We recently connected with Jeanie and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeanie, thanks for joining us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

The team we’ve had from the beginning is what allowed us to find success so early in our business. From day one, my husband and I have co-owned the restaurant, giving us a built-in partnership. Because we have very different skill sets and approaches, we naturally fell into our roles as we navigated the opening process.

Adam is the chef and leads all food development, along with many of the day-to-day operational responsibilities like ordering, handling building issues and maintenance, and even creative touches like curating our music playlist. My background is in hospitality and management, so I oversee the business side—financials, licensing, HR, PR, and media—while also getting to exercise my creativity through service leadership and our beverage program.

Adam and his former sous chef, Cory Western, had always planned to continue working together, so when we began exploring Bûcheron, Cory joined from the very beginning as our Chef de Cuisine. I recruited our General Manager, Tyler McLeod, during a playdate while we were both juggling life with very young kids. We had previously worked together at Bellecour and always saw eye to eye. We both love this industry, and as we figured out how to balance restaurant life with raising young families, we committed to doing it together. We now share the week, where Tyler works four nights and I work two, allowing both of us to maintain better balance and spend more time at home.

With this core team in place, the opening process felt streamlined. We spoke the same language, instinctively knew when to step in for one another, and understood what needed to be done. Working within a tight budget meant we had to open quickly, so we remained hands-on while bringing our team up to speed.

Without Tyler and Cory, this wouldn’t have been possible. If there’s one piece of advice I’d offer to anyone dreaming of opening their own place, it’s this: identify your core team early and invest in building strong, lasting relationships.

Jeanie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up on a small farm in rural Indiana and fell in love with cooking at an early age. Looking back, it feels a bit surreal – I was raised in a family of engineers, and we rarely traveled or dined out, yet I always dreamed of doing both. When I discovered the Culinary Institute of America in New York, I set my sights on it. Although I transitioned into the front of house after school, I remained committed to learning as many facets of the industry as possible.

Today, my role is incredibly multifaceted. We’re a small restaurant without the budget for a large team, so my responsibilities span everything from running to the bank, managing insurance and 401(k) plans, and overseeing service on a Friday night, to planning travel and events, handling social media and PR, navigating unexpected challenges, like dealing with insurance after a car hits our building during a snowstorm, touching up paint, and just about everything in between. There’s never a dull moment, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Recently, I attended a collaborative cooking event in New Orleans and connected with guests who had visited our restaurant last summer. They shared that they arrived in Minneapolis knowing no one, and left our restaurant feeling like they had found a community. And this happened on a night I wasn’t even there. That’s what makes me endlessly proud. We are deeply committed to quality, and while our team is exceptionally talented, what stands out most is how much they genuinely care: about our guests, about each other, and about upholding our standards every single night. There’s nothing that makes me prouder.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In our twenties, my husband and I moved to Singapore, where we set our sights on two restaurants from the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best list, and somehow managed to land jobs at both. We have never worked harder in our lives.
Our days were long, six days a week, covering both lunch and dinner service, and in environments that were, at times, far from ideal. We committed to two years, and we saw it through, often dreaming about the day we’d finally board a plane home.

What has stayed with me most, though, are the people I worked alongside, many of whom saw that experience as the pinnacle of what was possible for them. It was a powerful reminder of just how much opportunity we have as Americans. Even in the hardest moments, I come back to the same thought: I am so fortunate that this is my hard.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When we moved to Minneapolis, we spent our first seven years working with a great restaurant group, which allowed us to establish ourselves in the market before opening our own place. Through that experience, we built not only the core team who helped open our restaurant, and who have been with us ever since, but also an incredibly loyal and supportive community of regulars.

Because of them, we had a full dining room from the very beginning, and they’ve stood by us every step of the way. We also began to gain recognition from the local press through our work at those earlier restaurants, so when we decided to step out on our own, they already knew who we were and were genuinely excited about what we were building.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bucheronrestaurant.com
• Instagram: @bucheronmpls
• Facebook: @bucheronmpls
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bûcheron-minneapolis-3?osq=bucheron

Image Credits

Destiny Western