Grant Achatz Quotes

The part that I know I enjoy most is the restaurants. You can't do everything, you know? For me, the priority has been being deeply involved in my restaurants and figuring out different ways to make them run better.

I always worked in institutions, I never had a restaurant of my own before, but I have opened over 30 hotels, restaurants and casinos. I understand what it takes to keep them running.

Even if the chef has a good business head, his focus should be behind kitchen doors. A business partner should take care of everything in front of the kitchen doors.

I think the only thing I would've ever been any good at was probably being a pub landlord. I've thought of that a couple of times.

I think, as a chef and restaurateur, that you have to take care of your business. Otherwise, you're only as good as your last meal. You have to watch if your food costs are too high, or you could be out of business in no time.

When I set up my first restaurant, I was so inspired by Wolfgang Puck, who is also based in L.A. and is now a good friend of mine, and the way he would engage with his customers and greet them personally.

Some of the things I think I learned from that were very educational as far as just paying bills - the basics in dealing with a restaurant like that. It was just life - the education involved in running the organization, even on a small level.

The people that are running the bulk of the comic shops in North America aren't business people and they don't understand sales. They don't understand good product.

I worked in restaurants the first half of my life.

I would still like to own and run a restaurant serving Indian food with a good dollop of Parsi cooking - which you can't seem to get anywhere.

If it doesn't taste good it doesn't go on the menu.

My parents own a restaurant in Albuquerque.

There has been no great surprise, no sudden revelation. I knew pretty much what I was getting into. What I've learned is that a restaurant can be as much of an art as you want it to be, but it has to be a successful business first.

I love cooking. I'm in the restaurant business.

Whether it's books or TV, or whatever the case may be, the backbone of what I do is my restaurants.

The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can't trust it to anybody else, because no one's going to love it like you do.

During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant.

I was working in restaurants as a captain and as a waiter.

All my jobs have been with food in one way or another since 1948. My parents were in the hotel business, and I just loved the warm hearted people who worked so hard with such good humor.

The restaurant business had a profound effect on my future and that of my two brothers. When we were able to stand on a stool to reach the sink, we washed dishes, and later, when we could see over the counter, we waited tables and managed the cash register.

It's a very, very difficult space to operate in, the restaurant business-it requires a lot of human beings to intersect at just the right place to make it all work out.

I didn't open a restaurant, but I did go to a few cooking schools. It was too much like hard work!

I love how restaurants work. The energy, the pace, and the idea of working under budgetary restraints reminds me a lot of sets.

When I started on the very first day with just one restaurant, we used to pick oregano off the stems and chop them. We still do that.

Remember, restaurateurs are only shopkeepers; that's all we are. It's no different from the supermarket down the road.