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work. But I worked with my A Team to develop the B Team, and we
Nick:
As you became a restaurant owner and kept going over the years, what
do you feel was the primary strategy to keep you going, to keep you
being successful?
Roger:
It was all about brand building. I had this major passion for skiing
which became the dominant theme of my restaurant and bar. I was
also somewhat of a mountain climber years ago, so I had all these
experiences in Europe, all these photographs, all this memorabilia.
And I just started filling the place with skiing and mountain climbing
memorabilia which kind of captured the public’s imagination. And
then everything that related to my restaurant – really, the staff
was the foundation, but everything about our processes and our
procedures just sort of elevated and augmented and built that brand
over time.
Nick:
OK, awesome. And obviously we’re talking about how to build your
dream team staff that wows your customer and maximizes your profits.
One problem I’ve had issues with in the past, and I’m sure a lot of bar and
restaurant owners go through this as well, is how do you go through the
big, huge problem with turnover? How did you find a solution to finding
and keeping a good staff in the very beginning of doing this?
Roger:
That was really pivotal in the beginning because in the restaurant
and bar business, it’s very transient. We get lots of young people.
We get lots of people that don’t necessarily care about serving the
public. They’re just looking for a paycheck. And in this particular ski
town when I first started, there was not a huge labor pool, so labor
became a huge challenge and a risk. And I realized that if I was going
to stay in business, I needed to create longevity with my staff and
reduce that turnover which really costs us lots and lots of money.
So when I had a few key people, I trained and developed them, and
then I encouraged them to introduce me to other key people that
they knew what they thought would work out well. I called that
the A Team. And then once I started to develop the A Team, I also
got some B players. And the B players you can recognize had some
potential. They might have some rough edges. They needed some
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got rid of what I called the C Team. And the C Team are all those
people that just sort of are morale killers. They take the path of least
resistance. They’re there for the wrong reasons. They don’t really fit
the culture, and what I found was they very quickly undermine your
culture. It’s kind of like a disease that spreads through the place. So
we called it ‘weeding the garden.’ We got rid of all the C Team, and
we focused all our attention into turning B players into A players.
And then we had a huge recognition and rewards program that
encouraged them to utilize best practices, give our guests the most
amazing experiences, and that took on a life of its own. And that
was probably the foundation of creating such a powerful brand.
Nick:
Awesome. Let’s get to that in a second. I’m interested in knowing more
about how you rewarded them and everything. But this is just kind of
off-the-cuff. Do you have any crazy horror stories of staff that have
worked for you?
Roger:
I really do. And crazy is the key word, because this business
definitely attracts interesting people. When I was first opening my
restaurant, I was probably – I don’t know – a month or two out
from opening. And I had hired a chef that I did due diligence on.
He actually answered an ad in the Boston Globe that I had placed
looking for a chef. He was a chef on the island of Nantucket. So I
was invited over, and the guy spent the weekend cooking all this
amazing food, knocking my socks off. He was a really, really talented
chef, and so I thought he was the guy. So then I invited him to
Maine a couple of weekends, and he came up and he put a menu
together and he started sourcing equipment. I got the idea that this
was my guy, so I hired him.
And then it was two or three weeks later after a couple of trips that
he had taken to Maine, and I had a business partner at the time that
was working pretty much with him because I had a full time gig at
the ski resort while I was simultaneously opening the restaurant. The
kicker to this story is he placed a phone call to my business partner
one day saying he was at a restaurant auction in the state of New
York and that all the equipment that we needed to source before
we opened our doors, he could buy for pennies on the dollar. He
would rent a U-Haul truck, and he would bring it all up the very next
week into Maine. So he asked us to wire him a check to a bank in
New York for $40,000 dollars. Well, something obviously felt a little
scattered about that, but I was in the middle of a ton of deadlines
at work. I wasn’t quite sure that that was the right thing to do. My
gut told me no, but we were under a deadline, we still needed to
find all this equipment, and we were very close to opening. So we
reluctantly wired $40,000 dollars, which ended up being gambled
away at a casino in Connecticut. We never saw the chef again.
So that was sort of the baptism by fire where you make this heartfelt
decision. You go to bed that night and you sleep on it, and you go,
am I going to pay back $40,000 dollars of a $150,000 dollar loan to
the bank and keep going? Or am I just going to – what do we do?
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