The Secret Sauce to Restaurant Success: Service, Storytelling, And Disruptive Thinking with Christian J. Fischer
In a rapid age of technology where businesses are all about scaling and expansion, the beauty of keeping everything localized is still a strong strategy in the restaurant industry. Christian J. Fischer, the Disruptive Chef, joins Jaime Oikle in discussing the beauty and uniqueness of running hyperlocal restaurants. They share why focusing on certain food specializations can boost your restaurant’s exposure and give it a nice different flavor. Christian also explains how to constantly recognize your staff’s good performance, the power of being adaptable, and the unchangeable importance of having outstanding restaurant service.
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The Secret Sauce to Restaurant Success: Service, Storytelling, And Disruptive Thinking with Christian J. Fischer
I have a great episode for you. I have Christian Fischer, the Founder of The Disruptive Chef, a long-time chef, a consultant, and a podcaster. It is going to be good to dig in with you. Welcome, Christian.
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Christian’s Origin Story and Career Journey
We chatted a little bit before this and we were talking about your show. You're getting guests left and right, so you're probably hearing a lot of feedback in the industry about what’s working and what’s not. But first, what about your backstory? Where did you start? How’d you get into this crazy stuff?
I’m a native Austrian. I grew up in Austria. I had my first restaurant at 19 and I had 6 by the time I was 23. I then had my first acquisition happen. Nestlé came and Nestlé bought our restaurant to make the restaurant concept for Sofa Hotels in the US. I should have asked for more money, lessons learned, but it was my first acquisition.
I came and worked for Nestlé here in the US. They offered me a job for 20 years and I worked with them for 18. I then worked for Compass Group for eighteen years. I was the chief culinary officer. Then, COVID happened and, like you, I said, “We need to do something else. Let’s reach out and help other chefs in the industry.” We started this podcast or we started a form of it.
Our podcast was simple. You come in, we talk to you, we help you in whatever way we know we can help you, and hopefully, you have some benefits in the end. This was as simple as it is. We are about 160 episodes in. I told you that we recorded seven podcasts. We are pushing out two podcasts a week. We have one on Monday and one on Thursday.
The idea with The Disruptive Chef is that we want to disrupt your thinking. What we learned is that most of the chefs and most of the people in the restaurant industry are one strategy or one person away from having a different outcome of their life and a different outcome of their career. For us, The Disruptive Chef is that we want them to look at their job differently and work harder on themselves than they work on their job to be and do what they want to do. That’s the premise of The Disruptive Chef.
Disrupting A Chef’s or Restaurant’s Thinking
Let’s dig right back into that for a second. You said disrupt their thinking. You’re talking about a chef or a restaurateur who gets very busy, gets in their own head, and doesn’t break off from that. How do you get them to break away? How do you disrupt their pattern?
We learned that most of the commutes are 40 to 45 minutes. Our episodes are about 40 minutes long. If you drive to work or from work, you can listen to one episode. We bring people in that we love. What we did was when we were at about 100 episodes, my team, I encouraged them, and said, “Let’s find some new people. Each of us has to present 25 people back.” We then had another 100 people. We came back, and then I had to sell my team on why my 25 people should be on a podcast. Twenty of them or whatever got it. Somebody got eighteen. Somebody got twenty-two. It became the next level of what we want to do.
The greatest thing about that is there are so many great individuals in this marketplace. You know this better than anybody. They’re doing amazing stuff. Every day, they knock it out of the park but they have nobody there who tells their story and lets us become their person. It’s amazing, the people we have met. I know the people we are going to meet are going to be even better.
For us, it became the platform to promote them. For us, the whole premise of The Disruptive Chef is we want to give them new ideas. We want to give them new strategies. We want to give them new things to look at where they’re saying, “I didn’t think about this. I could do this,” or, “If I do this, I could do something different.” For me, it’s as simple as that. We want to disrupt their thinking and bring some new innovative people to the marketplace whom we love.
What we do is what we call ethical stalking. We are looking at people. We are looking at what they do in the marketplace. How do they make an impact? We look at their Facebook page and then we have this conversation. During that conversation, we have something that we call the Rapid-Fire Session Food Service Edition. It’s a fun way for us to make them humanized. The cool thing about it is every single person we spoke to has an amazing way of how they do business, an amazing way of doing something different, and an amazing way of how they’re looking at their restaurant. That’s it. That’s what we do on a daily basis.
The Power of Being Hyperlocal
I have a question for you. I don’t know when this will air but it’ll be towards the beginning of 2025. We’re sitting here in January 2025. There are New Year’s resolutions. Where are the trends? Where are things going? What have you been hearing in all these recordings about the prognostications for the upcoming year? Is it optimism? Is it pessimistic? What do you think?
It’s interesting. We hear a little bit of both but most of it is optimism because there are a lot of great restaurants that do $100,000 a week. You need to do $100,000 a week to survive in the industry. Also, I see that a lot of the restauranteurs are going all in on consumer service. They want to service their customers better than anybody else. They want to bring new dishes.
On the same token, I see that a lot of people are looking at it and saying, “I have a restaurant that specializes in appetizers. There’s a restaurant that does dessert first.” They’re mind-blown. They’re like, “There’s a restaurant that does soups, and they do amazing soups differently.” What’s happening is a lot of the entrepreneurs who come into this space are going hyper-local and hyper-specialized. I see more of that. I feel that’s the way to be different.
If you remember the old Italian restaurant, which used to be around for 60 or 70 years, they don’t exist anymore or they did not be what they used to be. There’s this new Italian restaurant, which does a few tricks differently. I honestly feel that’s the way to capture new customers. That’s not just the way of capturing the new customers and how to have them come back but it also changed. We eat out 4 to 5 times a week. That’s the average if it’s lunch or dinner. It used to be three. There is a lot of hope that the industry is going to come back and come back differently.
I look at my little town. Panera came to town. Starbucks came to town. We have some other famous concepts in town. They never existed here in town. Our little town of 60,000 people is becoming a food mecca. The next few towns had all of these concepts. They had all of the new restaurants. Seeing them in town is amazing for me. It also allows me to say, “I love the whole idea of having Starbucks in town.” I love to drive by, so I see Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts has a morning crowd, but then for the rest of the day, Starbucks is busier than Dunkin Donuts. For me, there’s room for all of that.
It comes down to two things. How do I measure up on the whole scale of financials? Some people will stay and go to Dunkin Donuts forever, but there is disposable income. A lot of the consumers in our town go to Starbucks in the afternoon. Starbucks is open until 8:00 at night. It has a sandwich concept next door. I’ve only been there twice. It has been open for 2 months or 2 and a half months and it’s doing phenomenally well. If you ask me what is the future of the restaurant industry, it’s hyper-localized and doing something much better than anybody else. What I hear from a lot of our restaurateurs is that takeout used to be 1 or 2 a night. Now, there are 15 or 20 a night. Takeout took off in amazing ways.
I’ve been jotting down notes fiercely while you’re talking. The word that I wrote when you were talking about the hyper-local was niche and niche-ify. You are seeing that. There used to be very generic categories of restaurants. People were like, “I’m going to open up a restaurant. I’m going to have everything under the sun.” Now we're seeing some a lot of smaller formats - a lot of quick service and mobile-centric. You order on your phone and come pick it up. These are mobile to-go smaller platforms.
What I see in my town is we have what’s called Seven Moons. Seven Moons has 5 tables or 6 tables. They do a ton of takeout. The food is amazing. We have Himalayan Gardens. They shut down the main dining hall. They have one dining hall open. They do a ton of takeout. That’s an Indian place, which does Himalayan-style Indian food. For me, Indian is Indian. I didn’t know there were a few things. That’s what’s happening. As a restaurateur, I love that because we need to do a lot more of that.
I love driving down the main street because I see Seven Moons. It has been there for 4 or 5 years. The Indian restaurant has been there for 7 or 8 years. They’re doing amazing work. They’re going super hyper-traditional to the stuff and are doing well. You know it better than anybody. Food is everywhere. There’s food in the grocery store. There’s food in a gas station. You need to do something differently. You need to serve your customers differently, and not just to service. You need to service the heck out of them. The restaurants are doing an amazing job.
There is food everywhere. A restaurant must do something differently and serve its customers well.
How To Handle Bad Restaurant Services
There are two things. One, you said service. I’m going to stay there because this is a pet peeve of mine. I was going to ask more about differentiation and how folks think of that. On the service side, I swear to God that 9 out of 10 times, my experience is mediocre or worse. We eat out a lot. We're a family with three kids. We’re running around. We eat out 4 or 5 times. My credit card bill can attest to this situation. We are eating out a lot but the service has been mediocre. I continue to tip but almost begrudgingly so, especially 20% or more. I would like to tip. I don’t have any problem doing that but give me a service that warrants that. What are you hearing from folks about how this can be better?
This is also a pet peeve of mine. What I hear from the customers is they expect higher service. If a restaurant doesn’t provide the service, they do take out because they want to still have that food. If I drive down the main street and I see the restaurants that do an amazing job with takeout, they don’t do that good of a job in customer service. The restaurants where people dine in knock it out of the park every single night and vow to their customers.
At the end of the day, it’s simple. Go and service the customer the way you want to be serviced. I don’t need somebody over me to help me 100%. I want somebody who is attentive. I want somebody who listens to me. I want somebody that when the food comes, they’re like, “Who had this dish?” They know exactly the person who ordered it. They know exactly how to serve it. They serve it the right way. Those are the little pet peeves I have. I also don’t want to sit forever at dinner when I ask for the check.
Those are the simple things. If you hit those, you do an amazing job and you have an amazing business of people coming back. Honestly, if I drive down the main street, I can tell you exactly who the restaurants are that do great takeout because they miss that little piece and do exactly what you said. They service the customer because they know the customer needs to come. It’s not serviced the way I want to be serviced.
There are those small elements of service that you hit on that when you miss them, it changes the whole aspect, and it’s not a lot. There’s a good author, a guy we have a whole bunch of articles on, Shep Hyken. He does customer service training. One of the phrases he uses there is, “It’s not like you have to give outstanding service. It’s not like the Ritz-Carlton every day, but if you can be consistently above average, you’re in the great category because most people are getting average all day long. When they see above average and you’re consistently above average, that’s all you need to do. We’re not setting the bar way up here. We’re moving up a little bit.”
I love that. We have this one restaurant in town. When I walk in, I know there will be five people going to say hello to me. For me, it’s the coolest thing ever because they recognize that I have the choice to come in. They have a separate station where they do takeout. They have a lot of people dining in. They’re doing a good job with you feeling heard. That’s number one.
If I go into a restaurant, I want to make sure they appreciate that I come because I have the choice to go anywhere I choose to and they will service the heck out of me but not in a way that it becomes overpowering. There is a skill of having service be perfect where they are attentive to you. Food doesn’t sit around forever. It’s the little things.
For me, what they do well is dessert. In that particular place, what I love about them is they come in and say, “How was the entree?” I say, “It was so good.” They say, “Are you ready for our dessert special or would you like to see the dessert card?” I’m like, “You have a dessert cart?” It’s so old-fashioned. They roll out this cart and the stuff doesn’t look dry, doesn’t look old, and doesn’t look like it’s been there for a week. For me, that makes all the difference. It’s this little thing. I was like, “I didn’t want to but can I have the crème brûlée?” When they bring out the cart, the first thing for me is like, “They’re bringing out a cart. It’s going to be there all day,” but it looked so fresh. I’m not sure how they do it and how often they replace it at night but it’s amazingly done.
When we went there, there were five of us. I wanted to do the dessert because I was the guest of honor. I was like, “If I eat, maybe somebody else will eat.” They were like, “Nobody’s going to have dessert.” I was like, “I’m not going to have dessert,” but I had the cart come. Every single person at the table had the dessert because they were like, “This looks amazing.”
For me, the cart is an old-fashioned idea but the stuff looks so great. The guy had little things on the side and said, “Would you like some berries on it? Would you like some sauce on it?” This was awesome. He didn’t bring the dessert but he plated it for you right there upfront. It was cool. I’m not a big fan of dessert carts but they are doing it right. There’s a way of doing it and there’s a way of doing it right.
First of all, dessert is a big profit center. Imagine selling four desserts to a table. That’s incredible. What usually happens when it comes to dessert is the server will say something like this and it’ll be an assumptive no. It’s almost embarrassing. It’s like, “You don’t want dessert, do you? You guys are too full, right?” or it’ll be like, “Here are some desserts. Are you interested?”
I love that because the guy we had came out and said, “Do you guys want to see the dessert cart? You better be ready.” I was like, “That’s got to be tough.” He comes and the stuff looks great, and then he says, “Look at me. I’ve been gnashing on this all day. The chef made this new strudel.” I was like, “You made strudel?” It wasn’t great but I loved the cream. He had whipped cream but the whipped cream had cherry flavor in it. You could have it with cherry flavor or you could have it with lime in it. I was like, “This is awesome.” He also had some other toppings with it.
Out of the 5 people, 3 of them had the strudel because I had it. They had all different toppings on it because they loved the way he was topping it. It was the way he explained it and said, “The chef made it today.” For me, it makes all the difference. I love what you said. I agree with you 100%. If somebody says, “Do you want to have this to-go? I’m sure you don’t have room for dessert.”
It happens.
We were having dessert. 4 out of them had a coffee drink to go with it and then 1 person had a coffee drink and another drink. It was some shot or whatever he did afterward. They would've lost out on a nice way of revenue because there are 5 desserts, 4 coffees, and the after-dinner drink. For me, that’s the way to do this right. That server alone made his money and more over dessert. It was great the way he plated it. He did ladies first. It was well done. This was a young guy. I was told, “If you want a great dessert, you need to go there. The food is good. It’s not great but the dessert is out of this world. They do an amazing job.”
I didn’t think we would stay so long on this but I’ll stay for another second. They did a number of things correctly, like the storytelling behind the dessert. Talking like that I love brings it to life versus saying some bland name. That was a big deal. If restaurants are reading this, remember this. We’re already sitting in your restaurant. We are your captive audience. We’re here to spend money. It’s how much of my money are you going to take.
When To Charge a Little Extra
5 desserts, 4 coffees, and a shot is incredible. If you offer that, time it right, bring me the extra beer and bring me the dessert, that is money that’s going to go to you, bottom line. I’m here. My credit card’s going to run. Make the experience enjoyable. You have me in there. Take advantage of the captive audience. If not, you’re missing a lot of opportunities. Let’s go to back-of-house stuff for a second. What are you hearing financial-wise? It’s a tough business. Being profitable, there are so many pieces to it. The costs continue to go up. Wages continue to go up. What are some of the key things you’re hearing?
Everybody is worried about charging a little extra. If you have a special steak, you should charge extra because it is different. Also, for me, it’s simple. Do appetizers right. There’s one restaurant we as a family go to that is up in West Hartford. When we go to that, they come and say, “You guys are going to love today’s appetizer.” That got me hooked because it’s not whatever’s on the menu. They’re doing specials similar to what they're doing for dinner.
They always do a good job of selling the appetizers. The appetizers are very reasonable. For me, it’s one of those things. They’re not big. It’s not an entree. It’s an appetizer. For me, every single person in my family has that appetizer because they love it. They do a good job. I’m sitting there like, “I have an extra drink because I have an appetizer.” That’s the way kids are. You have a separate drink when you have your entree. If they do a good job for dessert, you hit me with drinks 3 to 4 times. You will have revenue you didn’t have before.
You said it earlier. I love what you said. For me, it’s not just a business. It’s a skill. You need to have one skilled person who loves the dessert, and he needs to sell the dessert. For me, that person at the restaurant loves dessert. He said we should all start with dessert first. He says, “I’m not a big appetizer guy. I love dessert.” He’s selling dessert.
A restaurant always requires one person specializing in one skill.
What I feel a lot of restaurants need to do and they need to do more of is if you have a guy and that person doesn’t like plant-based, don’t have him be the plant-based guy or don’t have him be the plant-based server because they will not sell it. If you have a guy who loves plant-based, say, “If you want to stay plant-based and have a separate dish, there’s this appetizer I have. It’s plant-based and it’s delicious.” That, for me, is the difference. We haven’t had this conversation but for me, it’s simple. Are you an order taker or are you a server? For me, there’s a distinct difference. If you’re a server and you entertain me and tell me about the meal, I will buy a lot more than when you are just a server.
How To Address the Industry’s Longevity Issue
I don’t know if you’ve connected with my buddy Roger Beaudoin yet or not from Restaurant Rockstars. When I interviewed Roger, we talked about the order-taker phenomenon, where that goes, and all the opportunities that you’re missing. There’s a lot of content on our site around that topic itself. It’s a big deal. It’s a difference between being profitable and not and what your staff does. You don’t want order takers. You want salespeople. The sales component is a big part of the financials. Start with the money in. How do you hold onto that money? What are people doing with the cost?
We talked about some of the chats I had heard. There are three things. The first thing is they are afraid to charge up. I think if you do it the right way, you are allowed to charge up. The second thing is that our industry is not known for longevity. There are a lot of chefs and a lot of people worried about, “How long is this going to work here? This is my third job this year.” The average food service worker changes jobs four times a year. For me, that’s a huge thing. You need to do the right thing by your customers but you also need to do the right thing by your employees. If you have good people, you hold onto them.
The final thing for me is education. There are so many people working in the food industry who didn’t go to a professional school or didn’t come from a professional school. For me, teaching them about food daily is a huge thing. It goes a long way. All it takes is five minutes a day. The five-minute thing could be simple like, “Let me tell you how you properly do food costs. Let me tell you how this works. Let me tell you how you do this.” It’s also, “Let’s take five. Let’s clean up the kitchen. Everybody, let go of what you need to do. We have five minutes. Let’s clean up the place, go out there, and knock the customers out of the park.” Those basic things are what's missing for me in every food service or an average food service.
Customers have choices. I can get anybody’s food delivered to my house, number one. The second thing is if I go out and do the 20% tip because I’m a 20%-er like you, I want to have good service. If I don’t have good service, the next time I come there, I’ll get takeout. The final thing is, how is the atmosphere working around all of that?
There is a Chinese restaurant. I love to go there for lunch to bring food here for the office but I don’t like going there for dinner because they’re playing ‘70s or ‘80s music in a Chinese restaurant. I say, “Can you play something else?” It’s the little things that I honestly feel make the difference in great customer service or if you knock it out of the park. If I go to a Chinese restaurant, I don’t want to hear Diana Ross. Play Chinese music because I’m here for the Asian experience. For me, those are the little things. If you do that well, the rest is a piece of cake and people will come back.
If you can do the little things well, running a restaurant will be a piece of cake and people will come back.
Training People Five Minutes A Day
Let’s go to the training piece. It’s five minutes a day so it’s not overwhelming. You’re not asking the world of people to train. There are so many five-minute topics. I’m sure you still get resistance from chefs and operators like, “I don’t have time,” or, “My people don’t want to hear it.” Any success stories in conveying how to do that well? Is it a certain time of day before the shift and pulling people aside? What are ways to make sure that happens?
For me, you can do five minutes a day with a pre-meal. A pre-meal takes fifteen minutes if you do it right. If you have 15 minutes and you do this and you have the right people come, I’d rather have you do this 3 times a day and do 5 minutes because, within 5 minutes, you can teach them something simple like, “The reason I’m doing this is XYZ. The reason we need to do this is because XYZ.” Whatever it is, it is the sure thing people will remember a lot more. Also, it helps the kitchen become neat and helps the kitchen become clean. The difference I see with staff working in a clean kitchen versus a dirty kitchen is massively different. It’s this little thing you do for five minutes a day.
For me, the five-minute thing, everybody should do it. Even if you do it twice a night or one time a night, it doesn’t matter. It also takes the pressure off the staff because if they do 200 or 300 orders a night, if you do in the middle of this a five-minute, “Everybody, take five minutes,” they sit there and be like, “I don’t need to do anything for five minutes.”
For me, the one thing you can reset is the one thing where you can highlight for the first service, “Everybody, give it a hand to Jeff. Jeff knocked it out of the park. Susan is amazing today.” It’s those little things for me that make the difference between being in the restaurant industry and being a restaurateur. If you are a real restaurateur, you know all of that and you do this consistently. If you do this consistently, you don’t need to worry about people leaving jobs four times a year. I’m doing this with my business. We are reinventing the business. The business is going to be employee-owned. I love the people I have working for me and I want them to have skin in the game. It changes everything.
Importance Of Support System and Internal Recognition
100%. Staff recognition was cool. I’m glad you brought that up. Recognizing your staff, we don’t do it enough. Everybody in life, we don’t say thank you enough to people. We don’t applaud people. We’re very quick to criticize but we’re not quick to compliment people. That can be a big part of the culture. That can be a big part of retaining staff. What are some other retention strategies you’ve seen be successful?
I don’t look at 1 night or 3 nights. I look over a long period of time. Sometimes, if somebody doesn’t perform for a week or two, you could say, “If you do this one more time, we’ll write you up and you’re out.” You could say to him, “What is going on? This is not like you. How can I help? Maybe come to me after dinner service,” or, “If you need to take a break now, take a break now but tell me what’s going on because I want to help you.” That changes their minds.
People have stuff going on. Work is not something that is at the forefront of them. If you have somebody who does an amazing job and then for the last two weeks he fell off the wagon, have that conversation and ask him what’s going on. Sometimes, it’s something simple. Maybe sometimes, say, “How about you take a day off and I pay you the eight hours? Don’t worry about it. Go out there and do the right thing or take care of that thing.” For me, that alone makes all the difference. We practice this.
I love what you said earlier. We are conditioned that we don’t do a good job in highlighting people who do well, especially the people who are outperformers and who do great all the time. Everybody loves to hear, “Let’s give Susan an awesome job. Mackenzie knocked it out of the park today. Whatever the service is, you’ve been killing it tonight.” How often do you see this happening in places?
In the restaurant industry and any service industry, we want to be recognized for what we do. Having the chef, the owner, or somebody recognize what you do makes you think, “I am in this. They love what I do. I’m part of this team.” I hate the term work family because you will never be family. The way I treat my family is a lot different than how I treat anybody at work. For me, work needs to stay work but I want to recognize what you do because it’s important to me. I want to recognize what you do because it’s important to our clients. I want to recognize what you do because it makes a huge difference in my organization. It’s as simple as that.
On my door, I have, “Recognize somebody today.” There are days I walk by, I see it, and then I am like, “I didn’t recognize somebody.” We do a family meal twice a week. Otherwise, people run out for lunch. We do a family meal twice a week. In the family meal, we don’t talk about business. We’re like, “What’s going on with you? What’s holding you back from scaling? What is something you think about? What keeps you up at night?” It’s the little things on understanding who they are as people, and they don’t need to share personal stuff. That’s not the intent with that.
I want them to know that when they’re here, they’re being supported by me and everybody else in the organization. When they’re here, they’re part of a group and we perform because we want to have a certain task or a certain goal done. I recognize that you are a strategic piece of the whole bustle. I’d be like, “The reason we do what we do and we are still successful at it is because of you and because of everybody sitting to the right and the left of you.”
I have a whole line of things, but those are some of the things we need to do more of. I don’t always do a good job. There are days where I’m like, “All week, I didn’t recognize anybody.” I do an extra, “We’ll do a family meal. What does everybody want?” and I sit there. Some days, I sit there with them and say, “I haven’t talked to you, Mackenzie, all week. What’s going on with you?” or, “Devin, when you’re here, you light up the office because your sense of humor and the way you look at work is very uplifting.” It’s the little things. It doesn’t need to be great things. It needs to be little things and it needs to hit the spot.
It’s specific details too, not like, “Great job.” Be specific. It sounds like you’re doing that. Do you know what the cost of doing those shout-outs and those thank yous are? Zero. It doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t cost anything to smile. It doesn’t cost anything to say nice words. Use that to your advantage. There’s a story from a book. There is a little piece from How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s a classic book. There’s a story in here that echoed what you were talking about where there was a worker who traditionally had been a good worker but had fallen off or had fallen behind and wasn’t producing as well as he used to.
All it took was the boss to say, “You’ve been great in the past. What’s going on right now?” He says the same thing. He says, “Stuff has been going on with the family. I got a little distracted. I didn’t realize I’d fallen off.” Sometimes, people don’t. They get in the habit. The story goes on. From that point forward, he was like, “Bing, bang, boom.”
I love that. Sometimes, people don’t recognize that they’re off and that it’s being recognized and they noticed it. For me, having that conversation of, “Is everything okay with you?” is a lot different than, “This is the third time this week you did this. If you do it a fourth time, you’re out.” It’s hard enough to get good people, so go out of your way and make sure that they are being serviced like you do in a restaurant.
Meeting Tony Robbins And Parting Words
We’ve covered a lot of ground. We’re coming up in 35-plus minutes. I want to give you a chance for your parting thoughts. Maybe we’ll bring you back a few months down the road because there are a zillion more topics we could talk about, but in this episode, we covered a lot. Is there anything we didn’t hit that you want to make sure people know about?
If people want to know more about The Disruptive Chef, go to DisruptiveChef.club or ChristianJFischer.com. You can find all the stuff you need to find. We would love for you to come and become part of our family as they come to be family of
You threw out quotes. Is there anything else you’d want to share? Any words of wisdom, a parting quote, a favorite book, or a recommendation?
If any of your readers ever heard of Wayne Dyer, I have a story. My wife and I wanted to go and see Tony Robbins in New York City, both of them at the same time. We are going to New York City and everything goes wrong so we park outside of the city and take a cab. I didn’t even tell him. I said, “I forgot about the big guys. It’s the show.” He said, “I know exactly where to go.” I didn’t talk to him anymore.
My wife and I get ready. We went in and I was like, “It’s Wayne Dyer. It’s not Tony Robbins.” The usher comes and says, “Thanks for being twenty minutes late.” He walks us all the way up front. We sat up front and I was like, “Oh my god.” Wayne Dyer comes and says, “What is your name?” I said, “Christian.” He said, “Everybody, can you look at Christian and say hello? This is what you look like when you don’t manage yourself right.” I was mortified.
We were sitting up front. For sitting up front and being part of this thing, he invited us to his lunch. We were with him for lunch. He said something I’m still quoting. It goes like this, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” He said it a few times that day and I was like, “That’s such a cliche,” but it became what makes me do what I do and what drives me. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. For me, this is massive. I’m a big fan of his. I have every book he has ever written. If you are in a tough place or anybody reading this is in a tough place, change the way you look at things because the things you look at change.
If you are in a tough place, just change the way you look at things. Everything you look at changes.
That’s a good one. That’s excellent stuff. I know the name but I don’t have any of his stuff. I do have some of Tony Robbins’ stuff. He’s terrific as well. If you haven’t listened to him, he’s both inspirational but also very good with financial stuff and everything you could imagine. Good stuff there. I appreciate you sharing that. This was Christian Fischer of The Disruptive Chef. Find them on the web. I have ChristianJFischer.com but you also said DisruptiveChef.club.
If you go to ChristianJFischer.com, you’ll find all the stuff. If you look up The Disruptive Chef, you’ll find our YouTube channel, TikTok, and all of that stuff.
That’s what I did. I landed on both. If you type in The Disruptive Chef, you will bump into Christian’s stuff. I appreciate that. For more great stuff on restaurants, marketing, service people, tech tips, and more, stay tuned to us here at RunningRestaurants.com. In the meantime, do us a favor as far as our podcast. Like us, comment, and share. Wherever you are, take a minute, rate it, and review it. That helps us grow. We appreciate the feedback. Christian, this was good stuff. We’ll be in touch.
I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me be part of this show. To your audience, they need to do a lot more of what they do for you. I love your show. Thanks for having me.