Ari Weinzweig // The Art of the Imperfect Recipe

From a tiny deli with two employees to 14 businesses that generate $60 million in annual revenue, Ari Weinzweig unfolds how his eccentric business practices have transformed his small restaurant known as Zingerman’s Deli into a nationally renowned food enterprise. Ari shares with us his personal stories and principles that have turned a $20,000 loan from the bank and limited experience in the food industry into a masterful culinary ecosystem with over 750 employees and a community of unique businesses.

Transcript

Ari: There's stuff a new dishwasher knows because they're new. There's stuff that somebody who's 16 knows because they're not 60 and there's something that the 60-year-old knows because they're not 16 so diversity dictates that we all have different perspectives and we all have something interesting and insightful to contribute to the conversation.

Owen: Welcome to the Power of 2 where we explore the stories of unique individuals to understand how they define “success” and use that blueprint to lead an exponential life. I’m your co-host Owen Baim alongside my brother Ethan and today we are joined by the co-founder and CEO of Zingerman's, Ari Weinzweig. After growing up in Chicago, Ari attended the University of Michigan where he majored in Russian History with a focus in anarchism. Upon graduating, Ari stayed in Ann Arbor and landed a job working in a restaurant as a dishwasher. After six years of experience in the food industry, Ari received a call from his friend and former general manager of that restaurant, Paul Saginaw, about a potential business opportunity. Four months later and with a $20,000 loan from the bank, the pair opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen, a restaurant in a 1,300 square foot building with two employees and a small selection of specialty food. Through a non-traditional business model rooted in servant leadership, open book management, and overarching themes stemming from his Russian History degree and study of anarchism, Ari, Paul, and everyone at Zingerman’s have turned the small deli into a nationally renowned food landmark. Almost 40 years later, Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown into 14 unique establishments with over 750 employees, grossing over $60 million in annual revenue. Aside from the original deli, Zingerman’s Community of Businesses now includes a bakery, a Korean restaurant, a creamery, a location for departmental training, and an event space, among others. While no two of his businesses are alike, each share the same vision and guiding principles that deliver the highly coveted Zingerman's Experience. In addition to his work as the CEO of Zingerman’s, Ari is also a prolific writer who has published his own series of books, travels the world to teach other organizations about Zingerman’s guiding principles, and is the recipient of many awards, including in 2017 being named one of “The World’s 10 Top CEOs that Lead in a Totally Unique Way by Inc. Magazine.  

In this episode, we discuss the importance of writing out a detailed vision, what leaders can learn from anarchism, and how offering free refills on french-fries has saved the company thousands of dollars a year, alongside much more. Additionally, Ari discusses how their unconventional business model has shaped Zingerman’s into the culinary powerhouse it is today. This week on the Power of Two podcast… Ari Weinzweig.

Ethan: Hey, what's going on everybody? This is Ethan Baim here with my brother Owen, and today we're joined by the incredible Ari Weinzweig. Ari, welcome to the show. 

Ari: Thanks for having me on. 

Ethan: Absolutely. So, for those of you that don't know at home, Ari has been a founder of many businesses that are all part of the Zingerman's Community of Businesses, and he is also an author.

Owen and I actually purchased his books and read through those so if you are looking at starting a business or want to learn more about Ari's approach to everything that we're going to dive into, definitely pick those up and give those a read. But the first thing that I really wanted to dive into was in the building a great business book you mentioned and made a clear distinction between having a vision and having a strategic plan and how they are different.

Ari: Yep.

Ethan: And you made it clear that it's important to write down your vision. Can you talk about that distinction between those two and why it's so important to physically write a vision down? 

Ari: Yeah, I mean all this of course is just my take or our take here, you know, it doesn't mean other people have to do what we're saying, but as we define it and everybody gets to have their own definitions, but a vision is a description of what success is going to look like, feel like, sound like, in our case taste like at a particular point down the road. So, if you're starting a business, your vision would, you know, detail what your business feels like. What are the staff feel like? How does the customer view you? What do you do? It would include some metrics so that you'd have some idea of scale and scope. So not, you know, to the penny but if you're doing a million dollars in sales is totally different than if you're doing a hundred thousand which is totally different than if you're doing a hundred million, right? And there's merit to all of them. It's just having some sense of what you want to create and describing that so that other people around you who you're working with, your partners, your staff, your vendors, your community, ultimately have some idea of— a pretty good idea of where you're actually going.

The strategic plan as we look at it is more how you get there so the vision we often see is the "what" and the plan is the "how," right? So we don't really work on a plan until we've already decided where we're going. 

Ethan: Right. 

Ari: Which only makes sense in the same context as you know, if you try to figure out how to pack for a trip but you don't know what the trip is, it's a little difficult.

Owen: So, you initially wrote your first vision and it was a 15-year vision mapping out the future of the company. And that brought you right up to about like 2007 where you wrote your second, 13-year vision that took you through 2020. Now, we're currently at 2020 so I assume that you already worked on your next vision.

So what is that vision for Zingerman's for the next 10 to 15 years? 

Ari: Well, to be clear, there's an essay in that same book called 12 natural laws of business and it's my belief that any healthy, successful organization because nonprofits are really not any different than businesses they just have a different financial structuring.

But, in any healthy organization whether it's a basketball team or a university or a business, you know, has a vision of where they're going. Now, whether they actually write it down or not is a different story. So in '82 when we opened and Paul and I, in hindsight, clearly had a vision we just didn't write it down; we didn't know anything, you know, about visioning the way that we do now. So that really was the first one and it was really when, you know, Paul sort of had an intuitive realization that we had essentially fulfilled that original vision that we sat down and actually, for the first time, wrote out a vision and learn the process, you know, at a very basic level, but learn the process that we now use so regularly.

To answer your question directly about— so we've, we actually have a 2032 vision that we've been working on for, I don't know, year and a half that's probably 96% done. And we were actually supposed to roll it out last week but given the current state of the world, a few other things have preempted that in terms of priorities.

So it's a little on hold, so it's not totally finished but we've got it mostly done. If the world calms down at some point and we can go back to business in some form that resembles normal, then we can start getting back to work on doing that. 

Owen: Awesome, and is it possible to get a little sneak peek of some of these things that are gonna be happening in the next 12 years for Zingerman's?

Ari: Well, you know, it's still a draft, so I guess anything could change. But, going from memory, cause I don't have it in front of me right this second but, you know, our visions— I mean, which you know from the book but people might not realize— our visions are pretty long. They're pretty detailed descriptions so the 2020 vision is about nine pages long and this one's probably about the same. What are some of the things it talks about? It talks about working in harmony with nature so that would mean working more in harmony— more and more in harmony with nature ecologically but also enhancing and building on the work that we've already done what— to do, what I think is operating in harmony with human nature by honoring the people in the organization as the unique beings they are, and helping them to become themselves ever more effectively. It talks about starting to do a lot more work with kids in terms of— or young people, in terms of teaching the processes that we already teach because I believe there's no reason you can't teach visioning to seven-year-olds and there's no reason not to teach young people about energy management or servant leadership or how to run meetings. You know, those are all really life skills that I wish I would have learned at 10. Would have made my life a lot more effective.

So there's stuff about that, you know, there's also, of course, you know, talks about our food and our service and how we make those better and our finance. Talks about starting to open nonfood businesses for the first time. And it does restate our commitment to staying just here in the Ann Arbor area which is a very important thing for me and others.

Ethan: Right. 

Ari: So, there's more, but that's a good quick synopsis. 

Ethan: Yeah, and I know Zingerman's is just from being a student at University of Michigan, Zingerman's is super invested and involved in the community and we will definitely dive into that later on in the interview. But I wanted to talk to you about something you just mentioned about the craziness that's going on in the world right now.

Ari: Yeah.

Ethan: And as Zingerman's, you know, Zingerman's the deli being open for 38 years that's been a long-time you guys have survived some pretty crazy events throughout your time. 

Ari: Yeah, haven't survived this one before yeah. 

Ethan: So what has been some of your secrets that have allowed you to kind of weather the storm and in these times of crises, stay open, stay afloat, and now with this craziness and everyone kind of staying inside, I know you have other businesses that aren't necessarily the deli, but how do you handle that being in the food industry? 

Ari: You know, it's real long ways from through it. It's going to be an interesting two months, six months, 10 months— I don't know. But anyway, I mean, I think, you know, ultimately, the things that one does, you know, every day for long periods of time so whether it's systemic stuff, beliefs, culture, et cetera, those are the things that under stress people will revert back to those and so if you have an unhealthy organization then in extremely dire, difficult situation people will start to come apart you know, I mean they fall back on old antagonisms, et cetera, et cetera.

Whereas, you know, hopefully imperfectly, we've worked to help people learn to collaborate, stay positive, stay focused, be generous, believe in them— their colleagues, et cetera. And that's kind of what's happening but you know, realistically, none of us— I don't think anybody clearly at any level planned for this.

And so it's not like we have the answers and it's pretty much upended everything so—

Ethan: Yeah and I know you've built up a really strong infrastructure for yourselves and your employees and I know some of that is rooted in what you studied at Michigan, your Russian studies, is that— and you talk a lot about servant leadership is that— is all that something that you saw in practice when you were coming out of college? Was there another —

Ari: No.

Ethan: restaurant or—

Ari: I'd never even heard of it

Ethan: Gotcha. So that was completely— 

Ari: Well I didn't go into, I mean, we didn't open when I got out of college. It was four years after I finished school. So I mean, I only got into the food business by accident really cause I needed a job and one of my roommates was waiting tables at a restaurant and after applying three times, ultimately the only job I could get with them was washing dishes so that's how I started. But, I didn't have any big ideals about what I was going to do other than pay my bills and keep going. But servant leadership, no, we learned about it, I don't know, maybe 10 years after we had opened and it came from Robert Greenleaf's book Servant Leadership.

Owen: So can you dive into a little bit your business model and how servant leadership has kind of correlated with the success of Zingerman's community of businesses? 

Ari: Well, the business model and servant leadership are probably two different things but I mean, obviously everything's related. But servant leadership, like I said, comes from Greenleaf's writing. His book came out I think in 1979. It was written not just for business but also for nonprofits and educational institutions. He— the basic premise of it, or my— or our takeaway from it, I mean, the basic premise is essentially that the organizations— the leaders number one responsibility is to serve the organization not the other way around. You know, which might seem, you know, when one says that everybody kind of nods their head, but if you really look at it in general, people start businesses to serve themselves and not to serve the organization. So what that would imply is essentially Paul and I we're around, we're paid in order to help the organization get to greatness and part of that is to help the people in the organization get to greatness. It's essentially, you know, long before you were born, but John Kennedy's famous statement "ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country." And then what we've done with servant leadership and then a lot of these approaches is to take them out of inspirational, philosophical statements and turn them into practical steps or lists that people can learn how to do and feel good that they're actually doing what they're supposed to do.

So we have six elements of servant leadership which I wrote about in part two of the book, which is on leadership, you know, which I can get into if you want. 

Owen: Sure. If you don't mind diving into that a little bit. 

Ari: Yeah, just real quick. I mean, so we— these are the six that we say in our organization. If you're being an effective servant leader, you're doing these six things.

You're providing vision which you already touched on because we use vision not just for the organization overall, but for everything. It's pretty clear to me that it's a skill it's an approach that everybody who's succeeding in pretty much anything has, whether it's parenting or writing poetry or, you know, leading a sports team; the leader always has a vision and hopefully the people and the group share the vision if it's going to be effective. The second thing is to give service to the staff. So literally when I go to work every day, I think about the people who work in the organization as my customers and literally all the same things that apply, between me and you as a customer would apply between me and them. The third thing is to manage in an ethical manner, which, you know, sounds straightforward, but you know, I think mostly in the press, people focus on like super unethical things, you know, stealing or— 

Ethan: Right.

Ari: —murder or, you know, whatever, but those aren't really the difficult issues. The difficult issues are what we have right now, and you know, you asked about what's going on, you know, we furloughed 300 people last week, you know, which is horrible but we're in the same boat everybody else is which is if you don't act quickly, we're not going to be here for people to have a job permanently.

Owen: Yep.

Ari: You know, and that's the kind of ethical struggle that, you know, trying to find the right path through a difficult and uncharted water that you can't have a path in water that's the right route—

Owen: Right 

Ari: —through uncharted water. The fourth thing would be actively learning and actively teaching. The fifth is to help the staff succeed. So this is really where instead of most— what most organizations have, which is that the staff are hired to help the leader this is where the leader's hired to help the staff. So my job essentially is to help everybody who works in the organization get to greatness and if I do that well, then I think it's implicit that you know, I, or Paul and I, or whoever are also going to be getting to greatness. And then the sixth one is to say thanks. So essentially lead the way in making it an appreciative organization. 

Ethan: Awesome. And I want to touch on that fifth point a little bit more. I know one of your books you said, the CFO doesn't necessarily know anything more than what the dishwasher knows. They just know different things. And one—

Ari: Yeah.

Ethan: —of the other business principles that you guys practice which I didn't really know much about before reading your books, was open book finance.

Ari: Yeah.

Ethan: Can you talk a little bit about open book finance and what that means to Zingerman's and if it can be applied to other types of organizations? 

Ari: Yeah and to be clear, I mean, what you said is accurate. I'm not saying the CFO doesn't know a lot, it's just there's stuff a new dishwasher knows because they're new.

There's stuff that somebody who's 16 knows because they're not 60 and there's something that the 60 year-old knows because they're not 16 so—

Ethan: Right.

Ari: —diversity dictates that we all have different perspectives and we all have something, you know, interesting and insightful to contribute to the conversation. 

Open book is essentially, I guess, based on to a great extent, based on that belief. We didn't start it, again, we learned it from other people. The folks at The Great Game of Business or Springfield ReManufacturing in Springfield, Missouri. But it's essentially a system where you involve everyone in the organization, in the running of the business.

And in order to do that, they need to see the numbers. So you're actively sharing sales, profit, cash, all of those things in the belief that then people can make better decisions and also that they can contribute insight into doing it, doing things more effectively. The old model, which is what— excuse me, 98% 99.8% of the world is using is where basically only the owners or the owners and managers or whatever, see the real numbers. Everybody else just gets told to work harder. 

Ethan: Right. 

Ari: So, you know, it's a little bit—  I always say it's like a basketball game but only the coach knows the score and the same team has been playing for 10 or 20 years and they just get yelled at to play harder every once in a while, but they don't know where the three point line is, they don't know where the out of bounds line is, they don't know really how the game works. They just get told to play harder and harder, which even just saying it sounds silly.

Owen: Right and do you mind talking about the story of— and explain to our audience the story about the dishwasher and noticing the fries and it being like, too big of a portion. 

Ari: Sure. No, I don't mind I'm happy to to tell it. Well, I mean, the whole point is that, you know, it's not like literally everybody's in the room and right now with the Coronavirus we're challenged by not having the opportunity to have people in the room. But anyway, in the big picture, the idea is you're involving everybody and so, you know, we had a situation which is recurring in restaurants, but with particularly— a predominant in the early months of the Roadhouse, which is again, not uncommon in new restaurants.

And so they started to track waste and one of the systemic principles of open book management is you track key metrics, some of which might be on your financial statements but other ones like waste or check average in a restaurant wouldn't be on there cause they're not on financial statements, but they're really important metrics for running the business.

And, you know, who better to look at what waste is than the dishwasher because he or she sees pretty much all of it, you know, getting thrown out. And, you know, because one of the biggest things that was getting thrown out was french-fries, relatively quickly the group figured out, you know, that if we just offered free refills— cut the portion in half and then offered free refills, everybody would be happy, right? So for the one out of ten that really wanted that many fries, they could still get them. For the other nine out of ten or whatever that didn't want them, they were going to be satisfied. People wouldn't be freaking out about the portion size cause they know they could just get as many more as they want.

And the truth is it's better quality too because, you know, some foods, like a burger still tastes really great when it's down to the last three bites and it's at room temperature but fries at room temperature and fries hot really aren't, I don't think, the same quality of an eating experience.

Right. So it— 

Owen: Agreed.

Ari: this really was a situation that worked out well because everybody won. 

Ethan: Right. And then another thing that really stood out to me  when we're talking about the 12 natural laws of building a great business, was in the seventh one where you talk about successful businesses do things that others know they should, but generally don't.

And you talked about how before the bakery opened, when you guys were looking for the best bread in the Ann Arbor area and you found a spot that was 45 minutes away and that was the place you ended up going with and you made that trip you said 3,800 times. That was just amazing to me that you guys were so dedicated that you drove every morning. It was 45 minutes one way, right? 

Ari: Yep. 

Ethan: Yeah. So you made the hour and a half round trip every morning to be open at 7:00 AM —

Ari: Plus you got load time and unload time so it's probably two hours and it wasn't like me or Paul— I mean, once you got going, it wasn't me or Paul every single day, but somebody— we paid somebody to do it.

Ethan: Yeah. 

Ari: You know? So, yeah.

Ethan: I just wanted to say that that was crazy to me and I think that that's something that definitely— a lot of people that don't know what's going on behind the scenes might not notice that but that's so special and I think that that definitely is so important to making Zingerman's what it is today and definitely represents what you guys stand for: going above and beyond. 

Ari: Well I think that— yeah, thank you, I mean, but I think the point is in addition to what you're saying, I mean, I think the point is that it's really true for anybody as an individual. There's nothing to stop people from spending less time watching football games and reading more books and I'm not putting value judgment I grew up watching football games, but you know, if you truly want to master a subject, keep studying, right? So it's— and I'm not saying don't do other things and I'm not judging, you know, whatever but the point is, you know it's mostly ourselves that holds ourselves back and, you know, clearly right now we're all faced with a natural disaster, really I guess, that we don't know what to do about.

But, in general terms, it's really more our own decisions that are, you know, getting in the way. 

Ethan: Right and you're a big reader constantly learning and improving yourself. And I know you mentioned before The Great Game of Business that was the book that first really opened— really opened your eyes to open book finance.

Ari: Yep.

Ethan: And I know you have a huge list of book recommendations in the back of the book that you wrote, but what is one singular—

Ari: Thanks for reading I like that you looked at that closely. 

Ethan: Yeah, of course, of course. But I guess what is one singular book that any kid around our age, any college student, could pick up right now and learn a great deal from 

Ari: Other than the ones I wrote?

Ethan: Yeah. 

Ari: Well, I mean, there's a million of them it depends on what they want to learn about, you know I mean. I guess it's hard to answer without having some subject at hand. 

Ethan: Yeah.

Ari: But you know, you can just read off the list that I wrote about in the back. There's a ton to learn. I think you can learn from everybody is really the point. 

Owen: And learning is something that's obviously a big part of your life. You're a huge, reader and writer. But something that I thought is really interesting is you journal every day. 

Ari: Yeah.

Owen: What exactly do you journal about and what are the reasonings for your journaling? 

Ari: Well, I wrote about that in part three of the book, which is on managing ourselves. It's a technique that I grudgingly started to do almost 30 years ago but now I swear by it. I do it every morning, I did it this morning. It's just 15, 20, 25 minutes, whatever, of basically free thought, just getting put on paper. It's just super helpful in terms of emptying my brain and getting myself somewhat centered. Never perfectly, but you know, somewhat grounded for the day. Helping me, I don't know, just put together clarity around where I'm at, what's going on in my head, what's going on around me, you know, sometimes it's as mundane as remembering something I forgot to do, you know but it's just sort of putting stuff out of my head so that there's more space in my head to get clarity on the 8 million things that are going to fill it up over the course of the day.

Owen: Yeah. So you're obviously an extremely  busy man, I mean, you run a business—

Ari: Everybody is.

Owen: Very true but you specifically run a business that employees over 750 employees. So would you say that like your journaling and the run that you go on every day, is that the type of stuff that you do to like clear your head and to make sure that you're focused throughout the day?

Ari: Yeah. Oh yeah. For me, that's what works— you know everybody's different. I have a lot of friends who do yoga. I don't, but clearly it's a super helpful practice. You know, people do different things that work for them, but I think the point is just, you know, I wish— you asked about being 20 what you would read. I mean, I wish I would've known half of this a tenth of it when I was 20, but one needs to work on oneself and that the relationship one has with oneself is ultimately probably more important than anything else. You know and finding ways to get grounded and centered, you know, which requires some solitude, requires some self study and all that sort of thing, which I didn't learn in school and I didn't learn in my family, you know, really help a lot. 

Owen: And going off school and education and your studies at Michigan and Russian history specifically anarchism, what would you say the best thing you learned from your studies on anarchists and how has that contributed to the successes of Zingerman's?

Ari: Well, the best thing is not to look for the best thing because it's to not think hierarchically. 

Owen: Yes, can you explain that a little bit? 

Ari: Yes, absolutely. So, we pretty much all of us are raised, I would suggest in hindsight, to think hierarchically so I'm not being critical it just leads to questions like, what's the number one thing? What's the best thing? Who's the best? Strive to be the best, you know, be above average, et cetera, et cetera, right? So, you know, when you're thinking hierarchically it's so common that people don't even know they're doing it. So I didn't make this story up but it's the, you know, the little joke about the two fish swimming along and the one fish says to the other fish, you know, talking about a third fish who's not there they're like, he's like a fish out of water and the other fish says, what's water?

So it's so common that people don't even realize that they're doing it but it's actually unnatural because in nature there really isn't a hierarchy, everything matters. Even if it's tiny it can hit like right now the coronaviruses is invisible and as a percentage of matter in the universe it's infinitesimal yet it's completely upended the entire world. You know, so learning not to think hierarchically, not to look for the singular solution, not to look for the one secret, not to look for the most important thing, but to start to understand the nuances and the little things and that they all matter. And then in terms of the organization, it helps people get out of this mindset that only like the charismatic boss is important and to understand that, you know, the newest employee you have could be on the phone talking to your biggest client because they happen to answer the phone, you know, and they're bad service could lose you a million dollar a year client. Or conversely, win you a million dollar a year client. 

Owen: You obviously dedicate a lot of time and that's something that you talk about a lot is not just showing that you care, you actually have your presence in the room to show that you care. And one of the things that you and Paul do is you guys personally lead the new staff orientation. One of the two of you lead it every single time. 

Ari: Yeah.

Owen: Why exactly do you feel that's so important? 

Ari: You guys are good readers. Why do we do it? Well, you know, as you know from reading, I mean I think there's a ton of stuff— it's actually one of the paradoxical problems of the current situation is— well I guess there aren't really any new staff, but I mean we've stopped teaching classes cause, you know, don't have people in the room. But you know, I think this is proven by decades of experience by just sitting down with a new employee and just, you know, might be three at a time or 30 at a time but just sharing with them where we're coming from and why we're going there and being real with them. Sharing that vision that you asked about at the beginning of our conversation, sharing our history, some of the stories, like about the bread, if that's relevant, sharing where we screwed up, you know all of those things are important and when they hear about it from the owner or the founder or whatever it's, you know, with all due respect to somebody else who's going to present it for you, it's not the same, right?

Ethan: Right.

Ari: And you know, similarly in that class, it also gives a chance to hear just, you know, even a two minutes of their story like who are they and how did they get there and why are they working here and— it's almost always like, almost every single one of them has some other part of their life that's fast—, you know whatever, they designed video games, they, you know, they're a sculptor, they're a trapeze artist like it's just, people have all sorts of interesting things happening that in most settings at work, you know, for a frontline person, no one would ever even know about.

But really, you know, in the same context as getting out of thinking hierarchically, you start to understand all of those have merit and all of those have value to the organization if we can figure out how to put them to work 

Owen: A hundred percent. And I do think it's extremely impactful and it shows your like new staff how much you guys care about your business by showing your presence physically and that's really amazing. 

Ari: Yeah. 

Ethan: I guess switching gears a little bit here, I wanted to talk about— just from personal experience walking into Zingerman's deli or the Roadhouse and you guys just have this awesome aesthetic and all of the artwork and handwriting and everything is just so consistent and very different from things that you see in other restaurants and other businesses. Where did that come from? And—

Ari: Well, just originally just came out of necessity which a lot of good things come from which is we didn't have the money to pay for anybody to do fancy stuff so we just, you know, either had friends or employees when they weren't busy just start to make signs or whatever by hand.

You know, this is long before computers were something that you could carry around with you and do artwork on, you know, they existed but they were like a block long so it was really just the cheapest, most practical way to get it done. So that's where it came from. And then, you know, over time it became, you know, part of our look or whatever.

And you know, of course, ironically now we pay people a lot of money to make them all by hand. Whereas you can do, you know, food photography that used to cost $5,000 to get a photo shoot now, you know, in six seconds on your phone, you know but it is what it is right?

Owen: And one of Zingerman's guiding principles is being an active part of the community and we know you do stuff with like Food Gatherers and incredibly donating 10% of your previous year's profits. Can you talk about like what it means to the Zingerman's Community of Businesses to be a big part of the community? 

Ari: Well, I think every organization is part of the community whether they acknowledge it or not or whether they are a healthy part or unhealthy part we're all in the community. And I've—, you know, in part four which is The Power of Beliefs in Business, I started to write a fair bit and I've actually got another essay that'll eventually get written about this in more depth but just starting to look at organization like ecosystem and then understanding that not only are— is Zingerman's community of businesses an ecosystem, but of course every business within it is its own subset of the earth's small part of the ecosystem and then we don't exist in a vacuum we're part of a bigger ecosystem, right? So realistically, it's almost impossible to have a super healthy organization in an unhealthy ecosystem to understand that we all have responsibility for, you know, for helping to make the ecosystem healthier, right which means inevitably some people have less of "x" and some people have more of "x" it's just the way it is. And so the more equitably we, you know, freely choose to share that then we help the people around us who are in need, right, which is always going to be the case. And, you know, if you think you're not going to be in need, wait for a Coronavirus.

Ethan: Yeah and circling back to something you mentioned before about how in your vision for 2032 it's really important for you guys to stay local to Ann Arbor. 

Ari: Yeah. 

Ethan: Why is that? 

Ari: Well, I— you know, without judging others, I just have a very strong belief that it's different when you're doing business in a place you are, and I don't mean you have to be there every minute of every day, but you know, if you— like when you look at sort of the mass market, you know, they're just dropping down stores, which is, you know, they're not really any different whether it's in Montana or Southeast Michigan and it doesn't make sense because the ecosystem is completely different, right? So in the same way that industrial farming just imposes itself on the land and you know, this is what we're going to do so we turn Kansas, you know, which wasn't meant for wheat into wheat fields, which turns it later into a dust bowl which, you know, in the depression, which hopefully we're not entering one right now, you know, it's the same with business. I mean, I think it's important to be part of the community and to be able to honor it and to be making decisions based on what's happening in the community, not based on what somebody told you from half a world away. 

Ethan: Yeah and out here on the East coast in the Philly area we have these small, I guess relatively small, chain of convenience stores, even though I don't even know if you can call them that. Wawa, I don't know if you've heard of them but

Ari: I have.

Ethan: Yeah, but they actually— there's a lot of parallels between how they treat their business and what you guys do in terms of just very, very controlled slow growth, practicing similar principles of servant leadership is— have you seen an increase in similar business practices over the more recent times? 

Ari: Yeah, I mean I think that's why they're natural laws of business because I think you're going to find that all the healthy organizations, you know, they don't have to use the terminology I wrote about, but they're essentially doing those things.

And you know, is everybody doing them? No. You know, can you make money not doing them? Absolutely. Some ways you can make more money more quickly by not doing them in the same way that strip mining or you know, those sorts of things can extract a lot of money from an ecosystem but if you're thinking holistically in longterm, it's not a good move.

It's the same thing, you know? So you can certainly make more money but if you treat your employees poorly and they go home enraged every day, that negativity, that spiritual poison is being passed into the community and it's showing up in the school system it's you know, it's everywhere. And so ultimately, you know, in the same way that factories exploited the environment to make money and then left and left a mess behind for the people who were there, it's the same thing. I mean, it's not healthy, it's not helpful. 

Ethan: Yeah and one of the most common phrases we hear in business, or especially in the food industry, is the customer is always right. Is that a true statement? 

Ari: No, everybody knows it's not true. What we say is the customer's not always right but we're going to act like they're right anyway.

Ethan: Gotcha. I like that. 

Owen: Can you take our audience through the four steps that you mentioned when a customer has a complaint? 

Ari: Yeah there actually are five now. So first step is to acknowledge what the guest is saying to you so it's a simple, literally acknowledgement "oh" or "wow" or something along those lines.

The second step is to apologize and not to get caught up in arguing or proving who was right but just to say you're sorry. The third is to fix it in some way either yourself or to get help. The fourth is to thank them for complaining. And then the fifth one is to document it so that we start to capture a little bit of data and can do a better job of watching for trends and patterns for future change.

Owen: That's awesome. So going back to your community of businesses, each one—

Ari: Yep.

Owen:  —is unique. They're— you don't like to copy the formula that you use for each business. 

Ari: Yeah. 

Owen: But how are you able to go from something like a deli to something like a Korean restaurant? How do you have those skills to be able to open up two completely different types of food restaurants or a creamery...

Ari: Well, depends on how you look at it, I mean, you know, within the deli you have food that I didn't grow up with: bacon, cured ham, you know, depending on how one— depending on the lens one chooses to look through those are completely different than serving corn beef, right? So we have managing partners in each business the idea is that the business reflects their passion. So, Ji Hye Kim is from Korea so she knows Korean food. You know, the commonalities are the approaches to business, the philosophies, the values, you know, the visioning work, the service work, et cetera. So trying to take those and put them into place in different settings. 

Ethan: Great and something that I was wondering about and that you mentioned, now like there's the additional fifth step of when a customer has a complaint.

Ari: Yeah. 

Ethan: How has technology played a role in the evolution of Zingerman's and Zingerman's Community of Businesses? 

Ari: Well, it's allowed me to be talking to you while standing outside, walking in our back yard. You know, it's the same role as everywhere else. I mean, I think we— in the 2020 vision we wrote about intentional technology which, you know, in current context probably seems like a throwaway cause it's impossible to function in the modern world without it but at the time we wrote in '07 we were still somewhat, I think, or maybe I personally, biased against technology because so much technology was used to demean the quality of food in the 20th century through industrial methods.

And we chose intentional in order to— you really say we weren't trying to be cutting edge but we were more just trying to find, you know, ways that we could use technology to improve the quality of the workplace or improve the quality of the food or the guest experience and you know that we— sometimes that was really old stuff so like for the last two years we've been fresh milling grain at the Bakehouse which is, you know, 16th century technology or whatever, but it's made a huge quality improvement. You know, in the new vision, I don't think it's even going to come up because it's now so, you know, mundane but anyway, yeah, I mean, clearly it's helped. I mean, just being able to make a phone call from the car. 

Owen: One of the things that you claim is that there's an energy crisis in the workplace. 

Ari: Yeah.

Owen: And you say it's manifested with the apathy disengagement and disinterest in the workplace. 

Ari: Yeah. 

Owen: So you— to our young audience, can you explain— 

Ari: To your old audience.

Owen: Or our old audience, how important is it to get into an industry or to work in a place that you feel very passionate about and enjoy going to?

Ari: Well, I think it's really, I mean, life is short as we're experiencing and being reminded of right now, even more than ever, but, you know, to spend time, I mean, obviously people, you know, need to make a living and you need to pay bills so I'm not saying we don't do things that we're not always enthused about, but I think as a general approach to life being in relationships that are not rewarding, that you're not honored and respected and that you don't feel good about whether that's out of work or at work, it's really a good thing, right? So, I think in the context of the— of what I wrote is really more focused on the organization, making sure to honor the people who are a part of it but I guess if the question is, is it better to take a job where you make a lot of money but you hate where you go to work or take a job that you make less money but you feel honored, respected, that you're learning and valued, you know, that's a personal choice that people need to make, I mean, I certainly take the ladder.

I mean, I think that's what we continue to do in our organization cause we make plenty of choices that don't enrich us but that, you know, we feel good about and I'm not saying we're so great, it's just those are the decisions that we make cause it's what matters to us. 

Ethan: Right and Ari, we want to be very cognizant of your time so we're going to wrap it up here but before you go, we know that success is a word that's thrown a lot— around a lot today and it kind of takes on this arbitrary definition. A lot of people have different perceptions of it in their mind. So, something we've been asking our guests is, how have you defined success throughout your career and what does success mean to you today?

Ari: Well, it's yeah, I think success ultimately is living essentially the vision and values that you wrote for yourselves, you know? So, if your vision is to be a Buddhist monk and have no possessions then— and you're doing that and you feel good about it, that's awesome. If your vision is to be a gazillionaire, then that's awes— and you're doing it that's awesome too. You know, so if the whole point of the visioning work is that it's an inside out exercise, it's not trying to figure out what the market wants, although that might be embedded in it, but it's really more designing the future of your dreams, right? So some people want to have a relationship and have 20 kids and some people don't like kids.

Some people want to live in the city, some people want to live in the country and there's merit to all of them. It's just, you know, how do you create a life that fits with what you truly want to do? And the visioning process, which we didn't really talk about, but I wrote a lot about in the books, is very much how you tap into that and it's really my strong belief that we all— although we agonize a lot, we actually know in our heart what we already want. It's just that the voices of our family, our parents, society, et cetera, are so strong that we lose track of, you know, what's kind of a quiet voice still buried down in there. So I think that's what success is.

I mean, I— you know, the funny thing is in the context of hierarchical thinking is that people assign the title of being— you know, you are a success which I think is inappropriate and ineffective because we're all failing and succeeding simultaneously all the time. Witness the current situation. And then also I should say for people who have more questions, just— I mean my email is as you know is ari@zingermans.com and then if they want to buy the books, they're on zingtrain.com 

Ethan: There you go.

Owen: Read his books, they're incredible.

Ethan: Thank you so much, Ari. This has been super insightful—

Ari: Thank you man.

Ethan: This has been really helpful to us and I'm sure our audience is going to get a ton of value out of this. 

Ari: All right, well let's hope we see each other again in human—

Ethan: Absolutely.

Ari: —in human form. 

Ethan: And next time we're enabled to come back to Ann Arbor, we'd love to come meet you in person. 

Owen: We'll be hitting up Zingerman's for sure. 

Ari: All right you got it, man. We'll have coffee. 

Ethan: Thank you so much. 

Owen: Thank you, Ari.

Ari: Thank you guys. Take good care. 

Ethan: You too.

Owen: Thank you for tuning into the Power of 2 podcast. Ethan and I are two college students looking to inspire our generation and the ones to follow by sharing the stories of unique individuals. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to share it and follow us on Instagram @baimbrothers for exclusive content. You can check us out on baimbrothers.com for more information. Catch us on the next episode of the Power of 2...PEACE!