Jean-François Flechet is the owner and founder of Taste of Belgium, a successful
restaurant enterprise based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his restaurants have been featured on
The Food Network and Serious Eats, and in 2016 he was named honorary ambassador
of the province of Liège in Belgium, where he grew up. Flechet now owns four full service bistros
and two satellite locations within farmers markets, but it all started with the
waffle.
Flechet arrived in the United States to earn his third
master’s degree (he has one in social sciences and two in economics). With that accomplished, he worked for five
years in statistical applications before deciding to give up the day job for a
venture in Belgian waffles – thick, doughy, and with beads of sugar that
caramelize in the waffle iron.
You started out on
your own with a single 120-pound cast iron waffle maker in 2007, and now Taste
of Belgium has 280 employees across six locations, four of which are full
service bistros. What was the idea or inspiration that started it all?
It all started with the waffle. I didn’t know where this
journey would take me. I kept on adding products, more based on necessity than on
choice. Findlay Market [a farmer’s market in Cincinnati, OH] expanded mandatory
hours of operation and I needed other products than just waffles. I added sweet
and savory crepes, and then a full bakery. The reason for the first restaurant
was that we were out of space at Findlay market to do all the events and
farmers markets we were doing at the time.
What was it like
working as a solo entrepreneur in the beginning? Were there any unusual
challenges or advantages?
It was lonely at times and at the beginning I was doing this
part time as I was pursuing another venture. I was building a hot food vending
machine with a friend, and I was looking for a new group of investors. I would
work on that project most of the time and on Fridays I would make the waffle
dough in the basement of a restaurant, load it all in my car early at 6 am on
Saturday morning to be ready to sell at Findlay Market by 7:30am. Everything
was a challenge. I had no background in food and I had no idea what I was doing.
I learned everything by doing. I had never baked a waffle in my life before I
started Taste of Belgium. Some of it was a blessing in disguise as I had no
problem early on to delegate some of the day to day activities, and I did not
have an emotional attachment to baking like other professionals would have. I
had to hire people who knew what they were doing as I didn’t.
Starting out as an
entrepreneur, what were some of the biggest time management challenges you
faced? What were your strategies for keeping up with the work of both running
and growing the business?
Strategy. What strategy? I had no strategy. The original
plan was to do this temporarily until I could find a group of investors for the
vending machine. I was only doing this on the weekend to cover my mortgage and
keep going with the other project. We could never get the second round financed
and over time I spent more time baking waffles. The “strategy” was simply one
of not letting an opportunity go by unexplored. I baked waffles everywhere in
Cincinnati and in a very short period of time many people knew about Taste of
Belgium, long before we had a restaurant and before I had a permanent spot at
Findlay Market. I was doing all the farmers markets and going to many different
parts of town. I was also doing a lot of different festivals. I didn’t have a
food truck. There were no food trucks at the time. I would load everything into
a van, then set up shop under a tent.
Growing from a single
waffle iron to six locations is a significant feat of scaling a concept. How
have you dealt with challenges associated with growing and scaling the Taste of
Belgium business?
Originally there was no concept. There was just the waffle.
I think the concept started to take shape with the first bistro in 2011. The
opening was quite rocky. I didn’t know what I was doing. I kept on trying to
hire better people and fine-tuning our offerings. I realized there was an
opportunity with brunch in Cincinnati. Everybody was doing brunch on Sunday. We
were closed Sunday so we offered brunch on Saturday. We then won best Sunday
brunch from Metromix even before we had officially opened for Sunday brunch. I
opened one restaurant at a time and since before we opened Rookwood (the third
bistro), we began to build the corporate office and hire higher caliber people.
We are now working towards the next phase of growth, patching the foundation,
rewriting the operation manuals, and defining the growth strategy. Scaling is
only possible if you have the right people on the bus.
What personal time
management tools and/or strategies do you use to keep up with the busy life of
an entrepreneur?
Over time, I have tried to define more rules and less
options. The key to me is to spend time away from the business. The number one
rule that I applied soon after I opened the first bistro was to work ON the
business and not IN the business. It’s important to stay healthy; I’ve run 4
marathons in the past 3 years and that something that helped me a lot focus. I
ran with a team and we have set schedules. I never missed a training. If you
have options, not rules, you always have the option to do something else. I try
to create more routines; it helps to get things done. But as the organization
changes and my team grows, my role has changed a lot and that’s a work in
progress. I’m constantly trying to be better organized. It’s tricky as it’s not
in my nature. I don’t work a typical 8 to 5. I’m home most nights to put my son
to bed and read him stories. Once he’s asleep, I finish emails, read etc. I
don’t have cable network because it’s a time suck. I gave that up 10 years ago.
How do you define
success for yourself as an entrepreneur? What metrics do you use to measure
success?
I like to think of success as being able to achieve a
balanced life and have the business run without me. If I don’t need to be there
and things go well, the business is successful. There is always room for
improvement and the biggest enemy of success is complacency. So I’m not saying
I am not involved in the business as we are constantly trying to get better. But
it’s good to be able to step away and know that things are not going to
collapse.
What is the top
quality or value that you feel helped you become a successful
entrepreneur/restaurateur?
Resilience (you have to keep trying, running a business is not
easy and there are plenty of failures, as someone said success is going from
failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm). If you let me pick two, I’d add
adaptability. The business I’m running now is totally different from what I had
in mind originally.
What has been your
best day as an entrepreneur? Worst day?
Difficult to pick one but two things have happened several
times. When someone comes to me and tells me that I was the inspiration behind
them starting their own business. The second one is whenever we promote someone
from an hourly position to a management position. I get teary when I think
about a few people who totally turned their lives around, started working for Taste
of Belgium has they had no idea what to do with their lives, and then found a
purpose a career and grew as cooks and managers. One guy went from delivery
driver to dish, prep, line, lead line, sous-chef to executive chef and is now running
his own kitchen. We have another young guy who’s now running his own kitchen
and started with us a cook; I don’t think he knew how to cut an onion when he
started with us.
Worst day: December 23rd 2016 when my loan officer called me
to tell me that due to internal issues the bank never submitted my SBA loan and
they had been giving me updates for six months about a loan that had never been
submitted. The implications were catastrophic and I almost lost
everything.
What advice would you
give other entrepreneurs starting out in the restaurant business?
Think of your restaurant as a business and a collection of
processes, not as a restaurant. Many people will open restaurants because
they’re great cooks. Build processes and make yourself redundant; too many
people end up failing as they try to tackle everything. Try to work as much as
possible on the business and not in the business. If you’re a manager and
you’re stuck at a station you’re screwed as you can no longer manage the
restaurant. Same goes for a business owner. At first you have to do it all, no
doubt, but it’s not sustainable in the long run.
