EP 38: David Nayfeld

Transcript

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

So excited to have David Nayfeld here with us today. He is the Co-Founder of Back Home Hospitality, Chef and Co-Owner of Che Fico, Che Fico Parco Menlo, Che Fico Pizzeria, Bubbelah, and opening soon, Via Aurelia. David is also the Co-Founder and on the Board of Directors for Independent Restaurant Coalition, as well as on the Board of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, amongst other things. David, thank you so much for joining us today.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD 

Thanks very much for having me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And I have all these notes in front of me, but our listeners do not. Can you tell us how you got started in hospitality?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD 

Yeah. 13 years old, I got my first job actually stacking produce at a produce stand here in the Bay Area. And was one of those things that probably doesn't happen anymore, like the “Help Wanted” sign, and got my first job and paid me cash, probably. And one day there was a gentleman from around the corner, a Greek guy named Tony, who showed up at the produce stand looking for mushrooms. And he had a restaurant around the corner that was called Village Pizzeria or something like that. And he was looking for mushrooms, and I gave him some mushrooms, and he asked me what I was doing later that day. And I was like, “Well, I'm 13, I'm going home.” And he was like, “Well, my dishwasher didn't show up. I'll give you $35 cash to come and wash dishes,” which honestly was a small fortune for me at that time. And I showed up, and honestly I was just kind of hooked, right? Just the vibe in the kitchen, the chaos, the curse words, the fun. It all just came together for me there, and I've never stopped. That's the only kind of industry I've ever worked in.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Alright, so did you stay, and did you then just show up every day, like, “I'm ready to go to the dish pit”?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, washing dishes, and then it was that classic story, like six months later, the guy who was on salad station–salad and pizza was the same station at this restaurant. That person didn't show up, and he's like, “Hey, do you know how to stretch the pizzas?” Obviously every day after he had gone home and I was supposed to be finishing washing the dishes, I would also make a pizza for myself. So I had learned how to stretch the pizzas. So I moved over there and started making salads and stretching pies. From then on, I worked a couple of the stations in there, also was a pizza delivery guy later on when I turned 16 and got my driver's license. I worked at a couple of bar and grills and a local tennis club, making club sandwiches and all that stuff, right? Working at a bar and grill, making steak and eggs.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Living the life.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD 

Yeah, doing all that stuff. And when I was 18, college didn't seem like it was really going to be an option for me. I was lucky to get out of high school. And I just packed my bags and started this whirlwind adventure where I would just show up. I showed up in L.A. like a week after I graduated high school, and kind of doctored up a fake resume, and walked into some restaurants and got some jobs, and then realized it was probably best for me to go to culinary school. 

[I] really wanted to go to the nicest, fanciest culinary school I could go to because I wanted to make up for the fact that I wasn't gonna be able to go to college. And I ended up in New York at the CIA, which was just incredible, like walking into that space. The comparison would be, you'd see another–I'm not gonna list any names, but like a culinary school or a culinary program that was in a strip mall or some sort of business park. And you get to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, and you're just like, wow, this is like real college. It feels that way and it validates you a little bit. Like, when your parents are dropping you off, they're like, “Okay, maybe he's not gonna be a loser.” 

And from then on just always tried to work in the best restaurants with all the best accolades and the Michelin stars and all of those things, because I was constantly trying to make up for the fact that I didn't go to college, and I wanted to show that I was a success. And that was great in certain ways, but also I think it wasn't necessarily about how much I loved the food, it was more about all the accolades. And that's what eventually led me to opening Che Fico, was I really want to open something that I was excited about eating every day and that I would have regulars in, which is very different from any restaurant I ever worked in, right? Like I worked in two and three Michelin-starred restaurants. And I think probably the closest experience that I ever had to Che Fico–obviously it's very different–the original Nobu in Tribeca, 20 years ago or more even. I remember working there, and they would have regulars from the neighborhood. It was very posh and people really wrote about it, and it obviously became a massive worldwide success. But back then, it was a small restaurant in Tribeca.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Neighborhood spot.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

And it just became this incredible place with all these accolades. So that was kind of the path to here with some stuff left out.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah,I mean that's great. Everyone forges their own path and gets to different places. Some people choose school as something that they want to have as part of their experience. Some people don't and decide to go straight into figuring out where to work and maybe defer school or not do it at all. I think that's the beauty of getting into this industry, there's a lot of different ways. When you were starting out, were you thinking you wanted to be a restaurant owner in the future, or were you still like, “I'm enjoying this, this is cool. Let's see where this can take me”?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, I think when I was starting out, if I can really even kind of put myself in that mindset, I think being good at something was really a main driver, right? Feeling success. And I think that's something that's super important in life, right? You want to feel like you're good at something. At school, I never really felt like I was good at that. And I had very moderate success in sports growing up, like nothing really substantial. And I think the first time I walked into a restaurant was the first time I felt like I really could be very successful, right? I know that sounds weird to say that in the context of washing dishes, but it's very clear when you're doing something next to someone else and you feel like you're overtaking them, right? And you're becoming more adept at it than they are, right? You have all of your competition to your right and to your left. And you can see things. You can see when you stretch a pizza, how fast you can do it versus the person next to you. You can see how it comes out of the oven. And then you extrapolate that to working at a fine dining restaurant, right? Like you can see the way your sauce work is. You can see the way your production work is, how fast you can set up a station, how many orders you can take on and be perfect and not be yelled at at the same time, right? Like all of those things start to become the motivation. 

And so when I got into the industry, I think at first it was just the fact that I was good at it. So I would just keep doing it. And I think probably when I was around 18, 19, when I was thinking about what I needed to do for a living, I think ultimately I wanted to do this. Back then, it wasn't like… The Food Network was really just starting to get popularity. And this was right before people like Bobby Flay or something like that really burst on the scene and became immensely popular. Obviously at that time, that's when he was still considered to be a really excellent restaurant chef and those types of people. So that gives you context as to what we're talking about, like pre-Top Chef and all of that.

And so it was not necessarily something people thought about, like, “Oh, hey, you're going to go become a chef and be world-renowned or write a cookbook.” That was something that very select few were able to get to that. And so in my view, I was going to use this as a tool to become successful financially in some capacity, whether that was as a business owner or whether that was as a bar owner or restaurant owner or a nightclub owner or something. I knew that this was a stepping stool, right? And I didn't necessarily have a grand plan. It wasn't until I had been cooking in really fine dining restaurants for the first few years, like, I went to culinary school and then got access to places like Nobu and then worked at Aqua in San Francisco, which had two Michelin stars, and then learning–for the first time, frankly–who Joël Robuchon was, and then wanting to go work for him and to be able to have that name on my resume. And then traveling to Europe and seeing what the possible was for the life of a chef and how using these tools and using these skills could create a life for you. And if you just really, really dedicated yourself to it and you sacrificed, and you were willing to give more than everyone else around you, if you were that person that kept showing up and playing the game of attrition where everybody else kind of fades away and you are the one who keeps showing up, that was something that started to become very clear in my mind. So I think it wasn't an instant, but there was a bit of a progress to understanding that. 

Then there was the confluence of that and the proliferation of chefs becoming more of a thing, right? In the early 2000s, you did start to see more American chefs making a name for themselves besides just Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter. You started to see people actually starting to find ways to create careers for themselves. So I think all of those things kind of happened at once, and here I am.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, things change, things evolve. And you're absolutely right. 10, 15 years ago, the industry was very different. The restaurants, the diners looked different, too, meaning they had different preferences and behaviors. And fast forward to now, there are a lot of different ways that somebody could take what once was just a competitive passion or something to do part-time into something that could be really meaningful and be a wonderful career. So I want to kind of circle back– you glossed over it briefly, but you spent quite some time in Europe, right?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, I had the opportunity to work for some incredible chefs, and that gave me access and the ability to travel to Europe and spend some time, whether it was at Mr. Robuchon's restaurants, or after I worked as a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park for a number of years, I developed a lot of relationships, and I think it's very interesting. A lot of people go and stage in Europe very early in their career, right? Like super early. And I think that's great. That's lovely. Anytime you can go, that's amazing, right? But the thing to understand is when you go to Europe and you have zero experience, what you're going to do is you're going to sit in someone's basement or prep room and you're going to separate plushes of chervil, size chive tips and things like that, right? And during service, you're gonna play a very minuscule role of what's happening within the restaurant service. And that's great if what your entire goal is to do is to come back from Europe and say, “Oh, I spent time at ‘said’ restaurant in Copenhagen, and that gives me some sort of gravitas here.” Which, look, it works, right? People come here all the time and they're like, “I started at Noma for three months” or “I staged at this restaurant for three months.” And you're like, oh cool, that must be really incredible. And then you get them on the line, and they're like, wow, you don't know how to cook a piece of fish. You don't know how to glaze a vegetable or properly sauce a noodle. And it's because they went to these restaurants and they staged there, they did, but what they did was incredibly low-level work. And that's the way the world works. 

Now, conversely–and I didn't plan this out, it just happened to be this way–I never had an opportunity to go to Europe. I never had the money. I never honestly had the connections. I didn't even have the wherewithal. When I finished my tenure as a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, I had met chefs from all over the world. I had helped plan and coordinate and execute multiple collaboration dinners with the top two and three Michelin-starred chefs around. I had their emails. I had their sous chefs’ emails. I had their phone numbers. And I also had a good reputation. They had worked with me in a service. They knew that I was not only capable, but I was organized and that I had skills. And so when you reach out to these folks and you're like, “Hey, I'd like to come spend a month or two months or three months in your kitchen,” not only are they glad to have you from a resource standpoint–because they know they're not going to pay you–but they also know that you are coming with a certain set of skills that they're not going to have to instill in you like, “Hey, are you able to set up a station? Are you able to cook a piece of fish?” All of those things. 

And so I would show up in restaurants like Mirazur, after spending time with Mauro in the United States, in the south of France. And I would come into the kitchen that day and Mauro would say, “OK, great. Our chef who was the fish roast is no longer with us tomorrow. You're going to take over the fish station with one day of training.” And if I had not had the experience that I had up until that point, that would have been incredibly overwhelming. But for me, it was a treat. It was like, what an opportunity. And it was a style of cooking, frankly, that I had never done, right? Like in Mirazur, as opposed to being at a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park in New York–like in New York, you have your fish purveyor come. Sometimes you have multiple fish purveyors, they come, all the fish is brought to the butcher, and the butcher breaks them down. And you as the sous chef coordinate the station with multiple cooks and everything like that. 

At a restaurant like Mirazur–and granted this was 10+ years ago, so a lot has changed, I'm sure–but back then it was incredible to be at because you would get to the restaurant close to six or seven in the morning. The fisherMEN–not the fish salesmen–the fishermen would come after getting their daily catch. Sometimes they would have upwards of 11, 12, 13, 14 different species of fish and other types of seafood in these little buckets. And Mauro would walk outside and say, “Okay, I'd like these eight.” And you'd bring them all inside and then Mauro would say, “Okay, great, these all need to be ready for lunch today.” And so what you would do is you'd start breaking down your fish only to an extent, right? Because you wouldn't fillet all of them. Some of them would be roasted whole in salt, some of them would be in fillets, you'd have a langoustine which would get cleaned to-order, all of those different things. Then you'd get those ready, then you'd go out into the garden, and you'd pick your flowers and vegetables and elements like that. You come back into the restaurant, you do your sauces, you get your mise en place hot. You would not cut vegetables until your orders came in. 

If you can imagine being in a New York restaurant, you are slammed from the second you walk in. In this restaurant in the south of France, an order would come in, you would start cutting the vegetables for that order, right? You would sometimes break down fish or you'd open langoustine to-order, right? For that order, right? Because it's a tasting menu, you know exactly where you are in the progression of the meal. And that was such a unique distinction. Had I walked into that restaurant in my first year of cooking, I would have been in the back kitchen doing, frankly, the same thing I could do in my hometown at a quality restaurant without having to be in a foreign land. But instead, what I got was this incredible, not even “master's degree.” You're talking about the highest level of finishing school, working for someone like Mauro Colagreco, who had worked at the side of Alain Passard for many years and Bernard Loiseau and different people like that, right? So you got this incredible education that never would have happened had I gone earlier in my career. 

So I do try to tell people oftentimes, if you wanna go stage in another country, maybe go get five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years of experience under your belt. So that way when you do go to those restaurants like Noma–whatever restaurant is gonna be trendy during that time, world-renowned restaurant–come there with a set of skills that become valuable to the chefs there. And that way you're offering more than you're taking, right? Because then they can count on you, and they're gonna put you in a position to learn more.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's incredible. Actually, it's the first time that we've had somebody on here take us through that, so thank you. I think oftentimes when people are starting out and they're thinking or they hear stories of knocking on the back door of the kitchen in another country and asking to stage for free or whatever. But oftentimes you don't get it broken down like that. And there's different ways to do it. But that makes a lot of sense. I think that's great advice for people who want to get some experience overseas and are trying to figure out when and how. But also working here, as you mentioned, working here for a little bit, you build a network, you build your credibility, you build your skills on top of that. And that also helps with the facilitation of you potentially going somewhere else to get experience.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Well, and also there's so many things that happen within your career, right? Like I got the opportunity– So when I was in Europe, I was in Paris and I got to work at Frenchie–when I say work, I mean stage–at Frenchie with Gregory Marchand. That never would have happened had I not worked in New York and would see him at the green market all the time because he was working at Gramercy Tavern back then. And then he moved back to Paris and opened Frenchie. So having the ability to reach out and be like, “Hey, I'm this known entity to you. You see me at the farmer's market, I'm not just a random person. Can I come?” Well, there's an obvious “Yes, no problem. I know you're not going to be a weirdo when you walk in here,” right? Because how many people reach out to him on a monthly basis and ask if they can come spend time in the restaurant? 

You want to make sure that from a chef's perspective or an operator's perspective, A) you're not going to be a problem that I need to deal with, but B) you're not a liability. You're not someone trying to create some sort of issues for me. And then lastly, you're also trying to suss out people; they come with the right intentions, right? Coming with the right intentions means that you wanna work hard, you wanna help, you wanna learn, but you're also not there to steal ideas. Like I get people all the time who are like, “I wanna learn– I'm opening a pizzeria and this other place, I'd like to come and spend three days making your pizza.” I'm like, that's really strange. So you're saying you want to come learn how to make my pizza and go make something somewhere else? That doesn't really seem like a great offer for me. Right? If you wanted to learn about making pizza, if you wanted to learn what it was to be a pizzaiolo, that's a different thing. And you could come and spend some time here. But you want to come and learn how to make my dough so you can bring it somewhere else, that's a little bit of a weird proposition.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, great. That is definitely going to be very valuable to our listeners. So you had all this experience, you come back, I see you went East Coast, West Coast a bunch of times. That must be a pretty grueling move. But when you started thinking about opening your now-fiefdom of restaurants, how did that come about? Were you like, “I'm ready to do my own thing”? How did you meet your business partners? Take me through how those things unfolded.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, I mean, my path was very challenging. And there are many paths. There are many ways to do this. The thing is, I ended up in L.A., and I think I just got back from Europe. I was in Europe for a year, and then before that, I was in New York. I had these grand ideas as to what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I was super eager. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I was very idealistic, and I ended up in LA in a situation where I took on the first partner that I met who was like, “Oh, I can help you open a restaurant.” And I was like, great, perfect. And the partnership was really weak. I didn't really have any sort of, whatever you want to call it, control or power. It was… 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Not ideal.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

It was not ideal. And my name and likeness was going to be the main thing that was driving the project, right? Which is also not ideal. Because if that's the case, there needs to be a more equitable split. Now, I didn't know enough about what I was doing, and it's my fault for getting into this partnership. And the person who I was in the partnership with really did not have, frankly, honest intentions at the time. Or maybe they did, but they they weren't the right person for me to be in business with. And to be honest with you, I felt like a lot of weird things happened. They were going around raising money for restaurants that were not mine, based on, you know, their relationship with me and the fact that I would be cooking at these restaurants in some way, which was really strange and sketchy. But it was my fault because I didn't understand what I was getting into, right? 

Like I had a friend who was an attorney look at my contracts, but they were not an attorney in restaurants, right? I was trying to save money. That was a huge mistake. She was very well-intentioned and really wanted to help me, but she didn't know what she didn't know. She specialized in something else. I was trying to save the $5000 or $10,000 because I didn't have $5000 or $10,000. And so I ended up going through that process. It made me very unhappy. I was in a really, really weird spot in my life. I was working crazy hours trying to white-knuckle it and make it work because I felt like that's the only way I could do it. And I ended up really kind of having a bad experience and walking away from the entire thing, right? And I'm sure I was not a really great person to be around at that point because I was very upset with the entire situation. I had a lot of resentment around it, but it was my fault because I got into a situation that I was not ready for. 

And so my suggestion to someone who was in my shoes then is that I was ready to be a chef, but I was not ready to be an operator. And if you're in my situation–that was 13 years ago–if you wanna do that, then my suggestion is that you go and you work within a restaurant group, a really reputable restaurant group, right? Like Union Square Hospitality or BOKA Group, or any group like that, ours Back Home Hospitality. And you work for a reputable restaurant group where you can get to know the ownership and you show them your skill set, they're gonna wanna keep you around because it is a hunt for talent. And you tell them what your plan is. “Hey, I wanna open my own restaurant, I'm willing to come here and run one of your kitchens for a couple of years and show you that I'm capable of doing that, but I wanna become a partner, I wanna open a restaurant.” 

Great restaurant groups and great restaurant operators, they will 100% take you up on that because it's only in their best interest. So that's what I would have done, and I should have done that. But the thing is I didn't want to stay in New York because my family was here in California. I could have completely stayed. I had worked for Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group before. I could have also tried to have that discussion. I don't think it was available necessarily with Will and Daniel at Eleven Madison Park at that time, right? They were too young in their own business, but I probably could have worked that out with Union Square. But I didn't want to be in New York. 

So by the time I got to California and I went through this process, I wanted to be kind of the head honcho. I didn't know how to negotiate a lease. I didn't know how to raise capital. I didn't know how to fulfill an LOI. I didn't know what subscription documents were. I didn't know anything, right? I didn't even know that you could commit securities fraud by asking the wrong person for money. And so I went through this process. It was really negative, but it was a great learning curve for me. And then once I got out of it, I was like, okay, I can never do this again, unless I understand the entire process. 

So I basically put myself through school at home on Google. And everything was like, hey, how do you build out a business plan, start to finish? How do you create projections? How do you use Excel? What's an IRR, internal rate of return, and how do you calculate it? What is securities fraud? And so you might even ask–if someone who's listening is like, “Well, how did you even get to those questions?” Well, I'll tell you how. I would create a document, which I thought was a business plan, and I would go to restaurateurs or other operators or chefs who I knew had done this before. And I had developed enough of a reputation, enough goodwill in this industry because I've been working really hard and people liked me and people knew who I was. 

I would say, “Will you take a look at this?” and they'd ask a question, “Okay. Hey, what's your IRR? I don't see it here on your executive summary.” Or actually even better than that, “Hey, there's your deck. Where's your executive summary?” Okay, what's that? “Okay, well that needs to be here.” So then I hand it back to them. “Where's your executive summary?” “It's in the back.” “No, the executive summary is the first page.” Okay, well it says summary, I thought it was in the back. No, it's the first thing they want to read. And you're like, okay, well that's good to know. And then it's like, “Okay, where's the IRR?” Okay, well, then you go home and you're like, how do I calculate this? What are the different terms I need to know? A

And you slowly start to fold these things into a business plan, you teach yourself Excel, which now is much easier with AI and everything else and Google Sheets. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, just talk to it.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

But back then it was like, okay, Excel and Google, how do I do this? Or read a book, or call someone you know who's an accountant. “Hey, how do I do this function? How do I link the two pages together?” All that stuff, right? And that process took me six months on its own. And so in that process, I was also going to real estate agents. And sometimes real estate agents would set an appointment with me and then call me and be like, “Oh hey, by the way, how much money have you raised for your project?” And I'd be like, “Zero!” And they're like, “Cool, I'm not meeting you.” And you'd be like, “Well, what do you mean you're not meeting me? Isn't it your job to show me restaurants?” They're like, “Yeah, but that's a waste of my time because you don't have any money.” 

And my suggestion to anyone out there who gets that response, keep that person's business card and remember them for the rest of your life and never do business with them again. Because the truth is those real estate agents who treated me like that, they were so short-sighted and they were so transactional that they don't deserve your business. I found–because of Dominique Crenn–I told Dominique Crenn that I was thinking about looking at San Francisco, and she was incredibly gracious. She's always been one of the most lovely human beings on the planet to me. She's very generous with her giving and her kindness. So she introduced me to a real estate agent named Louis Cornejo in San Francisco. And he's got a business called Urban [Group] Real Estate or something like that. And she said, “Hey, Louis, will you please meet with my friend David?”

So I went to Louis's office in San Francisco, and I sat down and I showed him my business plan. He looked at it, he's like, “This is incredible.” And he asked me, “How much money have you raised?” And I told him, “I've raised zero, I don't have any money.” And he's like, “Okay, great. Thanks for telling me. What we need to do is we need to get you in front of the right landlord.” The right landlord is like a small landlord who owns the building, who is going to meet you face to face and see something in you. And they're gonna believe in you. The wrong thing is you don't want to go to one of these massive asset property owners like Brookfield or Tishman or something like that, because they're going to bring your deck and who you are to a committee. And those committees, they don't see you as a person. They just see you as a deal, and they have to protect their assets, right? 

So we went to where Che Fico is now, which is a former auto body shop. It was an auto body shop at the time. It was like a ramp, the stairs weren't there, nothing was there. But I remember walking up there–and I had seen all these other restaurants, second gen restaurants or strip mall restaurants and all these different things–and nothing really got me going. And I walked into where Che Fico is now on the second floor, and I saw these vaulted ceilings, these floor-to-ceiling windows, these skylights, and I got chills up my spine. I was like, I see people in this space enjoying themselves. I saw the whole thing. I saw the lights and the excitement and the pizza oven. All of these different things in my mind just were very clear to me. 

And I told John–our landlord's name is John Strickland and he's this incredible man, toweringly tall. He's like 6’7, a really gentle giant and an incredible soul, and to this day someone that I value so much because I told him what the idea was. He then said to me, “Listen, I know you don't have any money. If you shake my hand right now and tell me that you're going to do this, I'm going to believe you and we're going to do this together. And I'm going to give you the opportunity. I'm not going to show the space to anyone else.” John Strickland, he negotiated with me in good faith for like six months, and we negotiated hard. At some point, this guy could have been like, “Hey, I'm not interested. Like, dude, you have nothing that I need. I have everything. Like, take it or leave it.” But he never did that. He always negotiated fairly. And so to anyone listening, that's something that you need to remember, which is I remember negotiating with people when I had nothing, and they treated you like you had nothing. And when you get that vibe, you need to understand that's the best they're ever gonna treat you because that's the beginning of the relationship. If it goes sour, it's gonna get 10 times worse, right? And so John was so fair. 

By that point, I had met my now-business partner, Matt Brewer. We met a few months after I saw the space, and he was also looking to open his first restaurant. He had worked for Hogsalt Hospitality in Chicago and opened all those incredible restaurants like Au Cheval and Green Street Smoked Meats and Bavette's and all that. And he was a young guy and he wanted to open a restaurant too. He and I met and kind of combined our powers together. We had the time and we negotiated with John and John was really, really incredible and gave us the time and space not only to negotiate, but to go out and find our first couple of investors. But a lot of that was about me taking responsibility and saying, okay, great. Well, I'm not counting on Matt, I'm not counting on John, I'm not counting on Louis. I'm counting on myself to understand what does it mean that I'm signing the lease? What is the personal guarantee? What is a Prop 13 clause in California? What happens if the building gets sold and the tax basis goes up? What am I going to need to raise to build this all out? How much TI do I need to do this? How much, equity am I keeping, right? What am I really responsible for? How much operating capital am I going to need after I open? What happens if in 2017 or ‘18 there's another recession, right? Like, obviously nobody can predict the future, but you have to understand that your restaurant is going to go through–if it's successful and it's alive for a certain amount of years–your restaurant is going to go through so many ups and downs. You have to think about what happens, you know?

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, what happens if there's a pandemic?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Right, exactly what happens if there's a pandemic.? So in terms of raising capital, what I ended up doing was I was relentless. My cousin jokes about– I would set these meetings, and he'd laugh at me and be like, “Bro, you don't have a job and you don't have anything. You keep telling me you're going to a meeting. What are these meetings?” And what I would do is I would just set meetings. I would say, “Hey, would you have a coffee with me?” And it would just be anyone who would have a coffee with me, who was either in the restaurant industry, operator, potential investor, someone who knew an investor, real estate, anything. And I would just go have coffee with them. I'd ask some questions like, “Hey, I'm doing this…” and all at some point, something would break, right? Either I'd meet a restaurant designer like Jon de la Cruz, and Jon would be like, “Oh, I'd love to design your restaurant. Okay, cool. Let's talk about that.” And then, “Hey, I happen to know this investor who invested in another restaurant. Would you like to meet them?” Yes, I would. And then they're like, “Oh, I'm hosting a lunch for Alice Waters. Would you like to come cook it? And it's not going to earn you any money, but you can come cook the lunch and meet Alice Waters and a bunch of other people.” All of a sudden you cook a lunch for Alice Waters and you get three more investors there. Then what we started to learn was cooking in people's homes was one of the best ways to find investors. And so we would do a lot of cooking in people's homes. 

And then subsequently what that ended up doing was building our events business. And our events business today is probably one of the main reasons why our restaurants are successful. So I know that was a really long answer. As long as that answer was. it was a exponentially longer process, and there was a lot in between that that I left out, but like that's really kind of what we ended up doing. Now there's a lot of easier ways to do what I did, but at the end of the day, I control my future. I built the world the way I want it to be. It was very hard. There's a lot of risk. I have a ton of liability. I have personal guarantees. If things go wrong, my life would be ruined, right? 

What I'm saying to young chefs out there or operators is there's easier ways. If you get with a group that is trustworthy and has a good track record for treating people the right way, you can help that group grow, and you can gain partnership and ownership, right? Ultimately, had I known that everything was gonna be this hard, there was gonna be this much risk, and I could probably make just as much money and with a lot less headache, you know what? Maybe I would have done that, and you only know what right? But this is where I'm at today, and I'm happy now to be in this position where I can help young people–or maybe even not so young people–in my industry, either by giving them opportunities and paths to partnership or to give them guidance. But the truth is there's so many different ways to be successful in this industry. If you love what you do and you're good at what you do, you have great work ethic and you have great skills, there's gonna be a home for you, you know? I think that's the long and short of it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I was just letting you talk because there were so many knowledge bombs in there. I mean look, I think at the end of the day, you gained experience, you learned from your experiences and you did it your way. And now you're sharing your knowledge and building something that you are comfortable with because you know all the ins and outs and all that. And somebody else is going to hear this and maybe even choose to do it the same way as you did, right? 

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, perhaps.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Or maybe they're in the middle of it.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, and look, I think the best thing that I can tell people is you have to think very much what do you want? Go to where you want your life to be, envision that “This is where I want my life to be. I want a family. Where do I want to live? What do I want?” 

Like, my life is very much kind of the way it sounds in the sense that like I'm on a podcast at 10AM. Before that, I was on the Golden Gate Restaurant Association board meeting at 9AM. Before that, I was on a call with a PR group orchestrating a pop-up at the Rosewood in Kona at 8AM. Last night at 1AM, I was responding to emails. At 12AM, I was finishing menu descriptions for my new restaurant. That is very much my life. There's different ways to do it. Now this just makes me happy. Enjoy it. Right? So you got to think about what works for you, and you have to think about how do you envision your life and then kind of work backwards from that.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I love that. And right before we get to quick fire, I want to do a quick little question around your book that came out recently, Dad, What's for Dinner. Tell me about that, are you a dad?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Yeah, so I am a dad and I wrote the cookbook for my daughter, Helena. And the truth is it became something that was the most important thing in my life. When my daughter was born, more so than any restaurant or any accolade or my career, I wanted to be a good dad. I learned to be a father through using my skills of cooking, right? Like bringing my daughter into the kitchen with me and learning how to communicate with her, learning how to teach her something, and learning to pass things on. But the most important thing that I learned is that the gift of time is the most important gift that you give your kids and the most important gift that you give yourself. And you can extrapolate that to everybody else in your life that you value, right? Whether it's your spouse, your own parents, your cousins, your roommates, someone you want to be friends with. When you give them your time, you give them the most important resource you have in your life, right? 

To me, the cookbook is all about giving other people potentially a roadmap and some guidance. If cooking and getting dinner on the table is one of the major hurdles in your life, or you just enjoy it and you want to know how to do it better, Dad What's for Dinner? is a book that is for everyone, right? It's for that new college student in the dorms who wants to make friends and wants to make some pasta with people. It's for those busy parents who want to get dinner on the table. It's for those creative bohemians who want to learn how to make pasta from scratch and make lasagna on a day off. All of those different things. It's for everyone who just wants to cook with people they love.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I love it. On that note, quick-fire. What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD 

Stick it out, be patient. Not everything has to happen in your time, right? And most importantly, a year is not a long time. A year is not a long time. You can wait anything out for a year. You can wait anything out for five years, right? You just gotta stick it out.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

You really just have to decide if this is something you love. This industry can be unforgiving, and it can burn you out and chew you up. My best advice is don't help it. If you want to be good at this and you want to be successful at this, the ways that you help the industry chew you up is drinking, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, having a terrible diet, going to sleep many hours later than you got off of work. If you want to be good at this, you have to look at it like you're an athlete because it's very much similar type of sacrifice, right? Learn to have discipline, learn that alcohol is not your friend. And look, I'm not someone who is 100% sober. I'll have a drink when I want to, but I've realized that when I'm drinking, I am not good at life. And so recognize that if you wanna be really crushing it, you wanna be the best, then giving up that alcohol is gonna be one of the best ways for you to have better mental clarity, better physical fitness, all of those different things. 

And really understand that, hey, the best way to do this is, you wake up early in the morning, get some exercise in, plan, schedule, have a strategy, write things down always, always have a list, always have a notepad, sharpen your knives, get to work, absolutely crush it. When you get off work, go, have a cup of tea, sleep well, rest your body, and then get after it again, right? You're gonna feel so much better keeping your diet healthy, staying away from those late night Jack in the Box runs and whatever that is–whatever is in your place, Taco Bell–and understanding that all of that stuff really starts to weigh on you, like the cigarettes, everything.

And if you want to have longevity in this, you’ve got to look at the best athletes in the world. LeBron James, Steph Curry, those people, they treat their body like a fine timepiece, right? They don't treat it like a garbage can. And if you want to be good at this, you will make those sacrifices. And like either you'll make those sacrifices or your body one day will absolutely turn on you. And you will be like, “Oh, I burnt out. It's the industry's fault.” No, the industry is the industry. This industry requires sacrifice. It's not gonna change. It's already changed a lot, but at some point you have to realize even if you're working the easiest eight-hour day in a restaurant, the easiest eight-hour day in a restaurant is already gonna be 10 times more on your body than an eight-hour day at a desk. So you just have to either decide that you're gonna sacrifice and be in this game or you're not.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

I think the key is remember what we're in this for, right? Like we're not in this to bitch and complain. We're not in this to cry about what the guest did or didn't do. We do this because we love hospitality. We love making people feel good. That should be anyone, right? Like no matter who it is, whether it's someone coming in who's going to spend $5,000 on a bottle of DRC (Domaine De La Romanée-Conti) or a famous celebrity coming in, or it's someone coming in with a coupon and they're getting the two-for-one deal on restaurant week. Right? Remember that we're in this industry to make people feel good and to give people a great time. And make sure your staff remembers that as well. 

We're not doing people a favor by letting them come in our restaurants. We should value every guest and make them feel really good about our industry and what we do because this industry is really incredible. What we do for a living is really special. We get to make magic happen every night. We have to get back to a place as an industry where we understand our responsibility in the fabric of society. In the fabric of society, we create culture, we create incredible memories, we are creating beautiful communities. And we need to continue to work hard doing that.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Wow, on that note, thank you, David, thank you, Chef. Thank you for joining us today and sharing all of your experience and knowledge. I know you have plenty, plenty of more stories. Maybe there's another episode here, but looking forward to seeing you soon and excited to hear what's next.

GUEST: DAVID NAYFELD

Thank you very much.

HOST: ALICE CHENG
Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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