Transcript

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Welcome to Hospitality On The Rise, the podcast about the people shaping the hospitality industry and their journeys. I'm your host, Alice Cheng, Founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, hospitality's go-to hiring platform. And I'm here to give you your dose of virtual mentorship.

Here, we'll be sharing the stories, lessons learned, and advice from hospitality leaders who've carved out their own path to success. After all, this industry is where many get their start and go on to do incredible things.

Whether you're a pro, starting out, or just love the hustle, this podcast highlights what makes hospitality extraordinary, the people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

I'm so excited to have Chef Erik Battes with us today. Erik is the Executive Vice President of Food and Beverage at STARR Restaurants, which is headquartered in Philly, but across six or so, probably more coming soon, cities: in Philly, New York, DC, and a couple of cities in Florida, including Miami and also Nashville. Erik, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, I think our paths crossed a couple different times, and I found it really fascinating, kind of your career path and how it evolved. But I'm curious, how did it all begin? How did you get into hospitality?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Well, I've always had a connection to creative things and creative people. My parents were both artists growing up. My dad was a painter in animation back when that used to be hand painted. worked for Disney, Warner Brothers, grew up in LA. And my mom was a graphic artist. I sort of randomly wandered into cooking because I didn't really see a stable career path to become a drummer, which is what shaped the first 17 years of my life and I shaped my entire life around. 

At the time, I don't know, Food Network was kind of reaching its peak. And I thought that becoming a chef was a good balance between creativity and business, two things that I was interested in and actually turned out to be pretty true in this business. And I guess as luck has enabled it, the career has also been something that I was well suited for, which is not always the case when you go into culinary school. And then my first job in a restaurant, I decided to work for free. It was a Wolfgang Puck Cafe in a mall in LA where I worked for free to learn. And then I went to CIA.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Wow, yeah, I mean, we oftentimes see musical creativity kind of cross over into hospitality as well. That's one of the beauties of this industry as well. So you went to school in New York, so you went cross country.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

I did. I did. I don't know. I just looked for the best school I could find. And it was at a time when there was less availability on the internet, but I found my way to the CIA. And it was great.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, and I love that you mentioned Food Network, and oftentimes we kind of look at the past 10, 15, 20 years, and I feel like that time with Food Network really changing, it kind of inspired, I would say, a whole group of folks to see what would be possible, right? And made that really interesting and then kicked off this whole world into hospitality and careers in this world. So when you were at the CIA, were you thinking, “I'm gonna have my own restaurant one day”?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yes. I mean, world domination was always something that was kind of inside of me for whatever I was doing at the time. But I wanted to be at the best restaurant that I could find at the time. And I started trailing every weekend from the CIA when I was 19 years old, taking the train down as one does. Trailed at DANIEL with Alex Lee and Le Bernardin and Chanterelle with David Waltuck and with Marcus Samuelsson at Aquavit. 

And I finally found my way to Jean-Georges, which is where I did my externship. It was like, I don't know, my mind was blown there. It was small kitchen, main dining room kitchen had seven cooks, a chef and a sous chef. And the chef there, Greg Brainin, who's remained my mentor really ever since, he said that if you come every weekend until your externship, which is what I did, you can extern here. So every weekend it was just coming down in the city and helping the four star restaurant every weekend, plate food, work in the amuse-bouche station. It was awesome. And I ended up working for that group for seven years.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, well, Greg's awesome, obviously. And the team is really strong. They've, I shouldn't say, like, launched the careers of many, but they've definitely been the start of a lot of leaders that we've seen. And that's a great thing to also highlight, is that proximity. Yes, the CIA is one of the best schools, but it's also so close to Manhattan, where there's so many great restaurants. So clearly, taking advantage of that and taking the initiative put you in a position to kind of get a great externship. So you are externing at Jean-Georges, and how was that like? I mean, you kind of knew because you were there on the weekends and stuff.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

I mean, these guys were like–looking back and I still, I'm much older now, but I still remember them. They were like gods to me, honestly. With the level of skill they had. They were cool. They would go out and hang out and, I don't know, like, party after work, and I just wanted everything to do with what they were doing. The skill level that they had was incredible. And actually looking back, working alongside chefs that became really successful. I mean, I was cooking with James Kent and Greg Gourdet and other chefs who have gone on to do incredible things. So they were all on the line during that period.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, you externed also at a couple of different places. And you seem like a very methodical person that has frameworks and structure. Were you comparing specific things as you were testing out all these different kitchens, what you liked and what you didn't like? What ultimately helped you decide? For those listeners who might be at this point where they're like, “Where should I extern? Who should I go to? What should I do proactively?” Any advice for them [on] what to look for?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yeah I have to say that my priorities don't have to be everybody's priorities, and that there's a lot of great places to learn. But the framework that I found, I wanted to work in a restaurant that had somebody at the helm that would really invest and teach, but a place that you really could learn how to cook. And there was real cooking that was happening in that kitchen. It was not a 40-person kitchen where your job is to tweezer little whatever in some perfect little row. And that you're peeling shallots in the basement, which should teach very good lessons. But in that position in particular, there's actually two coveted roles, AM and PM, where you actually occupied a station where you worked amuse-bouche for the main dining rooms, you actually put out the first course. So you had a lot of responsibility. 

But I think that the first kitchens that you start your career at–and this is not universally the case–but if you can start your career at the best restaurant that you can find, it has a huge impact, I believe, on who you become as a chef, because you inherit their outlook on technique and excellence and communication and systems. And if you can really stick it out long enough–because kitchens have to hire a lot of people in general, but if you can be one of the people that really embraces what a restaurant like that has to offer, I think it will shape your worldview in life and as a professional chef.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, I love that. Great advice there. You figure out what your personal priorities are, and then go find the right place that you can meet those priorities and more, and then take that with you to the next place and the next place. 

You were there for seven years, you said, right? Six, seven years. Six, seven. I'm not cool enough to do that, but anyway. And you were at Perry Street as well, the opening sous there. Wow, what a great little restaurant, kind of on the outskirts, but not really. And then at what point were you like, “Okay, it's time to leave” and expand your personal experience into the next thing?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, Perry Street was a big experience for me. Jean-Georges is the flagship restaurant and one could say that to build a career there, you should stay there and that's where you should focus your attention. But opening Perry Street is a smaller restaurant. The chef at Jean-Georges, Greg, left Jean-Georges to open Perry Street, and he could only take a couple of people with him and I was one of them. And it was a small kitchen, like, two cooks on the hotline, one on garde manger, chef worked the line and was cooking and expediting from behind the line, like old school. And that was the perfect first sous chef job for me. And then really the first head chef job as CDC was essentially running the kitchen, which I did at 26.

There's something to be said about working your way up and knowing, I don't know… Everyone's always impressed by the 22 year old sous chef and like, “Wow, you're the chef of a restaurant.” We had a Michelin star at the time. That's impressive on paper, but there's more learning to be had. And at that point, I don't know, it's just opportunity presented itself, but it came to the point where I just wanted to see some new things.

Anyways, just to continue that. So I was offered another role that I, in retrospect, was probably underqualified for. But I took a role as a corporate chef for Laurent Tourondel with the BLT Group when that group was sort of at its prime and he was still a part of it. But to jump into a corporate position, I opened nine restaurants with that group. And you have a little bit of imposter syndrome and learn along the way because you realize you have some gaps in your education that you need to fill in. But as long as you can stay one step ahead of everyone and you can still contribute and do good work, which hopefully was the case when I was there.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Well I guess you never really know until you try, right? And I think part of that is taking the leap and having enough belief in yourself that you are prepared to a certain extent, but then also being willing to learn while you're there and recognize that there are some areas that you need to be filled. 

Do you remember like one or two things that during that time when you were like, “Oh I wish I knew more about this” or “I should have trained more or learned these types of skills before jumping into that type of role”?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Honestly, I think that everybody should be a little bit less impatient about climbing ladders and really learn fundamentals of cooking. I learned a lot at Jean-Georges, but Jean-Georges is a particular style. It's very, very well developed. It's hyper quantified in a way. But you learned a lot of great things there. But I don't know. I wish I could have worked in a classic restaurant and learned French cooking. I wish I could have cooked in Paris, for instance. Some people-management stuff, I'm sure that you learn along the way just from a leadership and management perspective, but that just kind of happened with time anyway.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, that's great. We hear that often, actually, people that give advice to themselves is slow down a little bit, cook more, cook different styles, get different experience before you take a leap. Sometimes it is a timing thing, you get an opportunity, but if you're not ready for it and you take it too soon, that could potentially work against you. I mean, in this case, it did not. But then I would also say, once you get there, ask for help, right? And I'm sure you had other people around you that you could reach out to for some advice. I'm sure Greg was there, ready to help.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yeah, I mean, certainly from a food perspective, you can always find someone who knows more than you. And I've stopped a long time ago trying to pretend like I can know and do everything.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, well, I see here that that experience did also take you into working across the country, partnerships, hotels, etc. So it opened probably some other avenues of learning and experience while you were doing that. Did you go back to Jean-Georges after that?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yeah, I did. I had the opportunity to go back as a chef de cuisine to the flagship, which was a dream that I definitely couldn't pass up. To be able to operate a restaurant like that at that level, just to feel the pressure of operating a kitchen with those types of standards with a small team, it really, really teaches you. It burns into your brain forever what excellence really looks like. Definitely wouldn't trade that for anything. But I was back with JG for about a year before I ended up joining STARR.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, so what I take from that also is never burn your bridges. 

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Definitely.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

You know, I joke, but not. I think employers also recognize that if you do leave on good terms and you go do some other great things, you are more valuable to them. So you're acquiring other skills and experiences that then you can bring back to them later on as well. Kudos for that on all fronts. So now you're part of STARR. I see you're Executive Chef of Morimoto.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

That's right, yeah. This was my favorite chef job ever, really. Morimoto was a great restaurant. I was coming straight off of working at Jean-Georges. The restaurant was busy, it made money, the product was incredible. I got to really dive into Japanese ingredients and the food. I mean, it's easy to obsess over Japanese food as a chef. And the restaurant sold enough tuna pizzas and rock shrimp tempuras so that I can play in the corner with, like… I cooked more there and I created more there than I ever had in my life. You work for Jean-Georges, you work within a bit of a framework. There is opportunity to create there, but not like there was for me at Morimoto. So that was a great time. I had a great team there and then segued that into another corporate role. It keeps pulling me into these styles of positions. But then I became a corporate chef after that.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, and I'm going to hold on to that for a minute. For those who aspire to be a corporate chef, what would you say is the biggest difference between being an executive chef at a restaurant and then being a corporate chef?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Well, I have a lot of opinions on this, and I think it depends on the group that you're with and the size of the company to some degree. If you're with a smaller group, and this kind of comes down to the idea of generalist versus specialist or depth versus breadth, you know? If you're with a smaller group that has one corporate chef, you kind of need to be a generalist. You are involved with operations, you are doing menu development, maybe you're covering on the schedule sometimes, you're providing some leadership and firefighting a lot.

But in larger groups, it ends up enabling a little bit more specialization. So you could have people who are really focused on operations, who are essentially, I mean, STARR, we have corporate chefs who are almost like project managers. They are managing new restaurant openings and designing kitchens and hiring teams and really quarterbacking entire projects. We have others that are more firefighters that are great generalists that could go in and fix a problem when the omelet is off at this restaurant or we need a new spring garnish for this duck dish over here. And then we have specialists. I don't know, I kind of personally refer to them as super chefs in a way. People who have the level of cooking pedigree that is like the 1% of the 1%, and their skill set is like really primarily–not primarily, but it's best suited, the highest and best use of some of these people, these types of folks, to help develop the menus and the cooking that happens within the restaurants.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

I love it.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

So for me, I have experienced kind of a lot of that. When I joined STARR as a corporate chef, there were just two corporate chefs and a lot of ground to cover, and I ended up having to do a lot and wear a lot of different hats. As we've continued to grow and I've returned to STARR after another break, which we can talk about later…

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Oh yeah, we're getting into that.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

But you can kind of have different types of folks do different types of things.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah. I mean, arguably when you joined STARR as a corporate chef the first time, they were a lot smaller, right? Because they're in a different stage of growth now. But let's hone in on that in-between because I love the fact that you then took all of your skills and experience, etc., and then took it in a totally different direction. So you went to work with Good Uncle. You were the Chief Operating Officer at Good Uncle for a while, with Wiley.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, yes, yeah. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

I didn't know that actually, I just realized that.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

So this was like a seminal moment for me. And I think that if you look at a career path for going from a cook to somebody who's doing what I do without this experience, it just simply could not have existed just based on what I learned during this time period. After 17 years in the industry and opening a lot of restaurants between a couple of different restaurant groups, I had kind of reached a point where I was a corporate chef kind of early in my career. I think it's a great role for someone. And I think that you can certainly enter roles like that at certain times. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, truly. I think that the act of creation and the energy behind creating something new has always been something interesting. So I had the opportunity to join an early stage venture capital-backed startup right at their first round of institutional funding called Good Uncle, which was a college meals business. I found a very different type of mentor there. You mentioned Wiley Cerilli. He's like one of these near mythical levels of high frequency people, like Steve Jobs type. Like off the charts charisma, super strategic thinker, most skilled salesperson I've ever met. He had a hundred million dollar exit right before this. So to be able to be exposed to this type of business, which started as one thing and ended as another, but I was exposed to things like working with–instead of restaurant people who are awesome, and I have nothing but great things to say about people in our business, but to be able to work with software engineers and product people and incredible marketers and Wharton MBAs. And you talk about mind-blowing and expanding of your worldview. I got to, for that chapter, really invent and navigate a food business through a couple of business model pivots and then to an eventual exit acquisition to Aramark in 2019, which was an incredible experience.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yes. I mean, many never get a piece of that experience, let alone the beginning to end, right, which is super unique. And when those types of opportunities come about, absolutely the fact that you did what you did up to that time and you have that type of experience kind of prepared you to, quite frankly, get hired for that position, right? Because oftentimes people say, “Well, that sounds so cool. I want to do that.” Yeah, but how do you prepare yourself to be able to step into a role like that, right?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, yeah, again, I don't know. Certain people are really excellent, but a lot of the world is structured based on maps, and you follow the map. And there's certain people, I believe myself included, that are really drawn to situations where there's no map and then you need to create it. So it was just a perfect fit. And honestly, a lot of the thrill of opening restaurants and just doing kind of these new things on the tip of what a company is doing is just 10x magnified in a startup environment. 

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

I did it twice. Even after Good Uncle, I was a part of another startup that had a different and opposite outcome, which was another incredible experience also.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, so take me to that one. So you did that, you went through the acquisition, you were at Aramark, and then you're like, “Oh, I'm going to go do the entrepreneurship again.”

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yeah. So I was advising for a venture fund called Armory Square Ventures for somebody that I’d actually become friends with. But back when venture capital was still investing in food and not just B2B software and AI, I was asked to advise on a potential investment during the pandemic, which was a direct consumer meals business that was exploding with growth at the time, like triple digits month over month. And it made sense for me to join the business as president at the time. 

And grew that business from a small commissary kitchen model to a 84,000 square foot manufacturing facility. We were shipping 110,000 meals a week nationally and really the training wheels were off with that one. We raised $30 million and had a really good run. But we weren't operating profitably, as many businesses like this do not, but just with the intention of growth. But as interest rates started to rise and post-pandemic, it just became apparent that we couldn't continue to fundraise. And we attempted to sell the business with an investment bank, which didn't end up materializing. 

But really dramatic story. In the end, our senior secured lender of some debt that we had ended up sweeping our bank account and rendering our business insolvent. We just had to shut down. So that was an insane experience to have gone through. But the lessons that I learned from that about business, about corporate finance, about people and managing emotions through times like this, you could never have learned that through business school.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting chills because obviously, Culinary Agents is a venture-backed startup as well. 

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

But I'm like, I just saw my past 14 years of my life flash before my eyes. Anyway.

But what incredible, right, to get that type and that level of experience, I mean, with a very short amount of time. That's very intense, very intense. I don't know if I'm saying it, but I'm feeling it as well. It's like, I can't even describe it as how intense that must have been for you. But amazing experience, right? So after all of this, you went to do other things as well. Well, you did a lot of stuff. And I see you're doing advising for Naya. Am I reading that right?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, yeah. So I'll be honest, when we wound down that business or whatever hit a brick wall with that business, I was at a bit of a crossroads. I imagined possibly never coming back to the restaurant business. I was like, “I'm going to stay in startups. This is for me, and I'm going to just raise money and do it again. And I want to be an entrepreneur.” And I came face to face with the realization of how much my identity was tied to myself professionally. 

And in that in-between period where it was like, all right, I know a lot, but it's in a sector that is going through a nuclear winter and may never come back. I did some soul searching and consulting and just to kind of pick up some projects that filled in some time. But really, I made the choice to come back to the restaurant industry and called Stephen Starr and really made the choice that if I'm going to come back, there's no restaurant group that I'd rather work for than STARR Restaurants. So it made sense for me to come back after a couple months of conversations. I wanted to make sure that I came back with a certain type of role, with a certain type of company, that I could continue at least with the spirit of the entrepreneurial energy that I had, which honestly, STARR is the perfect place for.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah. Yes, restaurants in general–I was going to make a comment earlier, but I was just listening to every word that you're saying–is that there's a lot of parallels with regular entrepreneurship journey, with opening a restaurant and going through those learnings and struggles for first time founders, if you will, and startups in the context of venture-backed startups and fundraising, what people kind of think startups. 

But there's so much of the similar challenges and life cycles of the business, etc., emotional roller coaster, all those things, I think you can draw from both sides. So it's not that far-fetched that you would A) join a group like STARR because, like I mentioned earlier, the growth in the past couple of years and then what's planned has just been one after another. I don't even know, I can barely keep up with you guys, but congrats, because that's, you know… First of all, I hope you took a beat after all that because I feel like going through all that is also…

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

I didn’t let myself enjoy one single moment of it, Alice, to be honest. I know. When you have a family and you are faced with like, all right, paycheck stopped and you need to find something when you reach a certain level, it takes time to find something, the right thing. I learned a lot through that period of treating a job search, if you don't have a job, as a job. So really I would just punch in every day and just kind of start networking, working through whatever that process looked like. So no, I got no beats, although emotionally, I was not showing up to it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, and I'm sure you have actually, I was gonna say, what keeps you inspired? How do you refill your cup? I hope you've been able to find little beats in between to kind of take a step back and enjoy. But I wanna latch onto what you just said about when you reach a certain point or any points in your career where you have a logical, take a moment and self assess or reassess your priorities, what you wanna do, your skills, etc. to treat finding a job or mapping out the next step of your career as a job. Now more than ever, there's more tools, information, whatever. If you ask yourself the hard questions and you realize that this type of path is what you want, work it back. What are the skills you need? Who's successful there? Who do you admire? How do you acquire those skills? What businesses should you work for in order to get closer to those other people? I mean, it really, to your mapping conversation, it really is like an exercise.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, there's a lot of cool frameworks that I kind of came across for that process. A self-assessment or a 360 assessment of what jobs could I get easily today if I applied? What jobs would be a stretch, and then what jobs can you probably not get? And to kind of map out that landscape and just realize the power of network and just having conversations with people just to stay top of mind and not necessarily having an ask for them. I was guessing CEOs’ email addresses and cold emailing them and all of the things, so it was cool. I mean, it's an interesting thing to unpack and fun. It's like dating, maybe, I don't know. Like I'd never, I've been with my wife since we were in high school, so I'm not one to speak to that. But you know, there is some excitement in playing that game as well.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Yeah, yeah, and lean on the people that you can ask for help with. I genuinely believe that people want to help, and sometimes the help is just talking through something. And also asking them to connect you to somebody else that might be good for you to talk to, right? That's how we initially got connected, through people that we knew that was like, “Hey, talk to this person.”

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Yeah, the kind of lightweight consulting leading to a full-time role thing is a good path too for people.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Yeah, yeah. Well, congrats. I always say that this industry is like the center of gravity, kind of pulls you, draws you back in. 

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Yeah.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

And I guess I can arguably say that that's also like Stephen and STARR Restaurants, right? Stephen has his own gravitational pull in and of itself.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Like the sun and the solar system.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

Right. On that note, we're going to go to quickfire. What advice would you tell your younger self?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Well, I'm going to skip the “stay cooking longer” one. But I don't know. I think that balance is a choice. And at certain times, I think I could have possibly made a choice to have a little bit more of it. But just making sure that if you choose to have relationships and a family and things like that, that you have to be able to support that with sufficient attention and time as well.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for someone struggling in the industry?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES 

Well, going back to the identity thing, I think that the number one thing is that you need to realize that you are not your job. Honestly, the industry rewards the opposite most of the time. People who care the most and do the most are often the ones who are celebrated, but you should be careful to not tie your identity too close to your work, for fear of collapse at a certain point. But creating separation actually I think makes you better at your job.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

What's your advice for fellow hospitality leaders?

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

I don't know. I'll do a call to action, okay, because this is a career podcast. I think that we are going to have to build the next generation of leaders and creatives if we're going to keep this industry alive and un-commoditized and special. I'm sure everyone is seeing that true, real talent is scarce. For chefs in particular, if you've been around long enough, you've seen the transition from the classic technique and cooking with your senses to where we're at with all the hyper quantification. And I think that all of where we're at is a direct result of a scarcity of talent to some degree or some imbalance of supply and demand. And that buying talent has its limitations. And I think that we need to go back to teaching certain things and move away from the dilution and inspire cooks to want to be great cooks. And we, as stewards of this industry, I think we need to create an industry that's worthy of attracting high aptitude and high performing people to enter it.

HOST: ALICE CHENG 

I love it. I love the call to action. Erik, on that note, thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing your really interesting and long career. Although you are very young, you’ve done a lot. And can't wait to see what's next.

GUEST: ERIK BATTES

Great. Well, excited to have done this. Thank you, Alice.

HOST: ALICE CHENG

Remember, success looks different for everyone in hospitality. No two paths are the same. If you have a leader or a topic you want to hear about, email [email protected].

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