NRA Chicago '17
The last couple years I have gone to Chicago to attend the National Restaurant Association Show (which is very different than the National Rifle Association Show). For those of you who have never attended a trade show, they're essentially a large vendor show where retailers, distributors, and industry experts gather to showcase new products/ideas, network, and conduct business. The NRA Show is everything restaurant: food, furniture, health care, technology, insurance...anything that is somewhat a component of the restaurant business. Originally, I attended NRA in 2015 to learn about the restaurant world in general. At that time, I had zero experience working in a kitchen let alone managing a restaurant, so my objective was to meet with as many reps as possible and simply learn. Now the show serves as another opportunity for me to trend spot. I'll talk about trend spotting more in detail later in this post.
Sand volleyball courts at North Avenue Beach
First day started with a morning run with Tanner, one of my best friends from college and the person's place I was crashing at during the trip. We ran around the lincoln park area and made our way to North Avenue Beach. If you are an avid traveler, I highly recommend picking up running. It serves three purposes for the on-the-go entrepreneur.
First, it is a great stress reliever. There is no better way to get the burdens of being an entrepreneur off your mind than a quality running session. It is pretty difficult to stress about scaling up when you're out of breath with a heart rate of 150bpm. Likewise, running can also serve as a catalyst to thinking clearly. There is a latin phrase "Solvitur ambulando" which means "it is solved by walking," an exercise many philosophers used to clear their minds. In my mind, running is a faster version of walking, therefore you can clear your mind more efficiently by getting those heels off the ground and moving your ass. Running is also a great way to explore the city you're in. As entrepreneurs, we often find ourselves in a weird paradox of traveling to many different cities, but never having enough time to actually experience them. In March I flew down to San Antonio for a 24 hour trip to check out a food truck manufacturer's operation. Although most of my time was spent with the founder, Cameron, a morning run allowed me to see the Riverwalk area as well as the Alamo during my short visit. Finally, running is one of the few exercises that can be done anywhere. No more making excuses about the inadequacy of a hotel gym. Start the day with a run and watch how engaged you will become for the duration of the day. Sound body, sound mind.
Anyway, I discovered that first day that John, a long-time friend of mine, was in Chicago until that afternoon. The last time I saw John was when we were couch surfing all throughout Texas eating nothing but tacos (we ate at over twenty taco shops in four cities in less than a week) to help me gain inspiration for my future restaurant. What are the odds we'd be in the Chicago at the same time after three years. It was great catching up with him.
John, myself, and Tanner
From the beach, we all grabbed brunch at The Vig. Great interior design, nice blend between exterior and interior, and good food. I wasn't too impressed with their plateware choice--the skillet did not really correlate with the plate they presented it on, and neither matched the furniture. One thing I really appreciate about a quality restaurant concept is the correct choice of music. The Vig's playlist had a great blend of modern and oldies that shared a groovy tempo, which made the experience that much more enjoyable. According to a rep for Soundtrack Your Brand at NRA, they have research that shows a 9.8% increase in sales for restaurants that play music that guests believe align with the restaurant's brand. I personally think that number should be higher, as music engages an additional sense of your guest, which can immensely alter their experience. I'd definitely encourage anyone to try The Vig out if you're ever in Chicago, they did a great job.
Overall, there was not much new at the show this year--like I said earlier, I mainly came to trend spot, in this case primarily on the interior design and plateware side of things. I met with my rep from Front Of House, my favorite plateware provider, to look at some stainless steel options. Porcelain plateware is great and feels very high-end, but is very fragile. My hope is that if I can find a stainless steel substitute that looks and feels high-end, I can provide the same experience with more durability. FOH recently came out with a matte black finish that I think looks phenomenal.
While walking around I also came across a company that is using naturally-fallen palm leaves for to-go packaging. I've been toying around with the idea of starting a cold-pressed juice company called Juice Palm, which would focus on raw, organic juices and health-conscious bites. Although a bit expensive, this packaging would align great with the brand for our grab-and-go salads as they are made from palm leaves and are sustainable, a very important characteristic in the organic space.
Trend spotting is something that's value cannot be precisely quantified, but is what I personally attribute some of my best ideas to. It's the art of immersing yourself in a progressive setting, like a trade show or innovative area, and finding a recurring theme between all the innovations you come across. My first trendspotting adventure was actually that trip I went on with John in the summer of 2014. We went from restaurant to restaurant evaluating what they were doing right, what they were doing wrong, what the customer mix was like, and how they compared to the other restaurants we had visited. From that trip, I came to the conclusion that although all the restaurants we visited primarily served tacos, they were doing it in very different ways. The concept of taking something that was familiar to customers, such as a taco, and using it as a vehicle to provide guests with a globally-inspired experience that was unique appealed to me. Maybe Fayetteville will find it difficult to support a Caribbean or Indian restaurant on its own, but I bet it would entertain a restaurant that featured menu items like jerked chicken or chicken tikka masala tacos. Anytime I visit a different city I always immerse myself in the restaurant scene there to see if I can develop any ideas out of the trendy local spots.
I spent my last day working from the computer at the Antique Taco on Milwaukee Avenue. It's by far one of my favorite taco concepts in terms of branding. Everything they do, except for the music (they were playing some Bob Marley), is aligned with the "Antique" brand. The place literally feels like it's someone's grandpa's hoarding attic. The floors, tables, and chairs were all rustic and worn, the plateware felt very homey, and they had a bunch of old trinkets all over the restaurant. Food is decent, but the authenticity is there--they have all their vendors' info posted on a wall in the kitchen, boasting their focus on locally-sourced.
Flying back to Dallas at 5AM left me exhausted. I passed out the second I got back to my sister's apartment in uptown. Once I woke up again, my brother-in-law and I grabbed lunch in Deep Ellum. Out of all of the years and hundreds of visits I've made to Dallas I have never managed to make it out to Deep Ellum...I have been missing out big time. It is unlike any other part of Dallas. For a brief moment, I thought I was walking on Guadalupe St in Austin. I was compelled to go back to see what the nightlife was like there.
Clare on the left, though I wouldn't mind knowing the girl on the right, if she's under 5'7"..
A text and an uber ride later I was catching up with my friend (who has the looks and height of a supermodel) Clare bear on the rooftop of The Green Room. One thing I really admire about Clare is her tenacity and her mantra that work ethic and performance can bridge any gap between wages, gender, race, etc. That is trait I absolutely love to see in people. We had great conversation, but the most impactful piece of knowledge she shared with me was mankind's necessity for struggle.
As humans, we crave a struggling sensation. Celebrity drama, working out until our arms are limp, studying in undegrad so we can study longer in grad school, humans actively choose a route of attrition on many different levels. There is probably some chemical component to it, maybe it's because we just want to be relevant, who knows. It does seem that humans love to struggle.
Reflecting on this point, I have to agree. However, I believe humans obtain the struggle in many ways. As entrepreneurs, the struggle is equivocal to "the grind." When you learn to love the grind, each milestone you achieve motivates you to work twice as hard to get to the next. The desire to struggle fuels your journey to success. On the flipside, as humans we can become so fixated on the need to struggle that we create a false perception of struggling in order to get that fix. Prime examples I used to always see in college were social media posts that read "dying from studying at library for ten hours." In reality, during those ten hours: one hour was allocated for social media, two hours for studying, five hours for first season of Orange is the New Black, and two hours to talk about how hard college is with a peer. My takeaway from Clare's insight is that it doesn't matter how many people think you're struggling--perception of pain is not enough to succeed. Results are what matter. And the people that push stellar results aren't the ones that get their struggle fix from complaining about it online; they're the ones that put their heads down and work until the job gets done. The desire for struggle is a gift that, if used correctly, will become a keystone to your success.
Overall, it was a great and insightful trip. I've got some things in the works that will implement some of the things I saw/learned on this trip. I'll be sure to reference back once I get more concrete visuals.
