|
"If you stop or you get complacent, someone’s going to overtake you."
Legal Sea Foods is a Boston icon. Scribbled on every visitor's must-see list are the Freedom Trail, Duck Tours and "Legals". There's good reason why Legal Sea Foods is recognized as representing New England seafood and our contemporary culture so definitively.
Legal Sea Foods is one of the countries most advanced regional-groups of restaurants. They market themselves with style and pizazz, deliver top quality seafood and constantly innovate.
Roger Berkowitz who leads this go-ahead private company is behind almost every aspect of their day-to-day operations. It takes a pretty extraordinary businessman to turn a multi-million dollar investment in a state-of-the-art seafood testing and processing plant into a competitive advantage, but "if it isn't fresh, it isn’t Legal," to quote a phrase.
We recently sat down with Roger and asked him to share some of his insights on running his 4,000 employee strong empire, as well as the state of the seafood business in general.
Q We are sitting here in this multi-million dollar fish processing facility on the Boston waterfront. What business advantage or competitive advantage does this kind of investment give you?
Well, I think it helps to establish a point of difference for our company. There are a lot of people in the restaurant business selling fish. There are not a lot people in the seafood business operating restaurants. And I think that’s our orientation, if we were just in the restaurant business I would probably be able to call up a fish supplier and say "all right, I need 20 pounds of cod," I'm sure the purveyor is going to make sure that I get high quality in my first batch of fish. But, if for a moment they think that your eye is off the ball, things can change. Over the years, we've found that seafood is different, in the way the product is harvested. All fish are created equal. It's how it’s harvested. It's how it's held and how it's handled that makes the difference in the end.
We found that over time - and as we got bigger - we have become much more sophisticated in our purchasing. We know the day boats. We know the appropriate boats from which to buy because we know how they handle the product. We know how they get their fish. We know how they ice their fish. We also have learned over time the importance of handling fish in a sanitary, cold environment because that can radically impact the quality. You can have perfectly fresh day boat fish, but if you’re portioning it in a hot kitchen the quality diminishes rapidly.
So, the testing and processing that we do in this building, we can do better than any individual restaurant can. That gives us a level of quality and quality assurance that I don’t think can currently be replicated elsewhere in the industry. Could we save money by not having this quality assurance building? Absolutely. But we think it’s the right thing to do, and it helps enhance the product. There are cheaper ways of doing it, but we’re not looking for the path of least resistance here.
Q Your business is now over 100 years old, how do you combine your family's heritage and your company's current leading edge approach to marketing so successfully?
I love this business. It's interesting. My grandfather got us into the food business back in the early 1900's. He started in the grocery business. He instilled a passion for food in the family that sort of just keeps going. It's funny, because in 1950 my father went off to open a fish market adjacent to the grocery business. My father’s older brother, who was also with him in the grocery store, went off on a different food tangent. He went into the meat business, and ended up starting the certified Angus beef program in the US. He also became one of the country’s leading authorities on meat. So, there’s a passion for food that came out of a 2,500 square foot grocery store. You know we just love to eat.
I think that we constantly remind ourselves that you can't afford to get too fat in this business. You have to run lean and hungry all the time with the understanding that if you stop or you get complacent, someone’s going to overtake you. I think that there's a gnawing fear in the back of my mind whether it’s a competitive notion or not, that if you stand still, you’re going to get run over. And I’ve seen that happen. I think we all have seen restaurants that we grew up with that were extraordinarily successful. Then almost overnight, they become obsolete.
Just because something works at a particular point in time does not necessarily mean it’s going to continue to work down the road. People start off with an idea and it works well, and then they say "we're just going to milk it." You could get away with that 20 years ago when the speed of change was not as rapid as it is today. Today, with travel, all kinds of technology and diner experience levels, you cannot afford that. You almost have to have ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder] to be in this business.
Q 34 restaurants, that's quite an achievement. What's next?
I like the idea of not having a ceiling over me. I'd also like to think we are an entity that is smart enough to move at a sustainable rate. You can move too fast, but you can also move too slow. What is the right rate? I equate it to being on a treadmill. You can regulate the speed, but you can’t stop, because once you stop, you fall off. So, we always have to have new projects in mind.
LTK was a project that we discussed for about three or four years. We wanted to develop a neighborhood café, bistro-style restaurant. If there was one in your neighborhood you'd want to go there two or three times a week. Then we asked, what does it look like? How will it take advantage of our core capabilities in terms of what we’re doing elsewhere? We got everyone involved in that process. It was a great participatory exercise for everyone.
I think that we have to challenge ourselves with exciting new projects. There are projects that we have going that we will see develop in three, four or even five years. What doesn’t change is the quality assurance of what we're doing, the value proposition. But, the look and feel can change. I have found that if you try to maintain something for too long, everyone including your customers, gets bored. And so the idea here is to keep it exciting.
Q Wild fish is under a great deal of pressure from increasing consumption. Do you take responsibility for supporting sustainability?
We do see ourselves as having a responsibility with regard to sustainability. We're in touch with the fishermen all the time and we are in touch with the scientists as well. Sometimes there is a disagreement. I remember challenging one scientist who said "sea scallops were endangered." At the same time I’m hearing from the fishermen that the bottom of their boats are scraping against the sea scallop shells. There’s so many of them. The wrong information was getting out.
Much of the science today, in terms of the amounts of fish available, and the overall fish stocks, has been based on faulty science. A piece of equipment being used to measure fish density was fundamentally broken. No one knew it was broken, but it could never accurately indicate what the true levels really were.
We study the data, the legislature, the fishermen. We try to understand what the environmentalists are saying. Then we try to weigh all the information and make intelligent decisions on what we use and when.
Q If you were going to give advice to somebody who wanted to get into the restaurant business what would you say to them?
You have to really love what you're doing. If you see going into the restaurant business just as a business venture, then it's a tough thing to do. You really have to do it more out of passion. And then let that passion turn into a business.
You have to be able to excite your guests. You can't say, "this is the perfect model. This is my food cost. This is my labor cost." Because, if it's too formulated the guest will somehow sense that, and it just won’t feel right to them. So, I think the idea is to focus on trying to excite people. And you know what? If your food cost is a bit out of whack, you can work on it later. It's really about getting people in and then selling them on what you're doing, so that you can show them that you can have an exciting product and deliver it consistently. Today you really have to have deep pockets.
For over 50 years, Legal Sea Foods Inc. has set the standard for quality and freshness in the seafood and restaurant business. With more than 30 restaurants spanning the East Coast, Legal Sea Foods has earned scores of honors and awards and proudly carries its well-earned reputation as the nation’s finest seafood restaurant.
For more information about Legal Sea Foods and its locations, please visit www.legalseafoods.com.
|
Industry Luminary 
