Facing the Competition with Passion and Guts – “This Olive has a Soul”
In capitalistic America there is little time that goes by when an individual comes up with a unique and successful business concept and when other organizations attempt to capitalize on the new found marketplace with copy cat ideas. In the restaurant business competition and copying are not uncommon according to Joey. Unlike other industries, competition does not always present the situation of immanent failure if a new player successfully challenges and replicates the formula of another restaurant, “The restaurant business is the most difficult business in the world. When someone makes a widget here, and then someone makes a better and cheaper one in a different country, you’re out of business overnight. In the restaurant business if someone in another part of the country or world does exactly what you’re doing, you’re still in business for a long time.” Restaurants obviously allow the owner’s to adjust and modify to a changing marketplace and competitive environment.
What is evident with Bertucci’s and Joey’s vision of running the organization is that copying the pure passion for high quality and authentic food, and the desire to create a unique and pleasurable environment for one’s customers is not very easy to duplicate and the downfall of many who try. “People forget that the restaurant business is more than just food and price. It’s atmosphere, the environment and the experience. People copy the restaurant business all the time, but you can’t copy the vision, the guts and the history!” The exclamation to this statement can be articulated by the example of an unsuccessful Mobile, Alabama competitor who attempted to open a similar chain of restaurants based on a the appearance of Bertucci’s, “What do a bunch of fat, old men in a conference room in Mobile know about Italian food when they start a restaurant chain?! I know this stuff. My corporate chef and I grew up with this stuff and doing these things. They don’t have a clue on the specifics. The list goes on about all these big companies opening restaurants and wanting to have Italian restaurants but failing because they don’t truly know it.” What it all boils down to is the customer and their judgment of the success of the replicated concept, and in this business there is no room for error, “They spell something wrong on the menu and the customer sees that. The customer knows the difference. It’s like me trying to get into the Thai food business. What the hell do I know about Thai food?! Do I go to Thailand for six months and steal recipes and restaurant designs and now I know the Thai food business? That’s why there are so many failures in this business because that’s the way people think it works.”
Amidst all of these different aspects of the restaurant business, the root of every restaurant is the food it serves and the appeal it has to customers. According to Joey the care that is rooted in his upbringing and embedded in his restaurants is something Bertucci’s pays strong attention to and is what helps give Bertucci’s an advantage over the “cookie-cutter” and mass producing competition, “We top each pizza with an olive as a sign of approval. But that is not just any olive. That olive is a California olive and we roast it, marinate it and cure it ourselves. We want to make it a better olive. We take this product that we take so much care in making it, and then we put it on the pizza. That is so special and our employees have to know this. It means more than just a garnish…this olive has a soul. We make our own dough, hand stretch it and watch it constantly in the brick oven. That’s cooking! Not pushing a button. There is a romance to that and we take that responsibility.”
The Restaurant Business is not an Easy Business
The rapid success of this restaurant chain and the hectic pace at which new locations were opened did not occur without taking its toll on the operations and people who were trying to maintain this aggressive pace. Bertucci’s has exploded i n the past five years to upwards of eighty locations from the twenty-one that existed when they went public in 1991. The company spearheaded new locations in states such as Maryland, Florida and Chicago but all did not prove to be as prosperous or long lasting as the original New England locations. In fact the company has had to slow its pace of growth recently in order to regroup after several recent quarters of poor performance and profitability significantly lowered stock value, and the need for closing certain locations that proved to be non-viable. “As we proceeded in this capital intense business we were building upon what we had already done and the success we had already achieved. An important thing about running a business like this is that you realize that you have to ask the customer what they want and how they feel and take the time to interpret that to make sure you are meeting those needs. You can’t do that when you are going 100 mph…it’s tough to do when you are going 30 mph.”
Realizing the necessity to listen to customer feedback at all times was only part of the process that Joey admits needed more attention while Bertucci’s was growing so rapidly, “Now you really start dissecting the company to find out what you did wrong. For example, I may not have spent enough time on considering automation or computer information systems, but on opening more stores. Maybe now that was the wrong decision.” The slowdown has given Bertucci’s the chance to settle down, reflect inward, and regroup its resources and strategy to push forward once again with its original motivation and commitment to excellence, “It gives you a chance to breathe and plan. To determine your resources and concepts and put them in place. To plan for the future and work on your overall strategy such as restaurant design… I think all businesses should take a year off and reflect on what they have and where they are going.”
Joey has spent his professional career in the retail food business and has seen it through its good times and its bad times. What is his opinion of the restaurant industry and how its unique characteristics add to the challenges of growing a successful venture? “The restaurant business is the most difficult business in the world. I think the restaurant itself is tougher to run than the company. You’re a manager, a psychologist, working with part-timers, non-English speaking people, a retailer, quality control… It’s a tough, tough job.” These unique facets to this business coupled with the struggles of being a public company can prove to be detrimental to any person’s will to survive when one looks at the roller-coaster the founder of Bertucci’s has gone through. At a recent event that showcased the business plans of new business ventures, an expert panelist made the comment that “Entrepreneurs never fail, they only give up.” Evidently this person had some foresight about Bertucci’s based on the perseverance and desire to continue ahead that Joey has, “We went too fast and we made a few mistakes which brought the stock price down farther than it should have been. I own a lot of shares and I never looked at it as all that money that I lost. I’m very proud of myself for that…for never being upset at it for the stock price issue. And for not bucking under that pressure. Once you stop expanding you die and the culture changes. Everything changes. You have to keep winning, growing and expanding.”
The Future
What lies ahead for Bertucci’s and the direction the organization will go? Joey has no intention to let things slow down or to quench his desires to makes the ventures he is involved in the absolute biggest and best they can be. He also intends to ensure that those who are along for the ride with him will benefit from the organization in as many ways as possible so it is an endeavor that is beneficial for all. “We want to make whatever we do fun for the employees so we can retain our people. We wish to expand the organization and to be profitable so we can make money for the stock. We want to add value for our shareholders’ interest.”
As for Joey himself, his personal desires are still engrained in the history that is part of him, and the traits that make up his entrepreneurial personality, “I will stay with Bertucci’s until it isn’t fun anymore. I would like to take a year off and live in Italy if the opportunity were ever to present itself. But for now, the organization is controlled by the management that I have hired which frees me up to do the creative and fun stuff. Bertucci’s is a very cool company, and even though it makes me go around and talk to myself from time to time, I enjoy being here very much.” – ###