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Kevin Farrell
Owner, General Manager
Booty's Street Food
October 15, 2013

Something about Kevin's (and his partner, Nick's) story reminds us of Cinderella. Only this version goes more like: two scrappy young gents scraped their pennies together and built a beautiful, sparkly restaurant in a downtrodden city. And their success - their 'happily ever after' - is built on the foundation that their employees also get a shot at being Cinderella. We dare you not to be impressed with how they're making that happen.

When did you know that you wanted to work in food?

I've been in and out of food jobs and the service industry for most of my life. My first job was a dishwasher gig when I was 13. I lived with a foster family on a goat and berry farm in Massachusetts in my late teens and did quite a bit of milking and berry picking. When the recession hit, I found myself bartending again for what I thought would be the last time.

The biggest thing that led to us building Booty's was how deeply our (my partner, Nick Vivion and I) daily lives were intertwined with a bar/restaurant/café while we were living in Seattle called Oddfellows Café. A gorgeous space full of happy, vibrant staff, regulars, sunshine and coffee. That was the promise of what we wanted to recreate in Nola.

How did you get your current good food job?

We decided to save our pennies and build a restaurant ourselves! Nick and I committed to a strict $12 a day household budget for 19 months. We ate so many sweet potatoes that our fingernails turned orange.

The decision to build Booty's in New Orleans was a no-brainer. I had lived here previously until Hurricane Katrina, and while we loved our time in Seattle, we were desperate for sunshine and palm trees once again. After finding a historic building ripe with potential, we began a 10 month construction process. As we neared completion, we tried to be very conscious about the fact that we weren't beholden to outdated restaurant tools and systems that everyone uses because that's the way it's always been done.

Our POS system is iPad-based, we use an energy efficient Nest thermostat, our scheduling is done online, and Instagram is an enormous driver of business for us. None of these are exactly revolutionary in their own right, but they add up to a fresh operating perspective for us. And it's working.

How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

Oh gosh, probably just a series of terrible service industry jobs - Bartending on Bourbon Street in college, catering upon moving to Seattle, working for first time restaurateurs on more than one occasion. All of those added up to a pretty long list of what not to do, to be honest.

We try to lead with our values. We pay our staff a living wage instead of the two bucks an hour Louisiana requires for bars and restaurants. We offer health insurance after 3 months with the company, and pay 50% the cost. We worked with Where Ya Rack and the Young Leadership Council to install gorgeous bike racks around our property. We organize at least one staff volunteer opportunity each month around ideas pitched by our employees. We've done trash cleanups of the Bywater, cleared rain gardens in Holy Cross, all sorts of things that align with our staff's interests. And we try our best to say yes to every single community organization that comes through our doors asking for help to make a change. We're giving our staff annual cost of living raises in the coming year.

We try to be very transparent with our staff about these things. The costs, the impact on the bottom line, the necessity to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively to help fund these big plans. They're helping us to help other folks, and they deserve ownership of that.

What was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome in pursuing your Good Food Job dream?

Now that we're open, our business is building itself, which is fantastic. But the construction process was hit with so many delays - City Council going on strike, Hurricane Isaac, three months of Sewerage and Water Board infrastructure work on our block, even Treme [an HBO show] filming on our corner for two months while we were nearing opening day. The entire project, and the years of work that went into it, nearly ran off the rails at multiple points during construction. There were points when we thought we would never get to see opening day.

We've now had an incredible year since opening - being named one of New Orleans Magazine's best new restaurants of the year, 3 months at number one on the Eater Heatmap, having been covered in Vogue, the New York Times, Southern Living, Esquire, the BBC even! - it's unbelievable. And we're only 11 months old!

What can you identify as the greatest opportunities in food right now?

I see all of the stories about minimum wage fast food employees striking in Seattle, New York, and other big cities across the nation and I am reminded that you can always, ALWAYS strive to improve the quality of your employees' lives. About 20 of our 26 employees live within walking distance of our restaurant, even as rents have skyrocketed in Bywater over the past two years. Our people are from, of and in this neighborhood, and I believe Bywater is better for that.

We're working hard to build diverse service industry jobs. As we open future projects (and we have a few in the pipeline!), we want our employees to be able to work across properties so that each day brings new sights, challenges and rewards. I think diversity of work experience is just as valuable as the number on a paycheck, but that most people don't even consider that they deserve to have an expectation of that.

We're super proud to be launching our Street Food Sabbaticals program right now. After 6 months with the company, our employees are able to pitch the rest of the staff on an eating vacation anywhere in the world with a vibrant street food scene. Booty's will cover airfare and travel expenses, so long as our hungry travelers blog, Instagram, and share their experiences with the world while they are away. Our Executive Chef, Greg Fonseca kicked off the program this month with a 9 day trip to Bolivia where he worked, taught, cooked and ate alongside the staff at Gustu. Food and Wine Magazine named Gustu the best new restaurant in the world while he was actually there! It was a really cool moment for our whole staff. We're really proud of him!

But it's not just our chef who is doing this. Anyone can pitch a trip. Our daytime bartender Jen is plotting out a trip to Uruguay to present at the next staff meeting. Someone else wants to go to New York. Austin! Thailand! Our people are excited about this, and it provides a really nice electricity to working here. It's very rewarding to have our people show us they value these sorts of opportunities by taking them seriously.

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

Oh man, just having our employees stick with us for the long tail. We have a really low turnover rate compared with the rest of the industry, which is fantastic. Having a staff that looks forward to coming to work, and doesn't view this as just a job is a reward all by itself. I want our people to stick with us for a long time. They're helping us to build the company. I want them to reap the rewards as we grow.

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