The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Fine Dining: The Secrets Behind Restaurant Industry By Jack Rasmussen

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Fine Dining: The Secrets Behind Restaurant Industry By Jack Rasmussen https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fine-dining-secrets-behind-restaurant-industry#/ In this book, you'll learn that you do not have to be special to become a restauranteur, you just need to capitalize off your love for food and creativity in your concept to curate a concept that can scale and serve your community. You'll also learn that a restaurant is not just about the food. You'll hear stories about... Daniel Humm- who changed his once “meat lovers” restaurant Eleven Madison Park into a vegan sensation. Dino Tekdemir- who opened up three Bay Area restaurants after arriving in California from Turkey with no money, no allies, and a short stint in jail. Bestia and Bavel- LA famed restaurants that incorporated takeout during the pandemic to survive, even though they are known for their classic fresh dishes that are made seconds before being served to a customer. Readers will love this book if they are enthusiastic about food, have an interest in entrepreneurship, or have a want to learn more about the world of restaurants. Readers will gain insight into several aspects of the restaurant industry, learning from a holistic standpoint about the many restaurants they may have visited but had never looked at from a behind-the-scenes point of view. This book will help to highlight the many concepts and hard work that goes into the creation and maintenance of the restaurant industry, and is a statement about the importance of the restaurant industry and how big of a role it plays in our world. Food has become such a vital part of life, and this book gives restaurants and chefs the spotlight they deserve for creating such amazing eateries for us to enjoy. Fine Dining: The Secrets Behind the Restaurant Industry is a nonfiction book that speaks to restauranteurs, elite chefs, aspiring restaurant owners, foodies, or anyone who may be interested in learning more about the restaurant industry, business, and the world of startups.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. Who knew we'd do another one? I don't know. They just keep coming, all these crazy podcasts we're always up to. Be sure to go to YouTube.com, ForrestSKrissFoss, see all the books we're reading and reviewing over there. Also go to Goodreads. You can see everything we're doing there. My two books are, of course, Goodreads giveaways, so you can do that as well.

Go to all our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places the kids are playing nowadays. Today we have an amazing author on the show, a budding author, if you will. His new book he's working on is called Fine Dining, The Secrets Behind the Restaurant Industry. He's got it up on Indiegogo.com right now, trying to promote it and get people to pre-order the book, and you get all sorts of goodies with it. His name is Jack Rasmussen. He is a Warren Bennis Scholar at the University of Southern California. He majors in business administration with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation

and minors in cinematographic arts and sports media industries. He aspires to enter the entertainment industry after graduation. After spending a year in Taiwan building his portfolio and teaching English, he is also a co-founder of Good Samaritans of Silicon Valley and the business lead for Screen360 TV. Welcome to the show, Jack. How are you? Good. Thanks for having me, Chris.

I'm so happy to be here today and to speak with you. I've been wanting to get on this show for a while. There you go. Congratulations. Congratulations on the book. Give us your plugs, your dot coms, so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah. So my Instagram, you can find me at Raz5. My LinkedIn, also Raz5. And my Facebook, Raz5FB. So you can find me on all of those. There you go. And tell people where they can order this and get the pre-order done for? Yeah, so it's on Indiegogo right now.

If you search Indiegogo, it should be under Raz Food Book. Actually, the link is, it's a Bitly link, Bitly slash Raz Food. Also, if you just look up Raz, Jack Rasmussen on Indiegogo, it should pop up. So hopefully that is helpful. There you go. And there'll be a link on the Chris Voss Show podcast site. So just click that link and you should be good. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Yeah, that's a great question. I realized throughout my whole life that I had this

insane respect for food. And I wanted to spotlight all the restaurants I've been to in my life and the work that chefs do behind their restaurants because there's so much work that goes behind a restaurant that people don't really take a second chance to look at, such as the marketing, the menu, how they put the menu together, the presentation, the ambiance, the location, the service. And so I wanted to do a deep dive into the restaurant industry, interview a bunch of chefs and spotlight some of my favorite restaurants around the country to give people an idea of how the restaurant industry has evolved over time, giving them sort of a history of the

restaurant industry, where it is now and what are the sort of the trends that are going on and spotlighting some of the most influential chefs of our generation. So it's been a really exciting process because I've gotten to study a lot of chefs and also interview some chefs, which has been awesome. So I'm just so excited to have it published in May. It's coming out in May 2022. So I'm just really... Well, it should be awesome. Your first book, man. This is pretty cool. And you're still in college. That's awesome too. There you go. There you go. So with the book, I love food too. Although unfortunately I did took a different round that you did. I just put

all inside me and ate it. The, I love food sadly, but I don't know, food, food is good. So what are you, what did you, who's the audience you're targeting with this book? And what are you trying to accomplish or what you want your readers to take away from it? Yeah, that's a great question. I am really into entrepreneurship. I actually took a few entrepreneurship classes at Stanford last year. And so I was so interested in business models and how startups come to be and how successful startups continue to grow and sustain themselves. And so I wanted to incorporate two of my favorite subjects, which is entrepreneurship and food. And so I was thinking, okay, why don't

I try to see how different chefs utilize their business models and how they evolve over time and how they make sure they're successful. And especially coming out of the pandemic, it was something that was on a lot of our minds is how are these restaurants going to come out on the other side? And a lot of them had to change and evolve their business model. So it was that business aspect. And I studied business administration at USC. So I really wanted to look at the business side of the restaurant industry and take a holistic approach. So I'm not just talking about what's on the plate, but also how a restaurant comes to be. Yeah, I really wanted to spotlight the business side.

And I think that's really important. People don't understand the restaurant business is a hard business. 24-7, anybody who's an entrepreneur is 24-7, but this is a real whole unique animal of 24-7. I've had people ask me, do you want to get the restaurant? No, not from what I've heard of it, but it's a really rewarding business if you can get in and kick really good butt. You become one of these Michelin people or I don't know, you get a TV show like that one guy who runs Hell's Kitchen or something. It's real worried. So you tell different stories in the book. You want to touch on a few of the stories that are in the book that you profile?

Yeah. So one of my favorite stories, I'm from the Bay Area. So I live in Los Gatos and I drove up to Anatolian. It's a Turkish restaurant in Palo Alto, right by Stanford University. And I was going there to interview Dino Tekdemir, a chef and owner of that restaurant. He owns a couple more restaurants in the Bay Area. And I get there and I didn't really know what to expect. I thought he'd be very professional, but he was the exact opposite.

And I sat down and he gave us a hummus platter right away. He said, I want to get you a biggest appetizer. So he gave me an appetizer. And then he just starts, he has this big smile on his face and he just starts talking about how he came to the US. And he actually came over with no family. He was all by himself and he ended up in jail for stealing. And in jail, he started to love the food. And he didn't want to leave jail because they gave him shelter, they gave him food. And so they had to kick him out of the jail because he didn't want to leave. And in jail is where he found his love for food. And so when he got out of jail,

he became a busboy at a restaurant and started learning the business behind the industry. And then he decided to open up his own. And ever since he's just been successful, I think it's because his attitude, he's just a really positive guy and he's very welcoming and he puts service ahead of everything else. And I think that's why he's been so successful is he talks to all his customers and he has very loyal customers that come every week to support him. So he will always be successful because he genuinely puts the time in. And he also gave me some Turkish cheese. So he was just an awesome guy, very friendly and welcoming and such an inspiring story for sure.

And he has three big restaurants. Wow. Yeah. He's actually expanding his other restaurant, which is an Austrian restaurant called Nashmarkt. He's expanding that to San Francisco. So he's definitely, he's succeeding for sure. There are some other stories you tell. David Hum took an adventure with his thing. I thought that was an interesting story. Yeah.

Yeah. So David, he is a Michelin star chef, one of the most famous chefs in the United States. And he has a restaurant in New York City, Madison Square Park. And it's always been one of the best, known as the best in the city. And they've always had a full menu with meat, entrees and fish and just the whole spectrum of food. And he decided after the pandemic that he was going to go completely vegan. So it's a total meatless menu and he's trying to perfect all these vegetarian dishes so he's there was one dish where he was spending hours on end trying to perfect how to cook a

beet just how to the best way to cook a beet and he was taking just hours on a specific vegetable and he said that vegetables are the hardest thing to cook for chefs. They're so hard to work with because you have to season them properly, you have to cook them properly. And a lot of people don't like eating vegetables. It's very interesting. I think he wanted to challenge himself, but he also saw that there is a growing population in the United States of vegetarians and vegans. So he wanted to ride that wave and try to create a very healthy restaurant because he's trying to become healthy himself. So he totally changed his restaurant and it's paying off right now. So he set an example for a lot of people.

That's pretty amazing. I've done kind of half vegan a couple times when I want to lose weight. And yeah, if you season it and everything else, hell, if you take jackfruit, which is a, well, jackfruit, it's a fruit. It tastes like bubblegum. But if you shred it and then you put barbecue sauce and cook it, reduce it and stuff, you can, basically, it will taste like pork, like shredded pork, or just about anything you can flavor with. It'll be, it'll become that.

And it looks like meat, looks like shredded meat. And you're just like, wow, like totally fools my brain. I think it's shredded pork and sweet, sweet pork. And it's a really pretty amazing. And I think covering some of these stories are really important because there's a lot of different trends in this industry. You talked to Bestia and Bevel. Is that pronounced correctly?

Yeah. So those are two of the best restaurants in Los Angeles. And I had the pleasure of visiting them earlier this year in August. And I absolutely loved my experience at both. So they're actually both owned by a husband and wife. And they own both. And they've been both owned by a husband and wife and they own both. And they've been able to stay open throughout the pandemic. They actually pivoted to a takeout venue and they were doing so much in sales of takeout. But unfortunately, they're known for

these small dishes that they bring to their customers right off of the grill or they make it right in front of you and give it to you. So takeout really wasn't something that they wanted to do long term. So they closed down, they both closed down for a little bit over the pandemic, but they were able to stay open because of the loyal customers in LA. And they were buying apparel, they were doing everything they could to make sure that those two restaurants would stay open. And they reopened and they've just, they've exploded since. And they're doing the best they've ever had right now. And I was able to go there, both of those places. And they're two of my favorite restaurants. Bavelle is a Mediterranean restaurant. Just amazing. My dad got lamb. I got hummus and baba ganoush. And Bestia is a really good Italian restaurant that has amazing pizzas and pasta. So I got, I think,

a margarita pizza that was amazing. And you just have the amazing pasta, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna. So yeah, I highly recommend if you're ever in Los Angeles to visit those two restaurants. Go check them out. Go check them out. This is interesting. So you go through the whole journey, the secrets behind the restaurant. What do you think? Is there anything you tease out as what people find the most surprising aspect of the restaurant industry?

Yeah. So really surprising. I talked to a lot of chefs and it all came down to one common denominator that not many people think about because you always think about food when you think about a restaurant. But the biggest thing that they all talked about was the service and how they treat their customers. And that is what ultimately has customers coming back. So I think the biggest takeaway for me was service and how that is basically the most important thing because at the end of the day,

the restaurant industry is in the hospitality industry. It's like a hotel, it's an amusement park. You need to treat the people who come there well. And so that's why a lot of responsibility falls on wait, because how they treat their customer will ultimately, food has a big part of it too, but it's the whole experience. And so how a waiter treats their customers is very important. And that's why the hiring process is also extremely important, which a lot of owners talked about as well. So I would say that's probably the biggest takeaway.

Yeah, it's a real people business because you're serving people and stuff. Are you going to talk about some of the, there's a lot of people been quitting and the great, what do they call it? The great, the great cancer, not canceling the great re, well, people, their works. And I know the restaurant industry has had some of that. In fact, some of the restaurants around my place have had to cut back hours or do different things to try to adopt because it's really hard to hire people and still be able to make money. Are you going to cover any of that in the book? Yeah. So there's actually a full chapter on the pandemic and what restaurants had to pivot to to survive, but also a lot of restaurants that unfortunately had to close down because of just the effects of the pandemic. I remember a restaurant

in Los Gatos, where I'm from, my hometown, me and my parents and I, our favorite restaurant's called The Wine Cellar. And I was speaking to their chef and owner, Julie Venata, and she was talking about how they had to basically just let go of people. And she said it was really difficult because obviously all these people have lives and they have families. So what they tried to do in the beginning was they tried to, they still tried to pay them even though they weren't working, even though they were shut down, but she was starting to lose a lot of money. So they,

they just had to let them go and try to make some promises that maybe in the future they could get a job back. But she said it was very hard for her to do that because she was thinking about their lives. And so I think a lot of restaurants, it was really hard and they had to close down because they couldn't handle paying all their employees anymore. And I know a lot of restaurants in Hollywood ended up closing down a lot of good ones. So it was very unfortunate, but that's why stories like Bestie and Bevel are very interesting because they were able to go through that adversity and come out stronger on the other side. It was definitely a tough time, especially if you're just starting a restaurant.

You didn't have a loyal base. And a lot of people weren't online. They didn't have good websites. They really didn't have their stuff up. You've written the book in four different parts. Tell us a little bit about the breakdown on that. Yeah. So the first part is a history of the restaurant industry. So I talk about how it came to be. I talk about the California revolution that happened, farm to table. So that was actually started by Alice Waters, a, a restaurant in California that she invented this idea of getting locally

grown food and bringing it straight into the restaurant and cooking it in the restaurant. So it's fresh and it represents exactly where you're from. And she was the first to do this. And it impacted the entire United States and even international restaurants. They started to follow her and started to do this as well. So that was something that I touch on in the first part, which is just how the restaurant industry has come to be. And I touch on the history of restaurants, which includes a bunch of fast food restaurants that started actually in California. Almost every big one that we see today actually came from California. Taco Bell, McDonald's, Subway, Jamba Juice,

all these different things actually came from California, which is just interesting. Being from California, I never really acknowledged that, so it's really interesting. And then California, I never really acknowledged that. So it's really interesting. And then I touch on, in part two, I touch on the main things that you need to have a successful restaurant. So this includes a chef, quality service, promoting positivity within your restaurant, and then location also really matters. So those things and then i go into sort of the large changes in the industry so the rise of woman chefs which is actually huge right now and in minnesota

there's about three woman chefs that are like thriving and a lot of people are are looking towards them they've all been james beard final, and that's a really famous award. It's sort of like equivalent of the Grammys in music. Yeah, it's a very prestigious award. And then in part four, I talk about embracing adversity. This is where I talk about the pandemic. Being in the restaurant industry, as you said, Chris, like you're going to have to deal with a lot of pushback, a lot of financial issues, a lot of stress. A lot of chefs I talk to, they don't sleep and they have a lot of things on their minds. So they go through a lot of adversity. And I think it's important to just embrace it and embrace the

fact that you're going to go through a lot of the people, the successful people are the ones who don't stop and they just continue pushing. And so, yeah, I heard a lot of inspiring stories, but that's part four is embracing adversity, following your passion and what you want to achieve, whether that means a different concept or different putting different ingredients together. It's really important to just follow what you want to do in your life. And you're doing that now with your book. Exactly, yeah. That's good. Like I mentioned in the pre-show, I think this is really cool you're doing this. I waited until I was 53 to do my book.

And authoring books, it's hard, especially the editing part, but it's so much rewarding. It's fun to be an author. It was nice to add that to my career after all this silly stuff that's been in my career. And, yeah, it should be pretty good for you. Give us the plug. Is there anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go? I would just say, if you visit my Indiegogo, there's a lot there. And if you do, please, please support me and just think about the food you eat. And I know there's a lot of people

who enjoy restaurants and the food they eat. So I think if you do enjoy, if you're a foodie, or if you are interested in entrepreneurship or starting your own restaurant, I think you would love this book. And you can go to the Indiegogo website. And there's six different perks. You could buy just one signed paperback or two or five, or you could be a super fan, which means you get a lot more items in the bundle. But it's all there for you. And I really appreciate anything and all the support. And I really appreciate you for letting me come on the show, Chris. Thank you.

You got it, man. Thanks for coming on and highlighting your work. Do we get the plugs in for the Indiegogo? Yes. Okay. And then if you look on the Chris Voss Show, there'll be the plugs and for the Indiegogo? Yes. Okay. And then let's, if you look on the Chris Voss show, there'll be the plugs and link to the website too,

as well. So you can order the book up from there and support a fledgling entrepreneur and a future book author here, folks. Give us some love. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Thanks for being here, Jack.

We certainly appreciate it, man. Appreciate you. Thank you, Chris. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. See all the notifications and everything we do over there with the video show. Go to Goodreads.com for Just Chris Voss and see everything over there.

And Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram as well. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.