A Lesson in Servant Leadership & Tacos: A Conversation with Ford Fry

Scroll Linkedin for 20 minutes and chances are high you will see the term “Servant Leadership” headline an article. It’s everywhere in business culture these days, but rarely is it practiced. If you don’t believe me spend 5 minutes talking with a friend about what their boss is like. Your friend may not use current “business speak”, but the tone used to describe their frustration is enough of a clue that they aren’t witnessing it day-to-day. This begs the question, if we intuitively know what servant leadership doesn’t look like, then what does it actually look like?

It’s Friday night and you are going to dinner with your significant other for a nice date. Immediately, you are greeted with a warm smile by the hostess and shown to your table. You can’t help but look around because every single detail in the place is so meticulously thought out. A specific vibe permeates throughout the building and quickly takes you to another place. So much so, the busy traffic you had to drive through to get there seems like a distant memory. The rest of the night is spent enjoying conversation and amazing food. The lighting and the music enhance the entire meal, and your waiter is someone you actually want to be friends with. You leave feeling refreshed, carefree, and likely with a pocket full of matchbooks.

Those of you who have experienced a night like this in Atlanta probably recognize that I am describing a Ford Fry restaurant. A restaurateur and chef of 16 restaurants across 3 states, Ford has a deep understanding of how to translate thousands of details into an unparalleled restaurant experience.

Over the years of experiencing his restaurants, I’ve tried to pin point what I think is so special about eating there. The subtle, cool details come to mind, and of course the food, but I’ve always known it was something else. Not until recently did I come to understand that it is the foundation of a servant’s attitude that makes it stand out. You can see it on your waiters’ face, you can hear it in the conversation with the bartender, and you can taste it in the food. At the root of all of this? Ford’s desire to serve others, which is defined by a humility rarely seen in successful business leaders.

I sat down with Ford to hear more about his story, his passion for food, and how he’s been able to build such a strong culture through servant leadership.

Ford Fry

Founder of Ford Fry Restaurant Group

Atlanta, Ga

How did your upbringing influence your desire for entrepreneurship and specifically starting restaurants?

My grandfather was a doctor but also a businessman because he had his own practice. My dad did all kinds of random things real estate and stuff like that. So I imagine that played a lot into it. When I went to college, I didn’t really study. I’ve always been a learner by doing as opposed to studying. School wasn’t really my thing but I can remember contemplating having my own business. I think when I started thinking about that, my family really played a role in pushing me towards that more than ever before.

I remember one point in time when I was trying to make up reasons why I couldn’t go out there on my own to start something. I would make up excuses like “well, I need a partner” and my grandfather would say, “Why do you need a partner? Can’t you just hire someone to do that?” My family continually spoke into me if I was trying to go down a direction that I shouldn’t go.

Let’s go back a little bit though. Early on, I always loved restaurants. I loved going out to eat. We traveled a lot and we ate out. I always loved the experience of a restaurant, but being a chef or getting involved in that angle never seemed like a possibility because it was viewed as a blue collar or trade job. You know what I mean? Back then, the manager in the suit out front was the cool guy. Whereas now, the chef is the cool guy, but it wasn’t that way when I went to culinary school.

Deep down there was always something that drew me to the experience of food and the experience of eating around a table with my family and grandparents. I don’t think that was clear to me until I started thinking about getting into cooking.

When you got out of culinary school, you spent some time in corporate restaurant environments. At what point did you think to yourself, I can do this my way and probably better?

At one point in my career I was in Aspen, Colorado and that’s when I thought about being ready to have my own place. So, I looked into Boulder, Colorado and met up with a chef in Denver and talked about starting a place in Boulder. I started going down that road and ended up pulling out, luckily because I wasn’t ready. I didn’t really know what I was doing. It wasn’t until I came to Atlanta and was in a corporate chef role running a place called Eatzi’s that I started to feel ready. It was this massive food production for people who didn’t want to cook. You’d go in and everything was made for you and you’d buy it and take it to go. Everything was made from scratch and there were thousands of pounds of food.

I really learned the business side there. Before Eatzi’s, my experiences were all about the art of cooking and fine dining and never really about making money. At Eatzi’s, we were forced to run things efficiently or we would be let go. So when it was finally time to start my own restaurant, it was pretty easy compared to what I as doing.

Who were some of the key hires you made when you first opened JCT?

When I first opened there was a guy I worked with at Eatzi’s who had run restaurants for a long time. He was the general manager and I really needed someone like him who knew how to run the front of the house and servers. So he focused on setting that up and I focused on the design/experience side as well as all of the food and kitchen.

Second was a chef that I brought on (who’s still with us today) who’s name kept coming up from other chefs. He was kind of a quiet guy, but just a solid cook. So I met with him and he did a tasting for me and we immediately saw eye-to-eye on how we like to cook and how we like to eat. He was pivotal. He made a lot of impact on what we are doing today. He enabled me to be able to look forward and into the future.

I know things with JCT went pretty well from the beginning. What were some of the valuable lessons you learned through the expansion process?

Yeah, JCT kept going forward even during a recession. At that point, I was making decisions based on my gut, with things like what the prices should be and what the concept should be for a location. I took all the responsibility on myself for making the right decisions for the business model. After I opened 246, which was our second restaurant, I hired my old boss, Toby. He was my old boss in Aspen and Santa Barbara. He’s also a few years older than me and from Scotland. I always thought about him as the best boss I ever had and I loved the way he managed.

He wasn’t buddy-buddy with everybody but he treated everyone with respect. I hired him as our COO and at that point everyone started reporting to him and he reported to me. That move was truly key to keeping me focused on growth. My vision for what I wanted to build totally lined up with what he wanted to do. Toby had just gotten done with 10 years of consulting in Asia and had a place here in Roswell actually where I lived. It was just very random that we reconnected and only lived a couple miles from each other and had no idea.

So really putting someone in place like that who was just an incredible general that also saw eye-to-eye on things was big. We’ve never had an issue where we disagreed on something, and we just think really similarly.

In your model you really give a lot of autonomy to each chef in the specific restaurant. How have you learned to manage the experience across the restaurants while chefs are still making it their own?

For the most part it’s been about education as opposed to dictating things from our office. We constantly educate on our philosophies and educate on why we feel certain things work. It’s more than cooking, it’s also how we do things from a PR, Finance perspective. It’s all about training them in the way we think. By setting up these things we call “modules” and having employees take them, they prepare themselves for the next level of job.

We’ve hired people from the outside for upper level jobs before and they rarely work. The ones who have really thrived are the ones who come up through the ranks because they are more passionate about what we are doing and they understand how we think about things.
A lot of it is empowerment and servant leadership. We approach conversations from the perspective of wanting to help chefs as opposed to getting mad. From that educational standpoint, we are saying, “hey, we want to teach you to be a great restaurant operator or a great chef from all of the angles not just about food.”

That approach is pretty new for most chefs because typically they go into a restaurant and they’re asked to perform a task and to hit a number. Here, we are talking about all kinds of things. For instance, they are heavily bonus based on social media scores. So we are forcing them to really be aware of not only what’s going on with the food, but a lot of other things as well.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but every employee goes through the same training right? What inspired that and at what point was that established in the company?

Early on when we hired our COO, Toby, our orientation became a big part of the company. His passion is training and inspiring people, so he took that and single-handedly set it up. He came from resorts and a lot of times that’s a big thing with resorts.

One of the things he does early on when people are hired is let people go if they are nodding off during an orientation. If he sees something that is off, he lets them go right then and there. It doesn’t matter who you are, even if you are at the lowest level. He’s executing our orientation and he’s seeing how everyone is engaging. It’s nice because sometimes we might not have the best hires, but this is a way to protect our culture.

What would you say are the two or three most important characteristics you look for employees?

The current state of the market right now makes it tough, but we typically try to find people with strong attitudes and then train everything else. I’m also looking for people that we can relate to and I think are going to understand the culture. That’s a culture of empowerment and not managing every move.

We’re here to listen to employees, so people who conform to that kind of environment and bring great ideas to the table, perform well. A lot of people come from restaurants like a Houston’s or a big chain restaurant and they can’t perform because they’re so used to being told what to do. We want people to be able to think for themselves. We definitely have systems and guidelines and things like that, but we typically generate people who can perform in this industry, even when they move on from us. A lot of times when we get people from other restaurants and they are applying for a general manager position, they are really more like a low-level manager in our eyes.

Who or what have been the biggest inspirations in your life that have helped you get to where you are?

I never really had a mentor chef. I’m kind of independent. I probably would go back to my grandparents. They were the types of grandparents that always spoiled you but everything was done with the purpose of education. They taught me food and I’m lucky that I experienced traveling and food with them. I may have wanted to eat a burger somewhere or something like that, but I’d be forced to eat duck. Our vacations were always educational and we always had to learn something or read something.

You’re making this all sound really easy. What would you say has been the greatest business failure you experienced and what did you learn from it?

The way I look at myself now is as a producer as opposed to a chef. I definitely lean towards the chef side of things but I see myself as a producer of restaurants and restaurant experiences. Everything from the entire concept, to the food and menu, to the graphics and the design. Early on, I may have been a little bit too trusting and not speak up when I thought something wasn’t going in the right direction. I would see a decision, not feel right about it and be afraid to say something. It could have been a menu item or design element. It never failed, whatever that thing was, it would come back to bite me.

For example, something like chairs in a restaurant. I would let a bar stool pass because I thought the designers knew what they were talking about. At the time, I was thinking to myself, these stools look like they are going to break and not be that comfortable. Next thing I know, we are getting reviews that they break and aren’t comfortable.

So, I’ve learned to not let anything go. If I feel something, I should speak up about it. I’m a little bit more on the passive side and I never thought I was a great manager. I may be a good leader, but I always wanted to be the nice guy. I’ve gotten past that and I’ve hired people to help with that.

What do you think makes a great business leader? And how has your opinion on that changed over time?

Every time I think about a leader, I think of Braveheart and that scene where he’s on the horse and he’s in the frontline. Sometimes I fall short of this and I could have been a little passive at times, but a great leader is someone who is out in front in the trenches with his people.

I’ve always felt that leading by serving and putting others before yourself is huge in leadership. It has a big impact on staff retention as well. You can do it in a fake way, so you have to truly embrace it and care more about someone else’s well being than your own. By pouring into and serving someone it never fails to be helpful to them and it’s always come back and been great for me.

Is that something you’d say you’re doing on a day-to-day basis?

Yeah, everyday. I remember early on when we had to watch money, my wife would be like, “Why are you giving them a raise? Why can’t you give yourself a raise?” And I would just say that they need it more than I do and they deserve it. A lot of times I’m leaning towards that mindset.

What are some of the daily rituals you have that are really important for you to get stuff done?

I’ve been going to the gym and that has been so amazing for feeling better. I’ve always been one of those guys in the past that would sleep and sleep and never wanted to get up. Now I wake up at a somewhat decent hour and my mind is so much clearer and I can see things. I’m a better person, a better leader. I can inspire a little bit better now that I am taking care of myself.

Early on, my goal out of the gate was to learn everything. So everyday, I had the same ritual and I did everything everyday. I never wanted to be in a place where I didn’t know how to do something in the business. Am I a pro at managing servers? No, but I understand everything. I know how to run payroll and all this stuff.

There was this book that one of my roommates in Aspen told me I needed to read called The E-Myth. I remembered it being a story of a woman who started a pie-making business. She didn’t have time to look at the future or focus on the future because she was so busy making pies all day. I realized that clicked with me and that I needed to be in a place where I can be looking towards the future while staying connected to the current.

I can remember working with a chef from New York one time at a charity function and he told me he was off on the weekends. I was like, “How are you off weekends?” He said he made sure the restaurant was big enough so that it could afford him to walk away when he needed to walk away. I still don’t take weekends off because I don’t want to, but I don’t have to be there anymore. If my son’s playing tennis or my other son has something going on in Georgia then I’m there. I don’t have to be anywhere though, and that was the goal. It’s taken 12-13 years but I’m there now.

So you always hear about restaurant culture being a huge grind. How have you learned to balance those demands with being a husband and a father?

Early on, I made sure that my time off was focused. With my sons, we’d call it bro time and that was time I could take them away from my wife, but it was also time that I could really bond with them. We’d go out to the park and act like we’re dinosaurs or whatever. We just made it a ritual and it was something we didn’t miss for anything.

With being a husband, I started dating my wife when I was working a hundred hours a week so she knew it going into it. I do think about other Industries and I don’t know that other Industries are really any different. You know, really anyone who’s an entrepreneur is putting in a grind. I’ve never seen anybody be successful by not doing that.

What are the most rewarding aspects of what you do?

I’ll give you an example. When we first started JCT, I told the designer going into it, I wanted it to be a place that’s nice enough for a date night, but casual enough for weekly visits. I remember one time I was standing outside and saw someone talking on the phone to somebody saying, “You need to come see this JCT place. It’s cool because its nice enough for a date night but also casual.” In the moment, I’m just like, “man, that’s exactly what I set out to do.” I love hearing that confirmation.

It’s happened with The Optimist too. I wanted it to feel like you are down at Rosemary Beach or on vacation so that whenever you come, it takes you out of work or whatever and into another place. I hear people saying that they feel like they are on vacation when they are there. So, I guess it’s just that confirmation that what you set out to do you achieved and I don’t know any better fulfillment than that for me.