David SenraLessons on Building Carbone, ZZ's & a Restaurant Empire | Jeff Zalaznick
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
105 min read · 21,386 words- 0:00 – 3:16
Seventy-Seven Restaurants, Seventy-Six Still Winning
- DSDavid Senra
[upbeat music] I wanna start the conversation with one of the craziest stats I ever heard. You've started seventy-seven restaurants and bars, and seventy-six are still operating and profitable.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay. Can you tell us about the one that we're sitting in right now?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So right now we're sitting in one of my favorites. This is The Pool we're sitting in right now, which is probably the most historic restaurant in America. You know, it was originally opened in 1959, um, built in 1959 by the Seagram family. And at the time, these were the two most over-the-top luxurious restaurants ever built. And they were designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, one who was the most famous architect at the time, and one who was soon to become the most famous architect of his time. And this room we're sitting in today is one of the only interior landmarks in America. In fact, it's the only interior landmark restaurant in America, where we had to restore this entire room to what it was in 1959 when we took over about eight years ago. So what you have here is you have the most incredible restaurant history, and, you know, we've been able to be the custodians of that history and take it into kind of the new next generation. But that pool behind us has been sitting here since, you know, 1959, and we've really just brought it back to life.
- DSDavid Senra
So tell me about what you had to do to restore it. Like, what, what was... Who owned it and, like, how did you come into ownership of this? Because you knew about this place when you were, what, thirteen?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in New York City. If you grew up in New York City and you cared in any way, but like you, I was obsessed with restaurants and food and what I do today for a living since I was a child. You know, I was watching cooking shows when I was ten on PBS, uh, you know, before there was any cooking channels or anything like that. And I was, you know, aware of what was going on in, you know, in the big picture of New York restaurants. And if there was any restaurant that you would know of as like, "One day I wanna go there," it was The Four Seasons, which is not related in any way to the hotel. The original Four Seasons was a restaurant, which is where we're sitting right now. This was called The Four Seasons. That was called The Grill Room. This was called The Pool Room-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... which is where we're sitting right now. And, um, that was really the most kind of incredible aspirational restaurant that you would wanna go to that, you know, you would have a chance to go to maybe, you know... I had a chance to go there for a, I think I came here and actually sat in this corner for, uh, like my grandmother's seventy-fifth birthday or something like that.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
You know, this was a place that you would come for, you know, major special events. In, in my case, you know what I mean. A- or, you know, if you were one of the kings of New York, you would be having lunch in The Grill every day, and that was really where power lunch was invented, right? So there's, there's a huge history of, you know, both what this restaurant means in terms of food, because it does have an incredible and interesting history in terms of food, being the first restaurant that ever had seasonal ingredients, the first American restaurant that ever wrote their menus in English, right, versus in French.
- DSDavid Senra
Wait,
- 3:16 – 4:41
The First American Menu Written In English
- DSDavid Senra
tell me about that.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So this restaurant in 1959, before this, you know, place opened, anything that was fancy and expensive was French, and you would go to fancy French restaurants, and the menu would be written in French. The Four Seasons was the first restaurant where that was written in English, and so this was the really the first example of American fine dining. It was the first time that American as a cuisine was actually thought of and celebrated. So it didn't exist before then. There was no such thing, right? American was a hamburger and fries, right? It didn't exist in terms of the luxury fine dining world. And so this was revolutionary in that sense, and it was a guy named Joe Baum, who was a great restaurateur of his time, the best restaurateur of his time, and someone who, you know, I've always looked up to, um, and we've always studied his process, who, you know, came up with this creation and created this place. And it was also the first restaurant where the design, you know, was, was equally, at the time, important to the actual restaurant. So the food was something that was new and spectacular. It introduced the ideas of seasonality. It introduced the ideas of foraging. It introduced the ideas of American cuisine. You know, the list goes on of how many things were created in this room.
- DSDavid Senra
The stuff that's still talked about today originated back then.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
This was the first place.
- 4:41 – 9:49
JFK's Cream Of Asparagus
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So, you know, when we took over, right, JFK had his birthday party here. You know, the famous birthday party before he went to the Garden and Marilyn Monroe came out of the cake.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
He ate asparagus soup up there.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Okay? So, so the story goes that-
- DSDavid Senra
Was Marilyn here?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Marilyn, it, it, it's unknown.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
But the, uh... No.
- DSDavid Senra
She's upstairs.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right. She was... [laughs] Who knows? But, um, but you know, I don't know if you saw in the kitchen, we have a quote from JFK, but the reason for that is because, you know, he famously loved this room, and he famously had his big birthday where she jumped out of the cake in Madison Square Garden. He had the dinner here.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And he was so busy walking around talking to people, as you can imagine, you know, that he, he didn't get a chance to eat. And so he actually went up to this... This room didn't exist up there. That was a storage room, right? And where they would-- some people would hide and do whatever they needed to do. And, um, we've now opened it up and made this beautiful lounge up there. But before that, when we took it over, it was just a storage room. Those doors were all closed. And famously, he kinda snuck in there, and his favorite thing to eat was cream of asparagus soup. So he said to the kitchen, "Make me a cream of asparagus." They said, "Of course, Mr. President, whatever you want." And so he ate this cream of as- asparagus soup, so we actually had an ode to that dish on the menu, uh, that we still run depending on, you know, the CD actually will come back now in spring, um, called Jack's Pie, which is a cream of asparagus pie that we make to, in a, as an o- to honor that, uh, that moment that happened here. But there's, there's so many moments that happened here. That may be one of the most famous and public, but so many incredible moments happened in this building that you have to understand that when I came in and, you know, we were able to take over this restaurant, it was... This was something that was beyond your wildest dreams. It was an institution that you never thought would change, right? Because i- it just, you couldn't even penetrate your brain that no matter how successful you had become in restaurants, like this, this was run by two guys that had been handed it down years ago, you know, after Joe Baum, et cetera, two, two of his, uh, guys that worked there took over. They handed it down to two other guys. Um, those two guys, unfortunately, they kinda ran it into the ground, right? They didn't reinvest any money in it. They basically were using it, you know, kind of as their own cash machine ge- which was just not reinvesting. This is a giant facility that needs a lot of upkeep, a lot of cleaning [laughs] , a lot of re- you know, restoration at all times.
- DSDavid Senra
I don't think you discussed this publicly, but we talked about just the revenue from these two rooms alone would make it... If, if this was just the only business, it would make it a substantial sized business.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, I mean, listen, th- this, this business, because you have what is The Pool, which is probably, you know, the most famous event space, um, in New York for the last, you know, half a century, right? And then you have The Grill, which, you know, was most famously known, you know, not only for, for its architecture and for the fact that it was where Power Lunch was founded. So conversations like these all happened for the last 60 years in that room next door. And where you were placed in that room and where you sat in that room was all very significant to your status, and it was written about in the Post or pa- hey, where you sat. Oh my God, they saw so-and-so in Siberia the other day. What happened? Maybe he's getting fired. Whatever it might be, that was a, that was a-
- DSDavid Senra
What's Siberia?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Siberia was the second level up the stairs where you never wanted to be sat, or you were thrilled to get sat 'cause you were just finally let in, right? You know what I mean? So you would work your way up, and based on who you were and what you did, you know, you would... They would allocate the booths and the main tables, and then the second floor was always called Siberia, and that was always very public. It was always where people were seated and what was going on. And you know, one of the things that we did when we came in here, which has given this new life, you know, and we were... You know, first of all, the process to get this place was, was a, a crazy process, right? So the pla- this building, which was the Z- the Seagram building, as I said, you know, desi- the building's designed by Mies van der Rohe. These interiors, uh, were designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. The Seagram family obviously built the building and, you know, paid for these restaurants to be built. Later it was bought by A.B. Rosen. A.B. Rosen, um, you know, still owns it today, and he was so frustrated with the way that the guys who were here, even though they, they had been here for 20-plus years, um, these two, um, he was so frustrated with the way, as a great lover of the arts that he is and of architecture, he was so frustrated with the way that they were keeping it up that h- he decided that he wanted to get rid of them because they wouldn't... They, he would come, the place was full of dust. It w- it, it was, it had really been run down.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, you were telling me in the other room that the panels, which are like, what, gray or white-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, these are, so they're gray-
- 9:49 – 13:32
Fifty Years Of Smoke, Forty Million To Restore
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, but the-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
When we took them over, they were black, right? Because no one had ever cleaned them, so they had 50 years of cigarette and cigar smoke-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... that had accumulated, and no one in 50 years had ever thought to go clean the tiles.
- DSDavid Senra
How much did you spend on restoring this place?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
We spent about 40-plus million dollars.
- DSDavid Senra
That's incredible.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, so we, we took basically this, this is a... You have the Grill Room and private rooms. You have The Pool. You have The Pool Lounge. Downstairs we have another restaurant called The Lobster Club, and we obviously rebuilt a beautiful first-class kitchen. The kitchen hadn't been redone since 1959, so you couldn't run a super high-end restaurant to our standards without rebuilding the entire kitchen. And so we put in what may be the nicest kitchen in New York, if not one of them, um, you know, not only to be able to do what we do, which is a combination of serving the best food to diners in an à la carte setting at The Grill, but also to be able to put out what is, you know, I think second to none in terms of events, right? So if you have a 200-person dinner in the room we're sitting in here right now, when you get your Dover sole, it's gonna taste like the best Dover sole you've had as if you ordered it just sitting with you and me, right? It's hot. It's perfect. The food here is what we are known for. No one is able to do large scale events the way that we are here at the quality level we are here.
- DSDavid Senra
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- 13:32 – 16:17
One Text: "Four Seasons?"
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So we got the opportunity because there was a rumor in Page Six that Abe Rosen's gonna throw out the guys at The Four Seasons, okay? I was sitting on a plane with my partner, Mario. We, we were reading the post like we always would, right? You know, this is now ten years ago. So we've got the post, we're on the plane, and, uh, and Mario-- and he says to me like, "Do you see this?" And I said like, "Can't be possible." Like, you know what I mean? It was one of those things that couldn't-- It was such an institution that you couldn't believe that this could be happening. So I knew Abe a little bit. Um, you know, we were friendly, and we had a-- you know, I had his number in my phone, but we didn't talk all the time or anything, so I just-- I said, "It's worth a shot," and I texted him. I said-- texted him, you know, "Four Seasons?" question mark. And, uh, he wrote me right back like, "Let's discuss ASAP." So we were actually on our way back to New York. I literally went from the plane to his office, which is-- was at the time across the street from where we are now. And I said like, "What's going on with this?" He's like, you know, I, I, I-- He, you know, "I'm getting rid of these guys. The, the- they've let the place go to shit," and, uh, you know, "I'm gonna basically..." He basically decided he was gonna run, because of the significance of this place, his own RFP process, like a city process, but he was doing it personally, which fits very much with his personality, which I loved. He was gonna run his own RFP process for different operators to come in. So we ended up in what was like, you know-- This was, for us at the time, a huge jump. So, you know, our-- my company's only existed for fifteen years, right? So this is now-- We go back eight, nine years ago. So, you know, we didn't have half the amount of restaurants we have today. We had some great successes, and we were definitely the up-and-coming group.
- DSDavid Senra
What was your biggest success? Like, what were you most well-known for at the time that you were bidding on this place?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Carbone.
- DSDavid Senra
Carbone?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So Carbone was our first real big success.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right? You know, that was the-- That was opened in two thousand thirteen, and that put us on the map on a large scale. And from there, we went on to open a variety of other restaurants that were all successful. And then this opportunity came about, and so we were competing for this space. I mean, everyone want-- This was every restaurateur's dream. So everyone we were competing against was, you know, e- e- was-- has been w- established for twenty-plus years in the restaurant business, all the best people that existed in New York at that time. And at the end of the day, you know, we, we successfully convinced Abe that we were the guys to go with.
- DSDavid Senra
How do you think you
- 16:17 – 19:13
Always Bet On Who Wants It Most
- DSDavid Senra
did that?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I think that, you know, Abe was the r- he was the perfect person to be in control of this because he understood me. He understood us. He understood what we did. He understood in betting on the kinda future of what restaurants could be versus going with the institution, right? Because he was gonna end up with another couple old guys that were doing, you know, things they had done before, and it was gonna be something stale. And I think he appreciated our energy, you know? You know what I mean? And our energy and our thought process and the fact that, you know, our process already had been established, you know, as people who really cared about New York. You know, our company's deeply grounded in New York, deeply grounded in New York history, and we consider ourselves all students of, you know, New York history and New York restaurants. So this had a huge meaning to us, and the appreciation of the history of this place, combined with the best ideas and the best menu and the best food and whatever we put in front of him, he decided that he was gonna partner with us to do this.
- DSDavid Senra
There, there's a couple things like I, uh-- This is obvious from speaking to you, and I see this with anybody who gets to the top of their profession. You have this like crazy database like of your entire industry's history in your head that comes out in conversations, and you tell these beautiful stories about it. But also it's like blatantly obvious that you're very passionate about this, and I would say like passion is infectious. And I wonder like-- Obviously, I think you express that to everybody you interact with. You definitely expressed it to this guy. You know Josh Kushner, right?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Very well.
- DSDavid Senra
He has a great quote that I always think about that I think is dead right, and he's just like, "You know, if it comes down to picking the most experienced person or the smartest person or the person that wants it the most, you always bet on the person that wants it the most." I wonder if that was the sit- the situation here.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
There's no question about it. That was always our thing was that we were gonna win no matter what. And we went about things that way, and we still do to this day, which is, you know, rare in my business that people-- You know, we, we literally did something like this last week. But, you know, what we would... You know, if they asked us to put in front of them X, Y, and Z, we put that with whipped cream and cherries on top in a hundred different variations for them to be like, "Holy shit." You know what I mean? Like, and I think that same thing resonated, to your point. It resonated with, uh, with AV that we were gonna be the best possible group. We were gonna-- This meant the most to us and that, you know, we would be truly what we said we would be, which is custodians of what is the greatest restaurant space in New York. And the concepts that we developed here and how, how would you bring this-- The biggest thing that-- The biggest, the biggest breakthrough that I had that I believe ended us, us up here was the biggest counterintuitive one, right? Which is always how it works, right? So everyone else, inc-including potentially him at the time,
- 19:13 – 24:00
Kill Lunch To Own Dinner
- JZJeff Zalaznick
it was such an institution that you never even contemplated that this room, The Grill, which is, you know, now one of our busiest restaurants, one of the busiest restaurants in New York as far as it pertains to fine dining, that it would ever be anything but this power lunch thing. It's been power lunch for sixty years. It's been power lunch since m-my parents were children. Just to put in-- Okay, that's how long this has been power lunch. So what-- The first thing that I said was, "We're not serving lunch. We're only opening for dinner because the truth is that restaurants can't be successful serving lunch."
- DSDavid Senra
Why?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
No one drinks.
- DSDavid Senra
Cheers, by the way.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Cheers.
- DSDavid Senra
Thanks for, thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Of course. Thank you for being here.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, of course.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So, you know, basically, what we did was we said, "We're not even gonna open for lunch," 'cause we need to reestablish this as the place you wanna be for dinner. We already know that history has told us it's gonna be a great place for lunch. It's in the center of, you know, Midtown, and it's, uh, obviously a very convenient room, and it's got provenance as the most powerful dining room to eat lunch in. We need to do that for dinner. And how do I do that for dinner? I don't open for lunch immediately, right? And I think that resonated with him greatly, right? Because I, I said to do the types of numbers we're talking about, this needs to be a dinner restaurant, not a lunch restaurant. Lunch restaurants don't make money. And so that was a big rebranding of what we did here. We kept the name The Grill, right? But renamed it that versus The Four Seasons, which obviously at this point in time had become quite confusing given the rise of the hotel.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, that's important. It has nothing to do with the hotel.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right, it has nothing to do with it. While they were building the Four Seasons restaurant, you know, he was opening Four S- original Four Seasons in Canada, you know, that in Toronto. But I mean, nothing to do with one another. But huge confusion all the time. You know, people would say, "Meet me at the Four Seasons." People would show up here versus the bar at the, that people used to hang out at in Fifty-Seventh Street. We rebranded it as The Grill. We made it a true dinner destination. We took the history and the heritage, which you'll see throughout all of our work of, you know, what it meant to be a quintessential American restaurant. How do we interpret that? We went back into the history books. We only served dishes at this restaurant that you could have ordered. Obviously, not the way we make them, but you could have ordered. We have seen them on a menu in our menu research in nineteen fifty-nine, and we built a menu around that, and that turned out to be an incredible project and probably my favorite restaurant that we have because of all this incredible history. But it also informs and kind of tells a story about our process in general, which, you know, which always deals with, you know, huge amounts of research, you know, studying, reading, going to the New York Public Library archives when we were young and, and still doing this and, and pulling old menus and pulling old articles to learn about, you know, what was going on there, to read those articles, things that weren't even available, you know, online at the time or even at all, I don't know now. But, um, to really find out what's at the core of this concept that we're doing and what is the story that we're telling. Because I think the one thing that, you know, we've done, um, and that my biggest contribution to probably the restaurant business is that we made sure that from day one, that we had a very specific process, right? One was that, you know, food was paramount. The food had to be the best. That's the thesis of our company, Major Food Group. It's all food is number one. But n-not too far behind are two other things. One is that the restaurant has to tell a complete story, and if it doesn't tell a complete story, then it doesn't work. And the right behind that is that it's gotta be fun.
- DSDavid Senra
Before we get to fun, tell me how a restaurant tells a story.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So a restaurant tells a story because we set a narrative. It's no different than, uh, we often compare it to making a movie. If we're right here in the place we're sitting, right, we're telling a story of, you know, American fine dining seen through our lens while paying homage to the time period the building was built in and all the history that had happened before it, as we, you know, create a menu and a service style and uniforms and music and artwork and all the different things that go into creating hospitality spaces, but are often overlooked. We make sure that that entire story makes sense. So, you know, whether it's the chair you're sitting in right now, like this chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe in nineteen fifty-nine. We had it remade by the same people. The
- 24:00 – 29:37
The Only Thing That Matters Is If They Come Back
- JZJeff Zalaznick
things that you might not even notice as a customer, but subconsciously they have an effect on you, and consciously different things have different effects on different people. Some people may talk about how amazing their server was and how it was to interact with their captain. Some people may talk about the soundtrack that was playing. Some people may talk about the artwork that was on the walls. Most people hopefully are talking about how great the food was and how great a time they had. And in my business, the only thing that's Even relevant is the most important thing, which is are, are they coming back? I always tell everyone that works for us, it's not a matter of if they come, because anywhere we would open, you know, everyone's gonna come and try a new restaurant. All that matters is that a, a customer's gonna come back. That's what you need to look at and measure, because coming once is easy. You could open a restaurant tomorrow, you know, and everyone will come once, right? Anyone can do that, right? You know what I mean? But it's how the-- will they come back? How often will they come back? Is it where they're gonna choose to have special moments, special occasions?
- DSDavid Senra
This is key though, 'cause we, we talked about this when you and I had dinner a few weeks ago.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And y- what I admire is like I'm o- I'm obsessed with people that do things for a long period of time. 'Cause, like, anybody can succeed for a year-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... for five years. It's like you've been doing it for fifteen years. You're at the top of your game. Your, your, I, y- your, your... I think your future success is gonna be much greater than what's behind you. But you were even saying it's like e- that's even more true in the restaurant business. Can you explain why?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, because I mean, listen, the restaurant business, especially in today's day and age, is, you know, it, it's a trendy business, right? And everyone wants to try something that's new, right? You know what I mean? And everyone's excited to go to an opening, everyone's excited to go to a place for the first time to say that they went here. But the big question is, after they've done that, after they've checked that off their list, after they've taken their Instagram photo to prove they went to this place and whatever else, which is, you know, we could talk, is a whole other topic, but do they still wanna come back, spend money with you, right? And feel good about the money that they spent when they left, right? Because at the end of the day, that's what we're, we're in the business of providing people with an incredible evening, right? We're, we're here to entertain you, we're here to delight you, we're here to feed you, and we're here for you really to walk out with a smile on your face, feeling like, "When's the next time I can come back? When's the next time I can get a reservation?" I always say the perfect thing is someone that comes to the desk and makes a reservation on the way out for the next time they're gonna come. That's one of the many factors that makes this business so hard, especially in New York. There are so many restaurants. There are so many seemingly great restaurants that are-- you're reading about every day that are opening, that you wanna try, and you wanna go to this one, and you wanna go to that one. So how do you become something that people are coming back to all the time, that becomes something that people, you know, identify with a place they wanna gather for business, for pleasure, and you know, also for special occasions, but all the time. You know what I mean? And on a regular basis. And I think that, you know, we have a great blend of that, right? We have a great blend of, you know, the demand, you know, all of our regulars that are consistently coming back to many of our properties, you know, once a week or more, and people that have been trying to get in for months at a time and are there for their first time, and hopefully, they can't wait to make their next reservation to come back. That's the critical piece. You, you'll, you'll, you know... They have a statistic, right? We've all heard it, you know. Nine out of ten restaurants close within the first year of their, uh, being open. That's like the famous rule of thumb, and many restaurants have a great first three months, and then no one shows up again. But that, you know, that, that's, that's historically probably what has plagued the most restaurants throughout time.
- DSDavid Senra
Hearing you speak, this is-- What comes to mind is there's this great quote that Steve Jobs said towards the end of his life. He says: The older I get, the more I think, uh, that people's motivations on what they're doing matters. It's like becomes more important. Where you have this obsession when you're a thirteen-year-old kid about being obsessed with food, but now you have restaurants may be higher status. There's, like, celebrity restaurateurs. There's celebrity chefs. So I can't help but wonder if, like, the people that you see coming into this are doing it, you said, you know, for the- their mo- their motivations and why they're doing it are completely different than yours. Do you see that as well?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. I mean, I think that, to your point, what we were talking about, right? My generation, myself and my partners, Rich and Mario, like, w- when we came in and started coming up with our own restaurants, right? You know what I mean? That was kind of the last generation of, you know, of people that were doing this solely based on blind passion for this business. It was the only thing that, you know, we could imagine doing. And, you know, it's the type of thing that, you know, if you love this business, it is, you know, by, you know, by math, like the hardest business you could go into. But if you love it and if you're passionate about it, and you study it, and you do the work that's necessary, which is critical, you have a chance of being successful, and you have a chance of creating really special places that you're proud of and that you love sharing with people. And that's truly the essence of hospitality, right? You know, we love to bring people together and serve them great food and have, you know, make people happy, and have them have a great time, and leave with a big smile on their face. And we w-
- 29:37 – 36:39
Going Viral Isn't The Same As Being Good
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That brings us great joy. I think that for better or worse, what's happened is that with the rise of social media, with the rise of, you know, Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, it did two things, right? You know, so two things happened. First, you had food TV going back twenty years, right? I mean, that started the whole idea of celebrity chefs, celebrity restaurateurs, et cetera, right? So now cooking became cool, right? And cooking was in the spotlight, and people were watching Food Network. And then the internet started, and you had, you know, websites and blogs and all these different food content. And then, you know, obviously, now we're living in an extreme where you have viral, you know, food-related content on all these platforms. And the thing is, is that now to have a line around the block, right? You don't necessarily have to be even making something that's that good. It just has to go viral. Right? And that lasts a, a pretty finite period of time. There's very few examples of this food that went viral that be- you know, that went for years, right? It might go for six months, it might go for four months, it might go for a year, but it's very rare that that happens. And in that, the whole... All those things combined turn the restaurant business and restaurateurs into a much more glamorous business, right? When I came in, it was not a glamorous business. It was a business that people were like, "Why on earth would you go into that business?"
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right? Like, "Are you crazy? You know, you're gonna be broke. You're not gonna... There's nine out of 10 are gonna fail. You're not gonna have any chance of success." But they didn't know what's going on in my head or my partner's heads and what, what, what we believed and knew we could do from the beginning. Now that it has become more glamorous and you have all these other, not only people that wanna go into it, right, but you have another reason for customers to come. You have different entry points. You know what I mean? That didn't exist before. People see it as, you know, are, are saying, "Let me try to create something that's gonna go viral," not something, "Let, let me create the best version of this product because I have a great passion for it. Here's the history of it, and here's how we're gonna do it, and here's why it's gonna be the best version of that that's ever been done."
- DSDavid Senra
They don't even know the history.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
They don't know the history, and the history for them does not matter because all that matters to them is how does it look on my Instagram, and how does it look on my... And how is it gonna catch on, right? And that's just a totally different approach. That being said, you know, everyone always says, "Well, do you have... Do you not like that?" No, I love it for me because the other side of that is that you have a much more educated consumer who's much more interested in spending their money on food and beverage than ever before. So we benefit greatly. Some people looked at it, I think, the wrong way. When, when that all, when that all started, you know, however many years ago, you know, restaurateurs would talk to each other, hospitality people would talk to each other. They'd say, they'd say, you know, "Oh, I mean, now everyone's a food critic." You know, like, "Oh, you know, how do we deal with this? Everyone's a food critic." And I'm like, "This is fantastic." Like, you know what I mean? And everyone's like, "Why?" I don't even have Instagram to this day. I don't even know what goes on on it. But what I know is that if these people wanna come and wait in line and wait months for reservations to come to my restaurant, and sometimes only to just take a picture of a dish, that's an incredible shift of things. These are not cheap dishes, right? You know what I mean? So I'm not selling a, a bagel and a donut. You know what I mean?
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I'm selling expensive meals, and if that's gonna drive people's willingness not only to spend on it, but also it does drive their awareness and their understanding of food. Because naturally, if you're looking at food content all day, you understand it better than if you didn't, right? So we have a more informed customer, right? Some of them are there for the... You know, just, just to take the picture, but many of them are there for bo- also to enjoy incredible experiences because they've tried all these different ones because they've become more engaged with food and beverage and more comfortable with it being something you spend money on. And I think that's probably the biggest thing that happened during my career, was that right when I really started and right when we opened kind of Carbone and things started to explode for us, um, you know, food truly kind of joined the rest of culture as one of the significant things, right? So, you know, if you were growing up in New York, there... People would talk about, you know, just Broadway shows and ballet and dance and sports and, you know. Restaurants became another form of cultural currency. It was something that if you were a cultured, sophisticated person, you need to know about restaurants. You need to talk about it. It became a topic of every, "Where'd you eat last night? What'd you have? Oh my God, I wanna try that." None of that really existed at the level that it did before, even when we, we started, and then that's just now been amplified to a level that is, you know, exponential and hard to even measure at this point, you know, when you add in all these new ways that people share their experiences.
- DSDavid Senra
I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what AppLovin has done with their advertising platform. AppLovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. AppLovin allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin ads are full-screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water, and you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal, and AppLovin achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and AppLovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased their revenue by millions. So you wanna get started quickly before all of your competitors are on AppLovin, and you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com. Okay, I wanna go to h- your unconventional path to break into the industry, this industry you were obsessed with since you were a kid.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Let's go back to, I think, your what? Early 20s?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Can you just tell us, like, what was going on in your life at this time? You even had a different job, if I remember correctly.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And then you, you take a very unconventional and risky decision to quit your normal job and-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes
- DSDavid Senra
... talk about the path that you actually, how you got into restaurants.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I was, you know-
- 36:39 – 41:47
Watching Cooking Shows Instead Of Cartoons
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Strangely obsessed with food and restaurants from a very young age. You know, I was, I was... You know, while other kids were watching cartoons, I was watching cooking shows. Okay? At that time, the only cooking show was available on PBS. It was a show called The Frugal Gourmet.
- DSDavid Senra
The Frugal Gourmet?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes. There was, like, one cooking show that was on after school, that's what I would be watching. So my whole life was always focused around food. You know, in high school I went to cooking school. I took a semester that I went to cooking school. So it was always an incredible focus of mine. Now, at that time, I could never imagine that this thing that I love to do so much, eating, cooking, drinking, bringing people together, having a great time, that, that's what I enjoyed to do. It's still what I enjoy to do today. It was hard for me to even really realize, because I liked doing it so much, that that could actually be what I would do with my life. 'Cause at that time, it was a hobby, and that's how people looked at it. You know, oh, you love to cook? That's great. Okay. You know what I mean? Whatever it might be. My first job was at, uh, out of college, was at J.P. Morgan as an investment banking analyst. And, uh, I worked there in the, uh, technology, media, and telecom group. That experience very quickly made me realize I don't care whether this is the hi- I only took the j- I didn't, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that if I could get this job, just on paper, it was the highest paying job out of college.
- DSDavid Senra
And very popular, higher status.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
But it was a very simple equation. It was like, I'm not sure what, you know, I don't know what, but if it is the highest paying job and I can get one, let me go do that.
- DSDavid Senra
You're how old at this time?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I'm 21 years old. I had never even opened an Excel spreadsheet. You know, I didn't go to business school, so I didn't know any of this. But, so I went to J.P. Morgan, and they basically, you know, they, they basically teach you. It's, like, it's like, it's an amazing thing. It's like a free business school. You go there for the first six months, and they teach you how to do everything, which was actually, you know, very beneficial to me. But, um, but I very quickly realized when I was in the, uh, office, you know, I started to realize, you know, there was something a little bit different about... You know, every guy, all the other analysts around me would be reading The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. I'm sitting there reading, like, Travel + Leisure Magazine and then, like, weird cooking magazines. And everyone's looking at me like, "What's wrong with this guy?" And I also realized the power of restaurants. It w- there was two things that happened. One was, you know, because I was so obsessed, I would go out. T- this is before you could even... You know, you, you would use a Zagat guide to find the great restaurants in New York, and I had memorized the guide, right? So the guide was memorized. So, like, a game I used to play would be, like, someone would open the guide, and I- they'd name a restaurant in New York, and I'd tell you the rating. It was 24, 26, 40... You know, it's not, it went up to 30. But, [laughs] um, that was, like, that was a fun game for me. Name a random restaurant, I'll tell you the rating. I memorized this guide. And I had... You know, so I wanted to try all these great restaurants. That was the bible of New York restaurants, you know, 25 years ago. That's how everyone figured out what restaurants they were gonna go to. And basically, I found two things out. One was, you know, because I had this incredible passion, and I nat- it was natural for me. It was natural for me to be in restaurants. It was natural the way I felt when I went to restaurants. It was natural the way I got along with, you know, the people who worked in restaurants, which is its own culture. Like, you know, the, whether it was, uh, waiters, whether it was the chefs, whether it was the restaurateurs or the owners, these were the people I got along with, you know? Like, we understood each other. So I would spend time, and all my time that I could outside of work, which was not that, much of that time, but, you know, trying this place or trying that place and spending all the money that I was making to go to try these restaurants and, you know, try every single thing that I possibly could in the amount of time that I had. Two things happened. One was that I realized the power of restaurants because, you know, because I went to these places, because I s- I had become friendly with a lot of restaurateurs at that time, you know, I realized that the greatest currency I had, you know, was that I could get, you know, my senior, you know, the managing directors that everyone was, like, afraid to talk to, suddenly I was helping them get dinner reservations, and they, like, thought I was the great... You know, it was, it was the craziest thing, you know, that I could get them into Nobu or wherever it was at the time. Like, they thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened to them. So I started to see, like, there's something here, like, you know, the, the, the, the currency of restaurants and it had already started, you know what I mean? Of people, these impossible tables, and being able to access them and what that meant to people and what they'd do and, you know, to have those great experiences that were out there. I started to see that, and at the same time I started to see, you know, when you look up to the top of your job or wherever you're working, and you look at the guy who is the top guy, the guy making the most money, you know, and you're the guy who you're obviously gonna try to be like and this is what you're gonna do.
- 41:47 – 43:21
The Men At The Top Were Miserable
- JZJeff Zalaznick
These guys were miserable, right? And I was like, "I cannot do this." I kinda realized very quickly that there w- A, this was not... I don't wanna be like that guy. I wanna be like that guy that I met last night in the restaurant. And on top of that, I'm never going to be the best at this. I can be the best. I don't know yet what it is, but in- s- as long as it's something that has food and people surrounding it, whether it be restaurants, hotels, or otherwise. So I walked out of my job on my birthday in my second year, which is a two-year program, so it was right before that was coming to a close. It was in August. And, um, right at that point I said, "You know what? I ha- I've had enough of this. I gotta go do something around hospitality and food and beverage." And it was still so crazy of an idea To go into the restaurant business that I didn't even take that. I went and go- went to go work in a hotel, which seems a little less crazy, right? And I mean, like, so I walked from, from literally a few blocks from here. At the time, you, you know, you can cha- he puts it into perspective, the timing, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Columbus Circle had just opened, right? And the Mandarin Oriental was, at the time when my Travel + Leisure I was reading, the most expensive hotel to ever open, right? And it was like the crown jewel of New York and, you know, everyone... It was, it was a big deal because it opened with Columbus Circle, and it was, it was, it was a big, big deal.
- 43:21 – 49:40
Walking Into The Mandarin To Beg For Any Job
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So I walked into the hotel to, uh, to try to get a job, right? And so I went to the front desk, and they were like, "Well, we don't give jobs here. You gotta go to, like, the service entrance in the back." And I was like, "Oh, okay." You know what I mean? "So how do I get there?" "Oh, walk around the thing." So I walked around the thing. I ended up, you know, going in and say, "I'm looking for a, a job." And they're like, "Do you have an appointment?" No. I was on my lunch break. And I said, "No, but I'm in my suit. I'm from J.P. Morgan. I, you know, I..." And, uh, and they said, "Well, you know, you gotta come back with an appointment." I said, "Well, you know, please just do me a favor." You can see the guy, the HR dir- you know, it's one of those, like, half walls. You know, like the half walls, like from like a show-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... like where, like, you could see the person in the office, um, through the glass. So he was, like, in one of these classic, like, HR cubicles where you kinda see what was going on. And, uh, and I said, "Could you..." He was, like, that far away from me. So I was like, "Can you, could you just ask him, um, you know, tell him that I'm here, that I'm an investment banker at J.P. Morgan, and that I will take any job in this hotel that he will give me." He thinks I'm out of my fucking mind, and I get up and I leave, and I remember going, walking back to work. I remember calling someone and saying like, "I don't think that went so well, but, um, we'll see what happens." You know, 'cause he, he kinda was like, "Yeah, well, you know, we'll see. Nothing's available." Let alone the next day, my phone rings and, um, it's the head of HR at the Mandarin Oriental, and he says, "Hey, you know, um, it was nice meeting you yesterday. We just had the head of guest relations quit. Do you wanna take that job?" I said, "That'd be fantastic." He goes, "Great. When can you start?" I said, "In two weeks." He said, "Great." So I ended up leaving and going to work at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. What I got very lucky with was that in the Ma- at that time at the Mandarin, guest relations, which means a lot of different things in different hotel. You could-- guest relations can be a synonym for concierge, or it could mean VIP services, which is what it meant in this hotel. So it ended up being a- an ideal starting point for me because basically what I did as kind of what ended up leading the VIP kind of concierge, the services, whatever you wanna call it, was that I, I handled all our most important guests no matter what they were doing. So from rooms to restaurants to check-in to every single aspect of the hotel. So I got to very quickly learn what I n- what I wanted to learn about, you know, how to run a hotel at the highest level and also the food and beverage outlets that were there that I got a chance to work in. So that was kind of my first foray into that. Now, my, my parents thought I was crazy. You know, they, uh... You know, you're leaving the best job that theoretically exists to go into what at that time, again, was not what it is today. It's not like this fancy, fun business, right, you know, that, that people are-- you, you see people as being big successes in. It was like a place that, you know, you would, y- you could never make any money. I, I continued to do it, and it led me to, uh... At that point, I still hadn't fully decided I needed to open a restaurant. I knew I needed to be around food all the time. I knew I needed to be around people all the time. I loved dealing with customers. I loved dealing with people. I loved being around food. If I could check those boxes, I was very happy. And so that led me at the time to, you know, do what I was, was to-- I started a website.
- DSDavid Senra
This is the very unconventional path.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
So you go from employee at Mandarin Oriental-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right, so-
- DSDavid Senra
... to entrepreneur
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... for all my VIP guests at the Mandarin Oriental, I had been building-- I built my own, using my J.P. Morgan skills-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... I built my own Excel database, right, of restaurants, and this database was so well J.P. Morgan style organized, right, that, you know, that basically, you know, it was n- na- all my restaurants that I liked. It was exactly what you wanted to eat when you went there. It was exactly what table you wanted. It had, you know, who you need to speak to at the door. It had every information because this was now, you know, s- they'd call me and say, "I wanna go here and here." I'd be like, "Great. I can..." I mean, I rose through the ranks there because I, I knew I could get everyone into these restaurants 'cause I made-- I was always spending my time in all these restaurants. That database then I-- one day, I was walking into my building late from, you know, we didn't get out of work at J.P. Morgan till two, three in the morning as, you know, you know. And I had an incredible doorman named Max, and I'm walking in, and I'm talking, a- and he says, you know, like he introduces me to this kid. This kid is a student at NYU, and he's a programmer. So I say to him, I say, "You know, I have this idea." This is all standing in the lobby at two o'clock in the morning. I said, "I have this idea. I think I have this database already built in Excel, and there's nowhere to properly search online." This is before anything existed. You know, there's no website where you can search restaurants properly and have it, you know, rated and graded and et cetera, et cetera, and also that tells you what to eat there and what the signature dishes are and blah, blah, blah. All things that we easily access now. But I had this vision to create this Content site all around restaurants that would allow people to use what I had built, you know, for themselves, right? So they could just say, "I want an Italian restaurant downtown," and it would say, "Here are the three that I recommended. Here's what you should eat there," et cetera, et cetera. That became a site called Always Hungry that, uh, that I created, which was a content site, and that was really my door into the restaurant business as a whole because now I was on the content creation side. So I got to be very close with the best chefs and best restaurateurs in the city, interviewing them, talking to them, doing things like this. You know what I mean? Before, you know, podcasts existed or anything of that nature. But we were having them take us through their process or through the restaurant, et cetera, et cetera. And what happened was after doing this for, you know,
- 49:40 – 53:06
A Front-Row Seat To His Hero
- JZJeff Zalaznick
a little while, I started to realize I understand this. Like it, it ma- all made sense to me. I need to be doing this myself, not talking about the people that are doing it. It was that feeling of like, this is what I'm meant to be doing, not some internet s- thing I really don't even understand the internet portion of. I'm just creating food content. That led me to starting another website called Dine Private with, who, a guy named Joe Bastianich, who was one of the most famous restaurateurs at the time. He came to me because I was, at the time, you know, this is twenty years, the food web guy. There wasn't anyone in my space. It wasn't like the... it is-- You know what I mean? Like-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. [laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I was the guy. So the big- so the biggest restaurateur, one of my... the guys that I looked up to, right, came to me and said, "You know, I ha- I have an idea. I wanna start, uh, you know, OpenTable," which existed at the time, but for private dining rooms, right? So like-
- DSDavid Senra
Like this room.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Like this room, right.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
But to-- But he had just opened a restaurant at the time called Del Posto, and he had like seven private dining rooms, and he was having trouble booking them all the time. And his idea was like, "Well, what if we, you know, automated this so you could do it online?" So I didn't really have that much interest in doing it, except for that I knew that it would give me an opportunity to spend time with Joe as his partner and do that, you know, on a daily or weekly basis.
- DSDavid Senra
So wait, you were gonna be co-founders together on this new project.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Correct.
- DSDavid Senra
He was one of the restaurateurs or chefs that you most admired.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
He was the bi- he was the biggest restaurateur of, of the, of that moment. Okay? Um, he was, you know, he was partners with Mario Batali. He was, he was, he was the big... you know, he was one of the... one of the, if not at that moment, the biggest restaurateur doing some of the biggest projects. And-
- DSDavid Senra
That was smart-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And, and so-
- DSDavid Senra
On your part.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right. So I, I figured if I get to have a front row seat and, and not even beyond that, be his partner and start working with him and figuring out all these intricacies that we would have to figure out around restaurants, I can learn everything. You know what I mean? And, uh, and so basically that's why I ended up doing that project. And he never knew my motive was that my motive was to become him, right? But-
- DSDavid Senra
He's the opposite of the guy you saw at J.P. Morgan.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right. Correct. Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
I don't want that miserable guy.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Exactly.
- DSDavid Senra
I want that guy.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I was like, "I wanna be like that guy. Um, I wanna be like Joe." So, um, so the opportunity to be his partner was a, was something that I said, "You know what? Even though I don't wanna build another, uh, website, I-I'll do it." So we built it. The biggest thing that it gave to me was obviously that I, you know, I would literally meet him three times a week. We'd sit in Del Posto, we'd drink wine, we'd hang out, we'd talk. I'd watch how he did what he was doing. I'd watch, you know, the way that, you know, he was, uh... You know, we'd talk about restaurants, we'd talk about the intricacies of every last detail, many of which we needed to program into this thing that we were building. Um, and that really, really put me in a place where I realized I can do this, and I think I can do it my way, you know, and at that, you know... I can definitely do it as good, if not better, as what I see, you know, him and the other peers that we were
- 53:06 – 55:35
Belief Comes Before Ability
- JZJeff Zalaznick
working with doing.
- DSDavid Senra
But this is, this is really important. I, I wanna pause here because, like, this is something that I see reappear over and over again in all these biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs I read, and it drives me crazy 'cause if you listen to normal people, they're like, "Oh, you know, you shouldn't... You should generate evidence first and then have confidence." It's like, no, you have it exactly backwards. Belief comes before ability.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Hundred percent.
- DSDavid Senra
You're in your early twenties at this time?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. About twenty-five.
- DSDavid Senra
Think about it. You have this obsession. You're in your early to mid-twenties. This is a guy you most admire, and you're like, "Actually, I can do that."
- JZJeff Zalaznick
It was natural to me. You know, the only thing I can equate it to when I talk to people, it's like w- like a, you know, it's like if you're an athlete and you were just naturally good at basketball, and obviously now you've honed your craft to be one of the best. But I was good at this. I understood why they put this here. I understood why those guys are coming here on the service. I understood what was on my plate, how it was cooked. Was it seared? Had they blanched it? Had they done this? Had they done that? And I could tell you, there's a problem with this because of this just by tasting it, right? Okay, here's what you gotta redo with it. And part of it was all the studying, right? All the years of eating, repetition, studying, cooking, et cetera, et cetera, and part of it was just natural talent. At the end of the day, like, you have to have a great palate, right? You know what I mean? Like, if you, if you don't have a great palate, it's gonna be tough to taste food professionally.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right? But, you know, part of that also just comes with a lot of studying, a lot of repetition, no different than anything else.
- DSDavid Senra
Well, if you're twenty-five, you've already had this obsession at that point for half your life.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
And it's funny you use the word athlete, 'cause I hear, hear... when you were speaking, this weird, um, clip of Larry Bird, a young Larry Bird came to my mind because, you know, w- he played at this like small school. They said he's too slow. He's not-- He doesn't have like... He didn't play against c- tough competition. You're not gonna make it in the NBA. Th- they're telling him after he got drafted to the NBA before he went. And so he had a lot of self-confidence, but he goes, "Wait a minute." So they used to have this thing called rookie camp where all the rookies would get and start playing together, and he's like, "It took me... I was hearing all this stuff like I'm too slow, I have t- horrible competition." It took him, he goes, three days of rookie camp to realize, "Not only can I play in this league, I'm going to dominate in this league." It's like the same exact situation with hair
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's, that's very similar. So like what I went through was exactly that. It went from, I can be like these guys, to I'm gonna be able to dominate this world.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right? You know what I mean? Like, and I was 100% confident in that idea, and I took that. We were for... You know, I was able to sell off these two businesses that I had started. I took the very small amount of money that I made on those-
- 55:35 – 57:31
Burning The Boats
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, wait, so you burned the boats. You got-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. So basically-
- DSDavid Senra
So you sold off your content, uh-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So-
- DSDavid Senra
... your website before you started your first-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. So basically what happened was, I don't know why, you know, is that I had both businesses running, and at that point, I was like, "I gotta go and open my own restaurant. This is, this is, this is what I'm meant to do." I was so locked in on this idea, and I gotta get out of these businesses. And, you know, one thing led to another. I spoke to a friend of mine who was in kinda the venture capital world. We sold Always Hungry, which was the content site, to, uh... In a matter of a few months, right, you know what I mean? We sold that, and we sold Dine Private. So I was able to get out, and then basically I hit the streets saying, "I'm gonna find a restaurant space."
- DSDavid Senra
The best businesses I've studied all figured out the same thing early. Your team is only as good as the information they're working from. And today, that team includes people and agents. But most generic agents only have limited information and don't know the most important aspects of your business, like your actual customer conversations, your sales history, what worked last quarter and what didn't. This is what HubSpot fixes. It connects AI to your real customer data. So when you ask AI to write an email, it knows this customer asked about pricing three weeks ago, it knows what campaign brought them in, and it knows that customer already contacted support twice this month, and that changes everything for a startup. When you're hiring, new team members can see how you actually sell. When you're fundraising, your data is clean and ready, and when you're scaling, you're building on something designed to grow with you, not rebuilding from scratch. It's the same platform that more than 300 startups who have grown to over a billion dollars in valuation grew their businesses on. And now, HubSpot for Startups offers this service at up to a 90% discount exclusively for eligible startups. Visit hubspot.com/startups to learn more. That is hubspot.com/startups.
- 57:31 – 59:25
Marry The Chef, Don't Hire Him
- DSDavid Senra
Did you think you were gonna be the chef at the time?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
No.
- DSDavid Senra
Did you know who you were gonna partner with or no?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
No. So what happened was I learned, watching Joe and other restaurateurs, the biggest reason why restaurants don't work out if it's, you know, on the restaurateur owner's part is 'cause there's always been this classic tension between the restaurateur and the chef. It's been happening throughout history, right? That it's a classic thing. The chef wants to make this food, the restaurateur wants to make more money, and they're fighting all the time about these things, and then eventually they break up. That's an age-old... That's like the stereotypical restaurant story. So I watched that happen a lot of times, right, while I was [laughs] watching the industry so closely. Um, I also realized that the best partnerships were when, you know, were when restaurateurs and great chefs were partners. That was still somewhat of a novel idea, right? You know what I mean? And so I, from day one, was looking for wh- who am I gonna be partners with? I'm not going to hire a chef. I'm going to look for people that have the same ambitions that I have, but most importantly, that can make the most incredible food in the world. And as I'm looking around for spaces, so, you know, everything ha- So simultaneously, I decide that the restaurant I wanna open, which is my favorite type of restaurant, was whatever my version in my head of Carbone was at that time.
- DSDavid Senra
Carbone's gonna be the first restaurant you would do?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
The idea-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... of this elevated Italian-American restaurant was my big idea, right?
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Because what, what I saw was the following, and, you know, to me everything made perfect sense, but other people didn't see it, right? I, I saw that I'm...
- 59:25 – 1:03:56
The Best Version Of Something You Already Love
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Some of my favorite restaurants to go to, you know, Mulino, Scalinatella, Rao's, et cetera, these are the best experiences. But, like, at the end of the day, the food is not that good, and they were very expensive restaurants. And I would spend as much time, a- as many times I could go there, spend all my money going to these places. That's how much I love them. I love the moves at the beginning of the meal. I love what they put down. I lo- I love the whole thing. And as a New Yorker, that's like the most classic style, you know, New York restaurant, right? These, these kind of finer dining Italian restaurants. My idea was what if I take this, but we take the entire thing to a different level. So instead of a veal chop being the shittiest veal you could buy pounded this thin, right? You know what I mean? It's gonna... Why don't we buy the best veal you can buy and make it a beautiful chop and still make a veal parm out of it, but not pounded so it's just you're eating breadcrumbs.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
You know, these little ideas. What if I made a lobster fra diavolo, but the r- lobster was perfectly cooked? Never had happened at that point in time.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Never, okay? It never had happened. You know, simple ideas like this, right? You know, what if you reinvented a Caesar salad, you know, but the lettuce was perfect baby gem lettuce, and you use this ricotta salata instead of Par- Well, you know, what if you, what if you took these dishes and gave them the love and respect that people would give when they were cooking fancy French food in terms of ingredient sourcing, et cetera, and you applied that to Italian-American food, right? And to this archetype that I... but was very much beloved by New York and beloved by me especially And right around the same time, my two partners opened a small, you know, it was ten-seat Italian-American restaurant on Mulberry Street. And it had started to gain some traction, and it was... You know what I mean? People were talking about it, and they served sandwiches during the day, and they served a, a five-dish prix fixe menu for thirty-five dollars in the evening. And people would line up to go to the thirty-five dollar prix fixe, and it... And it had sta- So it caught my eye and, and, uh, at first, I just had the sandwiches during the day, and they were spectacular, and they were very much in line with, you know, this philosophy that I was looking for. They were doing elevated versions of chicken Parm sandwiches and of chicken francaise sandwiches, all the same idea, but in sandwiches, right? And at night, they were doing reinvented versions of classic American- Italian-American dishes, right, with different influences and a little bit more avant-garde in that way. But, but it was still this elevated version of truly Italian-American cooking. And at this point, I'm a food expert, right? You know what I mean? I'm, I'm eating, you know, six meals a day at different restaurants. I'm tasting food, again, for these different... For, for a living at that point. And I go into that restaurant, and, uh, another restaurateur I was friends with took me there, said, "You got to try this place." I didn't have a restaurant or anything at that point. Um, he knew me from my web stuff, and we were friends, and he took me to this place. "You got to try this place." I was so blown away by the food, and I was like, this is crazy. You know what I mean? Like I... The, the hundreds of meals I've eaten this year, this is by far the best food I've had, and it happened to be the exact same philosophy and genre of things that I was thinking about and, and actually actively looking at spaces to do. So, you know, that night I went... You know, Rich and Mario were working at the pass, and we started talking. And they tell the story all the time that, like, you know, all the guests would come over and start talking to them. But, like, when we started talking, it was a little different because I knew what I was talking about, right? So the high-level food conversation, which has been the restaurant we've been going on now [chuckles] for fifteen years together. But, um, so we had this great conversation. I was blown away by the meal. Uh, I got home that night, and I told my girlfriend at the time, who later became my wife, I said, "I think that I found the guys I want to partner with, and I want to bring you back to the restaurant." I, I called because there was a, there was a line around the block. I called just doing what I would al- you know, you know.
- 1:03:56 – 1:08:29
The Hail Mary Call At Ten O'Clock
- JZJeff Zalaznick
It was a Hail Mary. I didn't really know them or know what was gonna happen, but I didn't want to wait on line. So I called, and I said, "Hey, it's Jeff Zalaznick. You know, I was hoping I could come in tonight for, uh, two people." And then, and they're like, the girl who picked up, Nicole, who ended up working with us for many years after said, uh, said, "You know, uh, hold on one second." It was a leap of faith they'd have any idea who I was. I wasn't a well-known person at this point. You know what I mean? In, in restaurants, I was s- But, you know, it all comes full circle because Mario, my partner Mario Carbone, had worked at Del Posto, where... Which was Joe's restaurant, and Joe and I, when we would meet all these times-
- DSDavid Senra
This is your partner on the-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
On Dine Private.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
When we would meet all these times, we would sit in the dining room of Del Posto like you and me are sitting now. And we would drink wine and hang out, and we'd be working and laughing and talking-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... whatever it was, and he would see me sitting with Joe in the dining room.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So he knew me and recognized me, and we had said hi once or twice or whatever it was. And, um, so when I called, they said, "You know, actually, w- we'd love to have you, but can you come in at 10?"
- DSDavid Senra
Is this after you had the high-level conversation with him?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
We had just had a quick high-level conversation on my way out.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Five minutes, ten minutes.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And I only knew later, because we tell this story all the time, that they felt that. You know what I mean? It w- I, I thought it was a great conversation.
- DSDavid Senra
They felt the same.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And apparently, they felt the same.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
They said, "Can you come in at 10:00 PM?" I said, "S- you know, sure." She, she said, "You know, because Mario gets off service at 10:00, and he would love actually to talk to you about something."
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, great.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And I said, "That's crazy. I want to talk to him about something. That's why I'm coming in." This is all real, not made up.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I'd literally say, like... I remember hanging up and being like, "It's the craziest thing," uh, to my wife Ally. I said, "Ally, we got to go at 10:00 because the thing I was telling you about, he wants to talk to me too. So we're gonna go at 10:00, and I'm gonna go out with him after, and we'll talk." And so we went for dinner, and after service, him and I went for drinks. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. I mean, we, we basically sat down at the Jane Hotel. I told him my idea, what I wanted to do, you know, what I wanted to do with, you know, Italian-American food, and he immediately said, "That's exactly what we want to do. That's our dream." We were there till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning just talking about what we wanted to create. You know, and we talked through. He had worked for Joe for a long time. So we talked through, like, we don't want to be... He, Joe only made Italian restaurants for the most part. We don't want to just make Italian restaurants. We want to make different types. And should this first thing work, you know, what's... My ambition is to be the biggest, greatest restaurant company in the world, and I, our, my ambition is to grow into hotels and into much bigger things, right? And, you know, and the entire hospitality experience. We talked about all these things in our first conversation, which has basically been the exact roadmap that we have followed up until today, right? Was talked about in our first conversation. And we stayed there all night talking, and it was like, you know, meeting your, uh, you know, soulmate kind of. You know, like you're... Like, if you play in a band, and you guys start playing, and then it just all starts working. I then met Rich, you know, the next day, and we decided to, you know, to partner up and, you know, I've- I quickly started working with them at Torrisi, which was the original restaurant, different than the one that it is now. From there, we started on our path to try to find the right space to do Carbone, and so that was probably in, you know, the summer of... They opened in January, and that summer I joined them, and we set our sights on creating what would be the greatest Italian-American restaurant ever opened, and with no other ambit- Like, the, the ambition was only to be the greatest New York-style Italian-American restaurant that had ever opened, and to really truly reinvigorate this art form that we all had grown up with together in New York that was slowly fading and being kinda left for dead. Right? You know what I mean? Like, it... No one was paying attention, right, in fine dining to spaghetti and meatballs, right? You know what I mean? Fine dining at that point in time had become this very, very, very
- 1:08:29 – 1:13:24
"A Piacere" — Whatever You Want
- JZJeff Zalaznick
serious tasting menu. The chef's always right. I'm gonna serve you these five dishes. That's all you can have tonight. That's the only thing that I'm making. No substitutions, no allergies. You know, you eat what I tell you and say thank you. That was the general tone of restaurants. And, and people loved it. That was the general tone, was I'm gonna go in. If I wanna eat a great meal, uh, you know, a, a great fine dining meal, the only options as we were coming up... So we loved this Italian-American thing, and we were also very blatantly and very collectively fighting against something that we also liked at one point in time, but were at this point just sick of, which was this incredibly inhospitable, robotic style of fine dining, right? Okay? Which was... didn't make any sense when you started to break it down. The whole idea of hospitality, the whole idea of restaurants is taking care of your customers. When did it become that you come to my restaurant, I'm telling you exactly what you're eating, you can't have anything else, I don't care what your preferences or your allergies are? When did that become the way that people want to eat? It had its moment, and we basically were ready to say, like, "We're done with that." And so when we came out with Carbone, which the Italian-American restaurant has that spirit of abundance-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... uh, built into it, we celebrated to the maximum. That's why, you know, Carbone famously has... I made the menu the biggest menu-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... in Manhattan, right? 'Cause at that point, everyone was giving you these tiny little cards with, like, six ingredients listed on it. That everything had become so austere. So our menu was big. It was bold. There was 70 things on it, and on the very top of that menu it said, A Piacere. A Piacere means whatever you want, right? Because my whole thing, and our whole thing, was that if we're so good, if someone asks for a piece of grilled chicken, why can we not make that for them really well? Like, what that means is, like, we're not that good, because I can only make you... If I... Anyone, just so you understand, without even that much culinary training could make you four or five dishes if they make the same exact dishes every single night, and probably get them to a point that is acceptable, right? Obviously, you need to be great for it to be great, but the whole difficulty of a restaurant is that you've got 70 different dishes. All that's gotta be prepared for. How much do you prepare? What ingredients came in? Did they all come in right? You got all these different move... You got hundreds of moving parts just to put out the menu that you're putting in front of people. That being said, that's your job. Like, you know what I mean? Your job is to do that at an incredibly high level if that's what you're putting in front of people. Now, if I have the ingredients, obviously if you come in and you ask me to make you Chinese food, that's, that's, that's what I call food terrorism. That's, that, that's not, that's not... You know, that's like coming to... When people come to our Italian restaurant and say they want noth- they, they, they, they love Italian food, but they want nothing with on- onions and garlic. Which actually we now accommodate, but at the time we thought that was the craziest thing. You're coming to an Italian-American... Can't eat onions and garlic. But, um, but they're... Outside of crazy requests, you know what I mean, our f- opinion was we're here to serve you. We can make you anything you want. Of course, if you want that plain and not with sauce on it, we can do it. Of course, if you want a pasta done a little bit... That pasta with this sauce, of course we can do that. W- what do you mean we can't do that?
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And that was, at that point in restaurants, that was a crazy thing. So we came in not only with this big, bold Italian restaurant, you know, serving the best versions of Caesar salads and beef carpaccios and baked clams and, you know, s- obviously the spicy rigatoni vodka and, you know, different pastas and veal Parm and all these different dishes done in a way that no one had ever been presented, a quality of product that no one had ever used for them, and that really resonated with people. And what really also resonated with people was that we created the category which is now thrown around in every conversation of experiential fine dining. Meaning that coming to Carbone, because of the nature of what we created, because of the types of captains that I went out and hired, you know, they all were part of this movie. We were telling, to your point earlier about t- We were telling a story. We were finding our voices in our creative process. We didn't realize what we were doing at the time that now guides everything that we do, but we were creating that story, right? This was 1959, you know, New York, Little Italy. You know, we were on Thompson Street, which had a great Italian-American history. We were in a restaurant called Rocco, which was the oldest exis- open when we took it over Italian-American restaurant that was still open since 1929 in New York City. Uh, so we always loved history. That was the space we put the original Carbone in. We kept the original sign, which has obviously become an iconic thing.
- DSDavid Senra
No, explain the sign part, 'cause that was interesting
- 1:13:24 – 1:18:17
The Broken Neon Sign That Became An Icon
- DSDavid Senra
too.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
The sign is a crazy story. So this is, you know, this is my first, like- Big lease I'm negotiating. I'm not, you know, it's our first big restaurant. But, um, you know, we found the space because, you know, I, I was one day standing there and a f- and a guy I knew taps me on the shoulder and he says, "You know, I think I have a space." We've been looking for a space for Carbone for over a year. And we-
- DSDavid Senra
Why was it taking so long?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Because it, it needed to be the perfect space, and we wouldn't settle for anything less. We had our restaurant, Torrisi, running. We decided we were gonna build a sandwich place next door called Parm, which ended up being the first restaurant that I'd built from scratch, and that was more of a sandwich shop, you know, uh, s- small though. We're talking about, like, 18-seat restaurants that happened to be... We ha- we moved the sandwich concept out and moved it next door. We did that because we just, we, we, we were waiting patiently, developing the food, developing the concept, but we hadn't found the space, and we weren't gonna s- we, we, we knew it had to be a very specific type of space. And one day, a guy came up to me and he said, "You know, I think I have a space you might be interested in." And he said, you know, "It's right around the corner." And I said, "Great. Let's go right now." And he walks me down the block. We w- turn the right on Thompson Street, and I see the sign. And as we're walking towa- up the block, I look at him. I say, "We'll take it."
- DSDavid Senra
Just from seeing the sign?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Just from seeing the sign. He goes, "You haven't even seen what's inside." I said, "It doesn't matter. I know this, this sign. I know this place. This is exactly what we're looking for." We go in. Obviously, the place is a mess. It hasn't been maintained in many years. There's some old Italian guy in the corner smoking cigarettes, and like, you know, that's been there not paying rent for six months or something. At that point, he's like, "I'm dying to get rid of this guy, you know. I just-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... I don't know what, I don't know what to do." And w- I, he said... I said, "Well, give him till the end of the year. Let him get the hol- you know, w- we should start January 1st." I was trying to be very friendly. And in the lease, right, I had put very specifically that I had this vision that this sign, you know, we had to do a whole bunch of construction inside and, you know, change where the kitchen was and dining rooms and all this other stuff. But it had the perfect bones. It had this incredible history. The building had an incredible, you know, history of, you know, New York and Italian-American, um, stories, and this place was obviously a very storied place. It'd been there for close to 100 years. And basically, we, uh, you know, put in the lease that we needed the sign. The sign had to stay. And so they put in the... Didn't seem like a big ask. They put it in the lease. And right before we were, uh, gonna execute it, I get a phone call that the owner wants a, a, wants $10,000 for the sign to keep it there. Now, it seems irrelevant at this point in time, but at, for us at that point in time, $10,000 was, like, a big decision and conversation, right? So, you know, we had like a whole m- and, you know, we decided, uh, you know, as the sign has to stay, l- yeah, we finally, let's just pay him. Like, it's worth it in the scheme of things. This sign is very important. Even though we d- gave him the money, you know, in kinda classic New York fashion, he was so angry that he was being removed even though he hadn't paid rent in close to-
- DSDavid Senra
This is the guy that-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
The guy who had been in the restaurant-
- DSDavid Senra
Okay
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... for the last 40 years or whatever.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
He-
- DSDavid Senra
He's not the one that's getting this $10,000 though, right? He's the owner.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
No, he's getting it.
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
He's saying, "If you want me to leave the sign, I want the..." No, okay, so we agree finally. And New Year's Eve was supposed to be his last night, and we were taking over January 1st, and that night, it's a neon sign if you've been to Carbone, right? So it's a, this old sign that, and it said Ro- called Rocco, right? And it says, "Rocco Wines & Liquor," below it in green, and it had Rocco in red. And when I show up on January 1st, th- there's shattered glass from the s- the sign is there, but all the neon had been shattered by him, you know, as like-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... to like, you know, like, you know, the-
- DSDavid Senra
Like a fuck you on the way out.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
A fuck you on the way out.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
He shatters all the glass. And at that moment, I look at the sign and I say... At first, I'm, you know, pissed off, and I'm yelling. I'm cursing. I'm calling the landlord. I'm doing-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... the whole thing, and then after a few minutes, I'm like, "I think this guy gave me the biggest gift he could've given me. We're gonna keep this sign, and instead we're gonna put Carbone in neon on top of the Rocco sign, put back the Wines & Liquor." And that became what is probably the most iconic sign in fine dining restaurants in the world, which we now have obviously all over the world. But that, that sign was incidental. Only because he broke all those lights did it become the quintessential Carbone sign that it is.
- 1:18:17 – 1:22:27
Go With Whatever Feels Natural
- DSDavid Senra
We're, like, deep into this conversation just 'cause I think, like, your lore and history is really, really fascinating, and it's just so in line with, like, the rest of the people I talk to, the people... It's my own experience, the people I read about. It's like this, like, true interest revealed early, and it's, like, so smart. And you kept using the word natural, which I think is really important-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... that this just felt natural to you, and I think that's the biggest thing. It's like you wanna get to the top of your profession, it's gonna be really hard fighting against your own innate, like, desires, stuff you're interested in. Uh, you should just go with whatever, like, is natural, even if it's low status or you didn't even see... You know, you, I'm sure you, when you started, you thought, "Okay, I can dominate this industry," but the size that the industry has gone, ha- has become, the amount of opportunity that you've already experienced so far, and that's in, that's ahead of you too, is just probably beyond what you could've pred- predicted right there, uh, back then. Can you give us, like, the state of the business now? Like, just describe when someone says, "Okay, what's Major Food Group?" Like, what does it entail?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So I would say at this point, Major Food Group is a, you know, on its way to becoming a fully vertically integrated hospitality company. So, you know, we started as a kind of luxury fine dining restaurant group, which is what we, you know, for the majority of our careers we've been. Uh, and then now we've started to add to that, you know, private members clubs, which has been a huge business for us. Branded residential towers, like we're just finishing one in Miami right now called Dilla, um, which will be a, you know, 80-unit super high-end condo building, right? That we're doing-- that we've designed. We're doing all the amenities for, all the food and beverage, all the apartments. You know, e- every detail, everything you touch, all the, everything that you feel in there. Um, so we're doing brand residential, we're doing hotels, and we're really kind of expanding the scope of what we're doing so that we can, you know, really so we can take care of you twenty-four hours a day.
- DSDavid Senra
Say more about that.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
You know, I think that, you know, right, we get right now... Our approach to hospitality, you know, has proven to be one that's incredibly, uh, successful and beloved. And, you know, I always say that, you know, our process is not that difficult. We just create places that we wanna go to, right? I mean, that's been our entire ethos, is we build places where we wanna go. That's it. And if we don't wanna go there, we don't wanna build it. Whether that be a restaurant or a private club or a hotel, like we know how to do it, and we know how we would want it done. And we create those environments. So, you know, being able to apply-- You can apply that idea. The most difficult part of any property, any hospitality property, is the food and beverage. It's the most complex, no matter what. But what's happened over the last, you know, decade plus is that everyone has come to realize that. So, you know, people building hotels, people building buildings, people building, you know, much larger format things realize that the food and beverage is actually the most difficult, and theoretically, at this point, the most important part of it. So that's been our way into spreading our wings to say, "We don't wanna just take care of you, you know, for the three hours you're sitting in our restaurant. We wanna take care of you from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to bed, you know?" And the way that we do that is our style of hospitality. We're gonna do that the way we would want it done, and we're gonna apply the same philosophies that we do to everything else in restaurants to the greater hospitality landscape. So that's really what we're focused on today as we grow into not just being a food and beverage classic restaurant company, but also adding all these different arms that come with it. And, you know, then you have other verticals that are not related to lu- you know, you know, you have luxury hospitality and everything that we're building in that. For example, you know, we've taken the Carbone brand, it's become such an incredible lifestyle brand, you know, that we've applied that, and we now sell Carbone tomato sauce.
- 1:22:27 – 1:24:15
A Ten-Dollar Jar Of The Restaurant
- DSDavid Senra
I don't think people understand. These, these products, now you're essentially selling products, right?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
They can scale to insane, like insanely large degree.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. So Carbone tomato sauce, you know, for example, which is sold in thousands of doors across America, right? More than you could ever penetrate with a restaurant.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Only so many people can come to a restaurant in a day or a month or a year, right? So, you know, Carbone sauce has become an enormous business for us, which is growing at a pace we never even expected, you know? And it's really put us at the top of kind of the premium sauce category, and it actually has worked incredibly harmoniously where even though that's a product that you sell, that you buy in the, uh, store, you know, and costs less than ten dollars, right? It's a little piece of what people see and aspire to, you know, at, at the restaurant, and they don't contradict each other, right? One is, at the end of the day, they're both standing for the same thing, which is being the best expression of something that you're familiar with, right? When I say that, I mean that, you know, Carbone... Everyone's had jarred tomato sauce, right? Whether it be Ragu or whatever it might be. We make the best one. It's not gonna be something you've never had before. It's gonna be the best version. That's our entire thesis around restaurants, right? And food. If you look at our menus, it, it-- very rarely am I gonna serve you something that's the first time you've ever had these foods or this dish. Our goal is just to make you the best version that you've ever had. Which is, that again, that same philosophy goes throughout everything that we do. You know, whether it be how we build a building or how we make a jar of tomato sauce. All the same
- 1:24:15 – 1:27:34
Your Mediocrity Is My Opportunity
- JZJeff Zalaznick
process.
- DSDavid Senra
I recorded, uh, an episode for this show, uh, here in New York with James Dyson, who's my personal hero, just 'cause I-- he's like a completely, probably the most determined, stubborn, like, and determined person I've ever met or I've ever, like, read about. He, like, struggled basically a decade and a half of just failing, of failing after failing. He did five hundred and one-- five thousand one hundred and twenty-seven prototypes before he got it right, his vacuum cleaner, and that was his whole point. He's like, "I don't have to invent markets. I can just look at the market, find a product that can be improved, and then just re-relentlessly re-engineer and optimize it." And, and the end result, because he hasn't interrupted the co-compounding for forty-five years, he owns a hundred percent of his business. It's like one of the most valuable privately held businesses by a single person in the world.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And it's literally just like, "That vacuum cleaner sucks. Everybody uses vacuum cleaners. I'll just make a better one. That hair dryer sucks."
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's the whole-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, does it over and over again.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's our whole thesis. I mean, that's, that's really our whole thesis.
- DSDavid Senra
It's almost like a-- I think I said on that episode, it's like he identified, like, your mediocrity as my opportunity.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's really the thing in, in our belief about food and hospitality. Again, it's that everything has been done in one way or the other. Has it been done the right way is a better question, right? So there's always something to look at in our businesses and take something that generally people already like and make a much better version of it, right? You use the vacuum cleaner. The, the things that people already are eating. People have been eating spicy rigatoni. Vodka or f- you know, with vodka sauce since way before you and I were born, right? But why is this one so much better than all the other ones? It's a very simple thing, but it's something that a lot of work and thought goes into.
- DSDavid Senra
So I wanna go back. You, you guys had this, remember this conversation with your, your partner the first night. You stay up till 4:00, 5:00 in the morning talking about we're gonna do, you know, Carbone first, but w- we wanna do other things. What was the first thing that you did that was not a normal restaurant?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
The real first divergence, you know, was, uh, getting involved with hotels, uh, which we did in Boston at The Newberry, which was really our first foray into hotels.
- DSDavid Senra
What'd you do there?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
We created and opened the entire concept. So we became partners in the concept, and we were brought in to basically do everything from design to, you know, execution, to branding, et cetera.
- DSDavid Senra
Were you guys a partner with the hotelier?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes. So the hotel group brought us, that was building it, brought us in to help with their... They needed, wanted our assistance with luxury execution.
- DSDavid Senra
But do you own a piece of the entire project?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
We own a piece of the brand.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And we have restaurants, and we have bars, and we have all this stuff inside the hotel. But, um, but we were really brought in to design the experience, and that was, that was years ago. And then the, I'd say the biggest step that we've recently taken in the last few years has been, you know, private members clubs. We started with ZZ's in Miami, where you and I had dinner.
- DSDavid Senra
It's my favorite restaurant in Miami.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I appreciate that. And, uh, and then we opened a much bigger one here in New York, um, you know, which has two... It's in the entrance to Hudson Yards. It's got-
- DSDavid Senra
What, what-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... two restaurants, three bars. It's a much larger space.
- DSDavid Senra
Why, why make it a members club, a private members club, as opposed to just another restaurant? Why'd you decide to do that?
- 1:27:34 – 1:32:11
Netflix With A Restaurant
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Private members clubs are fantastic because it's... I, you know, as I love win-wins, right? So a private members club is a win for the business and for the customer, right? Because for the business, it's a much better business, right? So all the things that make the restaurant business the hardest business, right, somewhat go, if you know what you're doing, somewhat go away when you add a subscription model to it. Now you're Netflix with a restaurant, right? You have people paying annual dues and monthly dues every single year. It automatically renews. You know, you have, if you do your job well, you have very little attrition, and you've got it. You know that every year X amount of dollars of subscription revenue is coming in. So you start to look at it, it's a very different business than the restaurant business where you have virtually no visibility, right? I mean, if it starts to hail one day, that's not gonna be a good day in the restaurant. If, you know what I mean? If it's pouring rain, that's gonna be a different... You know, the restaurant business has 100 different variables that are gonna affect, right? It's, it's spring break and everyone's away, so the week's quiet. I mean, there's 100 different things. Sure, at our level you, you know them, and you can predict them to some extent, right? But you're putting on a show, a new show every night where the variables are always changing, and you gotta do it the same exact way you did it the night before. That's why it's the hardest business in the world. Everything's gotta flow perfectly so you're full every night and nothing is preventing people from getting to your restaurant. A private club, right, you know, again, you now have a subscription model below it, so that's, that's now fixed, right? And it changes the whole nature of what you're... That's on the business side. That's why everyone's trying to go into private clubs, because it's a much better business, right? But the other side of it is, is that that wouldn't be the only reason we could do something like that. The other reason is, is that at the end of the day, it's what customers want in a luxury sector because you can apply a much higher level of personalization. You can apply a much higher level of, you know, kind of knowing your customer and not just anticipating what they want, knowing what they want, right? So here, you know, our, our job as a restaurant is to anticipate what guest wants. Private clubs, you don't need to anticipate. You literally have them fill out a form of what they want, right? [laughs] So, okay, okay, so you know what they're, what they, what kind of water they drink. You know what their drink of choice is. You know where they like to go. You know their favorite dishes. You know their diet. Yes, you know that in a restaurant, but you sometimes you gotta talk about it at the table. Everything is more natural, more fluid. It allows for a much higher level of service. And the interesting thing we've done in private clubs is that you've seen now that private members club have started to become much more popular. They always were big in London.
- DSDavid Senra
I was gonna say, what, what... You, you have to know the history of this.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, where-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
So private members clubs were always big in London, right? So even for, you know, for any of us that have traveled to London, you know, generally, you know, the majority of places you'd be going or being taken for business would be private members clubs, right? That was the culture in London. Everything was a private club. That's what it was. Still is to some extent.
- DSDavid Senra
When does it come to the States?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
And so about, let's say five, six, seven years ago, you know, forget about Soho House, 'cause that was always something a little different.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Um, the super luxury, super exclusive private clubs, right, you know what I mean, which were prevalent in London, the idea started to percolate into New York. And kinda right around the same time, you know, you had a few different private clubs open. The difference, you know, that with ours was that, you know, what I s- what I saw and what I knew from London, from being at all these places in London, um, was that the thing about private clubs were that it was all about being there. The food was never any good, right? So you'd go there for dinner, but really you just wanted to go there to have a drink and kinda see what was going on. You never sought out to go there for dinner. Aside from that, it was a cool place, and it was cool to take your friends to your membership club for dinner. Um, what we did was we applied our expertise, which is kind of, I think, set us apart in that space, which I take a lot of pride in, which is we're, you know, we're very, very much focused on food and beverage. Our clubs, ZZ's,
- 1:32:11 – 1:37:07
The Club Where The Food Comes First
- JZJeff Zalaznick
the food comes first, right? It- it's a great place just to hang out. It's a great place to sit and have drinks. Of course, you're gonna build a beautiful place that people can sit and congregate in. That's a given, and there's lots of now examples in New York. But we actually have a point of view, you know, which is that, you know, for example, ZZ's in New York, right, we have two restaurants. We have an Italian, a private Carbone that has, you know, about 30, 40% dishes that are only available there. We have our ZZ's classic Japanese restaurant. We have bars that all have their own snacks and whatever else. We're also the first people to ever have a culinary concierge. So, you know, to double down on that idea, if you're a member of ZZ's, you can call 48 hours in advance. You can call your concierge, and you can say, you know, "I have investors coming into town from Egypt. You know, can you make me an Egyptian feast, you know, for my dinner? It's gonna be six of us." And we have a team of chefs who put together whatever you call and ask for. It could be, you know, a theme, an Egyptian fea- It could be, "Hey, I want you to make, uh, it's my mother's birthday. Here's, uh, her three favorite dishes that she had," or, "Here are her three fam- my favorite three recipes of hers. Can you remake them for this dinner?" You know, people do that kind of stuff a lot. People recreate their, you know, their favorite birthday meals or anniversary meal.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
I mean, people go, you know... A- we g- and we, people, you know, we get everything from people wanting to do, "Hey, can you make me 10 courses of just beautiful caviar dishes?" To, "I want chicken nuggets and Big Macs done at the highest level." You know what I mean? And so, so we'll do anything. We'll make you anything you want and do it very thoughtfully. But again, it's all about indulging and indulging in kind of food, beverage, and excellence around that topic. Everything else is just amenitizing around that. At the end of the day, I always tell people, even friends, "You, you don't-- If you're not focused on eating and drinking, there's no point in being a part of our club," which is very different than most clubs because you join just to kind of go hang out there and have a drink that's okay.
- DSDavid Senra
I just like it 'cause the food's great.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's the idea.
- DSDavid Senra
I mean, I think, I also like it's way quieter in there.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, well, that's the nice thing.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, but the food is just-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
You can, you can control the crowd, and it's all about the food. And that's what keeps people interested.
- DSDavid Senra
You personally, you personally hang out there more. I feel like you gravitate towards that spot more than any of the other ones.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah, I, I d- I definitely spend the most time there. I mean, in Miami, it's my de facto office. I love being there because it's got, A, it's got the, you know, I love the food. And, uh, I think it's, you know, it's the best en- best environment for me to spend time in and be able to meet with people and, and have the right people around me.
- DSDavid Senra
As you move forward, are you gonna try to expand the members club more than the tr- tr- the traditional restaurants?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Listen, traditional restaurants for us is an ever-growing thing, right? And without, you know, just based on things that come to us, you know, we don't, we don't say, "Okay, we're gonna open 10 restaurants this year."
- DSDavid Senra
So how do you do future planning? Let's actually talk about that.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
We, we, we look at, you know... Because of the nature of our business, you know, we, we're generally dealing with so much incoming opportunity. Our general process is sorting through, you know, what could be interesting and what's not interesting at all. And-
- DSDavid Senra
Who's pitching you, and what are they pitching you?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Everyone you could imagine under the sun. Generally, people that are building new cities, new developments, new neighborhoods, whatever it might be. New stadiums, you know, whatever it might be, um, where food and beverage plays an integral role and hospitality plays an integral role. And so that, that's all around the world, right? So globally. So, you know, we're constantly looking at different opportunities and geographies that make sense to us. You know, I always say it's, for me, it's not such a, you know, hard equation, right? If you, if you tell me, "Is this an interesting city to open a restaurant in?" all I say is, "You know, find me two or three restaurants doing $20 million or more, and then it's an interesting city." There's not that many cities in the world that have restaurants doing 20-plus million dollars a year, fine dining restaurants. And when you can find those places, you, you already know that you can come in there with a great, expensive concept, that if you do your job well, you can blow away the competition in those markets because the business is there.
- DSDavid Senra
You start in New York, maybe the most difficult [chuckles] place-
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Right
- DSDavid Senra
... in the world to start a restaurant. But then you came down... I think this was accidental. Your dis- your, your accidental discovery that Miami was, like, this wide-open market where people love to go out. They love to spend money. Uh, they want great food. There's-- And you essentially found a market with almost no competition. Is that the way you would describe y- the way you spotted this opportunity?
- 1:37:07 – 1:40:45
Miami Was New Year's Eve Every Night
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Miami was, was one of the great surprises of my life, you know, in the sense that, you know, I ended up there the day before, you know, COVID began. Ended up getting kind of stuck there. What I started to realize, you know, as a New Yorker, when you would historically have gone to Miami, you know, you'd go for, like, the weekend with your family, or you'd go for a night to party and come back. You know what I mean? Like, it was really a place that you'd go for a couple nights and then, you know, go have a good time, come back. And what I realized after living there for, you know, the kind of first six months that I was there was not only is this an incredible place to ... live just in general. Do you know what I mean? Like, the entire place is a very special place. That's not at all what you experience when you come in for your quick, like, come to our bars on a party for three days or come to, you know, this kind, you know, thing to hang out for a couple days. It's, it's this incredible place with incredible people, and also with what you saw that happened during that time with this incredible drive that was not related to, you know, party affiliation or anything political. You know, there was a dri- where there was a drive between all the people that I would meet in Miami as the momentum towards Miami started to make Miami the best city in the world. And nothing, no matter who you were, right, which I had never experienced 'cause there's so much pushback on one side or the other, right, in New York about everything, right? Everyone's got... If you've got a good idea, someone's got a reason why you shouldn't build that. You know, there's always a, there's always a, a push and pull on everything, and it's very hard to make a lot of, a lot of progress quickly on things, whether it's filing plans to get a restaurant done or building an entire neighborhood, whi- whatever it is, or moving a tree. You know, try to move a tree in New York, your grandchildren will still be trying to move the tree. You wanted to move a tree in Miami, they move it the next day if you're doing something great. They were running, and that's why Miami exploded the way it did, is that, of course it came from the leadership that was there. But what was amazing to me was that the entire city, everyone you'd meet, right, was all... Everyone would work. It was working towards the same goal, which was basically like, "We've been waiting. We have the best city in America," right? You know what I mean? "We've been waiting for people like you to show up and do your thing here. We, we're ready for more sophisticated products. We're ready to not only have restaurants that are in nightclubs. We're ready for all this stuff to happen." And so I felt that in such a positive, amazing way.
- DSDavid Senra
How, how many times did you have to go out to eat to realize, oh, I'm gonna clean up here? [laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Not that many, right? You know what I mean? There was only a few places that people went. So within, within a few months, you know, I basically said, um... You know, I called my partners and then we... I said, "Listen, I'm gonna... The opportunity here is the biggest I've ever seen." You know, on top of that, it was in the middle... And it was New Year's Eve every single night. So every single night I didn't have a restaurant open, I was like, "How do I not have a restaurant?" Because, because everyone was there out every night. It was the only place that was open. So I very quickly, you know, found a space. I turned around the r- the Carbone on Collins Street in, in 100 days from taking the lease, got it open.
- 1:40:45 – 1:46:08
Carbone Miami In 100 Days
- DSDavid Senra
Wait, the one that's south of Fifth?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yes. So the-
- DSDavid Senra
You did that in 100 days?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
In 100 days from the day I signed the lease to the day we opened. And, uh, which was a, you know, one of the great restaurant feats of all time.
- DSDavid Senra
Is that one of your highest grossing restaurants?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Yeah. And so, I mean, that's an amazing story. I mean, I basically found a restaurant that had closed down during COVID because they were afraid about what was gonna happen. It was sitting there relatively new and, you know, relatively unknown, you know, in the sense that I knew that I could come in. It was in a perfect location. Everyone said, "How did you find this location?" And I say, "Well, 100 yards in each direction exactly, basically, from this restaurant are two of the highest grossing restaurants in America, Joe's Stone Crab and Prime 112, since I've been a kid. Okay? These are two of the highest grossing restaurants in America. Every time that list comes out, here are two of them. We're directly in between the two of them.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
That's all the math I'm doing. They're like, "Oh, well, what about the thing across the street?" I'm like, "I don't care about the thing across the street. You got the two highest grossing restaurants in America on either side of me. How bad can this be?" You know what I mean? Like, this is gonna... Of course, it's gonna be a great location. So I basically told them, "You can change any..." I knew they couldn't do that much in that amount of time, right? So I was able to say things I don't normally say, is like, I like, you know, I had like an Ocean's 11 style. I flew... Everyone was all over the country, and we flew them in from all over the c- you know, all my guys. All my guys that-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
You know, my... You know, we all flew in. Everyone flew in to meet me. Mario came down, and he ended up moving down there as well. And basically, I said, "You guys can do whatever you want here." And I had my designer there. He flew in from San Francisco, Ken Fulk. And I said, "Here's the thing. You can spend as much money as you absolutely want, but there's two conditions. Nothing can be moved. So if there's a light, it can be a different light, but it has to stay there. If there's an outlet, there's an outlet, it has to stay there. The kitchen does not change, right? The bar that's there, you can do whatever you want to it, but it cannot move. Nothing can move. Bathroom's there, cannot move. Do whatever you want inside. But here's the other catch. You have 90 days to do it. So go, feel free, it's the middle of COVID, to spend as much as you can possibly spend to make this look and feel like the most incredible Carbone in the world, but you cannot move a single thing." 'Cause I know from doing this many, many times, once you st- that's what takes forever, right? You know what I mean? It doesn't co- take that forever to put up new curtains and paint and other, and make it sound. But Ken and our team did an incredible job. It was ready in 90 days. We didn't move a thing. And, uh, it was a brand-new restaurant, um, that opened, and we d- we didn't even change the floor plan. The floor plan was the same as the restaurant before it. And that restaurant with the same floor plan was doing about, you know, call it $7 million in revenue. And when we opened Carbone with the same exact seats, right? You know what I mean? That restaurant does over $30 million in revenue. So that is the smartest way to build restaurants, right? Because people invest so much money in building restaurants, right? Even here where we're sitting, right, we did spend a lot of money. But relatively, to build this, right, from scratch-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah [laughs]
- JZJeff Zalaznick
... would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars today. In a way, you know, the greatest thing is when you can find something that already has the bones, because where people get stuck all the time is you invest so much money into build-outs that you can never catch up. When we came to Miami, we were able to open... You know, there was so much opportunity. There was no one doing what we were doing. There was no great experiential fine dining. There was no real fine dining to begin with. And certainly, there was also a culture there that the customers were ready for it, but there was no one there to train the staff. So everyone would come to me and say, you know, like, "How are you gonna open all these restaurants in Miami? There's no- the service there is horrible." And that's the first. Everyone would say that. And I was like, "I don't think the service, I think there's no one here teaching people how to do the service." Right? And that's what we found. You know, we had a lot of people that wo- moved down from New York. I gave kind of a, this, you know, town hall meeting where I invited any of our employees that were, you know, in New York furloughed or not working to come down to Miami, and that I'd have a job for them there. We had a lot of our, from, you know, from busboys to C-level executives move down to Miami. And, uh, they're all still there. They're all incredibly happy. And they brought the New York sensibility. You know, we brought our training, and have found incredible people in Miami. They just needed someone to teach them. And, you know, that's how we were able to open. You know, we've opened seven, eight restaurants in the last few years in Miami, and about, you know, 12 total in South Florida, and a private club, and we're about to finish our, uh, residential condo building. We take over the largest beach, uh, parcel in America, you know, the, uh, three acres on the beach on, uh,
- 1:46:08 – 1:47:53
The Greatest Beach Club In America
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Miami Beach in, uh, in-
- DSDavid Senra
What are you gonna build there?
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Imagine the greatest, uh, beach club you've ever been to, right? Think European-style beach clubs with the most incredible food, you know, our take on that. Again, going back to your kind of classic, you know, you've seen it before, but we're just gonna do it a lot better, you know, on the kind of beach club and restaurant side. The site is huge. So we'll have... It'll have an additi- you know, have another restaurant. It'll have priva- you know, private rooms. It will have a spa. It will have incredible pools and beach. I mean, it's three acres on a beach. There's no property like that in America. So it, it'll be a, a, a giant campus of kind of indulgence and fun and great food, done in a way that, and at a level that has not been done before. And with some, uh, you know, lots of different... You'll have your main kind of beach club restaurant, but you'll also have dinner restaurants. You'll have a Sadelle's on the beach for breakfast. You'll have all these different, um, elements to it, which are, are very exciting. But that's, so that's an- that's our next big project there.
- DSDavid Senra
Jeff, this has been awesome. Way before I've gotten to know you, which has been an absolute pleasure, uh, you've made my favorite products in terms of the restaurant space.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Thank you.
- DSDavid Senra
And now that I, the more time I spend talking to you, the more it makes sense that it all flows from this obsession and this desire you had to just be really truly excellent at, uh, what you do. So I really appreciate you taking the time. This was awesome, man.
- JZJeff Zalaznick
Thank you. Great to see you.
- DSDavid Senra
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 1:47:55
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Transcript of episode 7WBfRhPbS5I
