Christin Marvin: 0:08

If you are an independent restaurant owner looking for the right investor to start growing your restaurant group, I've got just the person you need to learn from on the show today. In the years since 2010, when Juan Padro and his partners opened their first restaurant Highland Tap and Burger the Culinary Creative Group has undergone remarkable expansion under Juan's leadership, opening 20 restaurants, bars and coffee shops across Denver and New Orleans. The Culinary Creative Group has received multiple local and national Best Restaurant Awards, as well as being named Best of and hottest restaurants lists. In late 2023, the Michelin Guide awarded the prestigious Bib Gourmand to two culinary creative group restaurants Ashkara and Mr Oso. Juan has a BA in history from the University of Massachusetts and a passion for creating jobs, investing in people, developing a and building businesses that truly impact communities. He has cultivated strong relationships in the local business and nonprofit communities, and Juan is proud to work with incredible humanitarians and to have the opportunity to support their efforts, both locally and internationally. Juan was recently nominated to the HR Power List of 10 Founders and Entrepreneurs Changing the Restaurant Industry.

Christin Marvin: 1:28

We have an action-packed, full-of-value episode for you today. Today, we are going to talk about how to know if and when your business is scalable, and how to prepare for growth, how to find the right investor for your restaurant, what a great investment deal looks like for you and some pitfalls to avoid. How to diversify your board of directors. And how to cultivate culture and develop your team through core values. Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators.

Christin Marvin: 2:11

I am your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership, lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting. Hi Juan, thanks so much for being here. How are you?

Juan Padro: 2:58

I'm great. Thanks for having me. It's nice to see you again.

Christin Marvin: 3:01

It's nice to see you too. I just want to say congratulations on, obviously, all your success. Your brand, Culinary Creative. Your group, has been one of our favorites Tyler and I's favorites over the years and have just been super excited to see the growth and excited to share with the listeners today what your growth strategy has been, how you've been able to financially secure investors and aid in your growth and share some of the lessons that you've learned along the way that can help anybody who's interested in really scaling do so in a really sustainable way. So thank you so much for being here. It's awesome.

Juan Padro: 3:39

Yeah, I'm excited. So, um, yeah, so you know, we started in 2010, um, with Highland Tappenberger in North Denver, um, burgers beers community eatery. Um, it was, um, an emerging, uh, a neighborhood that was going through some transition. Um, and uh, you know, today have grown to 21 stores 18 in Denver, three in New Orleans. We've got about 12 under construction, you know, including four at the airport, which are. So we've gotten into some licensing deals.

Juan Padro: 4:16

You know, along the way, I've done some consulting and, yeah, I've certainly have fallen on our faces many times and learned a lot, and I think we've been able to come out the other side All right and we're still learning. So that never stops, and we're a very unique group. We've got 14 concepts in 21 stores. So, you know, you have to be a special type of crazy to do that. Typically, you know, you find a concept or two that are working and you lean into them and and for us, you know, we just happen to be really good at conceptual development, and so, you know, but we are at the point now today where, um, you know, uh, we've sort of restructured our company and and um, you know, we're identifying concepts that we believe are local, regional and national concepts and um so we'll have different strategies for, you know, for all of those.

Christin Marvin: 5:20

That's awesome. Juan, will you talk a little bit about the, about the different concepts that you have in your group?

Juan Padro: 5:25

they're the tapping burgers and, um, you know, really, without Highland tap, none of this, uh, other stuff would be possible. But uh, we uh moved forward and uh worked on a project called old major, um, which was uh, so 2010,. We opened Highland 2012,. We opened old major, which was on the other side of the spectrum. Uh, that was a uh, you know, had a butchery program or charcuterie program, had a high-end wine program. It was really a completely different business.

Juan Padro: 6:12

We got out of that deal in 2014, and we had tons of lessons learned there. I would say the biggest one was not all partnerships are going to work, and I think you have to be selective about who you're going to be a partner with. And that's not to say our partner was a bad person or anything like that. I don't think so. I think just, generally, you have to have values aligned and it's perfectly all right to have different values. So we sort of learned that lesson there In 2000,.

Juan Padro: 6:43

That year, we also partnered with Max McKissick, who was an incredible chef, with the Squeaky Bean and you know so, old major in Squeaky Bean. That was, I believe, the first time Denver ever had two restaurants on Bon Appetit's Top 50 in America, and so it was a really important year for the culinary scene in Denver, which you know was certainly not on the national radar at that point in time. And so you know, obviously, as you know, denver had explosive growth and people are coming in from the coasts. The other palates were a little bit more diverse. People say sophisticated. I'm not sure that's true.

Juan Padro: 7:20

I mean, you know, I think Denver's pretty a lot of highly educated, sophisticated people. I mean, you know, I think Denver's pretty a lot of highly educated, sophisticated people. And so I think it's unfair to label a New Yorker or San Francisco, you know, as more sophisticated. It's just different. Yeah, and so you know, I think diversity plays, you know, a big, big part of that. And so you know the diversity of the cities are reflective of, you know the cuisine is reflective of that. So you know, from there we opened up Bardough, which you know I would say I mean you've certainly spent plenty of time in Bardough.

Christin Marvin: 7:52

Yes.

Juan Padro: 7:52

My second home, that's right. And you know Bardough, you know is probably what our group is most closely associated with, you know, still to this day and you know, obviously you know Max is again just a brilliant chef and he developed Carrie Baird who ended up as a finalist on Top Chef and so we got a lot of national attention at that point in time for that. And we started to, you know, kind of continue to grow with more taps and started to get into consulting and we did 7908 in Aspen and Main Shack and Sophia in New Orleans, which we are a partner in.

Christin Marvin: 8:34

Yeah, juan. Would you talk a little bit about why you decided to go out of Denver into New Orleans, specifically?

Juan Padro: 8:41

Yeah. So I got a call from one of my investors and he said, hey, listen, he's a money manager for UBS. And he said, and this is a friends and family investor, by the way, certainly not institutional money or anything and he said, would you mind taking a call? One of the families that I manage, their portfolio. They have a son who's in the club business in New Orleans and wants to start moving away from that into more of the restaurant world and I think he's got a pretty sophisticated palate. You know, grew up between like LA, aspen, new Orleans and DC. Father wrote the Exorcist and uh, so pretty interesting guy. And and uh, he was uh, climbing mount kilimanjaro and was training in colorado and kind of got grounded in denver, googled best italian, ended up at bardo and uh, fell in love with it and said we don't have anything like that in new orleans. Um, you are, our italian food is a little bit more like, like you know, sardinian and cajun hybrid italian american type stuff, and bardo is very, as you know, seafood and vegetable forward and lighter and um so, um, I took the call and we talked and um, really liked the guy and uh, he came up the next day actually just got got on a plane and what was supposed to be an hour meeting turned into an entire evening. As you know, in our industry that can happen and I think you know at that point we knew that. You know we really we liked the guy enough that you know we would be willing to license, you know, our concept to him, got it.

Juan Padro: 10:26

It took so long to get that thing off the ground in New Orleans with all the political hoops that you had to go through, and Billy's parents were really close with Sophia Loren and so that's why the restaurant is called Sophia. Okay, to note to her. And it's really remarkable. There were all these rumors about like love triangles and the tabloids and all this kind of stuff. So we have a lot of really cool content around that. But Sophia actually won restaurant of the year in New Orleans, swept every publication, oh nice. So it's the second iteration of Bardough, and the final piece to that puzzle was a chef and an operator and Peter Gordon, who ran restaurants at a prominent group in Colorado, and his wife Talia, who's an Italian and a really good cook. So she, they wanted to move to New Orleans. So it was perfect because they understood our culture and they certainly had spent a lot of time at Bardo and they've done a good job. With Sophia down there, she's done an especially great job.

Christin Marvin: 11:33

That's great, I love it. Will you talk a little bit about I mean, you've got so many different concepts, right, you mentioned a few of them. You've got, you know, now you've got really high-end sushi. You've got, you know, now you've got really high end sushi. You've got, you know, high end steak. You're just, you've got so many great concepts, coffee, or you've got your cocktail bar and Cherry Creek Did. Will you talk a little bit about the thought process of why why you continue to open so many different concepts? And then, at what point did you say this is the one or two that I'm going to scale Like? How did you make that decision?

Juan Padro: 12:04

Yeah, I think it's a really important question Because the way we built our business is certainly, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend following our script. In terms of all the concepts. It's very risky, yeah, and as you get bigger your mistakes are, you know, much more expensive. But you know we're fortunate. You know that we were able to do it and you know we gained probably greater credibility because we were able to do it, because it's next to impossible to do. But you know, I was a headhunter in the late 90s, during the dot-com era, and you know a very similar type, you know situation where all these like young, uh entrepreneurs had these incredible ideas when, uh, people started talking about the world wide web and e-commerce and all that type of stuff.

Juan Padro: 12:57

So the problem was that you know the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that were going into investing in these companies. These guys were putting money in with young kids. A lot of them didn't even have college degrees, but they knew the modern development languages and they were progressive in thought from a business perspective and so the investment banks and the venture capitalists and the angel investors just started pouring money into Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley in New York and the Boston Cambridge corridor and in order to de-risk they created incubators. And what the incubators did was really reduce their risk because all of the stuff that a 22-year-old founder of, let's say, raging Bull dot com which was a wall, basically taking Wall Street Journal and putting it online, you know, and selling advertising and all that type of stuff was wildly popular. But the really I think his girlfriend might have been 18 years old when they were interviewing, like all these C-level execs and custom suits from New York and Boston to run their company. You know that that that kid did not have experience in sales and marketing and any anything administrative. You know, did not have set up an office. Just, you know all the stuff that goes along with business that you don't read about cause it's not sexy. But what he could do is he could code and uh, and he and he knew the modern development languages.

Juan Padro: 14:29

So, um, so you know these guys. They go into an incubator and and uh, and the incubator takes care of all the peripheral stuff and they focus on that and they become millionaires and they grow. So we sort of um, do that with artists, uh, so I would say we're an incubator of artists, we're an equitable business. That's very important to us, and when our creatives create a concept that we work on together and we refine and make it financially viable, they get equity and they're partners and so we build around that and that's what's allowed us to do so many concepts, because we have our creatives that are very invested in it, because it is really their concept with our structure Got it. That's why we, we, we've, we've been able to pull that off. So you have to be willing to give something up to do the conceptual development at the clip we were doing it at.

Christin Marvin: 15:27

Yeah.

Juan Padro: 15:28

That's awesome as we grew. To answer your other question, you know some concepts just outperform others financially and you know, when you go out looking for capital, like you know, at first you know it's mostly like friends and family. You know you're just kind of cutting and pasting and getting things open, and so you know you'll take tiny investments, bigger investments mom, dad, cousin, friend, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, you know whatever, whoever wanted to put it in we got them open. But as we started to get a little bit bigger, we had we were getting people were like wow, these guys are doing really well, I want to be a part of it, because people it's like almost investing in an independent film, you know it's, I want to be a producer of a movie. Well, a lot of people want to be parts of restaurants, bars, you know things like that. It's sexy.

Juan Padro: 16:21

So we started taking in bigger investment dollars and then in like 2020, we restructured the company into a C-corp and and we've got a pretty, pretty complex structure, you know, beyond the C Corp, but we raised money into that entity today and that money flows down through the brand levels and the store levels. And then you know, now we're at the point where we've got. You know we're coming up, we're going to have five Mr Rosso's, we have four Tappenburgers we got, we're going to have fiveiano's. Like, and when you get, when you're starting to prove concept like that, people get very interested in peeling those concepts out and growing them, and so that's a different type of money, right? So then you're talking about, like, institutional money and and there are different there's a whole different set of rules with with that, and so we've avoided institutional money to date because we wanted to maintain control.

Juan Padro: 17:15

Once you start taking that, you know you're taking bigger dollars, and rightfully so. People have restrictions on those dollars. And you know those institutions, whether they're family offices or, you know, or PE firms or whatever, I mean they have a fiduciary duty to their clients to put their money in a good place and so so. So again, we're not really ready, we're not quite ready to do that yet. But that's the next phase. As we go out and we say, hey, mr Oso, you know how do we get Mr Oso from five to 20? Sure, yeah, mr Oso, you know how do we get Mr Oso from five to 20?

Christin Marvin: 17:54

Sure, yeah. Hi everybody, we're taking a quick break to offer you an exciting opportunity. If you're a restaurant owner or manager looking to enhance your leadership skills, I invite you to join my 12 day leadership challenge. In just 12 days, you'll receive a guided packet with actionable strategies to transform your leadership in less than five minutes a day. Join the challenge and the community, and grab your copy at kristinmarvincom. Slash 12 days. Now let's get back to the show. Now let's get back to the show Howdy listener.

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Christin Marvin: 19:25

So let's go back to the early days, when you said you were taking investments from friends and family and then people were noticing you and starting to reach out. Would you talk a little bit about how you did some of those deals? How were they structured? Were you also out there, you know, just really boots on the ground, hitting people up, saying, hey, I need investment, I need investment. Did you know how much you needed? Were you just asking for whatever was available? What did that look like?

Juan Padro: 19:48

Yeah, it was a little bit of. Well, we had a structure that we that we decided on. There there was a little bit of trial and error, but but generally, you know, we took a stabilized income, three, which we, which we pegged to year three, and we put a multiple, you know, on that, and so that's how. And then we that we assigned a value to the share. So you know, like, a Tappan burger was like 25,000 bucks a share.

Juan Padro: 20:20

So you know, if it cost us a million bucks to go out and build a Tap and burger, which in 2024, it's well north of that, but just for a round number, you know, and we knew we were going to get X amount in debt and we were going to put some of our money in, and so, say, we needed to go out and raise 500,000 bucks. You know, uh, we have a $25,000 share value. Um, you know, so the math on that is that we're selling, you know, 20% of the company, Right, so, um, and then, and you know, just, you know, everything was subordinate to the debt, but distributions were dollar for dollar and it was just a very simple, clean, you know, way of looking at it.

Christin Marvin: 21:00

They own stock in the company, so to speak. Okay, and how much did you? How much are you willing? Were you willing to give away at that point?

Juan Padro: 21:06

Well, it was usually 20 to 30%. Okay, yeah, so our model I should probably. You know, before we get too deep into that, we have a management company. So when we started to get a little bit more sophisticated, you know, after a couple stores opened, the management company basically takes 5% of the top line revenue. Okay, and that's where Katie, myself, kevin, max and Hazem live, the five partners and that's how we get paid. We get paid. You know, the more sales we do, the more we get paid.

Juan Padro: 21:40

There's a ton of incentive there and we're creating value in that management company, right? That management company has no asset, so no liability, no, anything. So the multiple will be higher than that. So that's just cash flowing, right. And so then you have the equity at the store. And today, obviously, the equity is in the C Corp, but then it was just at the store level.

Juan Padro: 22:06

And then when we restructured the know, the value of the equity was, the multiple was much higher. So I think we were doing, depending on the concept, we did three to three and a half you know times EBITDA, you know three or four EBITDA. And in the C Corp, when Grant Thornton, which is a large public accounting firm, came in and did our valuation. You know it was 4.8, I think it was as high as six X on the valuation of those of the store level shares. And so they, you know they do a little bit of a discount for lack of marketability because you don't have, you know, 10 of any concept or anything like that, and then they map it to. You know 25% of it they map towards what they call guideline public companies. So they look at public companies in the category, see what they're valued at and the rest of it is discounted cashflow.

Christin Marvin: 23:02

How did you put a value on the company in the early days?

Juan Padro: 23:07

Just three to three and a half times three or four EBITDA. Okay, okay, yeah, I think that's a fair number for a one-off store because really, what you're doing is your investor is really more focused on their IRR and if you're producing and we're producing north of 30%, what do you base that off of?

Juan Padro: 23:33

to 30%. So what are you? What'd you base that off of? It's, it's, it's so. So, basically, you know, when you do a financial model, you know we would do um. You know a five-year model, right, and really where, um, what we had seen in our first couple of stores was that year three is really when the business became stabilized. A lot of times restaurants lose money in their first year, Right, um, um. And then they kind of figure it out, they kind of grow at that point and then year three, it's like, okay, this is what we are, this is who we are, this is our. You know what our product mix is, these are what our margins are going to be. So you have a much more accurate number, um and um, and you know through experience you're able to kind of predictively model that. And so we take that third year EBITDA number and we apply to three and a half X to it.

Christin Marvin: 24:13

Okay, got it, got it.

Juan Padro: 24:15

So. So, for example, if you were doing you know $500,000, you just take an EBITDA, you do 500,000 times 3.5.

Christin Marvin: 24:26

Okay.

Juan Padro: 24:27

And it could be. The number could be 2.5, 3, 3.5, whatever. It's an inexact science, but but you know. But, but the you know the justification is is the key, right? It's like so, if I, if I'm giving, if I'm asking for three and a half X, what is my investor getting in return for that? You know, if their IRR is, is, is high, then you know that's very, that's, that's a fun investment for them.

Christin Marvin: 24:51

Okay, and then will you talk a little bit about when you made the decision to put the management company in place and why you made that decision?

Juan Padro: 25:00

Yeah, we, we put it in place when we opened Sloan's Tappenberger. So that was at that point. Then we were at three stores. You know we had opened four restaurants but remember we had moved on from Old Major, so we had Highland, tab, pardo and Sloan-Statenburg, and so we put the management model in place and just you know, to kind of tell the market hey, we're going to incentivize, we're going to be incentivized to grow financially, and so that's that's when we did that. And then in 2020, we added what's called an employee leasing company. And as you grow, I would strongly recommend that, because you put all your employees in one bucket. That's where their paycheck comes from, right, and you are now going out to market to negotiate benefits and 401ks and any sort of thing for your employees. Instead of negotiating as a 30-person restaurant, you're negotiating maybe as a 300 or 400-person company, right? You're going to get a much better rate. So you try to take advantage of economies of scale there.

Christin Marvin: 26:12

Okay, got it. Will you talk about give some tips to the listeners here that are that are starting their investment journey? How did you know where to look? Who's the how do you know when you found the right investor, what? What can give the listener some direction around that?

Juan Padro: 26:30

You know, the thing with that is, I think there are various approaches to that. My personal approach was to be very visible in the community and really understand who is in my restaurant and get to know them personally, and so it just happened organically. And so when you're small and you're busy, everybody wants to invest in you. Every single person you talk to is like oh, can I invest? 75% of the people never will even go beyond that conversation. And then the other 25% 20% of those will get to the goal line and not do it, and 5% will say, yeah, man, I want to put some money in.

Christin Marvin: 27:18

Got it, got it. What are some of the big mistakes you made when you first started looking for investors?

Juan Padro: 27:25

Um, probably, um, you know it's, your partners are really important, you know, and I think, and I think when you need money, oftentimes you can kind of justify maybe taking some money from somebody that really shouldn't be a part of that business. So I would say that's number one. Number two would probably be undervaluing ourselves. You know, and especially as we were getting into seven, eight, nine stores, you know we were really providing a lot of value and we provide. We provided a lot of value, you know, in the form of deals that we were getting from developers who wanted us, from public relations, from our community involvement, not really understanding the value that we were, we were giving to big real estate developers, um and so, um, I would say those are the big ones.

Juan Padro: 28:22

Um, other lessons learned, um, outside of the financial piece, uh was, like, you know, I think, restaurants, most restaurants, fail before they open, even if they open and they operate for a year or two. That you know they had no chance because they don't understand construction. It's still, it's still probably our weakest link right now. And you know we're just not, you know none of us are construction people, so that you know that tends to cost. You know those mistakes tend to add up.

Christin Marvin: 28:52

How have you been able to help your restaurants be successful from years one to three?

Juan Padro: 29:02

By being there and investing in good leadership.

Christin Marvin: 29:07

Yeah, I mean I will say that one of the things we loved and a lot of the reason why we came to the restaurant so often. I mean, yes, the food was great, we loved that whole you know area, but we love seeing the same leaders over and over and over again. Right, we built relationships with your managers and they they all you know really spoke highly and do still do about you and the organization and they. What I love about them is they're never running around like the dining rooms on fire. They're always comfortable. They're confident. When you come into the restaurants and say hi, every time we were in there you'd come up and say hello. I don't know if now I should feel slighted that you didn't ask me for money, but I'm just kidding.

Juan Padro: 29:49

We're about to open up another round of capital.

Christin Marvin: 29:53

Okay, perfect, I still have some chances. But, but no, they, they really emulate the same qualities, right and? And they'll come spend, you know, not not too much time with you, where they're ignoring the guests, but you really can tell that they've got the finger on the pulse of what's going on in the restaurant and they're always present. You know they're not sitting down, they're not in the office restaurant and they're always present. You know they're not sitting down they're not in the office.

Juan Padro: 30:17

We're a company that works right. You know work-life balance is a pretty dumb concept.

Christin Marvin: 30:24

You know it doesn't mean you're talking to a mindset coach, my friend.

Juan Padro: 30:38

I feel like you know, you I don't know how you quantify that. You know, I think the one thing about our industry is that people love it and if you can figure out a way to make it your career and take care of your family, you know, the fact that you can do something that you love so much and you're so passionate about it's never work. You know, if I was an accountant, I'd be trying to be a great accountant. I'd be working really hard to make as much money as I can to go out to the best restaurants and go to the best wineries and go to the best events. Right, yeah, a hundred percent.

Juan Padro: 31:02

We do that for a living, but you know, I you know the biggest thing is you have to have a strong set of core values and you have to talk about them a lot, and those values your management needs to be able to. Whenever a situation comes up, whether it's something on the floor or something with an employee or something with a guest that's external before they reach out to you, they should be able to look back to that document and the answer should be there. This is how we do things, this is how we treat people. You know, this is our value proposition, right? This is our take on making mistakes.

Juan Padro: 31:39

For us, it's like go ahead, just be a couple more concerned with accountability than we are with the fact that you made a mistake. You know, communicate up, not down, like those types of things you know. So you know, your, your, your, your core values are just like wildly important, right, and they become more and more important as you scale, because culture is the hardest thing to maintain. Yeah, you know, right now, our biggest challenge is that we have CCG and we have 14 concepts and we want the concepts to feel autonomous, but they're still CCG employees.

Christin Marvin: 32:12

Yeah.

Juan Padro: 32:13

So how do we, you know, how does that relationship work? So that's like a huge struggle and if you're not paying attention at store one to that stuff, you're going to fail at some point and it's going to hurt.

Christin Marvin: 32:27

And do you feel like the core values are really that glue between the management company and the concepts?

Juan Padro: 32:35

Yeah, from employees from the dishwasher to the line cook, to the GM, yeah, I mean, everybody has to be, you know, aware of what those are, because that's your expectation, you know. I think that I think I think people really struggle when they don't set expectations and don't follow through on on them. You know, yeah, yeah, and you know, I'll tell you. In business, one of the, I just did a talk at the Clayton Hotel in front of 40 or 50 CEOs and entrepreneurs the other day and you know, I had always had this philosophy that like, look, you know, you're going to have some A players, you're going to have some B players, you're going to have some C players, you're going to have some B players, you're going to have some C players, you're going to have some D players, right, and? And usually your C and D players.

Juan Padro: 33:19

You know, I'm like you focus so much. I mean, these guys are killing me, they're costing me money, they're not doing their job, they don't give a shit about anything, whatever. And I, all of a sudden, one day I woke up and I said that's not my problem. My problem is my B players, not my C and D players, because my C and D players typically fall off. My B players, who could be A players but choose to be B players, are killing my culture. And when we identified that problem, when we started working and saying, hey, and, by the way, it's okay to be a B and a C player as long as you're willing to improve, yeah, but the complacency, you know, and you know, hey, I want to. I turn my phone off at five o'clock every night, no matter what's going on at work. Right, I mean, it's probably not our culture. You know if you need, if you're behind and you need to improve, you know, ultimately the outcome is what matters. Whether you do it in 20 hours or 60 hours is irrelevant.

Christin Marvin: 34:19

So what'd you do with those B players?

Juan Padro: 34:22

Well, we've invested heavily in training and development. We have an organizational development person now and, as you know, in Colorado we have some significant challenges in terms of labor and cost of labor, and so it's hard to you know, back in the day we would be training on a weekly basis in the store. We'd just like bring people in an hour or two early, get them lunch and train. You can't do that in Colorado anymore, so you have to rely on sort of like you know train the trainers, you know so spending a ton of time with our leadership, our directors, and then you know helping a ton of time with our leadership, our directors, um, and then you know helping them really like um, develop the, the general manager, uh level, and then the general manager level is developing the agm level. And then, you know, during service, you know having kind of ongoing um, you know training, and then we have opus that we um downloaded I'm not familiar with that.

Christin Marvin: 35:12

Yeah, I had r Rachel on the show. Yeah, I've introduced her to some other concepts in Denver and they're loving the platform.

Juan Padro: 35:20

Yeah, it's a great platform. I really like it a lot. But the challenge is it gets harder and harder and harder to justify training your people due to the cost of doing that and especially in the restaurant business that has such a slim margin. But if you don't do it, you know that's even a bigger risk.

Christin Marvin: 35:42

Mm-hmm, I love that you're making that investment. I love that you also talked about some of the sacrifices it sounds like you've made because of the labor costs you know, and how you've kind of restructured that training. That's great.

Juan Padro: 35:56

Yeah.

Christin Marvin: 35:57

Will you speak a little bit to just you know how you're developing yourself and your mindset and how that, how the mindset that you have is really contributed to your success.

Juan Padro: 36:22

Yeah, there's a couple of components to that. You know, I think travel and that sounds sexy and fun, but like really immersing yourself in other cultures. You know I'm a big believer in three main tenets empathy, emotional intelligence and intellectual curiosity. And I really want to see that in my leaders. And you know, if they have two of the three, I think they can still survive here. But all three I feel like we can turn into really rock star operators and leaders, and whether they stay with us or go do their own thing. You know, I'm very proud of the people who have left and opened their own places because they've learned at ours.

Juan Padro: 36:55

But, but travel is a big part of that like really understanding, because we communicate with people but we oftentimes forget to put ourselves in their shoes. You know, and and really like striving to understand different cultures, um, the history of their cuisine, um, you know how many times you hear, um, oh, that's not authentic. Well, what the fuck is authentic? I mean like nothing's authentic. I mean there's been tribes going here and here and influencing and you know it's, it's crazy. Um, you know what's authentic is where you buy your food and how you treat your guests. You know that's, that's where I've, you know, and and so like. I spent a ton of time doing that, and that really helps our conceptual development as well.

Juan Padro: 37:44

The other side, which is probably the you know, more common answer, is you know, you got to surround yourself with people who just are very, very, very radically honest with you and, frankly, that are smarter than you, and, and so my mentor used to always tell me, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong fucking room. I think Confucius might've said that, maybe minus the F word, but you know, I think that that's a very true statement. You know, as well as like looking at yourself in the mirror every day and, um, thinking about who you're spending your time with, um, you know, um, you know who are the five people that I'm going to see the most today, and is that adding any? Is that adding any value to my life? Yeah, so those are really hard things, because there's a lot of fun people out there that are really nice people but that aren't that are dragging you down.

Christin Marvin: 38:38

You know. So yeah, but I have an incredible board of directors.

Juan Padro: 38:42

I lean on them a ton. I have great partners. I lean on them a ton and I would say that's, that's the large portion portion of how I'm developing myself.

Christin Marvin: 38:55

How do you find your board of directors?

Juan Padro: 39:01

So it's Katie and myself and Hazem who are partners in the management company. And then there's Matt Joblin, who's a very prominent real estate developer, who's partnered with us on Aviano and Forget Me Not and iPoppy. There is Lynn Doherty who is a just legendary tech exec was with Cisco, not the food company, the tech company as a senior executive, as a senior executive, mcafee, sumo, logic just super high powered, very intelligent but very empathetic. Frankly, somebody that I like to emulate. She's great Todd Herrick.

Juan Padro: 39:47

Their family has been an investor of ours for a while. They're at a Telluride. They own Helitrax, which is a heliski company, and Gunnison River Farms, which has Black River Anglers, so they have the two kind of marquee outdoor experience things in Colorado. But they're employers of capital. They invest in hotels and companies and things like that, and they're fellow New Englanders. So we had that commonality and we spend a lot of time together. Some of their kids have worked for us. And then, uh, a non-investor, um, is Janelle, uh, uh, english, and uh, so she uh is the chief. I don't know if she's what her title is right now she runs Sony studios in LA. Uh, she's married. She happens to be married to my best friend, but she's. She was the chief legal officer for the Discovery Channel and you know, as much as we like to say, we're in food, we're out, we're in entertainment, yeah. So they have that expertise on there, that's awesome.

Juan Padro: 40:46

Is great. So we've got a. We've got a fortune 100 board for sure.

Christin Marvin: 40:51

Yeah, I love the diversity, um, just really thinking outside the box from every aspect of the business. That's great.

Juan Padro: 40:57

Wow, that's like. I'm glad you said that, because I think you know, if we had gotten off this call without mentioning the importance of diversity, I think that we would have been. That would have been a fail.

Christin Marvin: 41:08

So yeah, I love it. Is there anything else you want to mention about the group or let people know how they can find you?

Juan Padro: 41:15

Yeah, you know we're at culinary creative dot com and you know our restaurants are all there. They all have Instagram profiles. I'm J-Pod 16. It's been 30 years or so since I've been an athlete, or maybe 20. But you know, I still keep my number attached to my name. You know, still keep my number attached to my name. So, yeah, people feel free to give me a follow, direct message me if you have questions. That's fine. I'm always available to really anybody and you know, hopefully if you find yourself in Denver, colorado, you reach out and if I'm in town, glad to have a coffee or a drink or show you one of the restaurants.

Christin Marvin: 41:55

I love it. Juan, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your story and just being vulnerable and transparent about the business, and I think there's so much value here for restaurant owners to think differently and just wish you all the best on your continued success, for sure.

Juan Padro: 42:09

You're the best. When are we going to see you again?

Christin Marvin: 42:12

I'm hoping another six to eight weeks. So I'll let you know so we can connect next time I'm in town for a workshop or to visit some more clients.

Juan Padro: 42:19

Awesome, you're the best.

Christin Marvin: 42:20

Appreciate it. Thanks, juan. All right, everybody, be sure to share this podcast with any leaders you know in the restaurant industry. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next week.