April 17, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Confessions Beyond the Food, listeners are taken behind the scenes with restaurant industry veteran and creative powerhouse Mark Brezinski—author of Fork Fight and the visionary behind some of the country’s most iconic dining concepts. From the early days of Macaroni Grill to the launch of Pei Wei and collaborations with brands like Pizza Hut and Velvet Taco, Brezinski has left a lasting mark on the foodservice landscape.
This conversation explores the emotional and often unpredictable journey of building a restaurant from the ground up. It’s a raw, revealing look at the spark of an idea, the grind of execution, and the highs and lows that come with bringing bold concepts to life. From risk and resilience to discovery and consequence, this episode pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to create something enduring in the ever-evolving world of dining.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Confessions Beyond the Food.
I'm your host, Nancy Redland.
Let's dig in and get inspired.
Welcome back to ConfessionsBeyond the Food, where we dive
deep into the stories that shapethe food service world.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I have the absolute pleasure of sitting down with
Mark Brzezinski, a restaurantvisionary, concept creator and
the author of the incrediblebook Fork Fight.
I have to say I was completelyabsorbed in Fork Fight.
The story is raw and real andfilled with a kind of behind the
scenes truths you rarely get tohear in our industry.
(00:44):
I was genuinely sad when it wasover because it pulled me into
the emotional roller coaster ofwhat it takes to bring a
restaurant to life.
Mark isn't just a storyteller,he's a creator.
His fingerprints are all oversome of the most recognizable
restaurant brands in the country.
He was a founding force behindPayway, played a key role in the
(01:07):
early days of Macaroni Grilland has worked with industry
giants like Pizza Hut and VelvetTaco.
His ability to bring innovativeconcepts to life has shaped how
we experience dining, blendingcreativity and deep operational
knowledge.
Today we're peeling back thelayers of that journey, starting
(01:28):
with a spark of an idea,through the grit of execution
and, ultimately, theunpredictable arc of success or
failure.
We'll talk about the risk,commitment, discovery and
consequences of following acreative vision, and what it
truly takes to build somethingthat lasts.
(01:49):
Welcome, mark.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh, I'm thrilled to have you.
So let's start with why youwanted to do the book.
I thought, it was really coolthat you know back in.
You know, going into collegeyou wanted to go into journalism
and you write poetry and youread a lot of poetry, so the
full circle of having a book isreally cool.
(02:13):
So tell us what inspired you todo this.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I've always loved writing.
I mean, my grandmother I thinkmy mother's mother was the one
who always encouraged me to read, read, read, read.
And back in the day, when Igrew up, we didn't have cell
phones, we didn't have theInternet, we didn't you know.
So our entertainment was eithersomething physical, like sports
, or it was something morecerebral, like reading right, or
(02:37):
creating.
You know math.
Whatever it was, I just took toreading.
I became a voracious reader.
I read all to reading.
I became a voracious reader.
I read all the classics.
You know, some of my favoriteauthors were Steinbeck, Clavel,
you know some of the otherpeople who started writing more
novelistic type things.
But I always read and I turnedthat into a love of writing.
(02:59):
I didn't write books because Ididn't know how books were
constructed.
I mean, I could at that time.
But I could write poetry.
I could put thoughts togetherin poems, and that's the way I
kind of counteracted.
My shyness is I could writethings down and hand it to
people and run away and let themread it right.
So I used poetry as an entreeinto expressing myself to people
(03:23):
in a way that I couldn'tpersonally face to face.
So that was kind of a coward'sway out of trying to meet people
is through poetry, but itdeveloped where people
encouraged me.
I had teachers who encouragedme and I went to my dad when
it's time to go to college andsaid I really want to go to the
school to study journalism.
(03:44):
When it's time to go to college, I said I really want to go to
the school to study journalismand he looked at me in a no
uncertain term, said no, son ofmine is going to go and study
something like journalism.
You're going to study businessif I'm going to pay for it.
Long story short, I went andstudied business but did poetry
and journalism on the side.
I wrote for the school.
The college newspaper I wrotefor the local Ithaca Journal was
(04:05):
the name of the paper.
I wrote a sports column forthem.
So I always kept dabbling inwriting.
But there was no methodology orpath for me to make a living
out of it.
So it became just a great hobbylike anything else.
A great hobby whether it's flyfishing or tennis or whatever it
is you like as a hobby.
It became my hobby anytime Iwould meet somebody and I was
(04:26):
inspired.
I'd write a poem, I'd writeshort stories, but I was a I, I
was in business.
That's the way I made my living.
But as my career pursuitprogressed, uh, and then I'm
gonna really fast forward to thethe In my business, in the
restaurant business, we came toa grinding halt, as many
(04:49):
businesses did, don't get mewrong.
But I had nothing to do.
I mean, I literally couldn'ttravel the way I like to travel.
My restaurants were typicallythe ones I was affiliated with
at the time were closed ortrying to adjust.
So I was kind of stuck in themud for a little while and I
said, well, it's as good a timeas any.
I love to write, I live alone,I've been married, I never had
(05:12):
children, but at that point Iwas living alone and it was like
, okay, what am I gonna do?
I can't watch TV, you know, 16hours a day.
So I got down, I got my computerout, just started writing my
story and not an autobiography,but I like to tell stories.
So I turned it into kind of ajourney book.
I call it a journey book, not astory book, because it is about
(05:33):
my journey, you know, from howI started to how I got to where
I am today.
And like all journeys, it's notalways smooth, it's not always
all ups, and you knowstrawberries and cream.
Sometimes you get to the bottomof the barrel and I've just
felt like my story had to bereal and I had to tell the
(05:54):
stories of the great successesbut also how I dealt with
failure and how I came back fromfailure and all the processes
that go into that journey.
And that's kind of what it wasthe pandemic, as bad as it was,
and as many things that changedfor so many people.
It changed my life because itput me back in a position to
(06:15):
lean on writing as something tooccupy my time.
So that's how Fork Fight cameto be and it just came naturally
.
I didn't have to do research,it was all from memory.
I've been blessed with a goodmemory, so as I wrote my stories
, it all comes back to me andfortunately I had a good editor
(06:37):
who kept me on the straight andnarrow and helped me through the
process.
And one thing led to another andwhen we were done we submitted
it through an agent to multiplepublishers.
And about a week after we didthat I got a call from a
publisher at Simon Schuster,which surprised me, and she said
(06:59):
Mark, I fell in love with youthrough your book.
Don't go anywhere else.
We're going to publish yourbook.
And then that was completelyout of the blue to me.
I'd never gotten a call likethat, Didn't expect a call like
that.
Quite frankly, A lot of peopletold me I might have to
self-publish my book and so Iwas prepared for anything.
(07:19):
I was prepared for not evenpublishing, but the experience
of writing it was was fulfillingenough.
The experience of having apublisher say they want to
publish just took it warp speedright, Took it to another level
and I've been blessed.
When it came out I was probablyproud of Simone in my life and
it was.
It's been fun, it's been a,it's just been part of the
(07:41):
journey, quite frankly.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It's always good to look back and reflect on the
journey, and so, actually whatyou just told me, I'm a little
bit shocked right now that yousaid that you were shy in high
school.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Oh, I'm really shy.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I mean, you are a bold businessman and
entrepreneur in our industry andthat is a little shocking to me
.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Well, I played sports and I come from a family of
five kids.
I was the youngest and mybrother closest to me and I were
always really good in sports.
So we played all sportstogether.
So I expressed myselfathletically and I was very good
at it.
I made all-state in basketballand I was written up in the
grade.
But that was all like outsideof me.
(08:29):
You know what I mean.
It was something I did, notsomething I was, and I used that
forum to meet people and when Imet people I liked that's when
I would write poetry to thembecause I couldn't express
myself personally face to face.
But I could express myselfreally well when I wrote it down
(08:49):
and then, like I said, I was acoward.
I would write a girl a poem andI'd fold it up and give it to
her, but fortunately peopleliked it and they were
encouraging.
So, yeah, but very, extremelyshy, the late bloomer for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, but those words and your creativity definitely
played into your conceptdevelopment.
And speaking of that, so youtalk about the bubble start of
creativity what does that momentfeel like when a new concept
starts to take shape?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It's so hard to explain, nancy.
I mean thought bubbles, right,I've written an article about
how everything starts with athought bubble and how those
happen.
I don't really know, but I doknow that it's all about being
committed to whatever it is thatyou do.
And for me, being committedmeans when somebody opens a new
(09:47):
restaurant or I hear aboutsomebody doing something new, I
have to go out, I have to go seeit, I have to experience it.
As an example, I'm going to NewYork next week with a client
for a week.
I love New York.
It's like a second home to me.
I know it like the back of myhand.
But this client wants to studyItalian food.
So we're going to go to, infour days, probably 30, 40
(10:08):
places.
You don't eat it, I mean, younibble, you learn how to eat and
run, so to speak.
But you know that thoughtbubble about what we're going to
create together starts withokay, let's go see what other
people are doing, let's absorb.
I always say innovation is asmuch about absorbing as it is
about emitting, and I thinksomewhere along the line I just
(10:34):
became very good at absorbingand was committed to it, because
you and I both met a lot ofpeople.
The first thing I want to do istell you all about themselves
and everything they've done intheir life.
And you sit there after about15 minutes and realize you're
not having a conversation,you're having a monologue.
You know they're telling youabout them, I'm telling you
about them before you know it.
But somewhere along the line,in order to be a good listener I
(10:54):
think that's part of being agood writer is you have to
listen to the.
It's going to sound corny.
The universe talking to you andyou the universe talking to you
, and you have to absorb thatand you have to know what to do
with it once you get it.
So a thought bubble is okay,let's look at this.
Then you have to know what todo with what you just saw.
An artist may have aninspiration, but do they work
(11:15):
from photographs?
Do they work completely fromtheir mind?
You might like an abstractartist like Chagall, who
probably didn't work fromphotographs.
He probably worked from justwhat was creating his mind.
To other people who are doinglandscapes and doing you know,
realism.
So it just depends upon yourindividual.
Me, as an individual, it alwaysstarts with.
(11:38):
I wonder about the curiosity,the four C's of innovation in my
mind Curiosity.
You have to have curiosity.
You can't always think you knowthe answer.
You have to go explore, youhave to go out and absorb things
.
So curiosity is the first step.
You have to have courage.
You have to believe in yourselfenough to fight through all the
(12:01):
naysayers and all the barriersyou're going to experience.
Then you have to havecommitment.
You have to say I'm committedto it, I've studied it, I'm
curious, I've done, courageousenough.
Now I need to be committed.
And once you're committed, thefourth C is capital.
You have to have the ability todo it, because without the
(12:22):
capital it's just an idea to doit, because without the capital
it's just an idea.
And ultimately, for some reasonand I can't explain it I've
been able to follow all thosesteps through the creation of
concepts that I've done.
Either I've been with partnerslike Paul Fleming for PF Chang's
, or when I worked with Brinker,with Norman Brinker.
(12:42):
They had the money, I had thethoughts, we all had the
curiosity.
You put it all together.
So it's rare that your group oras an individual you can do all
of it so typically.
Another C if you had to add one,if somebody said, hey, you have
to have another one.
We need collaboration.
You can't do this by yourself,people, I can write a book.
(13:04):
I wrote a book but I couldn'tdo this by yourself.
People, I can write a book.
I wrote a book, but I couldn'tdo it by myself.
I mean, I needed an editor toread it, I needed friends to
give me feedback, I needed thepublisher to say we need this,
we need more of this.
So you collaborate on a book,you write a book, but you
collaborate on a published book.
There's a difference.
Right when I was writing poetryand articles, I didn't have
(13:27):
editors.
You know, you're just writingand send it out and say this is
what I think.
But when you do conceptual work,it's always a blending of those
Cs plus adding thecollaboration to it, and I don't
know how to describe it.
Honestly, somebody says wheredoes it come from?
I say I don't know.
You know I mean your mind comesmostly in shower moments, you
(13:49):
know you just the water ispouring down and you're just
thinking about your day andyou're thinking about what if,
what if, what, if?
So to me, that's my time to askwhat if?
What if this?
What if we did this?
What if we did that?
I just had breakfast with somefriends and I talked about an
idea I came up with for a client, which was what I call Pad Thai
(14:10):
Poor Boy.
So Pad Thai is a Thai dish.
It's a noodle dish.
You usually eat with chopsticksor a knife fork or whatever.
So I came up with the idea ofwhy not take those great flavors
and put it on a baguette greatflavors and put it on a baguette
.
We're in the South.
You know New Orleans, you knowTexas, south Houston, you know
(14:31):
where I was working with aclient.
She said so let's do a poor boy, but let's put Pad Thai flavors
on it.
And we created a Pad Thai poorboy.
That didn't exist anywhere.
But the thought bubble was Iwant a handheld sandwich that
tastes Asian.
That doesn't exist.
So you have these thoughts.
How do I connect them?
And sometimes you're just ableto connect them.
You can't explain how youconnect them, but you connect
(14:55):
them.
And so Thought Bubbles broughttogether, encouraged and
developed.
I don't know how else todescribe it.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, in your book you talked about all your
travels across the world and Ithought it was really
interesting.
You mentioned Mumbai, forBengal Coast, and how you
immersed yourself in the foodculture, trying out a billion
(15:24):
different restaurants and thenbringing it back to the States
and figuring out how that'sgoing to translate here to the
American palate and thenconversely taking when you were
with Pizza Hut on and you wentit was China, china, yes.
And you went, it was it waschina, china, yes, and then
going out and coming up with, um, a set menu for a more
(15:48):
condensed menu for them.
Um, I thought it wasfascinating here like they had
like hundreds of items on theirmenu.
Their pizza had many piecesvery different in china.
I learned through your bookcompletely different.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, um, and I don't know.
You know it's, it's funny.
Again, I want to go back to theabsorbing versus emitting.
Even that trip to Mumbai and atthat point in my life I had
enough money where we actuallycircumnavigated the world I mean
, we started in Japan, we hoppeddown to Thailand, we hopped
(16:21):
over to India, we went to Londonand then we came home.
So I don't know how many peopleget to circumnavigate the world
in one trip, but we wereblessed and fortunate to do it
that time.
But even that trip, it wasn'tabout me consuming things.
It was about me absorbingthings, like we would go to a
restaurant.
I traveled with a very famous,well-known chef.
(16:41):
His name is Mark Miller, didCoyote Cafe, the father of
Southwestern cuisine, but healso knows Asian food.
Anyway, I asked Mark to join meand we would go to five, six,
seven restaurants a day.
But I wasn't there to eat allthat food.
I was there to look at it and Iwas there to watch Mark tell me
how it was made and I was thereto watch other people enjoying
(17:05):
it, how they enjoyed it.
But if I ate everything atevery place, I would have been
probably sick, because it's hardto eat that many things at that
many different places when yourstomach or your system is
acclimated to a certainlifestyle.
So when I travel, the funnything is people want to hear try
(17:25):
this, try this.
I'm like no, because I'm nothere to taste it, I'm here to
watch it.
I'm here to look at it.
I'm here to watch it.
I'm here to look at it.
I'm here to take pictures of it.
I'm here to try to understandhow you did it, not how it
appeals to me.
How it appeals to me isincidental.
I'm not trying to match it upwith me.
(17:45):
I'm trying to say where doesthis go?
How do I incorporate this?
So it's funny.
One quick funny story I was inBeijing and we how do I
incorporate this?
So it's funny.
When quick funny story went to,I was in Beijing and we went to
a hot pot place.
You know a hot pot is right andand they bring you a big bowl
of broth and all these otherelements and the people I was
with a neat interpreter, youknow it's very typical for them
(18:08):
to eat things like lamb heartsthat we would not eat here,
intestines and heart, and theywere very curious what I thought
of it and I'm like I don't dothat.
I apologize, but I don't dothat.
(18:29):
I'll watch you enjoy it and seehow you use it.
But all I could eat was somenoodles and some green tea
because I couldn't be in themiddle of Beijing.
And all of a sudden my stomach,and you know, like what do you
do in the middle of Beijing ifyou can't fulfill your trip?
So I tell stories like that inthe book about how people expect
(18:51):
me to give them opinions on allthis wonderful exotic food.
I'm like when I was in China Iate a lot of pizza and a lot of
fried chicken, you know.
And so even in India youbrought up Mumbai we went by so
many street stalls and standsand you look and as an American
I'm looking at.
So where's the running water?
(19:11):
Where's the hot water?
How many places is that rag bin?
Because I can't, but I want toabsorb and see how it works and
see what other people are doing.
So I apologize for that longexplanation, but I'm not as
experimental in terms of what Iingest as I am as to what I
absorb.
There's a difference.
And Jess, as I am is the word Iabsorb.
(19:32):
There's a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's really cool.
I went to China a couple yearsback and I was really worried
about you know, because theyentertain you.
You know they're wonderfulentertainers and so.
But yeah, I couldn't wait.
I was so excited to see thosegolden arches in the airport, so
okay.
(19:54):
So the restaurant industry isrelentless.
What do you think peopleunderestimate the most when
committing to a concept?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I think, underestimate the amount of
tweaking you might have to do.
You know, I've been quoted assaying that if in a new concept,
if you get it 80% right, you'rea genius, you know.
But people have this desire tothink that they can get it 100%.
Number one I don't believe inperfection.
I just don't think it exists,right?
(20:25):
You hear people I strive forperfection.
I was like I don't do that.
I strive to be as good as I canbe or create something as good
as I can create it with thegroup.
But ultimately, I think peopleunderestimate that you're going
to make mistakes.
Don't punish yourself for themistakes.
Correct them quickly.
(20:47):
You and I were just talkingabout a salad right, taking a
salad and shaking a salad.
If you realize that you missedthat and you need to add it, be
quick.
Don't personalize it.
Don't call yourself an idiotfor missing it.
Don't try to blame somebodybecause you missed something.
Just correct it, Adjust it,massage it, make it better.
(21:10):
Most people think becauseyou've got to get it, so right
right away.
That's not the goal.
The goal is not to get it.
The goal is to get it as closeto your vision as possible and
then again, absorb and learn,observe what people are doing
with it and then adjust it.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Right, because it always doesn't translate.
The way that you think in yourmind and I think that was
something that was reallyprofound in your book is you
would create this unbelievableconcept and be wildly successful
.
And then people come in andthey have their ideas and, like
you said, rigidity, I think thatwas the word you used Rigidity
(21:51):
yeah, and so that they justdon't want to change, they don't
want to adapt, they just wantto get their point across.
You know, be right.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I look at your studio here.
Right, I'm wearing your shophere and it didn't start like
this.
I mean, you started somewhere,but along the way you said, hey,
I've got to have this line, orI want to expand into this room,
I need more space.
Whatever it is, any business,you just got to get it going.
You have to have the ability.
I go back to the four C's You'vegot to be curious enough,
(22:22):
you've got to be courageousenough, you've got to be
committed and you've got to havethe capital to make it work.
But then after that, you've gotto be able to adjust.
And 80% is probably generous.
But the concepts as I look back, I'm trying to think I'd say
that was the biggest part of mysuccess.
I was able to get most of themright out of the box without
(22:44):
having major adjustments, buteach one of them had make no
mistake.
When you go into a Velvet Tacotoday, it's different than the
first Velvet Taco, because ithas to be Right.
There are learning curves and,by the way, not all learning
curves are good.
Sometimes people becomeinvolved after the fact and want
(23:06):
to change things without reallyhaving a reason other than they
want to put their fingerprinton it.
So you've got to.
There's a lot to manage.
Even after you open, there's alot to manage.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So you mentioned in Fortify that failure isn't just
possible, it's almost inevitable.
How do you decide when to pushforward and when to pivot?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Okay.
So the practical answer of itis when you run out of money,
it's when you stop Because youcan't keep on raising money.
Although I've I've been theremyself too you've read about
that where I just kept pouringmoney.
I think money's gonna.
Money's gonna solve the solvethe problem.
Money doesn't solve the problem.
Uh, sometimes you just miss themark.
(23:49):
Sometimes you just are in thewrong place at the wrong time or
chose the wrong location forthe right concept and the time.
It's a collection of things.
Honestly, it's not a singularanswer.
It's a collection of how muchmoney you have.
It's a collection of whatpeople are telling you you have
to have an intervention.
Interventions aren't just foraddictions.
You can be addicted to successand need an intervention.
(24:10):
Interventions aren't just foraddictions.
So you can be addicted tosuccess and need an intervention
for somebody to tell you whenyou're really not going to where
you think you're going.
I've done that.
I've had friends and peersintervene with me and say enough
, right, didn't work.
(24:31):
And then there are times whenI've realized myself don't work,
stop, stop the bleeding, so tospeak.
Move on.
You've got other ideas.
And that's part of it, I think,nancy, is that you have to have
the faith in yourself that youcan recover from a failure, and
that isn't an innate thing,that's not something we're born
(24:54):
with.
That's something we learn.
We learn from failure.
You know you can listen to I'ma sports person, so you can
listen to the Larry Birds andthe Michael Jordans of the world
and even you know Roger Federeris watching something.
The tennis player is talkingabout how in his lifetime he's
only won 54% of the points ofhis matches.
(25:15):
You go how's that possible?
And you've got 22, 23 majortitles.
Well, you don't have to winevery point.
You have to win more pointsthan you lose and you have to
win them at the right time.
So the more you listen andrealize as you get older that
failure is part of the processand you're not going to win all
the time, but that you canrecover from it and probably
(25:38):
highlight those things that helpyou be successful and try to
replicate those.
But somewhere you have to learnthat failure is inevitable.
I didn't win every basketballgame I played in.
I played in college.
We lost games.
I mean, you just realize you'regoing to have a bad game.
You're going to have bad games,a stretch of bad games, perhaps
(25:59):
.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, I thought that in your book, just the rawness
of your low times and when youwere going through really
challenging times, and I thoughtit was just really courageous,
one of the C's of you, to putthat out there.
And one thing that struck me inthe book is something I've had
(26:24):
to learn in my life is that yoursister said business doesn't
define you, and that feels likesuch a heavy and necessary truth
, especially when our industryis tied to our success, our
identity being wrapped in oursuccess, our failures.
So how has that shaped the wayyou see things now?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, you mentioned something that I want to back up
to Success.
How do we define success?
Well, you and I would both saythat in business, success is
making money, right, I mean.
So we have this vision of hey,are you successful?
And immediately people want toknow how much you make.
(27:12):
What's your bottom line, right?
So what you have to do is youhave to figure out a way to kind
of separate the elements ofsuccess.
For instance, I wrote a book,right?
Not a New York Times bestseller.
One of my goals always was youknow, I want to be author comma,
new York Times bestsellingauthor Mark Brzezinski.
(27:34):
Right, I'm not, but I wrote abook.
So what is success in thatworld?
Everybody wants to know howmany copies, right?
How much did you make?
How many copies?
I don't have any idea how manycopies we sold.
I know I didn't make any moneyfrom it, so I know that it
probably wasn't one of thosehuge successes, but is it a
success to me?
(27:54):
100% of it.
In business, it's all about, butthe things that I created
Bengal Coast, which bankruptedme, right?
I think it was my mostbrilliant concept that I've ever
created.
It was beautiful, it was sexy,the food was good.
The vibe was good, people lovedit, the people who opened it.
(28:16):
We opened at a bad time.
We opened the financial crisisof 2008 to 2010.
Those of you who've been aroundthat long realize that everybody
was suffering.
We couldn't overcome that.
But was Bengal Coast a failure?
No, was it a success?
No, only a success financially?
(28:38):
No, but I have more people,even at breakfast this morning.
What are we?
I closed Bengal Coast in 2010or 11.
So we're 15 years removed.
I had people this morning bringup Bengal Coast at a breakfast I
had is would you be interestedin reviving Bengal Coast?
And I smiled.
I said I get that question oncea month or so.
(29:00):
So to me it failed, but it wasvery successful at establishing
my reputation as somebody whocould create something from
scratch that was different andalluring and Hypnotic in its own
way.
So, yeah, it failed it.
It took me my needs financiallyand that's hard to get over.
(29:23):
Don't get me wrong.
I didn't sit at home and drinkand champagne say, well, that
was a nice concept, you know,but.
But you learn that, you know,but you learn that you know.
Okay, success is not justfinancial.
Success is all about how itmakes you feel when you're done
and are you able to hold on tothat feeling and use it again
(29:45):
and not consider it a blanket offailure that snuffs out all
your fire.
Failure just just snuffs outall your fire.
You have to learn that.
I had to learn that.
Nobody taught me that.
I had to have to learn itthrough experience, so I know
how other people deal with it.
I know that I learned to dealwith better as I got older.
(30:07):
I was a sore loser and abasketball we lost a game.
I would go in and throw myjersey or throw my sneakers.
I hated losing.
Nothing wrong with hatinglosing, but at some point you
got to learn that that's part ofthe process.
Losing and failure are all partof the arc of the journey.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, that was one thing I really liked in the book
that you said that it wasn'tabout money for you, it was
about experiences.
And you said and I probablymessed this up, but that you
should view success and failureas imposters.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, that's a quote from.
I forget who it is, but if youcan learn to accept success and
failure and treat them both thesame, there's a better saying
than that.
But ultimately that's what youhave to do.
You don't over-congratulateyourself for what you did right
and you don't over-punishyourself for what you did wrong.
(31:08):
You try to use them both andtry to establish who you are
going forward.
You try to use them both andtry to establish who you are
going forward.
I mean, I think the best quoteand this one I know by heart
that I've lived by is letyourself be silently drawn to
the stronger pull of what youreally love.
And that's by a guy named Rumi,who was a 17th century
philosopher, poet.
(31:28):
But in my heart, that's what Ialways have done is say what do
you really want to do?
What makes you happy?
I very rarely have held on to ajob.
I left Payway and if peopleread the book, I left Payway at
the height of its success.
I was making considerable money, living in Preston Hollow, huge
(31:50):
home, beautiful neighborhood,and I was unhappy.
I came home and it didn'tmatter how much money I was
making.
It was making more money than Iever dreamed I'd make, living
in a house I never dreamed Iwould live in.
But I left Payway and I droppedit because I wasn't happy and I
realized that and that's when Istarted Bengal Coast.
So I went from the height ofwhere I could be over the years
(32:14):
that Bengal didn't work to thedepths and then had to learn how
to come back out of that too.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you fought in a major way, and I mean you have
just developed I mean so manycool concepts since then.
So if you could go back andgive the young Mark any advice,
what would you tell him?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Don't be so impatient .
You know it's not always goingto work.
I talk about this with peoplebecause I want to teach.
You know I really I've beentrying to get into, you know,
hospitality programs to guestlecture and do this, that.
But you know, besides the fourCs because people want to
innovate, that's great, but justlife lessons is just the idea
(32:59):
of perseverance and persistencewith what you believe.
You're not always going tobelieve the right things and so
you've got to learn what to putyour energy into.
And again, I don't know how todefine that for students, but I
would go back to my quote and Iwould always end with my quote
Let your heart be silently drawnto the stronger pull of what
you really love.
But I would go back to my quoteand I would always end with my
(33:20):
quote Let your heart be silentlydrawn to the stronger pull of
what you really love.
If you listen to yourself andnot others, you have that quiet
time, and kids nowadays veryrarely have quiet time.
You know that it's the phoneall the time or it's the
computer all the time.
I would say find an hour ofevery day just to be by yourself
(33:41):
, whether it's on a walk orwherever it is.
However you do it, listen toyourself.
What do you really like?
What really makes your lifefull?
What do you feel like?
Because that answer is there.
We don't always listen to it.
You have to find the time toextract it sometimes to allow
(34:04):
yourself to pull it out.
I do that with kids that I talkto or students that I talk to
and said you know, don't listento what everybody else is saying
, listen to yourself mostly, butbe smart about it and then find
somebody who can mentor you indeveloping that, because we all
need that.
You know these concepts weren'tyou in developing that, because
we all need that.
You know, these conceptsweren't created in a vacuum.
(34:25):
They were created with peopleat a table kicking around ideas.
But to get to that table, youhave to be able to be strong
enough in your conviction aboutwhat you feel, and you can only
do that by knowing who.
You are Hard to do, not easy,and you can't write a book about
who you are Hard to do, noteasy, and you can't write a book
about it, because everybody hasa different upbringing,
(34:46):
everybody has differentexperiences that shape their
lives.
You know, I wouldn't presume toknow what motivates you.
I know what motivates me and Ithink the most important thing
is know yourself right.
Get to know yourself more thanyour interest in getting to know
everybody else right.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yes, I think that's amazing, especially like that's.
What keeps us in this industryis the passion and just the love
of being able to host people,give them, like you know, it's
like a vacation from life, youknow when you go and eat out and
get to experience everything.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
A little bit of an escape.
Right, we need escapes.
My escape was always going to amovie by myself in the middle
of the day or late at night,where you could just get away
from the noise and let all thenoise stop and just focus on one
thing.
You have to learn that, thoughyou have to learn that you don't
always have to be you know busy.
(35:49):
Sometimes it's better to not bebusy and to have time to think.
It's a hard thing to do.
I never had children, so Ican't say that from example of
what I've done to help.
But I try to do that when Iteach and I try to do that when
I talk.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well, one thing you mentioned earlier too was just
having an outlet, you know, withwriting, and with me I, you
know I love to dance.
And so I you know, taking thattime for yourself amidst the
chaos to just pursue yourpassions.
You know, outside of that, andit usually does spur on some
sort of creativity for me.
(36:26):
I don't know about you, butbecause when you're in it all
the time you don't take a break.
You don't allow yourself forthat reflection time.
You're just going to burn.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And however you express it.
You express it through writing,some people express it through
cooking, some people express itthrough cooking, some people
express it through travel.
Just learn what it is that youneed to do to fulfill that need
inside of you.
And it's not selfish.
There's a good selfish.
There's a good being selfishtoo, right?
I don't know how mothers in myera.
(37:00):
My mother had five children.
I don't know how mothers in myera.
My mother had five children.
I don't know how she ever hadtime for herself.
I couldn't even imagine how wegave her enough time to develop
what she wanted to.
But everybody's got to findthat in their own different way,
whether you're married, singlefamily, no family, whatever it
is.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
I don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
There's not like a step by step on how to do it.
You just have to learn whatmakes you comfortable and what
motivates you to move forward.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
That's awesome.
You've given us some reallygood the four C's.
I love that.
Some really good nuggets ofwisdom, lots of wisdom guys in
his book.
You have to read it.
I cannot push it more so tocheck out Fork Fight.
But before we leave, do youhave a confession?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You're not going to make me cook for you or anything
are you Actually?
Do I have a confession?
Jeez, my book.
I don't know how to confessmore than what I've confessed in
the book.
I guess you'd call this aconfession.
So my confession is that peoplelook at me as a restaurateur
(38:15):
who should know we talked alittle bit about it who should
have all this knowledge aboutall these different foods and
stuff.
My confession is is I'm apretty average eater.
That I don't, you know, I'm not.
I have friends that say trythis out, do this, do that, and
I'm like no, thanks, I don't eat.
I don't eat like deer and stuff.
(38:36):
Yeah, I just.
I eat pretty basically.
I observe, observe much broader, but I eat very basically and
not very experimental when itcomes to that.
No, that's a really goodconfession.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And honestly, that makes me feel a little better,
because I'm not a veryexperimental eater, so I really
resonated with the.
You'll have to read it in thebook.
But about your shellfish andyour experience with salmon.
But thank you so much forsharing with us today and again,
another shameless plug.
(39:11):
Check out Fork Fight.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Please do.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks For more inspiration,follow our social media.
At W3Sales, please like,comment and subscribe.
You know all the things wewould love to connect with you.
Welcome to Confessions Beyond the Food.
I'm your host, Nancy Redland.
Let's dig in and get inspired.
Welcome back to ConfessionsBeyond the Food, where we dive
deep into the stories that shapethe food service world.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I have the absolute pleasure of sitting down with
Mark Brzezinski, a restaurantvisionary, concept creator and
the author of the incrediblebook Fork Fight.
I have to say I was completelyabsorbed in Fork Fight.
The story is raw and real andfilled with a kind of behind the
scenes truths you rarely get tohear in our industry.
(00:44):
I was genuinely sad when it wasover because it pulled me into
the emotional roller coaster ofwhat it takes to bring a
restaurant to life.
Mark isn't just a storyteller,he's a creator.
His fingerprints are all oversome of the most recognizable
restaurant brands in the country.
He was a founding force behindPayway, played a key role in the
(01:07):
early days of Macaroni Grilland has worked with industry
giants like Pizza Hut and VelvetTaco.
His ability to bring innovativeconcepts to life has shaped how
we experience dining, blendingcreativity and deep operational
knowledge.
Today we're peeling back thelayers of that journey, starting
(01:28):
with a spark of an idea,through the grit of execution
and, ultimately, theunpredictable arc of success or
failure.
We'll talk about the risk,commitment, discovery and
consequences of following acreative vision, and what it
truly takes to build somethingthat lasts.
(01:49):
Welcome, mark.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh, I'm thrilled to have you.
So let's start with why youwanted to do the book.
I thought, it was really coolthat you know back in.
You know, going into collegeyou wanted to go into journalism
and you write poetry and youread a lot of poetry, so the
full circle of having a book isreally cool.
(02:13):
So tell us what inspired you todo this.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I've always loved writing.
I mean, my grandmother I thinkmy mother's mother was the one
who always encouraged me to read, read, read, read.
And back in the day, when Igrew up, we didn't have cell
phones, we didn't have theInternet, we didn't you know.
So our entertainment was eithersomething physical, like sports
, or it was something morecerebral, like reading right, or
(02:37):
creating.
You know math.
Whatever it was, I just took toreading.
I became a voracious reader.
I read all to reading.
I became a voracious reader.
I read all the classics.
You know, some of my favoriteauthors were Steinbeck, Clavel,
you know some of the otherpeople who started writing more
novelistic type things.
But I always read and I turnedthat into a love of writing.
(02:59):
I didn't write books because Ididn't know how books were
constructed.
I mean, I could at that time.
But I could write poetry.
I could put thoughts togetherin poems, and that's the way I
kind of counteracted.
My shyness is I could writethings down and hand it to
people and run away and let themread it right.
So I used poetry as an entreeinto expressing myself to people
(03:23):
in a way that I couldn'tpersonally face to face.
So that was kind of a coward'sway out of trying to meet people
is through poetry, but itdeveloped where people
encouraged me.
I had teachers who encouragedme and I went to my dad when
it's time to go to college andsaid I really want to go to the
school to study journalism.
(03:44):
When it's time to go to college, I said I really want to go to
the school to study journalismand he looked at me in a no
uncertain term, said no, son ofmine is going to go and study
something like journalism.
You're going to study businessif I'm going to pay for it.
Long story short, I went andstudied business but did poetry
and journalism on the side.
I wrote for the school.
The college newspaper I wrotefor the local Ithaca Journal was
(04:05):
the name of the paper.
I wrote a sports column forthem.
So I always kept dabbling inwriting.
But there was no methodology orpath for me to make a living
out of it.
So it became just a great hobbylike anything else.
A great hobby whether it's flyfishing or tennis or whatever it
is you like as a hobby.
It became my hobby anytime Iwould meet somebody and I was
(04:26):
inspired.
I'd write a poem, I'd writeshort stories, but I was a I, I
was in business.
That's the way I made my living.
But as my career pursuitprogressed, uh, and then I'm
gonna really fast forward to thethe In my business, in the
restaurant business, we came toa grinding halt, as many
(04:49):
businesses did, don't get mewrong.
But I had nothing to do.
I mean, I literally couldn'ttravel the way I like to travel.
My restaurants were typicallythe ones I was affiliated with
at the time were closed ortrying to adjust.
So I was kind of stuck in themud for a little while and I
said, well, it's as good a timeas any.
I love to write, I live alone,I've been married, I never had
(05:12):
children, but at that point Iwas living alone and it was like
, okay, what am I gonna do?
I can't watch TV, you know, 16hours a day.
So I got down, I got my computerout, just started writing my
story and not an autobiography,but I like to tell stories.
So I turned it into kind of ajourney book.
I call it a journey book, not astory book, because it is about
(05:33):
my journey, you know, from howI started to how I got to where
I am today.
And like all journeys, it's notalways smooth, it's not always
all ups, and you knowstrawberries and cream.
Sometimes you get to the bottomof the barrel and I've just
felt like my story had to bereal and I had to tell the
(05:54):
stories of the great successesbut also how I dealt with
failure and how I came back fromfailure and all the processes
that go into that journey.
And that's kind of what it wasthe pandemic, as bad as it was,
and as many things that changedfor so many people.
It changed my life because itput me back in a position to
(06:15):
lean on writing as something tooccupy my time.
So that's how Fork Fight cameto be and it just came naturally
.
I didn't have to do research,it was all from memory.
I've been blessed with a goodmemory, so as I wrote my stories
, it all comes back to me andfortunately I had a good editor
(06:37):
who kept me on the straight andnarrow and helped me through the
process.
And one thing led to another andwhen we were done we submitted
it through an agent to multiplepublishers.
And about a week after we didthat I got a call from a
publisher at Simon Schuster,which surprised me, and she said
(06:59):
Mark, I fell in love with youthrough your book.
Don't go anywhere else.
We're going to publish yourbook.
And then that was completelyout of the blue to me.
I'd never gotten a call likethat, Didn't expect a call like
that.
Quite frankly, A lot of peopletold me I might have to
self-publish my book and so Iwas prepared for anything.
(07:19):
I was prepared for not evenpublishing, but the experience
of writing it was was fulfillingenough.
The experience of having apublisher say they want to
publish just took it warp speedright, Took it to another level
and I've been blessed.
When it came out I was probablyproud of Simone in my life and
it was.
It's been fun, it's been a,it's just been part of the
(07:41):
journey, quite frankly.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It's always good to look back and reflect on the
journey, and so, actually whatyou just told me, I'm a little
bit shocked right now that yousaid that you were shy in high
school.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Oh, I'm really shy.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I mean, you are a bold businessman and
entrepreneur in our industry andthat is a little shocking to me
.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Well, I played sports and I come from a family of
five kids.
I was the youngest and mybrother closest to me and I were
always really good in sports.
So we played all sportstogether.
So I expressed myselfathletically and I was very good
at it.
I made all-state in basketballand I was written up in the
grade.
But that was all like outsideof me.
(08:29):
You know what I mean.
It was something I did, notsomething I was, and I used that
forum to meet people and when Imet people I liked that's when
I would write poetry to thembecause I couldn't express
myself personally face to face.
But I could express myselfreally well when I wrote it down
(08:49):
and then, like I said, I was acoward.
I would write a girl a poem andI'd fold it up and give it to
her, but fortunately peopleliked it and they were
encouraging.
So, yeah, but very, extremelyshy, the late bloomer for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, but those words and your creativity definitely
played into your conceptdevelopment.
And speaking of that, so youtalk about the bubble start of
creativity what does that momentfeel like when a new concept
starts to take shape?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It's so hard to explain, nancy.
I mean thought bubbles, right,I've written an article about
how everything starts with athought bubble and how those
happen.
I don't really know, but I doknow that it's all about being
committed to whatever it is thatyou do.
And for me, being committedmeans when somebody opens a new
(09:47):
restaurant or I hear aboutsomebody doing something new, I
have to go out, I have to go seeit, I have to experience it.
As an example, I'm going to NewYork next week with a client
for a week.
I love New York.
It's like a second home to me.
I know it like the back of myhand.
But this client wants to studyItalian food.
So we're going to go to, infour days, probably 30, 40
(10:08):
places.
You don't eat it, I mean, younibble, you learn how to eat and
run, so to speak.
But you know that thoughtbubble about what we're going to
create together starts withokay, let's go see what other
people are doing, let's absorb.
I always say innovation is asmuch about absorbing as it is
about emitting, and I thinksomewhere along the line I just
(10:34):
became very good at absorbingand was committed to it, because
you and I both met a lot ofpeople.
The first thing I want to do istell you all about themselves
and everything they've done intheir life.
And you sit there after about15 minutes and realize you're
not having a conversation,you're having a monologue.
You know they're telling youabout them, I'm telling you
about them before you know it.
But somewhere along the line,in order to be a good listener I
(10:54):
think that's part of being agood writer is you have to
listen to the.
It's going to sound corny.
The universe talking to you andyou the universe talking to you
, and you have to absorb thatand you have to know what to do
with it once you get it.
So a thought bubble is okay,let's look at this.
Then you have to know what todo with what you just saw.
An artist may have aninspiration, but do they work
(11:15):
from photographs?
Do they work completely fromtheir mind?
You might like an abstractartist like Chagall, who
probably didn't work fromphotographs.
He probably worked from justwhat was creating his mind.
To other people who are doinglandscapes and doing you know,
realism.
So it just depends upon yourindividual.
Me, as an individual, it alwaysstarts with.
(11:38):
I wonder about the curiosity,the four C's of innovation in my
mind Curiosity.
You have to have curiosity.
You can't always think you knowthe answer.
You have to go explore, youhave to go out and absorb things
.
So curiosity is the first step.
You have to have courage.
You have to believe in yourselfenough to fight through all the
(12:01):
naysayers and all the barriersyou're going to experience.
Then you have to havecommitment.
You have to say I'm committedto it, I've studied it, I'm
curious, I've done, courageousenough.
Now I need to be committed.
And once you're committed, thefourth C is capital.
You have to have the ability todo it, because without the
(12:22):
capital it's just an idea to doit, because without the capital
it's just an idea.
And ultimately, for some reasonand I can't explain it I've
been able to follow all thosesteps through the creation of
concepts that I've done.
Either I've been with partnerslike Paul Fleming for PF Chang's
, or when I worked with Brinker,with Norman Brinker.
(12:42):
They had the money, I had thethoughts, we all had the
curiosity.
You put it all together.
So it's rare that your group oras an individual you can do all
of it so typically.
Another C if you had to add one,if somebody said, hey, you have
to have another one.
We need collaboration.
You can't do this by yourself,people, I can write a book.
(13:04):
I wrote a book but I couldn'tdo this by yourself.
People, I can write a book.
I wrote a book, but I couldn'tdo it by myself.
I mean, I needed an editor toread it, I needed friends to
give me feedback, I needed thepublisher to say we need this,
we need more of this.
So you collaborate on a book,you write a book, but you
collaborate on a published book.
There's a difference.
Right when I was writing poetryand articles, I didn't have
(13:27):
editors.
You know, you're just writingand send it out and say this is
what I think.
But when you do conceptual work,it's always a blending of those
Cs plus adding thecollaboration to it, and I don't
know how to describe it.
Honestly, somebody says wheredoes it come from?
I say I don't know.
You know I mean your mind comesmostly in shower moments, you
(13:49):
know you just the water ispouring down and you're just
thinking about your day andyou're thinking about what if,
what if, what, if?
So to me, that's my time to askwhat if?
What if this?
What if we did this?
What if we did that?
I just had breakfast with somefriends and I talked about an
idea I came up with for a client, which was what I call Pad Thai
(14:10):
Poor Boy.
So Pad Thai is a Thai dish.
It's a noodle dish.
You usually eat with chopsticksor a knife fork or whatever.
So I came up with the idea ofwhy not take those great flavors
and put it on a baguette greatflavors and put it on a baguette
.
We're in the South.
You know New Orleans, you knowTexas, south Houston, you know
(14:31):
where I was working with aclient.
She said so let's do a poor boy, but let's put Pad Thai flavors
on it.
And we created a Pad Thai poorboy.
That didn't exist anywhere.
But the thought bubble was Iwant a handheld sandwich that
tastes Asian.
That doesn't exist.
So you have these thoughts.
How do I connect them?
And sometimes you're just ableto connect them.
You can't explain how youconnect them, but you connect
(14:55):
them.
And so Thought Bubbles broughttogether, encouraged and
developed.
I don't know how else todescribe it.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, in your book you talked about all your
travels across the world and Ithought it was really
interesting.
You mentioned Mumbai, forBengal Coast, and how you
immersed yourself in the foodculture, trying out a billion
(15:24):
different restaurants and thenbringing it back to the States
and figuring out how that'sgoing to translate here to the
American palate and thenconversely taking when you were
with Pizza Hut on and you wentit was China, china, yes.
And you went, it was it waschina, china, yes, and then
going out and coming up with, um, a set menu for a more
(15:48):
condensed menu for them.
Um, I thought it wasfascinating here like they had
like hundreds of items on theirmenu.
Their pizza had many piecesvery different in china.
I learned through your bookcompletely different.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, um, and I don't know.
You know it's, it's funny.
Again, I want to go back to theabsorbing versus emitting.
Even that trip to Mumbai and atthat point in my life I had
enough money where we actuallycircumnavigated the world I mean
, we started in Japan, we hoppeddown to Thailand, we hopped
(16:21):
over to India, we went to Londonand then we came home.
So I don't know how many peopleget to circumnavigate the world
in one trip, but we wereblessed and fortunate to do it
that time.
But even that trip, it wasn'tabout me consuming things.
It was about me absorbingthings, like we would go to a
restaurant.
I traveled with a very famous,well-known chef.
(16:41):
His name is Mark Miller, didCoyote Cafe, the father of
Southwestern cuisine, but healso knows Asian food.
Anyway, I asked Mark to join meand we would go to five, six,
seven restaurants a day.
But I wasn't there to eat allthat food.
I was there to look at it and Iwas there to watch Mark tell me
how it was made and I was thereto watch other people enjoying
(17:05):
it, how they enjoyed it.
But if I ate everything atevery place, I would have been
probably sick, because it's hardto eat that many things at that
many different places when yourstomach or your system is
acclimated to a certainlifestyle.
So when I travel, the funnything is people want to hear try
(17:25):
this, try this.
I'm like no, because I'm nothere to taste it, I'm here to
watch it.
I'm here to look at it.
I'm here to watch it.
I'm here to look at it.
I'm here to take pictures of it.
I'm here to try to understandhow you did it, not how it
appeals to me.
How it appeals to me isincidental.
I'm not trying to match it upwith me.
(17:45):
I'm trying to say where doesthis go?
How do I incorporate this?
So it's funny.
One quick funny story I was inBeijing and we how do I
incorporate this?
So it's funny.
When quick funny story went to,I was in Beijing and we went to
a hot pot place.
You know a hot pot is right andand they bring you a big bowl
of broth and all these otherelements and the people I was
with a neat interpreter, youknow it's very typical for them
(18:08):
to eat things like lamb heartsthat we would not eat here,
intestines and heart, and theywere very curious what I thought
of it and I'm like I don't dothat.
I apologize, but I don't dothat.
(18:29):
I'll watch you enjoy it and seehow you use it.
But all I could eat was somenoodles and some green tea
because I couldn't be in themiddle of Beijing.
And all of a sudden my stomach,and you know, like what do you
do in the middle of Beijing ifyou can't fulfill your trip?
So I tell stories like that inthe book about how people expect
(18:51):
me to give them opinions on allthis wonderful exotic food.
I'm like when I was in China Iate a lot of pizza and a lot of
fried chicken, you know.
And so even in India youbrought up Mumbai we went by so
many street stalls and standsand you look and as an American
I'm looking at.
So where's the running water?
(19:11):
Where's the hot water?
How many places is that rag bin?
Because I can't, but I want toabsorb and see how it works and
see what other people are doing.
So I apologize for that longexplanation, but I'm not as
experimental in terms of what Iingest as I am as to what I
absorb.
There's a difference.
And Jess, as I am is the word Iabsorb.
(19:32):
There's a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's really cool.
I went to China a couple yearsback and I was really worried
about you know, because theyentertain you.
You know they're wonderfulentertainers and so.
But yeah, I couldn't wait.
I was so excited to see thosegolden arches in the airport, so
okay.
(19:54):
So the restaurant industry isrelentless.
What do you think peopleunderestimate the most when
committing to a concept?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I think, underestimate the amount of
tweaking you might have to do.
You know, I've been quoted assaying that if in a new concept,
if you get it 80% right, you'rea genius, you know.
But people have this desire tothink that they can get it 100%.
Number one I don't believe inperfection.
I just don't think it exists,right?
(20:25):
You hear people I strive forperfection.
I was like I don't do that.
I strive to be as good as I canbe or create something as good
as I can create it with thegroup.
But ultimately, I think peopleunderestimate that you're going
to make mistakes.
Don't punish yourself for themistakes.
Correct them quickly.
(20:47):
You and I were just talkingabout a salad right, taking a
salad and shaking a salad.
If you realize that you missedthat and you need to add it, be
quick.
Don't personalize it.
Don't call yourself an idiotfor missing it.
Don't try to blame somebodybecause you missed something.
Just correct it, Adjust it,massage it, make it better.
(21:10):
Most people think becauseyou've got to get it, so right
right away.
That's not the goal.
The goal is not to get it.
The goal is to get it as closeto your vision as possible and
then again, absorb and learn,observe what people are doing
with it and then adjust it.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Right, because it always doesn't translate.
The way that you think in yourmind and I think that was
something that was reallyprofound in your book is you
would create this unbelievableconcept and be wildly successful
.
And then people come in andthey have their ideas and, like
you said, rigidity, I think thatwas the word you used Rigidity
(21:51):
yeah, and so that they justdon't want to change, they don't
want to adapt, they just wantto get their point across.
You know, be right.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I look at your studio here.
Right, I'm wearing your shophere and it didn't start like
this.
I mean, you started somewhere,but along the way you said, hey,
I've got to have this line, orI want to expand into this room,
I need more space.
Whatever it is, any business,you just got to get it going.
You have to have the ability.
I go back to the four C's You'vegot to be curious enough,
(22:22):
you've got to be courageousenough, you've got to be
committed and you've got to havethe capital to make it work.
But then after that, you've gotto be able to adjust.
And 80% is probably generous.
But the concepts as I look back, I'm trying to think I'd say
that was the biggest part of mysuccess.
I was able to get most of themright out of the box without
(22:44):
having major adjustments, buteach one of them had make no
mistake.
When you go into a Velvet Tacotoday, it's different than the
first Velvet Taco, because ithas to be Right.
There are learning curves and,by the way, not all learning
curves are good.
Sometimes people becomeinvolved after the fact and want
(23:06):
to change things without reallyhaving a reason other than they
want to put their fingerprinton it.
So you've got to.
There's a lot to manage.
Even after you open, there's alot to manage.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So you mentioned in Fortify that failure isn't just
possible, it's almost inevitable.
How do you decide when to pushforward and when to pivot?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Okay.
So the practical answer of itis when you run out of money,
it's when you stop Because youcan't keep on raising money.
Although I've I've been theremyself too you've read about
that where I just kept pouringmoney.
I think money's gonna.
Money's gonna solve the solvethe problem.
Money doesn't solve the problem.
Uh, sometimes you just miss themark.
(23:49):
Sometimes you just are in thewrong place at the wrong time or
chose the wrong location forthe right concept and the time.
It's a collection of things.
Honestly, it's not a singularanswer.
It's a collection of how muchmoney you have.
It's a collection of whatpeople are telling you you have
to have an intervention.
Interventions aren't just foraddictions.
You can be addicted to successand need an intervention.
(24:10):
Interventions aren't just foraddictions.
So you can be addicted tosuccess and need an intervention
for somebody to tell you whenyou're really not going to where
you think you're going.
I've done that.
I've had friends and peersintervene with me and say enough
, right, didn't work.
(24:31):
And then there are times whenI've realized myself don't work,
stop, stop the bleeding, so tospeak.
Move on.
You've got other ideas.
And that's part of it, I think,nancy, is that you have to have
the faith in yourself that youcan recover from a failure, and
that isn't an innate thing,that's not something we're born
(24:54):
with.
That's something we learn.
We learn from failure.
You know you can listen to I'ma sports person, so you can
listen to the Larry Birds andthe Michael Jordans of the world
and even you know Roger Federeris watching something.
The tennis player is talkingabout how in his lifetime he's
only won 54% of the points ofhis matches.
(25:15):
You go how's that possible?
And you've got 22, 23 majortitles.
Well, you don't have to winevery point.
You have to win more pointsthan you lose and you have to
win them at the right time.
So the more you listen andrealize as you get older that
failure is part of the processand you're not going to win all
the time, but that you canrecover from it and probably
(25:38):
highlight those things that helpyou be successful and try to
replicate those.
But somewhere you have to learnthat failure is inevitable.
I didn't win every basketballgame I played in.
I played in college.
We lost games.
I mean, you just realize you'regoing to have a bad game.
You're going to have bad games,a stretch of bad games, perhaps
(25:59):
.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, I thought that in your book, just the rawness
of your low times and when youwere going through really
challenging times, and I thoughtit was just really courageous,
one of the C's of you, to putthat out there.
And one thing that struck me inthe book is something I've had
(26:24):
to learn in my life is that yoursister said business doesn't
define you, and that feels likesuch a heavy and necessary truth
, especially when our industryis tied to our success, our
identity being wrapped in oursuccess, our failures.
So how has that shaped the wayyou see things now?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Well, you mentioned something that I want to back up
to Success.
How do we define success?
Well, you and I would both saythat in business, success is
making money, right, I mean.
So we have this vision of hey,are you successful?
And immediately people want toknow how much you make.
(27:12):
What's your bottom line, right?
So what you have to do is youhave to figure out a way to kind
of separate the elements ofsuccess.
For instance, I wrote a book,right?
Not a New York Times bestseller.
One of my goals always was youknow, I want to be author comma,
new York Times bestsellingauthor Mark Brzezinski.
(27:34):
Right, I'm not, but I wrote abook.
So what is success in thatworld?
Everybody wants to know howmany copies, right?
How much did you make?
How many copies?
I don't have any idea how manycopies we sold.
I know I didn't make any moneyfrom it, so I know that it
probably wasn't one of thosehuge successes, but is it a
success to me?
(27:54):
100% of it.
In business, it's all about, butthe things that I created
Bengal Coast, which bankruptedme, right?
I think it was my mostbrilliant concept that I've ever
created.
It was beautiful, it was sexy,the food was good.
The vibe was good, people lovedit, the people who opened it.
(28:16):
We opened at a bad time.
We opened the financial crisisof 2008 to 2010.
Those of you who've been aroundthat long realize that everybody
was suffering.
We couldn't overcome that.
But was Bengal Coast a failure?
No, was it a success?
No, only a success financially?
(28:38):
No, but I have more people,even at breakfast this morning.
What are we?
I closed Bengal Coast in 2010or 11.
So we're 15 years removed.
I had people this morning bringup Bengal Coast at a breakfast I
had is would you be interestedin reviving Bengal Coast?
And I smiled.
I said I get that question oncea month or so.
(29:00):
So to me it failed, but it wasvery successful at establishing
my reputation as somebody whocould create something from
scratch that was different andalluring and Hypnotic in its own
way.
So, yeah, it failed it.
It took me my needs financiallyand that's hard to get over.
(29:23):
Don't get me wrong.
I didn't sit at home and drinkand champagne say, well, that
was a nice concept, you know,but.
But you learn that, you know,but you learn that you know.
Okay, success is not justfinancial.
Success is all about how itmakes you feel when you're done
and are you able to hold on tothat feeling and use it again
(29:45):
and not consider it a blanket offailure that snuffs out all
your fire.
Failure just just snuffs outall your fire.
You have to learn that.
I had to learn that.
Nobody taught me that.
I had to have to learn itthrough experience, so I know
how other people deal with it.
I know that I learned to dealwith better as I got older.
(30:07):
I was a sore loser and abasketball we lost a game.
I would go in and throw myjersey or throw my sneakers.
I hated losing.
Nothing wrong with hatinglosing, but at some point you
got to learn that that's part ofthe process.
Losing and failure are all partof the arc of the journey.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, that was one thing I really liked in the book
that you said that it wasn'tabout money for you, it was
about experiences.
And you said and I probablymessed this up, but that you
should view success and failureas imposters.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, that's a quote from.
I forget who it is, but if youcan learn to accept success and
failure and treat them both thesame, there's a better saying
than that.
But ultimately that's what youhave to do.
You don't over-congratulateyourself for what you did right
and you don't over-punishyourself for what you did wrong.
(31:08):
You try to use them both andtry to establish who you are
going forward.
You try to use them both andtry to establish who you are
going forward.
I mean, I think the best quoteand this one I know by heart
that I've lived by is letyourself be silently drawn to
the stronger pull of what youreally love.
And that's by a guy named Rumi,who was a 17th century
philosopher, poet.
(31:28):
But in my heart, that's what Ialways have done is say what do
you really want to do?
What makes you happy?
I very rarely have held on to ajob.
I left Payway and if peopleread the book, I left Payway at
the height of its success.
I was making considerable money, living in Preston Hollow, huge
(31:50):
home, beautiful neighborhood,and I was unhappy.
I came home and it didn'tmatter how much money I was
making.
It was making more money than Iever dreamed I'd make, living
in a house I never dreamed Iwould live in.
But I left Payway and I droppedit because I wasn't happy and I
realized that and that's when Istarted Bengal Coast.
So I went from the height ofwhere I could be over the years
(32:14):
that Bengal didn't work to thedepths and then had to learn how
to come back out of that too.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you fought in a major way, and I mean you have
just developed I mean so manycool concepts since then.
So if you could go back andgive the young Mark any advice,
what would you tell him?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Don't be so impatient .
You know it's not always goingto work.
I talk about this with peoplebecause I want to teach.
You know I really I've beentrying to get into, you know,
hospitality programs to guestlecture and do this, that.
But you know, besides the fourCs because people want to
innovate, that's great, but justlife lessons is just the idea
(32:59):
of perseverance and persistencewith what you believe.
You're not always going tobelieve the right things and so
you've got to learn what to putyour energy into.
And again, I don't know how todefine that for students, but I
would go back to my quote and Iwould always end with my quote
Let your heart be silently drawnto the stronger pull of what
you really love.
But I would go back to my quoteand I would always end with my
(33:20):
quote Let your heart be silentlydrawn to the stronger pull of
what you really love.
If you listen to yourself andnot others, you have that quiet
time, and kids nowadays veryrarely have quiet time.
You know that it's the phoneall the time or it's the
computer all the time.
I would say find an hour ofevery day just to be by yourself
(33:41):
, whether it's on a walk orwherever it is.
However you do it, listen toyourself.
What do you really like?
What really makes your lifefull?
What do you feel like?
Because that answer is there.
We don't always listen to it.
You have to find the time toextract it sometimes to allow
(34:04):
yourself to pull it out.
I do that with kids that I talkto or students that I talk to
and said you know, don't listento what everybody else is saying
, listen to yourself mostly, butbe smart about it and then find
somebody who can mentor you indeveloping that, because we all
need that.
You know these concepts weren'tyou in developing that, because
we all need that.
You know, these conceptsweren't created in a vacuum.
(34:25):
They were created with peopleat a table kicking around ideas.
But to get to that table, youhave to be able to be strong
enough in your conviction aboutwhat you feel, and you can only
do that by knowing who.
You are Hard to do, not easy,and you can't write a book about
who you are Hard to do, noteasy, and you can't write a book
about it, because everybody hasa different upbringing,
(34:46):
everybody has differentexperiences that shape their
lives.
You know, I wouldn't presume toknow what motivates you.
I know what motivates me and Ithink the most important thing
is know yourself right.
Get to know yourself more thanyour interest in getting to know
everybody else right.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yes, I think that's amazing, especially like that's.
What keeps us in this industryis the passion and just the love
of being able to host people,give them, like you know, it's
like a vacation from life, youknow when you go and eat out and
get to experience everything.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
A little bit of an escape.
Right, we need escapes.
My escape was always going to amovie by myself in the middle
of the day or late at night,where you could just get away
from the noise and let all thenoise stop and just focus on one
thing.
You have to learn that, thoughyou have to learn that you don't
always have to be you know busy.
(35:49):
Sometimes it's better to not bebusy and to have time to think.
It's a hard thing to do.
I never had children, so Ican't say that from example of
what I've done to help.
But I try to do that when Iteach and I try to do that when
I talk.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well, one thing you mentioned earlier too was just
having an outlet, you know, withwriting, and with me I, you
know I love to dance.
And so I you know, taking thattime for yourself amidst the
chaos to just pursue yourpassions.
You know, outside of that, andit usually does spur on some
sort of creativity for me.
(36:26):
I don't know about you, butbecause when you're in it all
the time you don't take a break.
You don't allow yourself forthat reflection time.
You're just going to burn.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And however you express it.
You express it through writing,some people express it through
cooking, some people express itthrough cooking, some people
express it through travel.
Just learn what it is that youneed to do to fulfill that need
inside of you.
And it's not selfish.
There's a good selfish.
There's a good being selfishtoo, right?
I don't know how mothers in myera.
(37:00):
My mother had five children.
I don't know how mothers in myera.
My mother had five children.
I don't know how she ever hadtime for herself.
I couldn't even imagine how wegave her enough time to develop
what she wanted to.
But everybody's got to findthat in their own different way,
whether you're married, singlefamily, no family, whatever it
is.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
I don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
There's not like a step by step on how to do it.
You just have to learn whatmakes you comfortable and what
motivates you to move forward.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
That's awesome.
You've given us some reallygood the four C's.
I love that.
Some really good nuggets ofwisdom, lots of wisdom guys in
his book.
You have to read it.
I cannot push it more so tocheck out Fork Fight.
But before we leave, do youhave a confession?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You're not going to make me cook for you or anything
are you Actually?
Do I have a confession?
Jeez, my book.
I don't know how to confessmore than what I've confessed in
the book.
I guess you'd call this aconfession.
So my confession is that peoplelook at me as a restaurateur
(38:15):
who should know we talked alittle bit about it who should
have all this knowledge aboutall these different foods and
stuff.
My confession is is I'm apretty average eater.
That I don't, you know, I'm not.
I have friends that say trythis out, do this, do that, and
I'm like no, thanks, I don't eat.
I don't eat like deer and stuff.
(38:36):
Yeah, I just.
I eat pretty basically.
I observe, observe much broader, but I eat very basically and
not very experimental when itcomes to that.
No, that's a really goodconfession.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And honestly, that makes me feel a little better,
because I'm not a veryexperimental eater, so I really
resonated with the.
You'll have to read it in thebook.
But about your shellfish andyour experience with salmon.
But thank you so much forsharing with us today and again,
another shameless plug.
(39:11):
Check out Fork Fight.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Please do.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah Well, thank you guys for tuning in.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks For more inspiration,follow our social media.
At W3Sales, please like,comment and subscribe.
You know all the things wewould love to connect with you.
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