Building Community and Connection in Business with Jonathan Weathington

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:17)
Welcome back everyone to another episode of The Bliss Business Podcast where we talk with a wonderful guest live, about everything empathy and people. Today, we're going to talk about an interesting topic. Before we do that, I just wanted to mention that research shows that 79 percent of consumers want brands to create real connection, not just transactions. Businesses that really succeed in today's market do so by building communities rooted in trust, belonging, and authentic engagement. Today's guest is no stranger to creating wonderful communities, highly-engaged communities. Let's hear who it is. Mike, please introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (1:03)
Yeah, definitely looking forward to our discussion. Our guest today is Jonathan Weathington. He's the CEO of Shuckin Shack Oyster Bar.
They're up to 18 locations right now and actually have quite a few others under construction. And since 2014, Jonathan has been leading the company from its Wilmington, North Carolina roots to becoming really a nationally recognized brand. In fact, it's been featured on The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Nations Restaurants News, the FSR Magazine, and even Good Morning America, believe it or not. So he's known really for his no-nonsense approach to hospitality and business building. But Jonathan has also made Shuckin Shack a place where community, seafood, and connection all come together. So we're really looking forward to the discussion. Jonathan, welcome to our show. We are delighted to have you with us.

**Jonathan Weathington** (2:01)
Yeah, thanks for having me, guys.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:04)
So Jonathan, you've been at the helm of Shucking Shack for more than a decade. And we're talking today about the role of community, the impact it has on building connection in business. How has community played in shaping your growth?

**Jonathan Weathington** (2:21)
I think it's both an easy answer and a difficult answer. I think the easy part is people eat in restaurants. And restaurants without the people are just places that have cold food on not being served, right? And so when you open a restaurant, your goal is to drive traffic and get people in the seats or people at the bar stools. And so one of the best ways to do that is to create a community. And so you want to create a place where people want to hang out, want to get to know others, want a place where they can bring their family or come solo and feel welcomed. And I think that's also kind of the axiomatic beliefs of creating any community, even outside of a restaurant. And so we've just taken those things and given people a venue to do what they naturally want to do as people. And I think that's one of the things that we've been really, really good at.

**Mike Liwski** (3:10)
So Jonathan, just digging in a little bit more here, right? Because a lot of companies, we know, will talk about community. With Shucking Shack Oyster Bar, it really seems like it's at the center of your business model maybe. I know some leaders, they think of community as almost like a marketing thing or something that's like a buzzword that they may use. So I'm kind of curious to maybe go a little bit deeper the way that you think about your business and your growth strategy. What's really the difference between community as a buzzword and then community as you're using it today as part of your growth?

**Jonathan Weathington** (3:47)
Sure. I think that when you look at the word community, I think you could also sub in the word culture for that as well. Those two things are often found together. A lot of times when people talk about culture, community is perhaps an aspect to that when they're talking about building their own business. Whether you want to use the word culture or community, it's a representation of who you are. It's not something you dictate. It's a sum of your parts. When we look at community as a part of how we grow, it's our intent to make that at the forefront of what we're doing. I think when you're in my seat and when you look at the growth of a restaurant and the growth of a brand in particular, we often focus very much so on obviously the customers coming in, the customer experience, our guests, our friends, our neighbors, our locals, whomever it may be.
But I think on our side, we also like to focus on our employees because our employees are in the building more than our customers. When we're looking at that and taking that strategic approach and really being hospitable to our employees and helping them throughout their journey, whether it's one week, one month, one year, a decade, it doesn't really matter. What we can do to pour into our employees and what we can do to use that same approach that our employees pour into our guests and our customers, it's a cycle, it's a beneficial cycle, right? It's a symbiotic relationship that we have with our employees and it's a symbiotic relationship that our employees have with our customers. And so it's this large life cycle where everyone can benefit from the growth of the restaurant. Yeah.