It was extremely exciting and a unique learning experience for me to interview Chef Owner, Gabriela Vilar of Quintana Café and Restaurante, located in Curitiba, Brazil.
My biggest takeaway from this interview was understanding how to create and sustain a profitable restaurant business without losing passion.
How many times do we restaurateurs find it hard to sustain our passion in this business? Or we refuse to let our passion go and in the bargain, our business suffers.
So it becomes an either or situation.
You’re passionate about your work but your business end lags far behind. Or you have to let go of your passion to make your business work.
But Gabriela Vilar is a rare restaurateur. She has not only executed her vision of creating a business around her passion of respecting the environment, art, culture, tradition and food, but also runs a very profitable restaurant business.
Gabriela has made it her mission to invest in her restaurant’s environmental sustainability practices such as beekeeping, water harvesting, composting and supporting local farmers.
With that, today, Gabriela’s restaurant is not just a unique dining-out concept, but it’s a vision and a mission that’s bigger than just putting food on the table. And she’s created a successful business out of that with longevity (She’s owned this restaurant for 9 years!).
Having a specific vision in running her restaurant is also what set her business apart and helped her coast through tough times. While most restaurants were closing doors during the Brazilian economy’s downturn, Gabriela’s restaurant was thriving. {05:00 min}
She even charged more and had her customers coming back because they understood and believed in her purpose. (Hear this at {53:00 min} to find out what it takes to raise menu prices and do better business while your competition is crying.)
Having owned and managed several restaurants myself, I can tell you that not every restaurateur is aware of their core beliefs and principles like Gabriela is. Even the few who are, find it difficult to create systems and procedures around them. {04:53 min} And only the rarest restaurateur manages to encourage their employees to believe in their vision and make their work a part of a larger mission. {25:00 min}
Gabriela Vilar is that rare restaurateur.
Gabriela’s restaurant business is an inspiration for other restaurant owners and a great example to learn from.
Listen to her interview to
learn how you can create a business with a purpose bigger than just profit,
learn how having a vision/mission can sustain you during tough times,
and most importantly, learn how creating a unique differentiating factor, can make it impossible for other restaurateurs to copy and compete with you.
In this interview, you will also hear about:
1. Her #1 secret to creating a profitable restaurant business. {53:30 min}
2. How we identified Gabriela’s #1 challenge & the appropriate solution that would impact her profits, mission, personal life & stress. {41:45 min}
3. How respecting air, water, and food became her Unique Selling Experience and helped her business stand out from the crowd. {36:00 min}
4. How to spend more (quality) time with your family. {26:50 min}
5. How to deal with troubled employees. {51:50 min}
6. Advice for new restaurant owners. {50:00 min}
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