Nick Tappan - No college? No problem. PAPAS AND POLLO restaurant transforms into a seven figure thriving success

Nick chose life experience and industry exposure over a formal higher education and learned how to manage and run a restaurant. Then, in 2011, a longtime-local "Seb-Mex" eatery Papas and Pollo was threatening closure in Sebastopol, California.  Nick saw the potential to bring back a community restaurant, negotiated seller financing for three years, and turned the restaurant into a thriving community hub that supports his family's binational lifestyle.

Listen along to his incredible story and how he proves that a formal higher education is not always the best way to learn.

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Transcript

Nick Tappan
My goal was to make a kid -friendly community hub where if you're single, you can come in and hang out for hours and not feel alone. It was a space where you would constantly run into people you know there. And that vision really worked very well.

Anne McGinty
Welcome to episode five of How I Built My Small Business.

the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host. And today I'll be chatting with Nick Tappan from Sebastopol, California about purchasing a closed restaurant and transforming the place into a thriving success. Nick learned how to manage and run a restaurant by working in the food industry for years.

In 2011, when a longtime local eatery shuttered, Nick saw an opportunity to turn it around. With a do -it -yourself mentality, he expanded menu offerings, revamped the interior, added an outdoor beer garden, and created a bustling family -inspired community hub. The success not only allowed Nick's family to build a vacation home in Todos Santos, Mexico, but by implementing savvy operational strategies, he is able to continue operating his restaurant.

even when he's in Mexico and out for a surf. You can find a link through to his restaurant in the episode's description. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Nick has joined in from his second home in Toto Santos, Mexico, where he and his family are spending three weeks.

Anne McGinty
Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Can you tell us about what you were doing prior to owning Papa's Empoyo?

Nick Tappan
Sure.

I didn't go to college and at a young age, my dad would bring me down to Baja, which is where I am now. So at a young age, I decided I really wanted to travel and see the world. And whenever I would go back to school after being on independent study, I felt trapped. I felt kind of claustrophobic in the classroom. And I always had a hard time with school. So I couldn't wait to get school out of the way.

Anne McGinty
It's not for everybody.

Nick Tappan (02:28.046)
It's not for everybody, yeah. But you have to do it. So when I got to high school, the most important thing for me was to surf and play soccer. And in order to play soccer, I had to have my GPA up high enough to play. So that was my inspiration. And in order to be free in the small town in Northern California, where in order to surf, you have to drive quite a bit, I needed a ride for a while. And then I needed a car eventually.

And in order to do that, you have to have a job. So I was always working. Nothing was given to me. I considered myself a traveler. Growing up down here, I would meet folks and everybody was on a journey from Montana, from Canada, from Italy, France, you know, it was all these international travelers with their stories. And every winter I would come down here, a lot of the same folks would be here. So it was like being reunited with all these travelers around the world.

and it really guided me in how I wanted to live my life.

Anne McGinty
And how did you get the skills that you needed in order to own and run a restaurant?

Nick Tappan
You know, it's funny because a lot of my distributors, especially in the beginning of having the restaurant, they knew I had just transitioned from being a carpenter into a restaurateur. And Chris Sears from Meyers Restaurant Supply would always joke with me that he knew a few other restaurateurs that were.

contractors and did a career change like me and they were successful and he thought it was maybe the work ethic being a handyman because really when you get down to it owning a restaurant unless you have a brand new building it gets so much use that you really have to be handy and I often tell people I bought a job and I'm a janitor I'm a handyman I'm always fixing stuff and our restaurant we joke that it's an old pirate ship because it's

so old and always needs work.

Anne McGinty
What about the actual operational side? Where did you gain that experience?

Nick Tappan
So my freshman year in high school, I worked at Murphy's Irish restaurant and I was fortunate enough to get a job there. I went in and asked if I could do dishes or bus tables or, you know, see if I could be part of their team. And I ended up being a busser and loved it. I made tips. I got to be out on the floor.

Nick Tappan (04:52.43)
The food was excellent. And I worked my way up. I went from Buster to Headwaiter. I worked there all through high school. And in, I think it was my junior year, I did a report in economics on the financial side of the restaurant. And Margaret Murphy, who was the owner and manager of the restaurant, sweetest lady, definitely one of my mentors in the industry. She opened the books up and taught me how it worked and then trusted me when they would go to Ireland to help with ordering.

and running the restaurant. So I got to work with Andy's Produce, which is who I work with now, and kind of start those relationships early on. And they ended up closing, I think in 97, I was a senior, and they only closed because their lease was up. And then after they closed, in our small town of Sebastopol, I would be walking around and I would always run into my old clientele and they would always ask me, when are you going to do a restaurant? When are you going to do your own thing? And so I always had that seed planted in my head.

And I loved it, that it was something that I could do someday.

Anne McGinty
I'm getting chills thinking about that. So at what moment specifically did you decide to venture away and find your own restaurant to run?

Nick Tappan
Yeah, so I was pounding nails doing construction work. I worked with my dad and I also worked with my uncle, Longevity Construction, Petaluma. And I'll never forget when I was a teenager in Baja watching my dad surf.

and he would take off a bit slower. He kept throwing his back out doing construction. And a light bulb went off in my head and I went, I can't be a carpenter for too long or my body will break down. So I need to get out of it at some point. So I always had that epiphany. And it wasn't till I got back together with my girlfriend, we had a little six year break and we had a baby. And I knew right away that I needed to get my act together. And I drove by.

Papa's and Pollo and saw a for sale son and Papa's and Pollo for me was my best friend's family restaurant growing up and our high school hangout. It was the hip spot to be and I knew it did great business. My best friend managed it for a number of years. I got to see the behind the scenes. I would help him make Pico sometimes he'd throw me in the back and I diced tomatoes. I did some carpentry work there. I helped build the

Nick Tappan (07:18.19)
Palapa roof that is there right now. I put the windows in the swinging doors that you go into right now. I built those alongside my uncle 25 years ago or so, and they're still going, which is pretty cool. But yeah, so I saw an opportunity. My wife thought I was crazy. And so I went for it all by myself and it was really, really hard. First three, four years, I barely saw my son. I worked 12, 15 hour days.

It was really hard.

Anne McGinty
What were the hardest parts that you faced when you first acquired the restaurant?

Nick Tappan
You know, there's a lot of different aspects with that. I got in there and I had a vision and I really stuck to my vision, even though there was a lot of outside input. A lot of people wanted me to change the name, change the concept. It's amazing in the restaurant industry how much input other people will have. I've been a carpenter and done other work before and I've never done anything where people were so...

involved in how you make decisions, if you will. Like, I'd be in a grocery store and people would tell me how I should do the menu and the hours.

Anne McGinty
Was it helpful or?

Nick Tappan
It wasn't helpful. No, it was tough. But I stuck to my guns. I really wanted to create a hub and create a space for the kids. The kids were my target audience. And so I built a sports bar for the kids with two televisions in there. We didn't have a TV when I grew up. And I...

Love sports so i never really knew what was going on in the world of sports. I really wanted to make a safe place for the kids to come and watch sports not have it be a bar for drunks if you will and it worked it ended up really being a great place for the kids and. I realized that the kids were really in control when the parents say where do you want to eat the kids and say papa's employee and i still hear that they really feel safe.

and at home and I think that's kind of part of our magic.

Anne McGinty
So what else did you add besides the sports bar component?

Nick Tappan
Sure. I believe it was about three years into owning the restaurant. I was able to purchase the corner lot touching the restaurant and was able to transform that into our garden patio with a water fountain. I was able to move our barbecue grilling area into the far corner, far away from the restaurant. We

Nick Tappan (09:43.276)
constantly had a problem with people thinking we were on fire and they would call the fire department every morning because our smoker Barbecue was too close to the front of the restaurant So the chief of the fire department would call me and be like you're just barbecuing right now. Can I be like, yeah, he's like, all right We're not gonna come down Acquiring that piece of property and transforming it and then seeing it off So the kids once they got corralled into there, they were free. We built a little kid area. We didn't really regulate them. They were able to be wild and

straw with crayons on the chalkboard and play with the water fountain and the parents could relax and take a break and hopefully feel like they're at a park or in Mexico or somewhere to have a break.

Anne McGinty
That sounds amazing. So you have now an outdoor garden. You've got a sports bar. What other changes did you make?

Nick Tappan
Yeah. So the previous owner, Celeste, she's basically like a godmother to me and she is an amazing chef. She

From the beginning told me just with their menu, they were wasting some food. They had a salsa bar up front where they would have pico de gallo. They had this rapoyo spicy kind of pepper cabbage and then like a green and red salsa like we have. And then they would do chips that they would give away in these small little bags. But people would take advantage of the salsa bar, for example. And she told me right away that they lost a lot of money on that salsa bar. People would...

fill up their to go soda, 16 ounce cups. They would just load them up with Pico de Gallo and wipe them out. So I simplified the salsa bar. We did not put Pico out there. We did not put the burpoyo out there. We just did the red and green, which we still currently do. And we don't do soda cups. I took out the fountain soda. So it's more regulated as far as that goes. And then we also simplified the menu tremendously. It used to be a three page menu with enchiladas, mole and grape food.

but too complicated. And I really wanted it to be clean, healthy, food made to order, nothing pre -made, but small batches with no waste. That was my goal. And that is something that we have certainly achieved. We don't throw anything away, which is really part of our secret to our success. And then we brought yams to the menu. It's kind of a spin -off of a dish that my dad taught me down here in Mexico. He would take a five gallon bucket.

Nick Tappan (12:08.622)
and walk down to the beach and fill it up half full, a quarter full with seawater. And then he'd bring it back and he'd put a chicken leg and thigh in it and brine it for about three hours. And then we would get a fire going. We always sat around the fire pit in the evenings and we would slow cook the chicken on the fire with key limes. We would squeeze limes periodically over the chicken and turn it and cook it for about an hour and a half or so. And then we'd also put yams.

an aluminum foil on the fire. And the combination with the chicken and the yam was just so good. I fell in love with it and I kind of ran with it. I would have parties with all my surfer friends and I would do my Baja chicken and yams. So I knew I had to bring the yams to the menu and that was something we added right away and has been a hit. It's definitely one of our top sellers. Not so much with the chicken. I mean, the chicken's a big seller, but the smoked and braised pork yam, the combination of

The pork and the yam is just really good.

Anne McGinty
And was there anything else? How did that pivot happen where the restaurant went from being in a closed state to completely packed?

Nick Tappan
Yes. When we first started, there was a chalkboard sign. It's now in our garden patio, screwed to the back fence and the kids use it as an art board. So that board used to be out on the street and you could see it from both sides when you're driving by. And so when we bought it, we spent about

three months getting it ready. We tore apart the bar, I built the kid -friendly bar top, and we built about four dining room tables. And we would use the chalkboard out front and we would write, coming soon, and we'd write different messages throughout that period. And people would drive by and see it. And I think the real secret to it was building it up and then also just being a part of the community. It's a town I grew up in, it's a town my wife grew up in.

We have a lot of community and my goal was to make a kid friendly community hub where if you're single, you can come in and hang out for hours and not feel alone. It was a space where you would constantly run into people you know there and you'd go thinking you're going to spend half an hour there and you spend two hours there. And that vision really worked very well. It was a flip flop environment.

Nick Tappan (14:32.686)
casual when you would walk in and the plop a roofs you could kind of feel like you are in Baja or Mexico and I would say this though is when we first open we were slow. I really wanted the food to be made fresh. I wanted us to be able to serve people with food allergies, gluten -free. Vegans are a huge part of our audience and I really wanted to be able to cater to them and do it right. And the only way to really do that is to do each order.

fresh and exactly how they asked for it. And the problem with that was we were slow and we weren't prepared. And so as we got busier and busier, I realized we needed to prep more. And I didn't realize how important preparing the food and organizing it and knowing exactly what our inventory is, how crucial that was. So here we are today. One of the secrets of me being able to.

escape and be in Mexico and still run the restaurant is my communication with my prep cooks, with my headline cooks from first thing in the morning, 7 .30, my WhatsApp with me and my wife and our head cooks send us a picture of all of our refrigeration temperatures and all of our inventory prepared for the day. And then a separate picture of our plan for the day. We have a magnetic whiteboard.

with all the prep items and it's very well organized to the point where we can show up unannounced and we can walk in the back to our prep area and we can start preparing food and helping out without even talking to anybody. There's no verbal check in. The prep guy could be out at the barbecue, for example, and I could walk in and know that we're low on Pico and I need to make Pico and I can just start. So it's really made us efficient.

It's really given us control on keeping everything fresh and basically having a really, really clear communication. And there's no days off wherever I am. I'm working. And for me, switching from being a carpenter to a restaurateur, that is something that I do miss. I miss taking my bags off at the end of the day. I had like a little Velcro snap on my belt buckle and I would push it.

Nick Tappan (16:59.278)
And I would just let my bags drop on the floor. And it was kind of a joke with all the carpenters. We'd all be like, all right, that's it. Bam. Clocking out. But the day was over. I didn't really have to think about it much. When I went home, I could go out to eat or go surfing. The day was over. And that is certainly one challenge with having a restaurant is there is no days off necessarily. We're always communicating, pivoting, whether it's a piece of equipment broke or someone's sick.

or you name it, there's always something when you're open seven days a week and somebody is always in the building from seven in the morning until 11 at night.

Anne McGinty
So what type of hours are you working each week, physically, in person?

Nick Tappan
Right. This is where when I started by myself and was running the front of the house, the back of the house and doing payroll and all the behind the scenes.

all on my own, it was 12, 15 hour days. After about three and a half, four years, my wife wanted to have another child and I was like, all right, we can do this, but I need help and I don't want to miss the toddler years, this go around. So she quit her job and gave me a break at the restaurant. I took about a year, not off, but removed myself. We had a beautiful daughter and I was there.

for her, I didn't miss any of it. And the way it works now is I am in charge of the prep food and the ordering. I order six days a week. I have a great relationship with all of my distributors. We communicate daily. A few of them I have to call. It's kind of old school. Like I call the tides and talk to Elizabeth. My other distributors, I do email and then text and they are...

So great. It's just a beautiful relationship with everybody. If we're having a new prep cook, I have to teach the prep cook and sometimes that can take months. And part of the reason that I really like to teach the prep is because the methods of how we prep everything is very redundant. And because it's redundant, people tend to want to get creative and find a new method. And

Nick Tappan (19:26.03)
From the very beginning, I let them know, don't do that. If you think you have a great idea, awesome, let's talk about it. And if indeed it's a great idea, we will do it. Bring it to the table and we'll try it. Or I will tell you, great idea, but we've already tried that and this is why it doesn't work. And that has been so crucial for how we operate. And so right now we have a great team. And when we have a great team,

and great communication. We know that we're set to go to Mexico and everything will be okay.

Anne McGinty
How have you gone about finding the right people to hire and train and manage?

Nick Tappan
So when I worked at Murphy's restaurant, I was a busser and then a waiter. And when I was a waiter, I would finish my shift and I would distribute tips and I got 80, 90 % of the tips and

The dishwasher got very little and the bus or got very little. And I saw that dynamic and I saw a lot of the back of the house were often Hispanics, Mexicans, Guatemalans. And when I went to start Papa's, I really wanted it to emulate a soccer team. I even wanted us to have soccer jerseys with our names on them. I wanted a team atmosphere where we were playing reggae music.

dancing while we serve, dancing while we cook and prep. I wanted everybody to help each other out and not have any baggage about who's getting more tips. So from the very beginning, I made our tipping pool even across the board. And I think that's really been key. Another part of it is we always paid higher than minimum wage. And then also just being able to do every part of any job.

is also really key for respect with your coworkers and your employees and staff. You treat everyone as equal. Yeah.

Anne McGinty (21:37.294)
Can you share some insights into your decision making process when it comes to the development of the menu and also pricing?

Nick Tappan
Yeah, okay. The menu started out, like I said, really, really, really small because I didn't want any waste. And then it's gradually grown a little bit. And even though my wife didn't want anything to do with the restaurant in the beginning, I was able to twist her arm a little bit with helping me with the menu. Like I said before, I wasn't a scholar and...

So doing a Google doc wasn't really up my alley. So she always helped me with building the menu and I always wanted to charge too little and she always want to raise it a little bit just because she wanted to be smart about pricing. And then as we all know, costs have gone up over the last five years, like tremendously. So we've gotten good about adjusting our pricing annually, even if it's just a little bit.

Raising prices never feels good, but it is absolutely better to do it gradually and annually than in a giant leap every five years. It's hard to do. You know, a lot of people are regulars. They come in with the exact change in their pocket and they know exactly how much it is. And when we change that, sometimes it really would catch them off guard. I always look at like grocery stores. If the price of avocados go up, they charge more. The price of tomatoes go up, they charge more. But for us, we're

pain more, but then our menu doesn't change. It doesn't fluctuate with the produce. And it's always kind of irritated me that we can't do that as easily.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, my guest in episode four is in a creative field and she shared a similar sentiment that if someone goes out to buy a table at a chain store, the price is set and is what it is. But when it comes to design services, they think they can negotiate down to whatever they think it's worth.

It's interesting how people accept the pricing in one location, but then argue against it in another.

Nick Tappan
Right. And something, because, you know, like I said, I have a lot of friends in the industry and at wholesale pickups, I meet different restaurateurs and I see what they're buying and it's identical to what I'm buying, only I'm a Mexican restaurant. So I'm kind of capped at what I can charge, especially for like a burrito. People will say, how can I spend that for a burrito? And I'm like, well,

Nick Tappan (23:57.326)
Look at all the ingredients in it. Look how big it is. That's always been an interesting concept for me as far as pricing goes.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, it is. So do you have any idea, and I'm sure that you do, and maybe you don't want to answer this, so don't feel like you have to, but do you have any idea of how many meals on average you are selling each day?

Nick Tappan
I would say about 300, something like that.

Anne McGinty
Wow.

Nick Tappan
Yeah. Well, that's the thing about our restaurant is the numbers are really consistent. We don't have a slow day and then busy day.

We do get crazy busy days, but our numbers are really consistent across the board. And most of our regulars eat at our restaurant on an average, probably three to four days a week.

Anne McGinty
How do you handle competition and make your restaurant a shining star out of all of the options?

Nick Tappan
First of all, we don't advertise. We also didn't come from money. I threw everything I had at it and borrowed money. We built it up from nothing. And we're really banking on community and the product. And...

At this point, we really are still focused on the kids. So we do a lot of dine and donates for athletic programs, like at Annerley High School, the soccer team. We're really involved with Westco, which is the soccer league in Sebastopol. And I couldn't believe how many team parties were in our garden patio. And I'm watching these kids and I'm remembering when they were babies in our restaurant and now they're 10 years old or teenagers. And...

Like I said, our target audience has always been a kid friendly atmosphere. It's really about giving back to the schools and being involved in our community youth programs. It's a win -win. Exactly.

Anne McGinty
So this is a question that I've always wondered and I've spoken to other restaurateurs and gotten different answers. So I'm curious, what would you say is a healthy profit margin for a restaurant?

Nick Tappan
You know, it's funny because my wife had always asked me all these.

questions similar to this and I would always basically not answer the question because I was just so confident that I knew what I was doing was working that I didn't really care, which obviously isn't a smart business attitude or whatever. But yeah, when I look at the books, probably 30 % somewhere in there.

Anne McGinty
That seems pretty good.

Nick Tappan
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
I've heard much lower. So that's great.

Nick Tappan  (26:21.678)
Well, imagine wasting food every day and throwing it in the compost. We don't do that. I've really been more about

ordering everything and really small batches to the point where for a long time we were always running out of stuff, especially like beef and fish. And I still run out of fish every other day because certain proteins really don't hold well. I mean, our smoked and braised pork, it's smoked for eight hours out in our outside smoker and then braised in our oven and little something beer and

then we portion it and it goes in our walk -in and obviously that's gonna hold for a couple of days. But really, not wasting food and keeping it fresh. Yeah, higher quality food, a reduction of waste and an increased profit margin, that sounds pretty awesome.

Anne McGinty
Were there any other steps that you took to get your profit margin up to 30 %?

Nick Tappan
At one point, we were giving chips away and we were making fresh chips.

And we were using the best rice bran oil, GMO free, really high grade oil that really fancy restaurants use. And we were just giving chips away and we were financially not doing really well. And so I went in and sat during an late afternoon lunch and I watched these high school kids come in and not order. They got ice cold water and they sat at the table and they went through about four baskets of free chips.

and salsa and then they left. And I had a light bulb go off in my head and I was like, we can't just give these away anymore. When we switched and decided to sell chips, it instantly made the difference. And all of a sudden the profits were significantly better.

Anne McGinty
That makes so much sense, especially for a small family run business. It's fair to charge for homemade high quality chips like that.

I don't even think a larger chain like Chipotle gives out free chips. Can you give us an idea of other challenges you've faced as a restaurant owner?

Nick Tappan  (28:44.526)
It's mostly the staffing part of it that's hard. I'll give you an example. I went to run to the restaurant supply store and said bye to everyone and left. And then I ended up turning around 20 minutes later and coming back because I forgot something. And when I came back, everybody had poured themselves a kombucha on tap and were drinking it.

and hanging out and they hadn't paid for it. And kombucha is not cheap. And I was upset and told them you're stealing from me essentially. And that's not okay. If you guys do this every day, I'm going to be broke. And it's a bad habit. And I had seen this on construction crews and I realized that I needed a camera system and the camera system unfortunately was on my staff and

When I hire and when I talk to my staff, I let them know that I've had a lot of staff still for me and that's why it's there. I'm not sitting at home watching it all the time, but I use it as a tool for time theft, for example.

Anne McGinty
It actually reminds me of an econ class that I took and the professor was talking about how when given the opportunity to shirk, oh, it was something incredibly high, like 85 % of employees will.

if given the opportunity, which is, you know, it's kind of sad, but it is what it is. So what else have you experienced in that vein?

Nick Tappan
At one point, I watched a mistake order happen when I was just coming through the prep room and wasn't supposed to be on site as far as my staff knew. And this is like eight years ago. And the mistake order was a very detailed order that I knew one of my staff members would order that nobody else ordered.

was really unique. And I thought to myself, there's no way that's a mistake order. That is an order that person is going to take home. And at that moment, I said, all right, nobody is allowed to take orders home anymore. And this is why I think you guys took advantage of it. And we already eat our staff, they get free meals, which we're proud of. We really want them to be healthy and happy, right?

And I also felt like we were making a lot of mistakes and there was food going out the door. And that was a hard decision to make, but it paid off because we're making little to no mistakes now.

Anne McGinty
So you've mentioned working almost every day, every week. How do you prioritize your work -life balance while managing the restaurant seven days a week?

Nick Tappan (31:09.678)
Because I worked such long days in the beginning, it really took it out of me.

I wasn't balanced with my home life and my work life and that has been something that's been really hard for me to get back. I was always an athlete playing competitive sports, tennis and volleyball and surfing and even golf. And I'm such a workaholic that I will just not do a sport for long periods of time and I will just put my head down and work. And it definitely pays off, but it takes a toll on my body and my mind.

For example, I served today here in Mexico and I served two days ago here in Mexico, but before that I haven't served in a year and a half. So I can tend to just like put my head down and be a really hard worker and not have that balance. And it's not something that I'm super proud of. I'm too much of a workaholic.

Anne McGinty
But as you mentioned, that dedication has paid off. So there's that too. I feel like with work life balance, it's never too late. You can always take the time now to decide what kind of balance is ideal for you and your family. So what else do you think others should know if planning to get into the restaurant business coming from another industry?

Nick Tappan
I would say draw yourself a circle and create a pie sheet and imagine that everybody is going to come after you and want a piece of that pie and be very careful who you're going to let in that circle. I was really blown away at how aggressive distributors were and different people.

that wanted a piece of the pie. And you have to really be good at saying no. And hopefully you have skills and knowledge to fix things. And if you are having somebody fix it, like a plumber or a refrigeration guy, that you aren't clueless, that you understand the concept of how they work. And every time they come in, you should be there and build that relationship and understanding of how that.

tool is fixed by that person. And as far as the pie goes, everybody wants a piece of it. And as soon as you sign a contract, whether it's to have your aprons and rags and mats cleaned, and you're stuck in this revolving contract, then they got that piece of the pie and it's really hard to get out of it. We used to have a knife sharpening company come in and I didn't want it, but the chef wanted it.

Nick Tappan (33:34.318)
And I believe it was like $35, $40 a week. And they would come in and bring us a new set of knives. And the guy was really nice, but he would come in right at lunchtime, you know, knowing we're a restaurant. I'm like always scratching my head. Like, why couldn't you come a little earlier or during our dip? And he would always talk and pull my prep cook away from his work for.

at least a half an hour, sometimes even closer to an hour, they'd be just chatting. And I realized, I was like, not only is this taking an hour every week from my prep cook, but it's also costing me, you know, $200 a month. And then people would cut themselves on these really, really sharp knives, which obviously is a problem. A really, really sharp knife is really dangerous, even if you just barely touch yourself. And...

Thankfully, I didn't have a contract with that company, but it was an eye -opener for me and I got really guarded about who I wanted in my circle. And my phone rings off the hook and I'm always saying, no, no, thank you, we're good. So I would say anytime there's a contract, just sleep on it for as long as you can and try not to do it. And if you're going to jump into this industry, it can't be a hobby and it's not going to be a desk job. And...

Even if you're not open seven days a week, I've found it's almost harder to reopen. So I look at it as like a machine that's in movement. And as soon as you take the momentum away and close, like we're getting ready to close for the holidays, it's actually a lot more work to get the momentum going again. So it's easier just to kind of keep it running.

Anne McGinty
That makes sense. It's like stopping a train and then getting it going again.

Nick Tappan
Yeah. And for me, the prep is the backbone of our restaurant. Having all
the ingredients organized and ready to go is so crucial.

Anne McGinty (35:59.63)
So looking back, what are you most proud of in your journey of turning this restaurant around into a multimillion dollar success?

Nick Tappan
When I started it, I actually started it thinking I was going to sell it after five years, just because I knew how hard it was. But that was when I was doing it myself and I wasn't really sure my wife is ever going to jump on board. So I would say what I'm most proud of is,

What we've built for the community, really watching the kids that were babies or not even born yet come into the restaurant, the doors swing open and their parents are still getting out of the car. And I can see it. They feel at home. Go get some ice cold water and then they'll go flying out to the back patio and they'll make a wish in the fountain and they'll draw on the board. And I can just see that they feel at home. The parent isn't running into the restaurant.

Most restaurants, if your kid did that, you'd be like, oh shoot, I gotta go. Sure. They're okay and not in the way or whatever, but it's literally home for so many people. And then for me personally, I always dreamt from the beginning of being not stuck in a position, whether cooking or the front of the house to where I can move around on the premises and be social and observe the flow of the restaurant. So I'm proud to be at that point.

Anne McGinty
As you should be, what a milestone. So my last question for you, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Nick Tappan
I would tell myself to stay active and continue to surf and do sports and to my best ability to not just be a workaholic, even though I was so determined and I knew it had to succeed, but I wish I wouldn't have given up that lifestyle for my own personal health. And...

I would have tried to get my wife on board a little earlier maybe. My Spanish is good, but she's fluent. Now with communication with staff, there is no lack of communication. It's just this perfect communication with everybody. And I think about a quarter of all restaurant workers are Hispanic and for a Mexican restaurant, I imagine that is much higher.

Anne McGinty (37:56.238)
Well, that's a wrap. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and story with all of us.

Nick Tappan
Of course.

Anne McGinty
If you've made it this far, thanks for being here. 

Today's key takeaways. 

If a formal higher education is not for you, learn what you can from experience. Nick didn't need a college degree. He gained knowledge by working in restaurants and on job sites as a carpenter. 

If you make an inviting and comfortable space that is designed to be a community hub where kids feel at home, singles can mingle and families can relax, it can draw a crowd.

Food waste for a restaurant is money down the drain. Consider simplifying your menu and aim for no waste to instantly increase your profit margin. 

Sidewalk chalkboards are an inexpensive way to deliver messages to future customers and get the community excited about your forthcoming opening. 

Daily, clear communication with your staff is crucial, especially if managing a restaurant from afar. Develop communication channels that are a part of your process to keep the restaurant running smoothly. 

Focus on developing your food prep to streamline your restaurant's workflow. As the owner, being able to do any part of any job is key for respect from your staff. 

Look at what you might be giving away unnecessarily. This can include keeping an eye on employees, to make sure there isn't any additional food going missing or time theft. 

Giving chips away for free for Nick was actually hurting his bottom line more than he anticipated. 

And third party vendors for linen washing and knife sharpening, for example, may not be the best use of your capital. So think wisely before signing any contracts. 

And finally, don't neglect your physical and mental health in your entrepreneurial journey. Always carve a little bit of time out for your personal enjoyment and self -care because the time passes quickly and before you know it, you'll be a lot older and creakier. 

If you enjoyed today's show, please rate and review and share it with a friend. I'll be releasing a new episode every week, so hit that follow button to stay tuned. Have a great day.