Today, while seeking out more beverage truths about Los Angeles, we take a slight detour to the subject of creating success in an eating and drinking establishment. And we ask about the unique role that a beverage program has in this undertaking. Our guest is Adam Weisblatt, a principle in Last Word Hospitality, a consulting firm with a healthy list of high-profile restaurant clients. In 2015, at the tender age of 30, Adam teamed with Holly Fox, formerly a project manager at entertainment group SBE. Since then, the two have helped consult on all aspects of the successful launching and running of restaurants, bars and other businesses. This means soup to nuts: from establishing occupancy all the way to the by-the-glass wine list. But their ambitions extend much further. In 2016, they entered into a management agreement with a faded Thai restaurant, Rambutan in Silver Lake. Their work included a rebrand as Same Same Thai, a new look, a new beverage program and radically improved sales. Next was Found Oyster in East Hollywood, a smart take on an east-coast oyster bar which has been up and running since November 2019. So far, it has exceeded business expectations and is a worthy visit (this is a personal recommendation). And there are aggressive plans for more restaurants according to a template that Adam shares with us. To top it off, Last Word runs an ‘academy’ a few days a month in L.A. and San Francisco in the form of workshops devoted to providing the tools to future managers and operators in the restaurant/bar industry. Both ‘soft’ skills such as personnel management strategies and ‘hard’ skills such as negociating a lease might be subjects of instruction. Adam states that there is no true intellectual property in hospitality. LWH is seeking to broaden this program to compete with college-level hospitality curriculums one imagines. Adam’s advice to those aspiring to entrepreneurship: go learn how the business works as an employee and when you are ready to take the next step to management or ownership, take advantage of their instruction, which for the time being, is free. In the first part of a two part interview, Adam recounts his journey in hospitality from the Boston area to Los Angeles and beyond. The challenging restaurant/bar environment in Los Angeles, we learn, requires that, from the the first step, that operators must know their staffing and how their people inhabit their workplace efficiently. Because of a recent legal redefinition of the ‘tip pool’ in Los Angeles, allowing the distribution of tips beyond the front-of-the house, creative ways of staffing can now allow a more equitable distribution of the total staff monies coming in. With creativity, it can come down to fewer staff sharing the salary budget and tips. This allows for retention of a talented front-of-house while improving financial conditions among the cooks. Adam states, that In creating an establishment, LWH also looks for a built-in advantage from the start regarding occupancy, labor and cost of goods. This can save an establishment if things don’t go ideally and a re-concept is necessary. We touch on other factors of Adam’s consulting work such as creating ‘cohesive and timeless’ brands that easily convey a concept and why LWH is committed to small ‘specialty’ projects.
