Chef Tulla White

Hometown Restaurant King 

July/August 2006

By Hope S. Philbrick

When planning a grand opening it is impossible to truly predict how the day’s events will unfold. Unexpected things are bound to happen. Of course, the best-laid plans will include contingencies based on educated guesses. But some things are impossible to predict. What do you do if the world changes in an instant?

It’s hard to imagine a worse day to launch a business than September 11, 2001. But on that day Chef Tulla White opened his first restaurant, The Basil Leaf, in LaGrange, GA. “Of all the times in the last 100 years to open a restaurant, I picked the worst,” he says. “It was really scary times. We didn’t know where the country was headed; a lot of things were swirling in chaos.” His response was to keep going. “I looked at it as I had nowhere to go but up.”

White, a fourth-generation restaurateur who started busing tables at age 10, had developed the fortitude to view adversity as opportunity at a young age. His father died when he was 14 and within a year his mother had to close the family’s three restaurants. Remarkably, White says, “At that point it was kind of the best thing that had ever happened to me: She said, ‘You have got to go to work.'” White joined Hogan’s Heroes in Hogansville, GA, where he remained an employee to age 24. Today he credits Jeff Spader as “really, the person who taught me to cook. He was like a father figure, a phenomenal guy.” Dealing with dramatic change is nothing new to White, who noted that his mentor is now serving jail time, an unfortunate situation that “took 10 years of my life that was such a positive and, in one day, made it something negative to some people.”

White attended West Georgia Technical College in LaGrange, studying under Chef Henry Menard. He then made plans to open his own restaurant in LaGrange. Before opening day, White had encountered at least one other obstacle: His mother. Though he says, “I have to give a lot of respect to my mother. I still call her every day for something. But when I said that I was coming downtown [to open a restaurant], she said, ‘Tulla, don’t do it. It would be the worst mistake you ever make. Do not go downtown. There’s no parking, you can’t get there …'”

But he had fallen in love – with a “quaint” building and with the idea of bringing fine dining to his hometown. In pursuit of his dream, White opened The Basil Leaf when he was 25.

From day one, “We concentrated on the number one rule of business: Don’t let your problems become the customers’ problems. We did the best we could with food and ser­vice,” says White. His wife, Christy, worked the front of the house with one server while he was in the kitchen with a dishwasher and an assistant. “We just worked hard. It was rough, but the town really supported us and it just grew and grew.”

Now 30, White owns four restaurants and a catering business, operating as The Downtown Business Group, a company with 55 employees. He optimistically estimates it will earn $3 million this year and account for about 80 percent of downtown LaGrange’s food and beverage business.

A LaGrange location has advantages. In a population of 63,000, “word travels fast. There was nobody really doing what we were doing food-wise. I did no advertising,” – when The Basil Leaf relocated a block away from the original location 10 months af­ter opening, there was no sign for six months – “but they found us.”

LaGrange also presents challenges like sourcing staff and educating a populace on the subtleties of a fine dining experience. “At The Basil Leaf, every single dish is cooked by itself. Nothing is cooked ahead of time or in big batches, so it takes some time to get your food,” he says. “This is an experience. If you have four courses, you’re going to be here for two hours.” For a town that had primarily chain restaurants, this was a tremendous change in dining habits. “People get so used to coming in, sitting down and getting their food in an 18-minute ticket time. I could not do that in this kitchen even if I wanted to. But when I go out to dinner I want to take my time and enjoy it.” Business suc­cess, however, requires the ability to recognize that one’s preferences aren’t necessarily universal. If a customer at The Basil Leaf requests a rush, “we can slam the food out,” White says. “Formalities are trivial if the guest is not happy.”

To woo customers, White says he “came out of the dining room every night and walked around.” Greeting people, asking for com­ments and truly listening ultimately meant exchanging ideas. He taught diners a new pace, they taught him to stick with what works. “We were playing with a recipe. A gentleman came in and said, ‘What did you do to the linguini pappagallo? I have people that drive down from Atlanta just so they can come with me to eat this’ – I did not know that – and he said, ‘Today it doesn’t taste right.’ I said, thank you, and the next day we changed the recipe back.”

With a variety of restaurants, all four of which are located on Main Street, White is able to offer customers a range of dining options, from formal to casual. The Basil Leaf serves upscale international cuisine, Venucci features hearty Italian food, Tulla’s Bayou Bar & Grill offers Cajun and Southern classics, and the new Lazy Peach (opened with partner Joey Hart) is a “kind of a Mellow Mushroom meets Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville,” says White, with a Caribbean-rustic menu and a focus on Island drinks. The business reason for such diversity? “Some people call me crazy,” he laughs before providing a serious explanation: “I saw a need for some privately owned, different themed restaurants. Every time I’ve opened something, I’ve tried to think, what can we do that’s not being done in town? And then try to do it to the best of our ability.” He says that he admires Pano Karatassos and cites Buckhead Life Group as a model: “If I could ever get to that level of food and service, then I could die happy.”

As his business has grown, White admits it’s been a learning expe­rience. When he opened Venucci an initial worry was that The Basil Leaf sales might suffer. That he succeeded in retaining customers and attracting new ones did not automatically allay concerns about a third restaurant. “I thought, oh no, with three restaurants, even though they’re different, people can only eat out so much. The funny thing was that when we first opened Tulla’s we were so busy that it packed out all the restaurants. It still happens on the weekends. If one is booked, they just walk down the street and try to get in, so we kind of catch our own overflow.” Varied pricing also helps attract a mix of guests: Menu options range $12-30 at The Basil Leaf, $8-15 at Venucci, $8-19 at Tulla’s (with specials creeping up to $25). These three restaurants serve 425 diners on a strong night. The newest, Lazy Peach, aims at $6-12 and in its first five weeks already increased the draw.

Business sense drives White’s decisions more than personal prefer­ences. “To be honest, New Orleans style of food is not my favorite food style,” he says. But he recognized the cuisine would fill a niche and created Tulla’s Bayou Bar & Grill when he stumbled upon an available 3,000-foot space and was encouraged by its owners to “dream big.” At the time, he was actually searching for a space to house a pastry kitchen, thus proving flexibility and the ability to recognize an op­portunity are crucial to success.

A bakery has yet to open. “The long-term plan is to turn part of Venucci’s 4,000-square-foot space into a pastry prep and catering kitchen,” says White, who currently operates Tulla White Cuisine & Catering out of his restaurants. The catering business is strong, “but with these little kitchens, it gets tough to pull off a normal day’s business plus send out an extra 500.”

White believes each component of the business supports another. Still, there have been bumps. Recently, White stopped lunch service at Venucci. He cites a variety of factors, including the low-carb craze and the fact that he didn’t accept credit card payments. Adding salads to the menu helped draw customers, but attendance varied too drastically to standardize staffing. Since he was “barely breaking even,” he made the decision to cease lunch service, which he calls “the first failure.”

Ultimately, White aspires to own more restaurants. “Thirteen was the goal,” he says. “I figured I’d pick the unluckiest number that we could and see if we could reach it and see what happens.” It makes sense if you think about the fact that he opened on the worst day imaginable and thrived anyway. “But I don’t think that I’m ready to do any more right now. I spent a long time trying to grow the business and now it’s time to try to perfect what we have already.” Current challenges include tracking inventory (with four restaurants on the same street it’s common to move things from one to another without recording the transfer), learning not to micromanage (critical if White ever expands outside LaGrange), formalizing processes and systems (like a new security system) and continuing education (such as increasing his understanding of the capabilities of his POS system).

As White’s business has grown, LaGrange has changed, too. “Rents are going through the roof now.” The city is revitalizing its downtown. “They put in about $13 million,” White says. Construction projects include a new promenade, several courtyards, an $8 million parking deck and more. Though it seems undeniable that his restaurants have had an influence, White cites good luck in choosing the location when he did. “I could not have picked a better time to come downtown,” he says. Even White’s mother had to admit she was wrong about advising against the location.

How does White feel about his particular American dream? “Even on those days when everything in the world that could go wrong went wrong, at the end of the day, I love it.”