Dale MacKay - Top Chef & Restaurateur | Building a Top Chef Empire

How hard it is to get even one Michelin star and how that system works chefs live and died by the Michelin guide especially European chefs especially fine dining quite literally people have committed suicide I can name you five chefs the community suicide in the last 20 years from losing a star today my guess is chef Dale McKay originally from Saskatchewan McKay's culinary career began as a fried cook in Vancouver BC he then moved to London England where he began working at Gordon Ramsey's clearest restaurant he eventually returned to Vancouver to become the executive chef at Daniel Ballood's Illumnier Restaurant where the restaurant was awarded the AAA five diamond award under his direction after winning top chef Canada and starting his own Vancouver restaurant McKay returned to his hometown where he founded the grassroots restaurant group working in his restaurants and around Gordon what did that teach you focus and diligence I've never seen somebody so focused on a specific goal or a number of goals there's no point have I ever come up with an excuse that was good enough for him he never really yelled like on television in the sense of just a yell to make a show he couldn't understand how the fuck you are perfect why did you not take all those steps to make sure that you didn't screw this up how do you feel about the trends of celebrity chefs you know I think it's all welcome to success story I'm your host the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network now the HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like my first million hosted by Sam par and Sean Perry they interview some of the most incredible business leaders Alex Ramsey Sophia Amaruso Hassan Minhaj who shared their journey to success and how they made their first million on a recent episode they featured the acquired podcast host Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal to discuss how they scaled their multi-million dollar podcast don't sleep on my first million if you want to get inspired if you want to learn from the best you got to tune into my first million wherever you listen to your podcast today my guest is chef Dale McKay originally from Saskatoon Saskatchewan McKay's culinary career began as a fried cook in Vancouver BC he then moved to London England where he began working at Gordon Ramsey's clarages restaurant followed by stints in other Michelin starred Ramsey restaurants in London Tokyo and New York City he eventually returned to Vancouver to become the executive chef at Daniel Belude's Lumiere restaurant where the restaurant was awarded the AAA 5 Diamond Award under his direction after winning top chef Canada and starting his own Vancouver restaurant McKay returned to his hometown where he founded the grassroots restaurant group with Christopher Cho and Nathan Guggenheimer with this group he's opened restaurants in Western Canada including avenue Aiden Kitchen Dojo little gross on the prairie and sticks and stones in addition to his top chef Canada win in 2011 Dale McKay has many more accolades to his name including being named a Western living foodie of the year in 2014 while Aiden made air candidates on route magazines top 10 best new restaurants list one on routes people's choice awards for Canada's best new restaurants and was on vk.ca's top 50 restaurants in Canada list in 2014 to 2016 I would say seeing a documentary I saw a documentary called Boiling Point when I was 19 years old I was given a VHS videotape from somebody that I had worked with at the time I was really I was working in my first real good restaurant I would say good in the sense of like making everything from scratch that kind of stuff it was in Whistler BC I got this VHS I took it home watched it and watched it was a bookworm Ramsey going for his three Michelin stars he was 32 at the time he was trying to become the youngest chef ever to get three Michelin stars I saw this documentary was put on by the BBC and it was like the most intense thing I'd ever seen in my life it was it was like yelling and I just felt like I was in a completely different world you know I felt like I had been some in some kitchens and stuff but seeing the intensity and seeing the level that these people were at I just wanted it so bad and so actually literally three and a half weeks later I was living in England so I saw that documentary and I applied for a visa within the week my mom helped me apply for the visa and I got it back in three weeks and I I had a lonely plan in book because this is like 99 and so I booked a hostel through the only plan in book and stuff and booked it for four days and showed up in his doorstep so I with that with you know I feel like I would have done similar but that documentary just kind of changed my course I was I never thought I would just move to England at 19 and that's just kind of what I did so that that documentary changed my life for sure and okay so when when you that's amazing and I also love the similar thread between everybody that achieves anything is just this massive action and it's almost like you throw a caution to the wind you just go for it and that's obviously like a huge career shift so before that you were you I mean the story is you worked as a fried cook and you're probably doing some small much smaller jobs so what is the experience actually throwing yourself into cooking culinary arts as a profession because I bet before that video I'm sure there was still ideas of what else or what if or if I go different directions right it's not like you have a set career path but now this video solidifies it to probably expedited the timeframe in which you took that step so what is the career path of of a chef of somebody that wants to be successful in this industry do you all have to go over to London England are there other ways to do it I think there's there's a few paths but I kind of feel like I almost snuck through the back door for the the level that I kind of managed to get to and and the places that I managed to be the chef of and and that kind of thing and working for who I've worked for and stuff I I left school at 14 like quit school when I was 14 years old I had a couple classes a grade nine and then I just left school and I moved across the country to to Vancouver BC or when I was 15 I'm actually on my 15th birthday about a standby ticket when the still did standby tickets flew across to to Vancouver and then I basically was kind of I had my brothers there were living in Vancouver but I was somewhat on my own and so I'll start by saying I'm dyslexic I do a lot of work with dyslexia Canada as well I'm an ambassador for them I'm very proud of it nowadays back then it's a very different situation so I didn't feel like I definitely didn't have much career options you know I I was aggressive in the sense of ambitious and I wanted to be something and I had a huge chip on my shoulder in the sense if I was willing to I'll work everybody do that so when I I was watching dishes because I virtually had no other option you know there's not a lot of jobs out there for 15 or 16 or dropouts and so I I was watching dishes on a chain called red robin I'm not sure if you know red robin but it's a burger burger and clocks and greens and as they they call them there and somebody didn't show up to work one day and they put me online and and I honestly from that day forum I knew I was gonna be a chef and I wanted to be a chef it was just a matter of me you know 15 or 16 year olds you know dyslexic kid that really was parting a lot and you know doing a lot of you know everything basically just just kind of finding his way and then so um that documentary really kind of gave me the I was never scared to just throw obviously I moved across the country when I was 15 I was the scared to to kind of put myself in awkward situations but I think that documentary gave me the thought of like if I can go there and I can be one of these people I could do you know um one year in Canada is like I mean I could do one year in England it would be like five years in Canada that's the way I saw it I saw this is like going jumping into the army this is jumping into like the highest level of training possible so um yeah I I always felt I think it helped me that I was felt like this is all I had there was no other option this was all this is what you had to put every piece of energy and thought and and effort into it and and when I moved to England it was almost like a like a sweet release in the sense of I didn't I didn't care about anything else I didn't nothing else mattered it was only about being in that kitchen 16 17 hours a day learning everything I could do uh you know I I'm someone and I'm sure you know you interview a ton of people that like I I would always factor in every little thing I possibly could every day you know um what I you know I was having the same containers I was I'd hide pots inside of ovens overnight I would do anything I could to make my day smoother to I so I could look that much better and I could advance myself that much quicker and so I always looked at it I always looked at myself as like the blue collar guy that you know I I was working with all these people that went to you know culinary schools and all these different things and and and trained and did all these stages all the world when I was just that kind of I think rough and kind of I just hustled yeah just hustled you hustled you you figured yeah and and and how was how are you received in London when when you came over on a whim like I'm sure that someone was looking at this kid coming from Canada like yeah and not a lot of no experience really very I mean some experience in the sense of being in kitchens but never Gordon Ramsay level I mean when I joined Gordon he had his his restaurant was number one in the world he was he was literally the the per the top restaurant in the world so um showing up there I was just like I kind of thought to myself if I get him to hang in there and I can work 16 17 hours a day they're going to let me be here you know and whether I'm picking herbs or I'm on the line they're going to let me do it I use the way I kind of thought so I I didn't try to send my resume I didn't try because I had a crap resume I had nothing going for myself in that sense I didn't go to school so I showed up and I knocked on the door and I asked for a job and they said come back tomorrow for a stosh and you know which is a stosh in our world is essentially an unpaid day or a week or month or however long that may be to trial and so I went there and I picked langistines loans they're like shrimp for 10 hours and then and then I think I cleaned for the rest of the time and they gave me a job and so I was willing to scrap and fight anybody and so and I did like I could tell you like it was so aggressive and so competitive that you if you could have our friend in the kitchen it was great because then you could you could kind of team up on people and that's how how competitive it was um you had to kind of mark your territory like you're like a dog you know and if anybody came on your station you'd have to you know fight back and and bark back and and this is all while you know being kind of yelled at by Gordon and everybody else so it was usually most intense kind of situation I think I'd ever be in it's exhausting but exhilarating and yeah yeah yeah so when so you so I mean when when you when you see the Gordon Ramsay style of leadership on on TV and I think that that's I opening for a lot of people because I don't think a lot of people came up in their career with leaders bosses like that I mean that's a very high pressure environment but it sounds like that that's the that's not just a facade that's the way the kitchen that's the way a kitchen is and the highest most prolific you know restaurants in the world and that's just something that you have to dive into had first and to deal with to sort of carve out your spot in the industry and if you can do that for you know x period of time and you have the passions as sort of persevere that too sort of rises to the top yeah and especially in the time I would say you know in the 2000s and early kind of late 90s to kind of mid 2000s I would say it was probably the hardest core of in all kitchens there was you know it was modernized but at the same time there wasn't many labor laws being touched or like in there you you can't even like I was just in England for a couple months and they don't work quietly the hours that we used to at that time because you know the government has stepped in and realized that there's been too many people obviously complaining about these kind of things but from the better question of leadership standpoint I needed that kind of leadership you know I kind of thrived in that situation because I love discipline and I love structure and I was you know again young and and just needed some guidance and needed that so I always looked at it like a boot camp there's a reason why you know armies send people to boot camp it's to get them in the right frame of mind and put them under pressure and see how that they can perform under pressure and if you can perform your best well being under extreme pressure then I would think everything else and you know after that's going to be extremely easy and I think there's like there's that in all you know walks life from musicians to athletes to day traders to you know all those kind of people that have to deal with that kind of pressure and so I love that stuff like I when I'm when I'm even nowadays when you know I have my bigger restaurant and it's a heaving service and you've got you know it cooks kind of going it you kind of feel like almost like a captain of a ship and you're kind of pushing resources all around and you're kind of seeing where people are faltering and stuff and so I love that kind of situation and I love the intensity and especially when I was that young um not everybody deals with it well and it's not for everybody and I don't even really think it's it's net totally necessary anymore you know I think there's there's there's some of the best kitchens of the world aren't necessarily operating like that anymore um but it can't be all sunshine's written you know it can't be all like rub your back and say you're you're going to do better next time because it's not about that you know and when when you're trying to be the best when you are the best restaurant the world it's it's a defending game it's not even a it's one herb that's off you know or one smudge in the plate can actually take you down a notch and so you have you know people that don't understand that type of intensity or that type of focus they don't they're not going to get it but when you spend 18 hours a day doing something that you absolutely love and somebody some guy comes in and fucks it all up on the last minute you know there's going to be some some things to be said yeah that that's when that's when there's repercussions that's when you get that's when you get what the pressure exists and I guess for people that are listening that that don't understand the world of of Michelin star and don't understand the the level that you're playing at I guess it'd be good to sort of tee up what that means to draw parallel draw comparison maybe speak to how hard it is to get even one Michelin star and how that system works just to sort of show the level that you're playing at and that'll sort of give some context for the rest of the you know chefs chefs live and died by the Michelin guard guide especially European chefs and especially fine dining you know it's it quite literally people have committed suicide I can name you five chefs that have committed suicide in the last 20 years from losing a star because once you get you know Marco Piro White who was a great chef in English chef you know and he always explained you know first you know your first two stars or it's it's you can be creative and and aggressive and it's an offense but then after you get to the top it's pure defense and and so you're you're just trying to hold on that status and I mean it literally is like winning an Oscar for for for an actor you know it's it's only the elite of the elite is gonna ever hold that title and it's all encompassing and again it's it financially reputation pride all of it you know and and so it really is it's everything to them I'm glad that I never really got that fever to be honest with you and being a Canadian chef I understood it when I was in it and I appreciate it and I and I feel like I held myself and my team to the same standard when I first got back kind of when I was doing specifically fine dining and I was at the time I was the youngest grand chef in the world for a relay in Chateau which is a kind of the similar kind of thing as is Michelin but it's it's specifically for the chef not for the restaurant so I always awarded grand chef at 27 which was a massive accomplishment for me and that that was enough for me but because they do an inspection thing and and that's part of the Michelin thing is if you've ever watched you know I did the documentary point to a lot of it is as trying to figure out what these inspectors are coming in you know you've got a list of names you've got a list of phone numbers you have your staff checking every day back checking all these phone numbers you you know you have it it's it's not just about you hoping you you you have to focus that hard to try to make it happen it's it's it's beyond intense it is no I I totally appreciate it because I mean if you look at if you look at if you look at the the level of scrutiny that I think that it's also not as prevalent in North America obviously as it is in your yeah absolutely but if you if you've ever been to a Michelin star restaurant literally anywhere it's like the level that they compete at is is absurd I mean and it extends far beyond just like the food that you eat or the presentation I mean it's a service it's the entirety of these the bathrooms the perstools everything yeah yeah and absolutely everything yeah and it can all be taken away very very quickly from one inspector and that's and that's why you have to treat every single person to that level and you know you play little games like when you think there's an inspector in the room you'll start sending like you want to send you want to make sure that they have everything you want them to have and so you know Gordon taught me you taught me a lot about other little things so like you can't treat them special so you start treating everybody around them specials so they don't realize so you send an extra course to everybody around you do all those kind of little things and you just kind of yeah it's it's a whole playbook just to kind of get into that that kind of graces and and you know working working in his restaurants and around Gordon what did that teach you and what did you take from that for your own career your own restaurants let's sort of walk through that because I mean how long were you actually working in his restaurants what before you started your your own thing I was with him for about seven years total I was with him for just over three years I don't know about three years in England I was with him two years in Japan and then two years in in New York so I managed to I think I opened up eight restaurants for him total when I got when I joined him I was at the perfect time kind of when you had one restaurant and then from there kind of there was about eight of us that were kind of his core group that kind of grew and and and and shaped it I'm sorry what was your question I like sometimes rants in the name no no no it's no I appreciate it I appreciate the context but it was the the lessons and yeah so I'm sorry from working with him over that seventy yeah for me I would say focus and diligence I've never I've never seen somebody so focused on on a specific goal or a number of goals and driven and he you could never there's never an excuse there's at no point to have ever come up with an excuse that was good enough for him for anything you know there's no excuse for anything you know what he can't understand what I always respect about him is when he was yelling at you he never really yelled like on television in the sense of just a yell to to make a show he he couldn't understand how the fuck you are perfect why did you not take all those steps to make sure that you didn't screw this up and that I loved I I love that whole idea and concept of every day thinking about all the little steps that you can take to to not let things happen you know it's the complacency of people that just go into work or go into whatever and just kind of the day kind of goes on and if you do that things are going to go wrong but if you can kind of set your mind up every day to kind of eliminate steps and constantly I used to time myself doing everything not because I was told to because I wanted to see how much faster how much more efficient I could get and that was because from watching some of my Gordon that was just so good and everything he seemed and everything I just turned everything into a competition and he's very much kind of I would say like that as well and so I I thrived to being around that so you know focus and focus and no excuses you know it's it's all on you you take responsibility for everything I love that and and we'll speak about how that sort of impacted what you've done with the grassroots restaurant group but I want to also some things that have happened in your career and also just general trends that I think you'd be good to comment on so how do you feel about the trends of celebrity chefs and and chef competitions and building personal brands and how because that is relatively new in the industry too yeah you know I I think it's all positive you know I think there's going to be lots of chefs that kind of bitch about letter or say or that this and that I mean that there's absolutely chefs out there that have shows and that are have restaurants and have these big you know celebrity chef lives that really are very good chefs there's absolutely lots of them you know I mean there's there's also lots of musicians in our very good there's also lots of you know you know in any industry but I think the positive is much away the negatives in the sense that we have platform social media has given us a platform television is given us a platform we can possibly retire not poor and and and and and it exhausted you know you know it's not it's never really been a glamorous life it's one of those jobs that that kind of hooks you and that you love and you kind of stick with it you know chefs in in traditionally have stayed in the kitchen till they're 60s 70s even especially for end chefs in European chefs it's something you kind of you just do forever I don't want to do that you know I I don't want to be in the kitchen at 55 at eight o'clock at night I want to be at home and join you know my life and everything else and as anyone should be after giving so many years of some absolutely you know you should aim for yeah and so from the celebrity side of things I think it's I think it's only good for people you know if you watch say master chef's kids it's a great show you see these kids these kids have a crazy amount amount of knowledge they're they're they know more about cooking than their parents they're they're so impressive and it's because of celebrity chef it's because of these shows it's because of access of all this all this knowledge they can go on YouTube or they can go on Instagram and watch people's reels of how to make all these dishes and stuff so I think it's it is very positive and it's giving us a platform and they can make more money to be honest with you like I I would say that I you know before the pandemic and when we're doing a lot of events and different things I would say that I it was always a strategic goal of mine to only you know my income to only be about 40 to 50% of my income coming from out the restaurants and my my wage and the rest should be diversified into other things outside of my outside the restaurants and whether that be still food related or not that was always my goal and I would I wouldn't be able to do that without being a celebrity chef you know without product endorsements and doing all those kind of things so and I actually really enjoy that work you know I I'm the corporate chef for a grocery chain co-op I'm not sure if you've ever had them away out east there's about 265 locations so you know I feel very lucky there's only you know a few chefs in each country that are going to get one of those jobs because it's for a mash you know a national grocery chain so I develop food I develop frozen food for them I develop fresh food for them I do recipes for them for their website so that kind of work wasn't around in in the 80s and 90 even in the 90s really and so and to me that that's a huge amount of my income and it also allows me to be in they wear my apron they wear aprons with my name on it in the grocery stores I do events for them when they open stores they they do all that kind of stuff and I think it's the way chefs also look at it too just like any an athletes you know you know doing endorsements for whatever kind of company you know I'm a I'm a I call myself a bit of a cello and I'll endorse most things as long as I like it and I think it's okay I'll be I've done I've done commercials for AW I've done you know things for for blue cheese I've done it you know they're they're all things that I'm okay with and you know and if I can use my voice and I can make it's a lot easier for me to make $10,000 with a with a brand than it is make it burgers you know what I mean and so if from if you want to be a successful entrepreneur and and celebrity chef or or mostly an entrepreneur then you have to kind of realize you gotta it's a lot easier making money running a recipe than it is trying to cook for 50 people right every night you know and make that same profit so I I celebrate that stuff I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now companies are under pressure right now pressure to get more leads closed deals faster get better insights to create the best experience for their customers see a CRM can help but not just any CRM one that is easy to set up intuitive to use and customizable to the way you do business now that's where HubSpot comes in HubSpot CRM is an easy for everyone to use on day one solution it helps teams be more productive you can drag and drop your way to attention grabbing emails and landing pages you can set up marketing automation to give every contact the white glove treatment plus AI power tools like content assistant mean less time spent on tedious manual tasks and more time for what matters your customers HubSpot CRM has all the tools you need to wow prospects lock in deals and improve customer service response times get started today for free at HubSpot.com I know I fully agree with you I think that as industries evolve and ways to make money evolve I think that it's it's silly to not take advantage of them especially if it's like a net positive if you can teach more people if you can impact more people yeah because you have that celebrity stat I mean why why wouldn't you really like you said you're you're raising you're raising now another generation of kids that are wild more confident in the kitchen then maybe some of their parents are which is not really a bad thing it's a it's a positive hobby no and to reference to like the show is like when I when I'm being on top chef which when I was on top chef Canada that was 12 years ago now and so between co-op then having my aprons and doing recipes and and kids tasting the recipes the parents are making for them and then seeing and then kids I have people coming up to me that are 22 now or 20 years old and saying I watched you win top chef when I was 12 years old with my family and it was amazing and this that kind of stuff and so those shows have given me more relationships with people than any other than anything can I could have 10 the best restaurants in Canada that's not going to make that 20 year old remember watching me win that show and being emotional and and following my journey through a firm week to week and so you can't I've always said you can't buy that kind of kind of publicity I could if I had two million dollars I still couldn't buy that because it's a connection that they're going to have for the rest of their lives and so when it comes to a birthday or a special day or anything they're going to come to my restaurants because they have that connection with me from television and from watching me be under pressure and then also seeing me co-op and seeing in this so those things are actually much more beneficial to my actual businesses in in the long run than then really almost anything else now speaking about social media because if you're building a celebrity status I mean you're using social media but there's other trends that where social media intersects with with culinary and I'm curious about where you see that because in the culinary industry there's a lot of obsession with Instagramable food does that take away from traditional techniques traditional flavors does that jeopardize what a chef would actually want to create just to make something that looks appealing yeah I mean I think it goes to you know what I was saying before you know a lot of that some of those people that have got 200,000 or a million followers from doing Instagram food and that kind of stuff and some of it some of it is really nice it is fun to watch I don't actually know how much those people actually make those dishes or not but there are a huge amount of people online including myself that like to watch those reels and actually you know and and fall long I don't see them really doing any harm you know at the end of the day are those recipes great and tried and tested probably not it's more mostly for the gram but I don't really see it as a negative I think more food is more food it does definitely become harder for the good stuff to kind of punch out in front of the bad stuff because the fact there's just so much I was on Instagram for 20 minutes today and I I watched 30 reels from pianos like who's doing this who's doing it like and it seems like everybody everybody's doing it you know so I think it is a trend I filmed the bunch that I have coming out to in this strategic more of a strategic way and and I'm doing some some partnership posts with with some some kind of bigger accounts and things like that I like social media but I don't love it I I'm a pretty outgoing person but I don't really I think my part of my problem is that I think that why did people care I don't think someone cares what I'm doing today you know and so I know you're in your own head though you know you're in your own head people do care it's a love yeah I know I know it's funny that way you know and I'm like I'm doing this I'm like I probably gonna post this and I'm like yeah someone doesn't really give a shit what I'm doing I'm get you know but maybe they do maybe I gotta get a little bit more out and then I guess last question that I'm curious about in terms of the evolution of the culinary industry there's different technologies that are used are starting to be used like 3d printing a sous vide cooking what is your opinion on that is that a positive a negative how does that impact the industry you know I think you know evolution of anything is great to to a point but you don't want to lose sight especially with food you don't want to lose sight with what's what's what's what's real and what what food's really about and I think as a as a chef you I at least I can speak for myself that you kind of go in arcs and and you kind of come back and I think I keep referring to musicians and everything you know the same I think people are like that you know you have your period where you're all about you know the top of the fine dining or this and that but then you know you come around you kind of realize that foods really more about you know flavor and soul and and and and happiness and and how it makes people feel and that kind of stuff and I've definitely learned that over the years and I I enjoy cooking much more cooking more casual food and and and casual generally means being a bit more traditional in in technique and and that kind of stuff and staying away from you know I definitely don't need to 3d print anything you know I you know I I think we have amazing vegetables this has got you an amazing fruit and meat and I don't need to change that I think that's the way I go more towards now it's more about just having great products and great farm things and not doing that but then then then to to say Suvi has definitely changed the way that we can produce things if you use it in the right way you can you can get ahead things you can change the texture of you know you can take your short rib and you cook it for 60 hours and cut it like a steak but it will still be kind of like super super tender like a braille short rib so there's there's there when you use them in that kind of way I think it's fantastic because it's kind of opening up your minds to textures in different ways um but I think if you start 3d printing food that you don't need to then maybe we're just kind of being you're like almost commoditizing tradition to a point but it's not I get where you're coming from yeah so I mean if it's for a net positive in the industry if it's just to reduce expenses if it's just to expedite if it's just to make things cheaper faster quicker that's not necessarily the ethos of food yeah and there was definitely a period of I would say good five years kind of before 2020 or I'd say kind of in the early tens that everything was being sous vide and everything was being like I'm ever going into a kitchen and whose kitchen anyway the the sous vide machine and what had gone down they had no circulator and which means and and they and they were backpacking everything from land to fish to beef to everything and then they quickly realized that nobody in the kitchen know how to cook meat like like they hadn't these cooks have been there for six eight me months or even two years and there's been no put a pan on roast that piece of lamb cook it in some butter based it rest it to do all that because when you're assuming everything it's basically you take it out you put in there the water you take it out and if you do see it it's already cooked perfectly you don't have to worry about it and that stuff and so it does I think new techniques like that take away from the soul and the actual you're a cook you need to cook you know if you can't cook a piece of meat you're not a chef you know and so if you overutilize it you you do take away from your own trading and your own your own abilities so I'm glad I grew up in the what the time period I grew up when we weren't doing any of that kind of stuff it was just like you know when I was on a station I Gordon Ramsey so I mean at we'd have five different meats and four different birds on one station and you need to have the cook all those at once while listening and being ill bad so you know sink goes back to the multi-tasking and under pressure so yeah no okay so let's let's speak about building a restaurant empire so talk about the transition from and you're working in in Ramsey's restaurant for you said seven years you opened up eight restaurants when did grassroots restaurant groups start what was the impetus for that what was the idea that you wanted to do this and and I guess the the thesis for what type of restaurant and then eventually restaurants you wanted to start um so the first time I was I went back to Vancouver and I was working first chef named Danielle Ballout there so I'd opened up two restaurants for him there I was an amazing chef out of New York I my opinion I think is the best chef in the world um and so we we were running those two restaurants and then those restaurants were going to be closed or cease to exist at a certain point it was right when I was went winning top chef and then I decided I was going to open my own restaurant because that was kind of an actual progression of you know being a chef and doing all that to be an entrepreneur so um I opened up a restaurant called ensemble which was in Vancouver and it was the concept was essentially kind of trying to do fine dining but in a more casual way fine dining food but more kind of casual feeling and more kind of upscale in that sense um which was good and and I was quite successful and we were making money we're doing quite well and then I decided to open I wanted to you know open up another restaurant pretty quickly after which was much bigger casual restaurant was a mistake you know the numbers the numbers didn't work um I learned early on I've always been really lucky to have some good mentors and good accounting mentors um and I learned really on if the numbers don't work then you don't have a business and and and I unfortunately you know one restaurant took down the other restaurants and and I would say that I did a very mature thing which I'm quite still to this day quite proud of is that most chefs and most restaurants as you'll you'll see if they they're in trouble you'll start seeing quality go down you'll start seeing changes in the service they'll start changing changing this they'll stop paying their bills trying to save it they'll try to save it and realistically if you're if you're smart and you and you trust accounting and you trust numbers you know six to eight months to a year out that you're not going to make it unless you can make some some very big changes and in the restaurant industry that's extremely hard it takes months and months to change concepts or change things like that and the writing was definitely on the wall so I chose to be very upfront I shut down the restaurants very publicly I said these are the reasons why I I got over ambitious my rent is too high these are these numbers don't work and so I shut down those restaurants very publicly about it and I and I said I'm going to you know choose to make a life decision and I've been a single father I haven't mentioned this that yet I was a single father in my son since he was I guess three and a half four years old throughout my whole kind of career and so he lived in with me in Japan him and his mom and then from there I had custody him pretty much right after that when he was about three and a half years old so I wanted him to grow up in Saskatchewan like I did but we were in Vancouver and we were living you know downtown in Cancelano so I was choosing to shut down the restaurants I said okay well this is the perfect time to move back go to the Saskatchewan give my son you know the upbringing I think he deserves more which is a safe place you jump on your bike go down to the river you know kind of what I think made me the kind of person I am was growing up there so I wanted that for him so made the decision to go back there and open up a restaurant called Aiden Kitchen Bar which is named after him and and with great success and I you know I I've been extremely lucky that I had a lot of people that were willing to move their entire lives to Saskatchewan with me with never even being there my business partner Christopher Cho who's one door down right now we're in Mexico City together right now he's been with me 15 years now and he moved his life to Saskatchewan and he's he's my business partner now and and I hired him as a food runner at Lumiere actually so we moved to Saskatchewan we opened up Aiden Kitchen Bar very successful we were one of the best new restaurants in the country and you know financially we did you know above above my best case scenario which was which was amazing Saskatchewan was in a really good boom at the time I managed to pay back the entire investment to my investors and to you know the partners and stuff like that I think within 16 months which is quite unheard of for you know I think we raised 1.2 million which is incredible for a restaurant and especially at a small town like that and then from there you know we just kind of kept deciding to do new concepts and you know we opened up you know Little Grounds of the Prey which is a small Italian restaurant like my business partner is Korean and I live worked in Japan for a number of years I love Japanese and Asian food in general so then we opened up Stixestones which is an Isakaya was sushi so different concepts you know we don't want to ever re-keep redoing what we were doing and then Regina is just two hours away and I have family there so we opened up two more there and so it wasn't I didn't necessarily say okay we're gonna open up five restaurants over 10 years but whenever I saw there's an opportunity and I felt like we could grow I would I would say that I definitely struggled with over ambition throughout my whole career you know and I think I've got that under control the last couple years and I think ambition is an amazing thing to have but I also think can it can cloud your judgment sometimes because you think that you can just work harder and it will just be better and it will work and that's not the case and I keep referring to numbers and if the numbers don't work you don't have a business it doesn't matter how impassioned you are how much you want it's or how much people tell you it's great it doesn't matter none of those things really matter in the business sense of things and so we even had a fail in there too I had I opened up a pizza place that I thought was gonna be amazing and that everyone was gonna praise me for because we're using a little flower we're doing all these things and we're making delivery pizza but it was just better but at the end of the day you realize that people don't want to pay $35 that you need to charge for that pizza that they could just go to TJs and get it for 18 or 12 you know and so that concept didn't work and and I and I again saying thing after eight months I said okay we're gonna keep losing money here so we might as well just kind of losses and and be upfront about it you know I've never I honestly and I know this is a cliche to say but I honestly celebrate my losses way more than I celebrate my my my my wins because my losses have always I've always been okay with with with losing and or from time to time because it's really kind of reflective of going like you blew it so you kind of you you you were thinking you know you really need to look at the overview here why are you doing this are you doing this for you are you doing this for to have one more restaurant or is this a financial thing is it you know all those kind of answers so I feel like I'm in the best place ever now or we are in the sense of our scope and our understanding of each restaurant and and and each one has their own individual problems so for me now it's it's it's more of foods easy I always say cooking is easy it really is it's it's it's it's especially for really well trained but the foods the easy part it's everything else that comes around it's in in the restaurant industry it's in and mostly people and and these days staff and people are the most challenging thing you could deal with and I and I I don't think the hospitality is exclusive to that's that's that's just I think people in general right now the pandemic really I think changed people's ideas and views on work and and grinding it out and and want so we struggle we struggle now to to I think more now than we ever have to keep people employed and keep people motivated and keep people wanting to succeed you know I I just always wanted to succeed so bad I don't understand it when other people don't so it's you know I've had to learn I think biggest a single father to my son changed me a lot too and my son is very different than me like we're so similar but he's I'm a very intense person I've always quite I don't find myself that intense but people find me intense they told me my entire life but he's a very calm and and different kind of person and so and he doesn't deal well with like the Gordon Ramsay method of is not going to work with him you know I need to support him and understand him and and make sure that he he has what he needs to succeed and me putting him on the spot is not constantly he's not going to do that and I've realized with him and with my staff not everybody wants what I want and so you you have to kind of utilize people to the best of their abilities and and and be okay with it also yeah I work with who they are yeah yeah and how they best receive you know like they're their guidance and they're and how they best receive instruction and yeah no it's a hold that's a hold that's a whole comic okay we should we'll speak about that in a second yeah because that's a whole bunch of lessons in leadership and managing and and dealing with brick and mortar you know brick and mortar during COVID there's like there's a lot there before we completely pivot into those types of lessons I want to just ask a few more business lessons from you building this out so I mean you raised money to the restaurants failed you raised money again so this isn't this is very and a very expensive venture right and I think that a lot of probably parallels in starting any business right starting as startup you have to raise money I think it's interesting that after two restaurants failed even though one was successful and the second one sort of pulled the the first successful one down that's people still want to give you a reasonable raise money again yeah yeah yeah absolutely I wish that was okay yeah no that's that's that's absolutely valid and obviously a concern but I think I also think in going back to what I the way I shut it down I think that there's there's a huge amount of I it was a strategic in my mind is like I knew I wasn't done being an entrepreneur I knew I wasn't done opening restaurants and everything else and so when I chose to shut down way before I believe anybody else whatever most people would have I think that was a large feather in my cap and I think I actually gained a ton of respect in in my community in that sense that that I knew things were going to work and so I shut it down and then I also took on all the debt I in that situation I took on a tremendous amount of debt I think when I moved back to Saskatchewan I still I think I still had 260,000 dollars worth of debt personally for it that I had taken on and so yeah it's you know I'm always up front with my investors my my main financial investor you know when I first met him and then we sat down and stuff and he's like okay well you know what what do I get when I when I come into the restaurants and stuff he nice good service and good food that's it like like there's you don't get anything you know you don't get it you're not going to get a discount you're not going to get I'm not going to keep people out of their chairs when you arrive none of that stuff this is a business you're you're you're investing in a business to make money this so if you're investing in a clothing store or a tech company or whatever else you're not walking in there and getting free shit so you're not going to it's the same way that the restaurants and so and they said okay well when can you promise me I can have the money back or whatever how long is it going to take I said I can't promise you that this is this is a high-risk investment I'm going to tell you I'm investing my money in it and I'm going to show you and I'm going to show you financials every month I'm going to do all that kind of stuff like any good you know you know entrepreneur would but there's no promises here like this this is there's no I'm not selling you a dream you know I'm trying to sell you a business whereas I think most restaurants and things like that you are selling a dream you know most restaurants don't even have don't even have a shareholders agreement you know like they're like your people just give people money and they're like okay well here's honor grand and like they don't even have any real shares or documents or they're not formally sent up companies even really they're companies but they're not there's no structure they don't they don't have a showers agreement they don't have rules they don't have all that stuff so it's technically quite a shady business generally and so I I learned from Gordon Ramsay's group and from Daniel Bludes group I always push again I'm I have no education so when it comes to business I learned everything from putting myself in this situation so when we're opening up restaurants for Danielle for or for Gordon whether I was I was invited or not I would push myself in meetings I remember Gordon even looking and go what the fuck are you doing here and I said I'm here I'm just listening you know and and for numerous meetings whether I was invited or not because I wanted to know how to set up a company I wanted to know you know how these bells were paid or who was doing this or how payroll worked and even before I was really at that level and so I was always interested in that and and and then again I've had some good business mentors but raising raising million dollars after a couple of loss it was was stressful and and I was so broke at the time too and me my my son were living in Saskatoon living in a rented place and I used I used I used coupons for the first time of my life you know I took to buy pickles we were eating grilled cheese and and I and I was buying pickles with coupons and I never thought in my life I'd ever do that or need to do that but while I was trying to raise this 1.2 million and and we managed to you know I managed to find two really good investors and they brought other people into the mix and and and I managed to kind of do that and from there um each restaurant had less investors and now three of our places are just myself and and and my business partner and one financial partner so there's three of us in the restaurants which I'm I like the best and that's the way I best when you do it and and I think being upfront with investors and and and costly showing the numbers and costly you know it gives them confidence and they don't mess with you anymore you know I think if you if you if you don't report and you don't let people know going then they're going to want to know what's going on and going to do it so I think honesty is is always the best policy in in all respect especially when it comes to business no I appreciate agreed um and then the other thing that I wanted to understand is from the lessons that you've learned with the two restaurants that were pulled down and and went bankrupt for lack or didn't work for lack of a better term um what is the checklist that you look for when you're going into something new what's the checklist of between the the rent and the location and the foot traffic and the menu and the talent and the what is your list that you sort of check off when you look at something I mean you mentioned a lot of them I mean location is a good one rent I mean the your your your your cost or the biggest thing I it's it's it's stuff I mean they're they're two different things they if I was to walk in and take over a current restaurant it'd be very different you know you can kind of um see where they're at and kind of fix things but when you're opening up a restaurant from scratch and you're taking most restaurants fail the first year or whatever that that that that scenario is or whatever I firmly believe it's because of their initial cost they're opening costs and and and that's because you you get this amount of money and you go over budget by 40 percent 50 percent sometimes 200 percent in restaurants and that has to do with a lot of the time construction and it has to do with plans uh permits not getting approved by the city being behind three months four months having people on payroll already those are the things that generally kill you and when you're already behind um especially if you're a chef driven restaurant it's very hard to be creative when you've got hundreds of people calling you for money and trying and you're think you're not going to make payroll or you think you're not going to make that so that kind of business can go internally go south very quickly right off the hot because the fact you're under so much financial stress right away and restaurants are interesting because they're being opened by people that are in hospitality they don't know what they're doing when it comes to design when it comes to construction when it comes to um timelines of dealing with cities and and and toilet slope and for plumbing all that kind of stuff that you learn and so i've been lucky to learn that stuff through opening so many restaurants for so many other people and being in designing meetings i was in design meetings before i was even the head chef with with with Gordon and with Danielle i would sit there and listen to designers and and know the fact that you can get that same door handle for fucking 20 percent less the we're not designing a home here we're designing a commercial restaurant it needs to be good grade but it doesn't need to be that because the person holding it's not doesn't care no and so those things a designer can bankrupt you before you even open and so i think those are the biggest kind of lessons when it comes to opening up a restaurant and and and and staying open and then when you when you are now expanding your enterprise um you're you're looking to innovate you're looking to try new things but how do you balance out when you open a new restaurant how do you balance out innovation versus sticking with like the status quo and what customers already know so when you bring a new product i think the restaurant is a product the food is a product um you want to innovate so you don't you're not just a copy pace of what else is out there but being a copy pace of what else is out there means there's there's familiarity how do you balance that um you know with different concepts i would say marketing for me is a big thing i've always done all of our own marketing i would say like say let's start with eight is that i we did about 40 videos and this was i guess 10 10 years ago now we did a series of videos that were kind of sculpted around making eight in a story rather than just a restaurant we did you know i did a video on me to did a video on fish i did a each member of staff and it moved there or that hired i did a video featuring them where they're come from why they hear what's what are they most excited about the restaurant for is that the Shikuduri program is at this and so we did that for four months leading into the restaurant and kind of building up that hype and making it so personable that you kind of felt like you had to come and involved in stuff and we weren't and the goal there was with oh eight and was to do exactly what you said is kind of give them what they already knew but we just wanted to make it a bit better we weren't trying to change them because we were i'm a hometown kid but i was coming back the big top chef guy coming to the city you know i didn't i didn't want them to think all we're going to be stuffing you know fancy food down their face and stuff and so we're like we open you know we have burgers wings we have popcorn prawns we have all the things that ever all the other chains or people know but we just do them better and we make them in house and so it was more about trying to kind of make sure that get that meshes across and make sure that people understood what we were and creating this kind of buzz like when you came in you felt already you were a part of something so we do that with everything um even like when we open our korean japanese place you know we we actually got like business partners mom to come over from korea and she spent them like weeks with us making kimchi and doing all this we filmed all that when we let people know what we're doing this we're doing it for the right reasons we're doing all that kind of stuff and so i think attaching yourself uh emotionally to people and getting giving them a story and is is a big thing in our industry at least it's it's um easy just to put up a you know a menu and kind of thing you need to tell a story if you really want to kind of capture people and especially if you want to hit it hard off the start you need to kind of create that buzz um and again some people i think too you need to be able to try to do some of that yourself restaurants don't make a lot we have our margins are so small and so when you you can't just hire a PR company and say okay here's five thousand dollars a month to do this or or plus that you need to do a lot of that stuff yourself grassroots is the way i mean you need to do it yourself and save that money because the numbers don't work otherwise you know and and um when you're building out this this one restaurant or this group of restaurants how much you focus on competition versus how much you just focus on what you're doing yourself very little um but i i think we're a little bit more unique and where we are is that we don't have a lot of competition in the sense of doing what we're doing or our caliber we do now i would say over the years we've had a lot more great independent restaurants open up and stuff but i i i don't worry about too much what other people's doing i'm i'm i'm i don't even follow chefs on instagram i i don't really you know it's not it's it's the same thing as i don't really recook books because i don't really care it doesn't really change me or doesn't change what i'm necessarily doing i do love going out and eating and trying new things going oh i never really kind of thought that but from where we are i i i don't really think about it by the same time we don't oversaturate ourselves and that's why i've made sure that we don't redo the same thing in the same city you know we have kind of a friend's year european uh japanese korean and italian and then the other say we have a good japanese and korean and and and french again so we don't want to keep doing the same thing i would get very very bored of that too but um and we we yeah we want people to come back three times a week we don't want them to come back once a month or just on a birthday i just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode blinkist now have you ever felt like you just don't have time to read all the books you want 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to blinkist.com slash clary to start your seven day free trial and get 25% off of blinkist premium membership that's blinkist spelt b-l-i-n-k-i-st blinkist.com slash clary to get 25% off and a seven day free trial blinkist.com slash clary and now for a limited time you can even use blinkist connect to share your premium account giving you two premium subscriptions for the price of one don't miss this amazing opportunity from blinkist yeah yeah no it makes okay so um all right i want to i think that was like we really went into the business of restaurants i want to speak about some some leadership lessons you were sort of you know speaking about earlier um let's let's talk about some things that you've experienced managing teams and kitchens and now you obviously you're you're not managing a team every single day obviously you have people that work for you but let's like leadership lessons from a super high pressure environment um you even mentioned that it's hard to motivate people it's hard to get people to work so what are some things that um the you do to get the best possible team get the best possible out of that team um maybe just speaking about your leadership style in the kitchen because i think everybody knows the high pressure environment but yeah um not i've never experienced it so yeah i think so walk through that maybe can sort of pull some lessons out for people listening i think my leadership has changed i mean it changed over the years and is involved with anything from from obviously being a chef in Vancouver doing say fine dining and my leadership was i would say more corn ramsy style in the sense of like shut the fuck up and do just basically do exactly what i'm asking to do and do it and and there's no ifans or butts and if you don't like it there's kind of a door and that's i think when you're at a very specific height of your you know career or at a certain place in a restaurant you can get away with that that's kind of bored of time and it's not real leadership it's essentially you know you're doing whatever you're you're just kind of a you know doing what you're doing but uh again going back to my son you know and learning and seeing people i guess for more when you start doing more casual food when i start doing more casual food you i couldn't really you can't really keep that type of an intensity going all the time because it's not that intense and then you're just an asshole and that's kind of i kind of figured out that i was just kind of turning into an asshole and i wasn't that great of a leader anymore you know and and and so i took that to heart and and i think what a big thing was that i i always had people that stuck with me a very long time and and i think it's because i generally would take an interest in their life you know i always i was even though i i always encourage people to take time off like if you want to if you have a family thing i'm going to make a work for you if you want to take a holiday i'm going to make a work for you because you need to have a life outside of these walls because it's only sustainable for a certain amount of a period of time um these days because i'm not the chef in any of my restaurants my role really is um a motivator and some of that goes so i go around from restaurant to restaurant checking with everybody from you know and and obviously knowing every single person's name which is not that difficult i have only five restaurants but you would be surprised you know um knowing the dishwasher's name knowing you know everything checking with the dishwasher and you know making sure that they have what they need you know we've done every i've done everything from like when we've had a dishwasher that's down and out doing like a furniture drive where i go around and pick up a bunch of furniture and make sure that they have things for home and clothes for the kids and all those kind of little things that i think is maybe not necessarily a a boss kind of thing but it's it's building a culture within our restaurants to know that if shit goes wrong in your life you have people that are there for you and and i think that is actually very important in the hospital and industry maybe not so much in other industries because we we have a lot of transient people in our in our industry and a lot of people that don't necessarily have education they don't necessarily have things to fall back on and it's it's it's easier to try to fix a problem they're having at home or in their life than than just leaving and trying to hire somebody else it i found over the years it's easier to try to kind of nurture those relationships and try to make sure that you can set things up for them to for them to succeed is a lot easier than saying screw it i'll find somebody else um because you you get those long lasting kind of relationships i hired a guy one time worst interview ever had my entire life like i've never i i part i partly hired him because it was so bad he couldn't even he wouldn't look me in the eye he was kind of like oh all of the place and and i and i came downstairs and was like oh the shit i was there i said i hired him and they're like everyone was like shocked as like what and he ended up being with us for eight years he just finished with us like six months ago and he was a great employee he came every single day he wasn't he wasn't naturally talented he was in everything but he would work his ass off he do his eight hours a day and he would go home and so i have over the years started to value that almost a lot more than that really talented person that was you know you go yeah you invest in people and and generally but that being said yeah you also set yourself up for a lot of disappointment and especially in this industry as well as that people do when you invest a ton of time and energy and everything and then they necessarily leave without notice notice these days is not even a thing i don't know what it is like in other things but people just don't give notice anymore they just don't show up or they just say well i'm not coming back and and that's kind of thing so um yeah i've kind of learned that if you can invest in people and stuff and try to create opportunities for them and and if they know that you actually are generally there for you in the corner from from a personal side then it definitely holds a lot of weight in in this industry but from building a team standpoint i just check in and make sure i my goal is with all my chefs so i have five chefs my goal is to make to to take care of all the stuff that stops them from doing what they what they love and which is cooking i try to make sure that they can spend as much time in the kitchen they don't have to deal with too much payroll or too much paperwork or too much everything else i want them focusing on the cooks and focusing on the food and doing what they love and when they want to be an entrepreneur and grow from there i'll teach them or help them move up um but um yeah i just want them to keep doing their job and and i don't have to kind of worry about that and and and morale i honestly i feel like that's kind of my my job now is kind of keeping people's morale up and and and then teaching them about the numbers you know you you've got to have to come and tell them that they're not doing a right and then tell them how to how to do a right and how to explain and and then kind of and then prop them up um people i i associate the kitchen and being a father so much is that um especially a young cook or or in the middle of pressure like you said like if you're in the middle of pressure and you're you're being a leader i think as i find you know i tell people i'm a great delegator i'm probably better a delegate than anything you know it is is that and it's the follow-up super super it's so it's so important and it's it's a it's a tool that you can really utilize it's not laziness it's it's controlling it's it's a manager of getting everyone the best out of everyone and knowing what their limitations so i would ask them to do something and then i give them a couple minutes or whether a couple days whatever the type of the task that i fall up okay you know this is coming up do you have this kind of done okay and then so i usually give two to three follow-ups just like you what your kid and then so when the discipline does come you've got those and i also like in my summer chefs laughing that's them because i'll look them right in the eye so like yes you're agreeing with me we're having a conversation here so there's no way you're gonna not when i come to two days later remember when we talked about that there's no way you can say we didn't talk about this because we're looking to each other's eyes i'm basically holding your hand going this is what we're gonna do and so i think when you give people the opportunity to to do well and to you know it's it's hard a lot harder when you say you do this and you show up and you start yelling why it's not done and you you need to follow up and you need to give people structure and so i find structure is is a big thing and systems and rules and all those kind of things you need to put those in place for people to grow and you're also you know you provide a lot of support you remove the block as you remove excuses you remove any reason as to why they they couldn't exactly there's there's zero excuse but that's your job too it's like it wouldn't be fair for you to impose all these all these things on to them if you didn't give them the best environment exactly that's because well much well done done done done yeah yeah no no no no you're good you're and i'm curious like through i mean we've gone through covid we're now going through recession inflation how does that impact the people that you work with how does that impact your restaurants you even spoke about mentality towards work towards grinding it out so that's one thing but also for a while the restaurant probably couldn't have people working inside it for a period of time right so that impacts your bottom line i don't know if you furloughed or not but if you lay people off and then also now we're going right into we're going right into people think we're going to a recession i mean inexpensive cities is probably very hard with with minimum wage so this all impacts you it's all impacts the people that you're working with so walk me through how you've managed some of this slowly you know we when covid hit we were on we were on a really good trajectory when covid hit and i spent me my partner had spent kind of six months prior it's almost like we somehow knew that this was kind of kind of coming but it was more just like i i got really pissed off one day because numbers just weren't again weren't working or things just didn't seem that good so i went on a tear for about six months me and my business partner renegotiating everything from POS stuff to credit card fees to everything like linen we went through every single cost item and we we got it to dialed in as much as possible and then covid hit boom like right kind of there and then i feel like if we wouldn't have done that that massive house cleaning we would have been a lot more in a lot worse of a situation but because we did that and we were really really quite tight you know we had a good opportunity to and all of our restaurants came out fine and you know we obviously took the subsidies and did all the programs and all that kind of stuff which you know if you didn't you probably wouldn't be alive anyway or you wouldn't be in business i mean so for us you know it was about keeping our staff and keeping people employed and and and trying to just minimize our hurt to get through it and and that's what i think everyone was doing for the early part but then once we realized this is a long term thing then we had to kind of start kind of changing kind of our ideas and kind of and stuff and and finding other ways to cut costs and make money it's the worst case scenario to be honest you know like the pandemic and for the hospitality industry i would say a hospitality got hit the hardest it always gets hit the hardest as soon as a recession hits the first thing you do is stop going off for dinner you know it's it's an easy thing to cut you can make dinner you can buy cheaper stuff you can do whatever when a pandemic hits you know most businesses could still with some businesses thrived i have friends that did way better in the pandemic than they've ever done but you know nickel and dummy and burgers and doing all these packups and doing all these things and you know if i was like oh why don't you do an online cooking class once you do this and that and you pack up these things or order boxes where people can make food at home and stuff like that and you're like it's just but it's honestly it's just a bunch of busy work that doesn't make money you know and so i i did all the costing and did all the analysis and we chose not to do any of that stuff and the people that i saw doing it were losing their money i chose from a personal standpoint i used i used the pandemic time better than i could have ever imagined i became healthier happier i did a lot of you know mental kind of growth i became a triathlete i trained 15 16 hours a week now you know i did you know i i wanted to use my time use this time it was almost like a gift of when do you ever get to kind of really reset and really look at everything and that's what we did yeah so i i looked at that as a very positive period um our cities specifically or our restaurants in our cities really rely on business tourism Saskatchewan like i love Saskatchewan we all yeah never like this but nobody's coming for holidays Saskatoon you know i mean it's very rare you know like it's like i would say people have never been to Saskatchewan like yeah generally if someone gets married or dies as usually when you come if you don't from there yeah and so we need people coming in for potash and for oil and for gas and for agriculture we need those people coming in because from Monday to Thursday you know local's good but it's not gonna it's not gonna get me 150 people in one restaurant and 60 in the out you know i can't fill all my restaurants on on regular Wednesday business i need people from Toronto Calgary Edmonton coming in they're gonna have a bottle of wine and and and have three or four courses and so that is starting to come back and so we're we're just adjusting renegotiating leases a renegotiated numerous of our leases to to a percentage rent you know my you made made the you know the the pitch is like you can either have me as a long-term tenant or i can be out of here any year because i'm not gonna be able to pay your bills or you by the way i wanted to tell you like none of this is meant to be elegant it's just meant to be real yes that's really what i know that this is a very difficult but you're in hospitality and it's interesting how people navigate it even though it's not fun and it's it's terrible it's terrible and and and when you're standing there and you're niggling and dying in your and and the worst bit about all this all of our costs are going are going skyrocketing during all this time too like all of our food costs are liquor cost or labor cost our midge wages going up um people are choosing to beyond public government programs rather than come to work even as well and especially when we're first coming back um and then again uh to go back to our restaurants we're we're full service restaurants like we're we're concept restaurants when you come to us you're coming because uh you get greeted a certain way because we have nice bathrooms because we have great food so when you can only when you know we're at a point where at sometimes we can only see 25 to 50 percent of the restaurant do you do you really want to come and pay $48 for a beautiful steak and sit and have mostly empty room with no ambiance going everyone wearing masks and and and cleaning everything it's not a vibe it's a it's a vibe but it's not a vibe you want and it's not a vibe you want to come in and have and so we struggle to try to create that ambiance still so it was a very challenging a very very very challenging period um and we we definitely lost the love of people in the industry no do you think that do you think that uh going forward hospitality will change like do you are you going to structure your businesses and your restaurants different going forward or or is it going to slowly morph back into what it used to be um I think we're I think we're I think we're always going to be more efficient because of because of it I think you know the we've we've been forced to look at the numbers more often and all the numbers and costs and and and I think too that the only very only positive I think that's has come out of this is the fact that everyone with the inflation and everything going up so much and costs of goods going up this is the first time in I think history that I've ever been in the industry that actual the general public has realized that how much more everything costs and so we can't you know when we raise the menus you generally you're getting a bit more support of raising the menu prices rather than being you know a dollar more for chicken wings out or whatever it is I can go make these at home more than you're like we'll go make them at home but this is just what I cost now like for you to go by a stake in the grocery store a decent stake it's going to cost you eight dollars nine dollars to twenty dollars for for a stake whatever cost that is but it's the same as a restaurant so I think people are starting to understand a little bit more of the cost um we just have to keep raising our prices and that's so I've raised my prices more in the last 12 months and I've ever had my whole career like every month basically having to go up because the number at the end of the day if the numbers don't work you can say people are going to stop coming but if they start it doesn't really matter you if you keep serving food or breaking even we're losing on then you might as well have less guests and make it and still they might as well just not come anyway so you got to yeah yeah so um but we're we're we're happy you know we're optimistic of this year we still did okay last year and I think um this year is going to be different caterings have come back which is a big part of our are you know one of our revenue streams is weddings corporate events all that kind of stuff whereas you know for two and a half years no company was willing or wanting to do anything like that marriages you know all the weddings got scaled down or doing different stuff and so we see that business coming back thankfully because that's um you know it's a lot of our bread and butter if you had to pick one lesson that you've learned over your entire career and tell it to your younger self what would that lesson be could span food restaurant business anything I think the message I always tell myself I got to ask the question if you were if you were a book what would the title be and I said shut up and listen you know it's probably is a good message I think for any entrepreneur sometimes I think I as I mentioned ambition kind of kind of kind of kind of get in your way um but a lesson that I I feel like I learned early on um and I step to all the time is just is numbers don't lie you know you you have to as much as you want something if it's not working uh financially it's it's not going to be it's not going to be it's not a business it's it's a pet project or it's something that's just going to keep sucking money so um I think you have to be realistic and be mature enough to to and also just admit when you're wrong if you're wrong you're wrong uh you know I get taught that all the time from from my cooks from my staff from other mentors and stuff you know I think there's great power in admitting when you're wrong in admitting uh that you need to learn some more stuff still no very good okay um so I'm going to I'm gonna close this out and get some places uh some links and some socials but before um I pivot um was there anything that you wanted to speak about teach over um to the audience anything that's top of mind either it could be lessons for young entrepreneurs it could be where you want to go in the future goals that you want to set so floor is yours um just take a second close it out and then I'll do like a couple last questions true yeah I didn't I guess really think about a closing thing but I I from just from my standpoints I you don't have to get from my standpoint is you know uh I think and it seems seems like such a cliche these days but I honestly balance I always make fun of the whole balance thing but as I've got older I need I really need to have balance and I really need to have other things outside of work you know I need to have like you know before we did this I ran you know I ran 15 kilometers you know I if I there's that makes me more happy than almost anything because I feel I just feel healthy I feel happy I want it makes me want to get out of bed it makes me want to go so I think you have to have other outlets you have to be uh you know focus on what you're doing but you also need to have outlets and you also have to have um some some happiness in your life it kind of will be and I I guess maybe yeah so my my side is I I came from again such an aggressive like it was the more miserable you were it was almost like the better chef you were it was like more it was almost like badges of honor and I'm like I think it's pretty good to smile it's being mad all the time is exhausting so I kind of celebrate just being happy and and kind of and and and and and and love the people you work with you know they're and as an entrepreneur you know uh you have to you have to keep them accountable but at the same time you've got to create a place where they want to be and and and they're coming they're getting out of bed every morning for you and for your business so appreciate that yeah no that's very good um if people want to connect with you learn more about your restaurants go visit your restaurants if they're if they're up in Canada right now um website social where should they go uh yeah I'm on my Instagram is uh chef Dale McKay um sorry ad chef Dale McKay and then grassroots restaurant group uh dot com okay perfect um and then I asked this question to everyone to close this out so over the course of you know you've had an incredible career you've worked with some of the best chefs in the world you've built your own empire of restaurants after all of this and you've alluded to it before but what does success mean to you now um I think I don't want to say financially but but financial I think I think when you being with a work lesson is success for me you know being able to have the ability to work eight hours a day and really use those eight hours to do better than working sixteen and being is also the time and I think you can only get that with with somewhat financial success and or at least strength or stability um consistency um yeah would be this or yeah that would be a say