Transcript: Episode 185: Squash Milk

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:

APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | TOPFLOOR.COM

[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 185. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/185. 

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Steve Fortunato initially thought of working in hospitality as a stepping stone to something else. So did I. Once he realized the business was in his DNA. Steve turned the immersive dining experiences he was hosting into Los Angeles catering company, roomforty and later, the Fig House, an event venue. Steve has thought deeply about the essence of hospitality as an exchange rooted in generosity, and he recently published the Urgent Recovery of Hospitality, which explores this philosophy in depth. Today we are going to talk about how to create a culture that is less transactional and more relational. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button. 

Call button rings 

The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals and basically anyone with a burning question. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Doug, and here is what Doug asks. Why do European cultures value the profession of waiting tables so much more highly than we do in the United States? I don't know if you're gonna have an answer for this. I know you're not from Europe, but I think this is such a wonderful question. I'd love to know what you think. 

[00:02:06] Steve Fortunato: Oh my God, I love that question. My right hand man is European. He's from Spain, and my heritage is Italian. And so we spent a lot of time in Italy and my daughter has been at a French immersion school since she was four. So we love Europe and I think, Doug, that is an awesome question. I would say it ha it is a dignity issue. I would say that there is something I I think subconsciously inherent in waiting tables in America that feels like it somehow pushes against your dignity like it is somehow. Like you said about me, I'm saying this because I've embodied it. I saw hospitality as a stepping stone to something else. I graduated from college and I was tending bar for guys I went to college with that were partners in law firms, and there was something about that that felt uncomfortable for me. 

And I think in the European context, their ladders are often leaning against a different wall, and I think that they are often setting as their north star a life experience more than an accomplishment. And so oftentimes they don't feel like there's anything less dignified in serving tables. It is their profession and they understand that it is, I think there's pride in it. When I dine in Europe, there's a lot of pride in the community of the restaurant, the team of servers that are serving you. The legacy of the place that you're eating at. But as a lifelong non-European, I would be open to feedback. As soon as we get off the call, I'll ask Alvaro, my right hand man who's born and raised in Spain, why that might be. But I think Doug, that's a great question. 

[00:04:04] Susan Barry: I think there's another piece of it, maybe Steve too, which is that and I certainly don't know this, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but if we're paying servers $2 and 13 cents an hour for the past 34 years, I have a feeling that waiters in Europe are making a little bit better of an hour wage than that. I don't know.

[00:04:28] Steve Fortunato: A hundred percent. 

[00:04:28] Susan Barry: It's a little bit maybe more sustainable of a lifestyle and, and less temporary feeling, or you can raise a family as a leader. Totally in Paris. 

[00:04:40] Steve Fortunato: Totally. I think that you really hit the nail on the head in terms of the practical implications of some of, you know, I went psychologically, I think you went practically. 

[00:04:49] Susan Barry: Totally. 

[00:04:49] Steve Fortunato: I mean, psychologically, if you are working 40 hours a week and you can't actually provide for your family and you can't even pay your own bills, I think that taxes your dignity. Where I think when you work in Europe and you're like, this is my job, this is my craft, and this is how I support my lifestyle or my family's lifestyle. If you're okay with that. 

[00:05:07] Susan Barry: Yes, a hundred percent. You're absolutely right. So speaking of waiting tables, what was your first hospitality job? It wasn't serving tables, was it? 

[00:05:16] Steve Fortunato: No, it was. Well, my very first job was I worked in the kitchen at A&W, which you don't really see A&Ws in America much. There's a few in Montana. And then when we go to Canada, we see a lot of A&Ws. But my first restaurant job was, I bust tables at he Chinese restaurant that we went to almost every Friday night. And I was 14 and I had my Honda Elite scooter. So I was now sort of mobile and I lived in a small town, Santa Cruz, so you could get around. And I wanted gas money and I wanted money to go to the movies. And my family was there every single Friday. And so the manager knew us and I called him up and I said, Tom, can I have a job? And he was a little bit taken aback because he had always engaged with me. As a regular, whereas the son of regulars and he gave me a job and I started busing tables.

[00:06:13] Susan Barry: Wow. 14? You were 14? 

[00:06:15] Steve Fortunato: I was 14. I just turned 50. So that's 36 years I have been in this industry. 

[00:06:20] Susan Barry: That's amazing. So, I know you had a long and storied career, but I'm gonna skip ahead to roomforty. How did that come about and what was your sort of driving impetus or philosophy behind that concept?

[00:06:37] Steve Fortunato: Yeah, I had, as you said, well, by the way, I have to say your introduction and the way that you introduced us and our content, it was the most thoughtful, right on, introduction. I was just sitting there feeling known and seen and captured, and that is a reflection, I think, of the time that you put in and really understanding where your guests are coming from and their point of view. I know that's not what you asked, but I just wanted to say that because oftentimes I'll.

[00:07:11] Susan Barry: Stop. I hate these compliments. They're terrible. 

[00:07:13] Steve Fortunato: Well, oftentimes podcasts are reading these intros and then they're like, one of the podcasts I was on, they were like, you just wrote a book right? And what's the name? Which is fine, but I really appreciated the thought and the intentionality that went into your introduction. So thank you so much for having me here, and the work that you've already put in 

[00:07:32] Susan Barry: Pleasure is mine. 

[00:07:33] Steve Fortunato: Thank you. Like you said in the introduction, initially I had seen waiting tables as a stepping stone to other things that I wanted to do, and I had a friend come to me and say, yes, when you work in the restaurants, it's hard and you don't necessarily resonate with the culture of the restaurant, but look at what you do when you're off time. You are a bachelor that lives in an apartment in Hollywood, you're a musician and you gather people, and even in your bachelor context, you serve them, you host them, you play music, you love hosting people. I think you should go towards hospitality. And I just had this huge paradigm shift, Susan. It was one of the biggest turning points in my life and I thought, you know what? I've been running from my life. I have viewed hospitality as a means to another end professionally, and I think it's what I'm supposed to do. I came from fine dining, from that culture that opened LA Times every Wednesday and read the reviews and trained us in wine knowledge, trained us in food knowledge. And so I wanted to open a fancy restaurant. 

And so I started doing LOI's on buildings and started trying to find a location. And in the process that same individual, his name was Malcolm, that same individual that had advised me to embrace hospitality, said, listen, you've been around hospitality for decades. You are kitchen adjacent, but you're not exactly a trained chef. You're not, you know, you're a front of house guy, you're a gatherer. Why don't you start doing some gatherings and just talking about this restaurant that you are gonna open? And so I did, and this was long before the popup movement, and so I just started throwing dinner parties. And there was intentionality and I sort of gathered my community from fine dining and I started calling winemakers because I loved winemaker dinners in restaurants. And I started inviting winemakers to come down to these dinners that we were gonna throw in a backyard or in a museum. I spent, now, when I started business, I built a pro forma. When I started roomforty, I built tables. And I spent nine months, I spent nine months in a wood shop building these long wood Tuscan farm tables that could be disassembled. I wasn't aware of Town&Country. I didn't know that you could rent those tables, so I took nine months to build them. And they were a Parsons design.

They had really clean lines, but you could disassemble them and store them because I felt like the, the table is the centerpiece of a gathering. So I finished the tables, I started calling winemakers and people would come to these gathering season and they were like, oh man, we wish you could have done this for our daughter's wedding, or we wish we could have had this for our 40th birthday, but you know, you're not a catering company. And I was like, no, I'm not a catering company. In fine dining, there was sort of this judgment of catering. As a lesser craft, that restaurants really led the industry, led the hospitality industry, led what was happening from a culinary perspective, but catering sort of trailed belong. They were followers and not leaders. And I'm a disruptor. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I like challenges and I just, that was my second paradigm shift. The first one was embracing hospitality as a career. The second one was realizing restaurants open and close in LA all the time. And we all at the time had these judgments of the mediocrity of catering. And I found that tragically ironic, I found it tragically ironic that you could go to a phenomenal restaurant, have a killer experience, and it was just Thursday. But on your wedding night or on your 40th or on these once in a lifetime or once in a decade events, you would leave and someone would go, how was the food? And they would say, well, it wasn't bad for catering. And so I recognized a blue ocean of opportunity in embracing catering. And I abandoned the brick and mortar restaurant idea, and I set out to bridge that gap between the great restaurant experience and the catered format. And that was really the mission and the intention of roomforty. How can you deliver a restaurant experience? Initially we called it a restaurant without walls. How can you deliver a restaurant level experience for someone's wedding? 

[00:11:34] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:35] Steve Fortunato: 200 people in a vineyard, in a field, in a museum, in a gallery, because there's so many challenges. You're building a satellite kitchen in an alley, and you're working with a team of servers that is itinerant and works for 10 different catering companies, and you haven't had six months of training with them. How can you bridge that gap and that was challenging and I was up for the challenge, so I went all in on roomforty. 

[00:11:58] Susan Barry: Well, I know I'm not gonna try to make you tell me all of your secrets about what you did differently. I was an off-premise caterer. That was sort of my first grownup job, and I can just empathize so much with the idea of like producing a miracle every single event. Like I remember doing things like heating demi gloss in a coffee pot in an office building because we got locked out of the staging kitchen. Like just the wildest stuff. 

[00:12:27] Steve Fortunato: Yes. 

[00:12:27] Susan Barry: So not only do you have to overcome that craziness, but then the idea of elevating that to restaurant quality is quite a leap. I just wanna make sure the listeners understand this isn't like we wanted to do a good job. It's like, yes, we wanted to perform a miracle plus make it really great. 

[00:12:44] Steve Fortunato: Yes, yes, totally. 

[00:12:46] Susan Barry: So, Fig House was a major turning point. Can you talk about that a little and how you transitioned to owning event venues?

[00:12:55] Steve Fortunato: Totally. Catering companies really grow by relationships with event planners and event venues. If you go to a venue, they'll show you around and then they'll say, these are the five caterers that work at this venue, the preferred vendors. And so we began to get on these preferred vendor lists at venues, but there was always this sort of competition to rise to the top of the list of caterers or make sure that you are connecting relationally with the venue representative and staying top of mind. So they would say, we've got these five caterers, but we really love this cater. And I just, again, as an entrepreneur, I was like, I don't want to be one of five caterers. I want to be the only caterer. And is there any way we could open a venue? And so through this crazy stream of events, doors again opened and we bought this commercial property that was a large, long building that was an abandoned bike shop on the same property as a small Chinese restaurant. And I knew a bit about construction, I knew a bit about development. 

[00:14:02] Susan Barry: But from your table project. 

[00:14:04] Steve Fortunato: Yeah, exactly, exactly. From building tables. But, I'm an aesthetic dude. I can recognize style, but I'm not an interior designer. And so I was looking around LA and I knew I wanted something relationally that felt right and vibe that felt right, if that makes any sense. There's lots of different types of interior designers and so I called a someone that was a rising star in the interior design world. Her name was Emily Henderson. 

[00:14:34] Susan Barry: When I read that in your book, I, my jaw dropped. I have been following her content since she's been making it. I was like, what? 

[00:14:42] Steve Fortunato: No way!

[00:14:43] Susan Barry: Yes. 

[00:14:44] Steve Fortunato: No way. 

[00:14:44] Susan Barry: I'm obsessed with her design. Yes. Yes. 

[00:14:46] Steve Fortunato: That's so funny. 

[00:14:47] Susan Barry: Yeah. 

[00:14:47] Steve Fortunato: I'll tell you a funny story. So Emily had never designed a venue. And myself and one of my team went to meet her at a restaurant. And basically the essence of the conversation was, is Emily the right person for the job? And we were both sort of gauging that. She was like, I'm not the gonna design a nightclub. I'm like, oh my God, this is not a nightclub. So she was sort of beta testing me as to whether or not this was a fit and I was doing the same. 

[00:15:14] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:14] Steve Fortunato: And while we're sitting at the table, a lady comes up to the table and goes, oh my God, are you Emily Henderson?

[00:15:21] Susan Barry: Oh, wow. That's. 

[00:15:23] Steve Fortunato: And she just looked and she said, that is such poignant timing. Yes, I am. So, yeah. Emily came on board on the project and she was phenomenal and she was incredibly, she was just whip smart in social media and in capturing imagery and an understanding. I am not a social media guy. I never have been, and she was, and she had a great aesthetic. One of the things she nailed was great design, being resourceful. I didn't want one of those designers that came in and said, we've got this beautiful $10,000 couch from Provence and we've gotta import it. She was resourceful. She had class, she had taste, she understood the tension between budget and design.

[00:16:10] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:11] Steve Fortunato: She was super savvy on marketing. So she would take pictures of the wallpaper and of the tile samples and of the renderings. And Susan, girls were booking the venue. Brides were booking the venue while there were tractors inside the venue because they said if a wedding venue is opening, and Fig House isn't just a wedding venue, but if a venue is opening where I can have my wedding that Emily Henderson is designing, I wanna book it now. So we went from getting 10 to 15 inquiries for roomforty Overnight, 50 60 increase. 

[00:16:47] Susan Barry: Wow. 

[00:16:47] Steve Fortunato: Four figures. It was like a rocket ship to our business and it really was. Again, it's a lot about turning points, and it was the third turning point. 

[00:16:59] Susan Barry: Well, I wanted to set the stage with your background and your career, but what I really wanna talk about is your book. Can we start with having you describe it the way that you would describe it to your mom or your grandma? 

[00:17:14] Steve Fortunato: It's really a book about people and how we interact with them and how we engage with them. Looking through the lens of hospitality. And when I say looking through the lens of hospitality, I believe our collective understanding of what hospitality is has become a little bit confused and a little bit diluted, so it's no longer intuitive. When I say this is a book about relationships, looking at it through the lens of hospitality, it's no longer intuitive as to what that means. 

[00:17:47] Susan Barry: Hmm. 

[00:17:48] Steve Fortunato: Hospitality in its origin was a generous act. I have enough I wanna share with you. And that was really a virtue. It wasn't an industry. It was a tendency in people to share with the other, to host the other. And over the last 50 years, as we have mixed hospitality and media, as we have mixed hospitality and empire and celebrity and cooking competitions, and we've created this phenomenon that has definitely elevated. The level of execution and it's done a lot of really wonderful things, but in some ways we don't now understand is hospitality about the giver or is hospitality about the receiver. And I think that that confusion has sort of gotten in the water of how we engage relationally. Is this interaction about me and what I need and the witnessing and the validation and the affirmation that I need, or is this about you? 

[00:18:59] Susan Barry: So why put this in a book versus, I don't know, a TikTok or a keynote speech or something like that? Was there something particular about writing a book that appealed to you, or was it just the best vessel for your message? 

[00:19:15] Steve Fortunato: There's absolutely a hurdle that I had to get over with writing a book. There's so many books out there. There's too many books. Why? 

[00:19:24] Susan Barry: There's no such thing as too many books Steve, come on.

[00:19:27] Steve Fortunato: Why do we need another book? And one of the most formative things that I heard as I was wrestling with whether or not I should write this book was a quote from Brene Brown that she said, the longest distance information travels is from our head to our heart. And the way that it makes that journey is through our hands. And I knew that writing this book was important. So that this message was embodied by me and not just spoken by me. I wrote this book primarily to change me. Writing a book really changes the writer more than anything, and so that was the first impetus. If you open the book and you see the first dedication, it says to my younger self, you were lost and confused for so long, and if no one else reads this book, I wrote this for you.

I was a really confused. I was a really excluded kid. I didn't have any friends. I was ruthlessly bullied basically from the time I was 6 until the time I was 18. And so what I longed for was relationships. And I was really confused about why, why am I excluded and how can I change that and how can I engage in relationships? And, and I learned a lot about myself and about relationships and writing this book. And as I have watched civility breakdown and kindness breakdown, and an understanding of how to connect, even if there's civility. Sometimes we don't actually know how to connect. We don't know how to show up in conversation. We don't always know how to demonstrate interest and curiosity. I've been in so many conversations where people just sit there. Then one person just starts talking, but they don't actually know how to kick off connection. 

[00:21:14] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:15] Steve Fortunato: Through the timeless practice of curiosity. Tell me about yourself. So I felt like I don't just want this message to change me. I wanna share this message. And as I saw these things, you've read the book and so you understand that I identify these two cycles that can exist in our interactions. And as I saw these cycles in existing in me, I then saw it existing in my industry and then I saw it everywhere.

[00:21:46] Susan Barry: This is a perfect time for me to ask this question. This comes up a lot in your book when you say you can't make other people feel valued while trying to feel valued yourself. I feel like that sounds a little bit confusing. Can you talk about what you mean by that? 'Cause I think it's a great illustration of this whole point.

[00:22:10] Steve Fortunato: Totally value. Feeling valued is inherent. It's universal. It is in at a cellular level in all humans. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel valued. Every single person needs to feel like I matter. I'm valued. The challenge is that there is a cycle, there is an ecosystem. There is a law of nature with how receiving that works, and the simplest way to say it would be take a breath and if you hold your breath for a long time, what you need as you run out of breath, is another breath. But the only way that you get that breath is you have to breathe out. You have to give away the breath that you have before you can get the breath that you need. It is a cycle. You cannot breathe in and breathe out at the same time.

There's a cycle. You have to give away that breath to make space to receive the next breath. And that's really how the ecosystem, the law, receiving value works. We all wanna feel valued, but if I'm here in this conversation trying to get value from you, Susan, and trying to be noticed and appreciated, I'm not gonna be able to make you feel valued. You can't give and take at the same time, someone has to go first, and that is the virtuous cycle of generosity we all wanna receive. Of course, that's natural and there's nothing wrong with that. This is not about being altruistic, it's about being strategic. I go first and I give value. And in doing that, you are gonna feel valued. You're gonna feel the recipient of the generosity of my intention, and you cannot help but return that. It starts off this new energetic, generative ecosystem that changes the game. 

[00:23:53] Susan Barry: Will you tell the story of what happened to you at the Luna Restaurant about the way that you wanted some steak cooked? Because I think it's such a good example, and I swear I've had this exact experience before. 

[00:24:09] Steve Fortunato: Okay. Well, this is a little controversial, because.

[00:24:13] Susan Barry: It's not! 

[00:24:14] Steve Fortunato: Because this has become normal in dining trends in Los Angeles, but basically I was hosting, we were doing sort of a special event and we had a band from Nashville come and play and we said, let's go to this restaurant downtown in the arts district. And we hosted the band and it's a very well known restaurant and it's very successful. And we got there a little bit late. And from the moment we walked in, felt sort of dressed down by the hostess for not having a reservation and sort of a look of incredulity or shock that we would presume that we could get in. It was probably like 9:30 on a weeknight. They were open late. It wasn't like we were the last table and keeping them open. There was people in the restaurant, but there was empty tables. So from the word go, energetically, we could feel that sort of, are you cool enough to be here? 

[00:25:06] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:06] Steve Fortunato: As I say in the book, she's like, well, I'm only gonna have a table over there, which over there was sensibly not the good section. So she seats us and the guys in the band look at the next table and they're like, oh my God, that's the lead singer of the Killers. So. 

[00:25:26] Susan Barry: Oh, in this terrible section. So like. 

[00:25:28] Steve Fortunato: In this terrible section, Uh huh, you know, that is supposed to be in the back, left field, they happened to have, so the band guys were stoked. So we sit down and we're greeted by the server and he says, Hey guys, have you guys been here before? That was his greeting. Hey guys, have you guys been here before? And I said, Yes, I have. And he said, okay, well then you'll know how the chef likes you to order. These are the size of the dishes. We recommend these dishes, and we require you to order everything at once, which is a very typical kickoff of the dining scene right now. Typical. I'm gonna leave that alone. 

[00:26:15] Susan Barry: Typical/annoying. Carry on. 

[00:26:17] Steve Fortunato: So, so annoying. It is, it is. It basically presumes that I know nothing about coursing, they're gonna set the pace. It's just starting off with instruction and. 

[00:26:33] Susan Barry: Well, it's like you're there to work for the chef versus chef preparing food for you. Very strange. 

[00:26:38] Steve Fortunato: Exactly. And you know, humanity has a tendency to overcorrect, right? So for decades, the customer was always right, and we saw the cracks in the fountain foundation of that mindset, we've now swung to the other extreme, which is the chef is always right. So.

[00:26:55] Susan Barry: Too many TV shows. 

[00:26:56] Steve Fortunato: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I basically, Susan, I basically ordered the whole menu. I think there was nine of us there. Almost everything on the menu. And because there was nine of us there, I got the ribeye and I asked everybody, what's your preference on temperature? And some liked medium rare and some liked medium. And so I said to the server, can we have the ribeye cooked medium? And he said, no. And I said, excuse me? And he said. No, you can't. The chef prepares the ribeye, medium rare, and I said, no, I totally get that. We have some people here that would prefer medium. And again, I've been in the restaurant business 36 years. I understand the preferred temperature of steak, but I also wanted to be generous to my guests. And so he refused. And then he said, well, I can go ask the chef, but I know what the chef's gonna say. And I said, yes, please, will you go ask the chef? So he comes back very proud, sort of victorious and said, yeah, the chef said no.

And at that moment, and I describe this at greater length in the book, I think something snapped in me where I was so used to the dance of, do you belong? This is how we instruct you to eat. Just, I was just so used to it after living in LA for three decades, but something just snapped in me where I was like, this is not how it is supposed to be. We've lost something. We have lost something. This is normal and it's not how it's supposed to be. And I know that that is not every dining experience. That is not every restaurant experience. And that's why I described two cycles because I had other experiences that were created, this incredible generosity that I was like, I've gotta bring people here and oh my God, I'm gonna tip 40% and I wanna tell everybody I know. So it's not painting a broad stroke that this is everywhere, but what happened is that it brought an energy up in me that I didn't want to be. I was angry, I was offended. I started asking questions like, am I impressed? Is this restaurant all that it had transformed me from a host to a critic?

[00:29:20] Susan Barry: That question of am I impressed is so interesting because it underscores this, this thing that I'm sure I didn't come up with this, but I've said it a lot and I think a lot of people say it, which is if the service is bad, the food doesn't taste good. 

[00:29:35] Steve Fortunato: Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:36] Susan Barry: Or doesn't taste as good because. 

[00:29:38] Steve Fortunato: Absolutely.

[00:29:39] Susan Barry: It turns you, you're a critic, right? So you're looking for anything that doesn't impress you. 

[00:29:45] Steve Fortunato: Absolutely. Absolutely. Food is meant to be nourishment and nourishment is felt and experienced on multiple levels. It is not just experienced on the palate. And one of the things we talk about at roomforty is that people will remember how you made them feel long after they remember how the food tasted. That energy of, I wanna impress you. This is who we are. This is how we like you to order. I do think it can transform the energy of the person receiving it to going. Did I like it? Am I impressed? And I don't, you know, if you were hosting me in your home you made a meal for me, whether it was a burrito or beef boon. If you were hosting me in your home and you invited me in and you had shared with me the question, am I impressed, would not factor onto my radar. I would feel like, oh my God, Susan hosted us. 

[00:30:43] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:44] Steve Fortunato: Thank you so much. Oh my God, you took so much time to prepare this. You don't engage the energies of a critic. You don't ask those questions. You actually feel the recipient of generosity and you return that generosity. 

[00:31:01] Susan Barry: It's absolutely true. We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some practical and tangible tips and ideas to try either in their businesses or their day-to-day lives. If a restaurant or hotel listening to this right now is having alarm bells go off besides buying your book as they should, what are some ideas? What's the first step to shifting toward a more relational or generous or host like model versus a transactional one? 

[00:31:40] Steve Fortunato: It's a great question and that I think is really where the juice is. Okay, I'm bought in. I want to shift the energies, but how? And we talk about, in the book, there's a four part framework, and I love how you said what is the first step? The first step is speaking. The good words matter and what you focus on grows. The very first step is speaking kindly to yourself, and the second step is speaking good about the other. Whether it is the company, the colleague, or the customer, because we all have this tendency to walk out of the kitchen, push the door open, see the customer, good evening, welcome, put on a smile, and then we go back in the kitchen. We're like, oh my God, this client, you know. And we've all had that client. We've all had the customer, the client, the guests that just drives us crazy. But what you focus on grows and words matter. And so it's not about being blind to what is wrong. It's not about bearing our head in the sand and saying everything's wonderful. It's an intention to verbalize speaking the good. When you speak that good, it begins to metabolize that message in your body and when you begin to speak the good about the customer, the company, the colleague. We all could look at our company and just be like, oh my God, the benefits package, the side work, that manager. It’s complaint and deconstruction and negativity is easy. It's not hard to do. The problem is that number one, it's contagious, and number two, it doesn't build anything in us or in our teams or in our organizations. 

[00:33:15] Susan Barry: Steve, we have reached the fortune telling portion of our program, so you have to predict the future and then we'll come back and see if you got it right. What is, this is just such an easy question. No, not broad at all. What's a prediction you have about the future of hospitality? 

[00:33:35] Steve Fortunato: Wow. What is a prediction about the future of hospitality? I believe that as we progress in time, homes are going to return to a place of extending hospitality. 

[00:33:51] Susan Barry: Mm. 

[00:33:51] Steve Fortunato: I believe that there is a generation of people who have had a hosting desire, but because of the siege of content that we have gotten around cooking and recipes and how to do it. There's a lot of people that feel disqualified and I can't actually offer what I have because I don't measure up to that TV personality chef. And so people feel disqualified, and I think people are gonna start to feel like, you know what? What I really wanna do is just connect with people. Come over and I'll serve what I have. 

[00:34:33] Susan Barry: Mm-hmm. 

[00:34:34] Steve Fortunato: And I think this subconscious measuring and comparing that we have of what we make and what we see, I think that, that will run its course and we will become so oversaturated with that and our collective subconscious that we're just gonna at some point disregard it. 

[00:34:54] Susan Barry: I hope that that's right. You and I have something in common that I haven't mentioned, which is we both grew up in very hospitable households and families where entertaining at home was a very big deal, like my parents, like yours were teachers and they couldn't go out to dinner all the time, right?

[00:35:16] Steve Fortunato: Mm-hmm. 

[00:35:17] Susan Barry: They couldn't do all of all the stuff that I think now everybody just does as sort of a matter of course. But they would throw crazy elaborate dinners and cocktail parties and all that stuff. And my sister, who is a restaurant owner and I, a hotelier/podcaster, think that we both got the hospitality gene from watching them and learning how to set the table.

[00:35:39] Steve Fortunato: Hmm. Hmm. Beautiful. 

[00:35:42] Susan Barry: I hope it's true. I hope it's coming back. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the last restaurant or hotel that you visited, what would it be? 

[00:35:54] Steve Fortunato: That I was not greeted with instructions. 

[00:35:57] Susan Barry: Like, we would like for you to do X, Y, Z thing. Is that what you mean? 

[00:36:02] Steve Fortunato: Yes. Yes. This is how you need to order and this is what we recommend. It is essentially presuming naiveté on the part of the guest and I have been behind the scenes. I understand flow, I understand pickup times, I understand firing complexity. And there is a way to greet people with an embrace and a setting of the tone for what these next two hours are gonna hold that is so much more attuned and curious and reads the energy of the table and asks questions as opposed to, have you been here before? This is how we do it. 

[00:36:50] Susan Barry: Do you have any allergies? Yes. Am I gonna get sued? 

[00:36:54] Steve Fortunato: Yes. 

[00:36:55] Susan Barry: What legacy do you wanna leave? 

[00:36:59] Steve Fortunato: Hmm. I want to leave a legacy that I was a phenomenal husband and I loved the heck outta my wife. And in doing that, we as a couple, created a place of home for our children. And that I was a great father and that I wasn't perfect, but that I had a lifelong growth perspective. And I wanna leave a legacy that the fruit of my life, was that there was more love and more connection and more civility as a result of the way that I lived and the words that I said.

[00:37:48] Susan Barry: I don't know why I keep setting myself up for this, asking about people's legacy. That then makes me cry, and then I try to make them go down to the loading dock and tell me a dirty story. 

[00:37:59] Steve Fortunato: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:00] Susan Barry: All right. Before we tell Steve goodbye, we're going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:38:15] Susan Barry: The loading dock is brought to you by Fox Fold, creator of refillable toilet paper and facial tissue dispensers for hotels that lower costs and reduce waste. I talk to their CEO Ludo in episode 143. And I can tell you that this product is really cool. The paper is made of bamboo, it's refillable, and it helps keep garbage off of the loading dock. So if you wanna stop seeing half used toilet paper rolls at your loading dock, visit foxfold.com. Steve, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

[00:38:56] Steve Fortunato: You say, only tell you, but I'm telling you and all of your listeners. 

[00:39:00] Susan Barry: Listen, I don't know if they're still paying attention. Just pretend like it's me and you.

[00:39:05] Steve Fortunato: Okay. As I said, when I started roomforty, my exit into my own business was from fine dining. And so I was able to sort of cobble together a community of cooks and servers that came from the culture of fine dining. So we didn't have major league resources, but we had major league experience. However, the shift to catering was new for us. It's like month three, and we book a dinner for YPO, which is an organization of CEOs that are at a certain age that are a certain level of gross revenue, and it's definitely a room of high performers that are used to luxury experiences. 

[00:39:49] Susan Barry: And all of whom have the wherewithal to be your client individually. Right? 

[00:39:53] Steve Fortunato: Exactly. 

[00:39:54] Susan Barry: Exactly. It's a hundred future clients. 

[00:39:55] Steve Fortunato: Yes, they're all CEOs of their own organizations, and we are, I mean, so wet behind the ears in the logistics of catering. We know food, we know service, we know how to cook, but the logistics are new for us, 80 CEOs and they're partners. It's 160 people, and the first course is butternut squash soup. And so we're serving the soup and we're passing the bowls down the line. And 60 guests in Susan, we were outta soup.

[00:40:31] Susan Barry: What? No. 

[00:40:32] Steve Fortunato: Completely out soup. And basically the chef who was green in volume production had miscalculated the amount of soup based on the rented bowl and was over portioning in this rented bowl. So we have a hundred guests that don't have soup. So the garnish on the main course was these yellow patty, I can't believe I'm telling you this, was these yellow patty pan squash, you know those little yellow patty pan squash? So we grab heavy cream, we grab heavy cream, and all of the patty pan squash that had been blanched and we put it in the blender.

[00:41:20] Susan Barry: No. 

[00:41:20] Steve Fortunato: And we, yeah, we are like on the fly. Essentially creating this squash milk in a blender. Oh my God. And like the contact comes back because there's a huge gap in the plating. And she's like, what's going on? I'm like, oh, we're just, we're just sorting some things out here. And meanwhile we're like pouring cream into the blender and getting all the patty pan squashed and so we served, and I'm so sorry to admit this, I've never told this story in public, but we served squash milk. 

[00:42:07] Susan Barry: That phrase is the funniest thing. 

[00:42:09] Steve Fortunato: Oh my god. We served squash milk to YPO CEOs in their partners in our third month. 

[00:42:16] Susan Barry: Fantastic. Listen, I think that story more than anything else underscores the resilience and creativity and problem solving that every single person who is listening to this has had to deploy in their careers. So yeah, squash milk. 

[00:42:35] Steve Fortunato: Squash milk.

[00:42:36] Susan Barry: Bravo. Steve Fortunato, thank you so much for being here. I love your book. I know our listeners are gonna love your book, and I really appreciate you riding up to the top floor. 

[00:42:50] Steve Fortunato: Thank you so much for having me and for the way you engaged in this conversation. You were generous, you were thoughtful, intentional, really appreciate it.

[00:42:58] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/185. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.

[00:43:34] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.