We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeff Fritz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeff below.
Jeff , appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
My story of risk is similar to other military members that make the choice to retire. However, my choice was taking two risks at the same time. The first risk was making the choice to retire when I had just been selected for promotion the highest enlisted rank in the Air Force. I worked for over 19 years to achieve a rank that the majority of those that serve never do. When I was selected as Chief Master-Sargent I was forced to make the decision of deploying for a year and then be stationed for two years after that without my family. For the first time in my career my family and I had settled into a place we were stationed. We were also helping my wife’s parents at the time. I had to make a decision which would change our lives both in job stability and financially. Knowing that I would be taking a 75% pay-cut to retire in one of the most expensive areas in the country was a hard pill to swallow. This was the biggest risk I took as far as my family was concerned (outside of deployment). I made the choice and I told people it was the easiest hard decision I ever had to make. I chose my family over my career for the first time. It hurt me to walk away from something that I had lived for 20+ years, the job stability, the pay, and the life style. I needed to find a post retirement job which would lead to the second of my risks. Like many that have served in the military I was trained to do a job (or in my case several jobs) and as I grew as an Airman, I was also given more responsibility and slowly evolved into a leader. All of the lessons I learned and positions I was put in gave me valuable skills that many companies on the outside of the military are looking for. This was also a major lesson that I had to learn, “my value”. Many people either think too highly of themselves or too little. This is one thing that the military doesn’t really help you with on your way out. Understanding our worth is what can impact the job position and pay you take. In my case as a senior military leader, I had skills that many companies like and I was offered a few different high paying jobs as a government contractor and with companies that work with the government. These jobs paid in the six-figure range which would have been great for my family and I. But I was burnt out from military life so I took a job doing something that I thought would be great. I started a food truck, managed as a prep chef for a cooking show, and a private traveling dinner series chef. The pay was really good but it turned out to be a bad environment to work in. My style and the owners were too different and the owner wanted things done his way which I didn’t always agree with. This led to my second major risk decision that took place right in my finally month prior to retirement. I had to either find a different job or to take my small company and run it full time. I chose to invest in myself which really hurt financially since running your own business at the beginning doesn’t really pay. My wife and I were very worried that things might not work out since we were still dealing with COVID, then inflation, work shortage and more. I told my wife to give me one year and if we were losing money, I would take another job. That was two years ago now and the business is growing and we are doing well. As a small business owner, you’re always working and trying to expand your business which takes time and money and we are growing, not as fast as we would like but we are still doing well. Our business is two-fold and is about to grown into a third direction. The first which was a secondary part of the company was a small spice line. It has grown pretty fast over the last year and is not my main focus because of its growth. The second is we create pop-up style restaurant experiences cooking over open fire and melded with cooking techniques from many different cuisines. Our main focus is on Mediterranean cuisine. Or third focus is expanding into a food trailer that we will be using with one of our partner farms. We are projecting this third aspect to grow fast when we open in the spring.
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.
My name is Jeff Fritz and I go by Fritz. I’m a 20+ year Air Force veteran. I have an amazing wife, Faith and three awesome sons; Zander, Gavin, and Nikolai. During my career I had a few Air Force jobs, the first was a S.E.R.E Instructor however, I was hurt twice in training and couldn’t continue on. This led to the job that I did for almost 15 years of my career; Weapons Director. During my time I was selected to the Air Force Weapons School (AWDS) which is a harder, longer version of Top Gun and Air Force Vs Navy. Graduating from Weapons School was one of the proudest moments of my career. During my time as a Weapons Director I took a chance and went to Culinary School. I always loved working with my hands and I kind of fell into Culinary School. This was one of the hardest times of my military career as I was working 10+ hours a day getting up at 4 am to be to work by 6-6:30 am and then working from then until 5pm. From 5-5:45 I did my school homework and then went to culinary school from 6-midnight. I had an hour plus drive home and then did it all over again. This was two years of my life, by the second or third month I was sleeping in my car at lunch just to get some sleep. All this took place in Arizona which made it a lot to deal with. On the family side my family was growing and we were going from two kids to three which made it a very stressful time for all of us. During my time in culinary school, I took a part time job as a caterer and then a breakfast cook at a golf club. The breakfast cook job became my first Head Chefs position just as I was finishing Culinary School. My time in culinary school and as a Head Chef was amazing however my hours per week between the military and Head chef were still in the 100 hour a week range.
This was my lifestyle for much of the rest of my 12+ years of military service, I did my military job and then worked at restaurants, culinary schools in Canada, to temp jobs at Michelin starred restaurants and on their farm. It was the hardest time in my life. This has also been some of the most rewarding times in my life too, learning from great chefs, mentors both in the military and in the culinary world.
Today I’m an award-winning chef winning gold, silver, bronze medals from the American Culinary Federation along with best in show twice. I have an award-winning spice in my Primal Herb Blend, and I have cooked for Congress, sports players, celebrities, foreign dignitaries and more. I was selected as best dish at the Maryland Governors Buy Local cooking event in 2018 and published in their cooking book. Needless to say, I have so many great things in my career and enjoyed almost all of it. Today with my business of Open Fire Pop-up Restaurant experiences I fell into the world of competition BBQ and have enjoyed doing that on a national level with the Shed BBQ and Blues Joint out of Ocean Springs MS. We have enjoyed many awards and have now been on showcased on two seasons of BBQ USA with Chef Michael Symon. My Chef Fritz Brand Spices & Seasoning have grown both in the BBQ world and around Maryland where I live. I sell them online on my website at ChefJeffFritz.com/products
Have you ever had to pivot?
If you’re not familiar with the Culinary or Hospitality world it’s very hard and many businesses fail within the two years. I am just passing the two-year mark as a full-time business and have been open for about 7 years total. I will tell all of you that you have to be flexible in this industry, things change, friends disappear, and it’s just a hard life working many hard hours. As I noted I have several things that I do and each of these play a major part in my business. Since I live in a cold part of the country during the winter my outside events area hard to do, so we do more inside dinners, still cooking over fire outside, but my focus has changed to spices and expanding the stores that carry them. In addition, I’m expanding my line into restaurants now to help grow the brand. These have all been pivots and lessons learned as I have gone along. Like I noted this industry is hard and there are so many regulations and they all seem to vary bases on what city, town, or county you work in. When I left the kitchen, I had to find a new base of operations to continue the dinners we were doing. This led to a major sticking point for me as there were no commissary kitchens near my house. I was forced to go to established places and see if they would let me base out of them. This led to lots of issues with the Health Department as far as re-certifying my business. One kitchen that I tried to use I had to pay for them to get their septic system checked and their water system. After spending $300+ for a guy to take 5 minutes to look around the kitchen would not pass. The kitchen said if I wanted to use their space I would have to pay the $2-3,000 to fix the water issues, I had to keep looking. I ended up looking at kitchens and starting the process in three different counties and Baltimore city. In the end a commissary kitchen randomly opened up by my house. That is where I found my new home. This has caused major stress, extra financial costs and most importantly tons of my time.
All I can say for this is try to be flexible and try to be nice to the health department people, they can make this process so much harder if they want too. Good luck.
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
As I noted before my business is divers which has helped with the current environment that we are in. From COVID issues to the current economy and inflation it has been great to have several different streams of revenue. I know that not all business can be as diverse as we are but if you have the ability to diversify what you are doing it will help out in uncertain times. Even if it’s just expanding your business to include something new. I will say that it will take more management time which I know most small business don’t have. But once an additional revenue stream is set up the work load will lessen to a more manageable level. In my business we have our Chef Fritz Brand Spice and Seasoning line. Within this line we sell customer direct via our website, farmers markets, and festivals. Second, we sell whole said to stores, and third we are expanding into bulk spices for restaurants.
Next we offer our Pop-up Restaurant experiences with our live fire cooking. These are limited to a few a month since they take time to plan, prep. and execute. In addition to these we also offer private dinners, and cooking classes.
Lastly, we are opening a food trailer that will be used primarily with one of our partner farms. As an additional source of revenue, we will double tap some of the festivals with the food trailer in one section and our spices in another booth. Or when it’s only beneficial to have spices at the festival we will be open at the farm for service.
All of these take time and energy to set-up & manage but they can all provide a good source of income to pull from.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ChefJeffFritz.com
- Instagram: Chef_Jeff_Fritz
- Facebook: Chef Jeff Fritz
- Youtube: @Chef_Jeff_Fritz
Image Credits
Jon Guzman of Guzman Multimedia.