Ed Harris: Great Food Won’t Save Your Business

Josh Kopel (0:00)

I'm going to ask you a question that might sting a bit. How many holiday parties do you have booked for the month of December? Not like, how many do you expect? It's how many are on the books right now with the deposits collected and the contracts signed. And for many of you, I worry that the answer is not enough. And here's why that matters. I think that the companies that are going to throw those parties are picking their venues right now. This is a sweet spot between August and September. And by the time you start thinking about December, the decision has already been made. You're not losing those parties in November. You're going to lose them this month. And that's why I built the Private Events Engine. It's a simple three-part system that leverages AI to do most of the work for you. And this month in the Marketing Masterclass, I'm going to walk you through it. It's going to show you how to package events, how to get in front of the people that are booking them, and how to close them without discounting. And you get the whole thing for free. So show up to this month's Marketing Masterclass. Go to restaurantbusinessschool.com today to sign up. Now here we go.

Ed Harris (1:09)

It's unfortunate that a lot of people go into business and they think we just have to have good food. Like no, that's a very small fraction of it because I know tons of restaurants with horrible food, but they're always busy. What's the difference? The difference is they know how to market themselves. They know how to get their names out there.

Josh Kopel (1:28)

Welcome to FULL COMP, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators. Served up on the house.

What if the reason nobody is walking through your door has nothing to do with what's on the plate? Ed Harris one-chopped, then left the kitchen entirely to raise his kids and build a business from home. Today, he consults for hotel groups, develops spice lines for other chefs, and co-founded Flavor Bombé with Angelo Sosa. In today's conversation, we get into why good food is a small fraction of why restaurants survive, how he killed product after product without ever calling it failure, and why he measures every opportunity in time before he measures it in money. If you're waiting to be discovered because the work is great, this one's gonna hurt a little.

Ed Harris (2:28)

That path was me working in the restaurant business, and the last place I actually worked was Buddakan in New York City. So my schedule was getting at about 12, one o'clock in the afternoon and didn't leave until two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, depending on the day.

So starting a family, I was like, I can't not be there. You know, I kind of want to focus on being a dad. So that led me into thinking, what could I do that will keep me in the business, but give me the ability to still not be in it with that kind of crazy hours behind it. So consulting was something I always found fun. One of the chefs that I actually worked with at Buddakan was a consulting chef. And I just saw him coming in and that was the dream job. He would come in at 10, 11 and he would be gone at three, four o'clock in the afternoon. And I was like, getting paid big bucks. That is what I want to do. And it's funny enough, fast forward almost 15 years, we end up consulting together on about four or five projects. So yeah, here we are.

Josh Kopel (3:33)

Let me ask you a question about that. So I was a restaurateur myself. I owned multiple concepts across multiple tiers of dining in Los Angeles. And like, I wanted to be a thought leader.

I felt like I had a song to sing. I felt like I had a unique perspective on the industry. And I knew that like, eventually I was going to share it with the world. And I was around 40 years old. And I was like, oh, you know, I'd love to get into coaching and consulting and media. I was going to do all of these things. And I didn't know when.

I had a young child myself at the time of all of this is going on. Two big things happened. I had a daughter that had just turned one, was about one and a half at the time. And there was a global pandemic. It's one thing when you lose your job or your career, but when you lose your entire industry kind of overnight, like that was the big pause for me.