Sava Farah: Value Pricing Is Killing Your Restaurant

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.

Sava Farah (1:09)

I don't know how restaurants providing a value are making payroll. And my guess is that they're not. But we have to charge a lot more, and then we have to create the value behind that. And there is a big numbers game behind this. If you want to stay afloat, only there can I really have the breathing room to approach my work with such gratitude and abundance.

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 you can't make payroll is that you're still trying to compete on value? Today's guest fled Communist Albania at five years old, landed in the Bronx, and opened her first Ann Arbor restaurant at 23 years old. With no degree, no investors, and no plan beyond her own work ethic. Nearly 20 years later, she runs The Pulpo Group. Four restaurants and 400 employees, each one funded by the profits of the last. In today's conversation, we get into why she charges more and builds the value behind it. How she reads momentum instead of chasing problems, and why staying out of the investor game gave her the speed capital was supposed to buy. If you're working harder every year and keeping less of the money you're making, this one is going to show you where the leak is.

Sava Farah (2:35)

When people want to hear about the trajectory of my career, I have to start with my origin story, because to understand my career path and the choices that I've made, without understanding that, it just really does not give it context. So my family fled Communist Albania when I was five, and it was like an overnight journey through Montenegro. We walked for about eight hours being chased by the Communist government, and that is literally my first memory.

I have some faint memories of my childhood before that, but that's the moment that I was really awakened, and something like that really leaves an imprint. Then of course, throughout my childhood, we kept hearing about the story, the escape story. We came to America eventually. We lived in a refugee camp in Belgrade for a year. Finally made it to America, to the Bronx. I grew up in the Bronx, and when we got here, it's just like everybody wanted to hear the escape story, and everybody wanted to hear how we got out, and everybody wanted to hear about the refugee camp. So that was like my identity as a kid. We'd be at weddings or community gatherings, and we'd always hear people whispering like, oh, that's the family, that's the refugee family, which was like so crazy. And like it was an identity that it was like kind of ashamed of, because it just seemed like we were foreigners, we were outsiders.

But one of the things that that really woke me up to is like risk and opportunity. My family risked our lives, 17 of us, to get out of some really treacherous circumstances in pursuit of the American dream. And that was embedded in my identity and my worldview like immediately. So I was going to waste this opportunity. And I think that's really carried me through my life. And just like you were saying about your wife, it's not just my work ethic, it's in every aspect of my life. It's like, what's the opportunity here? And hell yes, I always joke with my husband, who's more analytical, he's an attorney. And I always tell him like, that's what you get baby for marrying a hell yes wife. Like I just live a hell yes life. And if you look at the 16 other people that were on that journey, escaping the country, each and every one of us carry that in our own unique ways. And like gratitude, it's like, you know, we know that we're so lucky to have made it out and to be here. And we ain't wasting this opportunity.