“Strategy is the art of sacrifice.”- Jamie Carawan
“We want to create something that gets everyone jazzed. The team creating it, the operators executing it, the guests eating it. And to us, that's success.”- Mark Rosati
Sponsored by Ventura Foods
Chefs Jamie Carawan, vice president of brand menu and culinary for Buffalo Wild Wings, and Mark Rosati, culinary director for Shake Shack, have followed similar paths to the pinnacle of the culinary R&D world. They might not have formal training, but both have had a lifelong passion for food, and they share a deep interest in the storytelling aspect of feeding people. Nation’s Restaurant News had a chance to introduce these culinary innovation leaders and listen in as they talked about their personal journeys, why self-care is essential, and the changes they see coming for the industry.
JC: I don't think we’ve ever met, which surprised me! I’ve been in the business such a long time.
MR: I was excited to know we were going to get a chance to connect for the first time. I feel like we might have similar stories.
JC: I know I’m probably like a lot of folks. I started cooking pretty young, had families that cooked; food was a big, big part of our family culture. My first job in restaurant was a fry cook at 14 years old. I started waiting tables in college, cooking, bartending. I got master’s degree in history, and I started teaching full time. I got married, had our first kid and realized being an adjunct professor in a university doesn’t really pay very well. So, I started doing weekend work and stuff. I kind of just got sucked back into it, and now, I wouldn’t change anything.
MR: I kind of got into the business a little haphazardly. I always loved food as a kid. I remember there was a great series called Great Chefs of the World and I loved to watch all the different styles of cooking. I grew up in a rural part of Connecticut and I would hear about these chefs in New York City and Boston that piqued my interest. And if they had a cookbook, I would buy it and I’d read and this. “OK, this is great. This is some very next-level stuff for me.” When I did get a chance to go to Boston, New York, I would try to get into these restaurants. I’d save money and I’d just be blown away by everything I saw and tasted. So, in my mind, at the time, I thought if I could learn how to cook like this but not do it professionally, I think that would be really cool.
JC: Once I got to the R&D side and the innovation side, that was it. I mean, that was my dream job. I had people tell me. “Wow, you just walked away from your master’s degree in history.” But I firmly believe that’s not the case, that there are things that I learned researching history that are really important for what I do now. I like doing the work on food. I like learning the stories about food. I like learning stories about chefs and real people doing real things with real ideas. So, in many ways, I still do a lot of what I was doing when I was researching history.
MR: It is so interesting that you say your study of history really informs how you approach your work, because I studied film and I’m always thinking about tone and how in film that affects the audience, and in food, how it affects the guest. I feel if I can somehow create an emotion in a in a flavor of bite, the way a film can, I am doing my job. I also think that way about music too. There are certain songs that just get me so pumped up in the way that the chorus starts off quietly, then it crescendos. I’m like, how can I create a flavor profile that might tell that same kind of narrative so? I don’t know if I’ve ever been successful to translate that, how those make me feel and into a bite, but it's something I've always been kind of inspired by.
JC: I think that is the most important thing to know about our sector of the industry, right? People need to know that even at big chains like ours, real food comes from real places made by real people. And we get so inspired by the food we eat when we travel, and when we start diving down into dishes. It’s really enriching personally as well. I think the hardest part for me, and maybe for you, Mark, is that I get to cook very seldom anymore, and I do miss it.
MR: Exactly! I miss the energy of the cooking on the line, but the opportunity to help guide the voice and the menu, the culture, I think is so important. Everything we try to do, there's stories behind it and getting the team excited, which will hopefully in turn get the guest excited, is a big part of it. I feel the same way, Jamie. The more we keep growing as a company, they want me in the kitchen less and less, which can be hard. But it can also be so rewarding to support other people as they have those creative moments that we know feel so great. We have a team now, more people can help and create, and recognizing that it is my job to let the other people who are amazingly talented do their thing will create more depth and dimension that I could ever bring. Fifteen years in the company and it’s still changing and I think that’s the fun part of it.
JC: And I think one of the things I kind of always get back to is that every product that we’ve been developing has a story, right? There’s a reason why we’re doing it.
MR: I think that’s what makes it makes it exciting. You know, at this level, the amount of people you can cook for and touch, it blows my mind to think about it sometimes, how many people we can reach and have them meet the food.
JC: I’m not good at math at all, but I’m pretty good at geometry, right? Putting a puzzle together. If you give me this angle and this angle and this angle, I can figure out all the other angles and see that there's an adjacency here. That what we’re doing when you're trying to get a product launched, it is putting together a puzzle. Can you get the right cost there? Do you have the right product? Can marketing talk about it like and what consumer are you going to? A new user or current user?
MR: I love that. All the way to the finish line, that is a very fun part of it for me too. I’m curious, how do you think about like menu and innovation annually? Do you say you want to do a few beverages a year, a few new sauces, how do you break that out?
JC: So, we do ideations. When you're with a brand I think you owe it to the brand to be a steward of that brand and that brand's positioning, you know everybody has to buy in there. And then, with that brand positioning, who is our core consumer? You can do that and categorize kind of what you're going for. And then we just create concepts. Then the real work begins, right?
MR: We’re somewhat similar, it’s all about the prioritization, when we think about all the things we want to touch, we can’t do it all. We say to ourselves “is that something we want to grow? Can that actually move the needle for all the work we would take to actually do that? Or is there anything else that should take priority?” In the past, we were definitely going a lot of directions at once, and then nothing really was great at that moment.
JC: Strategy is the art of sacrifice. What’s most important? You can’t do it all. What’s going to drive the business? I think about that all the time. You fall in love with something and think this might be the right product, just not right now. We get so committed to these ideas that sometimes it’s hard to move off, but I love that statement. You know, not just in your work, but also in your life. And the closer and sooner you figure out those priorities, the better things are going to be in your work and your life.
MR: Strategy is the art of sacrifice. I love that I get to grab that from you, I’m going to start using that.
JC: Also prioritizing yourself. Getting better health and better mindset, it’s opening up a lot of things for me. I shifted this year to committing to 90 minutes a day just for me. To keep me grounded. I think yoga has helped me a lot staying present, not looking too far back, not looking too far forward, but just enough and kind of staying present. Also, it helps with figuring out what are your values and what do you want to do and what do you want to bring to the world.
MR: I think we are walking the same paths in a way. I think this line of work is very fast moving, there's so much that goes into it, you have to give a lot in this industry because there's so many moving pieces. I wake up to emails, I go to bed to emails. Finding that moment and saying to myself it's OK not to respond to everything within a split second. It’s taken me a while to get there. I started to back off and just work on prioritizing my time. It has made a big difference. I realized I needed to be better about my time and how much I put in and when to have that personal time.
JC: It has changed everything for me, at work and at home.
MR: Cooking at home has also been revitalized for me. All that excitement I had for cooking on the line, I kind of bring that home. So, I feel like that part of my soul is being taken care of again. I acknowledge that for a while, I had to put it away. I feel happier today because I find that balance and I feel the ideas and clarity I bring to work are even stronger. By not saying all the energy and all my time is going to work and Shake Shack. Finding other avenues to have joy and excitement has brought out even better work to what I do. So, in a way like I had to stand back to figure this out.
JC: This industry’s given a lot to me and when it’s good, it’s really good. But there are some places in the industry where we need to clean stuff up. You know, a 75-hour work week may not be what everybody needs to be doing right now. I think this hasn't been settled in our industry yet. Everybody's trying to figure out strategies to make this better.
MR: We are diving into all of that as well. We’re saying, can we make everyone’s jobs easier? Can they be happier, can there be less stress on them, and can we function still and answer all the needs and wants our guest have? Looking at that I think has been very eye opening for us.
JC: The paradigm is really changed. I think the smart operators are taking measures to make this job a better job for people to live better lives. I’m really proud of Buffalo Wild Wings in this aspect. We have these great programs where we’re asking our team members to do some goal setting, saying “this may not be your last job, it likely won't be. But what is it you want to do after this job? How can we help you get there?” These are conversations managers are having with team members and it's the same kind of conversations that upper management is having with the operators as well. I think not just us, but I think the industry as a whole has to take a really good look at itself. I don't want to hear that “kids today are lazy” or “kids today don't want to work hard” or they need this or that or they’re entitled. It's BS. They will go to organizations that value what they’re doing, give them the lifestyle that most people have outside of this industry. And so, we just have to get smarter with it. That's my opinion.
MR: It’s always going to come down to how the restaurant industry responds and pivots yet again. I know. I really think culture is what it’s going to come down to. One of the very few silver linings during this time is that we reset our mindset and said to ourselves “Is this really the best business we could be running right now and what can we do to make it better?” Across the board.
JC: I’m really anxious to see how this winds out. But I’m hopeful. There’s a lot of work to be done. I think we all just have to remember; it won’t all happen at once. Just like when we do menu innovation, don't let “perfect” get in the way of “really good”. I think we are off to a good start.
MR: That’s really the ultimate thing. You want people to be happy. Across the board. I think that's what makes it makes it exciting. We want to create something that gets everyone jazzed. The team creating it, the operators executing it, the guests eating it. And to us, that’s success.
About MenuMasters:
The MenuMasters program was founded by both Nation’s Restaurant News and Ventura Foods in 1997, with the inaugural event held in May of 1998.
The Nation’s Restaurant News MenuMasters Awards, sponsored by Ventura Foods, is a highly respected competition honoring menu R&D leaders for their personal achievements and contributions to the foodservice industry.
MenuMasters Spotlight is a monthly communication that with stories that tap into the most creative minds in menu innovation and how their passion for food drives their success in business and life.
Visit https://menumastersevent.com/ and https://www.venturafoods.com/ for more information.
