Serves You Right

If your restaurant plan is your family’s favorite recipes in a room you’d want to eat in, you’re designing for a customer of one. First-time owners rarely fail because they can’t cook. They fail because they open underfunded, let ego make decisions, and underestimate how complex this business really is. Michael Linnemann spent 33 years in real estate before he and his wife Priscilla turned a gutte...

If you think running a food truck means parking, opening the window and collecting cash, a Spokane winter will correct you fast. And if nothing ever forces you to delegate, you’ll grind yourself into the ground before you notice. Mirak Kazanjian grew up inside Los Angeles’ Armenian community. He moved to Spokane for college and couldn’t find a single plate of the food he grew up on. So he taught h...

Earlier this year I sat down with Tal Clark, CEO of Instant Financial, on the Instant Payments Podcast. We went back to the beginning: my first restaurant job at 15 in a small Texas spot, falling for classic cocktails and wine behind a bar in college, and working my way from server to GM at Mahogany Prime Steakhouse. I also break down what the Court of Master Sommeliers levels actually mean, how w...

Jackson Connery, founder of House of Brunch in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, traces his path from dishwasher at 15 to owner of two restaurants. He covers the 45 page business plan a bank turned down, using home equity as startup collateral, a 90 day buildout, 120 interviews for 20 hires, a seasonal menu that became a greatest hits menu, fully loaded labor targets, blended food cost strategy, and a st...

If your plan for a profitable coffee shop is better beans, a cuter menu and advice from people who have never run one, the math is already against you. Small town coffee shops close all the time because one revenue stream has to carry rent, utilities and payroll by itself. Natalie Popplewell and Kasey Headley of Niche Coffee and Shop in Denison, Texas built something different: a boutique and spec...

If your restaurant hiring plan is posting on Indeed and sorting resumes, you’re buried in quick apply noise. Peer Larson leads Posana Biltmore Park in Asheville for Mandara Hospitality Group, and he spent years as a hospitality recruiter. He breaks down how great restaurant managers really find, hire, train and keep hospitality workers. We get into interview red flags, the questions that expose a...

If your plan to open a bar starts with breakfast, lunch, dinner and an espresso program, what kind of hell are you building for yourself? Bar ownership doesn’t reward the owner who offers the most. It rewards the owner with the clearest concept, the smallest footprint, and the discipline to obsess over details instead of glory. Linden Marno-Ferree, owner of The Reading Room, Chattanooga’s bookstor...

Chef Nick Wong and bar lead David Perez of Agnes & Sherman, Houston's James Beard nominated Asian American diner, both break down the back of house tip share that pays dishwashers, prep cooks, and line cooks more when the dining room gets slammed. We get into restaurant labor planning, the opening mistakes that cost real money in the first six weeks, training front and back of house staff...

If you build your wine program around what's cheap to pour instead of what's worth tasting, you're teaching guests to expect less. You pay for it in dead bottles, flat sparkling wine and empty Monday nights. Today we have Aaron Walters, chef and owner of Muselet Champagne Bar in Bentonville, Arkansas. They break down how a 27 seat champagne bar runs a deep BTG list, sells bone dry Ries...

Post COVID demand is swinging back to Friday date nights and 1 AM closes. Guests are hunting deals again. The Florida operators Brian just talked to are down 10 to 20 percent and fighting a full blown happy hour war. Brian Hanson owns Independent Ice Co. He's an Executive Bourbon Steward, president of Maine Business Brokers, and a SCORE hospitality mentor. He joins Andrew to rebuild the fundam...

Adeline Camarena survived one heck of a ride. She opened her bakery during COVID, lost most of her build out money, waited two years for a second location, then went viral on TikTok and Instagram and had to scale from three people to ten almost overnight. Her international dessert bakery in Waco, Texas now serves Nanaimo bars, brigadeiros, macarons, keto desserts and a banana pudding cheesecake th...

Manny Hernandez of Stokes Adobe in Monterey, California, one of PUNCH's Best New Bartenders of 2024, explains why barbacking is the real bartending school, why learning the classics beats chasing trends, and why awareness separates great bartenders from average ones. He covers going from dishwasher to cantinero, from trauma to a cocktail menu built on memory and Mexican heritage. Expect to Lea...

On this episode of Serves You Right, Katie Stryjewski, the PhD ornithologist behind Garnish Girl and garnishblog.com, explains why cocktail garnishes work as a quality signal guests read instantly, how edible flowers and cocktail presentation built her Instagram following, and why trendy garnishes like activated charcoal and unfamiliar flowers raise real cocktail safety questions for bartenders. S...

If your plan is to skip the barback shift, win with the prettiest drink on the menu, and let the cocktail do the hospitality for you, listen to this episode. Frederic Yarm was 41, a biochemist by training with zero restaurant experience, when he started as a barback in Boston. Today: a bartending career in year thirteen, two cocktail books, and the CocktailVirgin blog, still posting almost daily i...

Free food doesn't exist. Somebody always pays. Sometimes though it's not the person eating. For eight years, a cafe in downtown Raleigh has let complete strangers walk in, order a full breakfast, and pay whatever they want. Minimum price: $3. By every rule of how a restaurant is supposed to survive, this one should have closed in its first year. Maggie Kane is the founder and executive dir...

Ashwin of Unpinned spent seven years in vineyards across Italy, Greece, Georgia and beyond after his sommelier certification left him convinced the curriculum was teaching one percent of the world and calling it the whole map. In this episode he breaks down wine additives and the ingredient-labeling loophole, why the 100-point rating system is pay-to-play, what the Court of Master Sommeliers syste...

Most restaurant owners think their problem is food cost, when their actual problem is that they've never built a system anyone else can run. They hire managers who show off instead of asking questions. They chase a labor percentage they only hit in busy season and panic when the slow months arrive. Juli Norris, chef, restaurateur, and consultant to the mom-and-pops most consultants won't t...

Today’s guest, Austin Gardner, is impressive. He is, at the same time, age 25, floor sommelier at One White Street in Manhattan, Advanced candidate, and the wine educator behind a fast-growing TikTok and Instagram following. In this episode he breaks down the exact three-stage study regimen he uses, why being the youngest person in the wine room is a commercial advantage instead of a liability, ho...

Chef Paula Agganis runs Paula's at Courtland Club in Providence, Rhode Island: a Greek and Eastern Mediterranean residency inside a landmark cocktail bar, and she does it with no culinary school, three staff, two induction burners, and a spreadsheet she inherited from another chef. This episode is a working blueprint for the restaurant career nobody maps for you: constraint-driven menu develop...

Most people entering the bar industry think the sequence is fixed: get hired, survive two years of bad habits, learn technique from whoever happens to be on shift, and then maybe compete. Callie Draper ran it backwards and it worked better. Callie learned bartending as a guest from a world champion, entered Diageo World Class with zero shifts behind her, and made national finals before she'd e...

Alberto Antonini is a Tuscan winemaker and one of the most in-demand consultants in the world, with a résumé running from Frescobaldi, Col d'Orcia, and Antinori through client work on several continents. In 1995 he co-founded Altos Las Hormigas in Mendoza and made Malbec the whole thesis when every serious producer in the region was convinced great wine required French grapes and small French...

Hiring effective and competent restaurant managers is tough...you screen for interview skill instead of work ethic. And you are asking people to trade their marriage, their holidays, and their shot at a family for a title that pays less than a good Friday section. Brian Crossan is the Director of Operations for Table 301 Hospitality in Greenville, South Carolina, a 500-employee group built around...

Steve Schneider, Marine veteran, 19-year Employees Only alum, star of Hey Bartender, partner at Sip & Guzzle with Shingo Gokan, and now holder of the number one spot on North America's 50 Best Bars, is our guest today. He didn't chase fame or accolades; he showed up, took at-bats nobody else wanted, and stayed when the work got hard. This episode covers craft cocktail history from the...

Ivan Usov, flair bartender, two-time USA Flair Champion, Roadhouse World Flair tandem champion, cocktail caterer, and creator of the Easy to Flair online school is our guest today. There are three or four formulas for building a drink and everybody already has them. What actually moves income is presentation, positioning, and a willingness to pay for skills instead of gear. This episode covers fla...

The cocktail landscape was bleak for time. Rye whiskey was down to a handful of brands. Orange bitters were a regional New York oddity. Pimento dram meant a trip to Jamaica. Swedish punsch, crème de violette, real Zubrówka…every one of them came back because specific people went looking, made calls, and refused to accept "we don't carry that." Ted Haigh is one of those people, and Vi...