Daniel Frankel opened his first restaurant in 2002, the Mill Marine Bistro and Bar, in Vancouver’s upscale Coal Harbour neighbourhood. He’s since opened Tap & Barrel restaurants in the Olympic Village and the Vancouver Convention Centre, and is set to open a third Tap & Barrel near Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver.
Over the years, Frankel said he’s gotten a couple of vital pieces of advice from his father, George Frankel (a co-owner of Bridges restaurant on Granville Island) and Mission Hill Winery owner Anthony von Mandl.
“My dad taught me the three most important things in the restaurant business are location, location, location,” Frankel said. “That’s always stuck.”
With that advice in mind, Frankel took chances on newly developed areas of the city such as Coal Harbour and the Olympic Village when they were still sparsely populated. But Frankel had a hunch that the spectacular settings of both areas would pay off.
In the case of the Olympic Village location, that required ignoring the storm of bad press when developer Millennium ran into serious financial problems.
“Every paper … had an article out saying it was a ghost town and everybody was saying [to me] what are you doing here?”
“You have to have the confidence and look beyond that. What I saw is an extension of the downtown core around the seawall, waterfront land and an incredible planned community.”
The second piece of advice, this time from von Mandl, was “scour the earth for the best talent.” Frankel said he’s also taken that maxim to heart, developing training programs to encourage staff to move up to management positions in the company.
“Anybody that we hire, whether it’s a bartender or a server or a dishwasher … we always ask ourselves, ‘Does this person have what it takes … to become a great leader?’”
As a result, said Frankel, his restaurants have higher-than-average staff retention rates in an industry notorious for high labour turnover.
On preparing for growth | “We have an aggressive growth plan. … Our goal is 25 new stores by 2025. We started sitting down and identifying what our core values are. … For us it was integrity, an entrepreneurial spirit, being inspirational, having an empathetic attitude – and the last one is fun. Anybody new that comes on board, it’s pretty easy to see quite quickly whether they embody and latch on to those values. The ones that do, it’s all about spending more time with them and developing them as leaders.”
Has a work or career challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected].
