Following a company’s founder into the top job poses some unique challenges. In the instance of Not Your Average Joe’s, a 22-unit casual-dining operation on the East Coast, incomer Peter D’Amelio and brand father Steve Silverstein spoke for a year and a half before D’Amelio even joined the company in the subordinate post of president.
Now that the succession plan has moved forward, with D’Amelio replacing Silverstein as chairman and CEO a few weeks ago, the two continue to work on keeping the transition smooth. They lunch together every week at one of the chain’s branches, a highly visible and very real sign of their ongoing collaboration, according to D’Amelio. He says it was an effective way of getting buy-in from a staff that’d only known one prior CEO, for a 24-year stretch at that.
In addition to retaining a board seat, Silverstein has a formalized position as advisor to his successor, who learned the value of a founder’s unique perspective while working for David Overton at The Cheesecake Factory on the West Coast. They also have a secondary relationship of unit operator to brand chief: Silverstein bought the original Not Your Average Joe’s location and is now running it, the lone unit not corporately operated.
“He calls it The Lab, a test store, and he’s very excited about it,” says D’Amelio. “This is not a founder being removed and being put on the sidelines. Steven and I have a very good marriage.”
But the transplanted Californian doesn’t flinch at describing his mission as a course correction, a righting of some drift that came under his predecessor, who had no prior operational experience. Silverstein had worked in his family’s textile business and opened the first NYAJ’s in the Boston suburbs because he couldn’t find a decent restaurant without going downtown.
“We got a little too chefy and got away from the creative comfort food that people loved,” says D’Amelio, who has spent the bulk of his career in restaurant operations, including 17 years with Cheesecake. “When sales started to decline and we had to look at every line, we lost our focus on things, like training—staffing not to win, but just to have someone there.”
Frequent menu changes complicated operations, accelerating turnover. Weakened training meant newcomers didn’t have the bearings of their predecessors, and NYAJ’s are high-volume stores. D’Amelio pegs sales at about $600 per square foot, which puts most stores in the $4 million-a-year range, and at least four above the $5 million threshold.
The former is focusing on operations and training, with fewer menu upheavals. “The menu will stay very much like what it currently is,” he stresses. Weeding out some complicated excesses was a reason the concept’s sales were up 1.9% for the first quarter, he adds.
Two restaurants closed last year because their leases were up, and D’Amelio says he feels no pressure to expand right now, though he will be opportunistic about sites. He also intends to remain regional, operating along the Atlantic Coast from New England, where NYAJ’s has strong awareness, down to Richmond, Va.
“What will be different is that we will have an infrastructure in place to support growth,” he says. “The biggest problem restaurant companies have is they grow and they weaken the restaurants they have.”
Nor is he hell-bent on developing a big delivery business, or at least not now. “I may be the only executive in the restaurant business who isn’t,” he says. NYAJ’s offers delivery and has a good takeout trade, says D’Amelio, but he’d rather chase dine-in customers because the experience is more likely to make them regulars.
“When you have to-go orders and a 30-minute wait on Friday lunch, I don’t want to disrupt the guest experience,” he says.
In many respects, D’Amelio indicates, he’s striving to get back to Silverstein’s original vision for NYAJ’s: a neighborhood place offering top-notch food with flair, at a price that permits multiple visits per week.
“If you ask what’s the biggest operational challenge right now, it’s speed of service,” he says. “If we can be a little faster, we can turn more tables, we can sell that second drink, we can get them to try that shareable dessert. If we can do that, we’ll do great.”
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