Ryan Pernice: Reckless Optimist

By Hope S. Philbrick

From Restaurant INFORMER, 2014, Vol. 4, Issue 3

Ryan Pernice

Restaurateur Ryan Pernice is the owner/operator of Table & Main and Osteria Mattone in Roswell, Ga., both of which are credited with helping fuel the dining renaissance on Roswell’s Canton Street. Impressive, yes. But what makes his accomplishment even more remarkable is that he’s 28 years old – in fact, he was recently recognized as one of Atlanta’s “30 Under 30” stars by Zagat.

Sit down and chat with Pernice, however, and what strikes you is not his youth but his old-soul wisdom.

While his business philosophy, “Reckless Optimism,” sounds like a dude battle cry, something to scream out at friends while riding a skateboard down a steep, twisted rail perhaps, its meaning has depth. Reckless optimism is how he approaches work, customers and even his employees. He even named his company R.O. Hospitality.

“The restaurant industry is a tough business,” Pernice says. “There are lots of reasons not to go into it. It’s difficult to achieve success. Making a go of it has to have a level of reckless optimism.”

Georgia-grown Pernice was raised in Roswell and is a graduate of Roswell High School. As a student, he worked in several Roswell restaurant kitchens.

“I asked for a job at a local restaurant called Roasted Garlic when I was 13 years old,” he recalls, adding that he also worked for the Castellucci family. “I’ve been in the restaurant world long enough that I never seriously considered doing anything else – once you’re in it, you can’t get out!” he laughs. “But I love it, there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

He attended Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, graduating with highest honors in 2007. After college, Pernice gained valuable experience consulting at Avero, LLC, an innovative business-intelligence company catering to the country’s top restaurateurs.

“It was a lot of office work,” he says, “but a phenomenal experience on how successful restaurants run and how the moving pieces of a restaurant fit together. That job was all about the numbers and was an incredible opportunity to get a baseline for what’s ‘normal’ in terms of nuts and bolts of restaurant operations. A restaurant is a business – a really difficult business – and that boring spreadsheet component has tremendous value. I know exactly what my costs are, and that’s the result of driven, focused analysis. Few restaurateurs brag about their spreadsheets, but maybe they need to.”

In 2009, he helped open Maialino, a Roman trattoria in New York City’s Gramercy Park from restaurateur Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group. Lauded with accolades since its debut, Maialino set a high standard for Pernice, who like many people in the hospitality industry dreamed of one day opening his own restaurant.

Before Pernice returned home to Georgia, he’d decided that he didn’t want to work alone. “I’ve always known that cooking was not something I was going to do,” he says. “Come over and I can make you a great dinner, but I’m not a chef. I was attracted to the idea of offering equity; I was interested in a true partner.”

Chef Ted Lahey has been partner at Table & Main since day one. The story of how Pernice met Lahey is nearly the stuff of movies: “Craigslist,” admits Pernice. “I was living in New York City at the time, and the timeline I’d put together was two months. So, I’m up there and felt I just had to get some resumes. Since it was the peak of the recession, I got 200 over the weekend.” From those, he called about a dozen applicants by phone, then once in Georgia, had two chefs cook for him. “I picked the best,” he says.

“I think our partnership works well,” says Pernice. “I’m terrible at what he’s good at, and then those things he’s not so good at I’m really good at. I have a realm that I’m responsible to handle and Ted has the opposite side of it, and that’s working really well for us. I think the kitchen has stricter rules while the front of house deals with shades of gray. Our personalities fit our roles. We have mutual respect and trust that each other will do well.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges. “We’ve had our share of blowups, and we will in future,” says Pernice. “We work together 18 hours a day! But you figure out that if it’s important to him, it’s got to be important to me.”

Table & Main opened August 2011 featuring “simple, seasonal Southern” cuisine, and it earned early acclaim from both diners and critics. Pernice is proud to have built a “neighborhood spot” in his hometown, though when his friends jokingly complain about his prices, he says, “I didn’t build it for you. I built it for your parents.”

“People come into a restaurant looking to have a really good time; my job is to take their experience from good to amazing, to find ways to add to their experience,” he says. He realizes that happy employees count toward that overall diner experience.

“People take a risk by working here. I’m going to show them the loyalty that, yes, we can work with your schedule. Yes, we’ll make sure payroll is always correct,” he says. “Both parties owe it to each other to find common ground.”

His success has been earned, yet Pernice admits that luck had at least a little something to do with it. “Let’s not pretend there’s not a fair amount of luck involved in anyone’s life,” he says. “Ted and I both work tremendously hard, but at some level I got lucky to find Ted and he got lucky to find me. And we’re lucky this worked out.”

Building on their success, in November 2013 Pernice and Lahey opened a second restaurant, Osteria Mattone, four doors down from Table & Main. The only Italian restaurant on Canton Street, it’s based on a Roman trattoria. Pernice’s brother Daniel was brought on to run the beverage program.

“When you expand from one to two restaurants, it’s more than double the workload,” cautions Pernice. “You think, ‘I was working 40 hours, so now it will be 80 hours.’ It’s exponentially greater than that. But it’s been useful as we grow to fall back on the familiarity and trust we have with each other. I know I don’t need to worry about food. Having a partner saves time.”

With Osteria Mattone not even a year old yet, Pernice is cautious about making future plans. “I promised myself not to even think ‘what next?’ until this [concept] gets a year old. I would like to spend some time thinking further along than a third restaurant. I want to spend time making them both a fully realized version of themselves – in a lot of ways we can make both even better – maybe with more ambitious beverage programs, wine tastings, bourbon dinners.

“Even if we never open another restaurant, we can be happy and fulfilled making these two restaurants way better,” he adds. “All that being said, I like the idea of opening up other restaurants, maybe even something that is not a restaurant. It’s an exciting time to be in Atlanta doing fun food things, and I like being one of the people doing them.”

Pernice on…

The GRA

“It’s worth the investment. There’s a strong benefit in having the opportunity to speak to other members to validate assumptions and conclusions – it’s a built-in network. Sometimes we get so busy getting ready for the shift to start that we don’t take time to reexamine. There’s value in talking to some other people and seeing what they’re doing.”

Limits of Training

“Either you want to be in hospitality and make people happy or you don’t. If that’s not you, that’s OK, but then this isn’t the job for you.”

Luck

“There’s a saying that it’s better to be lucky than good. I think I’m good, but I don’t discount that luck. I’m grateful for it.”

Literature

“Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is great! A guy goes out to fish one last time, and you’re that fisherman and your business is your marlin. Everything else is sharks: Everyone wants something other than what you want for your business, but you’ve got to get back to shore safe.”

How to Succeed

“No one is ever going to care about your restaurant more than you will – not your wife, not your family, not your guests. Nobody ever will, ever. So you’ve got to push your business to achieve your vision relentlessly and not accept those who would do otherwise.”

The Future

“Superfoods are going to be the next big thing. People will be better about what they’re eating.”

Technology

“I just hope there’s always a place where people can relax and be together without phones dividing them.”

Working With Family

“The first trick is not to mention [to my brother] that he’s an employee. I’m big on partnership; I’m big on having people in the right roles. So Daniel’s in charge of the beverage stuff, and I just let him go and do it. That we won a Wine Spectator award less than a year in is cool – that’s Dan’s award.”

Resolving Conflict

“Keep the conversation about what it’s about. There have to be boundaries. Respect that.”

Customer Satisfaction

“The answer to the question ‘Is the guest always right?’ doesn’t matter. If a customer has a problem with food or service, I don’t invest myself emotionally in trying to be right. I just want to make you love me. I ask, ‘What can I do?’ and that’s when I win. Don’t waste time trying to figure out if a guest is right or wrong, just make them love you. That’s what you’ve got to do.”

Running Two Restaurants

“There’s some temptation to overlap: There’s a cost benefit to having the same martini glass in both restaurants, though we want them to be conceptually different. Ultimately, we decided we’re not a martini bar so the glasses aren’t a big deal. We do need the same level of hospitality. I can’t be in both restaurants at the same time, so I’m not there to make every decision. I have to find people who can make decisions like I would.”

The ITP vs. OTP Debate

“That’s silly: Our diners are very much the same. Our lives out here are somewhat different, for example when the Oscars are on TV or it’s the UGA opener, I may as well not open. You may not find head cheese on menus out here. But people want good food and good service wherever they are, and that’s what we’re here to prove. Roswell has a pretty attractive demographic for a fine dining restaurant.”