FITNESS

Change Is Inevitable. Here's How To Handle It.

Change Is Inevitable. Here's How To Handle It.Fotolia.com"When you're feeling unsure about the change in your life, turn to tho...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

How To: Be An Optimist

Yes Man - Credit: Warner Bros. PicturesOptimism is good for you. It's good for your health. It can nurture friendships and prof...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

MOVIES

  • Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

  • Boardwalk Empire Finale Recap: The Stylish Surprise Ending

  • Bond 23 officially titled Skyfall

  • The Lion King 3D Huge Succes

  • 300: Battle of Artemisia

  • The Woman In Black Trailer Offers Chills

Women&Sex

Date With Nicole Scherzinger

She'll probalbly Forgive you for stumbling over her name— just blame it on all thoseconsonants. Truth is, Pussycat Dolls star (...

08 Oct 2011 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Seduce Her With Your Fingers

Let your fingers do the talking with massage.Stand up. Look down. You will see an appendage of amazing erotic ability dangling ...

26 Sep 2011 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Victoria's Secret's Selil Ebanks explains.

When you become a Victoria's Secret model, you join the ranks of the most lusted-after women in the world. And while Selita Eba...

26 Aug 2011 / 0 Comments / Read More �

An Institution of Higher Yearning

Connie Nielsen: An Institution of Higher Yearning You may not recognize the name, but you may recognize the face (and the body...

22 Aug 2011 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Style&Leisure

James Bond Is Going Back To Basics

Columbia Pictures"The news coming out of Skyfall certainly suggests a back-to-Bond-basics approach." It looks like James Bond i...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Lessons In Manhood From The Walking Dead

AMC"Why should it take an apocalyptic scenario for a man with actual balls to have value?" People have attributed a lot of meta...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Where To Buy Your Vita, The App To Organise Your Life And Pricing Up The Death Star

Where To Buy Your Vita, The App To Organise Your Life And Pricing Up The Death StarSony PlayStation"Tip: Asda's kicked off the ...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Universal Brit Awards After Party Gallery

Next © BacardiUniversal Records' Brit Awards After Party GalleryBetween James Corden's incredibly earnest presenting, Ed Sheera...

25 Feb 2012 / 0 Comments / Read More �

Time&Money

  • Chase Your Dream

    How one man went from Hollywood writer to diner owner -- and never looked back.In 1998, Lawrence Rudolph was a TV writer living...

  • Six Key Money Moves

    A 20-minute review like this one, done monthly or at least quarterly, will give you peace of mind from knowing exactly where yo...

  • The Keys to Paradise

    With a methodical approach to saving and a strategy for cutting costs, you can go from zero to second-home hero in just 5 year...

  • The New Rules of Building Wealth

    Beat the S&P (and your hedge-fund buddy) with 8 simple tips from the most trusted financial brains in the game Mark Adamle ...

|

Chase Your Dream

How one man went from Hollywood writer to diner owner -- and never looked back.

In 1998, Lawrence Rudolph was a TV writer living in Hollywood. Five years later, he's a co-owner of Lunchbox Food Co., a Greenwich Village diner that the New York Times described as bringing "a fine-dining sensibility to what by rights should be a funky waterfront dive." Here he describes the cost of following his dream.

Is opening a restaurant necessarily a symptom of a midlife crisis? Am I better off just buying a vintage muscle car?
Sports cars are for pussies; restaurants are for real men. The biggest problem you have with cars is changing your Pirellis every 10,000 miles. With a restaurant, your whole life is invested in it, so you can't just sell it if it becomes too much trouble. I employ 30 people. That's 30 families paying for schools, food, mortgages, and rents.

What do you wish somebody had told you before you opened lunchbox?
Don't scrimp on the big hires. As in any organization, one man cannot do it alone. You need the best people around you.

What's the biggest headache you encountered?
I took over an existing restaurant, which is by far the most cost-effective way into a restaurant, especially for a rookie. But this used-restaurant route means cleaning up after someone else's bad decisions.

How is your day organized differently than in your previous job?
It's really two business "days": a nine-to-five part and the after-five part. At five o'clock, we're moving into our third service of the day. We've already finished the business of the restaurant--paying bills, buying plates, and checking in with purveyors. At lunch, customers want to be in and out in 45 minutes, so we can get away with not being on the floor. Dinner, however, is a different story. If a customer's spending $125 on dinner for two, he wants to see that the owner appreciates his business. That's what I do while others are at home watching Friends.

What's it like to be working when everyone else is playing?
Sometimes it can be a drag, but I never took to the nine-to-five world anyway. I find it exciting working at 11 p.m. My office is literally a stage for all experiences. People are laughing, crying, kissing, and living right in front of me.

How do you balance being a husband, a father, and owner of a business that occupies so much of your time?
Your family really has to understand that this is what you do for a living and these are the demands. The good side is that your family can come to the restaurant.

So if it's so much work, why do guys dream about it?
Because they want to be Hugh Hefner or P. Diddy and invite everyone back to their place at the end of the evening. The catch is, Hef and Mr. Combs didn't get everyone to come over without a lot of effort.

Posted by The Correspondent on 08:50. Filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Feel free to leave a response

0 reacties for "Chase Your Dream"

Leave a reply

Blog Archive

Recently Added