An Open Letter to Hubert Keller
Dear Mr. Keller,
I’m guessing that you’re not very happy with Michael Bauer these days. First, he writes a scathing review of Fleur de Lys and reduces its star rating to three in October. Then he banishes your restaurant from his Bay Area Top 100.
Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you are happy with the fame and fortune you’ve achieved and if some (perceived) slippage at your flagship is the price you have to pay, so be it. The restaurant business is tough and demanding. You’ve paid your dues. No good-hearted person, not even this grump, would begrudge you your success.
But, maybe, this is a wake-up call for you. If so, I’d like to offer a couple pieces of advice. They’re free and worth every penny you’re paying for them.
I believe that you can tell a lot about a business and its leader by examining the way they present themselves to the public. And the Fleur de Lys web site speaks volumes.
Let’s start by examining the URL – www.fleurdelyssf.com. This is a very specific URL. It tells the user that they’re not going to get information about any old Fleur de Lys but the Fleur de Lys in San Francisco.
But when we go to that URL, what do we find?
The title bar welcomes you to the “official website of Chef Hubert Keller.” Excuse me, but were we looking for the official website of Chef Hubert Keller? Did we type www.hubertkeller.com? No, we were looking for the San Francisco Fleur de Lys website.
On the page, we first see an animated autograph of Hubert Keller. Then, a slideshow featuring four photographs of Hubert Keller. In one, Keller’s pictured wearing a lapel mike, a not-so-subtle reminder that the Chef is on television. Finally, when the slideshow ends, we’re ushered not to the San Francisco Fleur de Lys web site, which is what we came for, but a landing page for the Keller Empire – two Fleur de Lys locations, two Burger Bar locations, Sleek Steakhouse and Ultra Lounge (Ultra Lounge??? you’re kidding, right?), and your Secrets of a Chef TV show. It takes two more clicks to get where we want to go, the San Francisco Fleur de Lys web site. Once there, we’re greeted by, guess what, yet another slideshow of Chef Keller!
This little vignette bespeaks two things that spell doom for many businesses – massive ego and lack of focus.
First bit of advice – check your ego at the door. You are not the brand. If you get confused about this, you run the risk of following the path of Martha Stewart. Not that I think you’re about to do anything criminal, mind you. It’s just that this kind of hubris often precedes a fall. Maybe you can find enough suckers to continually fill your restaurants because you’re on TV, even if the food isn’t up to snuff. But, I wouldn’t count on it. Not at the prices you charge.
Second bit of advice – if you’re not capable of scaling, don’t. Focus instead on doing fewer things exceptionally well. If that means selling or closing some restaurants, do it. As an investor in the company I worked for a couple of jobs ago liked to say, “More companies die from indigestion than from starvation.” From what I’ve seen, chefs generally don’t scale well. Witness Jeremiah Tower’s Stars Palo Alto fiasco and subsequent banishment from the Bay Area, Reed Hearon leaving chefville after he followed the wildly successful Rose Pistola with the disastrous Black Cat, Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen also departing Bauer’s Top 100, and Wolfgang Puck shuttering numerous Spago outposts as well as seeing Postrio fail to crack the Top 100 (despite three Bauer stars). Here again, ego raises its ugly head. As Harry Callahan said, “A man's got to know his limitations.” If your limitation is that you can’t scale without sacrificing quality, don’t let your ego get in the way of recognizing it.
In closing, as Dennis Miller would say, “Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.” But I don’t think I am.
Your humble and obedient servant (which you know damn well I am not),
Grumpy
[Close quotes the 1st Duke of Wellington.]
Right on! The 'Chef as star' thing doesn't hold up well here in the Bay Area...Thank Goodness. The public wants great food, service, and a pleasant atmosphere at a reasonable price. I don't think they really give a damn if the chef has a TV show or has made the cover of Food & Wine...
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Oh my stars. You do like to ruffle feathers, don't you?
Keep it up.
Great post.
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Yes, I do like to ruffle feathers. You'd know that better than most, wouldn't you?
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