In an age in which dining fads come and go, Akron’s Ken Stewart’s Grille has maintained steady growth over the last 10 years.
Every month has been better than the same month in the previous year, says owner Ken Stewart. The restaurateur gives SBN a glimpse at some of his successful practices.
What is the most important key to getting repeat business?
I start off with hiring great people. If there’s one thing that I really do well, it’s hiring really good people. I hire absolutely everyone who works here, from the dishwashers right up to the managers. I use the same standard for all of them.
We also pay tremendous attention to every detail. Our whole intent is to overwhelm the customer with service, food quality, quantity and value. We have a great training program for the servers and employees. What you have to go through to actually become a server here takes so much work that unless you’re really serious about doing this, you wouldn’t want to spend the time or make the effort.
So that kind of weeds all the people out who want to just carry food and see how much of a tip they can get, but not really be concerned with the operation.
If there’s a problem here — and there are problems in the restaurant business, we serve hundreds of people a day and not everything goes as everyone would like — no one will leave here unhappy if we know about the problem.
We far exceed anyone’s expectations of what is considered fair when there’s a problem.
What is the most important piece of advice you were given when you opened your business?
The best advice someone gave me was, ‘Don’t take any advice.’ Go with your gut feelings, don’t listen to a lot of different people. Go with what you think is basically what you want to do, because as soon as you get a lot of input from a lot of different people on how things ought to go, you lose sight of what your overall goal was.
And our goal is to just have a fantastic restaurant.
What is the most important piece of advice you share with other business owners?
We always try to concentrate on doing a good job and not worrying about the money aspect of it. If you do a good job, pay attention to the details, give great value, the money comes.
But if you’re running your business just based on watching the bottom line every single second, you’re going to lose sight of why you’re really doing the business in the first place.
If you were to open a new restaurant tomorrow, what would you do differently this time around?
I would not make any major changes. The most difficult part about a business is keeping it running all these years, and we’ve been in business 10 years. We’ve never had a year that wasn’t better than the previous year, and we’ve never had a month that wasn’t better than the same month from the year before.
That’s really unheard of in the restaurant business. It worked so well, I don’t think I would adjust it.
Could your restaurant run itself without you, or is your presence critical to its success?
I think all of the elements and all of the people involved are essential to the operation. I’m here every lunch and every dinner. I’m here because I like to be here. Sure, I have good people, and it would run very well, but I think my involvement certainly is necessary to keep it absolutely focused, so we don’t lose our direction.
I like to think I’m an important part of the operation, as is everyone who works here.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I see myself involved with other Ken Stewart Grilles and other Ken Stewart restaurant concepts.
Connie Swenson ([email protected]) is editor of SBN.
