From butcher shops to fine dining, Chef Brad Wise has built a reputation for world-class steaks and top-tier hospitality. As his Trust Restaurant Group expands and new concepts take shape, he’s proving that smart risks, self-belief, and hard-earned lessons are the keys to scaling his business.
Watch now to learn about the power of trust, the balance between growth and hospitality, and the surprising crossovers between running a butcher shop and a restaurant.
Watch now to learn about the power of trust, the balance between growth and hospitality, and the surprising crossovers between running a butcher shop and a restaurant.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Us, we've owned, I've owned Cali Barbecue for 17 years.
00:02I've failed so many times.
00:04Yeah, man.
00:04And what I've found, the whole idea,
00:06teach my young children, why do we fall?
00:07We fall so that we can get back up.
00:09Why do we fall, sir?
00:15So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.
00:20♪♪
00:25Welcome to Restaurant Influencers,
00:27presented by Entrepreneur.
00:28I'm your host, Sean Walchek.
00:29This is a Cali BBQ Media production.
00:32We are recording in La Costa
00:35with Chef Brad Wise, Trust Restaurant Group.
00:39I'm so excited for today's episode.
00:41We're actually going to be filming season two,
00:43an episode of Family Style, presented by Toast.
00:45So shout out to Toast,
00:47our primary technology partner at our barbecue restaurants
00:50for believing in this show, Restaurant Influencers,
00:52for also sponsoring Family Style,
00:55which is a YouTube show on Toast's YouTube page.
00:57But more importantly,
00:58I've been watching the career of Chef Brad Wise
01:03as a local San Diegan,
01:05and I'm so excited that not only today we get to eat,
01:08but more importantly, we get to share the stories in life,
01:11in the restaurant business,
01:12and in the new creator economy
01:14we learn through lessons and stories.
01:16Chef Brad, welcome to the show.
01:17Thank you. Thanks for having me.
01:19Where in the world is your favorite stadium,
01:22stage, or venue?
01:25Where in the world?
01:27I would say Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
01:30Go Birds.
01:31Go Birds.
01:32We're recording this the day after the Super Bowl.
01:36So this is going to drop later,
01:37but today is a very special day.
01:40Very.
01:41Lincoln Financial.
01:42Yeah.
01:43Your birds, they won.
01:44They did.
01:45And I'm a diehard Chargers fan,
01:46so it was a beautiful thing to watch.
01:48I think we had the whole country cheering
01:49against the Chiefs.
01:50Yeah, my wife's a Chiefs fan.
01:52Oh, really?
01:53And her whole family.
01:53No way.
01:54Yeah, my house is awful.
01:55House divided.
01:57She was inside watching it on the inside TV,
01:59and we were outside on the outside TV watching it.
02:02No way.
02:03Yeah.
02:04Wow.
02:05Yeah, it was pretty epic.
02:06Okay, well, we're going to go to Lincoln Financial.
02:07We're going to rent the entire Lincoln Financial out.
02:09I mean, what is it?
02:1070,000 probably?
02:11Probably.
02:1170,000?
02:12That place is huge, yeah.
02:13Okay, we're going to get 70,000 hospitality professionals,
02:15people that are in the restaurant industry
02:16that play the game within the game,
02:18and I'm going to put you on the 50-yard line,
02:20give you a mic, and say,
02:22Chef, what does trust mean?
02:25Ooh.
02:26Tell me a story about trust.
02:28Trust is, well, I'll tell you,
02:29I could go all day on that one,
02:31but I'll tell you, I've always had kind of an idea
02:36on how I wanted to run a business
02:37and what I like to get out of people,
02:40and at the end of the day,
02:43as long as you trust the people that are working for you
02:45and are working with you,
02:47and they have trust in you,
02:48you go pretty far and you go a long ways.
02:50But even where I stumbled on that name was,
02:54you'd need to build trust in your diners
02:57and your clientele for them to want to come back,
02:59and that's actually kind of where the whole group
03:01and the name started was.
03:02I wrote a menu years and years
03:04before I even thought about having my own restaurant,
03:08and I put at the top,
03:10because it was a place in Bakersfield,
03:12I put at the top,
03:13we need people to trust us to eat our food,
03:15and that was, or we needed people to trust us
03:20before we could cook the food that we wanted to cook,
03:23because I was probably a little bit ahead
03:25of where the dining scene in Bakersfield was at the time,
03:29so that, when we were looking for a name,
03:31I'm flipping and we had struck out on four names
03:34because other people's already had it,
03:36not that many original ideas anymore,
03:38and then I'm flipping through while I was writing this menu,
03:40and I saw that at the top,
03:42and I'm like, oh, that's it right there,
03:44Googled it, no restaurant was called Trust,
03:46and that's where it started from,
03:47but it is in the belief of,
03:50hey, people should come in and be able to trust
03:53the people cooking for them,
03:54and that's where it all started.
03:55Give us high level,
03:56how many restaurant locations do you have,
03:58how many concepts are you operating, employees,
04:00and then give us, set the stage for where we are today.
04:03Yeah, so I have six concepts,
04:07five are open, we're building the sixth now,
04:10it's a French brasserie in North Park,
04:14but we have steakhouses,
04:18we have a couple farm-to-table style restaurants,
04:20a little bit more upscale,
04:21Italian Chophouse, and then Two Wise Oxes,
04:24so in the group, 10 are open,
04:25we have 12 restaurants total that,
04:30and we're building the last two,
04:32but again, 10 of them are open,
04:34from Vegas to Seattle, Santa Barbara,
04:38San Clemente, two in San Diego,
04:40and they're all steakhouses,
04:42and then the other distinct concepts
04:44are around San Diego area,
04:47and then here at The Wise Ox was a,
04:48actually a, I knew when we bought the first one
04:52down in North Park, I knew the owners
04:56of the previous place, it was a butcher shop,
04:58it was called a Hart & Trotter,
04:59and yeah, there's Trey and James.
05:01They were on our digital hospitality show
05:03way back in the day.
05:04Yeah, they're great, and we were,
05:05when I was looking for my first restaurant,
05:07they were opening Hart & Trotter,
05:08so we were using the same broker,
05:10so I met them through the industry,
05:12and then I just became dear friends,
05:13obviously they were like,
05:14kind of the first small butcher shop
05:16that I've seen in a while around in San Diego,
05:19and then they just wanted to get out,
05:21and then, was it a couple days before the pandemic,
05:24or no, it was during the toilet paper craze
05:28of the pandemic, and I was in Target,
05:31I saw one of the owners, Trey,
05:33and he was like, hey, I need to get out
05:35of the butcher shop.
05:37I'm like, man, I don't know if it's the right time
05:38for me to be looking and buying restaurants right now,
05:41and then whatever happened, happened,
05:43and then a few months later, he texts me,
05:45he's like, hey, we really need to,
05:47I really want to get rid of this place.
05:49I'm like, great, we made a deal,
05:51and then came the birth of the Wise Ox,
05:53and this place has been special.
05:57We bought it out of, and I don't even like
05:59talking about this either, but it was like,
06:01hey, we're gonna, and we got such a good deal on it,
06:03but we bought it out of trying to keep jobs
06:08for the events coordinator at the time,
06:10and I'm not even joking, it's really what,
06:12why we looked at buying it,
06:13but then this thing just became like a labor of love.
06:18It's like a dying art, there's not many butchers anymore,
06:22and San Diego really didn't have it,
06:24that it was like the approach that we want to do,
06:26and I'm from South Jersey, so we used to go
06:28to this place called West Side Market,
06:30where you always had sandwiches in a butcher shop,
06:34so and then you had some of the best meat,
06:35all the, everything that goes with having a,
06:38using all the trim from your meats in the sandwiches,
06:41so then we really wanted to lean into the deli
06:44and sandwich production of it, and we did,
06:46and me being from Jersey, we put cheese steaks
06:49on the menu and burgers and things like that,
06:51and became, started winning awards in San Diego for it,
06:55and now this is like our outlet,
06:57because I don't really get to talk to people a lot
06:59in the restaurants, but when you're here
07:00and people are coming in, they want to talk to you
07:02about cooking a steak, it's, that's like the best,
07:05you need to clear your head and you still have to work,
07:07you just go to the shop and work service,
07:08and it's one of the funnest places to be,
07:10so, you know, the first one was in North Park,
07:12and then we got this one in La Costa,
07:15and this is, you know, just a,
07:17I used to live up here in this area,
07:19so we knew that there was a bit of a void here,
07:21and this has just been a special place,
07:23like every one of the executives that,
07:25that this is always like our fun place to go,
07:28like, oh, chef, where are you at today?
07:29I'm like, I'm at the shop, and they're like, okay,
07:30I'll leave you alone for a few hours,
07:32because I'm like making cheese steaks
07:33and working on the line, or just cutting,
07:34helping these guys, it's fun, it's a really fun place.
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08:18Tell me about what you've learned
08:19about the butcher shop and retail,
08:21specifically as it differs from the business of restaurants.
08:24Oh, you know, quick service retail is,
08:30you know, I think that there's a lot more similarities
08:35than people think of,
08:37one, if you're nice to people when they come in,
08:38they usually come back.
08:40And the funnest part about it is,
08:45again, just getting that, the face-to-face interaction,
08:47and you can, or face-to-face conversation,
08:50you still have to have a level of service
08:52that you probably wouldn't expect having a butcher shop.
08:55I don't know if I would compare this
08:57to some, like, coffee shops and things like that,
08:59you know, but at the end of the day,
09:01you know when you get a nice barista
09:02and you have a nice butcher.
09:04You know, we like to think,
09:07we like to treat this place just like the restaurant,
09:09so we're just as hospitable.
09:11But it's, we try to operate it
09:16probably a little bit too much like a restaurant,
09:19but it's also, but it also is, it leans to our success.
09:22And we say that because when you come in
09:24and you interview people, like, for a job,
09:25and you're like, oh, you guys take this serious,
09:28like, hey, yeah, this is, we're a restaurant group first,
09:32and then we're, you know, this is just a stem
09:34or a branch of what we do,
09:37so we like to execute it the same way.
09:39So there's more similarities than people may think,
09:44but nonetheless, they're both so different
09:48and so fun at the same time,
09:49and again, that's why this is like a good outlet for us.
09:51What have you learned about retail specifically?
09:53How are you curating the items that you have?
09:56It's not a huge shop.
09:57No, but-
09:58But you're very intentional
09:59about what you bring. Yeah, you know,
10:00and a lot of it is trial and error.
10:01You know, some things we strike out on,
10:03like we have a, you know, we either get samples in
10:07or we'll, you know, the buyer who buys the things,
10:10she'll look online and, you know,
10:13just go for the cool factor.
10:14Sometimes things sell better because the way it looks,
10:16you know, branding is everything.
10:18But no, it's, we try to see what the trends are too.
10:22What are people cooking?
10:23What do we like to do most importantly?
10:24You know, because we're the ones selling it.
10:26So, you know, if any one of us is like,
10:27oh, did you see this?
10:28Or, you know, did you try this?
10:30And then we'll end up, you know, trying to mimic,
10:32you know, that or put it on the shelves
10:34and so people buy it.
10:35And then there's, you know, we make our own hot sauce.
10:38We make some, make a lot of stuff in the cold cases.
10:40We like to do it, you know, do it ourselves as well.
10:43If you, we have a lot of restaurant owners,
10:44obviously that are listening to this, watching this.
10:47If they, you know, we know toast has gone into retail now.
10:50So there is this blending of what's happening
10:53at the grocery store, what's happening in small retail,
10:55what's happening in restaurants.
10:56What kind of advice would you have
10:57to a restaurant owner specifically
10:59if they're looking at a retail outlet
11:01or bringing retail into their existing restaurant?
11:04You know, are you saying in from, in relation to toast?
11:07No, just in general.
11:08Okay. Just in general.
11:09I mean, you just need to try, you know,
11:12there's nothing wrong with trying things.
11:17I don't know if I have the right,
11:19I don't know if I have the right answer, you know,
11:22cause I have figured it out, I haven't.
11:23Cause we still work.
11:24We haven't figured it out either.
11:26But here we are.
11:27Yeah, we still learn every time we buy something,
11:30but, you know, just make sure you have a plan.
11:32If it doesn't work, you have to pivot, you know,
11:34just keep things fresh, you know, don't get too stagnant
11:38and you just have to try new things.
11:40But if you don't experience it yourself,
11:42why would other people do it?
11:44You have to do the homework to make sure that,
11:47hey, I need to make sure this is going to sell
11:49or I need to at least try it myself.
11:51You know, like even when we curate our own ox boxes,
11:53like I get, it's a monthly meat subscription.
11:56I get it every month and I cook it just like everyone else.
11:58And I provide a lot of feedback, like,
12:00hey, this isn't right, you know, or, you know,
12:02we've made a, in what, 28 months we've done it.
12:05And, you know, we've made it, you know,
12:06had a few misses of like,
12:07hey, we need to get in front of this.
12:08And I'm a long way to get back to your question,
12:11but we need to get back to people and say,
12:15hey, this didn't work out,
12:16but it's from me trying and the team trying our product
12:19and trying what we're selling
12:20to make sure you can stand behind them and believe it.
12:22But you have to stay relevant and pivot when in need.
12:25And it's, when you get more and more people coming in
12:28and they see something new,
12:30it just makes them want to come back.
12:31You know, the best also that is once you hit on something
12:34and you have people come back and asking for it,
12:37you know, that's like a win.
12:38Like, hey, where's the seasoning?
12:40Where's the spice?
12:40Or where can I get it?
12:41So, and then that even keeps it fresh for us.
12:43We're like, great, I can just keep replenishing that
12:45and we know it's going to sell.
12:46Can you share one of a story of failure?
12:50Something that as a restaurant owner that-
12:52In general or in-
12:54In general, just a specific story.
12:55I mean, I think, you know, us, we've owned,
12:57I've owned Cali Barbecue for 17 years.
12:59I've failed so many times.
13:01And what I've found resonates the most with our audience
13:04is when I start talking about the things
13:05that I've buried in the back of my head.
13:07Sure.
13:08Things that like, you know,
13:09the whole idea to teach my young children,
13:11why do we fall?
13:12We fall so that we can get back up,
13:13but we forget why we fall that we just keep getting back up.
13:16Yeah, I'll tell you that.
13:17So we, so my first restaurant was Trust.
13:21It took 18 months to get recognized
13:23and we were grinding in there.
13:25Our first like real big review
13:27and it was from San Diego Magazine.
13:29Troy?
13:30Yeah, Troy did it.
13:31He was like, you know, where did,
13:32cause I was a guy on the beach that was just in operations.
13:35You know, I like was a chef,
13:36but I was like more, you know,
13:38developing restaurants at that time.
13:40And then I wanted to do my own thing,
13:41but I never really knew that I could cook,
13:43you know, of the style of food.
13:45I know I, what I like to go out and eat.
13:47So that's what I'm going to try to mimic.
13:49So I opened that place or I opened Trust.
13:52We, you know, after 18 months or a year,
13:54let's say we started getting, you know,
13:57notable press and then moving up
13:59and we were busy all the time.
14:00You know, we were packed every day of the week
14:02and you're like, okay, great.
14:03I'm, you know, let's buy another restaurant.
14:05So we tried to buy a restaurant three blocks down the road,
14:09opened a place called 100 Proof.
14:12Three months in, you're like, cool.
14:15I thought, I thought just cause I had success.
14:17Yeah. I thought I knew everything.
14:19I had all this success with one restaurant
14:20and I'm like, awesome.
14:21No one's coming in.
14:22It's not doing the numbers.
14:23Okay. It's just not cool.
14:24Cause we didn't do bars right.
14:25Or, you know, and you know, it took,
14:27we limped that thing along for two years
14:29and then it's, you learn something
14:31from all your failures, right?
14:33I, you know, back then I was like, man,
14:36I wish we never had done this deal.
14:37You know, it's, it's taking money from the other place
14:39and doing all that kind of stuff.
14:40And, and then it's, you know,
14:42usually the best things come out of failures.
14:44You know, we came up with the Rare Society
14:46or the idea of Rare Society.
14:48I have six of those locations
14:49all throughout the Western seaboard.
14:51That's like my restaurant that I scale.
14:53But that was, hey, we had to have a really tough conversation
14:56if we were going to keep limping this thing along
14:58or we needed to change it.
14:59I always wanted this concept of the kind of
15:02Central Coast meets, you know, Vegas Steakhouse
15:05and a little bit more rustic approach
15:09just cause we use wood fire,
15:10but it's more of a, a Sheffy style steakhouse.
15:13You know, I shouldn't say Sheffy.
15:14It's, it's the, the, we do the, you know,
15:18I like to do the original classic things really well
15:20and execute it well.
15:21And that's what we try to do.
15:23But yeah, that failure was the birth of Rare Society.
15:26So, you know, it was, and that's what-
15:28Was it in the same location?
15:29Same location.
15:29We just shut down for two months.
15:31Did a, not even, we shut down for six weeks.
15:33Oh no, it was two months.
15:34Shut down for six weeks.
15:35Did a, you know, a small facelift
15:37cause we just didn't have the budget.
15:38I had to put in a different hood
15:39cause we were cooking it under
15:40and that's what took the longest.
15:42But that was the birth of Rare Society.
15:44And I mean, we went from 24 months of making zero dollars,
15:47like, and then month one, it was, it was noticeable.
15:52And like, you're like, holy crap,
15:53this place can make money, you know?
15:54And we did.
15:55And then it was, I mean,
15:56that was a few months before the pandemic,
15:57but then I kept it shut the whole pandemic.
15:59And just off of that success for those three months,
16:03I started acquiring more, more Rare Societies.
16:06And then we did Solana Beach,
16:08then Santa Barbara was after that,
16:09and then so forth and so on.
16:10But yeah, that, that, that concept came out of a failure.
16:13Give me Rare Society.
16:14Bring me into the branding, the naming.
16:17You know, it's a great, it's a great name.
16:21Yeah. I mean, we were,
16:22and we came out with a name
16:24and we work with a team second site
16:26that I've been, that do my graphic design
16:27and have for years.
16:29And we were like going back and forth.
16:30And we, we were, they looked at it
16:32like such a different lens and, you know,
16:34and they put a proposal for you together
16:35of different names and things like that.
16:37And, you know, this wasn't even,
16:39they didn't even have like a deck behind this one
16:41because they weren't sure if I was going to use it.
16:42And it was, I was on like page three or four
16:45or whatever it was.
16:46And I'm like, and I'm like, they start the meeting
16:49and there was like a list of names at the back
16:51and I saw it and their name is Jess.
16:53They didn't even start the presentation.
16:55I just flipped it over and threw it over.
16:56And I'm like, Rare Society, like, that's it.
16:58Like this, you, you,
16:59because we were doing the Vegas-y kind of, you know,
17:02throwback and each, each location has like a,
17:05a playing card with a number on it.
17:07That's like, you know, the Ace is our first one.
17:10And then two, you know, a deck of cards
17:13or our second one has something in there.
17:14So it was like kind of that play on it with the design
17:18and they nailed it with that.
17:19And I'm like, dude, this is, that name was like,
17:22yeah, just stuck.
17:23So it was, it was pretty exciting.
17:25Which was the first location that you opened up
17:27out of San Diego County?
17:29Was it Santa Barbara?
17:29Santa Barbara, yep.
17:30And what advice do you have when you're no longer
17:33within county limits?
17:34That's another failure.
17:36Don't try to open a restaurant in another city
17:38like you actually live in that city.
17:40Cause it's not the same.
17:42We learned a lot.
17:43You know, it was like here, you're, you know,
17:45when you're here doing restaurant openings
17:47that people don't know, it's,
17:50you're there from seven in the morning
17:51till 1 a.m. every day for leading up to it,
17:54door to opening and it's,
17:56you can't do that when you're four hours away, you know?
17:59So you live up there, you know, we rent a house.
18:02It's, it's, you just have to strategize,
18:05make your budget bigger.
18:07And, and you, you need to have someone on board
18:11that has done it before.
18:12Cause there's not a book that out there.
18:13And I trust me, I've searched high and low
18:17on how to scale a restaurant,
18:19a full service restaurant nonetheless.
18:20It's different when you have these little concepts
18:22and you do, where you can move in a team and,
18:25you know, they have, you know,
18:26there's not much labor that goes into,
18:28not even financially, but there's not a much training
18:31that needs to go into these people
18:32and you can do it next to them.
18:33You know, it's different when you can train someone
18:36hip to hip versus classroom style, you know,
18:38like they have to buy into this vision because you're,
18:41you know, you have $120 price per person average,
18:44you know, so you, there's, there's,
18:46so we tried to open a restaurant like we live there.
18:49Yes.
18:50It exhausted everybody.
18:51We didn't have the right model in place.
18:53We didn't have the right training packets in place.
18:55We had them, but again,
18:57it was like we were going to be working next to them
18:59for the next six months.
18:59But no, we were only up there for, you know,
19:02a few months, you know, total,
19:04or a couple months or a month for, for a lot of us.
19:07So we struggled with that.
19:09You know, now we have, I mean, we call it, you know,
19:13like our, our in-house manual,
19:17we have another name for it that sometimes
19:19I don't like to say, but I know it's a rare sighted Bible,
19:22but I don't, we don't like to say that,
19:24but you know, that has every single picture of,
19:28to detail of on, on how things are done.
19:30The training is, you know,
19:33the training is so thought out, it's classroom style.
19:35I mean, we've kind of completely redone this place
19:38or redone that, that training process,
19:40but that's the hardest thing is training.
19:41You know, you need to get someone that knows how to do it
19:43if you're thinking about scaling,
19:45because we, I did bring someone in,
19:47but he just was never a part of the openings.
19:49And then we just had to, you know,
19:51fortunately or unfortunately learn the hard way,
19:53you know, and it was, and now the openings, you know,
19:56I get like the butterflies, every new restaurant openings,
19:58like everybody does, but with Rare Society,
20:00you have just a different confidence.
20:02Like, all right, there's not anything we're missing.
20:04You know, we were, you know, we talk to people,
20:07you know, the two weeks, in two weeks,
20:08you're going to learn all of these things.
20:09And they're like, just rolling their eyes,
20:10like, yeah, right.
20:11You know, and then at day 10, you know, period three,
20:14you know, on, we literally break it out like a classroom,
20:17period three, this is what we're going over.
20:18So you like see everything that we're doing, you know,
20:20and it's, it's just, it's just a,
20:22it's just a special thing to be able to blow an opening
20:27like we did in Santa Barbara, and we really did.
20:30And then, you know, and we've, we, we,
20:32we struggled for a while, you know, it was a great area,
20:35you know, so that's, we struggle with just personnel
20:37and all these things.
20:38And then to see where it is now, it's, you know,
20:41when we opened Vegas, you know, we go to meet now,
20:43because we're opening in a couple months and it's like,
20:45man, we were, we got these things pretty, pretty dialed.
20:48You know, we've still, you know, every building has a,
20:50there's a different set of walls
20:51that you have to work within,
20:52but it's, it's, it's just a little bit more dialed now
20:55when we open places outside of San Diego.
20:58If you're talking to the chef that's watching this
21:00that has a dream of going out on their own,
21:03how did you know when you were ready?
21:05You can't do it yourself.
21:08You need to have, you need to have someone.
21:12I knew I was ready to, I knew I was ready
21:15just because I was growing apart from the rest,
21:18the group that I was with, they were more hospitality,
21:20I was more restaurant-y, or more restaurant person.
21:26So, one, I knew it was time to go,
21:28and we was, and I'm still very friendly with them,
21:30they knew, you know, it was like, hey, you,
21:33because I had ideas, I wanted to do different things,
21:35and then obviously ownership has the final say,
21:37so, and I respect that, so, you know,
21:39and then they just told me, his name was Steve,
21:41he's like, hey, you need to,
21:43we're going in different directions,
21:44it's time for you to go do your own thing.
21:46Like, we've, I've worked there for 10 years,
21:47and again, it was like, he's like,
21:49I'll help you do whatever you need to do,
21:50you know, like, let's, let's, you know,
21:53you're, we're not going to have
21:54these style of restaurants anymore, you know,
21:56like the little chef-y ones that I wanted,
21:59but I had a counterpart at the time that I did it with.
22:04You know, you look a lot, you look around,
22:06and you see a lot of chefs at open restaurants
22:08and think they can do it themselves
22:09and not have that counterpart in the front of house.
22:11If you're in the back of the house,
22:13you need to have a front of house person.
22:15If you're in the front of house,
22:15you need to have a back of the house person
22:17that's invested, that has some skin in the game,
22:19not necessarily cash, but you need to incentivize,
22:22you know, if you can be able to raise the money,
22:24because you don't want these people going anywhere,
22:25you know, it's, it's, it's so important
22:27that you can't do everything yourself.
22:29I know that, and that's why I surround my people
22:31that have an amazing set of skills
22:33that I can, you know, pull out of them,
22:35and I just need to learn how to, or know how to manage them,
22:37but it's, it's, it's so important to make sure
22:40that your front of house is taken care of
22:42just as much as your back of house,
22:43because again, it's one team, one dream.
22:46Tell me about wine, specifically.
22:48What have you guys learned?
22:51Wine, I've learned to, I've learned to, again,
22:55trust the people that buy the wine, you know?
22:58We have an in-house sommelier
22:59you're gonna talk to today, his name's Ben,
23:01you know, and he's a vested partner,
23:02and again, it's like one of those things.
23:04He owns a percentage of the company
23:05that I know I can trust his judgment,
23:08and he handles his program to the fullest, you know?
23:12I, at this point, am lucky enough
23:14to be able to have those people that surround me
23:16that I just get the fun side of it, you know?
23:18I get to see these kick-ass menus, excuse me for cursing.
23:21Oh, you're good, we're all good.
23:24These kick-ass menus that, you know,
23:25have, you know, some new, exciting,
23:27or old allocations that we get to have,
23:30and he'll, you know, he'll ask,
23:31hey, do you want this for your cell,
23:32or do we want to put it on the, you know,
23:33on the wine, or on our wine list?
23:36So it's just, you know, being able to stay connected,
23:39but also trust the people that are running the programs,
23:41you know, and that's what he's in that place for,
23:42and I do trust him, you know, to run everything, so.
23:46But again, buying, that's not my world.
23:47I know what I like, and I know what I don't like,
23:49you know, on the wine side.
23:50What have you learned about storytelling
23:53from a social media standpoint,
23:54from when you started as a chef?
23:56I mean, we, it's crazy for me to look at social media,
23:59knowing that the first iPhone came out in 2007,
24:02I opened up our restaurant in 2008,
24:04I didn't even have an iPhone, I was on an Android,
24:06but like, where we are now, I mean,
24:07we have a media team we're about to do content,
24:10we believe in all the platforms,
24:11YouTube, TikTok, all of those things,
24:13but for you specifically,
24:15tell me about your social media journey,
24:16and then how do you guys approach it
24:18as a restaurant group?
24:19Well, it's, I could tell you this,
24:22cause I know that my social media poster is not,
24:26I'm just kidding, we call it that.
24:28She just posts media, all she does,
24:30she's in control of posting on Instagram, that's her job.
24:34Cause she tells me to, that we need to do more content.
24:37Yeah, we need to do more content, more content.
24:39Yeah, more, more, more.
24:41So that's pretty much all I ever hear,
24:43is, well, I don't have this, I need to film it.
24:44Like, dang it, I just got to get this idea out,
24:47but I don't need to video it yet.
24:48And then we just got to make sure the batteries are charged
24:50when we're actually doing the content,
24:51so we don't record something for an hour,
24:53and then the microphone doesn't work,
24:54like it happened last week.
24:55That is the real, that's how it happens.
24:59Yeah, that's it.
25:00We make our media like we make our barbecue,
25:02it's all slow and slow, you gotta learn, it's the craft.
25:06But honestly, some things are such hit or misses,
25:09you know, with, we think something's gonna work,
25:12it does work, and then we, a lot of times,
25:15we're like, oh, this is gonna kill,
25:17once we do this, and it's like, falls flat on your face,
25:19or you fall flat on your face.
25:21But, you know, it's the power of,
25:23some people are gonna hate me for saying this,
25:25power influencers are still out there.
25:27You know, like, that is, the power of video is huge,
25:30we all know that, right?
25:31And just making sure that you're available,
25:33and trying to create with the thought of,
25:36how is this gonna look through a lens?
25:38You know, unfortunately, that's the world
25:40we live in right now, but, yeah, exactly.
25:42So everything that we create, everything we do,
25:44just needs to be thought of, like,
25:46okay, is this gonna photograph nicely?
25:48What is it gonna do?
25:49The lighting is important, like,
25:51and I'm just saying from, you know,
25:53the lighting in the restaurants,
25:54not, I don't do this kind of lighting, but,
25:57so, you know, just being, again,
25:59if I see it and I like it,
26:00hopefully other people are gonna do the same,
26:02so that's the way we try to approach everything.
26:04You know, but you have to do more content, more content,
26:06and you gotta pay someone that knows how to do it.
26:08You know, like, the funniest meme,
26:10or the funniest thing on Instagram is,
26:12or whatever platform it is,
26:15there's a guy, it's like, oh,
26:16when you're trying to teach older people
26:18how to use Instagram, and the guy's, like,
26:21walking around, like, doing pictures of his buff face,
26:23and he's filming his face the whole time, like,
26:25that is, that is, like, yeah,
26:27and then, you know, it's just being tech savvy,
26:30and paying to get in the right places sometimes,
26:33you know, gotta spend a little to make a little.
26:35So we're here filming today, recording on,
26:38in February 2025, give us the big vision for Trust,
26:42this year and beyond.
26:43This year is, I have two big openings,
26:46my two biggest far, I have Las Vegas,
26:48beautiful, huge restaurant off the Strip,
26:51and it's in a real up-and-coming area
26:54in the Southwest region,
26:55and then I have my largest San Diego restaurant opening
26:58in the summer, it's 6,000 square feet,
27:01on the corner of, kind of corner of 30th and University,
27:05and the building has been,
27:06looked terrible for the last 15 years.
27:09Again, I was in the right place at the right time
27:11when this thing came up, never went to market,
27:14and I was able to make a deal,
27:16and now that's where we're putting my French location
27:19called All the West,
27:20and honestly, I'm gonna sound cheesy,
27:23that's like what my main focus is for 2025.
27:28And then beyond, you know, I still like to,
27:31we're still scaling the Rare Society brand,
27:33so, you know, we have feelers out in Dallas,
27:37Florida, and Tennessee as well,
27:39so, you know, my goal is to get that to 10 to 12,
27:41and then package and sell it.
27:43That's amazing.
27:43So if you guys are watching this,
27:44please go to Toast's YouTube page,
27:47follow Family Style, that is, we're filming season two,
27:49we're gonna go behind the scenes here at the Wise Ox,
27:52we're gonna go show you all of the things
27:54that are going on here.
27:55Chef, I'm so excited for today's episode.
27:58Selfishly, we're excited to eat.
28:00But more importantly, we appreciate you guys watching,
28:02you can join us, we do a live show every Wednesday,
28:05every Friday on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook,
28:08you can go to betheshow.media slash risingtides,
28:11it's a chance for you, if you're a restaurant owner,
28:13to come on a live podcast and meet our community.
28:16Chef, any parting words of wisdom
28:18for those crazy enough to be in this beautiful business
28:21of hospitality and restaurants?
28:23Yeah, you know, just, if you don't,
28:27you know, every waking minute,
28:28thinking about scaling business
28:30and keep improving yourself,
28:33it's a hard business to succeed in, you know,
28:35just keep at it, that's all I say.
28:37Don't do the same thing,
28:37don't get punched in the face the same way twice.
28:40That's like the rule that I live by,
28:42if I make a mistake, I need to fix it.
28:44We all learn from our mistakes
28:45and we make a lot of them in this industry,
28:46I'm sure you know.
28:47Oh, we know, we know.
28:48If you guys want to reach out to me,
28:49it's at Sean P. Walchef, S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
28:54Chef, best place for people to find you guys?
28:57On, I mean, Instagram is probably
29:01where we have the most presence,
29:02but, you know, at the Wysocks, at Trust,
29:05Ford Oak, Cartolino, or mine at Chef Be Wise, but.
29:08Sweet, we'll put links in the show notes
29:10so you guys can check those out.
29:11And as always, stay curious, get involved,
29:13and don't be afraid to ask for help.
29:14Catch you guys next episode, thanks.
29:17Thank you for listening to Restaurant Influencers.
29:20If you want to get in touch with me,
29:21I am weirdly available at Sean P. Walchef,
29:24S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
29:29Cali Barbecue Media has other shows.
29:32You can check out Digital Hospitality,
29:34we've been doing that show since 2017.
29:37We also just launched a show,
29:38season two, Family Style, on YouTube with Toast.
29:42And if you are a restaurant brand or a hospitality brand
29:45and you're looking to launch your own show,
29:47Cali Barbecue Media can help you.
29:50Recently, we just launched Room for Seconds
29:53with Greg Majewski.
29:54It is an incredible insight into leadership,
29:58into hospitality, into enterprise restaurants,
30:01and franchise, franchisee relationships.
30:04Take a look at Room for Seconds.
30:06And if you're ready to start a show,
30:09reach out to us, betheshow.media.
30:11We can't wait to work with you.