When the Dining Room Is Full, Every Decision Counts: The Art of Delivering Under Pressure

**Dan Bova** (0:00)
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**John Brandt Lee** (0:37)
I've thrown people out of my restaurant. I've asked them to never come back. I mean, there is, I teach my staff, there's a line. If somebody goes over that line, I'll have your back every time. But you have to eat it, you know, to this point. And I've had, you know, steaks sent back, that I look at them, they're perfect temperature, you can't tell in the dining room, they've only cut the end of the steak, they didn't really get into it. But the moment you go out and start arguing with the customer or telling them in any way that their feelings are wrong, you're not gonna win.

**Dan Bova** (1:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to How Success Happens. I'm Dan Bova, writer and editor at entrepreneur.com.
So as we hear from so many people on this show that we talk to, success in entrepreneurship is all about grittiness and having a never say die attitude. Well, today's guest knows a thing or two about both of those things. John Brandt is the chef owner of Bar Avalon and with two locations and a crush of hungry people dying to get into both, the man knows something about pressure and the steps that entrepreneurs can take to ensure that they are ready when it is go time. So let's talk to the man. Welcome John.

**John Brandt Lee** (1:56)
Thank you, thank you. I think grit is a good word you're using there. That's for sure. You ain't got grit, you're not surviving in this business.

**Dan Bova** (2:03)
Yeah, so I'd love to hear about that. When did you know that being a chef was gonna be your business? Were there any other options for you?

**John Brandt Lee** (2:13)
No, no, no, it's sheer stupidity. And I did computer web design and I designed a website for somebody that had just opened a restaurant prior to 9-11 and they were struggling because with the restaurant business, environmental, emotional things really kind of pushed this business in a good way and in a bad way. And at that time, nobody was dining out. Everybody was glued to their TV. They were struggling. And so I said, how hard can it be? I'm gonna make some food. I was from West Philly. I used to make some day gravy. This is gonna be easy. I'm gonna take their money and that's it. Lo and behold, three, four years later, my house is in foreclosure. The IRS is coming after me. Paychecks are bouncing.
And it just was kind of a bad snowball that I had to figure out either to get out or how am I gonna stay in?

**Dan Bova** (3:03)
So how did you decide that you were gonna stay in?

**John Brandt Lee** (3:07)
It was a lot of perseverance. It was a lot of ups and downs.
It was financially, I had put everything I had into it, so I didn't have a choice. Looking back, probably the better move would have been to step aside, close it and kind of move on.
But the grit, the grind that you spoke of, that's kind of what got me over the hump to get to where I needed to be. And it took a good, I'm gonna say 15 years before I finally found the formula. Each year got better. You started to learn, hey, you gotta pay these taxes. You gotta put this money aside. Stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. All these things, particularly in the hospitality industry, will destroy a business. And so as those got better, I started getting better, but it wasn't so probably a good 15 years. And I'm really almost going into COVID that I finally hit a really strong stride and a formula and a brand that I felt work and I could kind of then now settle in and say, okay, how do I take what I've put together and continue to grow? And make it better and be able to actually look at things from an analytical standpoint, not a prioritized standpoint, not a sense of desperation, which is one of the big problems of this business. I mean, there's just so many people, it's desperation mode, it's panic mode, it's making changes that are just, they shouldn't be making or they're not sure about, or just throwing things, caution to the wind, and it will eat you alive. And that's why the failure rate is so high.