Alon Shaya Creates Restaurant Consulting Division

NEW ORLEANS – Alon Shaya – the James Beard Award-winning chef responsible for Saba on Magazine Street and Safta in Denver – wants to help other restaurateurs build successful businesses. 

In partnership with his wife Emily, Shaya has added a restaurant development and consulting division to Pomegranate Hospitality, the company that oversees his own restaurants. Amanda Quintal, formerly of Shake Shack and Flywheel, is the new director of operations.

In 2017, Pomegranate helped launch Rocca Pizzeria in Baton Rouge. Now, Shaya is helping Marriott Hotels open two Italian restaurants in the Atlanta area.

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Shaya said he’s building the business by leveraging the accumulated knowledge of his team.

“I’ve been cooking and opening restaurants my entire career, so I’ve been able to stockpile many different recipes, techniques, ways to be efficient and an outlook on branding that will help people who are looking to grow,” he said. “We’re helping Marriott do all of the recipes, training, design and architecture. It’s a great way for our company to earn income without us having to take out more liability from an investment standpoint. ”

Shaya said he’d rather consult than open more restaurants of his own.

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“We get called every week about opening a place here, opening a place there but we have made a conscious decision to say that we’re only owning and operating a restaurant in Louisiana and Colorado so that we’re not spreading ourselves too thin,” he said.

Shaya said the most important thing he can teach clients is how to create a strong workplace culture and, specifically, how business owners can empower their employees.

“We try to build our teams in a way that really empowers them to take on more responsibilities,” he said. “We’re not protective of how we run our business. On the contrary, we’re very open to sharing how we operate and what our financial goals are. By opening that all up to our team it really empowers them to get out from behind the stove and take on a leadership role.”

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One inspiration for Shaya’s management style – and perhaps for Pomegranate’s new consulting division as well – is ZingTrain, a decades-old business started by Zingerman’s, the Michigan-based deli that became a mail-order empire. ZingTrain is estimated to earn $2 million annually thanks to courses that teach staff-friendly operating philosophies to other restaurateurs.

One of the ZingTrain foundations is something called open book management.

“It’s really is about creating a system for your team where they can predict or forecast what your sales are going to be,” said Shaya. “And then they actually have access to the reporting software so that they can see how close we’ve come and they know then what decisions need to be made to get closer to the goal.”

Shaya also likes to give employees responsibilities that might usually be reserved for managers. One of the Saba cooks, for instance, is responsible for monitoring clock in and clock out times for all of our team members. Another employee is tracking glass and silver breakage. The servers, meanwhile, are always aware of revenue goals and able to take steps to meet them. 

“One of the things that we’ve really taken seriously with pomegranate hospitality is our culture,” he said. “It’s more important for our company than any recipe or food or beverage or cocktail creation would ever be. That is all secondary to the way that we manage our teams and the way that we believe our culture should operate.”

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