Video Transcript: [ Music ] >> When I was in college I wasn't enjoying being in college. I wanted to be pretty much anywhere else but school, which I don't think is unusual for a 19 year old, and I went down to New Orleans with a friend of mine because we both like to, both like to eat, we both like food, and we went to a bunch of restaurants down there. And in one of them I was asked by a French chef, you know why was I in the restaurant. I said, I told him how much I liked it, he said well you should go to France and cook with great French chefs and I said yeah, that sounds fun. My name's Andy Pforzheimer; I'm the owner of Barcelona Restaurants. I came back to school and thought you know I'd really much rather be doing that than doing what I'm doing now, and I wrote to the chef, made up my mind I was just going to go to France and throw myself on his doorstep and say teach me. >> I was a waiter, 23, 24, I decided I wanted to be in restaurant management and I picked a restaurant in New York City, Tribeca Grill, and at the time AirTran was running this deal. If you were under 25 or something you could fly for $80 to New York from Atlanta; you just show up and fly. So I flew up there for an interview, they had a management training program that I wanted to be part of and they wouldn't hire me. My name's Scott, I'm the COO for Barcelona Restaurant. And I ended up flying up on that 80 buck ticket I think 6 times just showing up and I kept coming. It ended up working out. >> So spent a lot of time talking about warm fuzzy things, emotions, things we try to convey to guests. This is technical skill. This is your ability to do your job. In the last two months it sucked. >> If you're not putting in like 150 pounds of inventory that I can't sell you. >> That's the two month period. How much is suckling pig per pound? >> I'm not sure. >> How much is one way? >> It varies from the 25 pounds to 30 pounds. >> How much does the average suckling pig cost you to come in the door? >> About $75 to $100. >> Scott, how much does suckling pig cost? >> $160. >> Thank you. All right? >> Are you saying I'm not keeping track of my prices? >> I'm saying you don't know what your prices are and that's why you have 29% food cost. >> I mean it's not fair that you can throw numbers at me right now and say that I don't watch my food cost. >> I just asked you how much a pig costs when it comes in the door. There's only three reasons costs are high. >> Yeah but that's for the past two months, because my last six months was the lowest in the company. >> I can be difficult to work for. I am very interested in having other people's opinions thrown at me. I like managers who talk back. I like people who self-start. We'll tell them when we hire people, look, this is your restaurant. When people walk in the door I don't want them looking for me, I want them looking for you. If the place does well you get all the credit. If the place does badly, it's your fault. They have to be very, very comfortable with taking complete ownership. Some of our best managers come from very highly regulated, large restaurant companies where they were told how to answer the phone and how to set a table and how to greet guests and it's all in giant books that they have to memorize. We don't do that. We attempt to hire grownups. >> We give some basic guidelines as to what our philosophy is and what our beliefs are but we have to trust them to work within those confines and make the right choice. And they might not always make the choice that I would make, sometimes they make a better one, and to give them a, to give them a correct answer to every question I think is impossible and I think it doesn't work. I think in fact you're actually limiting your ability to get better. We as a company have gotten better not because Andy's a genius, not because Sasha's a genius, not because I'm a genius. We've gotten better because we've brought in more brain power, more creativity and we've allowed people to use it, and the more you try and, the more you try and define that the more you limit it. >> Restaurants in general are not run terribly professionally and so we work hard to inject some professionalism into the restaurant industry. I always get in trouble for saying this. Most literature, including things written by people I have a lot of respect for, tend to I think fetishize the relationship with the employee, as in if you take care of your employees then they'll be happy and they'll turn around and take care of your customers. I don't believe that. We are here for the customers. We're here for the customer experience. Everything else is secondary to that. If it makes the manager's life miserable, I don't care. If it makes the waiter's life miserable, I don't care. Makes the chef miserable, I don't care. Makes me miserable, I don't care. It's a job. It's work. It is work sometimes to smile. It's work sometimes to have somebody yelling at you because they weren't seated fast enough or their steak was cooked wrong and pat them on the back and say, you know, it was our fault, I'll do everything I can, yeah that's work, it's not always fun, but we're not here to have fun. We're here so other people can have fun; that's our job. >> I think the people who stick around definitely are happy to be here. I think a lot of them have come from good companies but maybe companies that didn't focus so much on achievement and focus on taking care of the guests and focus on doing something that's just satisfying; that's why they're in the business. You're certainly not in this business to get rich. So if we can empower them to make the guests happy they're going to make money, the vibe in the restaurant's going to be a ton of fun so everybody's going to enjoy the shift and they're going to be proud of what they've done and they are happy. It's a byproduct. If I'm running around trying to make them happy, to make the guests happy, it's just not going to work.

Solely based on his position as owner of Barcelona Restaurants, Andy has

a.expert power.

b.referent power.

c.coercive power.

d.legitimate power.

Which of the following is a symbol of Andy's power?

a.He stands in front of the seated group during Wednesday meetings.

b.He wears casual clothes into the office.

c.He asks questions of Scott during meetings.

d.He meets with all the chefs and general managers each Wednesday.

By hiring people and telling them, "This is your restaurant. Run it how you see fit." Andy is sharing power through

a.political strategies.

b.intimidation.

c.empowerment.

d.coercion.

Scott claims that he and Andy present their general managers and chefs with the company philosophies and values. The chefs and GMs can then make their own decisions, which Scott claims are often

a.the cause of failure.

b.the same as his.

c.better than his.

d.ridiculous.

Replay