Ivan from Rise N’ Dine of Wheeling

Scott: Okay, I am here with Ivan, of Rise and Dine, and my question for Ivan is, what do you do all day? As far as work? Everything, from the time you get here, to the time you go home.

Ivan: So, what I do mostly is customer experience, obviously yes, I own a restaurant, I own Rise and Dine, we serve breakfast and lunch, but that’s just the front, behind the scenes, I focus mostly on customer experience, people development, so just training them the way I want them to be. That includes operations in front of house, back of house, talking to vendors, responding to emails, social media, postings, responding to social media comments, again talking to people and guests like yourself.

Scott: What do you mean by customer experience?

Ivan: So it starts from the beginning, so the minute we open, I look for little things that you could say impact the first impression, so a lot of times when you come in early, you’ll see me walk around the dining room, filling up the caddies, sugars, wiping on the tables and booths, first impression, especially at 7 in the morning is very important to me because there’s no one in the restaurant, so if someone walks in and the place is dirty, or you’re missing a Chula, or the tabasco is not filled all the way, or the booths or the chairs are dirty, that defeats the purpose of first impression, so I make sure that happens in the morning, whether I do it myself, or a manager, or some of the servers, that’s what I do, and then obviously it goes through the whole making sure the coffee is hot, right at 7am, you know, one of the things that I like to think about is commitment and consistency, so the commitment is that we’ll be here at 7 o’clock every day, yeah we may be running late and instead of getting here at 6.30 like we always want to, we get here at 6.50, but the doors are open and up and running at 7am, that means the coffee is ready at 7am, that means that the griddles are turned on and hot at 7am, you know, so when the first customer walks in, they walk in without thinking about it, oh will they be open, oh will they have hot coffee, or will they have hot food, you know, and that goes all the way through 3 o’clock until we leave, you know, just because we’re closing at the end of the day doesn’t mean that you get to have a bad experience such as having cold coffee, or the food takes too long to come out, like it should be the same the whole time, so that’s the commitment and the consistency is obviously the same service, we’re using the same products every time, we’re not switching it just because they’re cheaper somewhere else, or because they’re offering cheaper coffee, no, we buy the same thing every time, and try to make it the same thing, the same way every time.

Scott: So I’ve noticed that you run a really tight ship.

Ivan: I’m actually pretty flexible.

Scott: Well you’re flexible, but your people are all very devoted to what they do. I watch the busboys walk around wiping down tables, wiping down booths, wiping down the blinds, shutting the blinds, turning the lights on, they all are very detail oriented.

Ivan: Yes, you can say that I’m a very detail oriented person, I like things to be a certain way, and not because I’m an asshole, or this has to be this way, it’s just, again if you put yourself in the place of being a guest, then you want to feel what they feel, so for example when you walk in here, it has to be a certain temperature, if it’s in the winter, it has to be 72 degrees, Ivan: if it feels cold, turn it up, it’s just logic, there are days where it’s colder, so then you have to turn up the heat, maybe there are days where it’s not too cold, but only the fireplace can be on, so all those things play in customer experience.

Ivan: In the summer when it’s too hot, turn up, leave the AC on overnight, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day when someone walks in in the morning and it’s 102 degrees outside, it has to be cool in here, it has to feel good, so that again, you don’t have a bad experience. And so I think a lot of the times people replicate what I do, and I don’t necessarily tell them, right, they just do what I do, so yes, I’ll touch base with them, like yeah, make sure the blinds are clean, because if you move them, there’s webs, so we got to wipe those up, you know, you can see Miguel wiping down the walls and the rails and the light fixtures and he moves the boots and, you know, moves the brooms and the trash and wipes the booths and the tables, and it’s just, again, part of the customer experience, so I explain it to him, he understood it very well, right, where, you know, look for little things that, you know, maybe you don’t see, but we see, right, and if we see it, then somebody else will see it, and so then that’s the reason behind it, and the servers, again, they want to do what I see and what I do, you know, so, and I tell them, I share with them, obviously, you know, what my thing is, is customer service, right, it’s not rolling up a hundred of these in the back for two hours, no, it’s being out in your tables, making sure that the guest doesn’t need anything, right, at the end of the day, we want people to come in, have a breakfast, order, and everything’s there for them, right, there’s utensils, there’s water, there’s straws, there’s butter and jelly, everything that they need, and so when they leave, it’s like, wow, like, I just had breakfast, and I didn’t have to call the server 20 times, you know, although, you know, we’re not perfect, and we always fall short on this or that, but, you know, we strive for that consistency, you know, so that’s the commitment that we bring, you know, the servers see it in me, you know, see that I care about it, you know, so they do what I do, so a lot of times, I don’t have to tell them, they just know, you know, when they do what I see them do things that I would do, I tell them, like, thank you, that’s exactly what I want to do, you know, so, it’s a whole science thing, and you may think that, you know, my wife and I are kind of like, just very, like, detailed, like you said, you know, and so that’s what we do, we focus on that, you know, even with this new spot that we’re going to open, there’s a lot to it, I mean, I have lists going on, because we want to make sure, again, if we open a new spot, we want people to walk in there, and it doesn’t feel like, oh, they’re just open, so we’ll see if they know what they’re doing, no, we have to nail it the very first time for the first three months, right, without, you know, without going through those, oh, they just got to get their kinks ready, you know, so there’s a lot of places that open up, and I see the reviews, and it’s most of them are, oh, you know, their first weekend, they were busy, so they were behind, and it’s, that’s unprofessional, to me, at least, right, it doesn’t have to be that way, you know, there’s a new spot that opened called Brunchies, I think his first two reviews on Google were zero stars, or one star, it’s like, how do you open a spot like that, you know, why are you opening it if you can’t get a first five-star review, so if I was the owner, I would beat myself up, you know, that’s your first impression, a 4.2 Google rating, you know, so that’s what I don’t want it to be here. You know, honestly, when I get bad reviews, it beats me, you know, I get mad, I get upset, but then I, you know, I go through a process of accepting it, seeing what I can learn from it, and find out where we fall short, you know, I usually try to find out who the server was, what happened, how come I didn’t get it made right, and at the end of the day, it’s always about people, they’re not asking the right questions, the kitchen didn’t understand the ticket, so they didn’t ask, and so they made what they thought it was right, and so then you start digging at it, you know, you just talk to people, well, next time, ask this, or be very specific about what they want, communicate that to the kitchen, and before you drop it off, look at it, see if it’s, if it is, so it’s, you know, it’s a process that we just gotta teach people, and it doesn’t, you can’t teach it in one day, it takes months, if not in years, you know, I mean, some of the staff members here have been with us for five, four, three years, so, you know, they know how we work, you know, so that’s part of what I do all day here at Rise N’ Dine, it’s more than just showing up and opening the doors and group coffee, it’s, you know, systems, it’s, you know, people encouragement, I try not to walk around mad, you know, obviously we all have problems, you know, but I always try to come here and just have a positive attitude, you know, and try to spread that energy towards the employees here, towards the people that I work with, and, you know, letting them know that it’s okay to have a problem at home, but when you come here, we have to show a different face, so we can, A, again, give the best customer service we can, and B, you know, just kind of escape from it, and just have a good time, you know, and at the end of the day, if you can’t make it, then just call off, you know, it’s okay, and the servers know that I’m very flexible about it, you know, and sometimes they call last minute, I’m like, alright, well, you know, it is what it is, you know, I’ll figure it out, I’ll call somebody in, and we always get through it, you know, but I think that’s what separates us from other restaurants, you always hear those bad stories, like, oh, my boss is an asshole, or I hate working there, and it’s like, it doesn’t have to be that way, you know.

Scott: I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants in my time, in my youth, I worked in a lot of restaurants, did a lot of serving, so I learned a lot of the hard way, which is why I’ve always respected what I’ve seen here, because you do run a tight ship, and you run a clean ship.

Ivan: Yeah, you know, a lot of people always say that, I mean, you run a tight ship, but it’s again, it’s just, it’s not about me, you know, it’s about the business, it’s about the brand, you know, it’s about our reputation. At the end of the day, I’m not doing this for myself, you know, I’m doing it because that’s just what Rise N’ Dine is, you know, and I would do it somewhere else.

Ivan: When I used to work for the competition, it was the same thing, I did it, I believed in their values, I believed in their mission statement, and just tried to spread that, you know, I don’t have values set yet, I kind of have, like, some stuff of what I want to do once we grow, you know, but, you know, number one thing I could say is, like, be kind, you know, I try to always be kind to the servers and to the cooks, and I always say, please, may I have this, can you do me a favor, why don’t you just shut up and start yelling orders, you know, because that’s not the way to keep a decent environment, you know, yes, I’m not perfect, sometimes I do come out a little stern, but, you know, it’s just the heat of the moment, and everybody knows that it’s not personal, you know, and it’s not, it’s not meant to make me feel bad, you know, and when I do make a mistake, I make sure I apologize, you know, I go up to them and say, hey, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I let you, just please understand that, you know, this doesn’t happen to me, and so they understand most of the time, you know, and they get it, so that’s some of what I do. Okay, that’s cool.

Scott: Okay, now, second part of the question.

Yes.

Scott: How do you feel about what you do, and what motivates you to do what you do, and how do you feel about it?

Ivan: What motivates me is my family, my daughter, right, to provide for them, but most important to be an example to my daughter, so she can see what we accomplish without having a college degree, you know, I don’t have a college degree, neither does my wife, but we feel like we can do whatever we want, and be great at it, you know, one of the things that my grandpa said when I used to talk to him, he used to tell me, make sure that you do always the best at what you do, it’s like even if it’s brooming, it’s like make sure that that’s the best brooming job you’ve ever done, and so that kind of stuck with me, right, growing up and going to different jobs, was I have to be the best at this, right, and that’s how we got ourselves promoted, that’s how I got myself promoted, you know, you want to be a manager, or a server lead, or you want to be a team leader, or, I always got picked, and so did my wife too, because we share that, you know, we always want to be the best at what we do, we may not be the smartest people around, we may not have the greatest degree from a nice fancy school, but when people look at us, they say that, you know, wow, they work hard for what they have, you know, and that’s also the motivation for that, you know, and what I feel about it, I feel great coming into work, and, you know, seeing the restaurant full on a Sunday, or even during the week, yesterday was packed, it was packed, it was awesome, it was great, you know, walking in here, people having a really good time, enjoying their meals, it feels good, you know, it feels great, and it motivates me to do more, you know, do research on how to make the place better, and I can pull up on a bunch of things right now that we can be doing to make it better, but, you know, then that’s just putting more burden on myself, so we just, we feel good about it, enough to get another location, right, enough to look for different restaurants so we can grow, you know.

Scott: How did you end up owning Rise N’ Dine?

Ivan: When I used to work for the competition, big breakfast place, Egg Harbor Cafe, you probably know that.

Scott: Okay, I remember them. They’re not around anymore.

Ivan: Yeah, they are.

Ivan: They’re huge. They’re huge. They got like 20 plus stores now, they’re huge.

Scott: Oh, really? Okay, I thought it was another… No. Okay. When I used to work for Egg Harbor Cafe, I started with them when they had like 6 locations, they were very new, so was I. I got recruited with them, I fell in love with the hours, right, 6.30 to 2, or Rise N’ Dine 7 to 3, just the morning hours, you can’t beat that anywhere.

Ivan: I mean, you’re talking about, you didn’t go to college, and you can work an early shift, you know, you don’t have to work all day, you make decent money, it’s fun, right. So I spent, I don’t know, 15 years of my life working for them and giving them everything that I have, and then all of a sudden they had a change in management and leadership and the guy who took it over or who was like their lead manager or their lead leader, it’s just not what Egg Harbor was about. So before I left in 2019, a year, maybe two years, I was just not happy with them.

Ivan: And then finally one day I woke up and I said, I’m going to type in restaurants for sale near me, and I live in Buffalo Grove, just up by the high school, by the BG high school, and I typed in restaurants for sale near me and this popped up out of nowhere. And I remember coming to Rise N’ Dine when it first opened in the mid, early 2000s, I want to say 2008, 2007, I’m not sure. And I remember sitting on this side and I came and checked it out, obviously it was run down from when I first visited it, but you know, we went through the process and it took us about almost nine months to close on the deal.

Ivan: We were still working for Egg Harbor, and then finally in June 28th, June 27th was our last day at Egg Harbor and June 28th we came here and took it over. It was scary, it was, we obviously went from making a lot of money at Egg Harbor, I mean that’s one of the things that they do, they pay well, but at the end of the day we weren’t happy, I wasn’t happy, you know, so wasn’t my wife, she was getting stressed out, you know, I mean, that’s the other thing that we love of Rise N’ Dine is that we come here at 7 and we leave at 3 and that’s it. We don’t, we don’t take work home.

Ivan: At Egg Harbor it was like phone call after phone call or project after project even when you were at home and it was just too much, it was getting too, it was getting too stressful. And we decided to just leave. We weren’t happy and we didn’t want to be the unhappy employees and we left, you know, and so that’s how we ended up with Rise N’ Dine. We figured, we know how to run a restaurant, right, we’re good at it, we’re people, you know, we’re people pleaser, so I think we can do it.

Ivan: It was tough, it’s still, it’s still a little hard, you know, we learned a lot, way, a lot, we learned way, way, way too much. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into from being just managers at a company that gives you everything. Then you walk in here and then you have to figure out that and we never thought that, but we don’t, we’re not quitters, we’re not, I’m not a quitter, neither is my wife, you know, I say we because we work as a team, you know, I don’t just own Rise N’ Dine, she also owns it, you know, and so we’re not quitters and we don’t quit, so we figure it out.

Ivan: That’s how we ended up with Rise N’ Dine. We did have some partners that we all left at Covid, but unfortunately when the pandemic happened and they made us close down, our partners weren’t really, they were really nervous and they thought they were going to have a nervous breakdown or one of them thought he was going to have a heart attack because he wasn’t sleeping, so they decided to walk out and then we told them the minute you walk through those tables that’s the minute you lose all your investment because we’re not going to be paying back and we’re not going to quit because if we quit right now, we would lose everything, right? We took out a loan, we put up our house, you know, for us to have Rise N’ Dine, so we could not lose everything. So they were okay with that and so we just kept going. Six years later, we’re still here, you know.

Scott: I ate here through the pandemic. I know.

Ivan: Yeah, we’ve known each other for a while.

Ivan: That’s how we ended up with Rise N’ Dine. When we took it over, you know, there was a lot of work to do. I mainly worked in the kitchen for the first, I want to say a year. I don’t know if you saw me as much, but in the beginning I worked in the kitchen for about a year, a year and a half just trying to clean it up, right? It wasn’t the cleanest place, so clean that up.

Ivan: The staff that we had wasn’t in the right place either, so by the time we make staff changes and getting used to the new menu that I was making, it was just a transition, you know.

Scott: I don’t think I’ve met your wife.

She’s coming here.

Ivan: I think she knows you. Because every time I tell her, like, oh, Scott’s here, she knows who you are.

Scott: I don’t know who she is.

Scott: That’s okay. Everybody knows who I am, but I don’t know who anybody else is.

Ivan: That’s a good thing, because we don’t want to be part of the show.

Ivan: Like, yeah, we own Rise N’ Dine and that, and yes, we’re the face of it, but at the end of the day, we’re not here for us. We’re here for you. So if you don’t know my wife, and she knows who you are, then that’s the goal.

Ivan: Because we want you to come in here and don’t feel like you have to talk to us or anything like that. We just want you to have a good time. Have a hot meal.

Ivan: You know, know the servers. We do what we do for them, too. We want them to make money.

Ivan: We want them to feel good about working here. So a lot of times, that’s what I explain to the servers and the cooks. It’s like, don’t think of me as the manager or the owner.

Ivan: I’m part of the team. I’m your co-worker, and that’s how we’re going to do it. And so I think that helps them feel themselves, you know? And at Egg Harbor, I felt like I was walking on eggshells.

Ivan: I couldn’t do this because someone would get offended, or I couldn’t say that because this… And it was just like, what do I do? I can’t be myself, you know? And here, we promote that. We hire people for who they are, and we accept them for who they are. Some people are obviously better than others, but that’s okay.

Ivan: We find their strengths and their weaknesses, and we work around that.

Scott: I have a perfect hostess for you if you open up the new location.

Ivan: Yes.

Ivan: I know you sent me a text, and I was going to say, well, if we do open that, we might need one.

Scott: Okay. What else we got? Those are my questions, man. I’m impressed.

Scott: I’m super impressed. Yeah. I’m really happy for you.

Ivan: If that works out in Killdeer, that’s really… Yeah, that’ll be a different monster that we gotta handle. But I think we… I think we can do it. I think we got it.

Ivan: My wife, she worked as a regional manager for Egg Harbor. So she had multiple stores. So she has experience managing different stores.

Ivan: Yesterday, we were having a conversation. I told her, you’re gonna have to teach me because I never experienced that at Egg Harbor. I was only a manager.

Ivan: They couldn’t even let me be a GM. They always had to whitewash me. That’s the way I look at it.

Ivan: What that means is right when I thought I was getting promoted for a GM position, which is the greatest thing that you can get at Egg Harbor. It’s like being a manager for Costco. You made it.

Ivan: They always brought somebody else in. Why? If you go to Egg Harbor, they got a certain look. It’s not the look of Rise N’ Dine.

Ivan: I always felt like my potential has never reached Egg Harbor. Being at Rise N’ Dine, I always pushed myself for that. What can we do better? Without someone telling me that it’s not good enough or bringing somebody else.

Ivan: My wife and I were going over there yesterday and I was telling her, you’re gonna have to teach me how to multi-operate different restaurants or become an original operator. At this point, we just don’t have Rise N’ Dine. We’re gonna have two. How am I gonna handle two? She was giving me tips and telling me what I need to be doing.

Ivan: My next step is start delegating all my tasks. Instead of me trying to do everything and trying to fix everything for everybody, I have to start doing that and start delegating. That’s hard.

Ivan: I know, it’s hard. That’s one of the things that I have an issue with. It’s like, alright.

Ivan: But, again, if we want to be successful and get more than two locations, maybe next year we’ll get another one. I don’t know. That’s one way to grow.

Scott: Cool. We’ll see. Be your empire.

Ivan: I don’t want to be so big, but just enough to keep us busy. Alright. That’s it.

Scott: Thank you, Ivan. Do you have enough? I think I have enough. Okay.