Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Beth Ewen:
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by Beth Ewen
Kam Talebi’s Crave restaurants are sleek and stylish, with beautiful people lining the sushi bar or basking in the sun on plush couches outdoors. When he opens a new Crave, he throws a big party and makes a splash in whichever new development he has targeted for growth, which always features big-name luxury retailers flanking Crave on either side.
When he invests in other restaurants, as he did before starting Crave in 2007, he and his brother Keyvan choose spots like the spectacular Bellanotte in downtown Minneapolis, which attracted football stars and celebrities before abruptly closing its doors in one of the industry’s most notorious flameouts.
So I expected our interview about his growth plans to be fancy, too, perhaps filled with grand visions about the empire he is building. Instead, Talebi gives entrepreneurs in this month’s cover story and new podcast a tutorial in business fundamentals: Choose the right location. Don’t spend too much decking out your place. Make sure you have enough people trained to manage your new locations before you open them. Be sure each new location is well capitalized.
Make sure all parts of your business model are structured correctly and working well – and he does mean all parts. If your labor costs are too high or the rent is too much or the food costs are up or the location is bad, the business won’t work and it’s only a matter of time until everyone discovers that painful truth.
Above all, it’s not about the top line but all about the bottom. Investors, bankers, developers, employees and owners should focus on profits rather than revenue, on return on investment rather than “silly spending” with “Monopoly money,” as he says so many did when credit was loose.
In short, he sounds like the finance and operations guy he is, who took what he learned in corporate America in his 20s and turned those skills to growing and selling two technology companies. That included a gloriously timed sale to Microsoft in 2001, right before the technology bubble burst.
Tired of technology, he opened his first Crave, then two more in the Twin Cities, including one in the new, ambitious and risky West End development in St. Louis Park, one of only a few new retail/restaurant developments in the United States. He inked that deal just before the worldwide economic collapse upset all industries.
It was only human to feel nervous at the time, he says, but he realized that the paralysis of large public restaurant and real estate companies gave his small firm a chance to gain space in places where he wouldn’t have gotten a meeting before. His growth plan is nothing fancy. yet seems downright inspirational after the sickening crashes and crazes of the last two years. “We’ve done enough to know what it takes to make a successful operation and we stick to it,” Talebi says.
