Michael Shemtov

'Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.'

So I got started really early. I'd been working in restaurants throughout high school. Like my first job — I think probably at 13 — was working for a pizza shop. They would drop me at the front of a neighborhood, and I'd walk and put a flyer on everybody's door for specials.

It's definitely not for everybody. I think it's important to know what you're getting into and why you're getting into it. So if you're going to open a restaurant, be at a point in your life where you're prepared to not take a paycheck for a year.

I understand that businesses may need to bump prices, and I'm willing to do it because I think that restaurant employees should have health insurance. I don't think that they should be a broken ankle away from bankruptcy.

Even though it's my 10th restaurant and 25 years of doing it, we still made the same mistakes. We made certain assumptions that are just not true. You always think it's gonna be faster and less expensive than it ends up being. Even if you just came out of a project that was over budget and over timeline, your next one you think is going to be on budget and on time. So just know that going in and steel yourself for it.