Wisconsin Public Television University Place Entrepreneurship in Society  Philip Hurley Being A Restaurateur On Your Own Terms  February 15, 2012 UP689   cc >> Jeanan Yasiri: This is Entrepreneurship in Society. It's a course that's offered through the University of Wisconsin School of Human Ecology. I'm Jeanan Yasiri. As we begin today, I would like to extend thanks to our partners in providing and supporting this course: the UW Office of Corporate Relations, the UW College of Engineering for their technical support, and financial support that's provided through the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. They are committed to advanced academic education in entrepreneurship. I'd also like to thank our media partners, Wisconsin Public Television and their University Place crew for taping today's lecture. I'm really please to introduce our special guest today, Phillip Hurley. He is co-owner of Sardine and Marigold restaurants here in Madison. We're going to hear all about those properties. Just as some background, Phillip grew up in Chicago and earned a degree in management and finance at Miami University, but it was traveling Europe and Northern Africa that really initiated his love of culture and what eventually, as you'll find, brought him to us today here. 

He tells me that he's spend countless hours in cafes while living abroad and used that time to reflect on his experiences during his youth cooking with his mother, an Italian woman who loved Italian food, and that actually helped in starting his 23-year career in the culinary industry. Phillip's career includes time working in the kitchen as well as out front in a number of vibrant restaurants in San Francisco, and then he later returned to Chicago and the kitchen again in some upscale food retail and catering experiences where he would eventually meet his business partner who he remains with today. A few years after they got together in the late '90s, they decided to move their love of food along with their families to Madison, and he has an interesting story to tell about that. And that's when they started Marigold Kitchen. About six years ago, Phillip and John Gadau, his business partner, opened Sardine restaurant as well, and they will open their third restaurant here in town later this year. Now, I've asked Phillip to come and talk with us today as we're kind of grounding ourselves in entrepreneurial journeys and to share with us how you can create a business plan that's successful but also do it on your own terms. And we're going to start by actually, Phillip and I are going to start by having a conversation about his background, and then, of course, as always, I'll open it up for questions from our students. So please join me in welcoming Phillip Hurley. [APPLAUSE] Phillip, you and I have had a chance to get to know each other and talk about your background, and very often, especially with students, they're very interested in what you studied and how you got started, and I think you kind of have an interesting story to tell about whether or not that provided insights on what your career eventually became. >> Philip Hurley: As you've referred to earlier, I spent a lot of time cooking when I was a youngster with my mom making eggs and doing whatever I could, making dinner when I could for the family. 

I remember gathering with, I always thought it was so normal to have both sets of grandparents together for every holiday. I didn't realize until later that, after I'm married, realized that never really happened for us. But there we did and we had these big tables and everyone celebrated together. So that sort of spawned this interest. But as I was going to school, I played music, I did a lot of things creatively through high school and whatnot, and my mother said you should go into something with the arts. And my dad sort of trumped her and said I should go into finance, and so I remember going for my orientation in the school and was completely unprepared. I feel like you wouldn't be this way today, but that was then where they said, okay, I drove myself and a buddy. We drove to Miami University, which is in Ohio, and at one point they said, okay, you have to declare your major, and I remember thinking I wasn't prepared to do that which seems ridiculous but that's what it was. And so I put finance down just because that was the way you get a good job. And so that was my dad's sort of influence, and so as I was going through school it was a good education but I always felt a little bit out of place. 

I wasn't super passionate about it, and yet, at the same time, there were great courses within there. Most of what we had talked about before, most of the people who worked in the community that were also professors at universities that had real life experience that brought to the table what it is to work out there. So it was translated directly, and they gave real life experiences. So it was good to have the business degree to have understood, having taken finance and accounting and all of that, I guess I look back at that and know that it has helped me to some degree, but it wasn't until after college I had a sense that at one point, I think it was during my senior year, everyone was putting their ties and jackets, on and they were going to these job fairs, and I remember thinking, this is ridiculous. I couldn't believe I would have to do that. I didn't feel connected to that. And so I never did. And I thought, I think I might want to do something in cooking, and I think I might like to open my own place some day or be an owner. And so we had a lot of entrepreneurs in my family. My dad and my grandfathers both had all of their own businesses so I never really thought corporate direction after college was a direction I was going to go. 

>> You decided to travel, though, right after school, and that kind of piqued some of your interest in diversity and culture, as you said. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it ties back to where you are today? >> In going to travel, I was sort of set out to think that I would really find what I wanted to do. I'd also have a lot of fun traveling and experiencing this, but what I did notice over and over was that I was kind of drawn into the cities and the cafes. I didn't have any money to be traveling. I stretched it as long as I could and realized that it was where everyone came together. These little cafes and coffee shops or little restaurants or whatnot, street food, I would go and eat street fare wherever I could, and you would find that those would be sort of in city centers where people were hanging out outside gathering. It sort of just reinforced that I thought this was where I want to be, and conversation was happening and it was just a very vibrant atmosphere and an exciting atmosphere to be in. I was young and yet I felt like I was part of something bigger at that time. We also on those travels, I have cousins that are from Italy and so I was able to go and travel and be there in their homes, and so everyone would invite me in, and I didn't speak Italian very well at all, and they didn't speak any English, most of them, so we'd have these drawn out, two-hour luncheons that were weren't communicating but they would just bring plate after plate, and sometimes they wouldn't be eating, they'd just watch me eat. And so I just realized that it was just something that I thought was special, and I thought no matter where I was, it was always the food that you saw there was a connection, the culture was sort of driven from that at the table and building sort of a community with that. 

>> So eventually you came back to the US after having traveled abroad and kind of experienced that part of life, and did you just know at that point that you were interested in establishing your own enterprise, getting involved in the food industry? How did that transpire? >> I came back and I had a bit of debt from my travels and from school loans, and so I needed a job and so I worked on in sales for industrial sales and sold forklifts and forklift parts and services to go with that. >> You did go corporate for a while? >> I did, I did but knowing. I remember went for my interview, he said if someone stays for one year, they'll be in the forklift industry, and I remember I was listening to that going this is crazy, but I need to pay my debt. He said, you stay two years, you'll be a Clark Lift guy the rest of your life. And knowing that was full well, I had a plan just to pay off my debt and kind of move on. But it was a great experience. I worked at night. I went and worked in some kitchens in Chicago. And so I would be done, whenever I finished my day, and rushed down, change clothes and head down and work in the kitchen or work in the front of the house doing some various jobs. >> And it sounds like you did that more out of fun than as a career path. 

Did it become more of a passion for you? >> At that point I was realizing that I wanted to get experience because I knew that we were planning, my fiance at the time, we were either planning on moving to Italy or somewhere on the coast in the United States. And Italy didn't pan out, but we ended up moving to San Francisco, so I was working in evenings to gain some experience so that I could go out to San Francisco and feel like I had something to put on my resume so I could try to get into a kitchen and start working out there. >> When one looks at your bio, it's interesting how you go back and forth from, at various points in your career you were in the kitchen and various points you were out front. Talk a little bit about that and then some of your experiences in San Francisco I know that you were in some very vibrant places that taught you a lot. >> I think I understood the fact that, if you don't know cooking then you don't have anything in this business. If you don't fully understand cooking, I think that's the ground work to running a business in food. It's just what you need to know. It's the nuts and bolts. But I also needed to know and I was also very interested in the business side of it. I was very interested in the management side. 

In this business, and me being a small restaurateur, you wear all the hats, from marketing and you're running the human resource department, you're doing your own graphic design at times, you run your own business plans. I knew that there was going to be a lot more than just cooking so be successful in this. So I would work, my first job was out there. I thought it was fantastic, and I remember showing up in a tie and looking sharp, and the kitchen guy looked at me and after he hired me I thought, boy, I didn't have much experience and he said, well, you got a tie on and you're from the Midwest, we had to hire you. We knew that you were going to be, no one comes to an interview in the kitchen like that, and he thought that I was going to take it seriously. And we're still friends now, and he's a mentor of mine to this day. But he hired me and I remember thinking I'm coming and I'm working with about four different countries represented around this big table. And it was a big food retailer in Berkeley, and I worked during the daytime. We cooked, I got there at 6:30 in the morning and cooked until 4:00, and then would leave and then work in the front of the house on more of the management side of a pretty acclaimed restaurant in San Francisco, so I stumbled into that. That worked out really well. 

>> Lots of lessons, obviously, learned in those San Francisco places. Zuni's was a place I think you mentioned and what as special about that and what did you learn there? >> Zuni, it was sort of one of the landmark places and it still is today in San Francisco, just even physically where it's located. The chef trained under the Troisgros brothers. Never went to culinary school but she did an exchange program when she was in college, and she went to Stanford. She was very bright and brought this angle of how sort of intelligent it is to do food and to run a business like it was. And this was the ultimate hang out in San Francisco. You would have everyone show up. The mayor would be there, just anyone, any prominent, there would be all kinds of really successful business folks coming in. Other chefs would there. So I could sense that it was just not just a good restaurant, but it was the ultimate sort of gathering spot for San Francisco at the time. 

And as good as they were, they were a little bit awkward, the owners. And I felt comfortable. So I remember I came home and talked to my wife and I said I have the keys to the restaurant. I was working for two weeks but understanding that it meant a lot to be sort of a Midwesterner who worked hard, who worked two jobs that they were trustworthy, and they saw me as that. So I was able to get in with the owners on a level, cook during the day and at night I worked as a maitre d', then head maitre d'. And so you're sort of the face of the restaurant and in charge of a lot. And you're also behind the scenes chatting with the owners, so you got really delved into the guts of the place. And so I learned quite a bit from them. >> Were you consciously trying to teach yourself about developing your own enterprise or having fun working in the food industry? >> I think it's a little bit of both. My wife used to cringe because whenever we'd go to a restaurant or any place I thought was worth while, I would always try to hunt down the owner. 

Always. And I'd always be like, who's the owner? Are they in here? And I invariably would be embarrassed because I'd ask a manager and they'd be like, no, I'm not the owner. I'd be like, are you the owner? But I wanted to understand what they did, just pick up something, and as much as it's fun being in the business, it was a ton of work, hard work. So as fun as that can be, it's late hours, it was a crazy existence. Looking back on it, I wouldn't necessarily wish to repeat it necessarily, but having had the experience where I am now, it was a lot of fun. But I think it was a little bit of both. I enjoyed doing it. It was fun learning constantly. It's a business that you continue to learn. You only know so much. 

I know this much as far as cooking, and I've been cooking for a long time. But it was also picking up with the idea that at some point, I said I wanted to be 30 when I opened my first restaurant. I wanted to be 30. I don't know why I had that, but that was my goal. I didn't make it, by the way. I really wanted to just find out and gather as much information. I wanted to understand how to make the best cappuccino. I wanted to understand how to salt our own meat and cure own cod in the back kitchen. I did all of that, and I was always asking questions, being inquisitive. >> You moved back from the west coast to the Midwest. 

Tell us about that. >> I think the biggest reason we moved back was my wife was pregnant with our first child, and we decided we wanted to come back to be where family was. She's from Ohio. I'm from Illinois, and so we wanted to come back. We thought, actually, when we were living in San Francisco we came back to Madison because we thought this would be an interesting place, potentially, to come to. Somewhere different to Chicago. We went back to Chicago for about five years, and I didn't want to work nights because I wanted to be available for my son and to be present. And so I didn't and I took kind of a challenging job on the North Shore in Chicago. And we stayed there for five years before we ended up coming here. But that was another great experience, different experience, more administrative, more pressure on hitting numbers and doing that sort of thing. 

But still creating the food and running a kitchen, a fairly good sized kitchen there. >> And, as you mentioned, really involved in the food aspect as well as administrative. And it was in Chicago where you met your business partner, John Gadau. >> Yeah. My wife and I bought an old turn of the century brownstone, and we were looking for renters and I was sitting on the front porch and he walked up and he said he always admired this building and he ended up renting from me. He lived on the second floor. I lived on the third floor. And he was a chef and so was I, but we didn't talk about food or what we did for a few months. And then at one point, which I think was an indication of why we potentially get along, because people in this business love to talk about themselves, especially the chefs think big of themselves and they have kind of big egos. They can, I'm not saying they all do, they can. 

And the fact that we didn't talk about it forever or care to share our experiences of San Francisco. He was in LA at the same time that I was in San Francisco, and our experience paralleled each other. And we came back to Chicago, and then he rented from me. And it was there we were having a couple of beers one night, and he was hanging out with us then we started sharing our experiences. And it was uncanny how we viewed food, how we viewed business, what our thoughts were about going into this business, our trepidation of even doing it on our own, and all of that. And we hit it off as friends first, for sure, and it wasn't for a couple years later that we decided to make the move up here. >> Having a friend who could become a business partner, did it boost your confidence level in your thinking that you could establish your own enterprise eventually? >> Yeah, I think having, I don't know if I'd want to be in this business without a partner, and I also probably underestimated at the time what a good partner is to a business, to starting your own business. It's absolutely a huge support system. We brought to the table different set of talents. Maybe not knowing exactly what they were then but maybe more exposed now. 

But, yeah, you can lean on someone that you can run ideas by, get nervous about things. When you're putting a business together, there's a lot of doubts, there's a lot of fears that can creep in there, but if you have someone, as I do with my business partner, it made it exciting, more exciting. It was a great connection to have met him. >> So the two of you met in Chicago. You each had your families there. You mentioned that you and your wife had visited Madison as you were contemplating where to come back to the Midwest, but you eventually, both families relocated to Madison, but you never lived here before. Why Madison? >> Just instincts. >> You didn't have a connection here. >> No, I know. And we didn't do much research. 

People, I think you even asked me before, did you do a little market survey? We did nothing. We just came up here and had a sense of what was here, what we thought we could bring. We thought we could bring something fresh and different. But more importantly, Wisconsin, it's just the place that you want to go have fun. We lived in Illinois, it's like everyone came up to Wisconsin to go to a lake or to enjoy or to recreate outside. And so it felt good, and being a university town and being the capital, we feel it offered, there was just a phenomenon happening here that doesn't happen everywhere in the Midwest. The size of the community and yet we had a sense that it embrace small business. And it felt right. And so we decided to move. >> The two restaurants that you and John have right now, first Marigold's Kitchen down near the Capitol Square, and then eventually six years later, you opened up Sardine. 

Let's start by talking about, because they're different restaurants, I'd like you to talk about each of them distinctly. Start with Marigold's and, again, how getting it established and why that location and what worked, maybe what didn't, as you got things started. >> We looked at one location for both restaurants. We knew they were right. John had just gotten married and hadn't moved up yet and I was sort of scouting out locations, and I saw this one. The road had been closed so I didn't see that there was this property open. And so I had gone up there a number of times and all the sudden this fence was down and I saw it, and I called on it and met with the developer. And as I met with him, we were chatting and he said, he goes, well, where do you live? And I said I live on the near west side. And he said so do I. And he said what area? I said this area, the Monroe Street area. 

Oh, so do I. And then he said what street? I said Pickford. He goes I live on Pickford Street. I hadn't even met him yet. I thought this is it. This is the right felt. I just felt we had a great conversation. He showed me the space and it felt right, the right size. And it's worked for us. And so we just saw that, we looked at others but this is the one we really thought was right. 

And it has worked out. Marigold's is busy and it's been pretty busy since the day we opened. It's a perfect size in the sense that it feels busy, even when sometimes when it's not. So when people come in they have the perception that you're always busy. And that's good. But it's not necessarily always true. But that's the key in getting a good location that doesn't have to fit the concept, and the concept of breakfast and lunch is what it is. And we do quite a bit of catering. It needed to feel busy. We designed it so it felt bright and it felt welcoming and fresh and a combination of new and old. 

The older tables and older kind of antique things in a newer designed environment. >> Now, do I recall that the concept of a breakfast and lunch place also fit best into your personal life as well? >> Absolutely. >> I think that's an important piece to bring up. >> It certainly started, we thought we'd run a breakfast/lunch place and that would be it. And we'd cater. We wouldn't do nights anymore. We'd have our families and we'd go out on the lakes and do all that kind of stuff and recreate here in Wisconsin. We did. We worked but with that is it's a ton of hours. When you start your own business, you work an enormous amount of time and energy you put into it. 

But it's still different than doing a place in Chicago or LA or New York. We're three miles from where I live. We shut down at 3:00 even though we do tons of catering and work late into the evening sometimes. It did work. We didn't want to, it was a great project for two new entrepreneurs that didn't know everything about business, and it was small enough that we could kind of digest what we wanted to do. And so physically and financially it was a smaller project to start out which was easier to manage for us, so it was a smart choice to do that first. >> Before I open it up to the students, tell us a little bit about Sardine. It's a very different concept and a very different feel. And it opened how many years after Marigold's? >> Five. >> Five years. 

>> Sardine is located on Lake Monona, and it's a much bigger place than Marigold. It's an evening restaurant, and we serve brunch as well, but it's more of a French inspired bistro. And it's a lot of what John and I have experienced out in California. And he cooked in Europe as well. It's always for the best of. You take little bits and pieces of what you have. The kitchen is designed from a kitchen he worked in LA. The front has a sense of Zuni. People who know where we've come from can sense where some of these things came from. But it was a big operation. 

8,000 square foot restaurant as opposed to 2,000 that Sardine was. We have 65-70 employees at Sardine and 25 at Marigold. So it's a bigger operation and bigger investment, much bigger risk to take on. But the similarities of the two are that we look at creating our spaces too. It's not just about food. It's certainly not just about us and the chefs who walk around, shake hands with people and want to be known. We do know PR about us. It's truly about the experience when you walk in the door. To understand that the lighting, the design, the music, the style of service, the people working there, the kitchen, they all have to combine to get an experience. And I think people who can appreciate both Marigold and Sardine get that. 

We have a real clientele that shows up, and they're just as much a part of the design of the place, and they don't even know it sometimes, but they want to look at each other and they see who's there. And it can be kind of a scene in a very good way. Some real interesting folks come in. >> I am going to take this microphone off and start to use this one as I walk around to the students so that they can ask questions of you, Phillip.  And I think I'll start just by throwing one out. I'm kind of curious, as you, because expansion is something that, you started small, sort of, with Marigold's even though it was an interim success, and then went to Sardine, and eventually we'll talk about your third property. Have you learned anything that you just couldn't have imagined as you've been expanding your enterprises? >> Well, initially we weren't going to expand, and I think that's something that you realize is that we don't move that quickly at anything that we do. We are fairly methodical in our decision making. We kind of go from instincts when we make a decision. So I don't think we ever thought we were going to expand. 

But then you realize that you need new challenges, and you have people who are pushing you and want you to expand, and I think we ultimately knew that our heart and passion was in evening night cooking and having a bar and creating a scene and energy there that Marigold wasn't able to do. And so I think the idea of expanding itself was a big deal that we decided to move on and do the venture that we did. And, actually, the size of the place was, I think, bigger than we thought we'd do, but we thought it was right for Madison. They needed a place that big to create the kind of environment we wanted to do. >> Hi, I'm Amanda. Thank you for being here. >> Hi. Thank you. >> My question is kind of broad. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about what you do on a daily basis? Do you spend most of your time in the restaurants or how does that work? >> That's a good question. 

It depends. Right now because we're planning another restaurant, we spend a lot of time in meetings, more meetings than I ever imagined I'd be in. In the beginning, we were in the kitchen. For five years at Marigold we were in the kitchen every day. We'd be there probably at 5:30 in the morning, and we'd leave anywhere from 7:00 to 9:00 if we had catering. So we did a ton of kitchen work all the time, and we trained people. What sort of changed is that by expanding you have to change what your scope of your job is. You have to hand the reigns over to other people. You have to train those people because if you're not teaching someone else to do what you're doing, then you're not going forward. And there's a sense of progress or progression that just happens because you're doing a good job. 

People want to grow. You want to pay them more. So there's this sort of cycle that you go to. But I'm at both restaurants every day. I spend more time at Sardine, certainly, right now. I'm in the kitchen two nights a week there. We're there in the day. We try to spend as much time as we can in the kitchen, but it's difficult. We've got great talent right now at both places. So we're working on fine tuning. 

When the economy just dumped a couple, few years ago it was very, we were still early on in our investment into Sardine. So it was some sleepless nights. So what we had to do was kind of recalibrate and see what we do better. So we spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how do we get our costs down without changing the value of what we're doing. So we would look at every invoice and dig through. We'd look at our labor costs. We'd look at everything. It's so much more than the kitchen, and every day it's so much more than the kitchen. And, I guess, the thing we spent a lot of time on is the human resource aspect. When you have more than five employees and you get upwards of 75 employees, every day there's something. 

Every day there's something, some discussion to have with someone, discussion with your manager about someone. We have a wonderful staff at both places, but it's taken a while to get there. We do a little bit of everything. We spend some time in the kitchen, but we spend a lot of time right now thinking about the next venture, talking about where the bar is going to go, what the ceiling, what the design of the ceiling is going to be, are we going to have ceiling fans, how many employees, who's going to run the kitchen for this place. So that's sort of a broad answer to a broad question. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Hi. My name is Michael. I was just wondering, you didn't think you were going to expand and open a second restaurant and now you're on your third. 

What's your favorite part about opening a new place of business and do you think maybe more is in the future? >> Thank you. That's a good question. We don't want to have a ton of restaurants. We don't have that kind of drive. This second one was because it was so different than Marigold, and it was more what we were trained to do. So that one, maybe it was inevitably, we just sort of denied thinking that we were going to do it. In fact, every morning when we'd be cutting quiche and cutting fruit salad for the case for Marigold, we'd look at each other and go, you know, we were talking about doing the night place. Does it feel good? And we were like, no, we're never doing that. We'd be so tired all the time. But once we did it and now it's taken a while, it's taken five years to get it up and running to a fact we don't have to be there all the time. 

I don't know if there'd be any more. This just seems right right now. And I can't see, someone just told me recently, you said you were going to stay small. I don't remember saying that but I do remember not wanting to worry about having a lot of restaurants. But this ones is a case, we're bringing a partner from Sardine. It's nice to be able to give people an opportunity to learn more. I have people who have families now that have bought homes, and it feels great to be able to have done that. And we did that by opening another place. And we've done that by, to open a third place is allowing someone who was going to be an owner on his own now can come along with us and be a great asset to us but also have a lot less risk than what we went through. And he's got a family, and he can't take that risk right now. 

I hope I answered your question with that. >> I actually want to dovetail on that question. It was partially based on the fact that, as I mentioned, you and I got to sit down and chat ahead of class, and you made the statement when we did: I like to run a business not a company. And I thought that was an interesting comment. Can you expand on that because I think that it means very similarly to what our student asked. >> I guess the feeling we have is that you have two ways of going into business, and you can go out and get outside investors and they can be partners with you. I think we had a sense early on that we didn't want to give away any authority or any power away to anyone else so that we couldn't make our own decisions. So we took all the risk ourselves, and we did that, basically with Sardine, we have a smaller partner at Sardine but by doing that we aren't working for anyone else and we don't have a board that we have to run our decisions past. If you open more restaurants and you keep opening them, then you have a company that's running restaurants as opposed to running an individual business. Our philosophy is that we want to be attached to it. 

It doesn't feel great. Marigold, when we opened Sardine, it was very difficult to get back to Marigold and to do what we needed to do. And so it felt a little strange. We felt like there was a little animosity between the staff that we worked with every day, and now we weren't there anymore. That has sort of balanced out and we're more comfortable in our role. They're more comfortable because they're stronger in their roles. But we want to keep it small enough that we know everyone's name and we know about them and they know about us. It's probably as simple as that. >> Hi. I'm Erica. 

Thank you for being here. This is a little unrelated. Well, I have two questions. The first is, at Marigold's, what your clientele is, is it mostly college students, grad students, or just professors/locals? And then also, because I love Marigold's, what's your specialty omelet and what's your number one selling our your personal favorite omelet? [LAUGHTER] >> Personal favorite? It's the corn chorizo omelet. And sort of the sad thing about that is those omelets haven't really changed since we started. We were doing them in our kitchen at home and we just liked them and they sort of stuck and we realized people are passionate about their omelets and they don't want them to change. But it's the corn chorizo omelet. And the first part of your question, I'm sorry I lost my train of thought, I got caught in omelets there. What was the first part of your question again? >> Like, your clientele. >> Oh, yeah, the clientele. 

It's everyone. It's an incredible cross-section. During the week, it's a lot of people who are working downtown. A lot of people from the Capitol working for the government. People in businesses that are downtown, and of course people travel there. Weekends, there's many more college students come in, and we saw that was discovered, we could almost put a date on when there was a first group of college students that came to Marigold and they brought more college students. Because we were going, we don't have any college students here. And we were sort of appealing. We were younger then so we felt like we were maybe closer to college than we are today for sure. And so one of our concepts was there was a place in San Francisco that was a breakfast/lunch place that we loved and that played their music inordinately loud. 

And we loved it. And so when we started, our first day no one came in and we had the music really loud. So an empty restaurant and the music is too loud and we were playing, like, The Rolling Stones. It was totally a miss on our part. And people walked in and were like why, the first person was like what are you doing with the music so loud? And they weren't college students that were coming in then. But now we have a lot of college students that come during the week, on the weekends a lot of college students. A lot of families on the weekend. I think it's a real Madison cross-section. I think it's fun because at any one time, I know Governor Doyle, when he was in office, he would be there. You'd have a couple of other politicians that you'd have in. 

One of the coaches would show up. And it was a blast. It still is. And that's why this business is fun for us because we have all types that come in. >> Hi. I'm Rex Oster. My question was, thanks again for coming. >> Thanks for having me. >> Restaurants go up and down so fast, what makes yours a rarity? You have three going on. >> I think it's because we fully, it takes a lot to get where we were. 

We didn't rush into it. First of all, we knew cooking, and we had a clear idea of our concept. We had countless meetings about what we wanted this place to be, how we wanted to approach managing our staff. It's the bigger picture, I think, when you're starting a business. It's not just the business, it's about, well if you have a partner, do you agree on, because that could just be the demise of you business right there if your partnership doesn't work, and they often don't. I think it's truly understanding your concept and truly understanding you have a passion for what you do and you believe in it and you don't waver. There were times we felt like we should change or we'd have  customers say you should do this different. This is ridiculous, you should do this different. You should offer this. When it was the Atkins diet everyone kept saying you've got go to an Atkins menu. 

And we're like, that sounds horrible. I don't even know what to do with that. We love carbohydrates. [LAUGHTER] And we didn't waver from the core of our business and really haven't. We knew better than the customer because that what we spent our time doing. We knew what flavors worked together. We knew that this should work. It's not that we didn't make mistakes, but we stayed true to the experience we had. And I think it stems long before you open a restaurant. You make decisions, whatever job you're doing, you set the groundwork. 

And John and I both did well at the jobs we did. No matter how menial or how grandiose they were, you excelled, and you created sort of this habit of making good choices, places to work, people you want to be surrounded with and learn from them. And so you have the confidence to open something and sort of stay true to what your vision was. I think that's what's been our success. >> Thanks for being here. My name is Matt. So, I was wondering more of future progress. What have you seen done in the way of incorporating your consumer base for developing your menu or do you ever offer cooking classes to make the things that you make? Reading your menu and things, I found myself being very hungry for your items. >> Good. >> So just wondering what you do in the way of incorporating your consumers. 

>> Incorporating consumers in menu development we probably don't do too much of that in the sense that, again, we sort of have a sense of what we want to do. If they're showing up and they're eating it, we know we're doing something right. And then we'll tell, but we listen to our staff quite a bit, the people who are talking because we're not often talking to the customer ourselves often. We do, certainly, but these are people who are servers. They have a big, important decision and they're sharp and they're bright and they're connected to what's going on. They are, our bartenders, everyone, they know what's going on. And we create the environment for them to talk and to have an influence on, when we sit and have our meetings, we have meetings every week with our managers and then we have meetings quarterly with our entire staff. And they're a meeting where we have dinner together and we hang out. We have a little wine and then we talk. And then we have an open forum for them to give us their feedback. 

It's not always feedback you want to hear but it's the right feedback. As far as incorporating, I think consumers, we don't do a ton of that in the sense of just we know we're doing it right if people are coming in and it's been that way. We do more social networking. We have managers who are connecting with the customers more than we ever did through Facebook, through a lot of emailing. We have mixed things up in the last couple of years to bring people in. We do family style dinners on Monday nights every couple of months which is something that really has brought in, we realized sometimes by doing these little projects we get direct feedback. Are we doing it right or not? And people are loving it. It's something that was spawned from tough economic environment. We offered something that was inexpensive, or a good value I should say, and allowed people to sort of meet new people and hang out at these big 20-seated tables in our place. We did fondue dinners. 

We found that that was one way to bring in the customers. They feel that they took a little ownership in our place and felt like this is something that they want to support. I'm not sure, did that answer your question? >> Thanks. >> Okay. >> Hi. I'm Amelia Hoffman. One thing I've realized that's most important with entrepreneurs in starting new business is to have clear leadership in making all the decisions. I know you said you have a partner, and do you make most of your decisions together or one of you do one part of the business, another do another part or how do you guys work together as a team? >> My partner John Gadau and I are very similar in our cooking. Some had more experience cooking in the front of the house. We differed a little bit, but we both have grown together. 

We were just talking about this. Part of our strength is that we make most of the decisions together. We make a little bit more separate or apart because we know how the other one is going to think or respond to something. So big decisions we always make together. It has been our strength that we put everything, we run by anything that's coming up. We run by problems with employees we've had, or challenges we are together quite a bit. Neither one of us runs one area over the other one. We naturally sort of will do things we're more interested in. But I feel like he has brought me up in things that I was weaker in as a business person, as a cook, and I feel like I've probably done the same for him. We're better because of our partnership. 

And so a lot of this, Jeanan asked me that. She said, so what do you do this or you run separately, do you complement each other? Everyone says we complement each other. Sometimes we can't see exactly how that is. We enjoy each other. We have a blast as partners. But we also fumble over each other in decision making which is maybe our success too because we're just on page. We're on the same page with just about everything and make sure every day that we start a new day thinking that way. >> I'm going to dovetail on that question as well. It was a great one. Thank you, Amanda. 

I'm curious about your personality and your business partner's personality. You're kind of different people in that respect, and that may really serve as a complement. Can you talk a little bit about that? >> Well, I think we both want to have fun. That sounds sort of light maybe, thin, but it's really about that. You got to, first of all, be passionate about what you're doing, and then if you can't have fun doing it, then it's not worth doing. And we laugh a lot, and we enjoy each other. And I think sometimes if I'm high strung about something and a little more intense about it, he's able to just diffuse my thought or just even say, oh, it's fine, don't worry about it. And I want to hear that. And vice versa if he does that. I think we're very similar personalities. 

We are very compatible. But the similarities in that we agree on the big things, we agree on what's important. We're not driven by how much money we can always make. Sometimes we've had to refocus and go we've go to make money doing this. We can't just love what we're doing. We've got to make it happen for everyone else. But we are two different people and I think we naturally give ourselves the space that's needed, and I think the way he responds to our employees and the way I respond to them might be different but they're the same on the big picture. >> We talk about overarching themes in this class. One of them being taking risk, and it certainly is something that all entrepreneurs have to consider at some point and experience. Can you think about one of the biggest risks that you and John have had to take and share with us your experience in getting through it successfully or not? >> I think the biggest risk is the first step to try to open a business. 

We really didn't have much money. In fact, we had, like, no money to put down on our first business. And you have nothing and you have this business plan and you go to different banks and some banks just didn't want anything to do with us. And one bank did, and they made a decision overnight and called and said we'll finance you because we had just a litany of experience behind us. We had been doing this. We weren't kids. We had a really strong business plan. But the risk is taking that first step to say you're going to do something and you're going to own it and even though you think you're prepared and you make this business plan, I think I had mentioned to you, Jeanan, I remember when we thought we were having the busiest week of our lives and I remember this one day when I looked at the register and thought now we're in it. This was like in our first/second month. And I looked and we were just shy of what our break even point was on our business plan. 

We had been working so hard, and we thought how am I going to stay in business? You just think, it's just making that step to say you can do it. If you look ahead too far and think there's so many reasons of why not to go into business for yourself, there's so many reasons why not to do it, but if you're passionate about being your own boss, you can do it, but you have the experience and the confidence. The experience that you had with all the jobs prior make a difference when you do it because you feel like when you believe in yourself at the very least I can work harder and I'll make it work and I'll treat my employees fairly. They'll want to work for me. So I guess it is that, it's the risk of the first place. The second place was a much bigger financial investment, and in that sense, bigger risk. But we had a customer base that was built in already, and we were busy when we started. But you never stop learning. The risk is still there every day. You just are hedging risk differently now. 

>> Well, I'm going to ask just one final question and that is very much about the future. Is there anything that you can tell us about your third enterprise? It's scheduled to open in August and in my backyard. We're very excited. >> It's going to be very different than both Marigold and Sardine. It's going to be very casual. It's going to sort of harken the idea of an east coast sort of fish house meets Wisconsin. There's going to be TVs in there which we're super happy to have because it's on the way to Camp Randall. We want to tap into that market a little bit. Where Sardine is a place that I think a lot of people enjoy, there's people that will never come there just because a French bistro, they don't relate to it or they don't want. Each year we reach out to more and more and our business is growing, but this is the place that I think anyone would want to go to. 

It's a joint. It's a hang out. The food's going to be comfort food. It's going to be kind of driven from our experience of some of, John's dad was a big cook and a Francophile. That was one reason why we spawned even doing Sardine, spawned the idea. And my mom was Italian, so they have this blend of sort of comfort food that we have done but really based around kind of a big, fun bar scene and family-friendly. Since we live in that neighborhood, there's a lot of families. We want it to be a place you can go and get good food, healthy food, and some unhealthy food I should say too, but that tastes great but in an environment that's just playful and fun and low key. >> Well, I can assure you that our neighborhood is looking very forward to welcoming you, and I know the students join me in thanking you very much for joining us today. >> Thank you. 

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