Sam Fox

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Sam Fox. Sam, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Sam Fox: I’m well, thank you. How are you?

SSR: Good thanks. So we always start at the beginning. So where did you grow up?

SF: I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. I live in Phoenix today, but I was born in Chicago, but I consider myself almost a native Arizona.

SSR: Amazing. And your family was in the restaurant business, right?

SF: Yeah. My dad had some restaurants in Chicago, and when we moved to Tucson in 1972, he opened up a little diner, then he opened up a little Mexican restaurant and he had a Jewish deli. So my whole life when I was a child was spent in many days and nights in the restaurants.

SSR: Yeah. And did you try all different parts of the restaurant? Did you start in the [inaudible 00:00:57] move out?

SF: Yeah. Well, I started out when I was really young. I think I would bus tables, I would help clean up at night. I’m sure we broke a few child labor laws along the way, but I worked my way up and have done everything within the restaurant except for really cooking. And so a lot of experience and just a lot of insight to what happens in the restaurants. My parents’ restaurants were mom and pop restaurants. They were not sort of big fancy restaurants what we have today or what you see around there. They were somewhat blue collar means of a way of making an income working six, seven days a week. So a lot of grinding going on.

SSR: Yeah, a hundred percent. What did you learn from your parents?

SF: Well, I learned a lot from my parents. I learned about having to be present, understanding the business. My parents made a lot of mistakes along the way as well, and learned a lot from those mistakes. As far as my parents, I would say were really great restaurateurs and not really great business people. And so when I went on my own early on in my career, I was I thought a very good restaurant tour and really realized quickly how important the business side of things were. And so that’s something that I focused on very early and it’s served me well.

SSR: Yeah. So did you go to college for restaurant management or cooking?

SF: No, I was attending University of Arizona in Tucson for real estate finance. And I had an internship with a big real estate firm in Tucson. And one day my mentor, my boss, made me go to his house and change the tire on his car for his wife. And it was 115 degrees in the middle of summer in Tucson. And I was a sophomore at the time and on my way to being a junior and got in my car, drove back and quit the internship, kind of had a little conversation with myself and said, “Is this what I really want to do?” And decided and said, “I’m never going to work for anybody. I only want to work for myself.” Wound up dropping out of college, taking my tuition money, and my parents had moved away, took my tuition money and opened up my first restaurant. I was 21 at the time, and I thought I was once again the smartest 21-year-old in the world and realized quickly that I really didn’t know that much about business.

SSR: Well, you talk about that a lot on this podcast, but was ignorance bliss a little bit, not knowing?

SF: Yeah, ignorance and age and just all of that, right? It’s just sort of this freewheeling and if I go out of business, I go out of business. If I make it, I make it. And so a lot of that, but it was stressful just running a business. I ran my first business really with no money, had that business for three and a half years and wound up selling it for a lot of money at that moment in time, never realizing I was ever going to sell a business, it just so happened to be.

But those three years are really sort of the foundation for who I am today. When you run a business with no money, not sure if you’re going to be open the next day, you have to really realize where every penny is and you make mistakes, but you have to learn quickly from your mistakes, otherwise, once again, those doors are going to be closed the next day. And you sort of wake up scared every day when you have that and what’s going to happen. And even today with all the success we have, I still have a little bit of that feeling in my stomach. “Oh, we have to perform and execute at a really high level today.”

SSR: Yeah. And have you been thinking of your first restaurant, which is called Wildflower, correct?

SF: Well, I had other restaurants before that, so actually Wildflower was actually my sixth restaurant, but that was within this organization, which is called Fox Restaurant Concepts, that was the first Fox Restaurant Concepts in 1998.

SSR: Got it. All right. Well let’s go back then. So the first one that you… was that something you had thought about or was just this space was right?

SF: It was a space was actually right. And it was also that moment of time of me quitting that internship and just being frustrated with that. And I drove by this restaurant that had been there for a long time and they moved locations. And so it was a Mexican restaurant and they left this little building and I saw for rent sign in there called up the landlord and rented a place and had to wait till I was 20. I had to wait till I was 21 to open the restaurant for my liquor license.

SSR: That’s amazing. All right, so you opened that one and then where did you go from there?

SF: Yeah, I had that restaurant for three and a half years. I sold that, never made a penny, sold it for a big profit. And then I opened up another restaurant in Tucson, merged with some gentlemen who had another restaurant and some other businesses, these gentlemen were in their fifties. I was 25, 26 at the time, had the business, and we worked together for about four years. And our relationship kind of came oil and water. I was in the restaurants working every day, and these guys were golfers and they would come in after golf and complain about things.

And so our relationship spoiled. I owned part of the company and they wound up firing me from the company, and I didn’t realize I could get fired from my own company. So big learning experience for me, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. And so with that opened up a restaurant, which is called Wildflower in 1998 in Tucson, and we still have that restaurant in our portfolio. And fast-forward today, all those restaurants that I got fired from are out of business and I’ve opened up 150 restaurants along the way.

SSR: 150 restaurants. That’s insane. How do you keep coming up with new idea because a lot of them are new concepts, you don’t have too many that repeat themselves.

SF: Well, we have a lot of what we call are in our independence, our boutiques, and then we have another bucket, which we called our growth portfolio. And so along the way, it was never my intent to open up all these different restaurants. It was more driven by opportunity. I’d opened a restaurant in Tucson and three blocks down the street, a building became available, and I made a deal with the landlord, but I had to come up with something new because it didn’t make sense to repeat the restaurant. And so it was not something that was designed. It happened very organically. And along the way we opened up, like I said, some restaurants that we’ve repeated and some restaurants that have always been one offs.

And what I like to say is that even though we’ve opened 150 restaurants and there have been many that have been repeated, they all look a little bit different. They all have a little different soul. They’re not always cookie cutters, even on ones that where we have 25 or 30 units. And so by doing that and opening new stuff and having existing brands that we have within our portfolio, I always find that it’s an incredible learning experience. That we take the foundation of all these old restaurants and when we look at something new, we always put something new into it and create new things. And then all those new ideas then sometimes go back into the old restaurant. So we have this circle of learning by doing old and new all the time it’s really been great for our organization and really great for our people, and even more importantly, great for our guests.

SSR: And I know in our previous conversations, you’re still very involved in terms of the process and the menus and design?

SF: Yes. Yeah, I’m involved with everything, real estate, the menu, the music, the playlist, the silverware, what goes on the menu. We have an incredible test kitchen here, great chef team that we work on food together all the time. And it’s something that I’m not a one foot in, one foot out kind of person. I’m either all in or all out and I’m all in.

SSR: Yeah, well, it’s all about the details, right? All of them together is what makes a successful restaurant.

SF: Yeah. So it’s 10,000 details every single day, and it’s in the shift every single day. And we’re really focused on running a great organization, but we got to make sure we have in all of our restaurants, that lunch goes great today. And then we got to refocus ourselves and making sure that we’re ready for dinner tonight. And so I always say we have an eye on today and an eye looking forward, but some people get ahead of themselves and it’s easy to get caught up in new and exciting and always looking forward. But I think it’s really, really important that you always have that foundation to make sure that your business is solid in running a great business today so you can continue to grow.

SSR: And is there one part of the process that you love the most?

SF: I mean, I love obviously design. It’s a lot of fun to be able to come up and create and do all that, but also the food development’s always fun as well.

SSR: Early on you were able to help push out healthy eating, like your menu really, I remember reading somewhere that the kale salad was partly, popularity was part because of you. Was that something that was just passionate about or you just saw that happening?

SF: Yeah, no, my partner in that was Dr. Andrew Weil, and we opened True Food almost 15 years ago. I sold it about seven years ago, so I’m not involved with that brand at all. But when I spent some time with Andy and we were working through a lot of the dishes, he introduced me to kale and I was like, “Kale? That was the garnish on the salad bar.” But we came up with this black kale salad and he had this great recipe that was really, really simple and it was olive oil and there was lemon. The acid would break down the kale and make it a lot more easier to eat and everything like that. And we opened it up, our first True Food here in Phoenix, and it was incredibly well received. And I think there’s over 40 units today of True Food, so very early to the health component. And so it was a great brand. We were very excited to be involved early and discover that. And now it’s very commonplace, a lot of the food that was early on on that menu.

SSR: And is there one concept or restaurant that you think really, I mean you learned something from every project, but was there one that you think was really defining in your career or you learned the most from?

SF: Well, obviously True Food, we grew that around the country and we had a big sale on that. But I also say today in our portfolio, today would be Flower Child, which is healthy, fast casual as well. We’re up to 36 units on that, very early on, very challenging from a full service restaurateur guy to going to run a fast casual restaurant. The check average is lower, there’s no alcohol sales, there’s just a lot of components that really challenged us as an organization, challenged me to come up with and really making sure the throughput and getting all of that right. And so I would say that I’m most proud of Flower Child today and what it has become and really what the future looks like for Flower Child.

SSR: Right. And how have your guests changed or have they in the last couple of years, do you think, especially coming out of COVID, is it something just heightened? What was happening in the past with more experience, a great evening? Talk to me about how you view your customers, your guests.

SF: Everyone always says, “Who is your guest?” And I say everybody that likes to eat. So we have a wide audience of who our guests are. And within our portfolio, we have so many different restaurants that gets used by so many different people in so many different ways. So we have a burger concept, we have Flower Child, and we run all the way up to The Henry, which would be more expensive, so we run a lot of different categories. We run breakfast, lunch, dinner, fast casual. We have pizza restaurants, we have burger restaurants, we have steak restaurants. So we see a lot of different guests. I would say our guest is today, if you want to talk about what’s happening exactly today, people want to make sure that the money that they’re spending, they’re getting value and that they’re getting what is, I would say, promised or what is expected.

And so they expect certain things from great hospitality, nice looking restaurant, your food cooked properly, timing right, all of those things that go into running that great shift. The expectation is that you need to deliver on that today. So I think people, they’re a little bit less hesitant to spend money, and when they spend that money, they want to make sure there’s value in that. And there’s value at any price point. So it doesn’t mean that the value is at $10 check average, it could be at $150 check average. They just want to get that agreement of, “Okay, I’m coming to this restaurant, I’m spending this money.” Now, making sure that all those things are perfect.

SSR: Right. And you expanded your empire too into Nashville where you did the Twelve Thirty Club, which was a mix of a separate club, a rooftop and a restaurant, right?

SF: Yeah, yeah. We’re almost three and a half years old there now. And it was a very exciting project that we worked on for about five or six years. In the middle of that, COVID happened. And so that was very challenging. It was probably the biggest challenge that I’ve had in my career was opening that restaurant in the middle of COVID. And I always say geography is a killer for brands. And that was really, really hard. I never had opened up a new restaurant idea outside of Arizona.

And so that was the first time that I did that outside of Arizona. And so the travel, the geography, the market that we were in was all new and had its own challenges, but also, once again, that was all in the middle of COVID. And so that presented itself as a whole another challenge of construction and timing and supply chain and getting all of this things staffed. So that was a really, really big hurdle to climb. I like to say today we’re very, very successful and it’s turned out we’re a better organization, I’m a better operator because of that, but it was some challenging times for us.

SSR:  And was it your first multi-experience venue too, in terms of having three different things happening in a multi-level space?

SF: Yeah. I mean, we have a little bit in the space. The Henry has breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and we have some with rooftop bars and some of our big format restaurants, like Culinary Dropout, have a lot of different experiences going on, so I sort of broke it up as having several different restaurants all in one space and approached it that way. So that part wasn’t that daunting. Like I said, I just think a lot of the other things that I had mentioned was really that daunting part, but a big expense, the most expensive restaurant I built also in the middle of COVID, not knowing what the world was going to be at the end of that. And here we are building this restaurant that seats five or 600 people and no one’s eating in a restaurant at that time. So we had to push through to make sure, and we’re fortunate that everything’s turned out great.

SSR: Yeah, amazing. And you partnered with AvroKO for the design for that. What do you look for in a design collaborator?

SF: I look for someone that is willing for me to let me have my input. And so I worked a lot of designers and a lot of people like to go one way and I liked to go another way. And I think always for me, the design always comes together if we can meet in the middle. So AvroKO was someone who I could work with, meet in the middle. I think our organization is really, really good at space planning and understanding space and how space should flow. And so that was fun to work with them and taking the space idea that we had and how it should flow, and then letting them do their magic and their work. And they became a great partner of ours and came up with an incredible building and really nailed what want the feeling and the vibe and the energy and really what the thesis was for the Twelve Thirty Club.

SSR: And now you’ve expanded again, not only just outside, this is a different expansion, not outside Arizona, but in terms of now you opened your first hotel, The Global Ambassador. So tell us why and what you wanted to create.

SF: Yeah. The why is that I’ve always wanted to be in the hotel business. Early, about 12, 13 years ago, I did a management deal inside a hotel and I was promised all these things from the developer and the owner of the hotel. We opened up that restaurant and none of those things happened that I was promised. And while I was running the business, really realized how broken I felt the hotel model was, typically you would get a hotel developer, they would buy or acquire a piece of land. Then they would hire all these third party consultants from architects to designers, and they would design something that maybe they don’t even have an end user operator for.

And so as they would get into the design, then they would work with a named brand, a Marriott, a Hyatt or one of those organizations. And then sometimes those brands would then third party outsource the restaurants and the spa and maybe the valet parking. And so in my mind, you had all these different silos that everyone was working in with all different agendas and not always synced up. And so after having that bad experience running the restaurant in that hotel, I decided that I can do a better job than this. And so my goal was to acquire a piece of land, be the developer, work with a contractor, work daily, and really intimately with my design team. I thought I was going to hire a big time architect and a big time designer, and I did.

And in the process wound up firing both of them and wound up going to someone who I work with all the time on a lot of my restaurants here in Phoenix, done some homes with me and some other people that maybe didn’t have the scale or the cache of some of the other brands or firms that we would work with. But I knew that I could work with them and I had a clear vision of what I wanted. So hired what I would say Judy Testani at the Testani Design Troupe who’s done a lot of my restaurants, some of my homes, I would say she’s my muse. We’ve done 50 or 60 projects together, and just have a great working relationship. We know how to work together. And once again, geography, those other firms were outside of Arizona, she’s here in my backyard and architect is local as well, Nelson Partners. And just put together a team of really people that I worked with, people that I trusted also, they were my friends as well, hired my landscape architect that does my house.

And so we put together this great local team. We worked really hard together. We then became, like I said, the developer of the hotel. We created one-off unique restaurants within there. There’s five restaurants, and it’s a non-branded hotel that we created from ground up 200,000 square feet construction. So nothing to stress us about there. So it was an amazing project. Once again, that came on the end of COVID. And now we’ll be a year old this December. We just got a Michelin key this week, which is amazing. We got a best new hotel award. We got Esquire Best New Hotel Award. And so a lot of great accolades, and it’s been very, very exciting. And what an amazing fun project. And like I said, when you come to Phoenix, you got to come see them.

SSR: Yeah. And when did it open? How long has it been open now?

SF: We opened December 6th last year.

SSR: Wow, okay. So it’s still in it.

SF: Yeah, it’ll be a year this December.

SSR: Yeah. So what have you learned from it in terms of you always want to do a hotel, didn’t work out in the past, you took control. What did you take away from this whole process?

SF: Like I said, the best thing about it was the geography. I talked about how hard it was in Nashville. Well, this I live three blocks from, so that was incredible. And so what I took about is just how many… the restaurant has a lot of details and there’s a lot of things that you have to pay attention to, but there’s such another component to, besides the F&B, which we led with F&B within that. So I built a hotel around F&B, which I know obviously very, very well. Obviously I don’t know that much about the hotel business when I was doing it. Today I like to think that I know somewhat a little more about the hotel business.

And so it was just all the little details, all the things that I didn’t know. Once again, I relied on my space planning skill set to really develop what I wanted it to be. And then just sort of didn’t pay attention to a lot of other people’s input. I really wanted to have its own sort of identity. I did not want it to be like other hotels. I wanted it to be how I lead with design. And like I said, who uses it? Why will they use it? And more importantly, will they come back? And so those where a lot of things that I have, I ask myself those questions all the time. And then just really working with, I hired a great operating team, meaning I hired the GM. They work for us, we don’t have a third party in the building. We operate the spa, we operate the gym, we operate the valet.

We have a private members club within there. And so every component, every line item in the building is controlled by us. And so just making sure that we understand a lot about that business. So once again, very exciting when you get to learn new things after you open 150 restaurants, you’ve done it a lot. So for me, at this moment in my career, having the opportunity to be able to do something new and exciting like that energizes me, gets me excited. And once again, so many learning experiences there that once again get woven into the restaurants. All my learning experiences in my restaurants are woven into the hotel. And so it just was obvious evolution of what I wanted to do with growing some other opportunities for me.

SSR: And how did you come up with the different restaurant concepts? Because they’re all new, right? You didn’t repeat any for the hotel?

SF: Yeah, no, all unique. One of a kind. We have a Parisian steakhouse, we have a Mediterranean rooftop, we have a Mexican Peruvian restaurant at the pool. The members club is loosely based on a London supper club. We have a great European market as well. So all those were just based on travel. My experiences, there was a little bit of thought process on check average within the building. I believe when you go into a hotel, there’s opportunity for you to celebrate and spend a lot of money, but yet also maybe there’s a daily need where it’s just lunch or dinner that you need to experience.

There’s also experience where you want to get something quick and get out of there. And so just worked through a lot of the restaurants and what I wanted them to feel. Like I said, the hotel has a very European vibe to it, The Global Ambassador. And so like I said, having a Parisian restaurant, having a Mediterranean restaurant, having a European market. So leaning into all of those, the cuisines and the feelings that we wanted to have within the building. And then, like I said, check average played a very important part of how we would program and move people through all of those different restaurants. We didn’t want anyone to leave. We wanted everyone to stay. And so far we’ve been able to capture incredible amount of food and beverage revenue.

SSR: Yeah. And you added a lot of wellness too. You have this spa, you have gym. How did you interpret wellness?

SF: Yeah, I try and live my life like that a lot. Fortunately, I get to travel, I’m a spa junkie as well. I knew exactly what I wanted my spa bed to be. I had an amazing spa experience in Paris about seven years ago. I vividly remember when the masseuse left the room. I took the sheets off the bed, took a picture of what the spa bed was, and here I am seven years later, I was able to get that spa bed within there. So a lot of details, sheets, thread counts, how you feel, all the emotions that wellness is. And we have a 12,000 square foot gym, well programmed with the best gym equipment, the best trainers.

We have our own spin studio, we have our relationship with Forma Pilates, we have yoga. So there’s a lot of wellness that also ties into that spa. And then we have the most incredible locker room experience. We have cold plunge and steam, jacuzzi, sauna, infrared and cryo. So all these things around wellness, all these things around educating ourselves with something that I was in the moment, living all of that, trying to learn as much about that as possible. And sometimes that’s a lot better for my longevity than working on cheeseburgers all the time.

SSR: And so looking back, what do you think you wish you had known when you started that you know now? Does that make sense? When you started this project.

SF: I probably overspent in a lot of areas that maybe I shouldn’t have overspent on, but when you have something that’s one on one, it’s very personal. Like I said, I live three blocks from the hotel and I think it’s a big legacy project for me. And so sometimes I get obsessed with the details, and when I’m obsessed with the details, some of the little things that I spend a lot of money on, people don’t even know it’s even happening within that building. So maybe a little bit more sensitive to the budget.

SSR: What is one thing people might not know about you? I mean, I just learned that you’re a spa buff, but anything else that people might not know?

SF: I was joking with my wife, it’s just kind of a… I like ketchup on my steak. And my wife goes, “No one can know that you like ketchup on your steak.” So I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but just silly stuff like that. I’m very in tuned with my business every single day. I live in my business every single day. I live three blocks from my office. The hotel’s here, we have The Henry here, we have a test kitchen. I’m just involved with all of my team on a daily, daily basis. We have incredible people that have made me look great along the way. And so just proud of our team, proud of the company that we’ve built. We’re very involved in our community, and I like ketchup on my steak.

SSR: How would you describe yourself as a leader?

SF: I lead by example. I have high expectations. I give probably more feedback than people want, but it’s honest feedback and I love a good debate within that feedback on both ends. So I’ve become a better listener over the years. I think that’s really equally as important as well. But I think if going to preach and you’re going to talk about all these things that we like to do, culture and expectations and making sure that everything’s at the highest level, I think you need to live your life like that and you need to lead by example. So I’m a very big true believer of leading by example. And so that’s how I lead.

SSR: Is there one pet peeve you have in design for restaurants

SF: One pet peeve in design used to be, we had a lot of these restaurants, we had a lot of barnwood within the restaurants, and we’ve kind of graduated from that. I’m kind of just over that barnwood look. That reclaimed barnwood look.

SSR: I liked that the Global Ambassador, you had a lot of blushed velvets and color and texture.

SF: Yeah, when people built hotels, particularly here in Arizona, they usually take two different approaches. They take either a Southwest where in the desert, and you see cactuses on TV all the time, or modern, which also plays really well within the desert. And I didn’t want either one of those. I actually, which was very risky, I wanted to build a hotel that didn’t feel like it was in Arizona or in Phoenix. Our hotel is modeled after European buildings. It could be in Paris, it could be in London, it could be somewhere in Spain. And so that design of that European influence was something that we really lean into. You feel it when you walk in there and you really walk into that building, you’re like, “Wow, I don’t feel like I’m in Arizona.” And so like I said, a little bit of risky of building a hotel in Arizona, everyone traveling to Arizona, but yet we didn’t want them to feel like they were in Arizona. But it turned out great.

SSR: But I think it’s still grounded and your outdoor spaces and the views and all the things too. So they’ll get Arizona, they just won’t get-

SF: They will get it. I mean, we have an amazing view of Camelback Mountain, but the gardens outside feel like they’re in Europe, not during the desert. We have a big water bill to water those. I don’t say that we were very conscious of drought plants. So it’s not necessarily what you would see here today. It’s very residential in nature. And so I thought that was really important as well.

SSR: I know you’re only nine or 10 months in, but have you gotten the hotel bug? Do you think you’ll do another one?

SF: Yeah, I mean, I think we have a lot of learning experience from the last five or six years doing that. And so I think we would lean on our experience for doing something. Again, I’ve kind of made a commitment to myself that I really wouldn’t get into that until after the first year. So December’s coming up, but the bug is in the head a little bit. And so like I said, we’re focused on really sure that The Global Ambassador is the best hotel it can be today. And once we get into next year, we’ll decide if there’ll be other opportunities for us.

SSR: And do you go into your spaces and watch people how they use it? And have you gotten into the hotel and just watch? 

SF: I’m obsessed with how people use and flow and how things get used. Like I said, I think that’s really, really important, especially as you open restaurants and when you build other restaurants and other restaurant, you want to make sure that everyone is better than the last one. And it doesn’t mean more money or more expense, just that it flows better, it works better for the employees, it works better for the guests. We have certain expectations of volume. And so how do we create these environments that we can get to that volume? How can we give the employees the tools to get to that volume properly? And so I really look at how the bars get used and how people flow within, out of the restaurants. I’m obsessed of looking at what comes back to the dish station, what did people eat on their plate and what did they not eat?

And so is that portion too big? Is that portion too small? Is that dish always coming back, and it looks like there’s more on there that maybe they didn’t enjoy it as much. And so I’m looking at every little detail within it. And like I said, we always ask ourselves why, how, are they coming back? And so all of those goes into the equation of what’s happening. But it’s been really eyeopening because of the wellness, the fitness, the pool, all these different things that I’d never really had an operating business around and how those things get used. And so I think we hit the nail on the mark. Probably could have been a few adjustments here and there. Like I said, maybe we over spent in some areas, maybe we under spent in some other areas, or maybe some of the areas should have been a little bit bigger. But overall, I think I would say we got about 90, 95% of it right.

SSR: Yeah. How with so many venues and what, 6,000 employees or something I read, how do you keep up with all the details? You still seem so involved as the leader of the company. How do you find that time? Do you just switch hats hourly?

SF: I mean, I think it’s just all encompass. I sort of live and breathe it. I’m in a 24/7 business. Now we have people spending the night with us, which is also a whole new thing. You used to have dinner and go home. Now I have room service. Now the air conditioning might not work in the middle of the night. Your toilet might back up, whatever that goes. So we’re learning on all these other things. But I have a pretty big capacity. I have an amazing team that I work with on a daily basis, and I really truly enjoy what I do. I don’t feel like it’s work for me. And so I wake up energized. I walk through the door every single day excited. I tell my team at this point of my career of doing this so, so long, I tell my team, “I just want to learn one new thing every day.”

So I try and learn one new thing every day. Sometimes people want to take on so much, I’m going to learn 20 things or this happens to me all the time, I’ll invite a chef to come and cook and stash for us and I’ll ask them to cook for us. And that chef will come and cook 12 items and they’ll be good. But I’ll go to shovel say, “Hey, come back tomorrow and just cook me one great item.” And so I kind of take things down like that a little bit. So small bites, I want to do one thing great, and then build on that instead of trying to do all these other things. So my career has been layers of bricks of trying to do everything as good as I can. And I have this amazing foundation and amazing experience of making all these decisions.

You get experienced by making a lot of decisions. And I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been making these decisions since I was 20 years old, opening up my own restaurant. So years and years, and I really rely on all of those decisions. And so by learning one new thing, I continue to educate myself, but yet I have this sort of knowledge of all of the past decisions, that I’ve made mistakes, that I’m able to not make those mistakes again. And so I truly believe put yourself out there, make all those mistakes, but learn from all those mistakes and continuing to learn new stuff and not make the same mistakes, I think is how some people can have some success.

SSR: And are you a good cook after all this?

SF: I’m not a chef. Sometimes people call me the chef and I’m not the chef. I have what I would say is a very good palette for what I think works within my restaurants. And yes, I can cook. And so I can cook and I cook at home. I cook with the team here and I travel a lot, I get to eat a lot. I’m very fortunate that I have that aspect of my life as well. But yeah, I actually enjoy cooking and it’s something that I do with my family a lot. And I enjoy cooking them dinner, and they’re the biggest critics as well. So sometimes it’s tough around the house.

SSR: It’s good to have honesty around you.

SF: For sure. Like I said early on, feedback is very important within our management style, including with my kids. They give it back to me as well.

SSR: Are any of them going to follow your footsteps?

SF: No, they’re both early on in their college career, and they’re sophomores and freshmen, and so we’ll see what path that takes them. They’re very interested in business and both in the business school at the college that they’re at. Fortunate that they’re both at the same school, which is really exciting for us that we get to spend time with them together there. And so they’ll take their path and maybe one day, but I want them to go work for other people and see other things and be exposed to a lot of things. So we’ll see where they wind up.

SSR: And if they drop out and open up a restaurant with you.

SF: I will not let them drop out. Like I said, I was not a great student. I do not with my kids, my kids are straight A students. They didn’t get that from me. And so I push on them and they always throw that back at me all the time. So yeah. Thanks for reinforcing that. Like, “You dropped out. What do you mean I have to get an A in every class?” So yeah, we have that debate all the time.

SSR: Amazing. All right. Well, I hate to end the conversation, but we always end the podcast with the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson learned along the way?

SF: My greatest lesson learned along the way was early on in my career, I used to have, when I opened my third restaurant, and I was pretty hard restaurateur, I was young, a little immature, and we really were guest-focused. And I would not take in account how important the employee was. And when I realized when I had my third restaurant that I couldn’t be, it was easy for me to be in two places at one time, but at the third restaurant I opened, I could not be in the third place all the time. And so that was a turning point in my career where I felt the employees were as equally as important as our guests. And so that really, really helped me develop a great culture. We have a lot of employees that have been here for a very, very long time, and I would say that was a really big turning career for me.

SSR: I love that. And you have a big charitable component too, correct?

SF: Yeah, we are very involved in all the communities we’re in. Here in Phoenix, we’ve support a big organization called Panda, which is the children’s hospital down in Tucson, Arizona that does a lot of research. So they’re all about research and finding out cures for some diseases and some things. And so they have a big fundraiser up here in Phoenix every year, they raise a lot of money and they put all that money into research and it’s all built around children. And so something that we’re very proud of. All of our charitable missions here at the organization at Fox Restaurant Concepts or at the hotels are usually around feeding people or around children and health and wellness for children. So those are two of the things that we’re really passionate about.

SSR: Well, that’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking this time with us and sharing your story. And congrats on The Global Ambassador. Can’t wait to hopefully see it in person and see what you do next.

SF: I appreciate it. Thank you.