Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

with nothing fancy, and he thought we could build the place in 3,500 square feet.

I realized that if the restaurant revenue was 50 percent greater than Trio’s, then that 50 percent would be almost all profit. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t imagine it not working out like that. If Trio was in Chicago, wouldn’t more people come simply because it was easier to get to? Out-of-town business travelers weren’t willing to go out to Evanston, but if Trio were in downtown Chicago it would be packed, right?

Before Grant came over on Monday I decided to call Jim Hansen to let him know that I was going to be closing up the hedge fund and that we really were going to build the restaurant. I could always count on Jim for a levelheaded reaction that would be a good gauge for the more emotional responses of others. Instead, it fell squarely in line with what I’d been hearing.

“Clearly you have too much time on your hands. Chill out for a few days, then decide what you want to do.” This was the advice I was getting from everyone I trusted, it seemed. And it was not what I needed to hear. Grant would be coming by in a few hours, and I wanted to appear confident and calm. Instead, my most trusted friends were telling me in every way possible to slow down. I went to the kitchen to see what Dagmara thought.

“Jim thinks I’m stupid to be doing this,” I said. “Greg thinks I’m stupid to be doing this. It’s your money, too. I’m talking about putting up five hundred thousand dollars on a restaurant. What do you think?”

“If you want to do this—if you need to build it—then you should build it, regardless of what anyone thinks.”

“Even you?” I asked.

“I think you should build it,” she said. “I think Grant is a genius. I thought that before you did, right? Who wanted to get the standing reservation at Trio?”

Grant arrived at my house at ten on the dot. He pulled up in his beat-up Ford and walked to the door looking exactly as he had at our previous meeting: wet hair, unbuttoned peacoat, white T-shirt, semi-wrinkled black pants, black chef’s clogs. I opened the door as he was about to ring the bell.

“I just want to let you know that I’m freaking out about this,” I blurted out. Perhaps not exactly the strategy I had planned in my head, but a very honest assessment.

Grant smiled and laughed. “That is not what I needed to hear right now. I am catching shit at home for quitting Trio without even knowing you. She has a point.”

“Well, if we screw this up we’ll both be unemployed,” I said.

“Yeah, but you seem to be doing a bit better than I am,” he said, laughing, gesturing at my house.

“So are we really going to do this? I mean, it feels like we don’t really have a clue what to do next. I know you can run a restaurant, but can you build one?” I asked.

Grant looked at me, gave a grin, and said, “How hard can it be?” He flopped his coat on the back of one of my dining room chairs and laid out a few sheets of paper. On them were sketches of some logos for the restaurant. Another sheet had a few kitchen layout sketches, and another had some dining room layouts. “I want Martin to design the restaurant,” he said, referring to the designer who worked with Trio.

I looked down at the sheets of paper and despite Grant’s bravado, I was not feeling equally confident. The logo sketch looked like the doodle from the back of a high school kid’s notebook. The kitchen layout had no stove at all—I guess I didn’t need to worry about the Bonnet, I needed to worry that Grant wanted to invent a new stove completely. And as far as I knew, Martin was not an architect.

“Martin is the guy who designed the gadgets that the food sits on?” I asked.

“No. Martin is the guy who designed the serviceware for Trio. If you’re going to be a big-shot restaurant owner you need to learn the lingo, Nick.”

“That’s great, Chef. But you need to learn what an architect does. There are things like electrical plans, plumbing, and, oh, I don’t know, walls and such, that will need to be built. And these guys called ‘engineers’ work for the city and have to approve it all. You have to be a licensed architect to get those approvals.”

“Martin can design it, then we can have an architect work out the details,” Grant said. “I trust him. He’s the only one who really gets what I do.”

“But you’ll be paying twice then—and architects charge about 15 percent of construction cost.”

“Seriously? That’s crazy.”

“Seriously. Not to mention that I doubt any architect worth anything will want to partner with a designer who has precisely no experience building a restaurant, or anything else for that matter.”

“Speaking of which,” Grant said, “I want to get something clear from the beginning. This is my restaurant. I want to be the chef/owner, or I don’t want to do it.”

“Chef/owner it is, then. I don’t really care about titles. You shouldn’t either. You should care whether or not you are going to get real equity in the place, unlike most chefs who simply get the title but don’t own much. As soon as our investors are paid back plus a preferred return, we jointly vest into 50 percent ownership through the management company. Plus you’ll be given shares in the investor group for contributions you make during build-out, or for anything that we receive for free from manufacturers who give us something based on your reputation. I’m trying to structure this so you have real ownership, and I am doing that out of self-interest so that you don’t decide to go anywhere in five years. So given all of that,