You are right. Um, Eric Bromberg is the chef and co-founder of one of the most beloved restaurant groups in America, probably the most beloved restaurant by chefs Blue Ribbon. John Caris is the chef leading culinary innovation at a burger spot that you may have heard of called Shake Shack. Um, to be honest with you, this conversation doesn't happen nearly enough and, uh, my sentiments are, are, are, I agree so much with Dan and I actually wanna thank Dan for bringing us together and making this happen and for creating brigade and more importantly, for creating this new paradigm of what it means to be a chef.
So I think we should just give a round applause for Dan and the whole brigade team.[00:03:00]
You know, my, my background is in, mostly was in fine dining before I started opening some fast casual restaurants, and, and what I can say about it is fine dining. It requires precision and finesse. It requires innovation and it requires a pursuit of excellence, feeding thousands of people. It requires the same and it also requires just as much creativity that cre creativity typically just shows up in different ways through constraints, through logistics, through smart problem solving.
It's the same craft, just a different stage. So I think we should just get into the conversation. I would love maybe just a 32nd windup from John and Eric of just a little background yourselves to tee us up for the conversation and then we'll go in with some questions.
John Karangis: Thank you, Josh. Uh, my name is John Cariss.
Uh, and as Josh mentioned, I'm an executive chef and vice president of Culinary [00:04:00] Innovation at Shake Shack. I have, uh, spent the majority of my career in fine dining. I absolutely love the industry. I love fine dining. Uh, fell in love with it at a young age and chased that and chase Michelin stars for a long time.
And somewhere through the process, I, I found my way to Shake Shack. Um, and I'm really excited, uh, to be here and to discuss how these two worlds come together.
Eric Bromberg: Thanks. My name is Eric Bromberg. I am the chef and founder of Blue Ribbon Restaurants. Um, blue Ribbon Restaurant started 33 years ago on a little, uh, 48 seat restaurant.
In soho in New York City, that restaurant's still open today and still, uh, rocking along. We've since, uh, expanded across the country, uh, [00:05:00] Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles and Boston actually. Um. My background is really in quick serve, uh, uh, fast, uh, let's see, um, quick serve restaurants.
I started my first job flipping burgers and kind of took that practice towards, uh, restaurants and fine dining and the spirit of. Trying to be precise in everything we do, really has taken shape and allowed us to grow to now 25 units across the country.
Josh Sharkey: Your background also is in some pretty incredible fine dining worlds as well, but We'll, um, okay, [00:06:00] so, uh, now some of these questions might get a little spicy, so I apologize, but we'll start with some that aren't, um, is operating at scale.
Inherently at odds with craft and excellence, and I'll let either of you take that.
Eric Bromberg: I don't think so. Ultimately, I, I see food service as a commonality. I think the, the work that we try to do in our, uh, fine dining restaurants resembles. Uh, the activities of a quick serve restaurant in that every day you need to be on time, on track and producing the same thing that you did the day before.
Um, we generally focus away from, uh, creativity in [00:07:00] our general line work, and we focus on consistency. And producing the same exact product every day, whether it's fine dining or in quick serve.
John Karangis: I agree a hundred percent. Um, you know, we, we obviously take the role of being a chef very seriously. And whether you're scaling that food in a fine dining restaurant or like we do in Shake Shack.
Our goal is the same, which is to, um, have a process in place that's going to allow us to execute something, um, at this, at the same level in which we executed it for one or two people to do it for thousands of people. So you need to, uh, come well prepared and, um, you know, again, goes back to that process.
The creativity happens prior to, right? The creativity comes when you're creating the item. With the intent to scale it. So everything needs to happen in order and there's a lot of, uh, a lot of [00:08:00] commonalities for sure between, between QSR fast food and uh, and fine dining.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, I mean, I think there is some, at least a notion that flavor and quality and really excellence are incredibly sensitive to the application of standardization.
And consistency. The more that you have to grow and scale, the more that you have to figure out how to standardize those things and cons and make them more consistent. That can have a big impact on the, the specialness or the quality or the flavor. Um, I find this to be the biggest divide between the upper echelon of fine dining and well really everything else.
So I guess my question for you is, and maybe even forgetting the, the food for a minute, but we can talk about that as well. How do you foster creativity with your team, or at least independence [00:09:00] and autonomy, um, to be, you know, culinary professionals at scale when standardization and consistency is so important that they have to follow the rules that they have to make sure that they execute precisely what you've instructed them to do, but you don't want them to feel like robots.
How do you balance that?
John Karangis: Yeah, I mean, I think if you're at scale like we are at Shake Shack, I think it's easy to say that you can go in and almost lower the bar, right? Because you're gonna be serving hundreds a day and 600 shacks around the world. So we're gonna start with all the things we can't do.
That's one approach, not the approach we like to take. We like to take the same approach as if we were going to scale that or make that in my home for four or five people. Um, so we keep that bar incredibly high and we make what we call the gold standard. What's the gold standard product for whatever it is we're going to make, and [00:10:00] then force ourselves not to look at the boundaries that we may run into down the road as we go through the process.
Um, and those are the great challenges, right? I mean, that's kind of why I have my job. I wouldn't be there if I was a guy that was just phoning it in every day. Um, I want to do what other people are telling me. It's not able, you're not going to be able to do it. It's gonna cost too much money. It's gonna be too difficult.
Uh, those are the types of challenges and those are the people that I want to prove wrong. Um, it's an opportunity I saw a long time ago when I get left fine dining, and I went and worked in places that would scale. Um, and I think it's critically important to honor not just myself, but fellow chefs and diners and guests, and, um, really do what we can to, you know, raise the bar each and every day.
And, you know, Eric said something before, uh, kind of struck a chord with me. You know, we go to work every day looking to be. Looking to be as great as we can be, um, even with the intent of trying to be a little [00:11:00] better than you were that day tomorrow. Um, and if you go in with that approach, I think you'd, you'd, uh, you'd find a lot of success.
Eric Bromberg: I think there's, there's maybe a couple of tiers involved in fine dining that can distinguish a bit of a difference. I think the ultimate fine dining restaurant where there's. Uh, innovation and, uh, experimentation taking place on a daily basis, and you have the chef giving his team orders to prepare new dishes and specific things like that.
I think that has a different approach to it than. Maybe your average fine dining or I, I don't know if what it's called, if it's not hte fine dining, but it's somewhere in the middle of the road and that that's kind of, [00:12:00] I don't know, the middle of the road, but the, the bottom of the high, high end and the top of the middle where it's still fine dining, but you're not changing your menu on a daily, weekly, mm-hmm.
Seasonal basis. So for, for most restaurants. That function in that way, they keep their menu consistent year round and they'll run specials, et cetera. But it gives the team the structure and the timing to actually perform their job consistently year after year after year. And you know, we've been at Blue Ribbon, we've been open for the original Blue Ribbon.
We've been open for 33 years. We've had the same menu for 32 of those 33 years. So it took us a year to get standardized and get the, the things developed, um, [00:13:00] so that we could have essentially technicians producing that food in a very structured manner. There's no flexibility if I can avoid it in, in, uh, the team.
There's no seasoning adjustments. That so that where you have over seasoned one day under seasoned another day or over season for one customer under seasoned for another customer. We use very simple things that we use in a fine dining restaurant, which are sort of taken from quick serve. We use salted butter to see, to saute so that we don't add salt.
By hand at the end. That's something that we sort of developed backwards from quick serve or from fast casual
Josh Sharkey: mm-hmm.
Eric Bromberg: To bring to our fine dining, uh, establishment. So [00:14:00] I'm,
Josh Sharkey: I'm, I'm gonna double click on this a bit because, and this is, this will go two different directions. Hmm. One, um, as you scale, yeah. You have to have these really tight systems to make sure that people, uh, execute the same way every time that they season the right way.
Your, your, your recipes are to the gram in terms of salt and sugar, or you're very precise about, and explicit about how, how something should be made. How do you teach somebody how to season or how to cook when they're coming up in a, in a, in a, in a restaurant where, um. It's almost, uh, there's a juxtaposition there, right?
Where like, they actually aren't learning how to season. They're, they're learning how to follow a, a, a direction. And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna say two questions here, and we can kind of go in both those directions and, and then in the same breath, let's say you have a a, a cook who works his butt off her butt off, and she loves the bone marrow and oxtail marmalade.
If you live in New York and you haven't had the bone [00:15:00] marrow and oxtail marinade. Uh, at Blue Ribbon. Shame on you. Please go have it. But let's just say that, um, I've made that a thousand times and I, and I say, chef, I think this would be great if we used braised flatiron instead, what do you do? How do you handle that?
So those two things, how do you handle teaching them those skills when we have to be so standardized? And then how do you let them ideate and be independent when we have to be so
Eric Bromberg: consistent? I think it's, it's very difficult with standardized items and certainly items that have such a history that the customer is expecting that when they return and the customer's going to Shake Shack, the customer's going, they know what they're getting.
They're expecting it to be taste like it was, it did the first time they got it. The second time they got it, the 25th time they've got it. They expect it to taste the same in Dallas as [00:16:00] it does in New York, as it does in Tokyo. So that process has to maintain its integrity. We, we generally, if someone comes with a, a specific, uh, adjustment to a dish, we'll listen to it.
We will. Uh, uh, let's put it this way, assuming that person is already, uh, shown that they can make the dish perfectly as intended, if they have an idea to change it, we will try it and everyone will taste it and kind of as a community will decide whether it's an improvement or not.
John Karangis: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that and I think it's, it's also important to hear your employees and help foster their creativity, um, while being mindful to the business needs.
So my approach would be very similar. Um, I definitely want to hear them. Have it play out. Obviously a separate tasting would be [00:17:00] in order, and then some simple coaching could, could help, you know, sort of nurture that person. Um, and that explanation of why we have it standardized, why it's been on our menu for 33 years.
Um, which isn't to say it couldn't be improved upon, but that would come under some careful, careful, very careful, uh, consideration and an evaluation with the right people at the table. And the last thing you wanna do is tell someone, no, this has worked for respiratory three years. We're not changing it.
Move on. That's not how we would want to treat someone. Uh, if anything, you wanna celebrate their desire to come and try to make an improvement, and I think that's, that's a win.
Josh Sharkey: Are there times when. It makes more sense for them to, um, to help them find something back in fine dining or go to find to, to fine dining
John Karangis: for sure.
Uh, I mean, for me, when I started to, when I started to work at, um, union Square Events, which was Danny Meyers catering events business for the Union Square Hospitality Group, [00:18:00] lots of folks that worked in the fine dining restaurants within that group. Saw what they saw, whether on social media, and they thought that working with me and my team would be better.
Um, and I wound up having really transparent conversations with them, um, finding out exactly why they wanted to come over. Um, you're not gonna get the Michelin stars, you're not gonna get this. You're working with me. That can't be very good. Um, and so, you know, it's really about being honest with those individuals, letting them know, finding out exactly what they want to do, and, um, hopefully putting them on a path to get that.
And more often than not, um, you know, what they were really looking for was to cook Michelin stars at a better schedule. Well, I can't give you that. Um, I couldn't give you the stars or the schedule or maybe they were just looking to get out of restaurants altogether. So sometimes those conversations actually had them do a lot of reflecting and, and, and [00:19:00] really just trying to have them figure out what they wanted to do.
And I just took it upon myself to help guide them the best way I could.
Eric Bromberg: And I think ultimately when, when someone is in our, our world and they're. Uh, really focused on experimentation and or, uh, their own version of food or their own vision of food. I definitely recommend that they find another location to work at and something where there's, there's more flexibility and it's, it's very difficult in a restaurant, especially these days.
Um. To, uh, be too inventive and too creative on a whim. And there's, you know, people are, these currently [00:20:00] fine dining is really reserved for a very rarefied group. There's, it's expensive as could be. Um, yes, it's spectacular, but. The vast majority of people can't afford to eat it even once in their life. Um, so it has, it has limitations in those fronts and I think, you know, ultimately the, the general group of restaurants, there's less and less to separate.
The quick serve or the fast casual, whatever the, the current definition is. And regular restaurants, because it used to be this, this concept that for cooking you didn't need to measure. But for pastry or baking, you really need to measure 'cause it was a science. But now in today's world, cooking is a science too.
And we, we [00:21:00] never use scales. In the past, we had people cooking with sort of, uh, let's say flexible type recipes. Here you make it good, you, you know, season it, you, here's what I want you to do. You make this. Um, that has gone away and it's really, everything is super precise. And whether it's in a quick serve or a, a fast casual or uh, your average restaurant, I think there is an enormous.
Focus on precision and getting the dishes right every day, because there's nothing more disappointing than going to a restaurant on your second visit after you've had something spectacular. And when you get it the next time, not only doesn't it taste the same. It doesn't look the same. Yeah. You know, a different person made it or whatever it may be.
But yeah, that's a, a tough spot. [00:22:00] And, and the, the price differential. Uh, is also, you know, quick serve is, uh, pretty expensive now. It's not super cheap.
John Karangis: It's also super competitive. Um, years ago when I was a line cook at Nice restaurants and Terra's point, we were left to our own devices and, you know, the chef or the sous chef did everything they can to taste everything.
And that was allowed, that was, that was a common practice. And that's not the case anymore because you know, there used to be 10, probably five ultra fine dining restaurants in New York, and then there was that level of maybe 15 New York Times three Star, and then maybe 25 2 Star. Well, that's out the window now because on one block you can have.
10 very similar restaurants that anyone walking down the street can go into. So what are you gonna do to separate yourselves from others? You're gonna be as [00:23:00] great as you need to be. And those days of just pastry being precise. Um, it's the entire operation needs to be precise from the service end to, you know, how you're sourcing your products, where you're so sourcing them, is someone receiving them?
Well, so it's, it's a lot more competitive and the, uh, competition is there and people have lots of options to choose from. And the QSR space, you can go get a nice meal at many QSRs, like Shake Shack or others. Two people can eat for 50 bucks. Two people can eat at a upper end, higher end restaurant for 80 bucks.
So, um, you know, we as operators, um, you know, need to, I think for me anyway, rely on all the training that I got in the fine dining world and be as driven, precise, and demanding on myself and my team to execute at a high level in hopes that, you know, guests will continue to come.
Josh Sharkey: [00:24:00] Yeah, I think there's.
Certainly been far more of a convergence of the fine dining world has been forced to, uh, learn more from fast food, fast, fast, casual food at scale because the unit economics don't work anymore. There's far more restaurants than there ever have been, and you, you almost have no choice but to figure out how to scale, even if that's just to scale your one restaurant.
But typically that's just scale to many because you need upward mobility for your teams because, uh, you know, the dollars, the margins are much lower, so you need multiple units in order to make those margins work so. I think regardless we're seeing that like fine dining has to adopt more of what we've learned from the fast food and the fast casual space.
Um, I do think it's interesting. I, there's, there's somebody I just saw sitting in the audience, Albert, who used to work for me at a fast, uh, fast food restaurant, I guess I would call it, that I had started 15 years ago called, called Bark. And um, Albert started there [00:25:00] and, um. And we wanted to do, you know, fast food done well, and make our own sausages and use the best products and, and, and buy from, you know, organic farms.
And Albert came in right at a culinary school and he was really good. He worked his butt off. And right away I said, you gotta go. Um, you know, like go, I think you went to Mo Fuku. Um, but I think then you came back. And I think that that's what we can see now is like you can learn, um, from places at scale.
Go. Go into some of this upper echelon of fine dining and then come back. Okay. So I'm gonna ask a question now, and I apologize if this is offensive, but, um. As you start to scale, right? At least historically, I think it's changing a lot nowadays, right? You have folks like Eric that can scale, you know, restaurant groups to 25, 30 and actually have great food and great system, great cooks, and John, someone like John who can run a massively scaled public company on the kitchen side.
Um, that's [00:26:00] new. That didn't happen, you know, 20 years ago. But, um, there are a lot of restaurants still around. Uh, red Robin. A bennigans. I don't know if they're still around, but is there a future where a red robin, a bennigans, can actually be a good, a great place to work for a chef and a great place to eat for a diner?
John Karangis: I can't answer that. I hope so. I think, but what I would say, you mentioned something earlier about,
Eric Bromberg: Hmm.
John Karangis: Fine dining restaurants, kind of tapping into fast food to learn a lot. Um, those places, red Robin, McDonald's, shake Shack, others, they're tapping into fine dining. Um, I think recently, um, if anyone knows, um, Kodak, uh, Korean Fried Chicken restaurant, it's, I think there's a couple of QSR spaces that I basically, um.
Did a very similar [00:27:00] fried bucket of chicken in their, in their business. And then I think when I saw that it happened maybe less than a year ago, um, which was kind of refreshing to see, because I think in our line of work, we need to take a close look at what the competition is doing, right? We're competing every day.
We're competing for market share, we're competing for employees. We're competing to continue to improve what we do. And so, um. So I keep my eye on the fast food world. I keep my eye on the fine dining world. Michelin star. I mean, I happen to love it all, but I can tell you there's a, a nice crossover happening.
Um, maybe all don't see it 'cause you're not studying it, you're not sitting in my seat. But, um, it's happening. It will continue to happen.
Josh Sharkey: And, um, what is that, when you say crossover, what is um. What are they doing?
John Karangis: Yeah, sure. Um, one example, uh, beverage innovation in the QSR space. Fast food space has exploded.
I think [00:28:00] McDonald's opened up a, a beverage. Business that they, I think closed but have now, I think they're taking a lot of those beverages, which include Boba and, you know, matcha teas and fancy Starbucks, like coffee drinks. So McDonald's is doing that. Years ago it was just Starbucks. We're doing a lot of that at Shake Shack.
Um, and those beverages came from places like Korea and Japan and Seattle, Washington. And they're finding their way in places, um, that, um, you wouldn't have seen five years ago. And so I think there's just a big focus on sharing of information, um, where at the end of the day, delicious. I mean, we all expect to have delicious food wherever we eat.
If we go down and get something in the, in the park from a hot dog stand and it's. $4. We expect that to be a value at four bucks. No different than if you spend [00:29:00] $500 in a Michelin Star restaurant. You just want the value for that, for that money. And so, um, I think you're gonna see a lot of, uh, different variations of food almost becoming one to a sense.
Josh Sharkey: Um, follow on questions. Why don't hospitals have better food?
John Karangis: Why don't you take that one
Eric Bromberg: That's, well, I, I think it, um, ultimately it's the industrial food complex that runs those type of services and there there's a complication between what people actually want to eat. And what they feel like they can produce.
Um, and these are very big [00:30:00] bureaucratic companies that make change very slowly. And they're not nimble. They don't really have any competition, so there's not the fight for it. We, about 15 years ago, we, uh, developed a food product. It was, uh, un. Breaded, uh, chicken nugget that was grilled. I remember that. It was called Naked Nuggets and we tried to get them into school programs, but the truth of the matter was we couldn't buy chicken for, uh, low enough price to compete in the marketplace because the big companies are buying commodity pricing chicken in their.
You know, they're managing their pricing in a way that we couldn't even compete in a, in a wholesale market. But I think there's just not the desire [00:31:00] for it, and there's not the funding, the funding to support the investment into the people and the process.
Josh Sharkey: What do you think, what do you think would need to happen for this, for, for there to be
Eric Bromberg: opportunity?
I think, you know, ultimately parents need to. React in a way that's going to make some impact in government because it's, it's a government controlled experience.
Josh Sharkey: I think
Eric Bromberg: brigade needs to
Josh Sharkey: start talking to hospitals then too. Um, well, why don't we, why don't we talk? I mean, we're talking about sourcing just now.
Um, and I mean, everybody knows necessity is the mother of innovation. You can have things fast, cheap, or good, but not all three. Um, all these things sort of, you know, lend themselves to constraints always can lead to breeding innovation. Right. Can you think of a time, um, when there was a sourcing constraint or a volume constraint that didn't [00:32:00] actually hinder, but sparked new innovation in your, in your business?
John Karangis: Uh. So we had, uh, when I was working at Union Square events, we had a client that wanted a certain fish for a wedding for 400 guests, and we weren't able to source it. Um, and so I spoke with her and she was sort of freaking out a little bit and made me feel really bad. I'm like, well, what would you like, we can figure out something.
Um. So we couldn't source the one item. And then she asked for sea scallops and she mentioned this restaurant, she loves sea scallops and she wanted seared sea scallops for a wedding. And normally I wouldn't put scallops on a four to 800 person event to s see her because it's difficult to do offsite.
But, um, she was a bride to be and wanted to make her happy. So we, uh, I said yes first and figure, we'll, we'll figure it out. And, um. So we did a couple of test [00:33:00] runs and we were able to, um, learn a lot through that. Um, where we would sear the scallops on the one side so they get really gold and brown and delicious like she wanted.
But I had sheet trays in the freezers getting really cold, so they were only cooked probably 25% of the way on their one seared side. And then it'd have guys, many guys searing, some guys bringing over trays. So we, we would invert the scallop on the frozen tray. Stop the cooking process, then they go right in the fridge.
We did that the morning of the wedding. So we then could, you know, uh, deliver on a restaurant style experience for the 400 or so guests for her wedding. Um, so, uh, and that actually helped, you know, not just figure out one item in scallops, but just some other items too. Um, just by way of, uh, not being able to source, um, the items you wanted.
Josh Sharkey: Can you also remind me, we, John was on my [00:34:00] podcast a while ago and you, you did something with a band saw that I'd never heard of before. I don't remember what it was, but
John Karangis: yeah, I remember. Um, we, um, um, my pastry chef, uh, was pretty awesome. Our pastry routine was amazing and we did a lot of sharing of sweet and savory.
Um, we learned a lot through the pastry. Program of being really dialed in with their precision of recipes. And we followed suit and we looked at the bandsaw. I don't know if you, y'all know what a bandsaw is that that giant scale, it cuts bones in half or anything else in half. You wanna cut? Um, but we would make, we would make sheet trays of lots of different things.
And then, um, one of our most popular hor d'oeuvres was a mac and cheese bite. So you basically make a lot of mac and cheese, just spread it out on a giant sheet tray. You freeze it. And then you can measure your, uh, bandsaw to cut however thick or thin you like. And we would just, as we [00:35:00] say, rip the bandsaw.
We'd make long, thin strips of mac and cheese bites. We'd cut 'em one way and cut 'em the other way, so we have a dice, and then we'd flour egg and breadcrumb them twice to then fry them and serve them. But I think what we chatted about was cheesecake. We also looked for ways of elevating classics, so we would make a cheesecake in the same manner.
Freeze it, and then we'd cut sort of like, um, rectangle portions of cheesecake. So there's no waste at all. Every cut is, you know, precise. Um, the freezer can be your friend if and when used properly and so can the band saw.
Eric Bromberg: That's awesome. So about you, Eric, I think, uh, the biggest change that we've experienced in.
Our, uh, last, at least in the last 10 years is COVID and COVID really put a, I dunno what the right word is, but uh, [00:36:00] really threw us for a loop and with all the restrictions and difficulty getting product, et cetera, what we really learned was we cut our menu down dramatically. And we cut some hours basically because we had to, because that was the rules.
But we learned that we maximized our payroll to our hours when we didn't really need to do that prior to COVID. Um, everything kind of shifted a bit during COVID and prices got, uh, increased at a rate that was not really manageable. So we removed stuff. We removed a hamburger from our menu, which is something that's always been there that, you know, we started 33 years ago with having a fine dining restaurant with.
A [00:37:00] burger on it, which was definitely not something that was normal back then. But then when COVID ended, we didn't bring the burger back mostly out of just not paying attention. And I think that's something that really was a bad decision as time went on. And now we've returned with the burger and. Life is back to normal.
But I think we made a bunch of changes that were solely economic based during COVID, and then realized when business came back that it wasn't the same customer as it was during COVID and people were sort of more demanding and more, uh, looking for life before COVID and what was normal. So we switched back, but I think that was a, a misstep.
Josh Sharkey: Gotcha. You know, we talked about some interesting use of band saws and [00:38:00] you know, Eric, you've now scaled your restaurant to, um. More than two dozen plus, um, restaurants across the country. John, uh, I first met you when you were cooking food at Massive Scale at Goldman Sachs, and you did the same for Union Square Catering, and now you're doing that at Shake Shack.
Both of you have, um, well, both of you are incredible chefs. Seeing you both cook you, you know, you're, you are, um, you know, precisions and, and, and, and great at what you do, uh, but you've also figured out, um, how to cook at scale. And I'm curious what you think a chef in the fine dining world, let's pretend I'm a cook at Noma.
Um, what is something that I might not know that I'll learn once I start cooking at scale?
John Karangis: I, uh, I've had the. Whenever I have the pleasure of having someone that works in fine dining come over to Shake Shack, I just peel back the Curt and I say Come, because they all wanna know why is Shake Shack, [00:39:00] shake Shack, and there's not a lot of sort of crazy equipment in our restaurants.
And, um, it's, it's kind of pretty basic, um, in some ways. Um, and I'd like them to come and see the why and the how so they can understand it. Um. So I think there's a lot to learn. I think, uh, you know, we have a, we have a labeling machine that, as simple as it sounds, uh, when it prints, first of all, it's pre-programmed.
Um, so no one could mislabel something incorrectly. If someone prepares something, uh, you know, who prepared it, when they prepared it, when the shelf life for that item. Um, what the shelf life for that item is. Um, and you know, our cooking, uh, our grills that we cook 80% of our menu on. Um, they're as precise as could be.
Um, you know, the, the procedures that we have, [00:40:00] um, are sort of, you know, bulletproof, um, and done with a lot of thought and care, with also simplified. So, you know, a 17-year-old kid who maybe has his first is or her first job can, can not only, uh, understand it, um, quickly be able to execute it quickly with supervision.
Um, and so I think, um, is so many things that I think a fine dining chef can learn. Um, but I don't think any of these processes that we put in place wouldn't have, they wouldn't be there, had. Me and a bunch of other peoples have that fine dining experience and um, I think sometimes when you're in the fine dining world, you do things too arduously because you feel like you need to, I mean, we used to pick time to order for every dish.
It was ridiculous. I haven't picked thyme in 20 years. I tie it up in a [00:41:00] string, I throw it in and I pull it out and whatever remains in there or I strain it out. So, um, you know, we used to slice chives to order because it was fresher that way. Um, I, I'd argue that if I tasted the best chef in the world on those chives, cut one, two, or 12 hours in advance, they wouldn't be able to.
Pick them out. Um, and I wouldn't have learned that had I not be working where I'm working. But, um, you know, those are the types of tests that we do to see if we can use chives at Shake Shack. Mm-hmm. And so I think there's a lot to learn and um, and I think, I think people are tapping into it now more than ever, as I said.
Eric Bromberg: Yeah. I think ultimately the lines are just very blurred between all of it. I think all of cooking is really. Uh, similar, it's, and when you watch, watch, shake Shack or I, the other day I was at, uh, five Guys, [00:42:00] but their cooking burgers. The same way you would in a fine dining restaurant. They're managing their kitchen in the same way as you would in a fine dining restaurant.
I think there's just very little difference. It's more just the actions and the materials that you're dealing with. But I think the, the physical action and the work that you do is repetitive. Get the systems down, do your job every day, kind of that flow, whether it's quick serve or fine dining, I think it's, it's the same chef, uh, or cook tendencies and, and characteristics that you need in both.
And I think you can switch back and forth. I think. The idea of getting a start in, in fast casual or quick serve, I think it, it teaches you, uh, organization, it teaches [00:43:00] you, uh, respect for the product and for the timing and it really sets your clock to be able to work in food service and to, to be able to work really in any level of food service.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Yeah, I think, I do think that the, the idea, this, this definition of, of scale, we tend to think of, you know, thousands of units and, and high volume, which it, it is, but in general, scale really means the ability for you to empower other people to do the things that you envision so that you can step back.
And think about more important things. How can you take better care of those people? How can you better promulgate your vision to others? And you can't do that if you don't figure out scale. No matter how much fine dining, you know, how, how much of a technician you are, no matter what. If you don't figure out how to scale your vision, right, and have those systems and processes and think that there's something more important than yourself in this, and that's those people, then you, you can't succeed.
[00:44:00] And I don't think there's any better way than to see that. Happen at scale, if you're going to step back into fine dining. So we have a minute left. I wanna sort of wrap this up with the last question, which is, you know, based on all of your experiences scaling businesses, producing at volume, um, seeing all the teams that you've had go through your businesses, what do you see that you're most excited about for the next generation of cooks and the next generation of the types of food businesses that we can see and look forward to?
John Karangis: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a fascinating time if you were entering into hospitality now because, um, a, as Eric mentioned, there's a lot of blurred lines, right? There's a lot of similarities between, um, all price points of, of, uh, of restaurant food. And I think the demand continues to escalate at a rapid rate.
I think the expectations on quality freshness. And [00:45:00] value are going to continue to, um, you know, really force a much more improved product. Um, I think a much better overall experience by way of how you feel when you walk into the establishment, what you're eating, what utensils you. You're using, if you're going into a fast food restaurant, um, what those ingredients are.
I think social media's had, you know, um, has had a tremendous impact on that. And, um, you know, my hope and goal is that, you know, um, you know, ingredients will be better, um, experiences will be better and the careers for folks like us will continue to, uh, be much more improved.
Eric Bromberg: Yeah, I'm, I'm excited about the sort of elevation of quick serve food.
Um, when it comes down to a quick serve, if you, if you sort of boil it down [00:46:00] to its essence, it's a kitchen with, uh, quick with no service. Right with no servers. So the kitchen side of things can be as elevated as you want it to be, and it still falls into quick serve. We just, in looking toward the future, we felt like our fried chicken restaurant was kind of sitting too much toward fast food and less toward quick.
Uh, fast casual. So we upgraded the interior to basically make it look like a restaurant. We switched from plastic and disposable, uh, materials to plates and silverware. Um, upgrading the, there's a chef in the kitchen cooking. Making the mac and cheese. It's not coming out of a [00:47:00] box or a package or any of those things.
And so it really becomes its own restaurant. Just like any, uh, any full service restaurant. It just doesn't have the waiter taking your order or not necessarily bringing your food to you. So it's, it still has that kitchen driven essence. And it allows much better food to come out in that marketplace.
Josh Sharkey: Love it. Well, to a future of good food at scale.
Eric Bromberg: Yeah,
Josh Sharkey: that's right. Thanks everybody. Appreciate it.
Thanks for tuning into the Meez podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the Song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, fresh daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's getmeez.com/podcast. If you enjoyed the show, [00:48:00] I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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