Letting go of the day-to-day: Tom Schmidt's journey from busser to leader | 073

The Pre-Shift Podcast is back!

Tom Schmidt, co-owner of Salt + Smoke BBQ, talks with host D.J. about shifting from hands-on restaurant work to leading an eight-location, 550+ employee business, a transition he says truly began around the fourth location and felt like a “phantom limb” loss of how he measured success. He explains how delegating to partners and leaders—especially co-owner Haley, a director of operations, and later hospitality, HR, finance, and catering roles—enabled growth while preserving culture and “magic,” in part by creating advancement paths for ambitious managers and chefs.

Schmidt describes systematizing communication through agenda-driven meetings and cascading updates to stores, and relying on 7shifts Manager Log Books and Shift Feedback to surface real issues and protect culture. He also discusses saying no to new concepts, using forecasting and KPI-based bonuses tied to food, liquor, and labor costs, and shares the ongoing challenge of producing signature cheddar-and-bacon popovers.

Key Takeaways

• The Desk Shift Nobody Talks About: Hear Tom's candid account of what it  feels like to trade the floor for a desk — why operators retreat to what they're good at, and why that instinct can stall your growth.
• The 4-Location Wall: Discover why the jump from one to four restaurants demands a completely different version of you as a leader.
  Building a Team That Outgrows You: Learn how Tom and co-owner Haley Riley turned retention risk into a growth strategy by creating new leadership roles that gave a path to their best people.
• Getting Out of Your Own Head: Find out how they cascade decisions from a Wednesday corporate meeting all the way to weekend front-of-house staff — and why Tom credits structured meetings (despite hating them) with keeping eight locations aligned.
• The Feedback Loop That Builds Trust: Hear how 7shifts' shift feedback tool gives every one of their 550 employees a direct line to the top — and why Tom refuses to filter what comes back.
• Telling the Story Through Briskets: Understand how Tom connects labor and food cost numbers to something tangible — like seventeen lost briskets a week — to help managers act on the data in front of them.

Resources Mentioned

• Salt + Smoke: https://www.saltandsmokebbq.com/

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7shifts is the restaurant HR platform helping operators hire, train, schedule, pay, and retain their team in one place. With an easy-to-use platform and built-for-restaurant workflows, 7shifts replaces disconnected systems for 55,000 restaurants.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, my name is Tom Schmidt. I'm the co-owner and lead bus boy of Salt and Smoke Barbecue.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Salt and Smoke has eight locations and more than 550 employees. While Tom did clear tables at first, he traded his bus tub for a desk. In this episode, we chat about what happens when an operator finally lets go of the day-to-day. I'm DJ, your host. Welcome back to the Pre-Shift. Tom, how's it going today? Great, how are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for joining us and hopping on the pre-shift today. Happy to be here. Alright, so Tom, you know, I want to dive right in. So there's a version of you to buses tables, like you said, and then greets regulars at the door. And now there's a Tom Schmidt that sits behind a Zoom desk and lives in spreadsheets and meetings with other people. How many locations did you start being more of the second guy? Because I know there's still a little bit of that first guy still in you.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It really started, I'd say, around the fourth location. I um it should have started sooner, to be honest, but I I couldn't get myself out of the mode of work is physically doing the job of running a floor or expediting a uh window or or dropping fries or washes dish washing dishes. I it didn't feel like I was working if I weren't if I wasn't doing those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

That's interesting. Um so you said it was around the fourth location, but it probably started needed to start a little bit earlier. Um I just want to you know dive into that a little bit more. What's something that operators don't talk super honestly about, or maybe they you know take too long to figure out, like you said, about making that transition? And you know, what are maybe some of the things you told yourself that later were not true?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I don't know if this is true for everybody. I I have talked to some friends in a similar spot that have shared the same experience, but being on the floor and being present for your guests and really knowing the vibe and the flow of how things were working for the first 20 plus years of my career was how I knew if things were going well. Yeah. And a lot of how I defined my success was talking to every single table, touching every single plate, really being intimate with the experience. You know, the teams that I built around me, they were valuable to me, and our work relationship blossomed if they had the same mindset of really being present, right? Yeah. And so then not being in that role, having to change that was then like, oh, I'm not working, you know, like I couldn't evaluate what the real value I was to the company and and they were to the company, especially initially. So it really felt, you know, I had this like vestigial arm that used to be there and was no longer there, is how I would describe it. Yeah, Phantom Limb. And it really kind of messed with my head a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

And I think the other side of that is because we all grew up doing that type of work and doing it day in, day out for decades, we're good at it. You know, I didn't spend a lot of time in spreadsheets or corporate structure or or strategy sessions or things like that. And so you retreat to what you know and what you're good at, and it becomes a really great place to hide. Yeah. You know, like, oh, I should be doing all of this stuff for the business to grow it and push it in the right direction. But I'm gonna stick with what I'm comfortable with because I know I can do that. I'm not gonna screw it up, and I love it. You know, that's that's why that's how you fell in love with this business in the beginning. So it it's just so much easier to stay in that lane.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

So what were some of those early things that you were able to delegate, you know, and let go of a little bit? What were some of those baby steps? Were there baby steps or was it kind of all at once?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, just over time, as I started kind of forming my core team, there were people that I really respected because of their talents. And it really started with Haley, who's the co-owner with me now. He he started as the chef, but uh now he's an owner as well, because I viewed him as being just critical to our long-term success, to have him be a true actual partner. You know, for the first 15 years I was in the industry, I didn't really have that partner where his skill at organization and workflow on the kitchen side of things was better than mine. You know, so we'd be executing these large-scale events and I would plan everything out. And, you know, a couple into it, Haley's like, hey, let me do this. I'm like, no, I I do this. You know, I've been doing this for 15 years, I know how to do this. He's like, Well, if we do it this way, this way, this way, and this way, it's gonna be faster. Like the layout's gonna be better, it's gonna be more efficient, whatever. And on that first event, which which I believe was um a barbecue festival called Q and the Lou. Yes, um, I let him take the reins, and it went better than I ever would have executed it, right? He kind of took over that operational wing of the company for us in the early days. And then nine years ago, we brought on our director of operations. And at the time he started with us, we only had one store, and he was leaving a company that had nine, but he really aligned with our culture. We had some mutual friends. You know, he's a very detail-oriented person, and like a lot of founders, I'm I like to be in the big picture a lot of the time, right? Um, as then it becomes director of hospitality came on board, and then HR director, CFO, uh catering director, all of these different pieces to like really have a very cohesive team that that supports where other people need it, because we can't all be good at everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Is there something you know that surprised you about you know being behind a desk and working in an office environment that's been satisfying for you in a way that maybe you didn't expect?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I'm not exaggerating. I I think I was in this industry for about 25 years until it transitioned to that, but the large majority of that 25 years was on the floor, and I don't want to sound egotistical, but I'm really good at it. I think I did a phenomenal job at that. But for 25 years, then I was ready for the next challenge. And I think that was the most important part of switching gears was like, all right, I'm 40 now was about when that started, and it's like I need something else. I need to keep keep my brain engaged and continue to think uh about uh my work and about this organization and in different ways and how to how to improve it and push it in a different direction. And that that challenge has been great.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Absolutely. So 40 40 was the wall where you're like, I gotta do something.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

It was also, you know, I wish I could say it was all that intentional. It was it was thrust on me by expansion, right? Like I just couldn't, I couldn't be in four places at the same time, and I couldn't provide value by table touching because I just couldn't do it in in a way at scale as one individual, obviously. These are those are kind of like reflections on how it rolled out. It wasn't like a premeditated plan.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Of course. It doesn't, yeah. It's hard. Do you think anyone goes into it with that hard plan? Like once I hit four, I'm gonna step back, or is it just like, you know, kind of that, oh shoot moment, I gotta step back and I can't keep doing this.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, I think some people probably are. I mean, uh you look at the scale of companies that uh are around in short time, and I think you know, places that get to 30 locations in five years had that before they opened the first one. Uh that just wasn't we were just trying to keep the lights on. We were flat broke in a mountain of debt and trying not to move back into my parents' basement.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Fair enough. That's a fair enough motivator, too. As you scaled, and you know, you said kind of running up for a location, Mark. Was it something you were afraid about losing that made things special, other than of course you being there, but you know, a particular style of service or a particular vibe that just set you guys apart that you were like, shoot, I don't want to lose that as I kind of take this step back and as you keep it going.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Uh 100%. We were worried about it when it was just our first location in the Del Marlo. And it was Haley and I working every shift every day. It was magical. It was really just kind of the most special zone to be in. We were packed all the time, the vibes were awesome, the ambience was awesome. He was touching every plate and often smoking every brisket, and it was just humming in a really great way. I went to him and said, I think we need to do another one, and he was like, dude, this place is magical. If we try to replicate it, we're gonna lose that magic. And I was worried about it too. We have this rule where like, if I can't convince you this is the right call, then we're not gonna do it because my argument isn't good enough. Right? Like push back on me. Like, I need to think you're helping me think through the issue. And so don't don't just give it to me. Right. Um and what had happened in those first uh over three years was we had wonderful talent as front-of-house managers and sous chefs that had been with us for a long time, but they were starting to leave because as long as we only had one store, Haley was gonna be the executive chef and I was gonna be the general manager. Yeah, your best people are ambitious and they want to take on more and they want to do more. And so they're like, okay, I've learned what I can learn here, I'm gonna move on. And by opening a second location, we're able to get rid of me and Haley as the exec and GM and hire two GMs and hire two executive chefs, right? And give those people that opportunity, the six chefs that we're gonna move on, they got to move up. We've really viewed all the growth as a way to build a better structure of support for the organization to be more successful.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah. And do you feel like hiring and growing that team, maybe not specific folks exactly, but if there's any mistakes you made in that process of like maybe looking for someone that's more like you, right, than someone who compliments you? What did you learn through that process of building out a team that maybe could save some other people some time?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I have uh probably not a unique scenario, but uh reasonable dissatisfaction for who I am as a person. So being surrounded by more people that are like me isn't anything that I've ever really loved. Sure. Um no, I really was intentional about trying to find the people that don't have that for me. In my early stages, like my first restaurant, which was a fine dining french restaurant, we were open for a decade and was phenomenal. But by the time we closed, there were probably only 12 staff members, and we were all just best friends. We were all kind of the same person, we saw the world in the same way, and I knew that was a challenge. Then with my third restaurant being Salt and Smoke, I think I'd learned that lesson a little bit that I really need to spread out the team. And so I guess that's probably a lesson that sunk in over the course of 15 years.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah, not necessarily looking for people like you, but coming to honestly about where you need help or where you're good at things and where you're not so good at things. And fixing the second part. But when do things really start to change as far as expansion goes? Is it one to two, that certain number where you're like, this has gone from a couple restaurants to full-growth business?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

It really continues to evolve, yeah. Right? So we're opening our eighth location in the next couple days. I I'd say the the hardest one was really one to two. Okay. But for me, that wasn't with salt and smoke. That was my first restaurant, which was a French restaurant called Franco, and the second one was called Nico. And I didn't have that concept of team composition down at all. And Nico failed miserably because of that. I I also was still just in the mode of putting everything on my own back and not delegating and giving people responsibility, and then when they would try to make decisions like changing them and reverting, in part because I hadn't built a the team that I necessarily could trust to do all that stuff the right way. That was a really hard learning lesson.

unknown 12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

What are some of those techniques and how what are the tactics? The actual log into your computer and figure out how to get that stuff out of your head and systematize it so it can live across eight different locations.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Meetings, which I hate meetings, but like meetings with agendas that go through all the different issues of the restaurant and the plan for the future and what needs to be done and who's in charge of it, and Tom, how do you want this to go? Type stuff. Carving out time to be together to actually talk about it as a guy that likes to just figure it all out in my own head. Yep. Is meetings can be brutal, but like it's it's critical for us to to share and get on the same page.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah, I totally get that. How does it how does it trickle down to the stores? How do you get from what's in your head through that meeting to someone who's working their first shift?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah, we have a corporate team meeting Wednesday mornings where we record all the notes and directives for the store level, and then we have a meeting with uh all of the GMs on Thursday afternoons, and then the executive chefs have their own meeting on Fridays where they go through that with the culinary team. Over the course of the weekends, the stores then have their own store level meetings to go over with the front of the house and sous chef uh leadership teams, kind of what's going on. One of those things though, in that Wednesday meeting is uh, and then in the Thursday meeting is we review the logbooks from seven shifts to see see what's going on the store level, what are the issues that need to be addressed that we need to plug into. And then one of our KPIs that we report to everybody on Thursdays is shift feedback. As we were starting to grow and we were afraid of that thing where we couldn't tell what was happening in stores that we weren't on because we weren't seeing every single little thing that happened. Seven shifts provides, and you're still the only ones that provided, as far as I know, that that feedback tool where at the end of every single shift that somebody's scheduled for in Seven Shifts, they get pushed a cell phone, uh text how was your shift, one through five, and an open feedback. What's so powerful about that is if I'm a busser at a store and I have a server that is being just abusive at saying, clean my stuff better or what? Just I have some kind of conflict that's going on. And I go to the front of the house manager and say, Hey, Billy Bag of Donuts is being mean. Could you talk to him? But Billy Bag of Donuts is the best server. They've been there for 10 years, they ring the highest sales amount, and the front of the house manager has been there six months, even though somebody's higher than somebody, technically, in terms of a managerial scale, that front of the house manager isn't gonna want to piss off Billy, and Billy might not care anyway, right? And then that's where that information stops. Well, now every single person in the company gets to share with us, and it goes directly to the top of the company and everybody in between what's going on in their world. Sometimes somebody's filling out something at two in the morning after a bunch of drinks, and it's raw, kind of not polished feedback. Um and one member of our team was like, hey, we should set up some parameters around how and when people should be replying to this and make sure it's professional. I was like, hell no. Like, I want to know how our team is feeling after they got their teeth kicked in on a crazy busy Saturday and then they've had a few drinks and they're fired up. And they might then we'd go and talk to them about it, right? And they might be like, look, man, I was a little tipsy and I overreacted and it's not that big a deal.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

And that does happen. Or they can be like, Yeah, I'm sorry I said it that way, but this has been an issue for a while. And we get the real feedback that we can act on to improve our operations. It's been just a wildly impactful tool for a company, especially as we continue to scale to be able to have that feedback come back to us. And I'm sitting in a desk, not we have 550 employees or something like that. I don't know everybody's name. Yep. And I feel bad about that, but I know we're trying to do the best we can to actually know what the experience is like for people.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, absolutely. And that raw feedback is so important, you know. If you wait to say, oh, you know, we have a monthly or it's every six months, yearly, annual conversation, whatever, but the edges get smoothed out, right? What's bad is not as bad, and what's great, but you kind of say, eh, it wasn't that great. As you've grown, what's something that you've had to say no to?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

We so far have turned down a lot of opportunities for different concepts. Okay, you know, trying to stay kind of with blinders on of it's so hard to get what we're doing right at just one store, now trying to get it right at eight stores, distracting ourselves with non-strategy stuff is hard. That's been the big thing that we've had to force ourselves to say no to. The new fun thing is where you want to put your attention. You want to put your attention in the new shiny object. And when you get to where we're at now and where we want to go, so much of the really important work is the hard, boring stuff that it'd be way more fun to be going out and you know, designing new um new concepts and logos and menus and like what if we did this and that and blah blah blah, and it all sounds uh great and it is it's sexy and it's fun. Yeah, but but like there's a lot of institutional work we have to do to make sure that this is right on terms of developing our teams, getting our culture right, maintaining quality and cost, atmosphere, and all of those things.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah. Going back from that big location all the way back to that first week, what'd you wish you could have known? What would you have told yourself then? Looking back, I always like to see what advice would you give to yourself as you started that first location of salt and soy.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Uh the The one thing that we talk about still, we're trying to figure out what kind of roll we wanted to do. And we didn't want to do cornbread because cornbread dries out, you know, and we didn't want to do biscuits because they dry out, and we wanted to do something unique and different. And so we landed on cheddar and bacon popovers. Okay. Which are like these big, airy, eggy, cheesy, bacon-y muffins that are like literally like that big and they're hollow, and they're like deep golden brown, and they're phenomenal. And they are an ever-living pain. And uh, you know what? It's just like a full-time job at each store to keep up with this popover production, and it's insane. We still say, like, if we would have known now how much work these damn things would take, we never would have put them on the menu, but they're so frickin' good that we can now never get rid of them. So it's uh um, yeah, that that's one thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

That might I mean that could have been the the thing that teeted you over, right? That could have been the secret to the success.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

So yeah, yeah, maybe it's a butterfly. Well, we're not changing it. We're not gonna find out.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah, there you go. Can't I do want to just shift here into talking a little bit about seven shifts? How far into the salt and smoke journey did you bring them? What's something that you wish you took a little bit more control of sooner within the Seven Shifts ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

We turned on Seven Shifts and we only had one location, and that was Del Mar. And that was really uh uh Haley driven initiative so he could better wrap his head around his schedule and getting the back of the house stuff figured out. I had just been writing schedules on with pen and paper for so long that I was like, yeah, I don't need this. So I'd write it on on paper and then put it into seven shifts as a redundancy. I didn't get the power of it at first. I didn't I didn't get how incredible it was to give your staff the autonomy to block out their availability, to you know, offer up shifts and have other people get them covered rather than calling me and saying, Tom, I'm sick, and then I'm going around scrambling, or hey, I know I'm scheduled Saturday, but I just got offered tickets to the White Stripes show and I can't miss it. And I'm like, yeah, you can't miss that show. I'm not gonna be that guy. And then like I'm spending so much of my time when I'm busy doing a million other things managing other people's schedules for them individually. So that was that, you know, such a small thing, but such a huge unlock. And a lot of restaurant people are this is their second job where they're working a couple nights a week while they're pursuing their degree or they're just looking for some extra cash or whatever, and giving that kind of flexibility without having to have all of it controlled through a central person is really great. And then more recently, the last several years, really using it as a forecasting tool to really understand. Okay, this is how much revenue we expect. That means we should budget this much labor and build our schedules to that much labor and then adjust accordingly if a rainstorm comes through or whatever, like really using it proactively and training our teams to use it proactively to to know, okay, if my budget is X percent of revenue for my labor, and we'll look at their schedule with them the week in advance and be like, you're already five percent over.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

And like if it's on your schedule, you're not gonna hit your target, which means you're not gonna hit your bonus, you know, and where are you off? It's always Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which are the slowest days where you put on more people, which is such an effective tool for us. And had had I leaned into it more early, we could have turned that on earlier and given people the tools to be more successful, and that would have been great. But everything in due time, there's always a fire to put out somewhere. So can't get to everything all at once.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

So you said bonuses are attached to some of the targets. Is that something you've done for a long time?

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah, we've been doing that for quite a while. We have a uh liquor cost target, a food cost target, and a labor cost target. Um and uh it's a complicated system of it's a basically a profit share, so however well the store does based on those three different metrics, you get a share in some of the profit. And if you far exceed your target, then you 5x your bonus and whatever. We really started doing that seven or eight years ago just to start to get people thinking about running their store as their own business, right? And make them aware of the numbers. It took a lot of years to really understand it. You know, a lot of us got into this industry because we weren't too good at school, we weren't good going to get our PhD in mathematics at Yale. Figuring out how to tell the story of those numbers and give people the tools to understand those numbers and start making some real progress took years, but in large part to the tools like seven shifts, we're able to do that now, and the teams understand it and they're on top of it and they're performing at really high levels. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

That's awesome. How have you been able to build that and make sure that it is understood and did you take that ownership?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

The bonus is meaningful and it's worthwhile to pursue. So the incentive is there, then the various tools. It used to be like we present people their numbers at the end of a four-week period or whatever, or at the end of the week. We do it every week, it'd be like this is your number.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Do do better. Now we're able to tie it into like hour by hour what you're doing and how you need to adjust throughout the day to get the day to win. If you win the day, and you win every day, then you win the week, and then you'll win the period, and then you win the quarter. Right. Uh, and getting people to view it not just as numbers, but like spatially connected to humans or on the food cost side. We used to just give them a number and like we started breaking it down into physical briskets of lost opportunity. 32.7% is not the same as like, no, that is 17 extra briskets this week. Wow. And like those are what you lost were 17 briskets. Where were they? Let's start fig figuring out where those two and a half briskets a day are.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

And yeah, no, that makes it that's it super smart and makes a ton of sense. And I think anybody can apply that to their business. I always like to end on a nice note. I'm curious what you're proudest of in your career in building salt and smoke that people may not know about.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

The team that we have around us is just so wonderful. I couldn't ask for any more, and I just feel absolutely fortunate and blessed to be able to work with these people every day, to see their passion for what they're doing and for all the people that we work with and their passion for our guests. There really isn't anything more heartwarming and inspiring and touching than that. I just feel extremely, extremely fortunate to be lucky to have these people with me.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

That's awesome. That's why we get into this business, right? How do you scale that and how do you keep that going while you go quote unquote corporate and grow? But it seems like you guys have mostly figured it out.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

There's always somebody that wakes up just wanting to be an a-hole. It means we have to be really intentional, direct about weeding that stuff out, and that's why we need that seven shifts feedback, right? We can't let those people create little thunderclouds of misery throughout our world. We can't. No, you can't.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

You can't. And it is a certain type of person maybe drawn. There's a lot of high emotions in this business too, for the most part, in my experience, and it's a lot of positive people that really just want to serve people and have a good time. I do have one food question for you. The trash ribs, I'm curious, what is the texture of those coming out of the fryer? So they're still slow-cooked, like our regular ribs.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

And then we flash fry them. And and so we have we have four core values that we have published, uh, that are four phrases that Haley and I have been saying since the day we opened, and they literally have guided our decisions on how to operate this company for the last 12 years, which are you can't barbecue on your heels, make happy happen, lead with your heart. And the last one is browning is integral to the flavor. Okay. Which is a quote from Marcella Hazan. So when you've slow smoked those ribs for four hours, okay, and then you slice them and deep fry them, you've just caramelized the outside of that rib even more, and they're phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Well, Tom, I really appreciate the time today. Thank you so much for just sharing, being personal about it, and I hope people take away just some of the lessons you learned, your passion and honesty really come through.