The owner of a company with supertight margins - say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods - would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.
My way of discovering of what I like was to create a restaurant list and eat my way through it, and I call it my 'inner fat girl bucket list.'
People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people.
I used to make my living by understanding people. And the way I learned to understand them was by observing them. I would sit in a train station or a bus station or a restaurant. And I would watch people. I would watch how they related to one another. I would try to get some insight into them and make them as predictable as I could in my mind.
After a two-year stint at Stars, I wanted to start my own full-service restaurant, but I didn't have the funds to do so, so I got a modest loan from my parents and opened Chipotle with the goal of having it fund that restaurant.
'Too big to fail' is fine for restaurant chains. If Denny's fails, it's fine for this economy. You can always go down to the TGIFs. But that's not the same for large-scale investment companies.
So I quit my job and went to the New England Culinary Institute for the full two years and worked in the restaurant industry after that until finally I thought I had a grasp on what I needed to do what I do.
I'm one of those people who has a toothbrush and toothpaste with me at all times. After lunch, I'll brush my teeth in a restaurant bathroom!
I'm one of those people who has a toothbrush and toothpaste with me at all times. After lunch, I'll brush my teeth in a restaurant bathroom!
I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.
You have to think of a restaurant as a series of impressions. But what makes my job so great is there's no one answer that's right for every restaurant.
If you write a song, and you go into a restaurant, and there's a guy with a piano singing and he's playing piano, singing your song, or you hear it at a wedding or at an airport... it's fun!
When you're out shopping, try to calculate the discount of something in the sales, or work out how much a bill in a restaurant will come to. Your brain is just like any other muscle - you have to train it to make it work faster.
My way of discovering of what I like was to create a restaurant list and eat my way through it, and I call it my 'inner fat girl bucket list.'
On Gates Avenue, there's an amazing Italian restaurant: Locanda Vini e Olii. It's in an old pharmacy - the front of it still has the pharmacy's name on it - and they have all these little tchotchkes and knickknacks and things behind glass. Whenever my parents come to Brooklyn, I take them there.
I'm a character actress, and I've done a lot of different shows, but 'Gilmore Girls' is the one that I'm stopped in the mall, in the restaurant, and that I'm recognized for. I'm so touched by it.
Life in the restaurant business can provide a start in the working world for young people or a stable living for many Americans and their families.