Marc Murphy knows a little something about running a restaurant; heโs established several renowned restaurants like Landmarc in New York and Grey Salt in Tampa, as well as being a judge on cooking competitions like Chopped. On this episode of Food 360, he talks with the legendary Jonathan Waxman, one of the first celebrity chefs who opened the wildly popular Michaelโs restaurant in New York in 1979 (regular listeners will remember that Marcโs previous guest, pizza chef Nancy Silverton, got her start at Michaelโs training under Jonathan), and now operates several restaurants in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco. They get down to the business of it, discussing layout, location, table times, and staff.
Jonathan points out that when he opened his first restaurant, it was a bit of a different time, with a lot less oversight; now, however, restaurants have to go through several layers of bureaucracy to get the right permits before they open, laying down a lot of money in advance. When the upfront costs were lower, Marc agrees, โyou could just wait to build the business. A restaurant has to have a soul, andโฆit doesnโt have one right away. The employees make the restaurant. Now...if youโre not busy from day one, youโre going to last six months.โย
โThereโs no place to learn how to do it,โ Jonathan adds. โI mean, you could go to school to become an architect. You could go to school to become a designer. You could go to school to become a chef, but you need to have all those hats. You need to wear a designer hat, an architect's hat, an engineer's hat, a chef's hat.โย
Why so many hats? Because a restaurant is more than its menu. A restaurateur needs to be concerned with their location, chiefly, and whether or not that location even calls for their dream concept. โWhat does the neighborhood need?โ Marc asks. โBecause youโre also a convenience to the neighborhood. If thereโs already five bistros...donโt go open a sixth...A restaurant has to have a need to be there to start with.โ Itโs also essential to know how many seats can fit into the space, which determines how many plates you can serve, and therefore how much money you can make. Is that space viable? โI think that from the publicโs point of view, they have to realize how small our margins really are,โ Jonathan says. โOur margins are so tiny that if you get the formula incorrect, youโre screwed.โ But even if youโre careful, thereโs risk: โYou think you got it right...and a year and a half later youโre still struggling...because the formula is amorphous,โ he says. โIt is this organic creature that you canโt really control.โย
Layout is important too: itโs not about cramming as many tables as possible into the space, because there are more people moving around than customers; you have to think about where the food runners need to be, the servers, where the line for the bathroom will form, where guests will wait at the host stand, and on and on. Marc talks about working hard to avoid a โmash pileup every night,โ but Jonathan says, โI want that mosh pit. I want everything to come together because it creates energyโฆ.I want things on the edge of chaos.โย
Most importantly, however, is the soul of the restaurant. โI think restaurants are a little bit...like eating in someoneโs house...now, youโre my family,โ Jonathan says. โThatโs the other connection...I felt that was kind of missing. Like, most restaurants that you walk in, and youโre just Joe Schmo, right? You should walk into a restaurant and itโs like, โWelcome to my house.โโ ย
Join Marc and Jonathan to learn more about running a successful restaurant, why itโs important for servers to bring their personalities to the table, and how social media has changed our dining habits, in this episode of Food 360.ย
If you want to be sure you're listening to the podcasts everyone else is checking out, iHeartRadio has you covered. Every Monday, iHeartRadio releases a chart showing the most popular podcasts of the week. Stay up to date on what's trending by checking out the chart here. There's even a chart just for radio podcasts here, featuring all your favorite iHeartRadio personalities like Bobby Bones, Elvis Duran, Steve Harvey and dozens of others.
Photo: Getty Images