$300M+ in Revenue – Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants

Best Advice I Ever Received: I was at a YPO forum meeting/retreat and a member asked why I wasn’t taking the approach of slowing down and focusing instead of being all things to all people. That coincided with my reading From Good to Great and it hit like a ton of bricks. The result was we built 19 more Mitchell’s Fish Markets and sold for $92M and I don’t think we would have done that without that comment.

Best Advice I’d Give To Someone Who Wants To Build A $10m+ Business: I was mentoring a Young Entrepreneur member who was talking about taking his business to $20M and I asked him “why not think big?” Every year, we set a goal and every year we don’t hit it. It doesn’t matter to me. $3.7B in 10 years is CMR’s goal and we may not hit that goal. So what if it takes 11 years, 12 years? If you don’t aim high, if you’re not driving your business hard, you won’t know what the possibilities are. Being a great restaurateur is difficult, if it was easy everyone would do it. It takes everything you have, inertia is behind you, and you’re going against the current. You have to set your goals, paint your vision and tell everyone. Believe in yourself. If you don’t, who else will? And it’s not even confidence, it’s belief. People can feel it. It runs to the deepest depths of your body. Run the walk. Having this core belief and the price you have to pay to get there, and then the commitment and resolve is where the rubber meets the road.

In this episode, Steve, Mary, Richard, and Cameron discuss:

• His professional journey from Dishwasher to Restaurateur.
• His exits and the scaling of his past and current company.
• Deciding on appropriate locations and generational sites.
• What keeps Cameron up at night.

Key Takeaways:

• If you don’t aim high, if you’re not driving your business hard, you won’t know what the possibilities are.
• Keep your culture present and alive even as you expand your business or locations.
• Build something you want to make great.
• Live within your goals and your values and everything will be okay.

“A restaurant company is built buy its people for its people.” — Cameron Mitchell

About Cameron Mitchell: Cameron Mitchell is the Founder and CEO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Cameron Mitchell Restaurants (CMR) celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018, and Mitchell has enjoyed success as a lifelong entrepreneur, accomplished businessman, culinary expert and nationally recognized restaurateur.

Cameron’s rise has been called “a dish room to board room story,” as he began his career in the restaurant industry almost forty years ago as a dishwasher at a local Columbus steakhouse in 1980 as a senior in high school. A few years later, when he was working as a line cook during a chaotic shift change, time stood still amidst the pandemonium and Cameron had an epiphany. He realized then he loved the restaurant business and set out to make it his lifelong career.

After that shift, he put pen to paper to map out his career goals, waking his mother in the middle of the night to share them with her. Those goals – to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA), to become an executive chef by age 23, to be a restaurant general manager by 24, and ultimately to be president of a restaurant company by the age of 35 – eventually were the benchmarks that would set the course of Cameron Mitchell’s restaurant industry career.

At the age of 22, Cameron graduated from the CIA and started his professional career with the 55 Restaurant Group based in Columbus, Ohio. He rose through the company’s ranks until he was directing all restaurant operations of the six-unit restaur