Legendary Restaurateur Bob Sambol Shares 50 Years of Wisdom

In this episode of Restaurant Leaders Unplugged, I sit down with Bob Sambol, founder of Bob’s Steak & Chop House, to unpack his remarkable journey from working in his father’s bar to running one of the most respected steakhouses in the country. Bob shares hard-won lessons on leadership, building a loyal team, scaling with consistency, and the simple business philosophy that’s kept him thriving for over 30 years.

If you’re a restaurant operator or aspiring entrepreneur, you’ll walk away with strategies you can apply today to grow your business, inspire your team, and deliver a guest experience that stands the test of time.

Connect with our guest:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobs_steakandchop/

 Website: https://www.bobs-steakandchop.com/bobs-steak-and-chop-house-location/dallas-lemmon

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Listen, like I tell new managers, don't save me money. Make me money. I don't need you to save me money I don't need. I know you're not gonna pay too much for the glasses or the forks or the tablecloth. Make me money. Bring me customers. It's all about revenue. Without sales, there's nothing but misery.

Welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplugged Podcast, where real talks with restaurant leaders take center stage, discover the challenges and victories that define success in the culinary world. Dive into essential strategies for marketing to operations and gain insights that will transform your approach to your restaurant business.

Don't just keep up lead the way. Join me your host, Sebastian Stall, on this journey to excellence. So Bob, welcome to the Restaurant Leaders and Unplug podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you on here. Thank you. Well, you have a really interesting story and I think that course many operators could relate and you could add so much about it.

But let's start at the beginning. [00:01:00] If you could share a little bit of your background, how you got started in the business. Take us back when, when you were starting out. I was born and raised in, in the Bronx and New York, and later on went to high school in New Jersey and my father was, had bars. Bar is when I was very young and then in the early 1960s, and I was born, I'm 71, I was born in 54, so in the early sixties he graduated into the restaurant bus, into the restaurant business in New Jersey when I was 11 years old.

My mother complained to him that he doesn't, he's my, he works seven days a week. That's what people did in those days. My father had a sixth grade education and all he knew how to do was work hard. Which he taught me, and I'll forever be grateful for that. So he takes me to work with him to his bar, and I was 11 years old and this is the days when people drank during the day.

So at 11 30, 12 o'clock, the bar is full and everybody's making a big [00:02:00] deal over me 'cause of my, I'm al brought his son to work with him. And I was dressed up, I had a little, uh, jacket on with a bow tie. And so I fell in love with that. Was it, I was in the business. And my father immediately start, had me doing things, getting ice for the bartenders, emptying the garbage, whatever it, whatever.

Of course I was very happy to do anything 'cause I was there with my dad and then he graduated and like I said, into the restaurant business in New Jersey. And I of course graduated high school, went to junior college for a couple years and then just decided, you know what, I'm gonna be in the restaurant business.

I'm just gonna go work, work for my dad full time. Which I did when I was 19 years old. So it worked for my dad until I was 24. And at that time, my dad, my mom had gotten ill and my dad decided he had to sell the restaurant and retire because he wanted to make sure my mom enjoyed the rest of her life and he was there to help her because she was not doing well.[00:03:00] 

So he sold the restaurant in 19 77, 78, and I've gotta go. I asked him, I said, will you sell a restaurant? What do I do? He said, you're a smart kid. Go out and get a job and learn more about the business. Learn things from other people. Go work in good restaurants and you'll be fine. You're a hard worker, you're, you'll be fine.

So I decide to go visit a friend of mine who was in Miami, and I went there. I drove down. I was single and drove down my car and we're having a great time, me and him, and. I just stayed for a while and I ran outta money. So I decide I gotta decide whether I'm gonna go back to New Jersey or stay in Florida.

Yes. So I decided to stay in Florida and I got a job at a restaurant on Kiska called the Rusty Pelican. I know the place, and it's a magical place owned by a great company at the time, publicly held companies, specialty restaurants had, when I left [00:04:00] them, finally they had 80 restaurants, but at that time they had about 60 and one of them being the Rusty Pelican.

So I'm working for my dad and I'm making literally a hundred dollars cash a day. This is 1978, so I'm, I'm just living the life single, a hundred dollars a day, got a brand new car going out every night, and so I get, I go to the Rusty Pelican and get offered a manager trainee job at $800 a month, and I was scheduled.

From nine in the morning to 11 at night, seven days a week. And I asked the manager his, he is a great guy named Peter Ton, big Yugoslavian guy. And I said, Mr. Ton, when do I get a day off? And he said, when you deserve one. Now, can you imagine if you tell somebody that now you go to jail? That's what was gonna say.

They gonna say, that's the old, yeah. 15 minutes later the cops are there and they arrest you for employee [00:05:00] abuse. Yes. Two and a half years later, I'm vice president of the company. Wow. I just saw an incredible opportunity to work for a company to take my hard work, the great hard work ethic my father instilled in me.

I learned how to work for a big company and I saw an opportunity, and I'm vice president, especially restaurants. One of the vice presidents, especially restaurants, ev eventually got transferred to Chicago, became Midwest regional Vice President of everything East. Kansas City had 14 restaurants in 11 states, just living a great life.

I decide it's time to leave specialty restaurants because I get an offer from Arnie Morton who started the original Mortons. Arnie had a friend who knew me and Arnie wanted me to, I was living in Chicago and he wanted me to come run his restaurant now, which he had called Arnie's, and he had just opened the original Morton's.

Right next door. A state [00:06:00] in rush in Chicago. The thing about Arnie Morton was what you have to realize was he, for 17 years, he was senior vice president of Playboy. He started Playboy Clubs with you, Hefner. So you could imagine the genius of this guy. So I had an, I saw an opportunity to work with a guy like this.

I gotta do this. This is it. So I started working at his restaurant, Arnie's, which was his first restaurant after leaving Playboy. But. I was very involved with the original Mortons, which the original Mortons to this day, I will tell you, was the greatest steakhouse that ever was. He'd had 200 seats. It was down in the basement.

They were the first ones with tray presentation where they brought the food to distance before you had to wrap it in plastic. They hold up live lobsters. They hold up a piece of meat, all that. Arnie was the first one, one of the first ones to have. Premium wine by the glass. Everything was just bigger than life.

I saw this, I said, man, if I ever do my own restaurant, I'm doing this. [00:07:00] So I worked for Ronnie Morton for a while, and it was time for me to just, I had enough of that and I get this incredible offer to go back with specialty restaurants. So I go back to specialty restaurants in Florida and I'm there for a little bit.

I get a call from Dick Clark from American Bandstand. You know who Dick Clark is, right? I know, yeah. Yeah. So he's starting a restaurant called Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill, and he makes me an offer I can't refuse, and I go to work for Dick Clark and I spent a couple of years with Dick trying to expand the concept, which really wasn't my cup of tea.

It was fast casual, although it wasn't my cup of tea, I just. Wanted to work with some this incredible entrepreneur, Dick Clark. He was amazing. He was incredible guy. So I ended up working with Dick. In the meantime, I had a very good friend named Jack Jackson, who had a steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale called Burton Jackson.

He was partners with Burt Reynolds. [00:08:00] It was in Port Everglade. It was on the water. It was an Amer American steakhouse. Men had to wear jackets. It was great. Him and Bird decide they should open another restaurant and they thought Dallas was a good place. Yeah. So Jack says to me, Hey, come with me to Dallas.

I'm gonna go look for a restaurant and if we find one you'll be me and Bird's partner on it. And I said, Hey, we gotta open a steakhouse, we gotta do a Morton's, Burton Jacks kind of thing there. We come to Dallas in, in, in 1993 and. Come to the original Del Frisco's. Where is Bob's now? On Lemon Avenue. And we come here for dinner on a Tuesday night in May, and there's a line out the door and literally a line out the door of a high end steakhouse.

I'd never seen this before. We go inside, we have dinner, we meet Del Frisco. Dale Waad was his real name and he said, what are you guys doing in town? He said, I [00:09:00] said, we're looking for a restaurant. He said, your search has ended. I'm building a new big restaurant north of here. Buy this from me. Jack and I look at him and say, holy mackerel.

Buy a restaurant with this line out the door. Let's do it. Jack starts to negotiate with him. They really don't get along. And I said to Jack, how do you mind if I talk to him? So I start to talk to Dale about it and I said, listen, I wanna do it. He said, great, let's do it. I said, we got one problem. I don't have any money.

He said, well, that is a problem. I said, but I got a great idea. Why don't you And I go, partners? What do you mean I'm not gonna compete against myself? That's stupid. I said, wait a minute. I got an idea. Why don't we change the menu up a little bit? And we're not really competing. Okay, let me think about it.

He thinks about it. He comes back and he says, okay, let's do it. You can't have a filet, you can't have shrimp, you can't have lobster, and you can't have a baked potato. [00:10:00] I said, okay, that's great. I'll do it now. You gotta remember I'm broke, I'm going partners with a guy who has a line out the door. I'll do anything.

I don't care if he told me we we're gonna serve pigeons. It doesn't matter. So we, we opened Bob and Dell's Chop House on July 19th, 1993 with that limited menu, very limited menu, and have a picture of it hanging in my lobby. And we did 60 dinners the first night, and it was downhill after that. It was terrible.

After six months, Dale says, either buy me out or we're closing it. And I said, I don't have the money to buy you out, but if you give me a year to come up with the money, I'll pay you an extra fee every month plus your rent. 'cause he owned the building. He says, okay, I'll do that. But if you are one minute late on your rent or your fee, I'm gonna throw your ass out.

I said, okay. Done. I opened Bob's Bob Steak and Chophouse on January [00:11:00] 1st, 1994. We really struggled in the beginning and then it started to catch on and here we are 32 years later. That's incredible. Bob, so many question, but how did he, because, because you're there six months in, it's failing that you change it to Bob's.

Then what did you do? We, we, we put 'em, we made the menu correct. We add a steakhouse menu and I just worked my ass off. I was here every night. We dinner, only closed on Sundays. At one time. I had me, my chef, two other guys in the kitchen, three waitresses, no bus voice, no hostess, just doing whatever I had to do to make it work.

Now, I'm a risk taker by nature. So that kind of helped that I was willing to take a shot like this and whenever we needed a miracle, we got it. So there were two things that happened that kind of pushed me over the top. [00:12:00] Mm-hmm. One, it now we started to get better, business started to get better very gradually.

And then the Dallas Cowboys hire Barry Switzer as their new head coach. In 1994, they fired Jimmy Johnson. The first night, Barry is in town, he comes to eat at Bob's, and him and I sat at the bar till one 30 in the morning just getting to know each other. I'm a big sports fan. Barry starts eating here three, four nights a week.

So every time he's doing a radio or a TV interview, he'd say, guys, I gotta go. I gotta go to my favorite restaurant, Bob Steak and Chophouse. And he'd go, he'd gimme a plug. People started to hear about it. Goes to Barry and it happened. It started to build. Then D Magazine, our magazine here in Dallas or one, it's not what it was, then decides that there are 17 steakhouses in the [00:13:00] DFW area and we're gonna, we're gonna go into every one of them in order the same exact thing and rate 'em.

They picked me the best. And some Del Frisco. At Dale Stead at Del Frisco's, Phil Romano at Nick and Sam's, all the Palm. They all wanted to, they wanted to sue D Magazine. They said, I must have paid him off. Excuse me. How did that happen? And so those are the things that kind of happened along the way that got me where I am today.

Wow, that's an incredible story. And it's like a, it's, it definitely makes a great execution 'cause you can't even, if you know anybody writes anything about you, your execution's not great. Now one other thing, I needed a partner Uhhuh, and so I was lucky enough to find a gentleman by the name of Bill Lennox, who has since passed away that became my partner and totally believed in [00:14:00] me and gave me the money I needed to make it work.

I was lucky. I found a great partner and I had some of those things that happened. But listen, most of all, it was hard work, dedication, and when I go to speak at hospitality schools or talk to young kids, I tell 'em that I decided what type of restaurant I wanted and I never varied from it. In other words, I never, I knew what I wanted, and all I strive for is to be in people's rotation.

When they want what I serve, they come to me. When they want something else, they go somewhere else. And that's what I think has made Bob's last for 32 years is our consistency. We are what we are. We're not gonna change. And listen, steak knows never goes outta style. All those fads, low carbs, all those fat, no red meat people come here to celebrate.[00:15:00] 

They don't care about carbs. We, we never sold less bread or potatoes during that. We never sold less steaks during when you told red meat gonna kill you. People come here to celebrate. We don't have chicken on our menu. We never have. And the reason I don't have chicken on your menu is when something good happens, you don't say, Hey, let's go out and celebrate and have some chicken.

You say, Hey, let's go out and celebrate and have a steak. You come to Bob's to celebrate and you have a state. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You talk about a few things, but let me backtrack a little bit. 'cause for the audience that, that will be listening and, and might not know how, where Bob is right now in terms of units and and growth here.

Here there's 15 Bobs, but I sold the brand to Omni Hotels. So Omni runs all the freestanding Bobs are licenses. Omni runs the ones in the hotel. Now I'm involved with the brand [00:16:00] a little bit and I certainly talk with them and we all have the same core menu, but they always look up as Lemon Avenue is the place that they try to be.

So if you can share with us a little bit of this process, right? Because you get a great concept over these work, right? Hitting all the cylinders and all that stuff, and then you, that you get approached or how did you go about thinking, okay, let me scale this. Bringing a partner to be able to sell? Well, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be very honest with you.

We open, we opened a few bobs and then Omni comes to us and wants to put us in their hotels. We did one in San Francisco. It was a great success. And then we decide to do, we're gonna do more. But unfortunately for me, excuse me, I'm sorry. I, uh, I went through some personal issues and I ended up selling the brand.

And actually I left for a while. I even sold the original and I bought I, [00:17:00] so all, like I said, all the freestanding bobs are owned by individuals. The people I sold this to in 2009 took it from 6 million to 4 million, and then called me up and said, you wanna buy this back? And in 2019, I did. I took it back from 4 million to 8 million and then we opened another one in McKinney, which is 25 miles away from Dallas.

So that's how the whole history of that goes. Got it. Very interesting. And Bob, so to, to have this level of success, we gotta go back to, so I wanna talk about your philosophy of in business, right? From culture to building a strong team. How did you go about. I was fortunate enough to learn early because I worked with my dad first.

He taught me how to work hard. Then I worked for, especially restaurants. [00:18:00] They had a great president there called and founder David Ache. Then I worked for Arnie Morton. Then I worked for Dick Clark and what I learned from all of them when they talk about building a team was what you want to do is create an atmosphere in your business where good employees wanna work for you.

Bad employees feel uncomfortable. You have to figure out who's good, who's not good, obviously. And you have to be consistent. You have to be consistent in your management. You have to be consistent in your philosophy. You can never waver, you can't take a day off from your philosophy. You can't say, I'm tired today, so I don't care if the tablecloths are dirty.

You can't, it's, it's okay if the food isn't hot today. In other words, you gotta instill that spirit. Your employees where they believe the same thing you do. And like I said, the good ones wanna work for you. 'cause man, that guy's great. We have him make a great living. We, he appreciates [00:19:00] the fact, we obey the rules and we come in, dress right on time and the bad employees go, man, that guy's a nut.

I was five minutes late and he sent me home, or he, I had the, my shirt, didn't have a button down collar. And he told me that I can't work tonight. I mean that those are what you have to create. You look at every successful business and their culture is built around their philosophy and who believes in it, and whoever doesn't believe in it doesn't belong there.

Absolutely. And, and, and Bob though, when it comes to leadership, is there anything that, any set of values, any set of things that you define? Because what you're talking about is it's probably your personality, right? As you grew and you were getting more people doing all this work, did you have a set of values, set of principles that guided you and then to hire the leadership team as well that helped you find the right people?

Yeah, I, first of all it, they would have to convince me [00:20:00] that they believe in what we're doing. They can't just come work here and say, yeah, I believe in it. Do you understand what I'm trying to do here? Do you understand why it's, listen, it's just as hard every day to do the same thing. As it is to try to do something different.

It's the blocking and tackling that every football team tries to do, every play every day. Okay. It's just as hard as coming in and trying to create a new menu every day. Okay? It's hard to do the same thing every day, the repetition, but you have to be, you have to be a person. We're in a high end restaurant.

Everybody who eats here can afford to eat in any restaurant in town. As soon as we screw up, they ain't coming back. It doesn't matter what you charge 'em. They don't care for filets $70 or $75 or $80. If it's delicious, they're gonna pay it. Okay? But you have to make sure everything's right. The valet, the bathrooms are clean, the [00:21:00] air conditioning is right.

The music isn't too loud. Everything matters. Okay? It's just, it's a point where. You have to get inspired that doing it right the same way every day. We don't hardly ever change our menu. Okay? So it's the same thing every day. So I have, I'm a cheerleader, I'm a leader. I'm trying to make sure everybody's in a good mood.

Sometimes I'm, I fail at it. Sometimes I'm not in a good mood, and you can tell, okay? And I feel bad about that, but at least they know that. Most of the, the large majority, I got waitresses that's been with me 20, 25 years. I got a bus boy that's been here 25 years. My bartender, 17, 18. My chef started as a dishwasher 19 years ago.

My manager is, was the original chef. These are all people that believe in what I do. They know if we make money, they're gonna make money. They're here to make money. Come on. It is. It's [00:22:00] like I tell my longtime employees who have customers they've been waiting on for 10, 15, 20 years. Let me tell you something, those customers are not your friend.

As soon as you give them a cold food and bad service, they ain't coming back. They don't care about your dog and your daughter and all those stories you told them and all those nice presents they brought, they gave you at Christmas. They ain't coming back to Bob's. Okay? You gotta understand why people come here.

And we, like I said, we just want to be in people's rotation. We have our own style and we're gonna stick to it and we're gonna be the best at it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Bob Lady. Now also one thing, I came up at a time in our industry where, excuse my language, they worked the shit outta you. Yes. And I was scheduled 14 hours a day.

I was scheduled seven days a week. It's a different world now. It is. So we're five day maximum, five day [00:23:00] work week closed on Sundays. I close all the holidays. I try to give people a good life. I try to give them a, so I have a little older staff, an older crew, because they, most of 'em have families and they get to spend at least Saturday with Sunday with their families and one other day.

So I attract the older employee, which I love. Because of my, the lifestyle that I can supply them. No, that, that's great Baba And for sure, having that type of balance in the, in this industry, it's changed for sure since the old days, but it's still not, not, not that common. They have some of these up. Bob, you, you, you opened, you had all this experience through opening different restaurants and can you share a little bit about a story where something, where concept didn't go well and a tough lesson that you learned from that?

We opened in Denver and it didn't, it failed and it was okay location, but [00:24:00] unfortunately John Elway, the famous Denver quarterback, opened a steakhouse six months after we opened right across the street. Oh yeah. It didn't never be, that didn't work out. Okay, I hear you. Yeah. Um, so that was a big disappointment and financially it was a disaster.

But it, it, it happens. You can't succeed at every one you get, you know? No one does. No, absolutely not. And so, from everything you see out there about, and for advice for other restaurant owners that might be starting out, what do you see as a mistake that many operators are making or in something that, that you notice or pattern that you see And there's a simple, so there's, is there anything that, that you see?

Lemme, lemme just tell you, there's two parts of our business. Yeah, there's the restaurant business and then there's the business of the restaurant. And a lot of these young kids don't realize that they need to know both or they [00:25:00] need to have someone who's working with them that knows both. Okay. So they go in, I've got a young chef who's gonna come see me tomorrow 'cause he's ver, he's getting ready to close his third restaurant and he's a very talented chef, but he doesn't know how to make money.

Because he thinks he's smarter than the customer. He puts stuff on his menu that people don't want. He puts stuff on his menu that he wants. So 80% of your menu is what you know people want, and 20% is what you think they want, and then you adjust as you're open. I have a friend of mine who asked me to what I thought of his investment in this new restaurant.

First of all, I told him, don't do it. Like I tell every, then he brought me the opening menu and on the menu was Rabbit. One of the entrees was rabbit. And I said, let me have something Dan. How many people are sitting home tonight going, honey, I can go for some rabbit tonight. [00:26:00] This is the dumbest thing to have on your opening menu and any, and you know what?

You tell this chef that later on when they're making money and you get your money back, he can run rabbit. A special, but to have it on the opening menu, that's as asinine. It's totally asinine. That's the, okay, let me tell you, let me tell you what, this is a saying that goes for every business in the world.

Jack Nicholas, the famous golfer, was once asked, had you win so many golf tournaments, and he said, I only had to beat half the guys. What? What do you mean? He said the other half beat themselves so I only have to beat half the restaurants. 'cause the other half beat themselves. They do stupid stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. A hundred percent. Listen, first restaurant I opened, first of all, second. I made that mistake too because I was letting myself be, be guided by a chef [00:27:00] who wanted to put his though when I knew my gut, that wasn't gonna fly and yeah, it didn't work. Let's, yeah, Mo listen, most chefs are not good businessman.

By nature. 'cause they've spent their time being a good chef and they don't understand that carving Mount Rushmore in a mushroom doesn't necessarily make you any money. Okay. Right. You just, and so they need somebody as a partner who can explain that to 'em so they can learn that they have to make money.

And when you get a chef that knows how to make money, it's great. Yeah. And my chef, he understands Bob's, he started here as a dishwasher. He's never worked in any other restaurant. He knows Bob's backwards and forwards and he's our chef, but he's also the lead broiler man every night. So he sees every steak go up.

And you know what? You can't put a value on that. No, absolutely not. And the chef that really make the really creative ones make it and they serve what they want. [00:28:00] Very few and that are profitable. You know what I mean? Listen, there aren't that many Thomas Keller's in the world. Exactly. But I bet you if you sit down with Thomas, he can, he basically, he knows the numbers.

Absolutely. Okay. So he a hundred percent. He was talented enough to be successful in the restaurant and plus he knew how to make money. So yeah, there's not a lot of Thomas Keller's and not a lot of Wolfgang Pucks. But if you talk to Wolfgang Puck, I've talked to Bobby Flay, and Bobby Flay will tell you the story that.

In his first restaurant, he slept in one of the booths 'cause he couldn't afford apartment. He slept in the restaurant and then he took a shower at his friend's house. He did whatever it took to be successful. And you ask any of those guys, they all have that story. They all have that story. Yep, yep.

Absolutely. Bob, let's shift gears here for a second. And I know that Bob's was built on reputation and consistency [00:29:00] and, but now. Marketing has changed in different ways. And what's your take on how restaurants should approach that today? I'm an aggressive marketer. I, I spend, I, my philosophy was I spend 5% of every dollar I take in on marketing.

It was very easy for me in the beginning because you had radio, you had print, and you had billboards. And the more money I made, the more money I took in. The more money I spent, I was everywhere. Okay, now I'm a marketing expert and you know why I'm a marketing expert? 'cause I pissed away millions of dollars learning how to be a marketing expert.

So I know what to do, right? Yep. Yep. So what I tell other restaurateurs who ask me, I say, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do anything 'cause you, because they're okay. So when I do something. I hope it works so I can do more. The other guy says, you know what? I'm gonna take that [00:30:00] billboard and if it works, I'm gonna not do it anymore.

Now does McDonald's stop? Does Red Lobster stop? That's not a good example. Does McDonald's stop? Does Burger King stop? Does Ford stop the, you know, general motor stop? No. They keep going at, so I go at it now. Here we are, 2025. What am I doing? I stopped my radio 'cause my spokesperson on the All sports station retired.

So I didn't want to be there anymore. I still do billboards. I think billboards are still great. People still drive, there's still billboards and I'm active on social media now. I'm active on social media. Knowing that it doesn't make a slow restaurant busy, it just keeps you top of mind to people. Agreed.

Now I'm very active on social media personally because what I'm selling here is [00:31:00] Bob, I'm selling me. Come to Bob's, I'm here, I'm gonna take care of you. This is what I built. And it's funny, my non-food posts get more attention than my food posts. People are tired of seeing it's national key lime day, key lime pie day.

So they have a picture of key lime pie. That really makes me want to go out and eat right. Wind down. Wind down Wednesday. Okay. How's that one? Oh, let's do that. What I really love is when Tequila Tuesday. Tequila Tuesday, yeah. Taco Tuesday. Tequila Tuesday. What I really love is when a guy really gets nervous about whether it's working.

He says at the end of his ad, mention this ad and you get a free dessert. 'cause he wants to see if anybody's listening. It's, it's just, it's just like when in a restaurant, and I think one of the Italian chains did this, I don't know which one, where they list all the sauces. They list [00:32:00] all the pastas, and they tell you to pick your own.

That's because in a boardroom, everybody threw their hands up and say, guys, I don't know what the customers want. Let's just list the sauces, list the pastas, and let 'em pick their own. You know what I mean? It's, they sat in that boardroom. That's what they came up with because they gave up. They said, I don't know what they want, shit.

I don't. They'll tell 'em, pick what they want. And so that's what I mean. You're up against people who do stupid stuff like that. I love it. I love it. Yeah, absolutely love it. And then so things have changed. We're very, we've been here 32 years, so we're very active in the community. We spend 1% of our sales on charitable causes.

We spend 5% of our sales on marketing. I'm not gonna stop. I'm never gonna stop and it's part of my budget and I'm gonna live with that. And maybe I should stop, maybe I shouldn't, but you know what? I'm not smart enough to stop. Okay. Yeah. [00:33:00] And that's just the way, but I do monitor it. I do keep wanting to change it.

I do keep aware of what's going. And my advice to young restaurateurs or guys just starting out is, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do anything. Agree. 'cause you're gonna, you're gonna lose money. You're gonna make, you're gonna make a terrible mistake. Yeah. Yeah. That is, you're absolutely right.

You're preaching to the choir, because that's my, my whole thing on this to it, if you don't know what, if what you're spending is making you money and it's working, don't do it. And yeah, it's, now let me just bring up one thing that I really think has helped me make suc be successful is in our business you need, you have to have loyalty.

Loyalty to your customers, loyalty to your employees, and loyalty to your vendors. I've been buying meat from the same company for 40 years. I had the same salesman for 38 years. He just passed [00:34:00] away. Okay. Wow. I've had the same produce guy for 32 years. The same fish guy, the same. Loyal to Aer, to Southern.

Southern Glazer's is my Bennett Glazer. I'm loyal to them because in my business, the high end business, you pick a vendor, you make sure he knows what you want at, at a fair price. You pay your bills and you cross it off your list because you need to keep, get your ass instead of worrying about saving a nickel or a dime.

Get your ass in a dining room and take care of customers, okay? Mm-hmm. Young kids need to learn about loyalty to vendors and pick a good vendor. Pick a reputable vendor. Ask other restaurants who they're buying from and meet with that guy. Get a fair price. Make sure he gives you what your specs, pay your bills and cross it off your [00:35:00] list.

Stop worrying about it. I want to be the guy that when they see me calling them. They go, holy mackerel, this is Bob. I gotta take this. He never calls me. I don't wanna be the guy who, when they see my name, they go, oh, this guy again. He's wearing me out and slam the phone down. Okay? Mm-hmm. They have to learn that loyalty to their customers, their employees, and their vendors.

Absolutely. Uh, Bob, but how do you, okay, because, 'cause I think that's definitely super important and, and I agree with you, but I do see some restaurant owners, what they're doing is. Constantly changing them because they're trying to save some money. Especially, they'll justify, Hey, right now labor cause us crazy food.

Cause us crazy. I'm not gonna stick to one. I'm gonna negotiate with all of them. Pick the one that's best for for, but why? Why not? Why not negotiate with one and stop doing? Stop wasting your time. Get your ass outta the dining room. Take care of your customers. Listen, like I tell new managers, don't save me money.

Make me money. I don't need [00:36:00] you to save me money. I don't need, I know you're not gonna pay too much for the glasses or the forks or the tablecloths. Make me money, bring me customers. It's all about revenue. Without sales, there's nothing but misery. Absolutely. Sales fixes everything. Everything stupid. Guys like me become successful because I'm able to fill my restaurant up.

Okay. I didn't graduate college. I wasn't a good student. But it's just, you have to understand what make, what makes this work. For me to whore yourself out for a nickel or a dime or it's all, what are you doing? I don't care if you're low end or high end, you gotta get vendors and listen. It goes so much as also this, I always talk about those guys delivering these products to you every day.

Yeah. Be nice. Be nice to them. You know what? They got a tough job. They got a full truck full of deliveries. Be nice to them, okay? Because there's gonna be a day where they're gonna be behind and they're gonna say, you know what, that guy, Bob's a nice [00:37:00] guy. I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna make sure he gets his stuff on time.

Don't treat those delivery men like shit. Be nice to them. Yeah, no, agreed. And Bob, you've been in this business for a long time now. Of course. Things have evolved and I know you're a grandfather now. Yes, I just became a grandfather. Thank you. So congratulations on that. We, when my wife and I babysat this morning for our two and a half month old little granddaughter, Scarlet.

Oh my God. I'm telling you, I was just like, man, I never thought I, it is, it's neat. It really is neat. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't imagine being the grandpa. I'm a dad of two and a a four month old baby. Ah, and a 5-year-old. It's a beautiful thing and I can't imagine the grandpa's even. It's gotta be incredible.

'cause you, it's great. You, yeah. You get to take care of 'em and then give them back. When you're done, you go, so how are you, how did you balance it? If there is any balance whatsoever in this, any distance. I've done [00:38:00] both restaurants, what I do now, but it's really hard to find that, that sweet part of balance.

How does you go about doing that, Rob? I listen. I'm never gonna retire. Yeah. They're gonna have to wheel me outta here. I'm working less. I work less and, but I still love it. I really do. I just, I look at that list of people coming in and I usually know at least half of 'em, and I, I just love what I do and I've got a great team here.

My managers know that their job is to make my job easy and they let me be Bob and, and I love when it's busy helping run food or clearing a table, or I just listen. 500 customers have my cell phone number so they can text me or call me with their reservations. I never tell 'em no. I figure out how to get 'em down because I'm afraid they're gonna call my competitor after they call me.

And what's the sense, what's the sense of giving your customer your [00:39:00] phone number if you tell him No, he might as well just go on open table and see there's no openings. But what I do is I say. Hey, listen, we're busy tonight. Why don't you come in, have a drink, I'll get you down as soon as possible. Then as soon as they walk in, as soon as they walk in, I pay attention to 'em and they love it and they get sad and they think, and everything's fine.

Because I paid attention to 'em. I didn't ignore it. Yeah, well, you just got hospitality. You're blood a hundred percent, right? So impressive. If you, if you're doing that at 71 and taking care of your kids like that, I'm telling you. This is for the love, absolute love of the district. My new pa. My new passion is speaking to young kids, and I'm going to University of Arkansas on September.

I'm going back to Oklahoma State in October. I've got two. I love talking to other business leaders. I got two more, two more speeches there. I love talking about business and how I'm successful and how I can help [00:40:00] anybody. I love helping young people. Try to navigate this tough road. That's a beautiful thing, Bob, and it's, it, it's a great thing that you're doing and I really admire what you've done, what you've built, and especially now for getting to meet you and talking to you more.

It's, it's even more about, listen, I, you, you, I just try to be, listen, I've done, I've made some terrible mistakes in my personal life along the way, and I've rebounded from it. That has a lot, lot to do with my belief in God. Yeah, but it has a lot to do. A lot to do with, again, I'm gonna go back to my dad who taught me how to work hard and not give up.

And I've been so fortunate in life. I'm healthy, I got a great family, and I just wanna, I get excited about the good parts of our business. Listen, no one likes hearing, Hey, the toilet in the men's room is overflowing. Okay. But like I told one of, one of, I'll tell you a great story. One of my managers is one of his first week that.

Toilet and the [00:41:00] bathroom got stuffed. Yeah. And he said, Hey, I had to put an out order sign on the bathroom. I said, well you what? You never put an out order sign? He said, but the toilet stuffed. I said, come on, I got a plunger. I got a big plastic bag. I wrapped my hands in plastic bag. I plunged the toilet.

We got it running. I said, listen, no toilet has ever beaten me. Okay. Um, undefeated. I'm undefeated. All right. You never put an outta order sign because that's disgusting. Yeah. All right. People have to go to the bathroom. They need the bathroom, and so he looked at me like I was nuts. Meanwhile, months and months later, maybe even a year later, one of the toilets, he goes, boss, I got this.

I got this and he went in the back and he got the plunger and he got the plastic bag and he says, I did it. I'm undefeated now too. Did you have the commercial style tech? That's Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, we're old school. It's an old bathroom. The building's 80 years old here. You [00:42:00] can imagine all this stuff that we go through.

It's just, and I can, I can listen. I could tell stories for hours about in the old days when things broke, what we did and how we fixed them because we couldn't afford to close or. Tell people we were clo. It's just, it's amazing the stories you can tell when you're in this business. Oh, a hundred percent.

Bob, I'm not undefeated. I had to call the plumber because I big, I cried and I couldn't get it out. I've had to call the plumber for other things. Believe me. You know, I was climbing up the opening summertime, Miami super hot. People were complaining that they were in a bcra yoga type of place and 'cause they were all sweating and I 'cause AC broke down.

I was climbing up the, uh, ac do trying to ah, yeah. Activate a little thing.

I know exactly what you're saying. I love it. I love it. Yeah. The stories and yeah, it's great. But last question, looking back and what's, where you wanna leave, what you wanna leave behind is your legacy, what do you want people to [00:43:00] remember from. All the experiences from Bob's, from my employees, I want them to remember that I appreciated their hard work and they got rewarded.

And I, I don't treat all employees the same either. I treat the good ones, the good, listen, a third of your employees are great, third of your employees are okay, and a third you need to replace. I don't care what business it is, that's the formula. And you're always trying to replace that lower third. But I want my employee, the good employees to say, you know what?

He, my job is to provide them a place to make a good living, give them everything they need to do that, and they come in and work hard every day. That's the way it works. So I want them to remember that. I want my customers to remember that I did my best to take care of them every time they came in. And that's it.

You're done. That's it. Yeah. That's it about that. Absolutely. And then one thing you just said, I think it's also important for me, and I think you mentioned gun. Because for me it incredibly [00:44:00] important because everything that we go through and we do here in business and life is connected. You know what I mean?

And if we don't have a higher purpose like that, you're talking about, I think things can go sideways. Uh, hey, my mother, my, as a young kid, I remember my mom telling me, don't do that because God will punish you. And I didn't know what it meant. But you know what? She was right. He did. Yeah, he did. And he will.

Okay. And if you don't have that higher power to look, to, look to, you're missing something in your life. And, and I didn't have it for a large part of my life, and I have it now. And, uh, my, also, my father used to say, you are who you hang around with, you hanging around with bums, you're gonna be a bum. And so you have to be careful who you're hanging around with and who you're listening to.

Absolutely Bob been there, done that as well and made a lot of mistakes and, but I've been in track for a while, so I [00:45:00] get you. Yeah. So Bob, thank you so much, Bob, for being on the show. It's, it's absolutely a pleasure. Would love to, to visit Bob's at some point. I actually went to school and BFW area, so I have been back.

Oh really? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I, I hope to be back soon and I'll definitely stop by and see you. I, what exactly happens now with this podcast? Now Bob, I'm gonna end the recording. Okay. And what's going to do?