Sign Banking Word New Hampshire Computer

Industry sign banking new hampshire word computer

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey i'd like to welcome you to mission matters your source for all things business my name is adam torres you can follow me on instagram at ask adam torres and if you'd like to apply to be a guest on the show head on over to missionmatters.com and click on be our guest to apply all right so did i have tom boucher on the line and he's ceo over at great new hampshire restaurants tom welcome to the show thank you adam very much oh man so i'm excited to bring your story to my audience today tom i mean because what a story it is i'm not going to spoil it of course we're going to work through this and and what you've managed to do over at the great new hampshire restaurants you have some amazing concepts over there and we'll go through those also but maybe just uh just to get us started for those that aren't familiar with your work yet tell us how you got started in the restaurant business uh it was really by accident it hap and that happens a lot in this industry truly um you know i started out pouring draft beers at the at the pub in in the college that i went to and just had a ball doing it and and uh it just kind of it gets you like a bug i mean it bites you and it just sticks with you for some people and that's what happened with me so were you uh were you going to school for hospitality or was that like part of the plan in a little bit or was it like no actually um believe it or not i have my degree in chemistry and at the time you know and i say this a lot to young people you know when you're when you're 18 years old and you go to college you don't know exactly what you want to major in or maybe you do but i picked chemistry because i loved the uh number side of the the study and i loved the theoretical side and i just i did well and i ended up graduating and i got a full scholarship to get my master's degree at villanova i attended villanova for six months and again here i am 22 years old he's still still just a kid in my mind and i did some soul searching and figured out i i just didn't know where my career would be in chemistry i couldn't picture myself wearing a lab coat for the rest of my life working in a lab so i left much to my father's surprise giving up you know full scholarship at such a great school and i came back home and uh tried to figure out what i wanted to do and i just said you know what i enjoyed that experience working at the pub so maybe i'll go work in a restaurant um so i took a job i applied as a server i'd never served before you know true serving i only just poured beer right so i um took a job at a company called t-bones great american eatery the restaurant was only a couple years old and i started serving there and again i just i just loved it and one of the managers at the time approached me and said you know what you've got you've got something in you i can see that you would be a good manager uh what do you think about becoming a kitchen manager i said oh sure i mean i've never worked a day in a commercial kitchen in my life uh so i i literally was training for six weeks learning how to make everything from scratch we and um i became a kitchen manager and over the years i just kept growing with the company within three years i became a general manager of one of the t-bone stores at the time they had three t-bones and there were three founding owners that started that group in 1984. so when i took over as general manager of their third restaurant that was in the early 90s and from there i kind of got in a place where i still wanted to grow more and the owners knew that i made it very clear to them that i wanted to do more and um i became the director of marketing for them um you know with some assistance from one of the owners but uh i that's that's where i really started to enter into a higher level in the company and then in 1995 uh i i said i'd like to be an owner in this company and they found uh they found a location to open a different concept called cactus jacks and they asked me to become a founding owner in that restaurant which i did um and at the time you know i was only 29 years old so i and again you got to put cash up that you're not the bank's not going to just loan you all the money so as a as an uh an owner i had to put up uh somewhere around 40 000 and you know 29 years old i i didn't have that kind of capital and my dad was gracious enough to lend me a good chunk of that and i also uh borrowed from from a bank using my car as collateral uh because it was fully paid off that was very risky obviously at the time um but i did it and i i ran that restaurant for a number of years and we continued to just grow at a slow but purposeful pace and in 2001 i became an owner within the t-bones group and that was something again that i i literally asked for and then in 2004 i finally i got to a place where i was really pretty much leading the whole company and i said and and the owner the two of the owners had become pretty absentee at that at that point in time and so i asked them if i could be the ceo of the company because i'm really leading this company down down the road and we opened uh another t-bones restaurant called sorry it was in derry new hampshire so now we had four t-bones locations and then in late 2007 the two older partners uh really wanted to retire and sell the company so the other founding owner mark and i bought them out uh on january 1st in 2008 and on that day um i i remember it so clearly because it was new year's day it was a sunny but brisk day and i remember walking out of that closing and just having this feeling of i did it like i own my own company now wow and then within a second i had this terrifying moment where i knew that it all stops with me now so i went from this euphoric place to oh my god it all rolls to me now and wouldn't you know it i think everybody that will be watching this remembers 2008 was just the the craziest crash uh and our sales went like this and i remember really getting to a place where what did we just do we just borrowed almost four million dollars and our sales are going the wrong way and of course we weren't the only ones yeah um so in that moment uh we made the decision that i made the decision to just really take a look at how are we going to keep customers coming back more often and i did i did just the opposite and decided not to cut spending which a lot of companies did we did just the opposite we actually spent more on marketing and promotions to bring people in and it worked we didn't make a lot of money but we paid our bills we got our employees great great working hours they got paid great and it worked you know we survived it and we came out thriving on the other side of that so that that's a moment that i'll never forget that was a tough decision to make but it turned out to be the right one wow i mean what what a story just first of all so going from you know pouring you know starting out in college let's just say at the bottom or at the beginning i should say on the journey to um to you know i don't know i don't know what your parents were thinking when they're like okay full ride villanova and then uh and then you um and chemistry major and it's like i'm gonna go work in a restaurant for you know i like i like that experience and then moving forward to acquiring the company working with them and really you've held you know every position i would argue pretty much in that whole restaurant um food chain pun intended uh what what kind of advice would you give to like people that are aspiring and to not it doesn't have to be just restaurants but that whole concept of like paying your dues or really that apprenticeship thing i feel like it's very lost on a lot of society today the idea of that apprenticeship and growing through your career can you talk a little bit more on that absolutely so it's interesting because one of the things i love about my position and our company is i love to mentor and and help young people because i i went through it i was young and didn't didn't know my direction and what i was going to do i guess i would say at least for the for the people that are going to go to college don't stress about what you're going to major in because you may not end up being in the place that you think you're going to be and in fact i oftentimes tell young people if they're going to college major in business you're either going to own a business or you're going to work in a business so you know you can't you can't go wrong with that um that journey and quite frankly the one regret that i have is that i didn't take any business courses when i was in college i took economics 101 that was it you know i had to learn everything um in the accounting side of things on hands-on i mean i i i wrote our our p l spreadsheet that still lives today and you know that's that's a uh that's a skill that i i learned when i was in college uh how to use computers but other than that i mean i had no business background whatsoever i'll also say for the young people that i think i think it gets lost sometimes that you don't always have to go to college you know you can i can't tell you how many of our managers here in our restaurants make some of them make six figures and they didn't have a college degree you know so it's okay to not go to college it's okay to go to a trade school um it doesn't have to be the cookie cutter you go to the four-year college and then you go work for you know a sales you know sales position or something like that i i think it's great advice and we actually share the same regret so i didn't take any business classes either and it hit me it hit me when i when i left and as i got further out of my career and i got like some of those basic concepts that i was unaware of um they really got me and they and they they were they led to some costly mistakes just because i didn't have some of the fundamentals so i i would i would have to piggyback on that one 100 do that um and so i want to i want to go further into the actual concepts and into the restaurants and into a little bit more about um what what what makes what you're doing special let's maybe start with some of the the company culture like tell us a little bit more about that and how that unfolds yeah so we actually have um six core values that we we actually wrote a book around it it's called sitting at the table of success and these six core values are they're they're not just words on paper we did take the time collectively all of our general managers and our leadership team to work with a consultant over the course of a week to really sit down and put on paper what our corporate culture our company culture is because once you put it on paper it it really changes you have to walk the talk then you know you can't you can't just say their words because you're now living by i'll just give you one one example um one of them is called courage that's one of our corporate uh sorry company cultures is courage and i don't mean courage has uh two two definitions the first the first um definition of courage is you know let's let's use the men and women that protect our country right that's true courage they're out there providing safety and providing the freedoms that we all enjoy the second definition of courage is having the courage to do the right thing having the courage to speak up having the courage to teach and coach someone uh where there's a moment to do that and that that's hard for a lot of people to do to to some people call it confrontation or confronting someone you know we don't we don't use that term we say it's a coaching moment and that's what it is people make mistakes and they need to be shown and and we view it as we're helping them so that's just one of our our company core values that we we operate on another one is executing greatness we picked that purposely because that's part of our name right great new hampshire restaurants but we also we also strive for greatness not perfection because that's not how the world works and again we just wanted to pick things that we truly believed in and things that we would really do every single day and we do and we use those words um throughout our days uh in the restaurants oh that's that's great i um i said because i think one of the things like especially as you're scaling businesses and as you're and as you're really trying to you know i mean you have many restaurants you have many different concepts so as you're really doing this to have that like that cohesive culture i mean to me that makes like the biggest difference like that's what makes people come back that's what makes it to where you because you can't and and i talk to people about this all the time it's like you can't micromanage to the nth degree like you can only do so much of that that only gets you so far but that if you don't have that right company culture if you don't know that buy-in um that will hurt you long-term you're exactly right and the par part of our culture has always been to grow people from the ground up i'm case in point right so i started as a server and here i am the ceo now so that became a real big part of our culture in fact we have over a hundred uh salaried managers in our company every single one of them every single one started out in an hourly position they were either a host a line cook or a bartender um we've tried a handful of times and we're not going to do it again we've tried a handful of times of bringing in managers from other restaurants and they just it just doesn't work they they don't grasp our culture because they didn't grow up with it and so that that's a lesson that we learned a couple of times and now we we're just very committed to promoting and growing from people from within yeah that's great and i i have that conversation often with my team i'm like guess who's the first person that edited one of these videos or edited one of our one of our podcast shows it was this guy right here so so when i'm talking about our culture internally and like and the content we put out for our for our our clients and our guests it's always thinking about like how do you put that heart in it how do you produce the best quality and and it's not just um a rote routine of doing this or that or editing or something else like no it's like this is a living breathing thing and we want to convey that so that's part of our internal culture that we work on really hard and the thing is it makes the difference it makes all the difference and i've noticed it and we can we get the feedback so i i'm a huge advocate of what you're doing over there um i wanna let's talk some about let's talk about the food and the actual concept so we've gone through you know kind of how you started through your career we've gone through you know the people the people at the bottom line the culture we know that if it's not in place then you wouldn't be able to have the success you're doing let's get into some of the concepts so let's start with the the uh call it the mothership it's t-bone's great american eatery uh we the the previous founders started in 1984 and at the time there was really no i would say for those that are a little bit older they might remember bennigan's um that that's what t-bones t-won's concept was like was casual dining it was all made from scratch food really value driven and catering to families and seniors and to this day 36 i don't know i can't do the math but coming up 36 years yeah 36 years later it's still the same core business approach it's all made from scratch food we cater to families and seniors and we do a we're very high volume restaurant and we're in that casual dining arena but it's clean it's comfortable you you feel like you're dining in a very comfortable atmosphere with warm hospitality um and that's that's the t-bones concept we just opened uh our sixth one uh last uh september so we're we're excited about continuing to grow that brand because it's been successful as i said for 36 years the second concept is cactus jacks the one that i co-founded in 1995 and we have um two of those one of them is actually uh underneath a t-bones we have a a lake location up up in winnipesaukee where t-bones is on the top floor and cactus jack's on the bottom floor which is very unique uh a lot of people you know think that they're two totally separate restaurants running from each other but little do they know it's the same owners right so that concept is a little more uh driven towards it's obviously southwestern just the name implies uh cactus jacks and it's southwestern it's tex-mex it's barbecue a little bit of southern food and it's um it's got a nice cool fun bar and i think that that's what really separates it from t-bones there is overlap with customers because all of our restaurants are within 30 to 45 minutes of each other and so there is some overlap but it definitely skews more younger and more towards the bar crowd the third concept is i'm sitting in our third concept and this was something that um my partner mark and i uh and my wife which i i get to give her a shout out guys i got a great story uh about that too she um so copper door is a uh upscale i wouldn't call it fine dining it's an upscale restaurant that has a really great amazing vibe i wish i could show you pictures but you can of course go to the website and see it but it's a it's a 240 seat restaurant that has a giant bar it definitely skews more affluent uh customers and the food is really upscale comfort food so picture like um if you take meatloaf but it's not just regular meatloaf it's it's bacon wrapped and it's got different flavors in it so we have an executive chef that creates all these recipes and it's an open kitchen so you can see all the chef's cooking and it's just a great great uh vibe and it's been incredibly successful we have we opened it so successful we opened a second one so we have two copper doors and we intend definitely to grow that brand as well because it's just been wildly successful but i got to tell you the story about how the name came about please so we were my wife and i were dining at a restaurant locally not far from where i am right now in bedford new hampshire and it was a mexican restaurant and it had an arch door and we sat down and she said god she goes this place could be so much better and it was good but not it didn't really and she said it really should be called the copper door and she literally drew the what the door would look like she's an artist she drew what the door would look like on a napkin that we we saved and we took a picture of it and that's how the name came about was just her coming up with it and i always like to tell the story how the door is actually made of copper okay it's a 25 000 door and i reason why i love the name is it's a memorable name it's not a name you have to struggle to try and remember it it always bothers me when restaurants pick these obscure names that you just can't remember i mean it's probably the most important thing for um word of mouth right is remember the name of the restaurant so i love it because it's memorable and then the second reason i like it is because it it it's another sense where you actually touch that copper door so it's another place to embed it in your head right and then i always joke saying the third reason is because my wife came up with a name so i better like it you know so but she did she did all the artwork and all all the restaurants and uh i give her a lot of credit for the success of copper door for sure wow that's amazing that that's a good story first of all the copper door and so it originally started at a mexican restaurant but yeah you're right you had me thinking about this meatloaf and this bacon wrap and i'm like oh thanks a lot tom i haven't eaten lunch at my i just felt my stomach i'm like it's funny i knew you'd come up with something there um so i don't want to like i don't want to obviously there's there's going to be more than one answer to this right so this isn't meant to be a curveball though but i want you to go through and maybe give us some of the some of the things that you think make these restaurants so successful so let's just go through one at a time that what keeps what keeps um your your guests coming back time and time again because i know they all have three pretty unique let's just say value propositions obviously the amazing food or guests don't come but what are some what's some of that secret sauce it's actually a really easy answer to to give we are so dedicated to taking care of our employees and it to a point where i'm not even afraid to say this even to our best customers that we we treat our employees at times better than our customers and the reason is they have become so loyal and so dedicated to doing the job executing greatness that they they are the reason we are so successful and they feel it they know it and they in turn take care of our restaurants meaning physically and take care of our guests and it's really interesting because i hear it all the time from our customers where do you find such good employees and the truth is they find us because we have such a great reputation in the hospitality industry here in new hampshire that employees want to come work for us and they interchange too it just because you're a server at t-bones doesn't mean you can't be a server at copper door and they do they transfer around and they like getting a new you know basically a new uh scenery for them and a new experience but it's the same you know i mean the copper door menu is different than t-bones but it's still executed at a very high level following recipes we have systems and controls and they're all the same i mean the way that we operate each restaurant physically operate is identical what makes them different is the atmosphere and the menu and that's truly the only difference interesting that's awesome and the systems part of it i mean that's the that's the key um well obviously the people but the systems part that's interesting so they all operate the same um but the ambiance the food different uh so i know you i know you also within um the great nh restaurants um um company have other things you do other than just the the pure food concept um catering or other things i mean do you care to comment on that just to give us a flavor of the overall portfolio absolutely so we do we we have a number of things that we do besides operate the restaurants we actually have a a commissary and for those that don't know what that is it's basically a a centralized place where you prepare either items uh for your menu or in our case we we do that like we make all of our chicken pot pie fresh fresh from scratch uh and it's delivered around in refrigerated trucks uh five days a week to the t-bones locations in addition to that so that's just one item that they prepare in addition to that we have a team of butchers and a team of bakers so we have 15 people working in this commissary preparing all of our hand cut steaks all of our fresh made from scratch desserts and of course the other prepared foods also out of that location our catering we don't actually cater from there but all the foods that we prepare to do a catering event are prepared on that site we have a giant commercial kitchen there that restaurateurs would drool over uh and it's it's fantastic and it's we're able to produce an amazing amount of food um from that kitchen and then thirdly out of that kitchen um because of the pandemic we wanted to figure out a way to to deliver meal kits to within the within a 30-minute drive of our facility so we came up with a new business called dingdongdeliver.com and if you go on that website you can order uh meal kits things like uh one of them's chicken pot pie and it comes with mashed potatoes and you you basically you cook it at home and you you reheat the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and um and it comes in a cooler that's re that has ice packs in it and it's delivered right to your home or your business you don't have to be home and it's been incredibly successful especially uh on the holidays we have special menus for christmas eve or or new year's eve or coming up valentine's day and people order these these meals because it's it's convenient and that certainly is a trend in the industry people are looking for convenience but they're also looking for great fresh food that's great and and what was the name of that website again we'll be sure to put in the show notes but i want to make sure that people that are maybe listening to this in their car get it what's the name of the website again it's ding dong deliver and we literally the driver walks up and hits the doorbell ding dong and they're on their way i love it that's awesome so um obviously we're in 2021 recording this depending what somebody's watching um what's next so uh what's next for the great nh restaurants like what what are some of the things that you have planned on the horizon like i think for sure we see another copper door opening probably not this year but coming in 2022 we actually have a location that we have our eyes on we have direct contact with the property owner we just happened to know him so uh i i would say that that's probably the next big move and you know i i want to say something that just hit me as i was talking about you know we just happened to know him it's really interesting and i would give this advice also to young people out there that networking is such a valuable tool and it's free and the reason i mention that is because i only know of this location for copper door because i happened to network i met this gentleman at a networking opportunity and he reached out to me that would have never happened if i didn't go to this networking opportunity and i'll share another story with you about how how important it is to be involved in your community be involved in different activities in your community um this in my this entire career where i bought out the founding owners would have never happened if it wasn't for this situation i played in the basketball league locally it was an over 30 over 30 years old men's league i met this gentleman named bill griner and i met another guy named joe riley had no idea who they were before playing in this league and we played competitively you know and we became friends because you see each other and we would go out afterwards well ten years later after playing in this league came the opportunity to buy out my partners as i mentioned i had to bring in one major investor who came to the table with uh a seven-figure number of cash and guess who it was bill griner from the basketball team wow and then i borrowed uh nearly four million dollars from a local bank guess who the banker was joe riley from the local bank so two of the guys that i met from this basketball league were critical in making the buyout happen i mean it you just can't make that stuff up and to this day i'm very close friends with bill griner and joe riley and i are we're we're the greatest friends ever i mean we we still talk and hang out and it's just been a crazy ride that you know so we're talking 12 years ago and we're still you know still still hanging out just amazing wow what an amazing story from a basketball league game like to like shake oh man that one blows my mind tom because you're like you don't always know what's going to happen next obviously that's why networking is so important even even in this exchange it's one of the reasons why i decided to do it because you just don't know what what what rock might what you might find find a rock when you turn it over man it's exciting tom well hey i just want to say um first off thank you for coming on the show today it's been a pleasure doing this interview with you and really bringing your story and the story of the great nh restaurants to to our audience and what you've done and everything from the the company culture to the people and i mean i i i was not surprised by that answer because we've talked before but when even just to hear you say it again like that the people are the main component a lot of people may say that but um it really comes through in what you're doing in your execution so um into the audience as always thank you for tuning in if this is your first time watching us or listening to us depending where you're at um definitely hit that subscribe button we'd love for you to be a return viewer and listener um so we've got a lot more great guests coming up for you of course and uh tom again thanks for coming on the show it's been a pleasure you bet thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]