We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dallas Rose. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dallas below.

Dallas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Bringing Mileta to life took almost seven years and a number of false starts along the way. I had always wanted to open my own restaurant, and after a few years working in the corporate world for Goldman Sachs, I knew I had to make it happen and get out of the rat race. I had a wife and a child on the way, so I couldn’t just quit my job and go full bore into getting the restaurant open. I started planning, researching, traveling, meeting industry talent, and looking for the right location. I viewed my job as playing quarterback. I just needed to find the best players I could, get them to buy into my vision, and find the right place to play. However, this was much easier said than done. I spent years finding the right chef/partner, and the project went through a number of iterations with each chef I worked with. Eventually, six years after beginning the journey, I met my current partner and Mileta’s Executive Chef, Alex Green. We hit it off immediately, and I knew he was the guy. Once I had him on board, we went head first into finding and securing a location, refining the concept and menu, and identifying key team members. We simultaneously negotiated and executed the lease, began designing the restaurant (which we did in-house), and co-GC’d the project. It was a little over six months from the moment we signed the lease to opening the doors to the public.

Dallas, 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 was born and raised in Lexington, KY. I grew up working in restaurants and bars through high school and college. When I was a senior at the University of Kentucky, I opened a burger joint and operated that for a little over a year. After graduating, I closed the restaurant and went to business school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN and earned a Master of Science in Finance. After graduate school, I was recruited to work for Goldman Sachs on their real estate private equity desk. Based in Dallas but traveling most weeks, I got to see the country and wine and dine clients at great restaurants and hotels across the country and globe. I worked on over six billion dollars worth of real estate transactions and got a masterclass in financial analysis, negotiation, raising capital, and navigating complex corporate and political structures. After a couple years, I was certain Goldman Sachs and the corporate world were not a long term solution for me or my ambitions. I started using my trips for R&D and began planning my dream restaurant. I knew given my hospitality background and financial acumen, that I could pull it off. I was drawn back to restaurants for a number of reasons. First, I needed a creative outlet. I grew up playing multiple instruments and performed for a number of years. I was cooking at home everyday for almost 15 years but was not satisfied without sharing it with the world. The restaurant is the ultimate creative outlet as I get to design the room, program the music, lights, team, what they’re wearing, etc. We get to curate a performance every night. Second, I have an innate desire to make people feel good. I love to throw a party, and Mileta is my way to flex that muscle every day. The thing I’m most proud of, and what excites me the most about going to work everyday, is the impact I get to have on 40+ humans that choose to show up and work for me on the daily. We’ve had a number of employees turn their lives around, and have relied on us as a safe and welcoming place where they know they’ll be pushed to become better people and professionals. We operate with the ethos that if we take care of our people like we would a guest or family, they will deliver that same care to our guests in turn.

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

The path to opening Mileta was full of twists and turns. When I first moved back to Lexington, I bought a master lease on an old bank building in the heart of downtown that was operating as a night club. The real estate deal itself was too good to pass up, but after getting into the weeds on construction, it became clear that it was not economically feasible to build the kitchen we needed to execute our concept. This was frustrating at the time because I had a chef and other key team members identified and ready to go, but ultimately had to put them on pause during that time. We continued looking for another location and soon started negotiating on a space in a new, mixed-use development in town. Over the course of three years, we negotiated on three different spaces in the center, getting as far as having a lease out for signature on March 11, 2020 – the day COVID shut the world down. At this point, I had been through three different potential chef partners and four different locations that didn’t work out for one reason or another. I continued to keep my head down and kept refining the concept and waited for the dust to settle before we tried to make another run at it. The group that owns the building we are in now reached out in late 2023 with a space they thought would be a good fit. It was a second generation restaurant space with a multi-million dollar kitchen that we could essentially step right into, except for some specialty equipment. The lease we negotiated was the most favorable of all the deals we had previously explored, and we were able to spend most of our money on the front of house, which is much more preferable than spending it on things the guest never see. My determination to bring Mileta to life kept me going, even when it felt like the universe was pushing back on trying to make the restaurant a reality.

Any advice for managing a team?

All businesses are people businesses, but the hospitality industry in particular is an acutely human operation. Due to the nature of the work, people from all walks of life and different backgrounds go to work in the hospitality industry. It is incredibly challenging to manage and lead a large group of people with disparate life experiences that range from recently out of jail to PhD students finishing their dissertations. I’ve found the most impactful thing in getting them to buy into our vision and march in lockstep, is to create a place and environment where they feel like we are pouring into them and making them better people and professionals. We treat all of our employees the same way we would treat a guest. We care deeply and personally for them, and hold them to high standards professionally. It is easier to hold them accountable when they know we not only have the business’ best interest in mind, but legitimately care about and push each one of them to be better humans in every capacity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.miletarestaurant.com
• Instagram: @miletarestaurant; @thedallasrose

Image Credits
Victor Sizemore, Jessica Ebelhar, Killian Rose