Restaurant Operations Discussion with Chris Dash, Senior Client Advisor
I had the opportunity to talk to Chris Dash, one of our Senior Client Advisors about his experience and the advice he has in regards to Restaurant Operations. His knowledge of and passion for the industry is truly inspiring. Check out some of his thoughts on restaurant operations.
Ally
Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. Today we are talking about restaurant operations. To kick off, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your work life before Vine Solutions and how you got started in the restaurant industry.
Chris Dash
So I've worked in restaurants my entire life since I was 14 years old. Just in and out and then in college I studied Business Administration and actually ran and managed the on-campus pub, partially as a job and partially to gain experience and then kind of stayed in it after I graduated, outside of dabbling in other things. It's pretty much all I've done is working in various aspects of restaurants and then, prior to Vine the company I worked for I was with for just over 16 years in a number of roles. All in management. Opened restaurants from construction on up. Did a ton of training. Oversaw a number of properties, and worked in multiple markets.
That's where a lot of the financial acumen came from.
Ally
That’s great. So what is your favorite concept that you've ever worked in?
Chris
My favorite concept that I've ever worked in? Well, I don't know if it was concept or more of a location because I think every concept I've worked in had various cool elements to them. The location and the neighborhoods and the people, I always felt is what made them unique. So for example, I worked in Virginia and Los Angeles and San Francisco and some beach communities and they were all different concepts. But really what stood out was just the differences of the markets that we were in, the consumers and the different guests and how they take to what they liked and how we adapted the concept to them. I thought that was pretty great.
Los Angeles was certainly a unique market to work in. We were in the heart of it, next to Beverly Hills and UCLA, so we got a lot of very famous people in the restaurant. It was always fun to see who would show up that day. But I've also worked out in beach communities and worked out on a pier. And so we would have, you know, really amazing sunsets with Dolphins, swimming by and things like that. So great experiences, you know. All different concepts though.
Ally
Did you have any mentors when you started in the industry or have you had any mentors as you have progressed through your through your career?
Chris
I have, yeah. Those mentorships have been incredibly important, all of those key mentors in my life I still keep in contact with to this day. I think there have been people that have helped kind of steer and shape my career and shape my learning and I've been very lucky to work for people that really took development seriously, and wanted to bring up people and wanted to bring the best out of teams. And I've also learned under very, very great teachers in terms of performance management an there were some just some amazing people that I have taken classes with along the way and learned from. A combination of both internal people that I've worked with and external. But yeah, I still have wonderful relationships that go back 30 years from people that were great mentors and I think that's incredibly important.
It is something I take very seriously with what I do with my clients. Helping mentor young managers now.
Ally
When you were managing all these different concepts in different markets, what did you find was the biggest challenge that you face operationally?
Chris
I would say the biggest challenge operationally was to understanding the guest dynamic or the guest taste. Overestimating the guest. I found that to be very dangerous thing; to go in, thinking that you knew everything and that you were going to deliver something and just not connecting with the guest. I can give examples of it. Just a swing and a miss. The guest just didn't get what we were doing and we were clearly thinking that what we were doing was so great, how could they not just love us? So I think that was the biggest challenge. What I learned through this was get to learn your market, get to know your guests, get to know what you're trying to do but rather than slam it down their face, think about how do you make it work for them? And when we figured that out, we were incredibly successful. But that's always really been important. Talk to your guests. Understand where you are. When I was on the East Coast, I was bringing all this West Coast knowledge to the East Coast and they didn’t get it. They couldn't care less. We had a lot of challenges adapting to that because they didn't care. You know, opening a restaurant in the East Coast that was coming from a base of the West Coast.
Ally
Are there any particular thing that stuck out as East Coast versus West Coast? Was it wine choices? Was it just what you liked? How you structured service? The product?
Chris
It was product. It was a lot of product differences. So a great example of that is we had a phenomenal crab cake on our menu. Using Dungeness crab and it was just a delicious recipe. It was great. They hated it because the East Coast palette grew up with a completely different product. They grew up with blue crab, which is lump crab, which is a totally different flavor base. And so when you're used to that and then come up with Dungeness crab, which tends to be sweeter and richer, it’s just a completely different flavor profile. It was just a failure. It was just a fail all the way around. There's palette difference.
There's a lot of things that are involved in it. There's, cultural differences as well, so you're learning all of that. Imagine going into, you know, New Orleans and thinking well, I'm going to make an etouffee in New Orleans. Well, you know, good luck. You're coming from Canada thinking you're going to make the best etouffee in New Orleans, and they're just gonna go, are you serious? And that's a very difficult thing that restaurants don't think of.
Ally
Yeah, that makes sense. I would definitely be a challenge for them for anyone.
Chris
Yeah, if you're not used to something and you're trying to introduce a product that's coveted ask yourself, is that the right thing to do? You could be running into a few walls and people will be quick to reject it. That's probably some of the biggest challenges that I experienced in my travels. And so I learned from that when I went in, and then when I started going into different markets, I spent a lot more time understanding the market before I made a lot of strategic changes. Many times I found early in my career that it was you'd go in like a bull in a China shop and it turned out to be wrong. I think I became very patient and very focused. There's different ways to do it. One of the mentors used to tell me running a business is like steering an ocean liner. If you go in and take over the helm and try to make a sharp left, you're going to turn the boat over. It's slow, steady movement in a consistent direction will get you there.
KEY TAKE -AWAYS
Restaurant Operations is a combination of taking steps in one direction consistently while also understanding your guest. A great way to learn more about your guests is to talk to them. Want to learn more about the basics of Restaurant Operations? Check out our blog post: Intro to the Three Components of a Successful Restaurant