For our fourth Business Breakthrough Session, we had the pleasure of learning from Andrea Snyder, Founder of Urban Cookhouse and Farm Bowl + Juice Co. Urban Cookhouse is known for their fresh, locally sourced food and amazing customer service. Farm Bowl + Juice Co. is their newest creation with juice, smoothies and açaí bowls. Andrea mentioned that they are currently working on their third concept but she couldn’t give any hints at this time as to what it will be!
The foundation of their restaurants is about relationships. They focus heavily on the relationships with their farmers, employees and customers. Obviously buying local means that their food tastes better but they are able to have a huge economic impact to keep these farms in business. Their main egg farmer started with 9 chickens when Andrea first hired him and now he has over 9,000 chickens total!
Another huge component of their foundation is their commitment to developing great employees. They now have a total of 175 employees with the combination of Urban Cookhouse and Farm Bowl. Andrea said they focus on hiring right because one bad employee can cost them a lot of time and money in the long run. They want to train and teach their employees well and incentivize them through franchising opportunities and bonuses. Offer your employees a growth track!
Andrea talked about something she calls “drive by reviews.” They want to continually encourage employees in the moment- as soon as she sees them doing something good. And from time to time, she also has to be direct when someone needs improvement. Encouragement goes a long way!
Andrea provided a great analogy for us. If you think of each day having a total of 150% of available time, most business owners will spend the first 50% on the tyranny of the daily urgent tasks. Then the next 50% is spent on gathering and analyzing metrics of the business while the third 50% would be developing your employees.
But Andrea totally flip flops this structure. The first 50% must be spent on developing and pouring into your employees. She believes this is what has created a great culture for Urban Cookhouse so she will continue to prioritize their employees with Farm Bowl as well.
Over the last 8 years, Andrea has continued to come back to this same quote from Samuel Johnson:
“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.”
What about customer acquisition? Andrea believes the real estate of your restaurant is the most important. You must be in the center of the customer population you want and parking is so important- that is one reason they just relocated their Homewood Urban Cookhouse spot. Plus they were able to add a drive thru!
In order to truly give their customers the best experience possible, they hire a CEO at each location. But this specific CEO stands for Customer Experience Owner. Even though this position may not be the highest paid, this person is extremely important to the success of the location. This employee does anything from holding the door open for customers to getting a high chair for a baby. Adding this position to their company has had immeasurable benefits!
Andrea has a wealth of knowledge about what it truly takes to build amazing restaurants! We are so grateful she spent time with us at Forge. If you haven’t already, go check out their restaurants! And look out for whatever restaurant they develop in the near future!