We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rodolfo Melo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rodolfo below.
At 26 years old in 2012, was one of the most defining years of my now path of being a business owner. I was working for a renowned restaurant chain since 2006 as a server, then bartender, then corporate trainer. This restaurant chain was growing and opening new locations across the US. I was invited to be one of the trainers that would travel and help train the staff at the new location for a period of a month or two at a time. Travelling for work in this capacity was something I enjoyed and I got to meet some great people along the way. During this last training trip in 2012, I was offered to stay and help the restaurant with employee development, training and customer service. I decided to take this offer and stay. This where I met my 3 partners. Two of which were my managers and another co-worker. The company we were working for was clearly successful and growing nationally and I saw that an opportunity in that. The original owners sold to the company to a private equity firm and did very well. There were a lot of changes during this time and my now partners and I agreed that we were able to open our own restaurant and have great success.
It took about 1 year of brainstorming, location scouting, and trying to figure out how we would fund the business. We then settled that we would put all our money together and we did just that. I literally scraped my bank account clean as did my partners to come up with the initial costs of equipment, remodel and launch of Terra Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse.
The transition of working for someone else to being “your own boss” was not very significant. I worked a lot of hours before, and I was working a lot of hours now. The different being that I was doing it for myself and I would reap better benefits for doing so.
The real test was the first six months of living off no income and working 80 hours a week. The rest I guest is history to where we are now…
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Rodolfo Melo I am 38 years old and I am a native of Brazil. In 2002 at 15, I moved to Marietta, GA where I went to high school for my junior and senior years. I started working at odd construction jobs for a couple of months but then got my first “restaurant job” at 16 bussing tables and any work was available. From this point on I worked my way up to becoming a server but I struggled somewhat because English is not my first language. I tried to overcome this by being very knowledgeable about the products we had for sale. Since I was still underage, I was not able to taste the wine, liqueurs, and cordials the restaurant had (the list was pretty extensive). This brought on my incessant need to read all of the labels, stories and characteristics of the items we had. While I was still bussing tables, many of my coworkers would come ask my to help a guest/customer with questions about our wine and liquor selection. This felt great and it only stoke the desire to learn even more.
I attribute my humble success to this idea of having to acquiring knowledge and help myself out of most situations and help my business grow.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
The main thing with reputation exceeding the guest’s/customer’s expectation. For this you must always place the guest first when making decisions. Being consistent with how you deliver the guest experience and having people that believe if your mission is crucial to achieving this. Our Reputation was one of the main reasons we found success in the restaurant business.
Any advice for managing a team?
Being in the restaurant business you always strive to provide the guest with a positive dining experience, this can only be achieved in the entire team share the same values and “guest first” mentality. Having our operating partners present and engaged with the staff allows us to take the temperature of the staff and know first have the issues and provide solutions to problems that arise. Having an “open door” policy to discuss the employees problems and actively pursuing a fix in a timely manner really helps.
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