Yacht Rocking the Boat

My friend Michael knows a guy who bought a yacht. He used the yacht for everything: every meeting, every meal, every important gathering. It was his fortress. A life at sea is not for me, but this yacht story is salient beyond the sea.

Michael’s assertion is that with a few twenties crumpled up in your pocket and a genuine interest, you can transform a local hangout into your very own yacht. By getting to know the staff on a personal level, tipping a little extra, and showing some care, you can forge your own yacht on dry land.

We have a regular that we’ll call Nicole who owns Pasadena Wine Shop. Nicole turns up for dinner with beers for the kitchen. She brings epic wines that I might see only once in my life, and she pours it for everyone. Do you think Nicole will ever have trouble getting a table? I don’t know if she tips or even pays, honestly. Betsy is her yacht. She gets Gin palace privileges because she opted into something unspoken. Nicole doesn’t work for us and we don’t work for her—we’re in a relationship.

This might sound hyperbolic, but we’re in a pivotal moment with the broader restaurant-guest relationship. It’s no secret that restaurant workers face a lot of abuse. Wearing face shields and masks during the pandemic caused us to slide deeper into the submissive position of “the help.” One of the best decisions we made back at All Time was to wait until we could all see each others’ faces to reopen for in-person dining. I will always protect our crew from becoming the help with everything I have.

Why? Because this is a relationship. We’re equal partners in your dining experience, though like any healthy relationship, sometimes it’s more like 90/10. We love to pick you up when you’re down, but often, you do the same for us. Kind words, a genuine interest in our lives, these things mean more to us than most restaurant guests realize. The only thing we want is to show you a great time, but the relationship is better when you opt in. We thrive on turning a frustrating 20 minute wait for your reservation into a memorable night. We’ll do the lifting—physically, emotionally, spiritually—we just need you to meet us anywhere on the path and say yes.

We enjoy a nice culture at Betsy because we operate as a family. We’re actually not even running a restaurant. We’re throwing a dinner party every night of the week.
Our little restaurant has had a lot of great press recently and it’s been mad humbling. In an unusual twist, I believe it’s deserved. I’ve never had the privilege of working with so many people who care so deeply about what we do and who conduct themselves with such integrity.

We cook 2000 plates of food every week, and there will be one or two mistakes that sneak through, but all we want is to make it right. We don’t use scripts or standardized language or anything corny. We’re just humans doing our very best and sometimes we need a little grace (and an opportunity to correct that errant error).

Getting back to yachts, the relationships we’ve forged with our guests give us ideal opportunities to earn said grace, with trust flowing in both directions. (Some of our greatest relationships with guests who are now friends started a little rocky.)

There’s a lot of talk about how hard it is to run restaurants or what a terrible business it is. I don’t buy it. All businesses are hard. Please drop me a note if you’re in a super easy business that feeds your soul while you’re making money hand over fist. Running a restaurant is deeply satisfying for all of us at Betsy because we’ve built a yacht-worthy culture that we’ll do just about anything to protect from hostility and bad vibes, internally and externally.