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Interview with Ray Blanchette, CEO of Joe’s Crab Shack

Ray Blanchette, CEO of Joe’s Crab Shack restaurants shares the secret sauce in Joe’s recipe for excellent food and customer service and his company’s focus on making Joe’s a great place to work.

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Transcript

CE:  Okay, Chester Elton for the Carrot Culture podcast this week.  I’m in beautiful downtown Houston, Texas, and my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast Ray Blanchette, who is the CEO of Joe’s Crab Shacks.  Welcome to the podcast.

RB:  Thank you very much.  Great to be here.

CE:  Yeah, we had so much fun this afternoon.  Now, tell us a little bit about Joe’s Crab Shack—I know you’re kind of a new entity, being on your own—and a little of your background and why now you’re starting to focus on what you call this Cultural Revolution.

RB:  Well, interesting…you know Joe’s has been around for…I think in 1990 is really when it was sort of started…and we got involved about two years ago. We bought it from Landry’s.  For us it just seemed like…Joe’s seemed like a really good idea!  The business itself…it’s got a really unique value proposition.

CE:  It’s a different kind of experience, Joe’s Crab shack, isn’t it?

RB:  It sits out there all by itself.  If you’re in a Joe’s Crab Shack, you can’t confuse it with anything else.  You know its Joe’s.  That, coupled with the fact that the seafood segment is sort of wide open, here Joe’s is with its own personality and it just seemed like the right place for us. Shortly after buying the business, we realized we were off-track a little bit.  When you looked at why was Joe’s in distress—because we bought the business in distress—it seemed like they’d sort of lost its focus and it really wasn’t food-centric.  It was more based on the experience and I think the only sustainable advantage in restaurants is food.  So we—everyone—sort of rallied around.  We got a new leadership team, we focused on food, we made our food better and we made our business better.  And now as we sit here today with an improved service proposition and improved food proposition, we said, “Where have we really not focused yet and where do we need to focus to get the business to the next level?”  From my perspective it really was about…the Culture Revolution is sort of the next strategic building block for the business.  Getting people to want to be a part of Joe’s, to want to stay with Joe’s, to want to really understand and embrace the brand, is going to help us move the brand forward.  So, it really is more strategic in nature, than philanthropic, right?  But, I think you accomplish both at the same time.

CE:  Yeah, you know, I always like to laugh about when you focus on your people and treat them right, nice guys really do finish first!  And in your business where your brand really is your people, I mean there’s no doubt about it. 

RB:  No question about it.

CE:  You can have the best marketing materials, but if they go into a Crab Shack and have a bad experience they’re just flat out not coming back.  So, how do you instill that?  I know you’ve got some acronyms you use about perfection and price and so on.  How has that helped you get the message to your general managers of your restaurants and to your line people?  How do those kinds of things help drive the message through?

RB:  Well, price in particular—what price is is really the price of admission into Joe’s.  And the PRICE as an acronym sort of represents our values around Passion, Respect, Integrity, Courage, and Energy.  And I think it helps in that your strategies may change, your tactics absolutely will change, but your values shouldn’t change.  And for us, it gives us the opportunity to get in front of people and communicate the same things over and over again.  I think that more than anything has helped us integrate the message in the business.  I think, historically, most restaurant companies are really good at implementing things.  We’re always changing things.  We’re massive implementers, but we’re not terribly good integrators, so by staying on the same message for more than a year, and know for the foreseeable future we’ll continue to drive this same message home, what it does, is it really lays a foundation for us to build off of.  And that’s where PRICE kind of comes into play as a key driver for us.

CE:  And then you talk about this quest for perfection—the perfect food.  And you’re right.  Restaurants—you can have a great experience, but if you don’t like the food it doesn’t really matter because people want to eat.  So you talk about the ‘perfect food’ and the ‘perfect beverage’ and the ‘perfect customer service experience.’  How are you driving that home, other than putting it on the posters?

RB:  Well, it’s part of all the conversations that we have with operators.  We would never get in front of a group of operators and not talk about the operation absolutes, which are perfect food and beverage and the others that you mentioned.  So, again, for us it’s continuity of messaging, about getting out and being able to talk about those same things.  You start to breathe life into it over time and what we find is that the level of conversation increases each time.  We know we’re not going to achieve perfection, but you strive for perfection in hopes of achieving excellence, right?  And that really is sort of the methodology behind this, that if we aim for the bull’s eye and you miss, you may still hit the target.  If you aim for the target and miss, you get nothing.

CE:  I love that.  Striving for perfection and then getting excellence.
RB:  That really is the methodology behind it.  The words were carefully chosen.  We want these operational absolutes to be aspirational to people.  But most importantly, we’re realistic enough to know that if we don’t get out and walk the talk every day, if we don’t lead by example and role model these behaviors, hold ourselves…it’s interesting when you talk to folks that work in the restaurant support center they don’t have the same operational absolutes because they’re not operating restaurants, but you heard the CFO today talk about striving for perfection in the way in which he executes accounts payable, because that’s a common vernacular and it connects with people.  We’re setting the bar just as high for folks in the restaurant support center around serving our customer, who’s a general manager, as we ask them to set for their folks.
CE:  Common language.  Great point.  Now, how do you, and how have you seen this, driven home using the recognition strategies and why is that part of the Cultural Revolution, in your view?

RB:  For me, it probably…this goes back to my Friday’s days.  When I started at TGI Friday’s, it was the first place I’d ever worked.  They were fanatical about recognition.
 
CE:  The pins and the whole thing?

RB:  Everybody was in suspenders and they wore pins on their collars and they wore pins on their suspenders and getting a “wow” pin when you “wowed” a guest, or an “MVP” pin when you were the star of the shift, I mean it really was meaningful to people.  And I remember how meaningful it was.  I remember how meaningful it’s been to me through my career.  I don’t care what level you get, you achieve in business, it’s always nice to hear that you’re doing a good job or that you’re satisfying the people that you’re tasked with satisfying.  I think it probably started at Friday’s for me and I believe in a recognition culture.  I think the other thing is…I think it’s the leader’s job to set the tone for how people are going to engage with each other.  I just want us to be a nice place to work. 

CE:  You know it’s funny—you talked about your CFO, Jeff, and he used an expression I loved: “It’s the leader’s job to cast the shadow.”  If we’re not doing it, how can we expect other people to do it?  Well listen, you’ve been great with your time and I know you’ve got a lot of people to see tonight.  A couple of last questions—tell me about one of your favorite recognition experiences, one where you saw the impact and where you became that real believer in recognition.  Because I know you are.

RB:  You want me to tell you the Russia story.

CE:  Well we could. That’s a great story! Not the train story, but the employee story.

RB:  Oh yeah, the employee story.  It was absolutely Russia.  The first restaurant that we opened in Tverskaya for TGI Friday’s in Moscow and when I had the opportunity to give some recognition to one of the stars before a grand opening night and she ran off in tears, hysterical.  She wouldn’t come up onstage and receive the recognition.  When I went and spoke to her afterwards and she said, “Men aren’t supposed to talk to women that way in Russia.”  But what she was really saying was that she was the one that should be thanking me because that job was the best thing that ever happened to her, and really to anyone in her family and now here we are recognizing her.  I just, at that point in time knew that at any point in the future recognition has to be a big part of the culture.

CE:  That is so awesome.

RB:  It was cool.

CE:  Excellent!  Thanks so much for having us in.  You know this is the start of a good relationship.  Let’s keep talking and have some fun. 

RB:  Everyone today was completely blown away.  They really were.  I heard from every single person that came up to me during the cocktail reception, or dinner, they all just said, “Wow!”  Nice job!

CE:  Let’s do it again.  Thanks for your time.  Thanks very much.

RB:  You’re welcome.