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Midwest Momentum
Stories from the Midwest Start-Up community.
Midwest Momentum
Culinary Innovations and Hospitality Horizons in Ohio with John Barker, Pres. & CEO, Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance
Discover the inner workings of Ohio's food and hospitality sector as we sit down with the insightful John Barker, President and CEO of the Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance. In a landscape forever altered by a global crisis, we uncover the stories of adaptability and innovation that have allowed businesses to thrive. From the mom-and-pop ice cream shops to the upscale dining of hotel restaurants, we delve into the strategies that have not only helped them weather the storm but also cater to the evolving tastes and demands of today's diners.
We chat about a celebration of culinary excellence, akin to the restaurant industry's very own Oscars with the Alliance's Annual Awards. Then discuss the buzz surrounding legislative debates that could reshape the industry's future , man y say not for the better. We'll also guide you through the rise of food halls, ghost kitchens, and the pivot to delivery services, encapsulating how Ohio's gastronomic scene is embracing the digital age's challenges and opportunities with gusto. Tune in to this feast of conversation that's sure to wet your appetite for innovation and community in the world of hospitality.
Time to hustle America, roll up our sleeves and make dreams happen. Midwest momentum brings you stories of CEOs, startups, product development and founders doing whatever it takes to make their big idea happen. Here's my momentum host, michelle Gatchel. She'll catch up.
Speaker 2:Joining me today is John Barker from the Ohio restaurant and hospitality Alliance. John, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3:Hey, michelle, good, good to hear from you and Snowy day that we're recording this right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you used to be the Ohio restaurant Association. When was the big change over?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, we were the Ohio restaurant Association for a hundred and three years.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that served us well because the predominance of our membership and activity was the what I call a traditional restaurant that we can think of, sort of a sit-down restaurant and Mom and pops, independent restaurants, through really our bread and butter, although you know we really do work with everybody big chains, fast food, quick service, everything you you're used to doing. You know, as a consumer you might not call them that, but we do in the industry, but you know, in the last several years, particularly during the pandemic, the industry had To make changes to survive and literally, if you recall, for a little while Businesses who used to be just sit-down restaurants had to figure out a way to do, you know, some kind of takeout.
Speaker 3:Delivery side pick up right, right, everything right, and you saw some real creative and innovative things from operators and Owners and, and you know, they did the best they could and some of those things have stuck and we're really just seeing what we call Sort of a blending of what used to be Very clear. You're just a sit-down restaurant and that's it. You come in and get service versus Maybe something as different as an ice cream shop out. You know, in a little town we literally just drive up and walk up to the counter and get your ice cream and walk away and everything in between that. And we're seeing so much blending of that where Somebody has a brick-and-mortar sit-down restaurant but now they have a food truck or they're in a ball or, you know, they're in a ghost kitchen or they're in everything you know, because People are trying to figure out this new crazy world we're in, where the way people want to get their food has changed just dramatically, and so with that we thought Over the last few years we would be better to open up and be more welcoming to everybody who is really serving Food and drink, however they're doing it.
Speaker 3:We're in the hospitality business, we take care of people and we don't want to hold, exclude anybody out. So we just opened up and become much more broader and hospitality really allows us to, you know, be more welcoming to people who might just have a bar or a brewery or that coffee shop, you know, or that food truck or a caterer or somebody that has a hotel.
Speaker 3:Yeah has a really good dining and there's so many of them anymore. It's what hotels have really gotten better, particularly the higher service. Right, you know hotels, they have restaurants in them and so, in giving example, over the last few years, over 50 breweries have joined our, our group, and the reason, yeah, and the reason they joined is they have a really good, a high-craft brewer association which does their programming and in some things at the state house. But joining with us, they just get a much broader platform or so much bigger than you know all the other smaller organizations that work around hospitality. We're bigger and we have a presence, you know, every day really with all levels of government and elected officials and community leaders, and you know we just we have all the resources national restaurant association and Programming and just really everything a business needs, and so I think they're finding that being part of both.
Speaker 3:Maybe some smaller organization could even be their local JCs, who knows? But? Or maybe a local chamber or a convention visitor bureau. People really need this, this alliance, because we're fighting the really big battles for them and and and so that's that's worked out really well. We introduced it into, so we introduced the new brand in name in December every year, we have a major awards ceremony where we recognize just terrific people who have, I call, change the world in a good way and yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's a lot of fun and we use that to introduce the new brand and so far we just had a very excellent response from everybody and we probably won't wait another hundred and three years, you know, to adjust it. We don't move too fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so the I know there's like the Ohio food truck association, yeah, and you mentioned food trucks, so do they? Did they come underneath you or do they, like you said, with the breweries? There's two different associations people can become members of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, we work. Right alongside there is that, you have the food truck association in Columbus, there's one in Cleveland, toledo, you know, and they're very small, what they're. Some of these small organizations are really focused on Promoting their businesses, and so they'll do. The food truck association does the thing called Street food finder, which is really important for food.
Speaker 2:I love street food finder. Just got something last night because of that right, right, you can.
Speaker 3:You know well who's in my neighborhood, who's in my town and I can go find them easier. So those, that's why the, these organizations that we align with, are really important, because they do certain things that we're probably not Going to do in the near term, and we're, you know we're focused on the broader issues across the industry, but you know we think there's just room for all, for all of this, and you need all the help. You know, food truck Today is a tough business, like you know. Today will be a tough day outside, you know, with all the snow trucks, and so, you know, as soon as the weather breaks, they'll want to basically get a good spot and drive some business and make up for a day like today. So, yeah, we just we cooperate with everybody and it works out well.
Speaker 2:Um, so let's talk about some of the Entities that you might have given awards to in December, that you highlighted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we, we do everything from what we call an award for the best back-of-house person the person that you know works in the kitchen and and does behind the scenes but of course, the restaurant wouldn't be good without them. Yeah, we also do front-of-house. So if you're like the best server Awards and the public voted on that, it's interesting. The public was able to nominate their favorite you know, they know people and then we put that out. That once got a bunch of candidates for that. We put that out for a vote and that's how that was decided, which was a lot of fun. We had the public vote on best restaurants in the state. We had a one for north, central and In southern Ohio. All these awards are highlighted on our website. People want to see them. I'm sure they might. They may want to go check them out and they're not.
Speaker 2:What is the website? Let's tell people what the website is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, eat drink Ohio comm, he's Ohio yeah we try to make it simple and some fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all the way up to every year, we induct a few people into our Hall of Fame and and this year your listeners would probably know for example, city barbecue and Rick Maylor, who is the founder of city barbecue which is growing like a weed, by the way, but we love them here in central Ohio, this is their home base and Rick was inducted into the Hall of Fame, as was Dan, young some people might know young's Jersey Dairy down.
Speaker 2:Love that place. We have to go there every summer.
Speaker 3:Isn't it the greatest thing, right? It's just a fun place to go to and really.
Speaker 2:Get that goat, see all sorts of stuff, and the ice cream is there.
Speaker 3:You can be the cows. Gets some ice cream, get a home home style meal. Dan was. Dan was inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was really a lot of fun and is. He's just terrific, the families terrific, so that we have we just so much these events. You know there are version of the Academy Awards and it's special for people and we're just where did you hold it at?
Speaker 3:we had it right here in Columbus at it's. It's kind of an event center, because it's hard to have that many people in a regular restaurant, you know oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so you know we have to have it in a place that can hold hundreds of people and a big stage and Lights and cameras and you know all that type of things. So it's not yet. It's not yet open to the public, although we are toying around that idea, and we're toying around it because it seems like people's fascination with food, this doesn't ever seem to be sated. You know, people follow websites and Food experts and the food network and what's the British baking show?
Speaker 2:Just oh yeah. Yeah, I'm a big foodie and I'm into all of those things. Let me tell you.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, like you know, I don't feel like I feel airy, you know he yeah diners thing and I don't know. So, you know, we're toying around with the idea with the public be interested in coming to see something like this, and and we'll, you know, we'll certainly make a decision while in advance, because it's every December, and If so, well you know, obviously Send out information about all that. But, yeah, it's, it's a fun industry, it's a hard industry, but there's so many people with gigantic hearts that take care of people in each other. And, by the way, you have to be, you have to be committed to hospitality and service to be in this industry.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and that is a big difference. I mean, it makes or breaks a business the people that actually show up in front of the customers.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:So well. So let's talk about what you foresee, Maybe some of the legislative issues. I know tips is a big one right now. Let's talk about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's all these things that are sort of coming at the industry and people in business and they're coming at because you tend to have folks that look at a big business like the restaurant industry and think, hey, that's a big target, let's go do something to that industry, which is ironic because this industry is really made up of mainly mom and pops and even the chains, michelle, are often times small franchisees, and so people drive through McDonald's and they think it's this gigantic corporation and there is a corporation behind it. But the owner and operator of that location, who has the full responsibility and the P&L responsibility, is somebody that lives in the same town as you often, and so, but they come after us. This newest one is a group called One Fair Wage which has been working on this and some other locations around the United States to radically increase the minimum wage, which, by the way, in the state of Ohio is 1045 and moves up every year with inflation. But, by the way, nobody's making that, with the few exceptions. I mean, there may be some jobs where high school kids are 16 years old and they're working in a tiny little business in small town, but if you're paying 1045, you're going to have a hard time getting somebody to work in Delaware or Columbus or Plain City because there's too many jobs. You got to pay more than that, but anyway.
Speaker 3:So it's minimum wage, moving that up to $15 and two years is what we believe they're going to bring forward, as well as elimination of what we call the tip wage, which is something that servers in this industry really count on, and it's the main reason that they come into the industry, because they have the ability to make a really exceptionally high income with no education, no specific skills, just you have to be really willing to be greater hospitality and have a serving attitude. And the average server people don't realize this with tips makes about $27 an hour and that's a really good income. It equates to about $56,000, $57,000 a year. Nice, yeah, if you work sort of a 40 hour week and all that.
Speaker 2:So what is the base wage that they get?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they get $5.25. That's the Okay. They have to be paid that much. If, for example, like a day like today, let's say you were on the schedule to go work at a restaurant today and because of the snowstorm, no one comes in, so you get no opportunity for tips, by law in the state of Ohio the restaurant has to make it up to whatever the minimum wages, so they're guaranteed to make $10.45.
Speaker 3:And that's the group that's proposing this, positions this as they call it a subminimum wage, and say people only get the $5.25, which is just a flat out lie.
Speaker 3:Nobody does it would be against the law and if somebody was caught doing that, the state and the labor department it would not be good for that business.
Speaker 3:And so that's the issue that's coming at us, and our position is really reflective of the discussions we've now had With over in-person in the last couple months, over a thousand servers in-person and operators, because we've been doing sort of a roadshow around Ohio and right now it is right between about 93 and 95% of every person we've talked to opposes this change in tipping, and so people who are actually in the industry doing it are the ones who oppose it. And so our position is. This group is trying to do something that no one in the industry really wants to have happen, and that's something that we'll be working on very aggressively here in the next several months. This will come to July when they have to when fair wage has to get about 413,000 signatures from verified voters, and if they do that, then they'll be able to actually put the proposal officially on the ballot for November in 2024. So there's some steps that have to occur for that to happen.
Speaker 2:Wow, so we'll have to be watching for that. It'll be interesting. It will be.
Speaker 3:And, again, there's a lot of noise around these kind of things, but we're just going to make sure we bring clarity and facts. And, by the way, we have all this information available for anybody to take a look at on the website that I mentioned, and we actually have created a special website called Protect Tips in Ohio, so people can go directly to that and see all this information. And, for example, today we put on that website a calculator for restaurant tours to go in and take this very simple calculator, put some numbers in and see what the impact of these things would be on their business. And, as we have tested this calculator and worked with operators many of them, if they put this into their P&L, their profit and loss statement, in many cases they go from making about four to five percent profit, particularly smaller restaurants, to how they have a loss.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's how dramatic this would be for restaurants and so we're making that available, but I'd like so they can understand the impact of this.
Speaker 2:Wow. So let's talk about the industry in general. What kind of trends are we going to see in 2024? Is there a newer food entity that's showing up, or a newer type of hospitality?
Speaker 3:There's always new, which is what makes this industry so much fun. You know, you just drive around and you know we all have our favorites, the places that have been around for a long time and they seem to be just part of the community, and Delaware has many of those right. All kind of places around central Ohio, Really all through Ohio. We have just some real iconic restaurants and businesses and we're blessed that this central Ohio is a hotbed for restaurant businesses to kind of start and take off and, for example, just in the last several years, condados tacos right has started up and really kind of taken off.
Speaker 3:City barbecue I mentioned a few minutes ago, but we also have everything, of course, from Wendy's was founded here and White Castle was founded here. They've been around forever, right, so just a high and so more people just keep keep opening businesses or come here pretty quickly you know what I mean as they're growing, which is kind of cool, You're going to see more A lot of food halls popped up. If you've noticed that. That seems to be really popular for people because you can go there and just have all these choices. You can go there regularly and, depending on how big it is, you can have whatever five, ten different choices, maybe more depending on how you see food halls.
Speaker 3:It's very popular with people. You're seeing a lot of what I call ethnic food, things that used to be West Coast only and then they would come to good old Ohio five, ten years later and now they're coming a lot quicker. They're with the ability to see all these things on social media and food shows and things. That doesn't take long. So, for example, we have Somali restaurants here in Central.
Speaker 2:Oh really, I've never been to one.
Speaker 3:Well, go to the North Market downtown and they have one and check that out and just, we have the second largest Somali population in the United States from the data that I have seen, Second to Minneapolis. But of course we also have things like the beautiful German village in Columbus where there's just all these mom and pops and just all kinds of different foods. Of course we have great Italian restaurants and pizza and things like that Italy and Cleveland.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, but there's just more of that, right. I mean I feel like parochies. You know Parma, ohio and a lot of great German food down in Cincinnati, and I think you're just going to see more of that. You know the American palate has become much more interested in various types of flavors. There's still room for what I call meat and potatoes, right, and people still love to go there Bob Evans and you know and get what I call good old American. You know middle of the plate type food. But I just think younger people are much more adventurous. You know you see more sushi and you see ramen restaurants, you know, kind of popping up all over the place, and I think you're going to see more of that kind of trend and aggressive flavoring in food. Yeah, and it's just good for us, right, because we get to experience all these things and find what we like.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about ghost kitchens, because I get that. It saves on space and money. But how do they make people find? What is the deal with finding them? And here is where I'm headed from. You know I'm a door dasher, I admit, because it's easier for me to find something on DoorDash than track something down that will deliver. But Ghost Kitchen, sometimes my DoorDash drivers can't find them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they've got to really work on that. There are Ghost Kitchens all around Central Ohio. It really peaked right after the pandemic, where many people jumped into that business, as you can imagine, because it just made sense right.
Speaker 2:We had.
Speaker 3:It was difficult to go in and sit down at a restaurant, so those proliferated. I think it's kind of leveled out a bit and that they're still out there. But the advantage for an operator is if you're a small operator and you're afraid to open up the full brick and mortar, you can open that up and you can survive with lower sales volume. You have to get really good at social media and you have to obviously play with the DoorDashes and Uber Eats and everybody else and to make sure you can get on the page you know what I mean and on their pages. But you got to be really good at social media and in today's world I will tell you that's not impossible to do. Some people have done extremely well because they know how to master social media, geo-offencing and virtual views of foods and they have influencers. There's a whole business that has been created in that space in the last three or four years and it's not gonna go away because younger millennials and Gen Z prefer to shop that way.
Speaker 3:To shop and order their food that way. So it's not going away, it's just the latest trend, and what can I say? But even yeah, tell you what, michelle? Even the bigger chains have their own apps and of course they also have the relationships with the DoorDashes as a world. But they have their own apps.
Speaker 3:Chipotle, for example, is up to 70%, but well over 70% of their food is now ordered through some sort of digital order and of course, they would love it to go to 100%, because they capture all the data. They can send things directly to consumers, so they don't have to really do what I call traditional advertising. They can advertise directly to you and I say like it, you know. Then in one hour they send you something through your digital connection and you go wow, I am hungry, I'm gonna order me a Chipotle day for lunch, right, and it's delivered right to your house on this snowy day, hopefully, and away you go. And younger. You know we do a lot of analysis and we do a lot of focus groups and studies and look at data, and the younger audiences don't seem to be bothered by whatever happens to food when it's delivered, which what I mean by that is that the food is never quite the same. A half an hour after it's cooked.
Speaker 2:Yes, a lot of times I'm re-heating and eating it.
Speaker 3:Right, but younger people seem to not care, and packaging has got better, there's no question about it, and so they use good packaging, the best they can afford, and consumers like the convenience is what we have learned, and that trend is here this day.
Speaker 2:You kind of scared me with that comment, because one of my fears is the thing I hate about DoorDash is you really have no clue or choice in who you get to be your delivery person, and so God knows something, if you had a deviant person, could be done to your food by the time it got to you. I try never to think about that, but it's a possibility and there's no easy way to complain about somebody. They say, you know, rate them such and such or whatever, but God knows where that goes. And then I think, well, what if they delivered to me again and I gave them a bad rating? Then they might for sure screw up my food.
Speaker 3:That is, of course. That's the issue with any kind of service that we get right food right and I do get it right, but you know you. Just I hope that whatever the material is that your food comes in is sealed.
Speaker 3:Yeah number one, right, and people took care of and I think I think restaurants are getting better at that because they realize it's a growing percent of their business. Takeout and delivery continues, you know, to be exceptionally important for so many businesses. Now we did see it tail off a little bit for what I call fine dining and higher-end casual. Yes, of course, they went to a hundred percent of their sales for a little while and then it settled into you know some number, but it had it dropped a little bit in 2023. Not that they don't want to have that business, but I think what they found is people wanted to go back out and have experiences and go into restaurant. Yeah, and that's that's a trend we saw in 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was said there is a restaurant from a hometown of Burlington called Tommy's Pizza and my brother and I found out tragically you can't go in there and eat anymore now, it's only you know delivery carry out. And I was like no, I love going and sitting in that place.
Speaker 3:But you know that's the other. That is another really important trend, and that is it's hard to get enough employees, and and so it's quite possible, the reason they're doing that is that they, you know they fought since the pandemic to try to keep enough employees, and you just can't hire enough people. They're just not enough people available. I mean, most of our restaurants are still short-handed. Even the best operators will tell us that they're just constantly in the mode of recruiting and hiring, and that's just because Two things one and we may have talked about this the amount of people you know in the workforce who are actually working but are, you know, eligible to work. It's about 61%, and this across the United States, and that's the lowest percent since they've been recording this data. The Labor Department and you know so, 39%. I don't know what they're doing for a living, but so you're fighting for just a smaller group of people and then, since the pandemic, I think people are just more willing to jump jobs and, you know, change and rethink what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Speaker 3:And we're hearing that in every field health care, technology, you know accounting, restaurants, you know people move around a lot. So I think you're gonna see, you know more restaurant models where people Open up a restaurant and in its only takeout and delivery or very limited service, with with a few amount of staff, and Even some of the fast food Chains are biggest. You know ones that we love. You know, either based here, they're both aggressively implementing technology White Castle and Wendy's to do Automation and AI in the restaurants and I've seen it up in person and it is that they're really good at it and you're gonna just you're gonna see more of it. We would see it more touch screens and then you know that type of thing, when you walk into a restaurant, when you go through the drive-through, it is AI, not a human. You know that's gonna be to you and things like that.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. It's a different world we live in and I wonder if the pandemic spurred it quicker to show up or what.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it did. I mean, one of the things that I spent a lot of time trying to get my head around during the pandemic and Really over the last couple years, is the rate of change that we see, as you know, people who are in business and and I think we've all kind of arrived, you know that there's no question that the rate of change has accelerated and you see it, of course, in every industry, that in this industry it was really forced, you know, by the pandemic. Restaurants Historically have been a little slow to implement technology and innovation. That forced to do it during the pandemic and and it hasn't stopped. So it's just hard right, and if you're not innovating you're typically falling backwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well so done. 2024, or just beginning. What do you see for our future?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're always optimistic. You have to be a little crazy to be in a restaurant industry crazy and happy. So we're optimistic about 2024. We think we'll see a lot of growth. Our local companies are all taught telling us about, even with everything that's on their plate. They are trying to position, to add new locations and create more opportunities for people, and that's what our industry does. We're in Ohio about 550,000 people directly and about another half million indirectly that provides services and product to our industry. So it's huge. It's the second biggest industry in the state and we obviously are important to helping the state grow and attract new people.
Speaker 3:We think about the intels and the Hondas and these big companies making all these announcements One of the things they want to know when they're going to do this or going to bring a lot of people into Ohio. They want it to be a good place for people to come in. A good place means they want to have theaters and they want to have ballets, but they also want to have great restaurants and super hotels and fun places to go and hospitality right, because if they're attracting them from places that have all that, they're going to expect that when they get here. So, for example I will tell you is that all that growth goes on in New Albany and Johnstown and everything that's happening out that way. We've spent a lot of time bringing experts in to talk to our members and say think about growing out there, because there's going to be some great opportunities for people to get there at the right time and secure the land or buildings and things like that. So that's exciting.
Speaker 3:I think you'll see more of that and it's happening all over Ohio in different places. We see a lot of development. Be honest, michelle, there's still going to be some closures, and we see it because this business is really tough, and so we'll still see closures, and you just know that. But in 2023, at the end of the first quarter was the first time that we saw more openings in Ohio than closures since the pandemic began, so that was good news, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, let's hope we have another quarter like that in 2024.
Speaker 3:Yes, sure, I hope so.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks again, John. Tell everybody again what the website is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, eatdrinkohiocom, eatdrinkohiocom.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Midwest Momentum on your favorite podcast site and great radio stations across Ohio like WWCD 92.9 in Franklin, Lickin and Delaware counties and WDLR, Herden and Delaware, Union and Marion counties.