 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. This is a collaboration of Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office and its partners to showcase stories of local entrepreneurs and small business owners. My name is Victoria. I'm from the V-Bock of the Pacific and today I have a special guest who is a veteran, a great chef, successful entrepreneur and an owner of a hugely southern cuisine. Welcome to our show. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. So can you tell us a little bit more about your motivation to start a business? Why to be a business owner? Well, my motivation was I was at 26 years in the Navy and it was time for promotion. I was at the tail end and because I hadn't gotten promoted when I, a little sooner, it was time for me to get out. Fortunately for me though, I was selected. So I had to make a decision. I had to choose either to stay in or continue to prepare myself for the transition because at some point you'll have to separate. So I separated. Initially I planned on opening up a catering company. I went through the SBA mentorship program and got the assistance and found out what I needed to do from there and here I am. Great. So as I understand you have passion for food, right, and you are a chef. Yes. And you love cooking. Yes. So why not just be a chef? Why a business owner? Well, the business owner allows you to share your talents with more people. If they could just cook for one or two people but with the business again you get a chance to have others experience your passion through the cooking. So your business is quite interesting. It's all Southern food in Hawaii. So why Southern food and why in Hawaii? Well my grandmother had a restaurant and it was Southern cuisine. My grandmother from Cleveland really that was the only cuisine that we had. So it became natural and very easy for me to be able to emulate, duplicate some of the dishes that she made. Again I did that all my life so it was really easy for me to just continue and start that up here in Hawaii. Just felt natural. It was very, very natural. So how do you think military experience helped you in business, running a business? Did it help? It did. It did. I did 26 plus years and I was actually in the submarine community. So there was a lot of training done to prepare you to be successful in your mission. And I just took a lot of that training and carried on. Again after doing it for 26 years you don't forget all of the training that you've received. And so I was able to carry some of it into the restaurant business. So being mission focused, goal oriented? Yes. You definitely, failure is not an option you know what I mean. The restaurant business definitely is not easy, not easy at all. A lot of businesses fold within the first year. They say that if you can make it to three years you're doing something it was never even a consideration that I wouldn't make it in the past one year. So here I am now, five years, still enjoying cooking. Fantastic. So southern food, why do you think it's successful in Hawaii? It's different. Yes it's just different. A lot of times you see it on different shows, you hear people talk about it and you may not have been in an area where you got an opportunity to experience it. Living here in Hawaii with us offering more of the traditional dishes that people are maybe a little bit more familiar with makes it a little more attractive. If I did like chitlins all the time then people probably wouldn't be as attracted to those. But we keep it simple. We do more of the traditional chicken, catfish, grains, mac and cheese, candy yams that type of stuff. Yes, comfort food. So how did you come up with your business concept? So you have a restaurant, you also have food trucks, how did this idea evolve? Well it evolved again with working in my grandmother's restaurant. Not so much the management of it but just the passion, seeing how much she enjoyed cooking, how much I enjoyed eating and cooking, it was a natural transition that we strictly just focused on a restaurant the first three years. As we became proficient as things we got the right staff then we were able to expand and utilize trucks as an extension of the restaurant. So for those who would like to start a restaurant, what would you advise, where should they start from? Well I started a small business action center. It's like a one stop shop here in Hawaii where you can get information on all aspects of whatever business you intend to venture into and they were very, very helpful. Then of course I signed up for the SBA and then I got a mentor to help me to do business plans. I got a chance to talk to experts that were successful running restaurants and then I actually went and talked to other restaurant owners. A lot of times you get so overwhelmed with not knowing that you don't know and a lot of times other restaurant owners can give you some advice to help you avoid some of the pitfalls. So I talked to quite a few restaurant owners. Sometimes I was familiar with the situation that they were dealing with and other times I wasn't. But just to be able to talk to them and get honest feedback on some of the challenges that you faced was definitely very helpful. That's very smart. So you actually were doing research by talking to people who already did it, right? So who told you to do that? Was it just your idea or just feeling that you need to go out there and talk to people? I praised so much that first year. Again there were so many different things that came up. A lot of questions. It was, I mean I expected that there was going to be some things that I didn't know. Again the challenge was dealing with the things that I didn't even know that would be an issue that actually came up that I had to deal with. But definitely talking to other restaurant owners helped out quite a bit. So Business Action Center, SBA, SBDC helped you, right? Yes. What about others like accountants, lawyers? Did you have a professional team surrounding you and helping you? Well that's where I used my military affiliation as a retired service member. I was able to utilize the Navy's, the legal service center. So they reviewed some of our contracts. They couldn't necessarily always give me specific recommendations or advice but they were able to definitely provide some insight or lead me into a direction, different direction where I can get the help that I needed. So what would you say was the most challenging part? The most challenging part was the transition from the military. There's certain motivators that you have in the military. One, the punishment, loss of money. The commanding officer can give you restriction. They can prevent you from going up for advancements. There's motivators that you don't have when you're in a civilian or civilian sector and you are starting your own business. So I had to learn pretty quick that what motivates people in the civilian sector is just completely different than what motivates people that are in the military. It was a challenge at times, again because when you do 26 years that's a large chunk of time where you have just maybe experienced one type of leadership and you've always dealt with the same people. But again, once you retire, you're in the civilian sector now. So I think the first time I used some of the skills, I'll say, that I learned in the military, the staff walked out on me. I had to quit. So I was like, okay, now I'm short, people. So this is definitely not going to work trying to apply some of the leadership characteristics that I learned in the military. What do you mean by those leadership characteristics, like being strict? Yes, yes, yes, again, like I said, in the military, if you don't do what you're supposed to do, there's some consequences. You know what those consequences are. When you're not in the military, there's a different set of consequences for not only the employees but the owner. Again, if you're not sensitive just in how your approach, how your feedback, how your response is going to affect them, you pretty much potentially could be in trouble and put yourself at a disadvantage. And that's what happened to me. Like I said, two of them walked out on me. So now we short staff during the lunch period and it definitely puts you in a position where you reevaluate and potentially your approach and how you view things. So human resources is one of the biggest challenges for growing a food and beverage business, right? Staffing is always a challenge. It is. And also managing staff. Managing, again, you have to, I think in the military, they train you to be leaders. It's always upward mobility. There's always an expectation that at some point you will be in charge. Those principles and beliefs just don't transition. So what does work in civilian work? What did you learn? Most of them just want to get paid. They want to be treated fairly. They want to believe that they are part of something. But others, they just want to get paid. They want to just do their job and leave. They don't have any desire to necessarily go out of their way. They want to do the job that you required them to do and that's it. And again, that's another thing that was different from the military. So how did you learn that? Were you told by someone or you just learned by observation? That was experience. I think if you talk to restaurant owners, probably in the first year, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that they may have had over 100 staff working full. Now, when you, depending on what field you in, some people say, well, 100 people ain't nothing. For a small restaurant that's just starting out, 100 people is a lot. Tips, especially if there's your staff consists of 7 or 12 people, 100 if not more in the first year. And that's, I think that's pretty standard for the restaurant business. Sometimes you get high school students, you know, so they just transition in, they want to be a little independent, so they take the job, maybe not recognizing the true commitment. They got to catch the bus, they got to be on time, they got to do whatever they got to do to get there and that could be an inconvenience to them. Definitely staffing is one of the biggest obstacles that most restaurants, I believe, face. So the secret is paying fairly, treating them good. Yes. We've never paid minimum wage. You know, there's an opportunity for you to take a tip credit. Okay. Great. So we will take a short break and we will be back in a minute. This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. There was a new woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread and kissed them all soundly and put them to bed. Hunger is a story we can end. End it at feedingamerica.org. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pamai Weigert and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on a Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Got the click. Welcome back to Adventures in Small Business. Today we are talking about food and beverage business and how to grow your restaurant. So to continue about key challenges in food and beverage area. You mentioned human resources, managing staff is a big problem and an issue, challenge. What about financing? Well, financing is probably the most important piece. I pretty much depleted all of our savings, all of the kids' college funds to start our dream, our restaurant. We did take out a $75,000 loan through the, at the time it was a Patriot Express that was specifically set up to help military, retired military personnel. We utilize that through, there are some confusing aspects of the SBA and the different loans. Typically the SBA don't loan you money. What they do is they guarantee it. So you still have to go to what they consider to be user-friendly SBA banks and typically the SBA provides you a list of those. The bank is really critical because you can get approved but due to their processes it may still take a month, a month and a half for the funds to be released based off of internal regulations and practices. So you have to have enough funding to cover through those funds being released. In my case, I didn't have enough because I wasn't aware of the process. I had to actually borrow another $25,000 just to gap until they released the $75,000. But I was thankful and blessed that we took out it. So it was a total of $100,000 and it was supposed to be repaid in five years and we actually paid it off in two and a half years, so definitely thankful. But without the funding you won't be able to address the unexpected things that are definitely going to come out. So how to get funding? How did you manage to actually successfully get a loan? Again, through the SBA they helped with the business plan. You have to be able to show the lender that you have the ability to repay that loan. And that's where the business plan is crucial. It has your projections and those projections should be realistic, if not just because it's backed by the SBA, the bank won't loan you the money. So how did you do projections? A lot of people find it really difficult. How can you predict something that you have no experience with? Well, the funny part about ours is initially the plan was not to open up a restaurant. The plan was to open up a catering company and commercial kitchen that was to service other vendors that did not have a commercial kitchen and to allow me to do the catering. We projected that we needed to do eight caterings a month and that we had to have at least six to eight tenants utilize our facility as a commercial kitchen or a commissary as a Department of Health call. And so we used those numbers. So when we changed the plan to start a restaurant we just kept the same numbers because again they're all just projections, especially when you're dealing with the restaurant business. But the catering I didn't have to have an inventory so a lot of the cost wasn't built in to my plan or the business plan, the first one anyway. So you got the money and then you used the money for a restaurant? I did. I had to tell them that we were shifting. But we had already been approved and we made some minor changes to our projections, included the scope of what we were going to be doing and had approved. Congratulations on that. Thank you. So all these financial projections, balance sheet, income statement, was that all familiar to you when you started or how did you learn all of that? Well, when you get a loan, they require you to provide monthly financial documents, which is your profit and loss in your balance statement. And that was one of the motivators to paying them off early, having to get them together every month. But it was excellent as far as making you aware what your true financial status was, whether you were, you know, and for us, we were in the negative. We had some vendors that the food cost just was way, way too high. So putting together the financials each month kind of allowed us to see that, hey, we need to potentially make some changes in order for us to be profitable. So it's actually really useful to keep track of your numbers. It's not just for a banker. It is. It is. It's very important. And you have to be aware so that you can make the necessary changes. So we talked about human resources, financing. What about some legal requirements, regulations? Did you have any problems with that? Because of the space that we took over, it was previously a restaurant. So the permits that we had to get, I think, were considered minor. But I understand that that process can be very challenging to get your plans reviewed. So you have to, again, that's why it's so important to have finances to be able to be able to continue to operate while you're waiting on plans to be approved by the city and county. The Department of Health provided step by step instructions on how you can open up a restaurant, have a kiosk, start a food truck. So and they have course staff there on site that can help you and answer any questions that you have. So there are a lot of resources. There are a lot. I took advantage of any and every resource that I possibly could. That's great. So you're a great example for people who want to start a business for sure. Thank God. What about marketing? So if you don't have people coming in, your business can't be successful. So how did you market yourself? Well, I think that our marketing strategy was a little different. One, we were completely different from a lot of the restaurants. I think there were actually five other restaurants that were already open that provided some type of southern or so food. So we just became the six. But there's over two thousand something restaurants just on Oahu. So we the market wasn't necessarily saturated. Our focus was just to provide the best experience and the best food that we could and be consistent with. And then we didn't have any money for no marketing. So we really relied on word of mouth to help the business grow. It was important that we address the issues while the customers was there and try to satisfy any concerns that they had. Because we knew I realized that that would go a long way and them helping with our market. So to sum up, what do you think are the key elements to successful business and to successful food and beverage business? Well, for me, pray. I think that I don't think I know. I pray so much because I had so many questions. The military helped me with some of the focus. They exposed me to opportunities to make mistakes at the government expense. And so when I transitioned, I was able to minimize a lot of the mistakes, but also just having the willingness to ask questions, share with people when you don't know. There's a lot of people that's willing to help. You just have to let them know that you need some help. So the willingness to act and ask for help. Definitely. So where can we find you if you would like to try your food? I am at 99-080 Kahala Street. And I am. Well, thank you very much. I definitely would like to try your food someday. So you're probably going to see me in the future. And thank you, everyone, for watching Adventures in Small Business. This was Victoria from VBock and Ken. Stay tuned for more adventures every Thursday, 11 o'clock.