ICYMI: Four reads on building a restaurant on your own terms

Every operator knows the feeling of watching a concept that works and wondering exactly how it got there. Sometimes the answer is a deliberate strategy. Sometimes it's a refusal to compromise.

This past month, our writer Kelly Dobkin spoke with Michael Babin, founder of Neighborhood Restaurant Group, about what nearly three decades of building layered, multifunctional spaces have taught him about giving guests a reason to keep coming back. She also spoke with Claire Wadsworth and Nikki Hill, the founders of La Copine, about building a decade-long cult following near Joshua Tree by doing exactly what they wanted. Both pieces are about the decisions that don't show up on the P&L but end up driving everything else.

—Bianca Prieto, editor

More reasons to return

Expert: Michael Babin, founder, Neighborhood Restaurant Group

The Evening Star Cafe in Alexandria, Va., has been running for nearly 30 years as a chef-driven restaurant, cocktail bar, whiskey lounge with live music, a patio and a backyard barbecue concept all under one roof.

Babin calls it "choose-your-own-adventure" hospitality: guests can arrive, change their minds based on mood or company and experience something entirely different without leaving. The recently opened New Orleans concept, Junebug, extends the same philosophy into a food, cocktail, music and cultural hub. His point for independent operators: you don't need a full music venue to start building optionality. A distinct bar program, a flexible event space or a rotating series gives guests a new reason to show up. The format only holds if the people delivering it make the connection. At its core, he says, it's not the food and beverage business. It's the people business.

What three decades of building neighborhood restaurants taught one founder about keeping guests →

The desert dining destination with a cult following

Experts: Claire Wadsworth and Nikki Hill, founders, La Copine

La Copine is open four days a week from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a remote stretch of desert near Joshua Tree. It has a two-hour wait, celebrity regulars from Kate Moss to Robert Plant, and a debut cookbook. Wadsworth and Hill describe themselves as "desert rich": not millionaires, but in possession of time, balance and a business they built exactly the way they wanted.

They hired from unconventional places, waited for the press to find them and wrote a cookbook only when the right literary agent walked in and asked. The competitive advantage is not the location or the format. It's clarity. They knew exactly what they wanted the restaurant to be and refused to compromise on it. That's its own strategy, even when it doesn't look like one.

How two founders turned refusal to compromise into a decade of word-of-mouth →

Don't miss this

The owners of Golden Steer, a nearly 70-year-old Vegas steakhouse expanding to New York City for the first time, spent hours debating whether to keep employee name tags and what shape the Caesar salad plates should be. Each small decision forced them to clarify exactly who they are as a brand. → Nostalgia-driven dining is putting itself to the test
Nashville's Noko Hospitality reinvests 5.5% of sales in employee benefits and has been profitable since day one. Founder Jon Murray says the math most operators run on labor stops at cost per hour. His calculation is different: what does turnover actually cost, and what would it take to make people want to stay? → Investing in your people is a profitability strategy

YOU'RE ALL CAUGHT UP

That's what we covered this month. If there's a restaurateur or operator in your network worth a Q&A with Kelly, we want to hear about it. Hit reply and introduce yourself.

Thanks for reading today's edition! You can reach the newsletter team at editor@theprep.co. We enjoy hearing from you.

Interested in advertising? Email us at newslettersales@mvfglobal.com

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get this newsletter once a week.

The Prep is written by Kelly Dobkin and edited by Bianca Prieto.