make money.
Speaker 3You know, at the end of the day, they're not making money. They're not, they're not following anyone.
Speaker 2You know they're making money and it's, and it's not long hours. You have a five hour shift, maybe, and you're making X amount of dollars and it's it's pretty good. Kitchen is a harder, that's a harder.
Speaker 3Kitchen is not long-term at all.
Speaker 1You know, I'll have people probably a year, year and a half, and you've had longer than that yeah, like, but I don't tolerate it, and like, if they're not cutting it and I'm paying them x amount well I'm not interested is that pretty much the nature of the industry, though in terms of I assume you're referencing the the line the people who are cleaning up in the kitchen that those staff members tend not to stay too long in any one place. Is that just the nature of the beast?
Speaker 3I think that your dishwashers will last forever if you treat them well and treat them kind, which we're blessed with. That. It's the line cooks, the ones that you know that have little extracurricular agendas sometimes.
Speaker 2I'm raising my hand. What I have noticed is you either get an older person who has been doing this for a long time and they're kind of tired. They're there, they show up, they work hard, but when you're looking for creativity it's not really there, they're tired. If you hire young, new talent, both want to be paid around the same, which really there. They're tired. If you hire young, new talent, both want to be paid around the same, which is fine. You're happy to pay it, but nobody wants to step up and take charge. Nobody wants to run the kitchen.
Speaker 2So Tim can take a break. So he still has to be behind the line. But the young talent comes in and they come in with an ego and mom said I can cook well at home, so I'm going to be this great chef. And you get behind the line in a restaurant and you're not cooking for your family of four. You have 120 people you're you need to make food for, but they, they want the limelight. So you want to go to Miami. You want to go to some hot new restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Plantation Isn't really your destination spot, so much. You know. We're a little family restaurant, so that keeps Tim working hard. You know, he still has the creativity and and knows how to make it good, right.
Speaker 3And then, like when I hire chefs, like chefs can um, hold it over. You Like in some restaurants, if the chef is running the show and the owners don't have any authority over him, he can get up and walk out and he's got you pretty much by the, by the whatever you know. So in this restaurant they can't. I'm, I'm right, we had the whole thing.
Speaker 2We had a guy. We had all been bitching at Tim to change the menu. I mean not me, cause I wouldn't do that. Everybody had said Tim, we're bored of the menu, tim, we're bored of the menu, we're bored of the menu. He was looking for a new guy. He hired this young, very hip chef who had all these big ideas and we paid him a ton and he came in and he recreated the menu, gave Tim a little bit of a break and I think it was within four months our dinner business dropped by about 60%.
Speaker 3I mean it went.
Speaker 2it took such a nosedive. It only took four months and then, and the problem is, like you said, I don't bad yelp, I just don't go back. So try it takes. It takes three times that to build it back up again. You lost all those customers.
Speaker 3It was. The food was good, it just wasn't what we served here. It did.
Speaker 1Right it sounded. Maybe it was. The food was a little tone deaf for your customer base and he wasn't going to.
Speaker 2He was a new chef. He he was like probably how you were when you started. I'm not changing it. Well, can I get this without this? No, no, no, it was a no.
Speaker 1He wouldn't change it up and well, maybe, he watched too many episodes of the Bay, or you know, that's what I'm saying. Like there's this whole celebrity chef culture. Now, what do you guys make of that when you've got now? I mean, this was not always the case, so when I was growing up, you didn't know, even if they were most a fantastic chef. And I grew up in Chicago we had great restaurants, but you didn't know who was back there cooking. And now people are drawn. You know, there's this whole celebrity chef culture. What do you guys make?
Speaker 3of that I'm not a big fan. I'm not a big fan. I like the older chefs that taught discipline and you worked hard and you, you, you know you grew through the ranks of learning, you know. And these chefs now maybe YouTube chefs I don't know like they're, they're, they're not, they're not tried and true. Yet you know, they may be good looking guys or whatever and have their tattoos and all that kind of stuff, but running a restaurant and being a chef is very difficult. It's not so easy.
Foodie Movies and Future Expansion
Speaker 2You can watch the cooking shows on TV and even like with cupcake wars people always ask me about that I'm like you can't make 2000 cupcakes in two hours or without you Like it's so not real and you get this false sense of what it really means to be behind the line in a kitchen and and you know we discussed this like certain movies are accurate representations.
Speaker 3There's a really good movie. What's it called?
Speaker 2Babette's Feast.
Speaker 3No, the other one, Jeremiah Towers.
Speaker 2Oh no, that's not a good one. No, that's a really good one. But one, jeremiah towers oh no, that's not a good. No, that's a really good one.
Speaker 3But he was the first I worked under this chef in san francisco, jeremiah towers he was. He was the original celebrity chef. So there's a movie that's called the last magnificent that's done on him. Anthony bourdain produced it and it's a really good movie and that's kind of tells you the mindset from where, how it started and where it is now right, I will definitely check that out, even though laura's shaking her head saying it's kind of weird, like it's weird, but it's weird, as chefs are weird, you know they're weird did you see that movie with nicholas cage?
Speaker 1I think was called pig, where he had the truffle hunting pig and I think the celebrity chef was also in san francisco. You're not seeing that. Check it out, burnt was good too, burnt um bradley cooper yeah that was okay okay. So if my brother-in-law listens to this episode, that's one of his favorite, one of his favorite movies. I'll give him a heads up. I thought that was a good movie.
Speaker 2I thought that was a good movie and I thought in the movie chef remember the movie chef and he had the food truck oh yeah oh yeah, yeah, that's a good movie, and I remember there was a line in it um chicago, by the way, has great food yes it does, I think chicago was always my favorite.
Speaker 3Like I worked in chicago for a little while, I liked it better than new york. I thought it was more sophisticated than new york and they had great chefs there, like great chefs there.
Speaker 1There will be gas from New York when they hear that. The second, I think in your opinion.
Speaker 3people in Chicago are are are smart, they're sharp. You know it's different.
Speaker 1It's a good, it's a. It's a great foodie town. I think it's a great foodie town, so you guys have any plans on the horizon? I mean it's a physical okay. So we just talked about how physically demanding this, this industry, is. Right, you're on your feet. Both of you are on your feet all day. You're running around, but do you have dreams plans for?
Speaker 2future expansion. It's funny that we're kind of in the midst of talking about that. We have some things coming up where it's, like you know, a lot of big decisions will be made this year. It's we had an opportunity maybe about a year ago to do something big, and it just you just don't know it really makes a difference If food costs continue to go up the way they are. People look at their bill and they go, wow, that's, that's a lot for this. I I now expect the expectation is so much higher. But what you don't realize is the again, we're not making nearly the money because the food cost is so high.
Speaker 2So is that the business you want to continue forever and ever? Do you do a twist on it? Do you do something you know together? You do a twist on it? Do you do something you know together? Tim and I really can do anything. Um, I believe that we can, and I have learned the kitchen part of it which I did not know before. I was never a cook. I don't really. I'm not a foodie. I like dessert. I just want to eat dessert. I know what's good. I know what's not good. Um, I, how?
Speaker 1are you so skinny with all this dessert eating? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 2I move we move a lot. I don't have one of those tracking devices, but I need to get one because I think one night Karen um has one, and one night she and I had worked one of the doubles we were working and what it was like 10 miles, I think. We walked and it's go, go, go. It's not like slow walking, you're moving all it's the only thing I can think of. I got to say like a good metabolism.
Speaker 3The restaurant right now is probably running like, kind of like the best it has in many years, and it's due to the fact that the wait staff is on par with the kitchen and that like means the world to the to the kitchen, because it's no longer the kitchen needs to be the star. You know, the wait staff can kind of carry some stress off of you, tim, absolutely.
Speaker 3You know it doesn't mean I'm like I'm not doing it, but it just takes some of the burden off and it's fantastic having a great staff. You know, means the world to us.
Speaker 1So you've been so generous with your time. I'm going to leave you with a final idea for future expansion open up a concession in one of these homeowners associations or condos. I'm just saying that I got to tie. I got to tie this into the theme of the podcast.
Speaker 2We did. We used to do at Midtown 24, we would do on like Wednesday nights or something we did. We did something I forgot we had food and everything. There's issues.
Speaker 1As you can imagine, there are people that come in and they think everything on the table, they can just sweep it into their purse. So there are some challenges in that concessionaire position in communities, but I want to thank you both. Tim Lara, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, donna. It's always good to see you. You Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, donna, it's always good to see you. You, too, thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform or visit TakeItToTheBoardcom for more ways to connect.