Brian Bullock, Chief Operating Officer of Restaurants Legacy Ventures.Taking care of family is important to Brian Bullock. Not just his own family, but his restaurant family as well.
In fact, his love of the industry began in childhood where his family home was the central gathering place for entertaining. His interest in hospitality took root, and after completing his culinary studies at Johnson & Wales, Bullock went on to complete a B.S. in hotel and restaurant management at The University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Starting as a kitchen manager at Houston’s in Atlanta, Bullock, 51, has moved around the country working in operations with Border Café Restaurants, then Bricktop’s Restaurant Company. Once back in Atlanta, he joined Legacy Ventures in 2012 to create the company’s Restaurant Management Division, where he oversees everything food and beverage for their portfolio of restaurants, hotels and catering facilities in four states.
In Atlanta alone, that covers a lot of territory, including several hotels, as well as Max’s Coal Oven Pizzeria, STATS Brewpub and Der Biergarten downtown. But while every restaurant owner and operator faced a multitude of challenges over the last two years, Bullock had more than his fair share: laying off hundreds of employees, initially turning his restaurants into grocery stores for them and setting up unemployment programs. Then, in May 2020, Legacy’s downtown locations were heavily damaged by vandalism with graffiti, broken windows and lost product. “We didn’t have anything left at all,” he says.
Despite every twist and turn, Bullock has never wavered from taking care of his employees. Although the company still isn’t back to their pre-Covid 1,300-employee level, Bullock says they’re about 80% there. “We made a commitment that we were not going to hire from the outside until every employee either said they don’t want to come back or they’re coming back,” he says.
Admittedly, Bullock says his main focus has been on the Legacy Ventures family over the last two years, but that hasn’t stopped him from helping others. One special project was supporting the police department. “That’s something we did a lot during this,” he says, “we were feeding them because we felt horrible for them.”
He also has a special passion for the Giving Kitchen, which he learned about through his friendship with restaurant owner Ryan Turner, who is a founding board member. Quick to embrace the organization’s mission of helping foodservice workers in times of need, Bullock says “Anything they ask me to do, I do.” That includes hosting meetings, lunches and dinners and fundraising. “We just brewed a beer in conjunction with Der Biergarten,” he adds, “and 100% of the proceeds go toward the Giving Kitchen.”
The foundation for that is all about family, too. “I do feel that restaurants are like family,” he says. “To be able to support an organization that supports your family and your people – I don’t know if there’s a better or higher cause or a better use of our time or our dollars than that.”
