Ep. 80 - Controlling the Uncontrollable during COVID-19: Rapid Innovation, Iteration and Elevation of Skillsets to Drive Momentum— with Jon Krinn
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Amid a global pandemic, economic upheaval, and social distancing restrictions, many in the restaurant industry have experienced potentially irrevocable suffering. But Jon Krinn — Chef, marketer, and owner of the award-winning fine dining restaurant Clarity based in the Washington D.C. area — took this time as an opportunity for innovation.
It’s because it’s not his first rodeo. In 2008, when the economic recession negatively impacted the livelihoods of many in the service industry, Jon was forced to shut down his restaurant and, subsequently, decided to make a change in his career path. But as an athlete and competitor at heart, he used this setback as a launchpad for learning and growth. Since then, he’s rebuilt his restaurant career, pivoting from the culinary industry to an 8-year stint at Booz Allen Hamilton as a marketing strategist and then back to being a restaurateur.
He’s taken everything he’s learned from that experience in the corporate world to help adapt his current restaurant business to the climate we are in now with COVID. In this episode, Jon shares what he did to control the uncontrollable, the pivots he made and skillsets he’s learned along the way, as well as the value of creating a career mash-up that can help you thrive amid adversity.
From the Kitchen to Consulting — and Back
After studying business and pre-med in college, Jon quickly decided that he wanted to work in the culinary industry. For him, it comprised everything he was looking for in a career: business, competition, product development, physical labor, and passion.
“The idea was that I always loved business, did business and pre-med in college, and I wanted to own the product I sold. I mean, that was the key ... whether it was going to be [making] paper clips, or cabinets, or food.”
“I'm very competitive, always was,” Jon adds. “[I] love sports. So, I wanted to think of my job as a sport in a competition that you wanted to win. So, lo and behold, cooking fit right in. It's got the physical. It's got the passion. It's basically a new game every day, although you're building on your experiences.”
Eager to learn and develop his skills, Jon spent the early days of his career pursuing job experience under some of the industry’s biggest names: Rocco DiSpirito, Tom Colicchio, Daniel Boulud, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Believing that the fastest growth came from working in the toughest kitchens and under the best leaders, he voraciously chased these opportunities and submitted himself to long hours, sleepless nights, and boot camp-like training just to further his own professional development.
By 2000, armed with skills and experience, Jon competed for and won the opportunity to be the head chef of 2941, a new fine dining restaurant in the D.C. area. The restaurant thrived and garnered numerous awards, but he eventually felt that it was time to go off and start his own venture. His luxe restaurant Inox opened up in 2008 to rave reviews, but the recession hit and his business faltered: “The recession exposed about 100 weaknesses to my game.”
He realized the fundamental gaps in this skill set, so he decided to brush up on his business skills before going back to the restaurant biz. He leveraged his connections to get a position at Booz Allen Hamilton, a strategic consulting company, as a marketing strategist. For the next eight years, Jon learned invaluable lessons in strategic planning, marketing, relationship management, and general business management. Cross-applying his already harnessed skills in customer relations, people management, leadership from his restaurant days, he led teams of up to 150 people around the country and globe.
“Booz Allen was where they took, maybe, some raw skills and turned it into sort of advantageous capabilities... I had a lot of raw materials, but Booz Allen was a total game changer as a chef. And really, if you look at it, I mean, it is the absolute, most unique chef resume on planet Earth.”
By 2015, Jon was ready to re-enter the restaurant business but — as he always liked to challenge himself — he opted to keep his marketing role and take on two full-time jobs in tandem. He opened Clarity in Northern Virginia and, this time, he was ready and able to right the wrongs he felt he had made when operating his first restaurant so many years ago.
Controlling the Uncontrollable: Adjusting to Change and Thriving through Innovation, Diversification
When COVID-19 and subsequent lockdown restrictions hit the restaurant industry hard, Jon’s first thought was “how fast can I turn an uncontrollable situation — which is, right now, 100% uncontrollable — into a controllable situation where I can bring in income and align it with my clientele who is already supportive, pre-pandemic? And the timespan between the uncontrollable and that pivot to controllable... that's the make or break of my business.”
Jon took what he learned from losing a business in the 2008 recession, coupled with the valuable skills and insights gained while at Booz Allen, and was ready to pivot.
Jon diversified his business by thinking outside of the box and aligned to customer needs, all while adhering to local COVID-19 guidelines. He knew he had to reinvent his business and broke it up into small ways that he could build it back up to 100%, but in a different way than what he did before. For him, it was about experimentation in areas where he wanted to get to market quickly — starting small, testing and learning along the way to see what would gain traction.
Knowing people were looking for comfort and stability in the uncertain time, he adjusted his menu to offer more familiar staples (like barbecue, big sandwiches, and pizza) and even added unexpected and creative items that his restaurant wasn’t known for (like pupusas and black truffle). While piecing together a new to-go menu, he also set up an outdoor restaurant in his parking area, whereby customers could drive into personal “boat slips” with private tables and plenty of social-distancing space and choose from a tasting menu.
By diversifying the way that he did, Jon expanded his reach exponentially, garnered greater interest, and tapped into the loyalty he had already gained from existing customers to maintain momentum while other restaurants were failing. The key was understanding his customers inside and out — which is a core business tenet regardless of the industry.
And trends have shown that consumers are not solely focused on the product, but rather it’s the experience around the product that draws people in. So, knowing that his audience wanted an experience, not just a meal, and given the spatial limitation dictated by the virus restrictions, Jon used this time to get creative, keeping his customers and the relationships he formed with them at the heart of everything he did. Today, he’s still seeing the rewards of his quick pivot.
While not everyone may have the means to adapt in exactly the same way, in Jon’s case, it’s been strategic planning and mindset over goods and materials that have led to successful shifts of his entire operation. His growth mindset helped him develop and apply those new skills he learned, which led to creating that beneficial mashup for himself and his restaurant.
Career Advice
Put your own skills up there, and break them down. That's the only way to build yourself back up. And if you keep doing that and keep doing that, the foundation of your skill set is going to be very strong.
You need a multitude of skill sets to achieve the goals that you want to achieve and you have a responsibility to do so.
Your resume is made up by circumstance but when those circumstances come up, you better be ready.
Key Takeaways:
The faster you can turn an uncontrollable situation into something you can at least partially control, the smaller that gap is, the more chance you have to succeed and thrive.
Skills development is a major part of career advancement and may open doors you would have never seen otherwise, but it requires a growth mindset throughout your career.
Whether you’re just starting out or established in your career, some of the best learning comes from placing yourself in the toughest positions. You have to constantly challenge yourself in order to grow.
Learn skills to apply to your own business outside of your own business, because it's a completely different perspective because businesses are the same across the different landscapes - just the products are different.
You just have to commit to yourself to embrace your weaknesses and make sure that you're not going to fake any skills. If you don't have a skill realize it takes a lot of work to build it and you have to be committed long term.
Core fundamentals of business apply no matter what industry or type of business you run:
Business is based on relationships, trust and coming up with the goods in a timeframe that is executed as planned.
Packaging matters and you have to think about the value proposition of what you can deliver to customers
When you have a business, you have taken on a responsibility for the product, for the staff, for the landlord, for the buildout, and for everything, you've birthed something that you have a major responsibility for.
Understand your barriers to entry, align to your customer needs to create the right experiences (not only products) for your audience.
Failure is a right of passage. Without it, you don’t have that important perspective.
Successful people were not given success — they earned it through hard work and perseverance through failure. You cannot quit. If you quit, then you can't use your lessons that you learn.
“You just have to commit to yourself to embrace your weaknesses and make sure that you're not going to fake any skills. If you don't have a skill, you can't say that you have that skill, but you can go out there and learn that skill, but it takes a lot of work and you have to be committed long-term.”
For those facing business hardships due to COVID, it is important to focus on building those necessary skills to help you to prepare. Talking to others is a starting point.
Have that solution-oriented mindset, always.
“It's not just enough to have a footprint, you actually have to have the strategic idea to be able to have the skill to implement them, to bring in the amount of money to support your staff.”
Diversification is crucial to your success as a business owner and in some cases, realized that diversity and change are more important than consistency to create the necessary traction you need.
