Episode 27
· 01:01:30
For eight years you built Sara, but then this spring, at a time when some other restaurants are moving in the exact opposite direction, you and the team decided to ditch a la carte dining, to go all in on Tasting Menu Only. What did you and the team see that you think maybe some other people in the industry are missing?
Adam Minster:I wouldn't necessarily say anyone in the industry is missing something. Everyone's gotta follow their own path for sure. What we did is first and foremost, we listened to our guests. And about 70% of our guests were already getting our tasting menu. We had a chef's choice tasting menu.
Adam Minster:And about 50% of those guests were already getting the wine pairing with it. So we have a weekly manager meeting. And in one of our manager meetings, it was brought up that, okay, if 70 of people are already doing it, 50% are already doing the wine pairing, then what should we do moving forward to make that specific experience even better? And we all came to the conclusion that you singularly focus on that tasting menu. You don't do anything else because this is what people want from you.
Adam Minster:This is what people expect from you. They're getting dressed up because they want an experience. So let's go all all out on that experience.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Was there some concern about losing that 30% of people that were not coming for the tasting menu?
Adam Minster:There wasn't a concern. We knew that we probably would lose that 30%, but we were pretty confident that if we go full force onto this tasting menu and do what we know we can do, then not only will we recoup that 30%, but maybe we'll get more.
Alex Abbott Boyd:One recent podcast guest was from Lucy, which you might know they recently, as part of having a new chef come on, they moved away from tasting menu only. And a big part of the logic was we wanna be there for more occasions for people, not just the special dinner, but the pop in after work, the more casual meal. And I'm hearing that from not just, like, Lucy, but other spots that it's tough times. We've got to try to be welcoming and accessible as we can.
Adam Minster:Yeah. You
Alex Abbott Boyd:and the team move Sarah into more of, like, this special occasion format. So we were originally charging $90 for our Chef Choice tasting menu.
Adam Minster:We have added more courses. We've added better ingredients. We've added surprises throughout the meal. Yeah. And we're only charging a $115 for it.
Adam Minster:So we actually truly believe that we are one of, if not the most welcoming tasting menu in the city right now. And so that's where we kind of laid our hat. We said every restaurant needs to be as welcoming as possible, and we're gonna do it by giving people the tasting menu that they're expecting from us at the most welcoming price in Toronto. So that's where we're matching what, like, Lucy and other restaurants are doing, but they were charging probably
Alex Abbott Boyd:Was it over 200 for the seven course?
Adam Minster:They were charging over 200. Some restaurants like Aloe, I think, are close to 300. Edgeless is close to 300. You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a restaurant charging a $115 for what we're giving at Sarah right now, And that's where we implement that welcoming nature into the Tasting menu.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could you maybe then share how do you make that work? I know those other restaurants aren't charging the high prices just because they want to gouge people. Yeah. So, you know, for example, you
Adam Minster:go to Aloe, and if they have a steak course, your last course is gonna be a Wagyu, most likely. Maybe even it's a Japanese Wagyu. Right? Right off the bat, that's gonna cost them a lot of money, and they have to pass that on to you. Our final course in the tasting menu is a prime stripline.
Adam Minster:It's a really good cut of meat, but it's costing us six times, seven times less than the Wagyu is gonna cost aloe. So we're giving you really good quality product, but we're not overreaching to things that are gonna make us pass that cost on to you.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could you share maybe just what that seven courses looks like in terms of the progression throughout
Adam Minster:the journey? So it's gonna change seasonally, but it's always gonna stay in the story that we've created. So we think it's really important that if you're coming out to experience something that there's a story there. A lot of people when they're a lot of people when they're going out nowadays because of the economy that we're in right now, right? The middle ground restaurant, I think, is really losing its edge right now.
Adam Minster:You have cheap and cheerful that people want to go for, and you have this experience that people want to go for. And when it comes to the experience, they better be able to tell their friends the next day what happened to them last night. They want to boast about it. They want to take pictures. They want to post it on their social media.
Adam Minster:So that's where I think the story comes in. So that's why we've made this thing called the journey because we're going to take you from point A to point B through our lens. So it starts off with what we call the raw course, which will always be two different preparations of raw fish. Then it takes you to the nostalgia course, which is always going to be things that have previously been on our menu. And that's why it's nostalgia.
Adam Minster:Then it goes to the heritage course. Now it's called that because our executive chef Leah is from Italy. So she loves pasta. It is in her blood. So it's always gonna be a rotating pasta, most likely a stuffed pasta because ravioli is just a little bit elevated.
Adam Minster:So that's another way. Right? When we were talking before, you don't have to shave truffle over a pasta to make it elevated. You don't have to put caviar on it. You can make it a beautiful ravioli because that in itself is an elevated pasta.
Adam Minster:Then it goes to the ember course. It's called that because the restaurant originally had Japanese influences. And me and some of the other owners went to Japan actually to learn a few things before we opened up Sara. And we love the charcoal grills out there, the Robata grills, and we brought two of them back to Sarah. They're still the two we use today.
Adam Minster:So it's called ember because it'll always be done over those flames, and it will most likely always be a fish course, so you get a really great crispy skin. And then the last one is gonna be called seasonal. So that will always be very highly focused on what's in season with our showcase protein, which is the prime strip one at this time. Then we have our refresher course, which is always gonna be like a small little soft serve ice cream with a seasonal compote on it. And then the finale, which is always gonna be something that, like, harkens back to what we loved to eat when we were kids.
Adam Minster:I don't know what the next one is going to be, but I was just discussing with my chef today that I want it to be like a play on Dunkaroos.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Oh, it should be super fun. And is it a better tasting menu now than it was before you made the switch?
Adam Minster:A 100%. Everything has just been made more streamlined and easier and more efficient and more organized. And on top of all that, it's actually made it more fun and it's reinvigorated the team and it's made it's made it more challenging for them. Often in restaurants, things can get stale. I know that restaurants change their menus two, three, four times a year.
Adam Minster:The the really good restaurants change their menus four times a year with the seasons. But that really only challenges the back of house. The front of house just has to learn a few new menu items, and then they just do the same thing they've always done. But when we made this change, the whole team rallied around it because they all knew it was the right decision because of what we talked about earlier. Cause they had they see their guests coming in for the tasting menu.
Adam Minster:They hear their guests talking about the tasting menu and that they're there for a birthday or an anniversary or a special date night. And so it just clicked for everyone. And the challenge to make this exciting and special and perfect, it was really a special thing to see the whole team come together and really dive headfirst into it together.
Alex Abbott Boyd:The front of house. How is it for them more than learning these new courses? What extra?
Adam Minster:Oh, with the whole sequence of the points of service have changed, right? So previously, when you do a la carte, there are a few points of service. Bring water first, Make sure you say your name. Bring a fork and a spoon with dessert. Right?
Adam Minster:There are little things like that when you do a la carte. Then in the previous tasting menu that we were doing, there were a few things because you know what the menu is and you're prepared for it. But again, it was simple things like make sure you bring a fork at this point in time, make sure you clear after this course. Now they have a whole story like we talked about before that they had to learn. Right?
Adam Minster:They had to learn the names of every course. They had to learn the story behind each course. And not only did they have to learn it, but they had to turn it into their own words. They had to make it theirs. So we're very big on, here's what we think, but don't say what we think.
Adam Minster:Say what you think. Make it your own and own it. Right? So now they get to do this whole dance and show for their guests. And they've gotten so good at it, which allows them to focus on what is really important, which is the connection that they get to make in between those moments where they have to provide service, which is dropping off that fork and the knife at the right time, clearing at the right time, and hospitality, which is making those connections.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What kind of training do you give them to help them learn how to do that? Or is it something that you kind of have to hire for?
Adam Minster:It's both, but a lot more you have to hire for it. So one of my idols, Danny Meyer, you must know him because you're from New York. So he has this idea called the hospitality reflex. So he says when someone throws a ball at your face, you're gonna protect your face and you're gonna grab it. That's who he hires for when he's looking for servers, whoever for his restaurant.
Adam Minster:But he's looking for people that have the hospitality reflex, which is when you see something that deserves a hospitality and response, you're gonna automatically do it because you were born with that reflex. So you have to hire for that reflex for sure. And then inside of people that innately have it, you can get them better at it for sure. But if someone doesn't have it, they're not gonna make it. And I've learned the hard way that you gotta let those people go before it's too late.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How do you tell if that reflex is there? Because you can't throw a ball
Adam Minster:at them. Now I don't have to anymore. Now the team tells me. Because when you create a team of people that are all like minded, and all have the same things that they believe in and the same attributes, they'll quickly tell you we don't wanna work with this person anymore.
Alex Abbott Boyd:If you're enjoying the episode, I have a quick ask. Ratings and reviews actually matter a lot more than most people think. It's how the show grows and how I can keep getting great guests. You can do it right now while you're listening. Leaving a rating takes about ten seconds, and I'd really appreciate it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And if you already have, thank you so much. Alright. Back to the show. You've got a pretty excessively priced wine pairing at $60. Yep.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How many wines does it come with, and how do you go about making a wine pairing cost only $60?
Adam Minster:The same mentality we have with the food, right? You don't have to bring in the most expensive Pinot to excite people. When I was getting hired for my first job at Oliver and Bonaccini, I I always remember that the interviewer said, rate your your wine knowledge on a scale from one to 10. And I said, if you're talking about how much I know about wine compared to the average guest that's gonna come in here, it's a nine. If you're talking about how much I know about wine and the overall universe of wine, it's a one.
Adam Minster:Because there's so much to know about wine out there. Right? So you can excite people very easily that come into your restaurant and do a wine pairing with without expensive wine because so few people know anything about wine. So if you can create a story around whatever you decide to sell them, they're gonna love it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I built my whole agency as we're the underdog region that people don't know about because that's where you can get the incredible wines with a good story for a very good price. You got it. But I do get pushback from some places because they're like, this is a hand sell. People come in, they want Bordeaux, they want Burgundy, they want it to start with champagne. I guess you don't have to worry about the hand sell because it's a wine pairing, that they pre bought it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:But do you think that your guests are coming in with certain expectations that they want that champagne, that they want No.
Adam Minster:I think you you answered the question already. They are coming in because they want to trust us. Anyone that books a reservation at Sarah now or booked a reservation previously when they wanted to come for the chef's tasting menu, they're coming because they don't wanna think about anything. They're coming because they wanna trust us with their experience. They wanna trust us with their special night out.
Adam Minster:And if they wanna do the wine pairing, that trust goes as far as them just saying, give me the wine pairing. Whatever you give me, I'm gonna allow myself to experience, and I'm sure I'm gonna love it. So we start off on a really strong foot of people wanting to allow us to guide their experience. Yeah. And when 95% of the people come in with that attitude, you're usually going to impress them.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Do you think part of that might be the price? If someone was spending a 150, $200 on their wine pairing, maybe they would feel justified in saying, I want a name brand champagne.
Adam Minster:A 100%.
Alex Abbott Boyd:But because it's 60, they're like, okay. I just trust you. Go for it.
Adam Minster:A 100%. It's part of the reason we charge 60 for the wine, 115 for the food is because we don't want people to be able to have a reason to dislike something. We want them to just be able to enjoy the experience. And price is always the biggest factor on will I enjoy this or not.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How did you settle on those prices, the 115 and the 60?
Adam Minster:Gut. We discussed what we think would be the most welcoming prices for both those experiences. And then we worked backwards from there. We said, okay, if we wanna charge a 115, if we wanna charge 60, what can we give people with inside of those two numbers? But it was a visceral gut reaction first of what would I want to spend on a night out if I wanted to experience something utterly special, but I have a tight budget.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It's like thinking about what what makes sense in the market before you think about the realities of producing it and then figuring out, okay. Now that I know what would make sense, what How can
Adam Minster:I how can I fit into that?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. What role does local sourcing play in the restaurant, both on the wine side and in the journey?
Adam Minster:In the spring and summer and fall, we do our very best to source as locally as possible. And then you hit the dreaded winter, and we can't source anything from here. So that's always a problem. But in in the seasons that we can, we try very hard. Our refresher course just had a rub rhubarb compote on it.
Adam Minster:And now we're switching that to a peach compote because peach are coming into season. Our steak dish just recently had ramps on it, and we switched that to corn because corn is so beautiful right now. Anytime we can switch to what's most in season, we will. Wine is more difficult because, as I'm sure you probably know, when you are dealing with a $60 tasting menu, the wines that you would want to showcase from Ontario, from BC, from all these other places you get great wines because there are certainly amazing wines across Canada. They tend to be quite expensive, the ones that you actually do want to showcase.
Adam Minster:There are really great drinkable wines that aren't expensive, but I wouldn't say that they would be the wines that you want to showcase on a wine pairing. Is that fair, you think?
Alex Abbott Boyd:What kind of cogs are you looking for in the wine pairing? $60, you're $20.25? 30. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Have some great local wine in my portfolio that's 25 licensee. So how many wines is it? So it's one, two,
Adam Minster:three, four, five.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. But the twenty twenty five could work because then the one glass is $5 cost, so you could do that.
Adam Minster:Yeah. It's tough. It's the Riesling problem is what I compare Canadian wine to. I think Riesling is the best white wine out there. I absolutely love it.
Adam Minster:But so many people view it as being too sweet, where most of the Riesling out there doesn't even have any sweetness. It's perceived sweetness because of just the way the wine tastes. So when it comes to Canadian wines, a lot of people, no matter how good the wine is, are like, yeah, but it's Canadian.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What I'd encourage then is with the platform of the wine pairing, can challenge the assumption a little bit. And how I'll say that is I import German riesling and I can only sell it to tasting menu restaurants because people will never buy it for the exact reason you said. But it goes great with so many different kinds of food.
Adam Minster:It's the best wine pairing there is.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That when it's poured for people, they're always delighted and local wine could be the same. Yeah. Did you always know when you were growing up that food would be a big part of your life?
Adam Minster:No. Did not. I have a very strict father who has two professions. He's a doctor and a lawyer. It weighs heavy on you as a kid when you're deciding what you wanna be when you're growing up.
Adam Minster:So I was always like, I don't like school that much. But I'm I'm pretty good at arguing. I can get myself out of bedtimes most nights out of the week. So why don't I become a lawyer? So that's kind of where I was heading.
Adam Minster:Then when I got to university, it was like, it built up in me so much that this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't enjoy this. I don't like writing so much. I don't like studying so much. I can do it, but I just really don't like it.
Adam Minster:Then I started needing something in university to just have a work life balance, school life balance. I started cooking for my friends. If it was my friend's birthday, I'd be like, come over. I'm gonna cook for you. If I went to visit my friends in Halifax, I'd bring lobster back from the airport, and I would do a lobster boil.
Adam Minster:Sopranos was huge at the time. So I got a Sopranos cookbook, and every Sunday when we watched Sopranos, I would do something new from the cookbook. And then it just it clicked. If I love making people happy through food, if that's what I had to do to make myself happy in university, why wouldn't I do this for the rest of my life? It's what truly makes me happy.
Adam Minster:Insane about the question that I knew that you had earlier, this harkens back to food being something important in my life. When I was around six or seven years old, very early in my life, my mom, like any good mother, says breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Every every day, she had breakfast ready for us. We had to eat it. I was not a morning person.
Adam Minster:Did not wanna eat in the morning. And then one time, I just said to my mom, mom, I will eat my breakfast in the morning. I wanna cook it moving forward. And she's like, you wanna cook your breakfast at six years old? I'm like, please.
Adam Minster:I can't eat your dry eggs anymore. And I started cooking my own eggs. And before I even knew about umami and the different flavor senses, I decided I wanted to put cayenne, lemon, and syrup in my eggs. And to get that sweetness, the sour, the spicy. And they were a big hit.
Adam Minster:I started cooking them for my whole family. And that's I that that love is what I got back when I started cooking for my friends in university.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So did you finish university? I finished university. No.
Adam Minster:I had one course left, And my mom begged me to do a online course when I came back. And I said, mom, I'm not doing it. Not because I don't have the time, but I just know this is not where I'm going in my life. I'm going to George Brown for restaurant management. And so I went to George Brown for restaurant management, spent two years there, graduated from that.
Adam Minster:And then the journey continued from there.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And how soon until you were connected with the Food Dudes and became part of that company?
Adam Minster:During that time, actually, you have to do an internship at George Brown. And I was out at one of the bars one time, and Lindsey Klein, who's one of the partners, she was at the bar, we had gone to grade school together. And so we were catching up, and she was telling me about what she was doing, and I was telling her about what I was doing. I was like, your company sounds really cool. This is only a couple years into the Food Dudes.
Adam Minster:And I said, I haven't picked a place for my internship yet. Why don't I do it with you guys? And she's like, yeah. Sounds great. So that's where it all first started.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And then how quickly were you then opening up Rasa?
Adam Minster:The first catering event I went to with the food dudes, Adrian was there. It was at the time where Adrian was still going to every event. And I walk in, and we're ready to start serving the food. And I grab a tray of burgers, and I start walking out. And him and the other chefs go, woah.
Adam Minster:Woah. Woah. I'm like, woah. What? Like, do you even know what you have on your plate?
Adam Minster:And I was like, yeah. I have the sliders with brie cheese, quick pickled cucumbers, whatever. And they were like, their jaws drop. And I'm like, why are these guys jaws dropping? And then I find out the next event because I come in, and they're all like, this is the guy.
Adam Minster:This is the guy. I'm like, the guy that what? They're like, what's on the menu today? And I list off the menu. And so I found out that no one else was studying the menu before they went to these events.
Adam Minster:But that it just I loved what I was doing, it just came natural to me. So I wanted to know what I was serving. And that's when Adrian, like, third event came up to me and said, we we see something special in you. Do you want to open up Blokenforth with us? Because they were about to open up a club called Blokenforth.
Adam Minster:Have you heard of that? No. No. It was a supper club, very popular at its in its time, And we did the restaurant side of things. But about a year into that, I started getting that feeling again that I had in university where I'm like, this isn't right because the club was much more of the focus than the restaurant was.
Adam Minster:We had to kick tables out before they were done eating because the club was starting. And they would start boarding up the windows as as our guests were eating because the club was starting. And I just I didn't feel like that's where I wanted to be anymore.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What was your role at Wilkins?
Adam Minster:I was the general manager of the restaurant.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay.
Adam Minster:And so I sat down with Adrian and our other partner, Brent, at the time, and I said, I love you guys and I love your company. I don't think I can work here anymore. And they said, We want to do our own restaurant as well. Give us one more year, and we think we'll probably have enough money to open up a restaurant at that point in time. And then we'll take it from there.
Adam Minster:And that ended up being Rasa.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. It sounds like you were getting some significant responsibility pretty fast out of George Brown as a GM.
Adam Minster:Yeah. I wasn't I had four years of university under my belt, so I wasn't like I was young, but I wasn't right out of high school. Right? Or I wasn't just right out of two years of college. I was out of four years of university and two years of college.
Adam Minster:Then I did the two years of Bloke and Forth, and then I opened up Rasa at 28, which I think is one year before my idol, Danny Meyer, opened up his restaurant.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Not that anyone's counting.
Adam Minster:Not that no one's counting.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What was the inspiration for Rasa? And why did chef Adrian want to move into restaurants as well as catering?
Adam Minster:Catering is amazing for the profitability. Right? You can actually profit in catering. Restaurants, as I'm sure when your listeners know, 10% or less is what the best restaurants are doing. Right?
Adam Minster:Catering, you can get 20%, but you don't get to truly showcase your passion for what you're doing. Right? You're not there watching these people eat your food. You're not there being able to change things on the fly because you saw someone take a bite of something and you saw the reaction. You got their server to ask them, did you enjoy that?
Adam Minster:So I think it was always something Adrian wanted to do to truly express his passion for food. Restaurants is where you can do that. That's why everyone gets into restaurant industry. Right? They don't get into it for the profits.
Adam Minster:And if they do, they're a little loco. But you get into it because you love it for the passion of it. And what was the other part of the
Alex Abbott Boyd:question? Oh, just what was the inspiration for the restaurant? The vision for the restaurant?
Adam Minster:Yeah. So along those lines, the inspiration for the restaurant was we wanted to create something that we would want to go to on a weekly basis. We wanted to create our local neighborhood restaurant, our local neighborhood watering hole. And that fits so perfectly with Adrian's style of food. You cannot put a title on his style food.
Adam Minster:It is just a beautiful hodgepodge of like all these different flavors from different cultures around the world. So that worked so well with this neighborhood restaurant that we wanted to create because we didn't want an Italian restaurant. We didn't want a French restaurant. We just wanted a place for people to call home. And when you are I always give Adrian his big ups for this as he cooks for the guests.
Adam Minster:A lot of chefs out there cook for themselves, and the food is still delicious. But you can truly taste the difference when someone is cooking for the guests as opposed to cooking for themselves. Does that make sense?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Do you mean it's not all about showcasing how good they are at certain techniques?
Adam Minster:You got it. It's not about techniques. It's not about high end ingredients. It's about flavor. We have always been a flavor first company.
Adam Minster:Everything we do from catering to Sarah to Ras at a pantry to Chop Op, if you don't take that first bite and it makes you smile and your eyes twinkle a little bit, then we're not gonna put it on the plate.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I was actually recently debating with my wife why sometimes the restaurants we love and the ones that get the most accolades don't always line up. And I was kind of ranking what matters to me. For me, it's hospitality and flavor, a very close one and two. And then presentation and ambiance and all that stuff is way lower. They just want delicious food and great hospitality.
Alex Abbott Boyd:In terms of what we go back to,
Adam Minster:we've to get out to Rasa. You described it in a nutshell. Flavour and hospitality, it's the only two things that we care about there. And because of that, like you were talking about the accolades, Rasa basically never got any accolades for ten, eleven years until we finally got a biblical moi from the Michelin Guide, and now we have two in a row. But not a single accolade, except for the fact that we have increased our sales every single year that we've been open.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And you're still in business after that.
Adam Minster:I don't know how many restaurants in the world can say that for twelve years straight, they've always increased their sales year to year.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I think that's a testament to people care most about those first two things. A 100%. I have to ask because it's such an icon. What is the story behind the chopped salad? Story behind
Adam Minster:the chopped salad. I like to challenge Adrian when we go through menu creations. And one of the ways I challenge him is to say, make me the best version of. So when he gave me the first Rasa menu, I looked at it, and I was like, okay, this is great. But I came back to him and I said, there's not a single salad on here.
Adam Minster:So we both love eating salads. Why wouldn't we put a salad on here? Not only that, Adrian, you know what I'm about to say. I said, make me the best version of a salad possible. And he got the twinkle in his eye, and he went back to the drawing board, and he came up with the Rasa Chop salad, and it was an instant hit.
Adam Minster:Because the way that he likes to cook for the guest, he understands a salad should be as important as any other dish on your menu. It needs a crispy element. It needs a creamy element. It needs crunchy elements. It just a plethora of things need to go into a salad to make it mind boggling.
Adam Minster:And that's what he did with the Rasta salad. Like, the combination of the jalapeno feta spread with the red wine vinaigrette with the crispy chickpeas and the harissa powder. People just die for that salad.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's awesome. It's jumped into chop hop and the catering side.
Adam Minster:Everybody's wedding in Toronto that uses the food dudes. I think without being biased, I think it's the most popular salad in Toronto, which is really cool to be able to say.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's super cool. And it's still on the menu. Yeah. Think Think you'll ever take it off?
Adam Minster:No. We'd have to close. We would, like, people would riot outside of the restaurant.
Alex Abbott Boyd:You you've opened Rasa. It's going well. You're the GM. What leads you to thinking that there should be another restaurant, Sarah?
Adam Minster:We wanted to show our progression in the industry. We were really happy with where Rasa was at. But because we created a restaurant that was focused on what we believed would be our favorite restaurant in the city, like that neighborhood watering hole that I was talking about earlier. We wanted to showcase the fact that we can also do the opposite of that. We can also create a fine dining restaurant that we would be happy to go to multiple times a month as well.
Adam Minster:So we really wanted to try and showcase a restaurant where not only do you feel as much at home as you do when you're at Rasa, but everything else, the food, the wine list, the service can also make you feel like you're at a Michelin star restaurant.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I think you mentioned earlier a trip to Japan. Were there any other inspirations? Yeah.
Adam Minster:There was the trip to Japan. Before that, there was a trip to San Francisco with the entire team, actually. We took the entire team from both Rasa and the people that were going to come to Sara. We And went to San Francisco, and we ate at a bunch of different restaurants there. A couple of Michelin star restaurants, but also a couple hole in the walls because we wanted to show that juxtaposition of this is how you feel when you're eating at a hole in the wall.
Adam Minster:This is how you feel when you're eating at a Michelin star restaurant. This is the food style at a hole in the wall. This is the food style at Michelin restaurant. How do we mesh it and make it the perfect complement of both of them? So there was those two trips.
Adam Minster:And then there was just a lot of trial and error. I don't think we spent more time on a single menu than the first menu that we did at Sarah. And I don't think we spent more time on training the front of house than we did when we first opened up Sarah because we wanted to come out of the gates firing. Right? We already had a reputation at Rasa.
Adam Minster:We didn't want people to be able to have anything bad to say about us.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Was there your main way of preparing for that, just going on these trips and seeing what else was out there?
Adam Minster:I wasn't ready. The trips were great, and they helped us understand what we wanted the place to be. They didn't help me understand what I needed to be to run a restaurant like that. I had never run a restaurant with such high standards. And it isn't innately what I would choose to be doing.
Adam Minster:So to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think I was actually ready at the start of Sarah. But I'm really excited about the new seven course journey because I'm extremely ready for it now. What were some
Alex Abbott Boyd:of the hard lessons that you learned in that first year?
Adam Minster:A lot of the hard lessons are lessons that I can implement into everything else in my career and my life is to allow others to do what they do best. I think I tried to have too much control over all the different aspects and processes inside of the restaurant. And I wasn't yet at the point in time in my career that I am now, where I am so much more excited and happy to hire people who I know will do a better job than me at a specific role in the restaurant. I think I was a little bit too controlling when we first opened up Sarah. And now I am so very much able to look for the right people and let them do their thing.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Did you have to change how you hired, or did you actually have those people already and you just needed
Adam Minster:to empower them? Both. Yeah. I would say that I needed to get a little bit better at hiring. We did when we first opened up Sarah.
Adam Minster:We did the whole, okay, we need a som. We need a assistant som slash floor manager. We hired for the right positions, but maybe didn't necessarily hire the right people because I think and I haven't thought about this in a while, but I think that we hired for experience when I've always known, and I let myself forget that you hire for the person first, and then you let the experience speak after. But when it came to Sarah, we're like, okay. We're doing this fine dining concept.
Adam Minster:We need the best Psalm in the city. We need the best this in the city. But often, those people might not mesh with you, your personality, or the personality you want for your restaurant. So always hire the person first and then let the experience come second. Great advice.
Adam Minster:So you opened CERA in 2018,
Alex Abbott Boyd:and then 2020 came. What a wonderful time. Yeah. Did you hired another GM for Rasa at this point when you're
Adam Minster:I had another GM at Rasa. Okay. And I was technically the GM at Sarah and overseeing Rasa still, but my main focus was Sarah because at that point in time, Rasa was running itself. We had everything well oiled machine at Rasa. Okay.
Adam Minster:And then COVID happened? I call COVID the the the great equalizer because I think it was the first time in the restaurant industry where everyone gave the restaurants some leeway. My table's thirty minutes late. That's okay. It's tough times for everyone.
Adam Minster:My steak is taking longer than I expected. Don't worry. Get it tough times for everyone. And it was actually for that. In terms of that aspect of things, it was a really exciting time to be in the restaurant industry.
Adam Minster:Because if people could just have that mentality always for restaurants, it would be such a beautiful experience for not only the people working at the restaurant, but for the guests as well. When people get anxious or angry or whatever it is about these little things that happen during the dining experience, it throws everything off, and then they don't realize what a beautiful experience they actually had just because their table is fifteen minutes late. It's okay if your table's a little bit late. You can sit down and have a drink at the bar, and you're gonna be so much more happy if you allow the experience to come to you instead of fight against it. So I love that aspect of COVID.
Adam Minster:I also will give the government a little bit of credit too. They did a lot better than most countries in helping out the restaurant industry. So it was exciting to be able to only do 50% of your sales. But because you only did 50% of your sales from pre COVID times, you could get 35% of your labor back. You could get 35% of your rent back, whatever it was.
Adam Minster:I forget the exact numbers. So that was extremely exciting too, but it was exhausting. The pivoting that you had to do because of the way that the government decided to open this, close that five feet apart, one foot apart, mass, no mass. It was an exhausting time.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I saw that at one point, you and the team decided to close Rasa for just a full month. How did that come about?
Adam Minster:Pretty much. The teams, to use the word again, the teams were getting exhausted. Serving with a mask on is not fun. And I'm not saying that it wasn't needed. It could have definitely been needed at certain times.
Adam Minster:But it's not fun. It's it takes a lot out of you, especially in the hot summer days. Even not even being able to express yourself fully because you have a mask on kind of gets to people in the restaurant industry because we got into this industry because we love people. We love conversations. We love creating moments.
Adam Minster:It's a lot harder to create moments when you're wearing a mask, when people are nervous about you standing near them, when people are so far apart. So everything just started adding up. And we were seeing people just hit the wall. And we were seeing people turn to things like alcohol and maybe even worse. And we weren't prepared to go any further with it.
Adam Minster:We thought it was much more important that our staff get to take a break and that we help the people that we notice were going down the wrong path during that break. Because if I got into this industry because I love making people happy through food, the most important people to me are my employees. And if they're not healthy and happy, something's gotta stop. And the restaurants itself had to stop at that point in time so we could correct
Alex Abbott Boyd:the ship for them. The government doesn't step in and help make you whole though if you close.
Adam Minster:No. No. With rent, they did.
Alex Abbott Boyd:With
Adam Minster:rent. Because we had zero sales. So they took care of whatever percentage of rent you get when you have zero sales. But they didn't take care of anything else. Still worth it.
Adam Minster:Yes. I will always put my people ahead of anything to do with profitability. Always.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Let's jump out of the dark days of COVID. When did some of the other concepts that are part of Food Dudes emerge? The Chop Hop and Pantry, was that post COVID?
Adam Minster:Chop Hop was post COVID. Pantry was a few years before COVID. I think Pantry is almost eight years now.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What is your role with the creation of those different concepts?
Adam Minster:Pantry, I was on the opening team for the first location, the Rosedale location. The team wanted me to be there to help with the overall concept of hospitality inside of a quick service restaurant. So I helped them with that. But I haven't done much since then. My business partner, Derek Wasser, who's the head chef of catering and also the head chef of pantry, he manages that business.
Adam Minster:And it's become Rosedale was the only restaurant that was really, like, at seats and that you could truly express hospitality in. It's become more of a kind of quick service, like a true quick service restaurant. So I don't have that much to do with that. Chop hop is my baby along with Adrian's, and we've actually brought Derek into that partnership, and we brought Lindsay into that partnership as well. So it's a nice four headed dragon doing the the chop up thing.
Adam Minster:And why I say it's my baby is because I've eaten the Rasa chop salad, I would say probably a thousand plus times, and that's not a joke. And I'm still not bored of it. And I think it was the first or second time I ate it. I went up to Adrian and said, one day, we're turning this into a concept.
Alex Abbott Boyd:One of the things that intrigues me is the hours. It's Hours? Yeah. Because it's eleven to three. Right?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Is that just because that's when people want salads for lunch?
Adam Minster:I think that since COVID, going back to the dark days, hit the city, the Financial District has still not really recovered. It's doing a lot better than it used to. But pre COVID, there was an amazing nighttime revenue stream in the Financial District. The pantry was doing a couple thousand dollars at nighttime pre COVID. It does $500 at max now for dinner service.
Adam Minster:So we kind of said to ourselves, what is the point of staying open for dinner if, a, there's not much revenue to be had, and, b, you're gonna force someone to sit there or two people to sit there, not have a night if they have a family, not have a night out with their family or a night in with their family, not be able to go to the gym. We do most of our business between eleven and three. Let's let everyone enjoy that fact.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And how big is the menu?
Adam Minster:Six salads with a rotating seasonal, or we've done collaboration salads. We did one with Chef Devin, if you know who that is. We did one with Abby Sharp. And then we have two wraps and two soups, four juices, four nosh balls. Done.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Was there because you mentioned when you stepped from Rasa into True Fine Dining, there was a bit of a learning curve. Was there a similar experience going into quick service or to kinda helping Open Pantry prepare you a little bit better?
Adam Minster:There was a learning curve going into quick service for sure, but I had already gone into that point in time in my career where I was like, I know what I'm good at, and I wanna put the people around me that are better than me at the aspects that I need them to be for this to be successful. So there was a much less of a learning curve because I had the right people around me.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. What is your vision
Adam Minster:for Chop Hop? The vision for Chop Hop I think we finally got to a point in time where we understand what chop up is, and we would like to put it in as many financial district areas in Canada and The US eventually and just multiply them until there's no other more financial districts to go into. It's the perfect lunch place for people on the go, need something quick, need something healthy, need something tasty. So that's our game plan there. It's just keep on infiltrating the downtown cores of cities.
Adam Minster:We don't really wanna focus on the rural areas. We'll leave that to the Mandy's and the Impact Kitchens of the world who do a great job with that.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I've seen the the really cool salad reviews that you're doing on Chop Hop socials. What would you say are maybe your top three to five salads in Toronto and why?
Adam Minster:Okay. One that really jumped out at me recently was the Cote D'Ivoire one. They had this amazing blue cheese and dive walnut pear, and I think it had a maple dressing on it. And if you like blue cheese, you know that all that is just such a classic pairing for it. I absolutely love blue cheese.
Adam Minster:I love, like, bitter things as well. So the endive and they had grilled radicchio on it too. They weren't trying to do too much. They were just putting really complimentary flavors together on a plate in a beautiful way. And you can see in the video, like, I take a first bite, and I'm like, audibly, this is a good salad.
Adam Minster:So I would suggest everyone go try that. The smacked cucumber salad at Mimi. It is called a smacked cucumber salad. Some people might argue it's not really a salad because it's just, like, smacked cucumbers and mushrooms. I had it this weekend, actually.
Adam Minster:Really? I'll did you love it?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Oh, yeah. I'll I love it.
Adam Minster:I think it's it's kinda like a Lay's potato chip. Like, you take a bite, and you're like, I can't stop eating this thing. And I love the concept. I had never had a smacked cucumber salad before, and I love the concept of it's so smart and so simple. If you smack the cucumber, so much more flavor is going to get into it.
Adam Minster:So I really enjoy that salad. I would say that another salad I had recently that I love is the seasonal salad at Maven. Tomatoes are just so perfect right now. And, again, I think you'll see a trend here. I love just, like, classic, simple pairings.
Adam Minster:And they do a tomato with some rye crisps and a tonata on the bottom. And I want a bunch of dill from their garden. Again, just a few flavors, but they're all complimentary, seasonal, fresh, simple. That was delicious. What else?
Adam Minster:Rasta salad will always have the number one spot in my heart because of just what it represents in my career. But to to veer off a little bit from other people's salad, my favorite salad right now on the Chop Hop list of salads is the mezze. So we created this salad based around Mediterranean flavors, and I think it is the quintessential kind of example of everything under the kitchen sink, but it all works together. So it's like the opposite of the salads I've been talking about. Just simple few ingredients, but done really well.
Adam Minster:You got golden raisins in there. You have halloumi. You have pomegranate. You have dill. You have parsley.
Adam Minster:You have cabbage, there's pickled chilies, there's turnip pickled turnips, what others? Cucumbers, then it has tomb tahini and a green sugar vinaigrette, and on top is crispy pita chips. And I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two ingredients. And every bite is just an explosion of flavor, but it just works together.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I've heard you use the phrase for salads main dish energy. Correct. What is main dish energy? It sounds like that salad has it. That salad has it.
Adam Minster:What is main dish energy is that you can eat a salad and be completely and utterly satisfied by it. I often compare it to, could you wake up hungover? And instead of getting your big American breakfast or instead of getting your burger with a fried egg, could you eat this salad and be satisfied? That's kinda like the ultimate test of a main dish energy salad.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I like that. One of the things I'd be curious, what you've seen in places like Sara and Rasa is how are drinking trends changed over, say, the last five years? Because there's a lot of headlines that people are drinking less. I'm not seeing
Adam Minster:it that much. I think it could have something to do with that the generation that they say isn't drinking anymore isn't coming to Rasa or Sarah yet. And I think millennials and up, which are the ones coming to Rasa and Sarah, are still drinking as much as they used to, at least when they go out. I think a lot of people have stopped more of the casual drinking. People have stopped having a couple glass of wine before bed, or people have stopped having that scotch before bed because they're like, okay, if this is really that bad for me, I don't need to just do it at home for no reason.
Adam Minster:But when I'm going out, I wanna add to my experience. And alcohol adds to that experience, not because I'm getting drunk. We're not drinking a dinner because we wanna dance and socialize with someone we're attracted to. We're drinking a dinner because it it pairs beautifully with the food or it enhances the experience, and it just makes everything that much more memorable. And I think memories is one of the biggest things we're trying to create when we go out for a dinner.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Imagining five years ago, non ALK pairings were not much of a thing. Are they a thing for you now?
Adam Minster:So I guess that's a good point. I guess one of the biggest changes I've seen in the industry is that every restaurant now basically has a nonalcoholic section. And I don't really have anything to compare it to pre COVID because we didn't have that section. But I don't think it doesn't get ordered that much. On a Sunday at Rasa, it gets ordered a lot more because Sunday is the end of the weekend.
Adam Minster:People are going out just because maybe they don't have food in their fridge, but not necessarily because they want that experience or that memory. It's kind of just like, let's go to Rasa. It's easy. It's right there, and we don't have any food in the fridge. So they don't necessarily want to drink because work starts the next day.
Adam Minster:So it is I would say it's day dependent on when those drinks get ordered or not.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Do you have any strong opinion on delivery apps?
Adam Minster:Can you swear on this? Yes. You can swear. They fucking suck. Yeah.
Adam Minster:Yeah. But they are now the lifeblood of many operations. One of them being chop up. 30% of our revenue is on the apps. And what percent of that then goes to the apps?
Adam Minster:We're lucky that we're a bigger conglomerate that was able to negotiate with them. And we're at 21%. But an independent restaurant that has no negotiating power is at 30%.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And I've heard majority of restaurant meals are now going through them rather than being eaten on premise.
Adam Minster:It's crazy. That that would be something interesting for the government to step in and put a stop to. I don't know if that's at all possible. It's not my field of expertise, but if they could do something to help out the restaurant industry, that would be one of them. You obviously have to then increase the prices for everyone.
Adam Minster:Right? Of course. But we can't increase it. We can't increase it by 21. And the people that have 30% definitely can't increase it by 30 because then people won't order it.
Adam Minster:So we increase it by about 12%. And that is what we found is the sweet spot that people will still order it. So we're losing out on that 8%, 9%. It's really tough.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I feel like they got us all hooked five to ten years ago when their just markups were much less and their fees were much less. And then now everyone's just been bamboozled and now they jacked up the prices.
Adam Minster:And apparently they had to because apparently they weren't profitable until a couple of years ago, but it does not bode well for the industry.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Speaking of technology, how do you
Adam Minster:think AI will affect the hospitality industry going forward? For sure. It's been integrated into our concepts relatively slowly right now. It's more so I tell my managers, like, we have a Claude account, we have a chat account, and I tell my managers, do this on Claude. It will make your life a lot easier.
Adam Minster:And there's a few apps that I have found recently that I'm going to try their trial. There's one called the Restock, which is an app that monitors your ordering and your invoices and your par levels. And it tries to find the holes of where you're losing money. I've seen one that I haven't scheduled a meeting with them yet, but I've seen one that apparently they put up a camera in your place and the AI will tell you, like, when your labor is getting out of hand and it will flag you so you can if you're not at the thing, you can call the store and say, hey. You're one person over what you should be.
Adam Minster:So there's gonna be a lot of different apps out there. I think eventually, there will be one app that kind of brings everything together. And my hope for the industry is that allows operators, managers, back house, front of house, whoever it is, to focus on what it is that brought them into the industry, to focus on their true passion. Front of house, hopefully, that's hospitality. Back of house, hopefully, that's cooking.
Adam Minster:Because I think currently in the restaurant industry, people are pulled in so many different directions that they lose their passion for the industry or what got them into the industry the first part because they didn't realize how many administrative tasks they were gonna have, how much dealing with numbers there is. And if an app can take that away and allow them just to be focused on what brought them into the industry, I think that'll be
Alex Abbott Boyd:really great. You mentioned there's some there what there's a chain
Adam Minster:Sweet Greens.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Sweet Green is is got robots creating salads now too. Yes. Sweetgreens has a
Adam Minster:couple of test locations where you come into the store and there's no one at the desk. It's just a bunch of computer screens. And you tell the computer what salad you want, And then they have a big glass enclosed glass thing so you can see it happen where a robot I think it's that a bowl goes across a conveyor belt, and there's a bunch of different places that cucumbers, tomato, carrot, whatever it is, and whatever you ordered will drop into your bowl. Then it gets to the last thing. If you ask for it for it shaken, the robot will put your dressing and shake it, then it comes out.
Adam Minster:Given the pressures of labor costs on so many people, do you
Alex Abbott Boyd:think there's gonna be some places that maybe go too far and try to replace too many people?
Adam Minster:Feel for the back house because I think it is possible that some kind of robot can replace the back house. There's already these machines that for Chipotle can skin, depit, and squash an avocado, you know, a thousand times faster than a human can. Right? So Chipotle doesn't use humans anymore to make their guacamole. And the place, Salt Hanks in New York, is that what it's called?
Adam Minster:I don't know that. The place that just does the beef short rib, the dip, the French dip sandwich. I think it's Salt Hanks. They're, like, very popular right now for their one sandwich. They only do it they use this giant robo coup to cut their purple onions.
Adam Minster:Right? They don't use a human for that anymore. And no one's looking at that and being like, hold on a second. Could that get to a point in time where no humans are needed? Because we're not quite there yet, but it could get there very quickly, and then you only need one kitchen manager and then all these robots.
Adam Minster:I don't think it could ever replace the front of house because part of the reason people come to a restaurant is for connection. So you're not going to I know there's some of these I think they're mainly Japanese restaurants that already have these robot servers. But I think that is more of a kind of kitschy thing than it is something that will come to all restaurants because people want that connection with their server. It's fun learning your server your server's name and then being able to speak
Alex Abbott Boyd:to them during the meal. But back house, I worry about. So many of my favorite meals, though, in places in the city, and maybe it's just because I know the people cooking, it's their stories and who they are as people and seeing that reflected in the dishes.
Adam Minster:But that that would probably be the one person you still need. Right? Yeah. You would still need Adrian Nyman, whose story is still there, whose food still resonates because of what he's experienced in his life. But then everyone cooking his food could be a robot.
Adam Minster:That's terrifying to me.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Do you have any sense of the timeline on that or since you're not hiring robots now?
Adam Minster:Not hiring robots. Yeah. No. I'll follow I'll keep on following Sweetgreens and see how they do.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. Given all the changes in the industry and the exciting different projects and concepts you're working on, what what just keeps you excited and motivated for the future? Similar to you, my family.
Adam Minster:That's the main thing that keeps me excited and motivated is to be able to provide the best life possible for my wife and my current kid and hopefully whatever other kid we have moving forward. I I adore being able to spend time with my child. It's the greatest gift of life. Everything she does makes me smile even when she's in the terrible twos right now. So even when she says no to me at every possible turn.
Adam Minster:But that's a little personal, what gets me excited for the future. Industry specific, what gets me excited for the future. I really enjoy all the collaborations that are taking part in the industry. I don't think this was something even as little ago as when I was first coming up, which let's call it twelve years ago now, I would consider is when I really became a restaurateur when I opened up Rasa. There's very little of this, hey, you do the best bread in the city.
Adam Minster:I do the best I do the best pulled pork in the city. Why don't we come together and collaborate and get more people to enjoy your bread and more people to enjoy my pulled pork? It's happening all over the place now. And it's a beautiful thing to see because more people get introduced to more things, more people get to experience different people in the industry, more people get to see different people in the industry. And I think if we can continue on this collaborative path, it would only create great things for the industry because it was a little too competitive.
Adam Minster:I think even twelve years ago when I was opening up Rasa, it was like, I'm gonna do my own thing. You do your own thing. We'll see who gets the most amount of customers. But I'm really excited to see that now it's like, no. Why don't we work together to not only provide the best possible product for our guests, but also to help each other.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I love that it's gotta be both much more fun. And then to your point of the whole reason that Sarah moved to the journey, it just gives more experiences for people because they can come for limited time collaborations or things like that. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Adam Minster:I'm excited for you to try Rasa because I think you are really going to love it from what you told me about what you love about restaurants.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I can't wait.
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