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Expert Interview with

 ROGER BEAUDOIN How To Build

A Dream Team That “Wows” Your

Customer And Maximizes Your Profits

Nick: burning brick oven pizzeria. I ate lots of pizza over the course of
All right, on today’s interview we have Roger Beaudoin, and we’re that summer. And then I actually took a trip across the border
going to talk about how to build your dream team staff that wows to Switzerland because I’m a huge skier, and in this town called
your customers and maximizes your profits. Roger is with Restaurant Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn, I stumbled across a bar
Rockstars. Roger, are you with me? and restaurant called the North Wall. And what really inspired me
about that was there were people from all over the world. They
Roger: were singing drinking songs, drinking big steins of beer, and eating
Yeah, I sure am, Nick. How are you today? wood-fired brick oven pizzas again.

Nick: It was a couple of years later when I actually moved to a ski town
I’m good. As we get started, Roger, why don’t you tell everybody who is and I saw that there was lots of skier traffic in the winter, but there
reading the article here a little bit about yourself, your background, and were very few restaurants that couldn’t even keep up with the
how you got started in the restaurant business? incredible business that came through in the winter. And that’s
when those images and inspirations came back to me, and I said,
Roger: “Whoa. If you were to take that place in Switzerland, drop it in
It was one of those things that I never would have expected. I any ski town in America, it would rock and roll. But here’s the
had a marketing background. I’ve got an MBA which goes back 25 place to do it, because this place needs everything and there’s this
plus years or whatnot. But it was when I was in graduate school incredible amount of skier traffic.” So that was kind of my story. I
and I was doing an internship for a company based in Milan, Italy, had no experience jumping in. Be careful for what you wish for. It
and I suddenly got really inspired with pizza, because Italy is the might come true. But it was really the business skills that gave me a
birthplace of pizza and on every street corner there was a wood- competitive advantage to actually make the restaurant work.

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