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Billy Dec
<p>Billy Dec</p>

Restaurateur Billy Dec shares social media lessons

Chicago operator spots trends on TV special

Chicago restaurateur Billy Dec is not just the founder and CEO of Rockit Ranch Productions, which operates Bottlefork, The Duck Inn, Sunda New Asian, Rockit Burger Bar and Rockit Bar & Grill.

Dec is also an Emmy Award winning TV personality who makes regular appearances on local and national morning television shows, and something of a social media maven, with more than 40,000 Twitter followers, more than 12,000 Instagram followers and more than 25,000 Facebook fans.

He used his social media savvy to help make “Big Night Out,” a national TV special that airs Thursday on A&E’s FYI Network, in which he and TV personality Camille Ford visit restaurants and bars in Portland, Maine, based on suggestions gleaned first from social media and then from personal recommendations.

Dec discussed that process with Nation’s Restaurant News, plus food and beverage trends in Portland, and how his social media behavior changed after the experience.

You’re based in Chicago. How did you plug into Portland’s social media?

We started searching on Twitter and Instagram, but also once we were able to get in touch socially with anyone — who were, by the way, hugely hospitable and inviting — they would turn us on to other crowds, and if we saw correlations among people whose postings we thought were cool and essentially in line with what we were looking for, we’d go that route. Some didn’t turn out that well, and some were just really unbelievable finds.

So once you started contacting locals they pointed you to other social media outlets?

Right. We ran into a beer club because of that, which was really organic and kind of neat. And all these guys wanted to talk about was new and different beer coming out of their town.

But I travel a lot. When we were building Sunda, our Asian restaurant, I was all through China, Japan and Southeast Asia, just jumping in and talking to chefs and people at the markets and different people in the restaurant and bar industry, and just making my way around and kind of absorbing the culture so that when we came home we were newly informed and in love with the place and inspired to create new things.

So this is something you’ve done in the past, but not with a camera crew in tow and not with social media, but just with sociability?

Yeah, and the love of discovery. You really have to get out of your bubble to see what the world has to offer, what people are demanding in other areas. And you absorb all that to create your own library, so that when you are at home and you have your resources and different levels of talent and strengths you can begin to mix, match and create on your own [food and drinks] with a bigger library to pull from.

What did you take away from Portland?

The culinary and bar talent was so incredibly passionate and integrated. There were chefs behind the bar and bartenders in the kitchen, and we saw a lot of collaboration and correlation between what was in the bar and the kitchen.

I found myself preaching and freaking out about how much I love the city. And it really was because these locals were introducing me and pushing me to these nooks and crannies outside of their own venues, to the little neighborhoods and sub-cultures that exist in this different community that I’d never been to before.

I also thought about how much more mainstream local/sustainable has become across the country, and definitely throughout Chicago. But in Portland, they are really using all ingredients, in most of the places I was going to, from within 10 to 20 miles of their restaurants. It wasn’t even like an effort; it was almost like a natural part of their DNA — working amongst themselves to create these fresh, local offerings.

And that really was interesting when it crossed over to cocktails. I mean, there were people distilling in their own restaurants. I’d never been to a restaurant where they were making their own vodka and gin, with product that was from within 20 miles from their location. You actually can’t do that in Chicago.

And not only were they doing farm-to-table; they were doing boat-to-table.

More from Billy Dec

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The beer is good, too, in Portland.

I found where these bartenders were drinking late at night, and they were doing beer and waffles, which I never really thought would go together. Whatever was in season they were just pulling from within five, 10 minutes of their places and creating specials based on that to go with these beers.

I saw a lot of recycled places, too. I was eating in places that were old churches, old book stores. It was just fascinating. They really had that soul of what they used to be in them still and worked with it as a concept.

How has using social media when you were in Portland, as a customer, changed the way that you handle social media for your own restaurants in Chicago?

Now there’s a more immediate instant or organic response because I was put in a position where I needed to know at that moment, and it reminded me that these people [contacting me on social media] are here for the weekend, or they’re about to go to dinner, or they’re hungry at that moment. We’ve really got to stay more open and communicative and fast. So instead of going to your Twitter at the end of the day, or the next day, that’s not necessarily OK anymore. If you’re truly trying to help deliver value, interact, gain followers and essentially land people at least in your city, but maybe even to your restaurant, it has to be more immediate.

You’re a busy person with multiple restaurants. How do you manage your social media?

My calendar used to back up [meetings] next to each other, and now I put gaps in between. There are natural breaks in between these commitments to allow for open, instantaneous organic conversations in general, whether that happens in social media with myself or with others. I think the formal, structured, one-dimensional building blocks of what a schedule used to look like are so different these days. [Your schedule] needs to have the ability to weave other things in at any moment. The immediacy of everything has caused a need for some flexibility and openness in these committed meetings.

I made that change recently, and with that trip [to Portland] I was put in a position where the stakes were higher for me as a person, where I didn’t have the power. I wasn’t in my own backyard responding to randoms. I was the person begging for help, asking, “Can someone show me where is the best place for a craft cocktail?”

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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