Life, on the Line (28 page)

Part of me thought that some objection would surely arise that would make doing it impossible. Part of me hoped that I could find a graceful exit before I did too much damage to Grant and his career. I searched for reasons to not get involved, and there were many. Anyone I asked, even casually, about their experience in restaurants told me tales of hardship, failure rates, and lack of profitability. I mentioned my plan to a chef I knew who owned three successful suburban restaurants, and his response was blunt: “You seem like you have a great life. Why would you want to do that to yourself?”

And yet. And yet.

These were all of the same objections I faced when I started out as a floor trader. Other traders would tell me, “You seem like a smart kid, why the hell do you want into this crazy business?” The saying on the Chicago floors was that only two out of every hundred guys break even their first year, and out of those only one out of a hundred becomes a millionaire. Usually, though, they were telling me that just as the valet brought around their Porsche. The restaurant business seemed similar—long odds, difficult hours—but with huge rewards if you succeeded. The chef who told me not to get into the business was himself now building a fourth restaurant. If the first three were so bad, why would you build another one? I never really got an answer to that question.

I left the breakfast with Greg determined to press on at least another week, to see what happened. But either way, I knew for sure I would close the start-up hedge fund. I couldn't be sure that the restaurant was a good idea, but it was clear that my trading days were, for now at least, over. And that clarity felt pretty good.

When I got home I called Grant and told him that I quit the hedge fund, and that much at least was definitely true. I did not, however, voice my hesitancy or concerns.

“Good. Because I gave notice to Henry today.”

“What?” I panicked. “Even if we go through with this it's not the kind of thing you just open a month from now. I mean, we have a business plan but those are total bullshit. This could take years to put together, eighteen months at least.”

“I want to be open by the fall. I think we can be open by November. Why should this take more than nine months? Anyway, I can't work at Trio while we build the restaurant, and you quit, right? So let's go.”

Maybe Grant could sense that I would waver, or maybe he was just nuts. Or maybe he was bluffing. Either way, I just felt scared more than anything. Maybe Greg was right. Maybe putting that much money behind a guy you don't know is just plain stupid.

But my gut was telling me the opposite.

“We need to send out a packet to potential investors. Something sexy, not a typical business plan,” I said.

“Let's send 'em food. That's what I do, after all.”

“Yeah, and I'll work out the rest of the plan. Can you come by this afternoon?”

“No, I told Henry I would be here for the next two months. I owe him that. But Monday is no problem. I'll be there at ten.”

That would give me the weekend to figure out a way to tell Grant that I was out. By Wednesday he could tell Henry that he wasn't going anywhere, that his deal fell through. It would only be a mild embarrassment.

But when I got home, I sat down at my computer and started writing:

Three hours later I had a fourteen-page executive summary that told the story of Grant, the vision for the restaurant, and the plan to raise funds and search for real estate. It was all of my thoughts, all of my conversations and e-mails with Grant, distilled into an explanation of why this restaurant needed to exist. It flowed easily.

I wasn't writing it to convince investors; I was writing it to convince myself. By the end of the day I had reread the plan twenty times, and despite my better judgment I e-mailed Grant:

My overall plan for raising the money for the restaurant was pretty simple: go to the people I had done business with for the past ten years and convince them that we would be building the best restaurant in the country. Just as important, I'd let them know that I was in this as a full-time gig and would personally be watching over their money.

I quickly laid out an operating structure that was both simple and effective. The restaurant would consist of three companies—the restaurant itself, an investor group, and the management company. Grant and I would be the only people who were members of all three groups and therefore had a controlling interest. But the fact that I was also the biggest investor meant that I would always have the other investors' best interests in mind when making decisions. After hearing all of the horror stories about investors getting screwed in restaurant deals, or having kick-out clauses in contracts as soon as things got good, I wanted to create a structure that rewarded investors long-term and that kept them interested in future projects.

Just as important, I would stress to Grant that we needed to keep the scope of the project small. We couldn't have a giant Bonnet stove that cost a few hundred thousand dollars. That's just a chef's ego in the kitchen—like a sports car. I called it the “dick in the kitchen.” Grant was doing brilliant work at Trio with nothing fancy, and he thought we could build the place in 3,500 square feet.

I realized that if the restaurant revenue was 50 percent greater than Trio's, then that 50 percent would be almost all profit. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't imagine it not working out like that. If Trio was in Chicago, wouldn't more people come simply because it was easier to get to? Out-of-town business travelers weren't willing to go out to Evanston, but if Trio were in downtown Chicago it would be packed, right?

Before Grant came over on Monday I decided to call Jim Hansen to let him know that I was going to be closing up the hedge fund and that we really were going to build the restaurant. I could always count on Jim for a levelheaded reaction that would be a good gauge for the more emotional responses of others. Instead, it fell squarely in line with what I'd been hearing.

“Clearly you have too much time on your hands. Chill out for a few days, then decide what you want to do.” This was the advice I was getting from everyone I trusted, it seemed. And it was not what I needed to hear. Grant would be coming by in a few hours, and I wanted to appear confident and calm. Instead, my most trusted friends were telling me in every way possible to slow down. I went to the kitchen to see what Dagmara thought.

“Jim thinks I'm stupid to be doing this,” I said. “Greg thinks I'm stupid to be doing this. It's your money, too. I'm talking about putting up five hundred thousand dollars on a restaurant. What do you think?”

“If you want to do this—if you need to build it—then you should build it, regardless of what anyone thinks.”

“Even you?” I asked.

“I think you should build it,” she said. “I think Grant is a genius. I thought that before you did, right? Who wanted to get the standing reservation at Trio?”

 

Grant arrived at my house at ten on the dot. He pulled up in his beat-up Ford and walked to the door looking exactly as he had at our previous meeting: wet hair, unbuttoned peacoat, white T-shirt, semi-wrinkled black pants, black chef's clogs. I opened the door as he was about to ring the bell.

“I just want to let you know that I'm freaking out about this,” I blurted out. Perhaps not exactly the strategy I had planned in my head, but a very honest assessment.

Grant smiled and laughed. “That is
not
what I needed to hear right now. I am catching shit at home for quitting Trio without even knowing you. She has a point.”

“Well, if we screw this up we'll both be unemployed,” I said.

“Yeah, but you seem to be doing a bit better than I am,” he said, laughing, gesturing at my house.

“So are we really going to do this? I mean, it feels like we don't really have a clue what to do next. I know you can run a restaurant, but can you build one?” I asked.

Grant looked at me, gave a grin, and said, “How hard can it be?” He flopped his coat on the back of one of my dining room chairs and laid out a few sheets of paper. On them were sketches of some logos for the restaurant. Another sheet had a few kitchen layout sketches, and another had some dining room layouts. “I want Martin to design the restaurant,” he said, referring to the designer who worked with Trio.

I looked down at the sheets of paper and despite Grant's bravado, I was not feeling equally confident. The logo sketch looked like the doodle from the back of a high school kid's notebook. The kitchen layout had no stove at all—I guess I didn't need to worry about the Bonnet, I needed to worry that Grant wanted to invent a new stove completely. And as far as I knew, Martin was not an architect.

“Martin is the guy who designed the gadgets that the food sits on?” I asked.

“No. Martin is the guy who designed the
serviceware
for Trio. If you're going to be a big-shot restaurant owner you need to learn the lingo, Nick.”

“That's great, Chef. But you need to learn what an architect does. There are things like electrical plans, plumbing, and, oh, I don't know, walls and such, that will need to be built. And these guys called ‘engineers' work for the city and have to approve it all. You have to be a licensed architect to get those approvals.”

“Martin can design it, then we can have an architect work out the details,” Grant said. “I trust him. He's the only one who really gets what I do.”

“But you'll be paying twice then—and architects charge about 15 percent of construction cost.”

“Seriously? That's crazy.”

“Seriously. Not to mention that I doubt any architect worth anything will want to partner with a designer who has precisely no experience building a restaurant, or anything else for that matter.”

“Speaking of which,” Grant said, “I want to get something clear from the beginning. This is my restaurant. I want to be the chef/owner, or I don't want to do it.”

“Chef/owner it is, then. I don't really care about titles. You shouldn't either. You should care whether or not you are going to get real equity in the place, unlike most chefs who simply get the title but don't own much. As soon as our investors are paid back plus a preferred return, we jointly vest into 50 percent ownership through the management company. Plus you'll be given shares in the investor group for contributions you make during build-out, or for anything that we receive for free from manufacturers who give us something based on your reputation. I'm trying to structure this so you have real ownership, and I am doing that out of self-interest so that you don't decide to go anywhere in five years. So given all of that, we will call you the Grand Pooh-Bah or whatever the hell you want, okay? And I promise never to tell you what to send out of your kitchen, or to ever deliver a plate to a table. Deal?”

“Sounds fair. But I am chef/owner. It means something to me. It's the dream of every chef and has been mine since I was a little kid.” Grant said this with real emotion.

“Okay. Chef/owner. I'm just calling you ‘G' from now on,” I said, laughing.

“No. Don't.”

O
nce we got rolling on the business plan, things flowed. Every day I would write up ideas—about the dining room, our identity, serviceware ideas for Martin, and anything else that came to mind—and e-mail them to Nick. He would send me just as many drafts regarding raising money, equity splits, cash flow projections, and build-out costs. Then we would simply comment on each other's work. It was efficient and satisfying to work in this way while still running Trio at full tilt. We sent literally dozens of messages a day.

We discussed names for the restaurant all the time. Ideas like Avant-Garde and Achatz and Grant came from Nick. But I didn't want an eponymous restaurant. I wanted a name that meant something about the philosophy of the place. Then I remembered that a cook had mentioned the word “Alinea” to me. It was that funny, backward “p” symbol that indicated a new paragraph or a new train of thought. I hastily put together a list of names in an e-mail, snuck “Alinea” in the middle, and sent it to Nick. His reply was quick: “Chef. I Googled ‘Alinea,' and it's the best possible name for our restaurant. The rest of the names are okay. But that one is great. We are done.”

We had a name we loved right from the beginning. We did not, however, have the most important thing—an actual building.

When I sent Nick ideas for dining room and kitchen layouts, he would simply write back, “Fantastic but largely irrelevant until we find a building. To a certain extent, what we find, and what we can afford, will dictate the design.”

I didn't like the sound of that. I imagined a great blank canvas where I could create the space I wanted without limitation. I was free to think of tables that came out of walls without legs, dining spaces that could transform over the course of an evening, and a kitchen that was a series of open work surfaces flexible enough to accommodate any station at any time. Whenever I brought up such ideas, however, Nick seemed to shoot them down, and it was getting more than a bit annoying.