We recently connected with Carla Chalkley and have shared our conversation below.
Carla, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?
The number one thing I learned from my previous jobs is exactly what I DID NOT want to do as a business owner. A lot of times business owners are only concerned with the bottom line, which I can definitely understand is important to ultimately run any business, but it’s not the ONLY important thing. The employees ended up being overlooked and underappreciated. I knew that when I bought my own businesses I wanted to be sure that everyone who worked for us felt like they were important and belonged to our family. I always wanted to provide a safe and happy work environment where individuals were not afraid to be themselves and were made to feel accepted for who they were. Restaurants can be seen as toxic environments in general, so I always valued finding ways to problem solve efficiently and also show no tolerance for toxic behaviors.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I started working at Aladdin’s approximately 27 years ago. I came from a low income immigrant family and my siblings and I all started working at very young ages to help support our family financially. I worked my way up in the company and by the time I was 19 I was already a General Manager at a location in the Cleveland area, where I’m from and where our company started. Throughout college, I continued working full time at Aladdin’s while going to school full time to pay for my education. I graduated with honors and at the top of my class. Shortly thereafter, I joined the Corporate office and became the Director of Training for the company. My job was to make sure our local stores had fully trained staff, I worked on creating and updating all training materials and I would fly out to new locations and help them set up new stores and train new staff members. In 2008, I came to West Chester Ohio to open the newest location for my current business partner. About 6 months later, my brother and I bought out her previous partners and moved to West Chester to focus on expanding that market as the new co-owners. Of course that location opened right as the economy was crashing, so we were faced with a lot of adversity very early on. We struggled to keep this location open but worked our butts off to stay afloat. Thank God, with the help of our amazing staff, we were able to keep the doors open and eventually flourish at this location. We worked hard to build it from the ground up, focusing on implementing the right standards and policies, and after approximately 7 years we decided to open our second location in Hyde Park. I was actually pregnant with my first son and in labor while I stood in my stores helping to take care of business up until the very last second. Opening this second location taught me so many life lessons. When I only had one location I could work day and night and control everything (which I loved because I was a workaholic and control freak), but now with 2 locations, it was physically impossible to be at both of them at the same time. Not to mention, I was a brand new mother! I was the kind of person who said I wasn’t going to get married or have kids! Then I met the love of my life and everything changed! I had to learn how to balance being a mother and wife while still being an entrepreneur. This was by far one of the hardest things for me. I really had to learn how to make boundaries in my life so that I could also give my child the focus and attention he deserved. I had to learn how to still effectively run my businesses without always being physically on property. I had to learn to trust my staff to do what I hired and trained them to do. I had to be ok with mistakes happening and taking them as learning opportunities instead of biting someone’s head off. We really had to learn to work as a well oiled machine and effectively problem solve and coach together. Of all my blessings, I count my work family at the top. I could never have done it without them and my brother and business partner.
In 2018, we decided to open our third location in OTR. It was the first of it’s kind for our company because this location would have a full bar (the others only served beer and wine). This was definitely a huge change and many new policies and procedures had to be developed to make us successful. By 2019, we were still hemorrhaging money at this location. The entire first year we didn’t even have streets or sidewalks because the city was still developing this new area. We were losing money left and right but again, we worked hard with our amazing staff to do everything we could to grow our business. In January of 2020, I was pregnant with my second child, a daughter. I had never taken a real maternity leave with my son, so this time I was hoping to actually be able to do that with my daughter. Our projections showed that the summer of 2020 would be our turning point of possibly breaking even and moving into being profitable. I gave birth to my daughter on February 24th and approximately 2 weeks later, THE WORLD SHUT DOWN thanks to COVID. All of our stores had to shut down their dining rooms and we were forced to shut down our 3rd location completely because downtown became a ghost town once all the businesses closed down for COVID and sent their employees to work from home. It was like my life was flashing before my eyes. I had no idea how I was going to keep my employees staffed or keep a roof over my children’s heads when these stores were my only source of income. With hard work, amazing staff and unwavering dedication, we were able to get through it by the skin of our teeth. All 3 of our locations held on and were eventually able to reopen. We all learned so many more life lessons.
The thing I’m most proud of is my work family. All the amazing men and women that we employ are so loyal to us as owners. We’ve had people who have been working for us since the very beginning. Our industry generally has a lot of turnover but we have been so fortunate to have our amazing staff. We were able to build unbreakable bonds with them. We’ve put our money where our mouth is numerous times for anyone who needed it. THAT to me is so important. I have always valued being a women of my word and being a person that my friends and family could always rely on. I’m incredibly proud of what we have all created in our stores. Our teams have helped us create such an amazing environment not only for our staff, but also for our awesome guests! Hospitality is so important in our Lebanese culture and our staff has upheld our standards for hospitality to the best of their abilities. They make me so proud every single day. There would be NO ALADDIN’S without them.
I’m also proud to be able to offer families a healthy alternative to eating out. It brings me so much joy to see young children trying new, healthy and delicious foods! I don’t know how companies who serve garbage can sleep at night, knowing they are essentially poisoning their clients. Our made from scratch menu also makes it possible for people with dietary restrictions to easily dine with us and have MULTIPLE items to choose from. That can be rare at most dining establishments that don’t generally cater to people with restrictions. We believe EVERYONE should be able to eat with us and leave full and satisfied! I’m so grateful for all the connections I’ve made with our customers over the years. So many of our regulars have become life long friends now and I’m so grateful for their loyalty to our company and for our friendships.
Currently, I also help co-host a women’s group called Let’s Talk Womxn. We are a nationwide action led movement dedicated to supporting all women in food and beverage. Our local Cincinnati chapter has so many amazing women and I am privileged to be apart of the organization. This group was born out of a need for support in 2020 when COVID hit our industry. I was originally invited to join the KY group and we would meet virtually once a month to discuss strategies for staying afloat and offer each other a shoulder to lean on. I eventually worked on expanding the group into Cincinnati because I realized that we have SO MANY LOCAL WOMEN who could benefit from our group, and that’s how our Cincinnati group was born! Our group has an annual women’s day event each year to showcase our amazing women in food and beverage! This year it will be at The Grove Event Center in Springfield Township on March 8th! Be sure to follow us on social media @letstalkwomxncinci (IG) or Let’s Talk Womxn of Cincinnati (FB) to find more information on how you can support your local women in F&B.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Aladdin’s has always prided itself on word of mouth advertising. We never had a budget to market ourselves through real advertising so we’ve always had to focus on word of mouth referrals. In order to do that, it takes a lot of time and consistency not only from us as owners, but from our staff. They are the ones who interact with our guests day in and day out. We had to train them and enforce our high standards across the board. We wanted every guest to walk in a stranger but leave as a friend! We always stood by our product and made sure that if we made a mistake that we did everything in our power to make it right! We didn’t cut corners with purchasing our goods. For example, would buy Amish free range chicken with no steriods or hormones (even though regular chicken was close to half the price!) We took pride in what we were serving to our guests and the experience we were providing to them and this in turn gave us their word of mouth referrals which helped us organically grow our businesses. We also were always willing to donate to local organizations in our community. Again, always putting our money where our mouth is! I definitely believe that this is the main reason we have such a great reputation within our community.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
My best advice is to take the time to know your staff. Have more intimate conversations where you get to learn who they are as people. Always be sincere and work hard to build trust. Trust is one of the most important components in any relationship, whether personal or business. Foster an open line of communication. Without appropriate communication, you cannot effectively problem solve and find solutions. Be a man/women of your word. Always do what you say you’re going to do with a high level of reliability. Treat everyone equally and create a safe space for everyone regardless of our differences. Love each other for your differences instead. Try to create team building activities to encourage the staff to have fun together! All these little things eventually compound to become bigger things and create loyalty to you and your brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aladdins.com www.letstalkwomxn.com
- Instagram: @aladdinseaterywestchester @aladdinseateryhydepark @aladdinseaterylounge @letstalkwomxncinci @letstalkwomxn
- Facebook: Aladdin’s Eatery West Chester, Aladdin’s Eatery Hyde Park, Aladdin’s Eatery + Lounge OTR, Let’s Talk Womxn of Cincinnati