35 min
Ep. 28 Joel Nickson of Wishbone Restaurant Chicago On How To Build Company Culture The Honest Field Guide®
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- Entrepreneurship
Being an owner, operator, chef, creator and manager in the restaurant business is really, really tough. The money is always tight, customer's tastes change, and rent always rises. In Chicago, the business is painfully competitive but most of all, the dining experience can be positively brutal for the owner but also for the customer. Not at Wishbone Restaurant, a Chicago staple in part put on the map by Oprah Winfrey and her fans back in the early 90s.
Joel Nickson with his brothers, were able to exceed expectations for all, not only with their delicious southern comfort food, but with the welcoming vibe, the great service and the culture that created ease and relaxation for after church Sunday brunch for Black Chicagoans, in a city with a violent history of racism, segregation and plantation-like politics--that still exists today.
Joel shares how he built his family-owned business, Wishbone Restaurant, from his roots as the picky-eater and dyslexic son of a French immigrant artist mother, to working in the kitchens of New York, to his two brothers pulling him to Chicago to help create a new concept family-style restaurant that after two major transitions, and luckily ended up dead-smack in the path of the establishment of one of the most famous Black Americans in the world that gave her famous stamp of approval: Oprah Winfrey.
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The Honest Field Guide is a production of brand strategy and visual identity agency Birk Creative at http://www.birkcreative.com. Episode song "Golden West" can be downloaded on Apple here https://music.apple.com/us/album/charmed-life/206143120?i=206143135https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-golden-west/212635734?i=212635810 and is written by Grant Birkenbeuel and JinJa Davis, from the band Utah Carol http://www.utahcarol.com. Recorded at Stomping Ground Studios. Podcast Editing by Jason Marck. Custom episode artwork designed for our podcast created by American printmaker and textile designer Jen Hewett https://jenhewett.com.
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Text The Honest Field Guide at (312) 445-0903 Send us a voice message and we will record it on an upcoming episode: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/message Do you love our show? We would love your dollars to keep going! We can take a donation to support our podcast here and we will shout you our when you do it on an upcoming podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/support
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-honest-field-guide/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-honest-field-guide/support
Being an owner, operator, chef, creator and manager in the restaurant business is really, really tough. The money is always tight, customer's tastes change, and rent always rises. In Chicago, the business is painfully competitive but most of all, the dining experience can be positively brutal for the owner but also for the customer. Not at Wishbone Restaurant, a Chicago staple in part put on the map by Oprah Winfrey and her fans back in the early 90s.
Joel Nickson with his brothers, were able to exceed expectations for all, not only with their delicious southern comfort food, but with the welcoming vibe, the great service and the culture that created ease and relaxation for after church Sunday brunch for Black Chicagoans, in a city with a violent history of racism, segregation and plantation-like politics--that still exists today.
Joel shares how he built his family-owned business, Wishbone Restaurant, from his roots as the picky-eater and dyslexic son of a French immigrant artist mother, to working in the kitchens of New York, to his two brothers pulling him to Chicago to help create a new concept family-style restaurant that after two major transitions, and luckily ended up dead-smack in the path of the establishment of one of the most famous Black Americans in the world that gave her famous stamp of approval: Oprah Winfrey.
--
The Honest Field Guide is a production of brand strategy and visual identity agency Birk Creative at http://www.birkcreative.com. Episode song "Golden West" can be downloaded on Apple here https://music.apple.com/us/album/charmed-life/206143120?i=206143135https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-golden-west/212635734?i=212635810 and is written by Grant Birkenbeuel and JinJa Davis, from the band Utah Carol http://www.utahcarol.com. Recorded at Stomping Ground Studios. Podcast Editing by Jason Marck. Custom episode artwork designed for our podcast created by American printmaker and textile designer Jen Hewett https://jenhewett.com.
---
Text The Honest Field Guide at (312) 445-0903 Send us a voice message and we will record it on an upcoming episode: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/message Do you love our show? We would love your dollars to keep going! We can take a donation to support our podcast here and we will shout you our when you do it on an upcoming podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/support
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-honest-field-guide/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-honest-field-guide/support
35 min