YouSaid · the spoken record

Cameron Mitchell

lines on the record: 74
first: 2019-01-25
most recent: 2019-01-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh, sure. I think the biggest thing I've learned really is the power of branding and how to develop restaurant brands and how important that is and that the brand, all the brand touch points and the brand DNA is congruent with everything across that brand. So that took us a long time to learn and it takes years to really refine a brand and really to create a successful brand. It doesn't happen overnight.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First and foremost, anybody started a business, I would say, get some experience. You know, we have a lot of these young 18, 19, 20 year olds, 21, 22 that want to just graduate from college, start their business, and make a bazillion dollars. And I think people need to get experience first, first and foremost, and work for some successful companies and understand what it takes to be successful. Secondly, they better think about their values and their culture and what they stand for and get those identified right away. And thirdly, you have to be willing to work your tail off and be knocked down and get right back up. And entrepreneuring has been one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life, if not the toughest thing.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like to think I've never totally failed. I've been knocked down many, many, many times. And the biggest, but I would think failure in my experience was we've had restaurants fail, et cetera. I've made some mistakes there. But really, after 2008, we just sold two-thirds of our business for $92 million. In my hubris, in my ego, and I ran out and signed a bunch more leases, I was going to... Another 20 plus million dollars in development. I was going to rebuild the EBITDA that we sold it took 10 years to build. I was going to rebuild it in three years. And then the great crash happened in 08. I almost ran a company off a cliff in 2009. It took some really lousy entrepreneuring to get us into that mess. It took some really hard work and great entrepreneuring to get us out of that mess.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a customer comes second was from Hal Rosenbooth that was inspirational in helping me write the company culture and values. I think yes is the answer. What's the question? I think we'll be hopefully people feeling a lot of value. Yeah.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My all-time great favorite book is Good to Great, Jim Collins. I'm a Jim Collins disciple. I think he was instrumental in that book was instrumental in helping turn our company around and ultimately resulted in the sale of the fish market. It's been instrumental in the building of the Ocean Prime brand itself. So I love all the manageable books. Pat Lencion, I've read every single Spencer who moved my cheese, one-minute manager, all those leadership books I've read too. I find those very valuable.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We didn't have really a lot of early mentors and who I talked with. I believe people could have mentors that they don't even necessarily know. Rich Melman out of Chicago listener to restaurants was certainly one of mine, Norm Brinker from Chile's his book, and he's been inspirational to me, Dave Thomas from Wendy's His Story. There's lots of those Herb Keller, CEO of Southwest Airlines. I think their story and how he ran a business is incredible. Those are some of the people I looked up to as I was coming up the ladder.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, two things. One, and I'm working on this currently, is to move to truly a chairman's role within the company, which is Chief Strategy Officer, if you will. And then really Chief Steward of the company and legacy and stewardship of the organization and really about part and parcel why we were at the book just as the answer was the question is to share that knowledge and to tell that story we were the lead donor I'm opening and sharing the fundraising efforts to build new 80,000 square foot hospitality management school in Columbus at Columbus State College We are opening the Bud Dairy Food Hall which is takes 10 restaurateurs, young budding restaurateurs will be in this space and our goal is to help and we run the bars and we run the food hall and we curated these restaurants and our goal is to help take these restaurateurs to bricks and mortar restaurants along the way. Just all about the young leaders in our company, working with them and helping build their careers, et cetera.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a tough question because I am an open book and it talks about that and yes is the answer. What's the question? I would say if what people really don't know about me is I'm still an entrepreneur, I'm still chicken little, I'm still scared every day. And even with the national success we've had, I still wake up every morning and check our numbers and see how we're doing. And I'm nervous all the time.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. In fact, I was just there last night. Know it's just depends. Now, Ocean Prime, you know, we wanted to build a high-end steak and seafood restaurant, and we didn't want to necessarily build a steakhouse. And so that's how it was original name was Mitchell's Ocean Club. And when we sold to Ruth Chris, I sold the name Mitchell specifically. So we sold Cameron Mitchell restaurants, but it was Mitchell's fish market. And I couldn't call Mitchell's Ocean Club. That's when we rebranded and came up with Ocean Prime, and we felt it fit the concept perfectly.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, somewhere between fine dining and upscale casual. It's just a little bit up there. And we did it. We have another restaurant site in our short north of Columbus that this location became available. And this is back when the Gastropub craze was going on across the country. And so we said, you know, I called the landlord up. He said, What are you going to put here? I said, I don't know, but I'd like the site.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Upscale casual steakhouse kind of a A little bit of a Ralph Loran feel. It's not fine dining. It's not all white tablecloth, but it's approachable. Somewhere between.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out the window. Exactly. So I think every restaurant we've done kind of has a story to it We have a restaurant called the Barn at Rocky Four Creek, and it was an old barbecue restaurant. And our guy said, they called us and said, hey, we'd gone out of business. Would we like to put a restaurant there? And I said, no, we don't want this barbecue replace this bar. No, we don't want to do it. And I remembered, as I was saying that, one of the top grocery restaurants in the country is called the Angus Barn in North Carolina. And it's the top restaurant in North Carolina. And I said, Boy, this barn is perfect for that concept. It could be perfect.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How does that happen? Well, I'm not sure there's really a lot of new ideas out there. It's just your version, your artistic impression of someone else's new idea”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what you get is people say, well, let's just go to the buckets and shorten. Just the bucket. Yeah, we're going to the bucket.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's casual dining. That name kind of came out as a fluke. It took off and it has legs. But yeah, when we go into new markets, people are like, what is that? And we have to explain a little bit more. And restaurant naming itself is very challenging because that name you want to reflect on what that brand is. Just like Ocean Prime. Exactly.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Ocean Prime is the brand we're building for the time being. We may build more rusty buckets. And like I said, we have two concepts within our independent group that we're looking to maybe take outside”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indianapolis. Industrial Midwest. Yeah, sure. We started building outside of Columbus in the Midwest. So we're in Chicago. We're in Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, natural movement from there is Florida. You know, a lot of those Midwestern...”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can imagine. And there's a lot of independence. There's a huge independent dining scene in the world too. That's probably might not be top of our list in terms of national development.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Portland, Seattle Well, they're tougher markets to do business in because of the regulatory requirements and so forth. And we had a deal in actually Seattle and we passed on that deal because of that. Really? However, we're working on a project currently in San Diego and we're currently looking up in Northern California”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Host and hostesses. Yeah, and I understand that. And again, the jury is still out on whether that's really working or taking hold in his company. He's doing it and he's making that decision and trying to change the way we do business. And there's a lot of pushback. You know, I'm trying to reserve judgment on that. I'm trying to keep an open mind. But I don't really like that personally. I like the tip. I like gratuity. I like great servers make more money than not so great servers. Little incentive never hurts, right? Now, we, on the other hand, tip of the hat to Danny, I mean, we're trying to take care of our back-of-the-house associates more and still able to do that and giving them raises and paying them more along the way. But, you know, not everybody's cut out to being in the front of the house. Not everybody's cut out to be in the back of the house. And not everybody makes the same amount of money across America. So it is what it is to a certain extent. And I do.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I definitely differ on that than our friend Danny Meyer, who's leading the charge on the no-tipping program. And I understand what he's trying to do. He's trying to bridge that gap and the disparity between front of the house associates and back-of-the-house associates.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when they see lobster, mashed potatoes or grotin at 2,100 calories, they're ordering something else, but they're still ordering. So it hasn't really, and I... Where you believe on that, I believe in freedom of choice, and people can do what they want, but”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was as well. And, you know, that's the jury's still out on really how that's affecting restaurants. I was talking to a CEO of another restaurant company that has done that, and it's just shifted to way people order. It hasn't really affected their business volume. So what does it do?”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And thanks for the silly rule. There's the national rule too that over 20 units you have to label all your menu items for the calorie counts and all that.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is respectable. Huge menu. It's a little bit, it's a different approach than Houston's. But along those lines, and those are the... Then there's the fine dining brands like Ocean Prime that isn't a major markets across the country.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, sure, the national standard bearer, gold standard is Houston's. Oh, sure. Very good. Polished casual segment. Those are who really the rest of us aspire to be cheesecake factories in it.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's what we call that as limited service or as counter service, et cetera. We're in a full service space. In the full service space is the casual brands like a Rusty Bucket. You put Applebee's and chilies in there if you want, but there's others. Then there's upscale casual. And then there's the fine dining. So we play in all three of those segments.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. How many Shakespeare is obviously a good example, five guys, burgers, another good example. At one point, I had our vice president of operations leave us because he wanted to do a burger joint and start the burger craze, and I didn't want to get involved with it. I mean, that's a very competitive space.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, you've had a lot of failures along the way with that too, but you have everybody and her brother throwing money at it trying to get into it. And I've just tried not to do that. Didn't want to do that. What about all the birds?”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, it's Chipotle came out. You know, everybody wanted to do the Chipotle delivery model and everybody wanted the success of Chipotle.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's the thing, it's saturated. And I never wanted to get into that fast casual business because of that. Where do you draw?”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While we're still working on that, you know, casual dining itself is probably one of the more challenged parts of the restaurant business. Fine dining where Ocean Prime brand lies is doing very well. We all know fast casual is doing very well. It's become so competitive.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is that? It's a corner 4,500 square foot 140 seat corner neighborhood tavern concept. We put it in a fluent suburbs. It's a great place. We really say it kind of... Is the default vote. You've got kids, you want to go out to dinner, you don't, you know, where will the kids be happy? Where would mom and dad be happy? And that's where we're really basically bedroom, pastas, pizzas, that sort of thing. But good food from scratch. Great environment. The bar is right in the middle of it. You can have people drinking at the bar and still walking with your kids and feel very comfortable and it's that kind of place. So it's really known as affluent suburbs. We're in six states right now around the country.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's kind of a multi prong question. I think not every restaurant operator wants to build multiple restaurants. Not every restaurant operator wants to live on an airplane and travel all the time like we do. So I personally want to build a national brand. I wanted to do that. So we kind of looked for it and we worked it. And building a national restaurant brand takes a lot of time and effort years and years of time and refinement of that brand. So it's not as simple as just replicating it. You're right. There's certain regionalities to the country. Barbecue doesn't necessarily travel all over the country. It's different, especially different types of barbecue. Just a lot goes into it. And I think just having an individual successful one restaurant doesn't always mean it's translatable to build across the country or across the town.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Oh, I say people go out to be stimulated, not to sedated. So in a restaurateur's nightmare is an empty, quiet dining room. So we don't want those. So think about where we're coming from. And we want loud. We want that energy. Energy breeds energy. The staff is happier. The guests are happier. Everybody's excited. But she had to be able to talk at the same time. You have to be able to converse and enjoy yourself.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It certainly is noise and sound is certainly an issue. We've had to add soundproofing to restaurants along the way. But first of all”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, correct. So that's why I say, hence, I think they're both equally important. Then comes the ambience, which is a lot of that is the unobtrusive things that you may not even necessarily realize, whether you like or don't like. Yeah, right. You might sit in a restaurant. Saddies don't really like this place. You may not know why exactly, but maybe the lighting's not right or the music's not right. All those intangibles to a certain extent. Marketing, you know, you can't really have a successful restaurant unless you also know how to market yourself because if you don't have a great location, people need to find you. So you have to spend a lot of time and energy tooting your horn to a certain extent and marketing yourself. So it's really, those are the four legs of the stool in my book.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, certainly service. And you could debate whether food or service is more important. There's different studies on both. I think they're about equal. Really? I'm surprised.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're right. Everything has to be congruent all the way across the brand. And even restaurant branding itself has taken me years to really understand and. maybe get a little good at.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Heard from other restaurateurs Well, obviously by the book, yes, is the answer what's the question is all about your values and your beliefs and your philosophies, I think, are very important. A lot of people start out, they don't even have any values written down or any mission or anything, don't even understand that. So that's first and foremost in my book. Understanding brand brand development, restaurant brand development. I'm going to have a barbecue restaurant that's super healthy also. Which is.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Columbus Both. I mean, it's a, when we talk about return on investment, it's about volume and capital invested. So, yes, there's less capital invested, but the lower the volume. So you might have the same return on investment as we have out. Somewhere else”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You already took my first challenge out of the picture. That's plentiful capital. That's never been the case. It's a lot of capital. And”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, if you take out the people that maybe really shouldn't be in the restaurant business out of that equation and the success rate's a little bit higher, but because of that. It creates a lot of failure rate.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For your first one, maybe you can get away with that. You know, we spent millions of dollars today to open our restaurants. Certainly, my first one was $400,000, to put it that way. But I always say people don't walk around a grocery store pushing a grocery cart saying, I want to be a grocery. But they do go to restaurants and say, I want to be a restaurant position.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Simply put, a lot of people want to be in the restaurant business, and it's got a very relatively low barrier to entry as far as cash goes.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that particular restaurant I say may enough to feed a cat for seven years. But anyways, and that was a mistake, and we made mistakes. We make lots of mistakes. And I look at it as a batting average. I look at every five restaurants I open. One is not going to do very well or it might even close. The other three are what I call singles, doubles, or triples. And the other one, the fifth one is a home run out of the park. And so you average them all together, I get five good ones. We know we're going to get mistakes, but we've gotten better at our craft along the way. And, you know, I go back to when the high failure rate in the restaurant business to me is a little bit of a misnom”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, in the evening, early evening. And I said. Is she a prostitute? He goes, Oh, yeah, there's a bunch of them down there by there's some hotels dinner.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it was seven o'clock at night. You know, the construction team's gone. It's a beautiful, clear night, and I'm talking to this police officer. I look across a couple blocks down the way I see a lady dressed provocatively walking down the street. And I said to him,”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. It usually takes six months to a year for an outside hire to really adapt and learn to our culture. So today we won't open a restaurant without a homegrown management team in that restaurant. And it's very important to inculcate that culture into that new property, no matter where it is.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We opened our restaurants without a town people and so forth and we didn't really know how to transfer that culture and those values. We brought people in. We thought if we hired an outside manager and then come in for eight to 12 weeks and train and learn it and it's just not that way.”
2019-01-25 · Masters in Business · Cameron Mitchell Discusses the Restaurant Business (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source