Guest: Dave Barton
Topics: Restaurants, restaurant leases, commercial real estate, restaurant consulting

In this episode of Retail Retold, host Chris welcomes Dave Burton, a well-known restaurateur and consultant from Tampa, Florida. Dave shares insights into his thriving restaurant ventures, Gen X Tavern, Soho Sushi, and his upcoming project, Storm Runners Tavern. The discussion touches on the challenges and trends in the restaurant industry, including cost management, labor issues, and insurance expenses. Dave also recounts the story of his past successful project, The Getaway in St. Petersburg, offering valuable lessons on phased openings and creative financing. Tune in for a comprehensive look into the world of restaurant management and innovation.

What You’ll Learn:

1. How is passion for quality driving the success of Dave’s restaurants?
2. What are the current challenges facing the restaurant industry?
3. How Dave and his team develop compelling (and delicious!) concepts.

About Retail Retold:

The Retail Retold Podcast highlights community retailer stories from across the country and gives a behind-the-scenes perspective from business leaders in both retail and real estate industries. The show’s episodes contain valuable insights that help solve the needs of entrepreneurs and real estate pros. Join host Chris Ressa and new guests weekly for amazing insights and thought-provoking stories.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] This is Retail Retold, the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris Ressa, and I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast brought to you by DLC Management.

[00:00:17] Chris Ressa:
Welcome to Retail Retold everyone.

Today I am joined by Dave Burton. Dave is a restaurateur in Tampa, Florida. I’m excited for him to be here. Welcome to the show, Dave.

So Dave, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do.

[00:00:38] Dave Burton:
Sure, absolutely. I’m happy to. My name is Dave Burton. I’m a restauranteur here in Tampa, Florida. I own a couple of restaurants. I grew up in the business. I love it. It’s my passion. It’s what I do. In addition to that, I also have my own hospitality consulting firm, where we help emerging hospitality groups with concept design, construction management, you name it. It’s called Hoscon group. And then I also do a retail and restaurant commercial real estate brokerage with Tomlin commercial, a boutique brokerage here in Tampa.

[00:01:13] Chris Ressa:
What one of those do you spend the most time on?

[00:01:19] Dave Burton:
I spend the most time operating my restaurants.

I’m fortunate to have built a team that can help me operate them on a day-to-day basis. But, like I said earlier, Chris, man, it’s my passion. I love being in there. I love talking to customers, talking to my employees. I love, you know, seeing people having a good time. when you go to a restaurant, generally you’re celebrating something good, whether it’s lunch with friends, dinner with friends, maybe it’s a graduation. It’s generally a happy time. So I like being around people that are happy. So I spend most of my time with my restaurants, but I really do enjoy all three, and I’ve just been fortunate to have a good team of people who can help me out in all aspects of those three things that I do.

[00:02:04] Chris Ressa:
Amazing.

So then let’s talk about your restaurants. That’s what we’re going to focus on today. So you have two restaurants you own and one about to open. So what are those three restaurants?

[00:02:20] Dave Burton:
Yeah. So, the two that I own that are currently operating, Gen X Tavern, which is in downtown Tampa. It’s a retro 80s and 90s-themed bar and restaurant. It was kind of a passion project for me. I thought, how fun would it be to create a concept based upon so many awesome memories I had from the 80s and 90s in my childhood, the pop culture, the music. You know, the movies, the whole bit, and created a concept kind of centered around those memories and, people have responded to it really well. We’re celebrating six years.

I also own a sushi restaurant called Soho Sushi, which is in the South Tampa part of town. We’ve been open now for 20 years and are celebrating our 20th year in business.

And then what’s coming? You know, being in Tampa, we’re surrounded by all this water, and I’ve thought it would be fun to do a waterfront concept that celebrates everything regarding the ocean.

So, we’re opening here just in a couple of weeks. It’s called Storm Runners Tavern. The theme is just kind of centered around, you know, in Florida, it seems we’re always running from storms. We’re just running from one this past week. So the concept’s very fitting for our area. And, we’re opening in Gulfport, which is a small, Close-knit for Keys-inspired community about 30 to 45 minutes outside of Tampa.

We’ve got a great rooftop bar. We’re right across the street from the public beach and golf port. We’re kind of at the corner of main and main where you want to be.

So it’s a project. We’re really excited about. We love the real estate. We love that area. and it’s kind of three concepts in one. We’ve got a big outdoor tiki bar area. That’s going to be our dog friendly, bar where people can bring their pets and just hang out. we’re going to call that bark. So, capital B, capital A, capital R, lowercase K Golf Port. Then we also have a rooftop bar, which we’re branding the Crow’s Nest at Storm Runners Tavern. And then we’re going to have our traditional kind of inside seating. You know, it’s going to feel like your traditional kind of like waterfront, casual pub, tavern sort of feel.

[00:04:35] Chris Ressa:
What, what can I eat there?

[00:04:39:00] Dave Barton:
So you’re going to be able to eat a lot of approachable kinds of things. Seafood driven, you know, we’re going to have, grouper tacos, grouper sandwich. We’ve got some killer crab cakes on the menu. Some nice little shareable appetizers, fish dip, crab dip, little sheet crab bisque, a lot of handhelds, just kind of a casual, approachable menu, where people aren’t going to be needing to spend $30, $40, $50 on food. They can come in and have a nice little sandwich and a beer and have it be affordable. So that’s kind of what we’re looking for there.

[00:05:09] Chris Ressa:
So. what’s your favorite dish served in the two restaurants that are open or the, and including the third that will be open.

[00:05:17] Dave Burton:
So I’ll start with the newest one because we’ve been doing a lot of, taste testing. So Stormrunner’s Tavern. I love our crab cakes. I brought in a chef friend of mine who was a James Beard Award finalist. Really knows a lot about seafood and comfort food. So we had him kind of help us out with our menu development and the crab cakes are phenomenal. They’re outstanding. So that would probably be my go to there.

At Soho Sushi, I like to mix it up. We’ve got so many good rolls on the menu. I usually just let my chefs get creative on me, and they never fail, man. They do a great job. Everything they produce is stellar. I’ve got a lot of people that have been with us for a long time. We’re just very passionate at what we do. We’re very particular about every ingredient that goes. We’re proud to still be doing that.

Then lastly at GenX Tavern, I love our burgers, man. You can put a variety of different things on them. we do smash burgers, so you can double it up, triple it up, or just do a single if you’d like. kind of mix and match with all kinds of different toppings, but yeah, our burgers are stellar there.

[00:06:33] Chris Ressa:
Awesome. So you’re in the thick of it of the restaurant business Give me what’s going on in the restaurant world right now from someone who’s operating on the ground. What’s your take of like the market?

[00:06:46] Dave Burton:
Sure. I mean, you know, we’ve already, we’ve historically in the restaurant business been kind of a tight margin industry. and it feels like, you know, it’s getting even a little more difficult getting a little tighter, you know, rents, cost of construction are really, really, you know, not getting to where it’s absolutely ludicrous, but getting to where it’s a lot more difficult to make money. So everything’s just getting a little bit more expensive. You’ve got challenges with the labor market that I won’t, you know, go into detail that I’m sure everybody knows and has read about and heard about. You know, in the restaurant industry is definitely one where, you know, we hire people that, you know, unfortunately, a lot of industries won’t. So it becomes tough for us sometimes to find people, you know, so we just have to work in our own restaurants at creating great cultures and being employers of choice to where people actually want to work for us. But yeah, the restaurant industry is tough, man; it’s getting even more challenging.

I think the people that are creative and that just focus on delivering a consistent, great experience, good service, great product, you know, those are the ones that are going to keep, being successful.

[00:07:58] Chris Ressa:
We all know the labor challenge from finding the right people and the cost of labor outside of those two things, what else might the listener not know that’s making margin control tough?

[00:08:14] Dave Burton:
Well, for us in Florida, a lot of, things that are coming down the pipeline from an insurance point of view are getting a lot more expensive. Unfortunately, we live in a society where everybody likes to sue people. So, liability, property, casualty, insurance, workers comp, all those expenses keep getting higher. It’s becoming tough to manage, from that point of view. And that I think is probably one of the things that I know, at least in Florida, I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but I know in Florida, it’s a real challenge for us.

You know, when your brokers come in with, your renewals and telling you, oh, it’s only going to be a 24 percent increase, maybe last year it was a 28 percent increase. So it’s like, well, in two years, it’s up over 50%; that’s a real problem. But there’s a lot of other expenses besides rent and obviously labor, that once those start to increase and pick up.

In such a tight margin industry like the restaurant businesses, you have to get creative with either cutting expenses or raising prices. And, that’s what we’re seeing a little bit of both, and restaurants have had no option but to raise prices over the past couple of years.

[00:09:24] Chris Ressa:
What, what’s food costs like these days?

[00:09:26] Dave Burton:
Well, it’s starting to stabilize a little bit from what we’re seeing. it’s definitely challenging. It’s not what it was at one point. But, you know, restaurants still kind of, I tell people all the time, you know, you got to try to hit that 30 percent of under on your cost of goods. If you really want to bring anything substantial to your bottom line, that’s kind of why we’re seeing some of those higher prices tick up is because restaurants have to keep that 30 percent as their benchmark or goal because other expenses as well are creeping up.

[00:10:02] Chris Ressa:
So that’s the cost of goods sold. The 30 percent are based on where we are today. Do you think the majority of restaurants that you see out there have to raise prices in order to 30 percent, or is what we’re seeing on the menus out there?

[00:10:31] Dave Burton:
Yeah, it is a tough question. It’s hard to say. I will say from, you know, from some of my consulting, clients, I would say that most of them, if they wanted to be at that 30%, they’d have to raise prices a little more.

Now, 30 percent is kind of the goal. There’s some genres that You know, we’re going to be a little heavier on your cost of goods, a concept like barbecue, for example, which is very protein heavy. Your cost of goods. It’s going to be very difficult to get that 30 percent. So 30 percent is just kind of a benchmark. But I would say, looking at most places, they probably would have to raise prices to be at that 30 percent level, or they can look at their expenses and see what else they can maybe trim.

[00:11:15] Chris Ressa:
Got it. All right. Well, that was pretty interesting take on the restaurant industry. you know, the restaurant industry overall has been on actually a pretty good run here.

[00:11:28] Dave Burton:
It has been.

[00:11:29] Chris Ressa:
Do you think there’s going to be some softening?

[00:11:34] Dave Burton:
Yeah, I think we’re already starting to see it. I have a good friend who is a bankruptcy attorney. And he said, yeah, it’s like this booming economy has been terrible for my business these past 15 or whatever years, but he said he’s starting to get busy again. So, to me, that’s a telltale sign that there’s definitely some softening that we’re seeing.

I think the restaurant industry is going to see some tougher times. Like you said, we’ve had it pretty well for a while, and [00:12:00] Things are cyclical, and we’re about due for some softening—a correction, maybe, if you will.

[00:12:05] Chris Ressa:
Thank you. That was super helpful. Sure. Of course. Let’s move on. You have a story about a restaurant you don’t own anymore, but you did. it was called Getaway in St. Petersburg.

[00:12:18] Dave Burton:
Yeah.

[00:12:19] Chris Ressa:
Tell us the story!

[00:12:20] Dave Burton:
Yeah, so, you know, The Getaway in St Pete, I, I opened it up with a friend of mine who actually did not have restaurant experience, but it was his goal to create something, that kind of mimicked a lot of the experiences he had while going to places in the Caribbean, going to places in the keys.

[And, you know, we, we wanted to find something that we could produce pretty much from scratch, you know, start with a clean slate. So, we wanted the property to be on the water. And despite being surrounded by a lot of water in this Tampa Bay area, we just weren’t really finding the right thing.

But eventually, we came across, this property, and we had to envision what we wanted to do, because the property itself was in such terrible shape, feral cats running all around the property, no telling what people were doing in this old neglected waterfront lot, who knows what kind of criminal activities were going on at that time.

We saw the property and we’re like, this has some real potential.

[00:13:17] Chris Ressa:
And what was it like? Was it just land?

[00:13:26] Dave Burton:
So it was, it was an old dive bar that had been there that the building itself was actually fronting the street. And all the area that faced the water, all the property that faced the water was kind of like its parking lot.

And we’re like, well, we want to invert that and have, you know, build some bars, build some tiki bars and, you know, kind of put in some docks so we could get some boat traffic in, and just really kind of took the property from something that was neglected, never used fully. And then [we made it, you know, kind of what we envisioned.

We had to get creative with our food program. When we opened up, we originally had rotating food trucks that we would just bring in to handle the food. We control, obviously, the bars, the music, and the entertainment, but we saw how busy the food trucks were. So we’re like, maybe it’s time we built our own kitchen.

So we bought a couple of shipping containers, retrofitted them, gutted them, put them in kind of like a backward L and, put all our kitchen equipment in there, worked with an architect and, made three old shipping containers into our kitchen to service.
There is a restaurant area that seats about 400 or 500 people. So, yeah, and I mean, it’s tight in there, but the concept itself is done.

Well, over the years, my partner eventually ended up buying me out. I kind of made up an offer on the table. I was like, Hey, “you know, this is your passion project. You know, why don’t you control at all?” And he was all in to do that.

And the place itself is still open. It’s still doing well. I know it was named one of the best beach bars in the state of Florida by USA Today. So yeah, it’s still in existence, still doing well, but, it was just, a matter of taking a neglected property that had been forgotten about that no one seemed to care about and just getting creative, and letting our imaginations go to work. And we ended up, you know, I think creating something pretty cool that, people are still enjoying going to.

[00:15:32] Chris Ressa:
That’s awesome. What body of water is it on?

[00:15:38] Dave Burton:
So it’s on the Tampa Bay.

[00:15:40] Chris Ressa:
Did you buy it? Did you lease it? What did you guys do?

[00:15:47] Dave Burton:
So we bought it, and the only way we could buy the property was through an owner-financing kind of deal. So we approached the owner. We looked up who owned [00:16:00] it, reached out to him, and he was receptive. He charged a pretty hefty interest rate at the time, but we were able to eventually get conventional financing once we were able to prove ourselves.

We believed in our vision, and he took a chance on us. And obviously we took a chance as well. And, it ended up working out well for all of us.

[00:16:24] Chris Ressa:
Did you have to get seller financing because of the property’s condition? It just wasn’t financeable?

[00:16:30] Dave Burton:
Yeah. The property’s condition, we knew there was no way a bank would touch it. Also, you know, we were a little bit younger at the time, so we definitely didn’t have the cash on hand to acquire it and then do the build-out ourselves. So, we just had to get creative, and, like I said, the original owner took a chance on us, and it worked out well.

[00:16:49] Chris Ressa: And did he own the bar or was he leasing out the bar to somebody else?

[00:16:56] Dave Burton:
He was leasing out the bar to somebody else at the time. But that bar was no longer operating. So it closed for a while. The property was, nothing was happening there.

[00:17:07] Chris Ressa:
And what time era are we in?

[00:17:08] Dave Burton:
This was like you know, around 2000 9, 10, 11?


[00:17:17] Chris Ressa:
Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

Okay, so you ended up getting seller financing. And then what did you guys estimate that it would cost to build out to make it presentable, build docks, and get people to boat up and enjoy this? What did you think it was going to cost?
And what did it actually cost?

[00:17:39] Dave Burton:
I’d have to look. I know it costs a lot more than that. We originally planned for and were scrambling, so we reached out to some investors to help us get to where we needed to be. Our plan, Chris, was to open it in phases, so we originally didn’t open with the kitchen.

Our plan was to build two different bars alongside the water with a stage and boat docks. and that’s what we ended up doing. And then the second phase was, building out our own kitchen. but we were able to, after a couple of years, prove that, hey, we’re doing well and a bank was willing to finally take a chance on us, and we were able to do conventional financing to at least build out the kitchen.

I’d have to look back, but I would say it probably ended up costing us probably 25 to 35 percent more than we initially budgeted, and at that point you’re scrambling, but we were able to make it work.

[00:18:35] Chris Ressa:
So that’s interesting. That’s how the Getaway, one of the top 10 beach bars by USA Today in Florida, ended up opening. So that’s a pretty cool story.

One of the things that was interesting is you said opening in phases. If you’re a restaurateur what do you think about that as a concept? Like, Hey, you might need or want to open this up in multiple phases for cash preservation. How do you think that usually ends up working better or worse?

[00:19:10] Dave Burton:
It’s tough to say. I think it ends up working better. You know, a lot of people, Chris, when they come to a brand new restaurant, expect it to be amazing for some reason, especially an independent restaurant.

A chain concept, they have a lot of procedures and things in place, right? But for an independent restaurant, you have to remember when you’re opening up a place that it’s first of its kind, you’re probably hiring 75 people essentially off the street. You just happen to be looking for a job at that particular time. You’re looking to open, and then you’re training them. And you got to remember you’re training, you know, 75 people all at one time. And then once you open, like some of the people that you thought interviewed, well, you find out they can’t really walk and chew gum. So you have to replace a lot of them. so I think opening up in phases is a good thing because it allows you to control your output a little bit better.

I’ll give you an example: at Storm Runners, our new concept opening up, we’re not going to put out all the furniture and seats that we bought. We want to be able to control the flow into our kitchen so we can at least execute and not have people waiting a long time for their food. The problem with putting out all your seats and then people seeing it empty is that a lot of people are like, well, why can’t I sit here?

Well, you’re trying to control the flow into your kitchen, so you’re not burying your kitchen, and a lot of people just don’t understand that. So that’s why I think opening up in phases and doing it methodically is a smart way to go because you can end up controlling the guest experience potentially a little bit better if that makes sense.

[00:20:46] Chris Ressa:
Well listen, David, this has been great. I really appreciate it.

Now I have three questions for you. A little rapid fire. You ready? These are my last final questions.

Question one. hat extinct restaurant would you like to see come back from the dead?

[00:21:14] Dave Barton:
It’s coming back. In fact, I think it opened already a new one. Steak and Ale. I love it. Loved it as a kid. So yeah. And I think they’re coming back. I know one opened recently in Minnesota, so I’m excited.

[00:21:30] Chris Ressa:
Question 2. Outside of your restaurant, where’s the best meal you’ve had in the last 60 days?

[00:21:39] Dave Burton:
60 days, man. That’s tough. I’m just going to go with a local restaurant here in town in Tampa. Great chef, Chris Ponte, here locally; he has his namesake restaurant called Ponte. They just do everything right.

One of my old friends from growing up is a server there. So, I always request him, my wife and I, when we go there, never have a bad meal there. I just got a New York strip with some sides and mushroom soup. And then I forgot what other appetizer we got, but it was fantastic. And shared a bottle of wine, of course. A good red with my wife. But yeah, just went there last week for my birthday, actually. It was fantastic.

[00:22:20] Chris Ressa:
If you and I were shopping at Target, what aisle would I find you in?

[00:22:26] Dave Burton:
Ooh, that is a good question. probably in the electronic section.

[00:22:34] Chris Ressa:
Well, listen, Dave, this has been great. Thank you so much for sharing about your restaurants. And when I’m in Florida, I’m going to have to, my father lives in Dunedin. I’m gonna have to tell him about your spot.

[00:22:47] Dave Burton:
Yeah. I love Dunedin.

[00:22:52] Chris Ressa:
Yeah. And, I’m going to have, I’m going to have to, when I’m down there, I’ll have to check one of yours out.
Sounds great, Chris. Good chatting with you, man. You have a good one. Take care. By