Adam Halberg’s Hospitality Hot Take: Why Barcelona Wine Bar is Doubling Down on People Over Tech

While many restaurant brands are cutting payroll and installing kiosks, Barcelona Wine Bar is taking a radically different path. CEO Adam Halberg is betting big on human connection—creating new roles like VP of Hospitality, maître d’s, and daytime guest services teams across all 24 locations. In this episode, Halberg shares his unfiltered hospitality hot take with the editors at FSR. At Barcelona and its newer sister concept, Corsica, there are no QR codes, no tablet ordering, no flashy tech gimmicks—just real people connecting with real guests. From menu pricing to design philosophy, Halberg lays out a countercultural blueprint for what the future of full-service dining could look like if operators just remember, “What’s the point without the people?” 

Transcript

Callie Evergreen: 0:02

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Restaurant Innovator, a podcast from the editors of FSR magazine that spotlights forward-thinking chefs, restaurant owners and operators, and tech trailblazers who are transforming today's food, beverage, and hospitality industries. I'm your host and FSR editor, Callie Evergreen, joined by my colleague and co-host Sam Danley. I'm excited to welcome our special guest for today's episode, Adam Hallberg, the CEO of Barcelona Wine Bar and its recently launched sister concept, Corsica Wine Bar in Denver. With more than 20 restaurants across the country, Adam is building something that feels radically different in today's data-driven, tech heavy landscape. While many operators are chasing automation and QR codes, Adam is investing in people. He's hiring more staff, front-of-house, creating VP level hospitality roles, and making sure every touch point is deeply intentional. But before we dive into all of that, Adam, I'd love to briefly touch on your background. You've held many roles at Barcelona Wine Bar over the past nearly 18 years. So what first got you in it and what's kept you in it?

Adam Halberg: 1:16

Thanks for having me on. Especially if you're used to interviewing tech innovators. I wind up not being on the uh on the list there uh for most of the time. But no, um, yeah, I I've been with Barcelona for for almost 18 years now. Started as the culinary director um when uh there were five restaurants in Connecticut. It was a small, very regional group before uh the founders were getting ready to sort of take it and start some expansion. Um so I got to spend some really cool time working with um super creative chefs and uh and managers and um you know participate as as Barcelona started finding its way into neighborhoods uh across the country. Um as a team, we started uh a second concept called Bar Taco, which is now off Living Its Own Life. It's bigger than Barcelona and uh and is growing in cool and unusual ways. And um as you said, we started uh a new restaurant uh last year in Denver called Corsica. We can talk a bit about that. We actually just opened the second Corsica this weekend in uh in uh resting, Virginia, right outside of DC.

Callie Evergreen: 2:29

Oh, fantastic! Congrats.

Adam Halberg: 2:31

Lots going on in the world.

Sam Danley: 2:33

Can you just kind of explain the concepts briefly for listeners who might not be familiar with them? What are you guys all about at Barcelona Wine Bar and Corsica for someone who maybe hasn't been?

Adam Halberg: 2:45

Yeah, you know what? It it's a great question because I feel like so many restaurants right now, when you ask people like, what is your restaurant? There's a pitch there, right? We're gonna serve this type of food and this type of place, and we're gonna deliver it to you in this type of way. A robot's gonna bring it to you, or an Uber's gonna bring it to you, or you know, a drone is gonna bring it to you, or whatever else it is. And the cool thing about Barcelona and now about Corsica is we are so fundamentally old school that it has somehow become something that feels innovative again, even though it's not necessarily that. Um, I always think about it this way, right? We are your local neighborhood tavern. Uh, we're your favorite neighborhood bar and grill. We lean deeply into the origin of the word uh restaurant or restaurateur, which means literally to restore you. The idea was travelers on the road would stop at a at an inn and a tavern, and they would get resuscitated, right? Whether that was sit by the fire, have a glass of something to drink, some food that was there, join the camaraderie of the people who uh were also traveling through or happened to be there. There's a community that you found and developed way back when, hundreds of years ago, as restaurants started to build. And if anything, the new innovative thing that we are, that Barcelona is in the course of is that. We're a place to meet people, we're a place to try new foods, a place to try new drinks. Um, I know that sounds a little bit um maybe overly romantic or throwbacky, but um, when we talk about what Barcelona is, it's really what we describe first. Barcelona is a Spanish tapas restaurant and a wine bar, yes, but that's oftentimes the second or third thing we say. We say we're a bar, we're a ton of fun, we're a great place to come and hang out. Uh, and you get to do at Barcelona and be at Barcelona however it is you want. And um that is a little bit different than somebody saying, Well, I'm hungry for Italian food, so I'm gonna go to the Italian restaurant. Um, these days it's more like it's not okay to go to an Italian restaurant. You have to go to a Sicilian restaurant or a Puyan restaurant or a Mili Romagnan restaurant. Um, you have to get hyper-specific on it. We're not popular because we're Spanish. We're popular because we give great hospitality, it's an awesome vibe, it's a cool place to hang out and meet people, uh, it's an affordable, good time. And I feel like a lot of restaurants for years leaned into that. That's what we did well. We try to give you something that was delicious to eat and fantastic to drink in an environment surrounded by people and presents and lighting and artwork, um, which just made you feel good. You're right. You should feel better walking out the door than you walked in. You should walk out going, that was fun, let's go back and do it again. And um it seems not, it seems that today when you ask somebody, well, tell me about your restaurant, they are. They're looking for the pitch. They're looking for our cuisine comes from this street in this country. It's so hyper-specific. And I've I've done that. I've cooked that type of food, um, and I've worked in that type of restaurant. We're not trying to do that. We're really trying to step one, show everybody just a superlatively great time. And then we joke that like Spain and tapas and the beautiful wines and cocktails, the gintana culture, all of it. Those are the colors that we're painting with. That's the palette. It's not the image that we're creating, if that makes sense. The same thing is true with Corsica, right? It's French and Italian, just like the island has spent half of its time as part of France, half of its time is part of Italy. We're just leaning into the same thing. It's got to be a beautiful place that you want to hang out, right? Is that awkward? It has to be beautiful enough to make you feel good about being there, but not so over the top beautiful that you feel like you have to dress up in order to go. Uh, so finding ourselves in that fun in-between is really where we try to land.

Callie Evergreen: 6:58

Hmm. You know, it's fascinating to me that like Barcelona Wine Bar and Bar Taco had the same owner. And if you want to like briefly, you know, clear up the timeline. I know you mentioned some people are still confused, um, but it's just interesting, and this is not a dig at all for Bar Taco, but how you've taken very drastically different approaches to the overall hospitality experience from a tech perspective. They've leaned in heavily with the QR codes, and you've kind of leaned out of that completely. So I'm just curious, could you kind of walk through how that evolution happened?

Adam Halberg: 7:35

Um, yeah, and I'm look, I would say yes. And the hospitality at both companies is still evolving. And I know the team over at Bar Taco very well. They're deeply, deeply committed to a high quality of hospitality. The question has been as the world evolves, how do you how do you achieve that? So Barcelona created Bar Taco. Um the the team at Barcelona created Bar Taco back in 2010, 2011, uh, and we started to grow these two restaurants side by side with each other. Um, when we actually started Bar Taco, it was done completely without any service at all. It was done where you would fill out um a little card with a golf pencil and somebody would take it. Um and we wound up adding on servers. We wound up adding on at the time. Initially, we had what we call tequila someliers that were walking around. Um so both concepts are tackle a little bit more just because it's been it's a newer concept, sort of have emptied and flowed in the way that we operate. Um, but look, during deep COVID, everybody had to lean into QR codes and technology, and nobody wanted to touch anything. Um, and coming out of it, I think every restaurant has found its path to what of this technology do we want to keep and what do we want to move on from? There was a um a company, there's a ton of these now that right before the pandemic was selling the ability to put a QR code on your uh check when you uh delivered it to a table, and somebody could pay at the table and not have to wait uh for a server to come and process payment and everything. And they're like, how awesome is this? Somebody can just take it and leave. And our whole team looked at that and went, what a terrible idea. Like, if you came over to our house for a party, we're gonna let you leave without saying goodbye. We lose that last opportunity to say, How was it? Did you have a good time to fix any residual things that may have gone uh astray uh during that process? So uh we found that the second that we could give people back a paper menu, the second we could give people back a leather-bound wine list, the second that they could talk um to their servers, bartenders, whoever it was, and have a great conversation about, it couldn't be about the food and the wine, but it could just be about life. That's what makes a bartender great, right? You could talk about anything. Um, that the team was happier, the guests were happier, um, and the whole thing sort of started to hum again. Now, Bar Taco, like a lot of other groups, you know, wanted to play with how do they incorporate technology uh in a way to still give great hospitality. They've made some um adjustments since. I think they've that there's a lot more people serving at Bar Taco uh than there used to be, and I think they're seeing the benefits of that as well. So they're the two are we share a lot of DNA because we come uh from the same parents, so to speak. Uh we just happen to be operating as separate companies, but we talk a lot, we trade trade ideas a lot, and I got a lot of uh respect and I'm pretty impressed with with what the team over there is doing right now.

Sam Danley: 10:47

You know, you talked about in this kind of post-pandemic world, every brand out there has to figure out what technology from that period that we adopted as like a necessity. What tech are we gonna keep? What are we gonna move on from? What is that gonna look like for us? I'm curious, just zooming out a bit, is there like a framework or some key questions folks out there should utilize if they're evaluating like what that looks like for their own brand?

Adam Halberg: 11:18

Yeah, no, I you know what the the most dangerous word in your question was the word should. And there are there seems to be, as technology has caught up with restaurants, right? We we were the industry that was completely left behind as technology hit everything else. And I can't tell you how many times uh we've looked at vendors that do uh beverage inventory or food inventory or scheduling uh or reservations, and you know, you hold up your smartphone and you go, why can't it just work like this? And it didn't for a very, very long time. Arguably most of the time it still doesn't. Um, but technology has caught up with uh with restaurants in a very, very fast way. Uh, but with that comes a lot of people trying to sell you things. And whether it is uh the people who own those technology companies and run those technology companies, or the restaurants that have adopted some specific technologies and are now the apostles or advocates for that, um, particularly coming through the pandemic and the inflationary years after, there's been a lot of people telling each other what they should or should not be doing with technology. And I always come back to step one: who are you and what are you selling? You have to know what you're selling in order to make a decision about uh what technology is going to feed that purpose and what's not. If your job is to fill people's stomachs when they're hungry, right, then the technology that you need should be fast, efficient, delicious, all those things, right? Make that happen. Um if what you're feeding is people's social needs, which is what we're after, then the technology that you're gonna need is different, right? I don't want, I actually don't want to get you your food as fast as humanly possible or robotically possible. I want you to have that cadence of talking to somebody about the food, talking about somebody to the drink. Then you talk to the people you're with, and then the food in the drink comes. It doesn't mean I want that experience to be slow, you shouldn't be looking around wondering where everything is. Um, but I always put it this way: the biggest question coming out of the pandemic is always, what's the new normal? And for a group like ours, the answer was nobody wants new normal. We want normal. Right? And being shoved into the types of technology um that people have felt obligated to try out has not always worked in the benefit of the experience of sitting down and dining. Um, so I'm very, very cautious about telling anybody else what they should or shouldn't do. I always ask, what do you what are you trying to sell? And then how does technology help you achieve that? For for Barcelona, um, we're selling a good time, we're selling fun, right? We're selling we're selling a convivial experience. We're charging you for food and drink because that's what you're used to paying for. But if we could do it with a turnstile and you just buy a ticket and come in and have a great time and eat and drink everything you want, we would be okay with that also. Right? So we need to be careful that any technology doesn't interfere with that experience. We're building uh restaurants that I oftentimes describe as uh cinematic. Um, you you feel like you have walked into another world. You are fully transported. And then while you're there, uh you get to completely immerse yourself in the energy and the music and all the things that you see around you, and all these cool people and everything else. So we have to be careful that the technology doesn't do what in theater you would call breaking the fourth wall. It can't pull you out of the experience and break the uh break the uh the facade and break the the excitement and break the magic of what's going on. And if you think about that, that's what happens when something goes wrong in a restaurant and you're upset about it. That's what happens when all of a sudden the lights shoot up at the end of at the end when you're sitting at the bar and you're you're deep in conversation with somebody that you've met, and you're maybe you're on a date or whatever. All of a sudden the lights come up and the music stops, it's jarring. And our job is to remove anything small or large that is going to take you out of the experience. We want to own the full uh experience that you have. When people talk about experiential dining, that has become somehow a code word for games, right? And for us, it's not. It literally is a capital Lee experience because it's immersive, right? Every sound, every lighting, every bit of decor, uh the way that the team is moving around the restaurants, the things that you're smelling are all really, really intentional to allow you to let the rest of the world fade out. And for us, that means if we're gonna ask you to see a piece of technology, right, you're gonna order from your phone, you're gonna go on. I mean, I like the idea of Wi-Fi blocking paint in restaurants, possibly. Because anything that you do, we all know we're addicted, right? If you look at your phone for any purpose, you are drawn into that world. And you're drawn out of the world that we've we've spent all this money and time and energy curating for you. So I really think about for us, what are we selling? We're selling this total experience, you should just have a superlatively great time. Uh, we we tell our teams when we're in training, like your job is to make people stupidly happy. And we empower the teams to do that. And I know there's a lot of people who like to tell stories about the bartender went and got a sprite because we don't serve it or something like that. But that's such a small thing. If you think about what is the smallest thing you could do to make somebody feel good versus what is the biggest thing that you could do to make somebody stop and go, wow, I can't believe that just happened. Um, so that that's sort of what we're after. We're after the unexpected, we're after the deep immersive experience. And it means that the technology has to support that behind the scenes. If it means that our team doesn't have to walk around as much because they can quickly type in an order onto a handheld POS and then put it away, that may feed the experience. If you walk up to a host stand and somebody looked at the iPad instead of looking at you in the face, then it's hurting the experience. Um, so you know, very, very early on when that technology was coming in, we had to force the tech companies to make it a black-lit, backlit um screen instead of a white or blue screen because it just makes people look terrible to have that ghastly glow coming up. So, so technology is completely fine. But for uh for Barcelona, this is not a should for anybody else. It all has to be um hidden behind the scenes, things that help us move a little faster, walk a little faster, change the music um more efficiently. Right? The fact that you can change lights and music on your phone and attach it to a system is great as long as your manager does that and then gets off their phone.

unknown: 18:42

Yeah.

Sam Danley: 18:43

I love what you said about like Wi-Fi blocking paint. It made me think of a conversation I just had recently with the owner of Strongwater. It's uh this bar in Anaheim, California. And they did not realize when they were setting up this space that there's no Wi-Fi signal inside, like where the guests are in the bar. And they were really worried about it when they realized that. Come to find out, a year, two years later, she said it's the best thing that could have happened for the guest experience in her restaurant.

Adam Halberg: 19:11

One of the arguments that we have when we're designing restaurants is that we have a contingent of people who say, Oh, underneath the bar, you have to put a plug at every seat. And then others who say, No, you need a plug because you have to have that available. But if you put a plug in every seat, then you've do you've designed this gorgeous marble bar with this beautiful furniture, with all this great glassware. And what do you look at? Cords everywhere hanging out. And again, when you come down to this idea of breaking the fourth wall, you've done that. You've just you've taken me out of this place. Right? There's there's the psychologists that have done the research that just simply putting your phone on the table while you're having dinner with somebody else reduces your capacity to hear what they're saying, right? And to and to hear it and to internalize and to remember what the other person at the table said, because your attention is subliminally drawn to the device which these days own us. Right? If we're a counter-revolution at Barcelona, we're not a counter-revolution, I think, against other restaurants. We're a we're an escape from, or should be, an escape from all of the technology, the computers and the cell phones and everything else that are drawing us out of the real world. And I think there's a hunger for people to dump some of that, right? There's a hunger for people to have the opportunity to look at somebody in the face and uh and have a real conversation. So I think when I think about it as a counter-strategy or a counter-revolution, it's that. It's it's we're going to be so normal, so to speak, uh, that it feels uh stranger than usual. When I was growing up, we used to be able to remember, I don't know, dozens of different people's phone numbers. Right? That was just a normal thing because you constantly use them. And then the cell phones gradually remove that skill from our brains. First, they showed you the person's name with the phone number, and then they just removed the phone number. So when you go to hit the name, it just says the person's name. And all of a sudden, we're lucky if we remember two other people's phone numbers. And if I showed you somebody today who could remember 15 different phone numbers, you'd go, wow, you have got some mnemonic skills. You're a genius, right? But they're not, they're just exercising a different muscle. And with Barcelona, we're encouraging you and you're enabling you to exercise your social muscle. Right. In a time when so many people are lonely, we're giving that back. We're trying to give that experience back.

Callie Evergreen: 21:44

It's almost like we've outsourced our memories.

Adam Halberg: 21:47

We have, absolutely. We've outside outsourced our ability to memorize.

Callie Evergreen: 21:52

It's it's so interesting too, just like the studies on the younger generations, the counter-culture movement is almost like approaching becoming like a Luddite again. You see, like, you know, I have like the dumb phone app that like completely like it's all like black, it's like super simplified. I don't see like notifications pop up. I like get to choose to check it or not. And I feel like that is like such a cool but also still rare thing that you know, uh people want that.

Adam Halberg: 22:27

I give you a subtle thing that we do, which I think draws that this that distinction. And this isn't even quite technology. Um, people are far more aware of their allergies than they've ever been, right? Um, and it could be an allergy, it could be a sensitivity or anything else. So restaurants are constantly thinking about how do we convey to people what has gluten and soy, what has shellfish and dairy and all of the rest. Um, and obviously, if you have a very high-tech menu, you can search maybe on the screen by allergen. There's a lot of places that are goat, they're just printing it on the menu. Our allergies are not printed on the menu. We spend a tremendous amount of time educating the team. And when you sit down and say, Hey, I don't eat X, Y, or Z, the person on our team will actually take your menu, sit down with you, and they will circle, highlight, they will customize your menu for you and give it back to you and say, these are the things that are cool for you to eat. These are the things that we can actually just take an ingredient out. You don't like garlic? Cool. I can make that dish without garlic. And there's a sense when that happens of trust. The person that I'm talking to cares about me. They know the details, they've taken the time to care about those details. They're sort of holding me protectively in their hands. And then I know that I'm uh, again, I'm I'm in a place that cares. We actually had a um a representative from uh the State House in Massachusetts that lives near a restaurant in Cambridge, outside of Harvard Square, who called us and said, you know, my family have all these different weird eating restrictions and allergies. And your team is so wonderful. We're trying to think how to pass um some good rules and regulations locally to educate other restaurants and can we have your training to use as a model for other people? And again, you can it'd be super easy for us to just print it on the menu and draw a little fish next to everything that has fish in it. Um, but it's a whole different level of experience when somebody looks you in the eye and goes, I've got you. I'm gonna make sure that this is all great. You're gonna have a great time. I'm gonna customize this for you. This is your time. Go back to go back to having a great time. That that interpersonal engagement is something that we lose just as we lost our ability to memorize a phone number. Uh, if we simply print it on the menu.

Callie Evergreen: 25:01

It really is those subtle little touches, though, that make such a difference in how the guest feels. And that's such a great example of that. Um, you know, I feel like I want to switch briefly to talk about Corsica to make sure we get that in there. Obviously, Barcelona has become, you know, a national name over the past decade. You know, you've grown to over 20 locations while still kind of maintaining that anti-chain mentality that that each each location is their neighborhood bar. Um, Corsica feels like an iteration, but kind of a fresh chapter. And I'm curious why now is the right time to like launch that concept and why Denver.

Adam Halberg: 25:45

So the two things that you said there are actually super interconnected. Um, Barcelona did not set out to be an anti-chain any more than I always tell people, like, you don't get to decide what your signature dish is, your guests tell you what your signature dish is, right? They're gonna tell you this is what I come and eat all the time. Um and in a similar way, um, when we talk to people who come to Barcelona in different neighborhoods around the country, um, they tell us that they don't think of us as a national group. In fact, most of the time when we're talking to people, uh, they disbelieve us if we tell them that we're in another state. Uh, in Connecticut, right, which is where Barcelona was founded, the idea that there's Barcelona in Denver or Minneapolis is sort of you know mind-splitting uh for people because it's probably the first place that they uh had a drink once they were uh legally allowed to drink growing up in Connecticut. Um and if we're in Boston, uh I think you know, people in Boston, they know that we're a group, but it feels like a homegrown restaurant group. In Boston Boston, I I lived in Boston for a long time. I was his chef in Boston. They don't have a problem with restaurants that have multiple locations, they have a problem with some restaurant that came from outside of Boston and then landed as if they were gonna tell Bostonians what and how they should eat, right? And we're we're not approaching it that way. And so there's a feeling like we're of the community. I was at our restaurant in uh or Barcelona in Denver, and there was a couple there that were actually arguing over whether or not the restaurant there in Denver was the same as the one back in Boston. Um and as our guests have told us that, that they view us not as uh as a chain, but rather as their local neighborhood restaurant, we've leaned into it. We've had a restaurant in uh Inman Park in Atlanta since 2011. Um there is no sign, it doesn't say the word Barcelona on the building anywhere. Um our restaurant in uh DC and 14th Street, you can barely see the word Barcelona. Uh it's gold leafed onto one of the windows, and by now it's sort of faded off uh over time. So we're we've always been more the neighborhood restaurant than the thing that has come from somewhere else to you. And that means when we talk about breaking the fourth wall, if we open too many restaurants within a city, we break that illusion. And remember, if people are coming to us for that local experience first, and because it's Spanish tapas and a great Spanish wine program second, we have to be careful not to replicate that and put a Barcelona on every street corner like Starbucks wanted to do, right? Um, and so we're very, very cautious about um trying to understand the cities that we're in, trying to understand the neighborhoods that are different from each other enough that we can maybe open two restaurants in it, we have two Barcelonas in Atlanta. Um, but we're cautious about putting too many. Yet that fundamental thing that people are coming to Barcelona for, that good time, that date night, that meeting new people, that um excitement, that immersive experience is still something that they want. So, how do we do that and give somebody another, as you said, uh Kelly, iteration, um, without it being the exact same thing. So we sort of joke, we change the language, we change the uh the outfit a little bit, and we're doing with French and Italian cuisine and traditions uh of Corsica what we've done with uh the traditions of Spain. It's still small plates, it's still eminently affordable. Um, we're trying some new things at Corsica. Um one of the most wildly successful things it we've always thought about is we we try to think about our restaurants as we've invited you or our home for a party. Well What happens when you first show up at somebody's house for a party? Can I get you something to drink? Right? That happens before anything else. Not let me find you a seat on the couch or come out to the backyard. It's here's the cooler with the beer, or I've got a glass, a bottle of wine open, would you like some? There's a starting point there that happens really, really fast. So with Corsica, we have a concept which is called spruzzo, where the moment that you get sat, the moment that somebody comes over to say hello at the table, they're actually holding a bottle of wine already. As if you just walked into their home. And you've got the opportunity not to have to commit to anything, we're just going to pour you a half a glass of wine. Would you like that? And oftentimes it's something effervescent, it's a little bit bubbly. Um, it could be a kava or or or a sparkling wine from uh from Italy, something light to get you going, right? And um that experience, we're trying to think about how do we lean further into you just can't, you just showed up at my party, and I want to give you something to get things moving instead of the a more traditional experience. And these things, if they work well at Corsica, we'll bring them over to Barcelona. There's so many things that we do at Barcelona that we've brought over to uh uh to Corsica as well. So it really is leaning into this idea that what we talked about, that counter-revolution, that desire to go someplace that feels exciting, that feels fun, that feels immersive, but also is super accessible, right? You don't have to go in expecting to spend a crazy amount of money. Um that I can go and spend what I want and have a just have a cool time meeting people. Um that that is something that we can probably replicate and do over and over again, but by putting another twist on it and another cuisine behind it, you don't feel like you're going to the same place over and over again. And we're not breaking the illusion of the neighborhood restaurant.

Sam Danley: 31:55

You know, you you said that that personal touch, the local feel, that kind of true hospitality, that's something you feel like you can replicate from Barcelona to Corsica. And the word there replicate kind of pinged something for me because that's been bubbling in my head throughout our conversation. You know, what do you think is the biggest barrier out there for full service restaurants that want to scale those like true moments of hospitality? Is it availability of talent? Is it training? What have you guys learned about how to actually make this something that you can repeat and replicate again and again?

Adam Halberg: 32:32

Um, great, great, great question. Um the barrier to entry for any full service restaurant is getting higher and higher and higher. Um and that's walking in the door. The cost of building a beautiful restaurant has gone up and up and up. And as construction costs, material costs have gone up, um, just like with people looking for someplace to live, rent has gone up in an unsustainable uh way. And if you're gonna get most people, when they're going to open up their first restaurant, don't have a ton of cash sitting behind them to go and open a restaurant. So you're getting an investor or investors to help you with that. Those investors, let's be honest, if you're investing in a restaurant, you probably weren't expecting a return in the first place. Um, but even more so now, right? It's really, really hard to tell anybody they're gonna get paid back, that you're gonna last, right? The average restaurant in the United States closes in a year and a half, in about 18 months. That that became that much more difficult because it the upfront investment is so much more. Um, particularly if you're gonna do it the smart way and have enough cash on hand to withstand a tumultuous, because it always is, first six to 12 months or 18 months or so. Uh, you need to protect yourself when something breaks, because it will. You need to protect yourself when you have to hire in new people and train them, because you will. Um, you need to put you need to have a game plan when all of a sudden uh the price of your ingredient and your signature dish goes through the roof and it will. And if you don't have enough cash on hand walking in the door, it's really, really hard to get lift off. Um, so we're seeing um more and more people struggle to give the type of experience that they really want to give. Right? There's people when they open up their first restaurant, it can be all about me and my food and the things that I want to cook and get known for. Or it can be all about you as the guest and how can I make you happy? And um if you're gonna make it all about the food, sure, maybe you go and order the counter because that's sort of a way around it. But is that the full experience that your guests actually want coming in the door? Particularly if they're paying a premium for an elevated type of cuisine and an elevated type of talent. Um, so I would say the biggest barrier to entry right now is the pure cost of getting the doors open, right? Insurance costs are through the roof. Now that people feel like they have to have all this technology, the technology costs are through the roof that weren't even there before. The cost of credit card fees through the roof, right? And um and then there's you know different states that are constantly trying to shift the way that your labor model is gonna work in a way that you know you need to be able to have a plan for who you're gonna hire and how many people you're gonna hire and what jobs they're gonna do. And if every time the state looks at it, they pretend like they understand the business and they want to change the rules around it, it makes it really, really difficult to have a game plan moving forward. So so I would say, you know, again, first question, right? The hardest thing is just getting the doors open. Yeah. Once you, once you have a system that works, once you have the ability to show that you've got a restaurant that is profitable and knows how it works, um, then it becomes understanding who your guests are, who likes you. Is it everybody or is it some smaller group? And having a strategy of how you want to um to do that around the country. We do it the stupid way, the smart way. They're really, really smart operators. They open up one restaurant and then they open up more restaurants within that market. We're a Chicago-based restaurant group. We're gonna open up a bunch of restaurants in Chicago, and then maybe go up to Milwaukee or maybe go down to uh uh Nashville or something, we start expanding out. We do it the stupid way. We opened five six restaurants in Connecticut and then one in Atlanta. We opened up our first Corsica in Denver, even though we're based in Connecticut. Um, but that is, it's oftentimes because um if you have a model which really works, and if you're a value-based organization, meaning people understand the mission and the goal, in our case, making people happy, you should be able to find a great team to run one restaurant. And if you think about it that way, it's really, really hard to think about how am I going to find great talented staff over 10, 20, 50, 100 restaurants. But if each time you open a restaurant, you go, how do I find an awesome GM and a great and a great chef and a great bartender, right? Can I find a couple of people just to run one restaurant? Of course I can. That's eminently doable, especially if you're opening up a restaurant in a city with a million plus people. Right? So I think the it's hard to find talent story is a myth that restaurateurs like to tell themselves. Um, because I find that if you take the development of people and the recruiting of people really, really seriously, there's just awesome people out there that are hungry for the experience of hospitality. Remember, very, very few people go and wake up and graduate from high school or college or wherever else and go, I want to be in hospitality. I want to be in restaurants. Far more often it's a job they do on their path to something else that they fall in love with, right? You hear people say, you caught the bug, right? It's because it's infectious. Making a scenario where other people have a great time is it is it is addictive. So finding the talent far less of an issue uh than the cost of getting open in the first place and then building out your strategy. And honestly, I worry most about um independent owner-operator restaurants. They're what make our neighborhoods vibrant. We don't go with Barcelona, Corsica, we don't go into the malls and big uh new developments where every national group has put an outpost. We'll specifically look at that and go, nope, we're not opening there. We will be the only, in many cases, uh, restaurant that has locations in other cities and other states in the neighborhoods that we choose to go to. And we that's because we want to fit in with the neighborhood and help elevate the neighborhood. We don't want to land in a place where you can look around and has no sense of place. How many malls and strip malls and developments can you look around and go, I don't know, what city am I in? Who knows and who cares? Right? Why? Because it's the same retail stores, it's the same restaurants over and over and over again. And we've even had to be careful. There are there are other restaurant companies with portfolios of similar size to we are that have started to follow some of the same patterns and we love them and they're great, but we have to be cautious. If we're going in uh to a neighborhood next to the same other great restaurant over and over again, it starts to build that uh that vibe. And we want to make sure that we're we're not doing that. We're we're really leaning into the neighborhoods that we're going into. It's one of the reasons why if you look at a Barcelona or a Corsica from the outside, there is very, very little that tells you from looking at that building that you're at Barcelona. The color scheme is different, the logo is different, the font that the word is in may be different between different places. Um we have restaurants that look like they are um built out of ancient brick ruins. We have restaurants that are glass and steel. We opened up a restaurant in Tampa in um right on Bayshore, on the water, glass and steel. It used to be an insurance office before we went in. Um, but it looks and feels fundamentally different than a restaurant that's in Denver that used to be a brick factory or Raleigh close to where you are, Callie, right? Which it looks like brick ruins when you're walking in. It feels like you've come into this place that feels uh maybe like it's been there uh forever and you just didn't know about it. Um so long-winded as usual, sort of sort of answer to uh to to how we're getting there. But I but I do worry about the independents, and I think they need they need the help, they need support uh much more than the growing groups do. We all need the help, but we need some good government policies in different states that make it predictable of how you're gonna be allowed to run your restaurant. We need some landlords that are willing to lean into the locals. Uh, I'll I'll call one out. We have uh some great partners with uh Asana partners. They're based in Charlotte. Uh we work with them in Charlotte, we work with them in Nashville and in Tampa, and they tend to make sure that part of any new development they build has some locals that are there, whether it's a retail shop or a restaurant or a bar. It's not going to be just a replica of the same uh chains over and over and over again. And I think that's fantastic. So there are people who are paying attention to it, but we need we need more. We need more landlords that are committed to it. We need more um incentives, I think, to to help the local businesses stay local.

Callie Evergreen: 42:04

Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's so impressive how you've managed to scale this this concept, which essentially is a collection of almost independent restaurants that share, you know, some common themes, but each one, it's not quite a snowflake, but it's it's unique and fits into that environment, and you've you've done a fantastic job with it. And you know, do you think though that there's like a cap of like, you know, I how many restaurants you can realistically have with that model?

Adam Halberg: 42:39

It's an interesting question that we don't ask ourselves all that much because I I think the second that you start um thinking too much about scale, the second that you start thinking about that number that you're after to try to hit, you start changing the way that you operate in order to achieve that goal. And you lose like you can only have so many prime reading goals, right? You can only have so many North Stars. So if our goal is how do we fit into this neighborhood and make the people here wildly happy? If we can make this zone, this couple of streets, that much more vibrant by adding what we bring, right? We bring a little bit of salt and pepper to the neighborhood, somebody brings the chilies, everybody's happy, we're gonna have a party together to block party. How do we bring what we need to bring to the neighborhood in order to uh accentuate it and to help build it up and to help the other businesses around us as well, right? We're not out to drop into a neighborhood and steal all the sales. We want people thinking about the neighborhood as a place to go. And if we're really, really focused on that, you do what we have done, which was very, very slow and intentional growth. We typically open one or two restaurants a year. Uh, I would say right now we have enough of a of a team that we could open uh a little bit more, but we've been very careful to select our investor partners as well, so that we're not under that pressure of, oh, you opened two restaurants last year, open five. You opened five restaurants last year, now it's time to open 10. How are you gonna scale? How are you gonna get to that number? Instead, we're thinking about at each level of growth, each new restaurant that we have, how do we build out the framework and the structure and the systems behind it that allows that one restaurant to feel like one restaurant? To allow that bar to feel like a great neighborhood bar and not how do we get as many of these on the map as possible? And so I think it's it's a it's a maybe subtle, just different angle to be looking at it. But I think the way that you talk to yourselves and the way that you ask these questions of yourselves can drive uh the mission of where you're going.

Callie Evergreen: 45:04

Something else that you've also been cautious about, and you talked to me about this last year that you know it's almost like offensive for people how expensive things have gotten, um, which is, you know, more true, you know, more relevant today as it's ever been, of course. Um, but you've been super hesitant to raise prices across both of your concepts. You've kept it really affordable with that small plate model. Um, can you talk just a little bit about, you know, you said like it may be a little countercultural not to take advantage of everyone raising their prices, but how that's worked to your benefit and just kind of your philosophy around that.

Adam Halberg: 45:41

Sure. Um I I I would say that the average human walking around in American cities today feels like they're getting taken advantage of. Uh in some cases, they actually are, right? We know that the egg industry uh looked around and said everybody else is raising their prices. Cool. We don't have a shortage, but we're gonna raise our prices too. Why? Because we can. Um we look at it this way. Um, yes, the cost of ingredients go up sometimes, uh, the cost of doing business goes up sometimes. The easiest thing you can do is to turn around and go, well, the cost went up, therefore I'm gonna charge you more. Right? That seems like A happened, therefore B. Our job as great restaurateurs is to make that our problem and not your problem. Right? How can we work around? And this is honestly, this has been the trick of every uh what I would I would argue great chef and restaurateur uh throughout history. And that means not great in terms of we're chasing a Michelin star, not great in terms of we're chasing to be on the world's best 50. Great in terms of I want you, when you come to my place, to feel restored, to feel taken care of. Right? That this is why that type of tavern, that type of chef, that type of operator uh is the one who was always started using hanger steak and skirt steak when everybody else was doing uh Fle Mignon and Ribeye. That's why this is the one that was serving chicken thighs when everybody else was serving chicken breasts as a premium piece, right? You you name it, whatever it may be. Um we sell a lot of potatoes at Barcelona, uh, right? Bravas, uh, Patatos Bravas have had a moment. Uh, they've had a moment for a long time with Barcelona. Now they seem to have a viral moment in general. As people become more interested and excited about Spanish cuisine, you see bravas on all sorts of different cuisines. You'll see Korean bravas and American bravas and and bum bum bum bum bum. Um but our job is to think about what are those humble ingredients that we can treat really, really well with great technique and the right amount of salt and the right amount of garlic and the right amount of vinegar to make them delicious and exciting. Um, and how do we lean into that in a way that we can control our costs so that we don't have to pass them on to you? That's on us. And it's hard. And um we we joke, we move the goalposts for ourselves on every uh area that we can control our costs, from uh the way that we schedule our teams to the way that we order our food to um some work that we do with wineries and distilleries and other different parts of the country, right, and around the world, to make sure that we are constantly after using up every possible option on our end to deliver what you want to eat and what you want to drink at a fair price before we get to the point of raising prices. For us, that's the last possible option, and we're not raising prices until everybody else has, and we're full, which is important also. A lot of people over the past couple of years raised their prices as the number of people coming into the restaurant was going down, and that turns into a death spiral. If you are packed and busy and people can't get a reservation to come in, and you want to take a little bit of price, right? You're you're now playing with supply and demand, right? And that makes a little bit more sense, but you still have to be careful not to take advantage of other people. We're seeing this in a lot of different parts of the restaurant sector right now, where people have raised their prices, particularly on the fast food end, right, to the point that you're in competition with now a full-service restaurant and you're getting less. It's why I keep on waiting for uh this whole third-party app uh boom to break. Because at the end of the day, let's be honest, you're getting a lower quality product without any service for a higher price. That math at the end of the day doesn't make sense. So we do. We take it really, really seriously not raising our prices. Have we raised our prices on certain things? We have, but it is very, very carefully and with a lot of kicking and screaming, right? Finding something that's going to go up 50 cents, oof, right? I'll tell you, you'll if you talk to anybody in our team, it is a battle, it is an argument, there's a lot of jumping up and down and gnashing of teeth and wailing in order to get any prices to move. And when it does, you saw for years people raising their prices 8%, 12% multiple times per year. And I think we've raised some items to the in totality of maybe we're up 3%, 5% over the past six years.

unknown: 50:58

Right?

Adam Halberg: 50:58

We barely, barely, we have things that are on the menu right now that are still priced back the way that they were in the in the late 90s and early 2000s. Our team is committed to like, how do we make sure that we've got great glasses of wine and cocktails that are they may start under $10 or they're at least in that in that zone. Our menu is made up of things that are in the $6 range, $8 range. Granted, it's small plates, it's top of this. But how do we fiercely, fiercely hold on to that? Because again, the easiest thing that you can do is to step out into traffic and raise your prices, but you're gonna you're gonna get hurt. And I think I think if in general, the restaurant industry has done a tremendous amount of damage to itself over the past couple years by so many restaurants raising their prices so egregiously. And granted, they've done that in response to some other suppliers and people raising their prices in a way that they shouldn't have, but it has created a perception that going out to eat is more expensive and less fun than it used to be. And our job is to keep our nose down on the grindstone and continue to prove people that that's not the case everywhere. You can go out and get a very, very fair meal at a very fair price and have a just a fantastic time. If we can lean into all the things that you're supposed to be taken away to get rid of the people, they're expensive. What's the point without the people? Right? And um, you know, raise the prices on the menu. If we keep raising our prices on our menu, we become fine-dining, which we're not trying to be, and then we're charging fine-dining prices without the hospitality? Like all of this is so counterintuitive. It just, when you lay it out on paper, it doesn't make sense. But so many people in restaurants are doing it anyway. And I think, again, the beyond government doing weird things to us, it's the thing that that's hurting the restaurant industry the most. Is we we need to remember that running a restaurant is really, really, really, really hard. It always has been. I know it feels harder now, but every generation has felt it's really it's it's they're dealing with the hardest generation to run a restaurant ever. Right? The next one, it's gonna be it's gonna be harder than this one. But that's okay. If you want to succeed, if you want to do it well, you have to do the hard work. You have to manage your labor, you have to manage your costs, you have to know where it's coming from, and you have to start with am I making my guests superlatively and stupidly happy? Because if you're not doing that, it doesn't matter what you're you know, how much money you're saving on uh or or earning by charging extra for things.

unknown: 53:45

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Danley: 53:46

Well, we've covered a lot of ground here, Adam. I uh I've loved just hearing about your philosophy, your approach. Um, if any of our listeners out there want to just stay in the loop with what you guys have going on at your restaurants, what you're doing, is there a good website or social media that you'd send them to?

Adam Halberg: 54:04

Uh yeah, Barcelona Wine Bar, Corsica Wine Bar. There, we're on all of the um platforms. Most you know, this is fun. Most of the social media that we do um is user generated. We're literally just taking things that people do in our restaurants and bars that they post on their own, and then we go, oh, that was cool. Hmm, look, look what Sam did, look what Callie did, right? We're we're just constantly reposting that. Um because again, it's it goes back to the you don't get to decide your signature dish, right? What other people like doing in your restaurant? That's what we want to amplify. You had fun doing drinking this wine, you had fun eating your food upside down, cool. Then we'll we'll take a uh we'll take your post, we'll take your video of that and just sort of amplify it and broadcast it. Uh, but but our our team is super collaborative, also. We've one of the best things to come out of the pandemic of the past couple years is the restaurant industry has become a lot less guarded and a lot more collaborative. So I would invite anybody in the industry that wants to talk shop, reach out, say hello, uh, whether it's me or somebody on our on our team. Um, always happy to trade good ideas.

Callie Evergreen: 55:16

Hmm. And I love what you said. What's the point without the people? I feel like that kind of just sums everything up in a in a neat little bow here of what we've been talking about today. Uh thank you so much, Adam, for for sharing your your insights and thank you also to our listeners out there. Stay tuned for more.

Adam Halberg: 55:33

Thank you so much, guys.