Are you ready to see what 2021 brings? We think there’s a chance that 2021 could be the single greatest year for the food industry and those businesses which make it through the pandemic.
In this episode, we interview Bill Post, the current President of the WJ Post Restaurant Group. Bill has an incredible background having previously been the President and COO of the Levy Group
Bill Post has over 40 years of experience in the foodservice industry in extremely diverse operations, including managing, supervising, and leading the creation, development, and opening of almost two hundred uniquely different concepts. Throughout his career, Bill has also provided consulting and advisory services to a list of who’s who in in the restaurant, hospitality and entertainment industries. A sampling of these clients would contain the following: Walt Disney World, Levy Restaurants, Roti, Harley Davidson, RestaurantAssociates, Sony, and now his newest venture, Say Cheeseburger.
You can learn more about Bill and his companies by visiting his website = CLICK HERE.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
You’ve worked hard to build your business and now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team and a serial entrepreneur. And on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about some really interesting topics. But most importantly, what comes out of this is why we think 2021 could be the single greatest financial year for any business. And especially any company operating in the food service industry. Now this is not some crazy prediction or anything like that, but I think when you listen to the interview with our guest, Bill Post today, you’ll extrapolate and hear how 2021 is setting up truly to be that single greatest financial year ever for anyone in business, operating a company. It’s really remarkable takeaway out of it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Bill has over 40 years of experience in the food service industry in extremely diverse operations, including managing, supervising, leading, creating, developing, and opening almost 200 unique different concepts, over 200 if you can believe that. That’s an incredible number. He’s advised and worked for some of the who’s who in the food hospitality and entertainment industries, companies like Walt Disney World, Levy Restaurants, Carnegie Deli, Harley-Davidson, Sony, Madison Square Garden, Roti, Restaurant Associates, and the list goes on and on and on. It’s really an incredible background. So needless to say, Bill’s background is impressive, what he tells us is incredible, and you’re not going to want to miss this one. So without further ado, here is my interview with Bill Post.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
My name is Bill Post. I’m a 40-year restaurant veteran. I’ve been in this business for a long time. Grew up in my youth caddying at country clubs. Grew up with Bill Murray. So the whole heritage of the movie Caddyshack is part of my growing up in my high school and early college years and took that early emergence in the hospitality business, if you will, to go and get an education on it. I got a degree in hotel and restaurant management and then worked for the next 40 years in the business, right up until current and hope to be working in it for a lot longer.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
I was a first employee at a company called Levi Organization in Chicago, which is now a multi-billion dollar food service organization. I was its president and chief operating officer. I then went to New York and ran Restaurant Associates, the oldest restaurant company in America, and ran it as its president and chief operating officer. Came back home to the Midwest, which is where I was born and raised and created a concept called Roti Mediterranean Grill. Founded it, raised the money for it and grew it to about a 45-unit national enterprise, fast-casual Mediterranean business, and then really took the leap about five years ago to take the more entrepreneurial path, if you will, and use everything that I’ve learned and some of the people that have come along with me over the years, creating my own company, the WJP Restaurant Group. So that brings me up to the current.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Wow, wow. Well, Bill, that is a lot. And I know it’s hard to jam 40 or so years of just experience into a condensed interview here, but there’s a lot in there that you talked about. And for me, I’m always curious how you got into the restaurant business. And you had mentioned that you started as a caddy kind of as a kid working at golf clubs and golf courses. Would you mind sharing how you ended up in the restaurant business?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Well, that was really the start time. I mean, I was caddying and then I worked my way into the clubhouse, enjoy the interaction with people, the whole hospitality aspect of things, way back in the day. I mean, having lived a long time already, right, way back in the day, there really were only about a dozen schools in the United States that offer quality degrees in hotel or restaurant management and Conrad Hilton, the Hilton Hotel Group endowed a significant amount of money to the University of Houston. And I went to school at the University of Houston and developed relationships down there with great teachers, probably my mentor, a man who just passed away a couple of years ago was really like a second father to me. He put his arm around me and gave me an awful lot of direction and guidance. And those are things that are very important to myself in my emergence and growth into the business and things that I hope that people would say about me.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
I mean the greatest success that I think I have had in the business, aside from all of the business successes and the businesses that I founded and everything, more than anything else, I’m most proud about being a mentor to people because in order to grow a company and in order to be successful, I think you really have to have great people. I trademarked a phrase many years ago that the coach makes the difference, and a great coach really does make the difference. You got to set the game plan. And I’ve never been the smartest person in the room, even though I was the president and chief operating officer of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales companies and everything like that. But I always hired great people and then counted on those people to really work in their area of expertise, much like a great coach would do in any sporting enterprise.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Bill Belichick, great example, New England Patriots. He’s always hired or drafted, I should say, from the same pool that everybody else drafts from. But why do the New England Patriots always win? They win because he dressed the best players from the best positions and counts on them to be effective and execute their roles. So that’s what I’m probably most proud of in the business. There’s been a lot of success along the way, but it’s been fun and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. No regrets.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Wow. Wow. Well thank you for sharing that, Bill. And one of the things that I think is incredible is your experience starting at the ground level with multiple brands, multiple companies, and growing them to at some point, some sort of either a large scale or an exit with Levy and Roti. Would you mind sharing kind of that experience of coming in very early and really being a part of launching these brands and growing and what your experience was and some of the lessons you took from it?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Sure. Well, starting with Levy as a very young man, it was actually before Levy was a company. It was an investment by a couple of brothers, Mark and Larry Levy. And that one restaurant, they bought out the general partner and we became a company and I was there for 20 years. And during that reign, developed more than 200 entirely different restaurant concepts. So we never really took the path of ever duplicating anything, Tom. By some measure, you’d probably say, well, that was the harder way to grow. And it was, we never replicated anything, but it was a really fun way to grow because I got involved in every element of culinary exercise from every concept and every ethnic cuisine that you could imagine. And then we use those restaurants more or less as laboratories to walk through an open window of opportunity to get into the stadium business, especially as concession business, where people got a food experience where they would least expect it.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
In a sport’s stadium way back in the ’80s, people thought that sports food was hot dogs, peanuts, and beer. And then we emerged into it with restaurants that would emerge and bring a person in a skybox or in a stadium club or in a loge box restaurant-quality food and restaurant-quality experience. So we became, we actually monopolize that business. And even though I’m 20 years removed from Levy, there’s 113 stadiums in the United States today and Levy has a presence in 66 of them. So that’s a pretty, pretty strong, almost monopoly role. And that’s how I kind of emerged into the business. And then Restaurant Associates was very much the same thing.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
And oddly, when I left RA, Restaurant Associates in out of New York back about 16, 17 years ago, I took a path to actually replicate a concept. I saw a window of opportunity again, this time in the Mediterranean food business to enter the fast-casual trade. And although that’s very, very common today, 15 to 20 years ago, fast-casual was something that was just emerging. Chipotle and Panera were coming on the scene and they’ve been stars in that segment. And Roti emerged as a market leader with a fast-casual Mediterranean food. So.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Wow. And when you talk about Levy, just hearing over 200 different restaurants and menus and all of the different things that you went into creating it, and while it wasn’t that one single brand wasn’t being duplicated, but the process that you went through to create those different brands, I’m sure had to be duplicated in some way, shape or form. I mean, going from just the original one operating a business to hundreds, and I’m sure thousands and thousands of employees that were working for you, that’s an incredible ride to grow through that. We’ll Bill, could you tell us a little bit about your commitment to due diligence?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Well, going back to the whole Levy reign, the only way that we were ever able to develop those 200 entirely different concepts was through the great teams of people. We drafted wonderful chefs coming out of culinary schools. I was on the board at the Culinary Institute of America, Johnson & Wales. We drafted great kids coming out of school. There was enormous loyalty and allegiance because we stayed in step with what their expectations were for a great company. We provided them with great challenges. We provided them with open windows of opportunity for them to express a lot of their food knowledge and maybe creativity. And really just continuing on that path. I took that to New York with me, with Restaurant Associates, we continued what was the oldest restaurant company in America, and then with Roti and my current brands. It’s just a continuation that’s going down the same road. And looking at what it is in the marketplace that provides an open opportunity.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
So 15 years ago, when I was leaving Restaurant Associates and coming back home and creating Roti, I had a concept on the shelf, so to speak called Carbon. It was a Mexican fast-casual concept, very authentic. Not Chipotle not, Americanized Mexican food, but taking real Mexican food. I spent a little bit of time down in Mexico, really getting deep knowledge for their passion and how they created their own food with a great deal of respect for the Mexican culture, their hard work ethic and everything. And I brought Carbon to Chicago with two other operating partners, very successful, real gritty locations, nothing really on Main and Main, far from it. And Carbon has been very successful.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
I then took that very same concept with some different wrinkles and created it for my own restaurant group, WJP Restaurant Group called Fiero Mexican Grill, and located that now in Columbia, Maryland and Huntsville, Alabama. I also have a complex down in Huntsville, Alabama with a central kitchen. It kind of serves as a central wheel with three spokes or four spokes coming out from it. Three of them are actual daily restaurant concepts, and one is a conference center. So yeah, it’s just a continuation of everything that I’ve enjoyed in my career and all of the creativity and the independence and latitude that I’ve been able to enjoy and lead companies down different paths. It’s just a continuation in that regard. And I hope to continue it.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
I have another concept that’s kind of more or less in the hopper, so to speak right now, it’s called Say Cheeseburger. It’s a cheeseburger concept that takes on a very, very aggressive stance if you will, to recreate the cheeseburger. Sounds ridiculous. Sounds funny. But we have created something that is so different and so unique. And I’ve had this in test now for about six months. I think that this thing is really ready to get out into the mainstream.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
And if there’s one final comment that I have before you turn it back to you, Tom, it’s having lived as long as I have, I’ve lived through stock market crashes. I’ve lived through terror attacks. I was in New York during the 9/11 terror attacks. I’ve lived through ups and downs and economic recessions and depressions and what have you. I’ve lived through sports strikes, major league baseball, national hockey league. I mean, these are major socks in the gut, but we always stayed the course and we continue to develop concepts in the past and I’m developing concepts right now, as we go through what is arguably the most severe economic difficulty in our lifetimes with the pandemic. And I believe that developing concepts during crises is a real opportunity to emerge out of it. A lot of people hunker down during these things and can’t criticize them for that, but I’ve always had the opportunity to develop businesses during situations like that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Great advice, Bill. Great advice. And one of the things we like to go through and ask all of our guests as we kind of go through our little formula here is we’d like to talk about the idea of misses, makes and multipliers. And I’m wondering for you, if you wouldn’t mind sharing, we’ll start with a miss, if there was a miss along the way that you wouldn’t mind sharing and sharing what you learned from it?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Well, I guess if there really were misses, I really don’t have any hard regrets in my career. I guess if there were misses, I go back to the fact that I was involved in companies and was given the kind of leadership role to develop all kinds of different businesses at both Levy and Restaurant Associates. So we didn’t have any duplication. I mean, arguably, if you go back 40 years in my career, right, there were so many food service companies, successful ones that were founded on the basic principle of replication, whether you take fast food and you’ve had during that 40-year term.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Look at all the concepts that have come up in fast food, whether it’s Culver’s or Popeye’s and the list is a hundred-long. Or the casual restaurant sector, you’ve got the Applebee’s and the Chili’s and the Outback Steakhouses and all of these other different concepts that went on to become their own, maybe a hundred millions or billion-dollar concepts on their own. So I could have taken that path. I don’t have any regret, but I guess some people might look at that as a potential miss.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
And then I think the other miss that has been prevalent now, having been in the business for 40 years, Tom, is what I’ll call acts. They’re not acts of God, but they’re acts beyond one’s control. And those are the market crashes, certainly the 9/11 terror attacks, certainly the current pandemic, the recessions that have taken place during my business career. Strikes that have happened in major sports. That was a major growth vehicle for us at Levy. So I guess you could turn those as possible misses, but again, nothing major that stands out in my career. I just don’t function that way. I don’t look really back at the past because you can’t do anything about it. Mike Dikta, a great coach for the Chicago Bears here in my hometown has always said that you can’t do anything about the past. All you can do is deal with the current and look towards the future. And that’s part of the philosophy that I’ve always held to.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I appreciate that, Bill. And let’s turn things on the other, flip it upside down and go with a make or two. Is there anything that, as you’ve kind of thought about over your career, a make or two that stands out above the rest? I mean there, it sounds like just full of great makes and things that happened and successes in your career. Is there anything you’d like to share?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Sure. I think that a lot of people go through life and maybe haven’t had the great opportunities or these open windows, as I commonly refer to them, windows of opportunity that have kind of opened themselves up to myself and two have actually been enormous successes. And I hope that there’s a third, but two, one would be way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of sports and team owners were starting to develop new stadiums. And one of the avenues that were not really touched or in players contracts or anything in the development of a new stadium was the building of a stadium club, loge boxes or skyboxes. So we would participate with team owners and everything in the build-out of those stadiums and created an avenue there of enormous profitability that we would share in, but also the team owners. That was just, and fortunately lucky period of time for us. And we became the leaders in that business.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Secondly, I think going back to my creation of Roti, I saw at the time 15 years ago, an ethnic opportunity with Mediterranean food, which is generally regarded as the healthiest diet on our planet. That was not really prevalent in the fast-casual business. So I created Roti and we grew it on up to about 45 units. I left that company about five or six years ago, but that’s certainly an element of pride in my past career.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
And then the third situation is what I described a few minutes ago with the cheeseburger concept. I believe that there’s an opportunity here for new food. I think that coming out of this pandemic being the optimist that I am, and most Americans, I believe are optimistic that this too shall pass. And when it does pass, unfortunately, there’s going to be an awful lot of people that have lost their restaurants. And there’s going to be a fewer number of restaurants, but generally about the same number of population. So fewer competition means very robust opportunities for the restaurants that do survive. And those that do survive will be gifted with that. And then I also believe that there’s new opportunities for new kids on the block, and that might be where Say Cheeseburger comes in. So I’m looking for an opportunity to bring partners and investors in to join me in that success.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Great. Well, and that’s a great point and we’ll make sure, Bill, that anyone who might be interested in talking to Bill or learning about his new venture with Say Cheeseburger. And I’ve seen the images and the brand book and so on. And it’s incredible just from the pictures. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I think that our audience, if for anyone who’s interested in exploring this, we’ll make sure, Bill, that we include links back and contact information to get ahold of you so that they can learn a little bit more about that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
And one of the things, Bill, that we like to talk about is this idea of multipliers. And as you’ve talked about some of these successes and wins, or makes along the way, is there any kind of a multiplier that you use personally or professionally that helped you open, as you’d said, these windows of opportunity? And I know firsthand that windows of opportunity, don’t generally just surface for a random reason. Oftentimes you were prepared for it or ready, or a convergence of a lot of different things happened. So in order to help you get prepared, were there any kind of multipliers that you may be used to put you in that position?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Well, that’s a great question and one to definitely ponder, but I believe that in our business, the restaurant hospitality business, the most important multiplier to ongoing success, whether you’re going to remain a small enterprise and be a business that might fortunately be open for have a 40-year tenure or more is all based in people. No matter if you’re a small single restaurant or you aspire to be a big company, you got to have great people. And that loyalty and allegiance of people enables you to build your customer base and build your company.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
We had visions of building a very large company back in Levy day. And we were able to do that based on the fact that we would draft great people. They would come aboard, these real young men and women who we met or exceeded their expectations for what personal growth could provide them. And for a good 10 or 15 years. I mean, our industry is known to have an enormous amount of turnover. We had the opposite, very little turnover because we were really good bosses. We were really good challengers. And in return, we got an incredible amount of loyalty and allegiance from those people. So at the core of everything in my playbook, it’s all about the people. You get the great game plan and in our business, you make that analogy to a restaurant concept.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
So yeah, we had some restaurants that didn’t work as well as others. We had a few that failed over time and that happens, but we had many, many more successes than we had failures. And all of that is all based on the fact that we had a pretty good game plan or a great game plan, and that can all be judged by people other than myself, but a great game plan. And we executed well and built a great company. So it’s all based in my opinion on people.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Wow. Well, great advice. I think anyone listening and especially for our audience in the food business of any kind can relate immediately to that. And Bill, as a closing question that we like to ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
Oh, well, first and foremost, I think you have to be happy personally in order to be happy and successful professionally. So core, I believe of any happiness is family. And having a strong family core enables you to go out into the world and then have a strong professional core. So I think you got have, the family comes first, always has. And it continues to this day. My people will always say that I always I’m highly respectful and ask questions about how is your family and that kind of thing. So family is the first part of it. And then the professional side of it, it goes back to the whole people thing. It isn’t so much the ideas about the concepts. It’s the people who execute them. So success, in my opinion, one of the things that I’m most proud of and I said this earlier in this conversation is about the people that I have led, that I have drafted, and that I have mentored. A lot of people around the industry have gone on to great things. And I’m very, very proud of that.
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
And I guess if there’s a last thing from a success standpoint it’s maybe being gifted with being in situations where I can always feel like I’m a winner and that I’m ahead of the curve. Seeing things that maybe others might not see a step or two ahead. I think that was true with many of the things that we did at Levy. Some of the things that we did in [inaudible 00:27:28] in New York, certainly ahead of the curve with Roti. And I want to be ahead of the curve with Say Cheeseburger. So
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Yeah. And well, Bill, I can echo and reiterate and reemphasize that you, for all of the years we’ve known one another and work together and one thing that has stood out consistently for, in watching you and being a part of what you’re doing has been your ability to see new trends and see things that are coming in the food industry that others don’t. You just have just a great perception, understanding of kind of synthesizing all of these different moving pieces that are always happening and putting together just fantastic offerings, great branding, great menus, creating all of these things.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
So, I certainly, you can see, I can see how your past success in all of these different types of food operations, the diversity is really incredible to me as an outsider looking in and observing and watching what you’re doing, the diversity in food is really just uncanny. I can’t say I’ve ever worked with anyone with that kind of background as diverse and broad as you have. So I really appreciate that. And Bill, as we look to kind of close things out here, are there any other closing comments or anything you’d like to leave with the audience that you didn’t have a chance to say?
Bill Post, WJ Post Restaurant Group:
I think it’s been a great interview. It has been a great recap, Tom. And I just like to thank you. You’ve been a great friend. You’ve been a great guidance counselor as I try to navigate the waters through franchising or joint venture partnershipping. You have been always there from a great communication standpoint. And I thank you for all of that. And I also thank you for this morning’s opportunity. This has been great.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
Well, Bill, thanks again for being here. What a great interview. And let’s jump into today’s key takeaways. So our first key takeaway today is that you need to make sure you’re finding recruiting and keeping good people. Let me rephrase, great people as Bill had mentioned. That was key. Number two is just seeing things before others do and keeping ahead of the curve. And Bill described this as finding those windows of opportunity and how he saw that in his career, whether it was with Levy when he saw the opportunity in major sports venues or with Roti in creating a national Mediterranean brand, or now with his Say Cheeseburger brand that he’s building, seeing those windows of opportunity. And one of the things that Bill had mentioned as well seeing opportunity in difficult times or during pandemics or crisis, I think that was one other really critical component to this, seeing the opportunity.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
And one of the things that has Bill very optimistic about 2021, and seeing what’s going to come out of this. While there have been one of the things Bill and I spoke about that wasn’t ended didn’t end up getting recorded was that at the end of this year, unfortunately, there will be many, many restaurants that will have closed. And that in turn will present an opportunity for those companies that survive and make it through it that 2021 could be explosive and maybe the greatest financial year that these companies and people will have ever had. So it’s setting up for a tremendous, tremendous opportunity.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
And the number three takeaway is to have a strong family core and by keeping a strong family core, that leads to being happy. So keep that strong family core, keep your family first. And don’t just say it, but do it. And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is what Bill said he had actually trademarked many years ago where he said the coach makes the difference. And I think that’s a great phrase to take away and use as the walkaway here, the coach makes the difference. So you can recruit great people, but if you’re not mentoring, guiding, coaching, supporting them, it’s all for naught. So just keep in mind, you have to train, nurture, support, and help these folks along the way.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team:
And so that’s our episode today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. Please subscribe. Please give us a rating. Please share this with your friends, family, anyone else you think could benefit from our content and we’ll see you back here next week.
