Q/A with Thomas Pash
Meet Thomas Pash, the chief executive officer of Rockpool Dining Group, a company that has grown from 17 venues and $150m in sales to more than 60 venues and sales over $350m. The Shaker sat down with Thomas, to talk business, the future and the challenges of the hospitality industry.
Where did it all start? Tell us a bit about your journey in business so far.
My first hospitality job was when I was 14 at a ten-table Mexican restaurant In Houston, Texas. I was Jack of all trades: I cooked, served, cleaned, you name it I did it. My only goal at that time was to buy a new bike and some music. In doing so at such an early age, I learned a lot about what it takes to run a business and also that I loved taking care of people. I never stopped working once I started. I quickly got addicted to the pace and opportunity of the hospitality industry.
I got my first floor and bar manager job at age 17, my first kitchen manager position six months after that. By the time I was 18 I was the General Manager of a large casual dining restaurant that, in the early 90s, was turning over $125,000 a week. At 22 I was managing my first 2,000 room hotel. At 26 I was running a US$50million celebrity-owned dining group with locations in NYC, LA, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix. By the time I was 30 I was the COO of a US$2 billion hospitality group with more than 70 restaurants and 34 hotels and resorts.
What do you see the biggest challenges facing the hospitality industry in Australia? How do you overcome these challenges in your business?
The saturation of the dining sector and staying relevant with customers. While people are eating out more than ever and dining is getting a larger share of the wallet, the industry is adding way too many seats. In a couple of key markets we have seen the addition of more than 20,000 new seats, in the past two years.
We have to remain one step ahead of our competition and challenge ourselves to do better every single day. All of our brands have to remain relevant. We also need to have a stout operational focus and discipline across our group. We have to leverage our size and scale. As a group of 60+ restaurants and 16 brands we have efficiencies of scale that aid dynamic and innovative practices, which stand us in good stead in such an over-heated market.
What importance do you place on innovation and disruption in your business? How do you drive innovation? Do you have a process?
Rockpool Dining Group wouldn’t be where it is today if it didn’t innovate, it’s the key to our success, so it’s immensely important. To drive innovation, you have to be able to let go of deadweight that is holding the company back: concepts that aren’t profitable or viable, menus that are old and boring, vendors that are not aligned with your vision, mission and core principals, employees that are bad apples or not adaptable, experiences that are tired and out of date. You then inject positive and adaptable people, innovative ideas, solutions and offerings into those spaces.
As a company, we’re not afraid of doing this. We believe in running fast as a group and are not afraid to fail, as long as we learn from any failings and improve. We come up with lots of ideas to improve the group and innovate, some are great, some are not so great. We figure with our talented and hard-working team that if we get it right 80 percent of the time, we will achieve our goals and continue to drive innovation.
What are the big lessons that you’ve learnt so far?
One of the big lessons I’ve learned is the importance of having a deep knowledge of your product, whether that’s menu items or catering options. Early on, some of the more rigorous training programs I went through encouraged a maniacal attention to a detailed product understanding. That’s stuck with me. Knowledge gives you credibility when you are talking to and taking care of a guest, it allows you and the rest of your team to take real pride in what you offer.
I also believe this industry offers endless opportunity for anyone who wants to work hard and take on new challenges. I never dreamt back at the age of 14 when I started in this business that I would be CEO someday and run one of the world’s top dining groups. But I did find out that if I put my hand up, worked very hard, stretched myself and took on challenges that good things presented themselves.
What is your management structure? How do you divide the areas of responsibility among the team?
We run a lean, flat management team here so we can stay very close to the action on the front line. We like to interact with each other a lot on a daily basis. We call them touch points. So the more touch points each of us have on a daily basis, the better. We find that leanness results in high accountability.
We’re also lucky to have a seasoned and proven leadership team of four chief executives: CFO Michael Campbell who looks after finance, accounting, payroll and IT, COO Frank Tucker who heads up venue operations and reporting, Chief Culinary and Brand Officer Neil Perry who leads the culinary side of the business as well as brand innovation, and myself with oversight of new venue openings, learning, development and organisational culture, HR and recruitment, corporate communications and PR, marketing and sales and events. The four of us are part of a Senior Leadership Team with 16 of the industry’s best that cover various areas of the business and departments; including legal, construction, marketing, sales and events, corporate communications and PR and HR and recruitment. Of the 16, we have five Food & Beverage Directors who drive the venues across all three pillars of dining – fast casual, casual and premium.
What is your approach to marketing?
It’s a no holds barred approach, but it has to be underpinned by thorough group-level and brand-level strategic and tactical plans of attack, and a well-managed budget. We want to make a splash, we want to make some noise, so across the group we take a multi-pronged approach that covers everything from paid media, including outdoor, newspaper/magazine and radio advertising, social media ads, and digital takeovers, to careful curation of brand awareness across our owned media – including websites, mobile sites, blogs and social channels – and always with an eye to chalking up some credible earned media across print and online publications and social media channels.
What technology do you use day-to-day in the business?
In the past 12 months, we’ve made a substantial investment in a world-class cloud-based platform along with bleeding-edge applications and tools that integrates our ERP, point-of-sales, bookings and customer data, time and attendance, procurement, and marketing systems and platforms. This state of the art technology allows real-time tracking, operational intelligence and efficiencies, as well as the tracking of customers’ dining frequency and preferences. We believe we have architected and built a system that can scale with this group for many years to come.
How do you recruit? Do you only hire from the hospitality industry?
The nature of the hospitality industry means we have to activate every recruitment channel possible: from external recruiters and headhunters, to our own job ad placements across platforms such as Seek and Linkedin, and employee referrals. I network daily on LinkedIn and have sourced a number of recruits in that way. We don’t always look for hospitality experience: in head office particularly we’ve recruited from a range of sectors, notably retail, brewing and professional services.
I strongly believe that if you find a potential star, they’re worth investing in and given the opportunity to grow and excel. For that reason, we also promote heavily from within our own ranks, then fill more junior roles externally.
What does a day in the life of Thomas Pash look like?
Always up early to work out and organise my thoughts for the day. Working out in the morning is always the best way to start and have a productive day. I also try to mini-fast from dinner the previous night to lunch the next day. I find the workout and the fast keep me at my best for the first half of the day, so I try to schedule my more intense analytical work or harder projects and decisions for early in the day when I am fresh and at my sharpest. The second part of my day I try to reward myself and focus on the fun, lighter parts of my job like strategy, spending time with the team and in team meetings, planning around new venue openings, large strategic initiatives, visiting the current and future sites and R&D across the brands.
My days are typically 12-14 hours a day but they seem like they go by in a flash. I really love to work, always have. I like to go to bed very tired and to reflect back on leaving nothing on the table that day. I am a big believer in trying to achieve many, small, regular successes and wins every single day. I like to push the tempo hard. Ongoing small wins and successes keep you motivated. High tempo gives you ongoing energy and that energy is infectious.
Working in business and hospitality is tough – what’s kept you strong on a day-to-day basis?
Taking it one day at a time and trusting the process. As mentioned earlier, I am a big believer in trying to achieve many, small, regular successes and wins every single day. Ongoing small wins and successes keep you energised, strong and motivated. Freezing cold showers help keep you strong too.
How do you deal with stress? Do you have a work life balance?
This is a highly stressful industry: it trains you very well from your first job as a server, or in the kitchen, to handle stress. I think in hospitality you build up stress “blocks” over the years. The more you are tested over time, the more you can progressively handle more stress. I would say that after all these years in this industry, my ability to handle stress is pretty high. I definitely have a lot of blocks built up. That being said, it is important to keep yourself in good shape and healthy so you can perform and be the best you can be. Working out, yoga and meditation, reading, listening to music and eating great food works for me.
How do you challenge yourself when you’re the one challenging others?
If you’re comfortable in your work, then you’re not working hard enough. Someone is also passing you up. I firmly believe that what we achieve today as a business isn’t good enough tomorrow. You can never get comfortable. Diners are always looking for something new and if we don’t provide that, they will look somewhere else. Therefore each day I strive to improve on what I personally achieved the day before, in order for the business to supersede each previous day’s results.
What’s next? Where do you see yourself and the business heading in the next few years?
Rockpool Dining Group is on track to meet its five-year goal of becoming Australia’s first AU$1 billion dining group by the end of FY 20/21. We’ve signed more than 15 new leases over the past 90 days, to support plans to open 12-20 new venues each year across our diverse dining portfolio. I think everyone here can feel the excitement across the group as we enter 2018. We have great energy as a team. We have tremendous momentum. We have big plans. This type of progress and momentum is thanks to the efforts and success we enjoyed as we closed 2017. I am excited to lead and see where this group goes over the next five to 10 years.
If you hadn’t worked in business and hospitality – what would you have done?
I love music and movies. I think I would have been a film score music composer.
Any advice to those starting out in business?
Go big. Many people, when opening a new restaurant or bar, tend to limit themselves, thinking a small venue is easier to manage. Starting out small can hurt you long term. Many of our venues are very large, possibly too big from Monday to Wednesday, but it’s those peak days from Thursday to Sunday that make the business. That’s when the bulk of people are dining out and spending their money and that can really push the needle on making a profit. You don’t want to be turning people away on a Friday night because you’re constrained by size and number of seats at peak times. If you want to get big or maximise your opportunities in this industry it’s okay to think big and it’s okay to overdesign or over-scale a venue because you really can benefit from that.