Turned $1 Into $2M/Year Restaurant Business

if a new restaurant owner's getting to set up shop what would you advise them when it comes to managing finances this is a different world in here james oh yes the best advertising is a satisfied customer our best-selling drink is easily our spanish coffee what would your expected profit margin be this is where we prep the turkeys to go into the oven oh the aroma here it is so turkey filled look at that that's kept our business going for over a hundred years break down a revenue real quick for us and it's like having a party at your house every night except you have someone to wash the dishes someone to cook the food my family acquired half ownership in 1941 for one dollar and now we treat the entire staff as family in this episode you'll discover behind the scenes hacks tips and tricks that helped james run a generational restaurant past a century years old most restaurants can't survive past five years plus you'll find out how his restaurant became known to be the largest user of kalua so let's go dive in tell us your story like when did you get into the family restaurant business and why choose that career path well when i was a kid i wanted to be a professional baseball player but i didn't get drafted by the red sox i got drafted by the us army and it wasn't to play baseball after a couple years of college and not knowing what to do for the coup for a career that's when i decided to go into the family business and it was really actually a good personal decision for me because i was a really shy kid you were and a really shy young adult and the restaurant industry gets you over being shy real fast my parents actually never ever put any pressure on me too that's good take over the family business but they kept on constantly kept on asking me to come down to health so between classes i'd come down and help out wait tables and do whatever i could to help out so how long as of today has have you been part of this business specifically you it's pretty close to 50 years it was so long ago i can't remember when it went full time yeah so take us into the original entrance to the hubert's cafe and we'll follow you in all righty i mean this this building is obviously over 100 years old yeah it goes it's built in 1910 1910 all right so this is the original one with the ceiling and the highlights i mean this is a different world in here james oh yes [Music] how have you responded to the current environment with regarding into rising costs have you had to change your menus because of that are you still kind of taking in the cost and we have to raise prices with the minimum wage going up and also the difficulty getting staffing it's hard to make a buck in the restaurant business so but you have to be very passionate to stay in it just like you right for me the enjoyable aspect of the harassment business is you meet a lot of really nice people and it's like having a party at your house every night except you have someone to wash the dishes someone to cook the food someone to clean and clean up afterwards i think i'm going to start a restaurant once i retire a little bit later because there's something about serving others food and seeing them enjoy it that just gives you a warm feeling i'm sure they would rest in would you agree oh yeah if a new restaurant owner is getting to set up shop what would you advise them when it comes to managing finances like what are the typical mistakes that they make or pitfalls what have you learned over your number of years well it's been a long time since we've been a new restaurant right here an old restaurant but generally speaking one of the biggest issues with a new business and a new restaurant is having enough financing because early on so expensive it well first off yeah you've got all the equipment expenses and the build out if you're a brick and mortar type restaurant and then initially it's going to be a losing proposition until uh a restaurant gets established and well most don't survive for more than five years and you're going on year 123 right the obvious is where you have to make sure your your product is wholesome part of that is making sure the raw product is tough quality and then there's the other part of the equation and that is maintain your staff not having turnover when you have turnover then you've got to retrain and then you lose consistency as far as the way the product is produced and presented whereas if you maintain that staff you don't have to constantly retrain you've got an incredible team and some people have been here for decades i'd love our audience to understand how that's achievable like why that's important for really any restaurant the important thing is making sure that when you hire people that they're a good fit that they fulfill your needs and we fulfill their needs the other thing about it is you got to show appreciation for for the work that they do and a couple of things that i do to try to show my appreciation for their work is number one i try to greet every employee when they come in by name and let's see if they're working a double i try to be sure to thank them for working extra and then if they do something good i'll say adelphi beautiful job on that dessert or they get a positive comment card i'll say heidi you got a really nice comment card way to go thanks for for your effort just little things like that is important yeah we're going down by the way to the prep area right james yep this is what happens here this is where we prep the turkeys to go into the oven oh and the aroma here it is so turkey filled look at that it's called a groin pot but this is uh we're making soup stock yeah and also the the stock that we get from this we use for gravy it smells amazing james this is what we call a combi oven and it's a combination steamer convection oven and most of our roasting is done in turkey gets roasted here right gotcha we also have double stacking convection right there yeah touch on leadership what is your leadership style in a couple words and why is that important for a restaurant owner well i'm a real easy boss i don't get into people's faces and chew them out i think the most important thing is if you need to have a conversation with a staff member do it privately not publicly but you don't want to make them look bad or embarrass them the thing i learned about leadership is that you can't do it all yourself and it's better to spread out the responsibility among your staff and usually you know let's say you you pick someone who's part of the rank and file and you give them a little bit of responsibility they're flattered because you trusted them and you gave them some additional responsibility and of course you know you have to hold them accountable i have found that that as a way to make people just take them from being just employees to being company oriented right personnel what is your best-selling drink well the our best-selling drink is easily our spanish coffee which is a flaming drink gun tableside [Music] 47 years ago when we first started doing spanish coffees i had no idea that i would get this big but today we're the largest user of kahlua in the state in the galaxy too well the galaxy also but we're the largest fusion in the city largest use of glue in the country and by default the largest use of glue in the world because america is the number one consumer exactly yeah do you have to have some kind of a certification for your bartenders to be able to make that drink because there's fire involved there's potential hazard of this and that well basically there's no certification and i don't train every single bartender they learn from the other bartenders so your bartenders went through a lot of kahula before they mastered it it's my guess right they learned through repetition right by the way you guys my up flip team wanted me to attempt to make a spanish and after i saw i said not even touching it so thank you where is your revenue on a monthly basis today we're running around uh 180 to 200 000. almost 200k a month yeah and for a restaurant in this location i know may vary from market to market but what would your expected profit margin be after all said and done generally speaking five percent is what a restaurant toured five percent yes that's why that's super low that's nothing that's not a lot now during the months of uh november and december our profit margin is a little higher it gets up to ten maybe twelve percent the rest of the year if we're hitting five we're grateful to god for that there are times when we're just breaking them there are times when we lose money i'm i'm shocked i mean wow five percent i mean obviously you can live off of that but that's a low mar is that are you saying industry-wise especially in these central hubs like portland it's expensive to operate well yeah it's industry-wide i should say all right comment below guys we'd love to see if you're a restaurant owner tell us what profit margins you're shooting for and actually achieving we'd love to hear from you and by the way keep watching because later we're going to reveal how james and his team they find reliable employees and how they treat them as family and why that's important to any restaurant i always say restauranteer restaurant tour restaurant tour thank you you're teaching me something new today let's talk about food like what what's your specialty in food wise and what's unique about how you prepare it well roast turkey is the health special okay that we've been serving turkey going clear back to the saloon days so that's one of the items on the menu that's been here almost from the beginning oh yeah that's pretty cool to the beginning give us a rundown on how the turkey's made what's special about it what's unique well what's special about it is we use the whole bird most restaurants they uh just get the keel bone breast in and they just cook that here at hubers you can get turkey leg turkey wings turkey tails we have the neck we don't usually sell it as an entree yeah and i can't see that doing well but it does go into the stockpot but the one one of the things about the turkey neck is the meat is very tender i saw one of your uh i think employees eating it and it looked incredible maybe we should try it later tell us the story of the one dollar purchase like elaborate that story for us in a nutshell like how did that happen how did you buy this in the 1940s and get your footprint here well great uncle jim had worked for the hubert family for 49 years at that point he was hired by mr huber in uh 1891 wow 1891. mr huber passed away in 1911 and the business was willed to his widow augusta hubert but because augusta huber was a housewife and a mother she didn't know anything about the bar it was like not now so great apple jim managed the business for augusta and then in 1919 converted the saloon into a restaurant because of prohibition and then augusta passed away in 1940 she willed the business to her son john and at that point green uncle jim asked john about becoming a partner in the business and john hebert was so kind gracious and generous to my great uncle that he sold them half ownership for a dollar gotcha so that's how you got it half ownership for one dollar he would have probably have given him just half ownership but in order to make the transaction legal right some money had to be exchanged that's pretty cool break down a revenue real quick for us you mentioned 182 to 200 how much is that food and the rest is alcohol and anything else yeah currently we're 60 food and 40 alcohol is that a good spot for you to be in or do you want to kind of shift that a little bit and which direction well that's actually a good place to be because insurance companies don't like to ensure restaurant bars that are too heavy alcohol i see i didn't know that all right rates go up i'm guessing or they just don't want to touch it well rates go up and they get concerned because restaurant bars that are primarily alcohol there's a greater risk of someone leaving and enabling oh yeah getting into an accident getting sued for getting sued yeah and then that makes sense so 60 40 is what your suggestion would be kind of stay within that range all right well at least that works for us right excuse me so you do these things for clients called birthday club program uh that's a loyalty program that you have walk us through it and wise how effective is it in your restaurant we get participation whether or not we have a birthday club or not it's important to recognize people on their special occasions you know do they do something special for them the birthday club does help us build a mailing list and like i said it gives us the opportunity to invite people in and have a meal on us that's awesome so you offer the birthday program people opt-in put their email address and then their date of birth and then you email them matamatic says hey it's your birthday come on in we have a free meal for you well it's either email or us postal i'd love to hear from our audience how you guys if you own a restaurant how do you recognize your guests in a special way we'd love to get your ideas so please comment below and don't forget to check out the up flip blog for more information on how to run a successful business what do you look for in an application or in a person most importantly when they walk in and sit down for an interview with you anything you've learned over 50 years that kind of just stands out or what can you share on that the aspect that i am most uh familiar with as far as hiring is hiring the front of the house staff when it comes to hiring see a bartender or server if they smile if they smile a lot during the interview that goes a long way a smile is nonverbal communication saying to the other person you know i like you and i'm glad you're here that's the message you want to convey to your guests is that you're glad that they're here and we're going to show you a good time what kind of systems and tools james do you use to manage employees and maybe inventory since we're standing here well it's pretty much old school that we do a liquor inventory once a week and then of course we do uh monthly inventory which is a little bit more thorough we do have a a software program uh it's kind of dated and it's called food tracks food trucks okay and it still exists so you're using it well yeah yeah it's a a very old system and there's there's newer software programs that are probably more efficient but it took a long time for my brother david to upload it and get all that information in so he is really attached to it blitz time with james james what would you tell your previous boss if you had the chance to thanks for the opportunity awesome if something happens to you meaning you can't come to the restaurant anymore and operate and do what you're doing what will happen to your business actually nothing it'll keep going it'll keep going awesome what's the biggest misconception people have about your position here they think i work all the time that's not true nope have you come up with a slogan for 2020 i wish it hadn't happened there you go that's a good slowing what do you want to highlight here like the ceiling is incredible like how do you maintain all this and really what's unique about where we are right now what do you want to highlight this space is one of the most dynamic restaurant spaces in the country of course the skylight is spectacular the mahogany paneling is vintage why don't we walk around and kind of show a little bit of the features in here and the question to follow is you have movies filmed in this restaurant right right so tell our audience who have other restaurant businesses for example what are the pros and cons and how did that happen for you how did movies end up filming actual hollywood first off hubers is very photogenic looks great on camera but some of our clientele are involved in the movie industry and when a movie company comes to town they think of hubers first yeah because like i say we're so photogenic and the space the design is so dynamic does that help your business in any way well it does the exposure on the other hand uh we're in the food and beverage business we're not in the movie business and i always hate to have to say tell yes we're close for today we're doing a movie oh wow is that reason why you stopped doing movies because you just felt bad telling no to your customers well yeah if someone wants to shoot a scene here at humors it has to be during the time that we're closed i see so tell us where we're standing because there's two different sections to huber's cafe that's the original part as we as we all know but when did this come into play and how did that happen yeah this space which we call the dining room was built in 1997 and that's when the space became available we decided that it would be beneficial to acquire this additional space because at the time you know we would have a line of people waiting to get into the bar oh wow especially on weekends i bet and some people would tell us well they would drive by third avenue and if they see a line they would just keep driving so you just wanted to expand for more room so we want to get all those people in line inside hubris missing their business they're driving by right right it's like no stop spend some money enjoy the good food james let's quickly just touch on the kind of tools you use to manage the restaurant's finances what are you using what is it costing you per month to manage that well we are a little bit behind the times when it comes to accounting tools and technology we have a a person well lisa and she goes through our checkbook and she's the one who prepares prepare information for our public accountant who does our financial statements now we are still shopping for accounting software you are all right and we we're considering quickbooks there's also uh accounting software called peachtree but yeah we're interested in something that is going to make things a little bit easier so you're kind of keeping it old school for now i would say old school or not as up to date as you mentioned okay well guys if you want to comment below and help james out in terms of what's really working for you we'd greatly appreciate it how many total employees do you have right now with hubers we have about 40. wow that's a pretty large team yeah and what employee uh stayed with you for the longest how many years well john pierce has been with us for 40 years wow he's one of our bartenders he's on medical leave right now and he wants to come back once uh he heals from his surgery i'm not sure if he's going to be able to steal 10 bar got it being a bartender you're on your feet a lot yeah well 40 years has been enough i think he's maybe going to close the chapter but it's been good 40 years and then i have to mention yoko who is no longer working for hubers but she was here for over 40 years she was a perfect fit for us she was a mom with two sons and when her sons got to be school age she didn't want to be sitting home by herself someone suggested she applied for work at hubers she came in my mom hired her and she stayed for 40 years even after her sons got out of school that's incredible that's the kind of loyalty you want with your employees and your team at your restaurant let's talk about if at all do you do any kind of advertising or print advertising to attract new customers or are you just known so much that people know and they went to you we do a little bit of social media type advertising but i'm kind of old school that the best advertising is a satisfied customer and things like up flip god sent you here so to help us promote our business that's right and so uh that's how god has blessed us and kept our business going for over a hundred years how often do you change the menu in terms of what you offer like and what does that process look like for you and your team like what can you highlight for us on that yeah we we don't change the menu that often especially our lowest turkey if we can't change our house specialty but then the other entrees on the menu they're just basically our core menu and we have a following and these are the things that sell for us the thing about choosing the formulating the menu the main thing is either have something that nobody else has very unique or prepare it better than anybody else in the city that's it two things two things yeah okay we're now here at the bar officially right this is your bar tell us about that unique item there and it's history just curious well that brass cash register uh goes back to august 4th 1910 and it was actually purchased by frank huber it was not an antique that we picked up somewhere that makes sense it was purchased by frank hubert do you guys still use it uh no we gone modern and so we have yeah modern's boring currently it's a little uh the keys are jammed up but i can fix it i want to pan our camera to uh james's brother who's the other partner oh uh that's that's the other brother partner for the restaurant so good to see you david let's touch real quickly on the kahlua story right when did it come into the story of the restaurant uh when did the sales increase when did you officially by definition became the biggest user of it we've always had kahlua in our inventory but we started using large amounts of kahlua probably starting in the late 70s early 80s by the time we hit the 90s yeah we were going through an incredible amount of kulua and is mainly because of the spanish coffee oh yeah that's it no other reason all right what's special about the drink because i don't i don't drink that so i'm just curious i'm not quite sure what's spanish about it but it's one of those names huh yeah exactly what makes the drink special especially here at hubers is it's done tableside and because our bartenders make so many through repetition their expertise level has reached amazing levels i really marvel at how good they they've gotten i used to make them all you did yeah so you have some expertise there yeah but uh my our bartenders have far surpassed uh my humble skill level i want to ask our viewers as you've seen how it's done comment below on what you think we'd love to see what you guys think and please share that with us james if you could share one thing and that is the reason for your success well it has nothing to do with my entrepreneurial skills or but it was by the grace of god and i am the christian man and god has blessed me all my life and i remember when i first got into the business i prayed and i said god help me to make a success of the family business and i will give you the credit and here we give you the glory this is it this is payback time that's amazing by the way it's very inspiring because i think without faith uh we'd all perish in some extent yeah i love all these pictures i'm just wondering is there anything you want to show us oh this is uh my dad oh that's your andrew wow we have a picture of frank huber back that way yes i saw that and then there's a picture of my great uncle a couple of them there's one over here let's take a look just curious i'm sure you guys all enjoy history and this restaurant certainly has the most that's pretty cool where's that turkey right some of these spittoons we don't put them out for people to spit in them one of them is behind the bar barton is used as a tip jar and this is where you got your free turkey sandwich back in the saloon days if you came in and ordered an alcoholic beverage you got a free turkey sandwich i know we'd love to try it after after we're done a little ramek and a coleslaw how has the restaurant industry changed over the last 30 years since you first started it's been harder to get help previously we always have people popping in uh applying for work or if we ran an ad in on poach we'd always get some response but nowadays it's so hard to get people to just come in for an interview well i'm not sure what people are doing these days for staying at home james apparently yeah well it has been my honor to get to know you and you have an incredible place here definitely an icon so thank you so much james my pleasure god bless you and uh we wish you up thank you i hope you guys enjoyed this episode with james one of the owners for huber's cafe here what an icon more than 100 years in business hope you guys took away and learned some things we appreciate you watching take a second to like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our videos and again thank you so much guys take care

2022-09-06 20:28

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