If you’re a fan of great stories, our episode of Forktales featuring Doc B’s Restaurant & Bar founder Craig Bernstein is for you. Craig shares tales about how a childhood meeting with Morton’s Steakhouse legend Allen Bernstein inspired his hospitality career and emotional stories about going above and beyond to make guests happy.
Also on the menu in the episode, Michael and Craig talk about slow and steady growth, the unique design of each Doc B’s location and the indispensable qualities in any good restaurant manager. Here’s a look at four questions from that episode. Check out the full interview with Craig here.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACING RESTAURANTS?
Costs continue to rise, including construction costs. Delivery versus dine in. Work from home versus coming into the office. All of those things are real challenges. When you look at the business as a whole we’re constantly competing with our neighbors and we don’t want to cut costs just to get more bodies inside the restaurant. We want to maintain our integrity, we want to maintain our value on the plate and we don’t want to trim the quality that we offer.
WHAT’S YOUR APPROACH TO GROWTH?
It’s about slow and steady growth. Not just growing for growth sake. Really trying to get great real estate, grow organically, grow from within and build the team from within. We have people on our team from day one and when you look back and see an opening line cook from our kitchen now running the kitchen of our first restaurant, you can’t beat that.
WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR JOB?
What’s fun about my job is you can have a day that’s the easiest day in the world and then you can have another day where nothing is going right.
IN TODAY’S ERA OF QUICK SERVICE, IS HOSPITALITY A DYING ART?
For me, the idea of hospitality and really going above and beyond for every guest was always really innate in the philosophy of our business. That’s why we transferred to full service. From the start of the dining experience to the middle to the end, the idea of hospitality and serving the customer was really ingrained in me.
