Episode 11
More Than Food and Drinks with Alexander Buchholz
Now this is your first venture, on your own?
Alexander Buchholz (00:43)
It's, so I have a business partner. It's our first venture where we've done everything ourselves from raising the capital to opening the front doors to setting all the standards to building the brand. The first time we've done it from A to Z all ourselves.
Doug Logan (00:59)
How does so how does that feel? I had my first business card when I was 14. I had a short stint as a fryer cook. You know, I, I never wanted to, never wanted to, you know, be around a deep fryer again in my life. It's always been me, my business partner, you now have taken on that role. And I mean, how does that feel? There's nobody else to blame, right?
Alexander Buchholz (01:23)
You know, it's funny because I'm a bit conflicted. I have a lot of friends who are founders, entrepreneurs, and young CEOs. And I'm always envious of people who took the leap quicker or at a younger age than I did. Because I'm just having so much fun and I can't imagine not doing this. At the same time, I think what is allowed, both me and my business partner Victor, to really excel in this and kind of take market share and move quickly in our industry is that we have such a robust corporate background. And what has really been a big unlock for us is, we walked in on day one understanding that we know exactly how the best in the world competes, how they structure their teams, how they built their SOPs, what they focus on, what they don't focus on. My time at Ralph Lauren, just totally reframed the way I think about competition, food and beverage, because all that I talk about with my team now is how do we build the best brand? You want to feel amazing. You want to be seen and be taken care of. And to the outside world, we have to build this brand that is so aspirational, right? That we've created this lifestyle that is just so palpable and curated and designed and beautiful, the people in the photographs look awesome and look super cool. And you really want to be in this world. And so for us, like that's what competition is. So much of my time in corporate America and with like world leading luxury brands has influenced how I lead and how I think about prioritizing things as an entrepreneur, as a CEO. That said, I don't ever plan to go back to that world. Victor and I make every single decision, from how to allocate capital to do we like the way the napkins look on the table, right? And so it's a really intellectually rigorous job and I would never trade it for the world.
Doug Logan (03:08)
Yeah. I you learned a lot, right? And I learned a lot to get to where I'm at now, 20 plus years into it. I mean, like I didn't feel like we really arrived or earned our seat at like any table. I think there's a lot of other times like, do I deserve to be in the room? You know what I mean? That took some time, but I got over that 10 plus years ago when we worked with Ferrari. So when we were working with Ferrari, that was it. I was like, all right, I don't know that there's any higher brand than this. A lot of times I would say to anyone, just fake it till you make it or just believe in it. You can go into any room and just own it and be there. But we had two different paths to getting you've now to your own testament, you're, you're not going back, right? You've. I've been attacked by this plague, this addiction, I would say, of entrepreneurism and the world is your oyster and that's the entirety of the oyster, all the good and the bad that comes with It's comforting. mean, or maybe you're in a state of denial yet. I don't know. You're pretty new to this entrepreneurship. Yeah, there's stages to this.
Alexander Buchholz (04:17)
I'm pretty comfortable. Yeah, I'm waiting for my deep valley, which is inevitable. You know something clicks in your head when you move from a corporate role where everyone talks to you about work-life balance to being an entrepreneur where it does not exist at all, as you know very well. And so you have to put yourself in this headspace of like, okay, I need work-life integration in a way that feels healthy and natural. I'm never not working, right? But I'm also like, I can go out to dinner and I can have a glass of wine with a friend and I can check my emails in an hour, right? Like it's a different kind of working. I don't foresee myself ever like truly taking a week off ever, right, in the future. But I'm much less stressed than I was. Right? It's a different kind of stress. Obviously now, like to your earlier points, everything is my problem. Right? Where in previous roles, like if a pipe bursts, like don't call me. What am I going to do? Right? Now there's no one else to call. Right? So someone's got to fix this. So it's a different kind of stress in the sense that you're always kind of humming along, but you don't have this like super severe like and valleys of stress that turn off and on with the work day. I don't know if you felt the same way, but that's been a huge adjustment for me. I sleep it, I work way harder, I work all the time, but it's a different level of stress for sure.
Doug Logan (05:37)
Yeah, I mean, I think stress has a negative connotation to it that it doesn't really deserve. It's not, you know, not all stress is bad. There is definitely an unhealthy stress and there is definitely good stress. You and I are doing things that are very productive. You know, we're working hard towards a vision that we have and leading others. in that quest to that vision, right? mean, like that's as leaders, that's what we do. We're convincing people, like, I want to go from here to here and I want to take you with me. And for whatever reason, people decide to follow us. that, you know, I'm still trying to figure that one out. You know, that's what we're doing. And in a lot of ways, you know, pioneering into new spaces and new lands. We have to build systems, we have to build mechanisms and processes to be able to support what we've done. Otherwise, it's you. Just because you don't have a documented process, you still have a process. It might be the lack of a process, but it's still there and it might be you. You are the only one that can make that one particular drink. I don't know.
Alexander Buchholz (06:45)
Yeah, I mean, it's funny about like, so we, with our team, we always use the term defaulting. And so we always tell people to avoid your default position, right? So we push people pretty hard and look, we're baby brand. And so I think for us, it's when we've identified a brilliant head bartender, right? Who now has leadership roles, right? And who now oversees a team and a program and represents the brand when we traveled around the world. You know, it's easy for him to default to making drinks. Things are busy, he gets in, wouldn't think, tons of tickets, he's gotta pick up some slack, he makes the drinks. And in any business where tactical things have to get done to achieve a deadline, someone's gotta do the work, right? But we work so hard to pull ourselves out of our default mode, right? For me and Victor, our default mode is to be there and very Four Seasons style, talk to every single guest, know about every single check and what's happening at every single table. And that's productive to a point, but it doesn't set you up to let your team and your business really grow. Right? And so I think we try to avoid our default modes all the time and we teach our team to do exactly the same thing.
Doug Logan (07:55)
Being in the agency world, there's this very smart strategy to like narrow your focus and your positioning and say like, Hey, we only build websites for dentists. Like that's what we do. Then yes, you've essentially narrowed your available audience and you've really focused in on it and to that audience, it makes it really easy for you to be perceived as an expert because that's all you do. That sounds boring as hell to me. And it doesn't matter what the industry is. I love hospitality, but I also love luxury. I also love automotive. I love e-commerce. There's a lot of different spaces that I love to learn and experiment in and help clients grow their businesses, their brands in. And I think there's also a rewarding mechanism to that because the things that we learn in one industry can absolutely translate to another because they're doing things differently. There's a lot the hospitality industry can learn from e-commerce brands, right? And there's a lot that e-commerce brands could learn from hospitality brands, right?
Alexander Buchholz (08:37)
Yeah. I think that this myopic view of I only sell hotel rooms to this demographic in this market and that's your business. I think you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're constraining yourself for no good reason. And I think that, especially in hospitality, in luxury, in lifestyle, the biggest mistake we can make is to think that we're selling a physical product. If you're an hotelier, you're not selling a bed. Or in other words, maybe you are, but you're not getting that incremental price premium by selling a bed. You're selling this really amazing lifestyle and this experience, and you're selling this moment of you walk in the front door and you're recognized. And you go to the cocktail bar and your favorite drink is just ready for you. I joke with my team all the time that we're not in the cocktail business. What really drives people to my business is that they want to be a part of this environment, and they want to be a part of this world that is so sexy and aspirational and beautiful and curated. And I think that's what separates the good from the greats. And I think it's, to use your example, it's so dangerous to only tell yourself that you are running a business that sells websites to dentists, or only sells martinis to people in Brooklyn. Because you constrain how you think about your market. You constrain how you think about where you can and cannot compete, and you constrain your relevance. I think we set ourselves up for failure. Without a doubt. Does that resonate?
Doug Logan (10:29)
It does. But it also begs the question of how do you convince the team and the staff to follow that? Because to them, they might be coming in there because this is just another job and this is just the paycheck that I need to get. And I'm going to make a decent martini tonight, right? How do you convey that and something I've always thought is like, You can't train passion, right? You'll find it and then you you nurture it. Like how does that translate? How do you how do you convey that how do you pass that along and pass that baton in a way that it feels sincere and they can run with it?
Alexander Buchholz (11:12)
Totally. I think it's a really good question. And our industry is one that is run by people doing really hard work. And these are thankless, grueling jobs. And everyone has to do them for this to stand up. The way I've framed this throughout my career, is we all do these jobs. We all pick up dirty dishes from restaurant tables, but we all do this because the brand is so spectacular. And like everything that we do supports this much broader vision of what we're building. So we take our teams all over the city, all over the country to hotels and members clubs and restaurants and cocktail bars and just beautiful spaces that are just so inspiring to us to double down on, we're building this, right? And everything that we do, supports this incredible. incredible experience. And I think once you experience that, it's really hard to lose sight of why it's so important. I think it's our job as leaders to infuse every single… discussion, every pre-shift meeting, every weekly touch-based meeting with, like, these are the real nitty gritty things that we have to do and never lose sight of reframing that within this larger brand. How can I get people excited about the vision that I have and build it alongside them and build it with them and make them feel super engaged and super involved?
Doug Logan (12:38)
It’s one thing to have like a big grand vision. It's another thing to then break it down and like ladder it up, right? What are the steps that we need to take to kind of get there and achieve that vision? A lot of it's outside of our control. Like we can only do, we can only do so much. can create the best experience. We can have the best food, have the best cocktails. We can do all of these things if it doesn't resonate and the guests don't show up...
Alexander Buchholz (13:02)
For us at Bar Rêv, there's two of us with very different skill sets. And this has been a huge unlock for us. And I also think it's a great entrepreneurial lesson that partnership can be really powerful if done in the right way. Neither one of us could do this on our own. I'm really good at building and structuring and strategizing. Victor is an incredible operator. It's an incredible ballet of zooming out and zooming in and zooming out and zooming in all the time to make sure that you keep people focused on this grand vision, you tie every single thing that you do on the ground up to this larger vision.So I am a huge believer in reframing all leadership towards a very clear vision, a very clear aspiration that you're trying to achieve as a company, as a brand, that people can see. And people believe you, and that's critical, right? If no one believes you, people are gonna like jump ship really fast. They have to believe that you can accomplish these things. Therefore, like 18-hour days are bearable, right? And they want to do them because they wanna work alongside you to build this thing.
