Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kathleen Sullivan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Kathleen, thanks for joining us today. How’s you first get into your field – what was your first job in this field?

I’ve worked with food and the restaurant/hospitality industry for 25 years. I started off as a dietary aid in the nursing home where my mom and step dad met when I was 14. It’s located in Cleveland and we lived an hour south at the time, so they would drive me up every weekend and I would work my 8 hour shifts. My mom would be working 12 hour shifts, so I would do my homework in the dining room after my shift and talk to the elderly people who were in need of some company until it was time to go home. My day would go : prep the food, stock my food cart and head upstairs to the dining room and I always tried to make everyone smile when I gave them their food. If not then, I would try again when it was study time.

I stayed there for a few years, but once I hit 16 I was ready to get a job with people my own age. We lived in a small town that had many fast food and pizza places. As a teenager, still in school, they were the ideal job to have for someone starting in the restaurant industry. They had just opened a Papa Johns up the street from my house and I was able to work there the rest of high school, although I did leave for a year to work at Blockbuster ! At the pizza shop I started on the phones, then moved to making the pizzas, delivering them and then for a little while, assistant general manager. I still love the smell of a pizza shops more than I love actual pizza.

At the same time I was working at the pizza shop I also worked at KFC. A lot of my friends had worked there and I thought it would be a fun second job. I worked both places until I was 21. Just like the pizza shop, I started up front, moved to cook, then supervisor. I left Papa Johns when I was offered a promotion at KFC where my job would be to relocate to different locations that did not pass their health inspections, work as a temporary GM to bring them up to code and set up their new management team. It was one of the most brutal jobs I’ve ever had,

That KFC job would have been rough for anyone, but as a 22 year old, I could only do it for about a year. I then moved up to Lakewood, Ohio and got my first serving job at Aladdin’s Eatery. I ended up working there for 3 years and went from a host to a server and then a manager. I loved working at Aladdin’s it was fast paced and I was always learning something new. At that job it really clicked that I loved serving people and that I was actually pretty good at it!

After working at Aladdins I applied to work at Lolita, Michael Symon’s restaurant that had opened a year prior in the original Lola location in Tremont. I was way under qualified, I had never worked in any fine dining, but I was hungry to learn. I was so excited to get the job and I ended up working there for 9 years. I learned more there than I could ever list. I started as a host and worked my way up to a back-waiter. We went through a few general managers as I was moving from back-waiter to server, so I had to prove myself over and over before finally becoming a full time server. In all, the transition took 3 years and by the time I reached that point, I was ready for a new challenge. I worked with our GM to count inventory and I quite literally talked them into giving me a bar shift and having a seat at the table for developing new cocktails. I worked both as a server and a bartender through my last year there, sometimes still filling in back-waiter shifts when needed.

At Lolita, I worked with some of the best in the business, including Will Hollingsworth and Sin-Jin Sataysthum. At the same time we worked together, they were building the Spotted Owl that went on to high-end cocktail bar and a place I would grow more than ever. Will brought me on as barback on Monday nights to work on fundamentals . Mondays were slow and the perfect night to work on research and development. It was an incredible opportunity to learn what made a bar. Every week we’d pick up a different bottle and research everything about the product, taste it and test it in drinks. Those nights lead to the Owl’s Menu 7. 3 months later I had left Lolita and become a full time bartender at the Spotted Owl. After 6 months, we were already working on menu 9, Bangs (as in bangs of flavor). By Menu 10, Bangs vol. 2 (July 2016), I became the Beverage Director and held that title through Menu 13, the Education of Cyrus, August 2018. After that I moved into the General Manager role through the development of iconic The Wheel program that gave people the opportunity to tell their bartender what mood they were in and what flavors sounded good at that exact moment and the barteneder would go through their extensive 500+ cocktail index and come up with something specifically for that person based on their conversation. During that time I learned to price out prep items, create well organized documents to make searching quick and efficient and started to dive into analytics. At the same time Will and Sin-Jin started to build a second Spotted Owl in Akron. When Spotted Owl Akron opened I moved into the Director of Operations roll, which was a super humbling experience for me. I was used to getting down in the dirt and coming up with systems myself and I had a lot to learn when it came to running a team and helping them create their own systems. During 2020 I helped develop ways to keep the bars relevant and moving forward. In 2021 we expanded again welcoming Prosperity Social Club into our company, a staple of Cleveland and a bar that means so much to Will, Sin-Jin and myself. It’s a place we used to go to after work at Lolita, Will and Sin-Jin basically designed the Owl sitting at that bar. With Prosperity came a new role for me, I moved into the Head of Finance role. For every role I took I had to learn from scratch. In the finance role, I was working with accountants and financial people who have gotten degrees in their field and here I was trying to catch up on glossary terms. It was to date the most challenging position I’ve taken on. In 2022, we acquired Good Company, a scratch kitchen full of young, hungry talent. This acquisition gave me the opportunity to built a finance team and I became Vice President for Operations for Buildings & Food, which is the name of our growing hospitality group. I’m excited to be back in operations, I love being part of the fabric of this company and love the opportunity to help these talented people hone their craft as I was able to.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Kathleen Sullivan, many people in the industry call me Sully. I am the VP for Operations for Buildings and Food hospitality group. We are based out of Cleveland, Ohio. In our company, I started as a bar back, polishing glasses and clearing tables to a beverage director with 7 high concept menus in 3 year and now holding the VP for Operations position where I’m the lieutenant to the owner and CEO.

Outside of work I’m also the Co-Chair for the North of Literary block club in the neighborhood of Tremont where I have lived for 10 years and worked for 17. It’s important to me to keep the residents apprised of growth and giving them a platform to voice concerns.

Our goal as a company is to create bars and restaurants centered around innovation, preserving Cleveland restaurants that are essential to the fabric of the city and out-reach in the neighborhoods that our bars and restaurants call home.

We started off with the Spotted Owl in the neighborhood of Tremont, a high-low bar where you could get a high end, well executed cocktail, or a beer and a shot for $6. We expanded with a second location in Akron, Ohio in late 2020, which was only open for 4 months before the pandemic. Our 3rd location was the purchasing of the iconic Prosperity Social Club, which some may remember as Dempsey’s Oasis. We are only the 4th owners of the restaurant that has been open and operating as restaurant continuously since 1938. When the opportunity to preserve this Cleveland gem came along, we jumped on it, promising to only make changes to help preserve and continue the live of the space, but nothing that the public would ever notice, just the same restaurant they’ve always known. The 4th installment to Buildings and Food was Good Company in Battery Park. A scratch kitchen, they make everything in house, from the buns to the ice cream. It’s a young staff there that are hungry to learn the most efficient and best practices, we are lucky to have them. Due to their drive, we are working on bringing Good Company into the former Akron Spotted Owl location, which we think the city of Akron will enjoy greatly. Old 86 was the 5th location for Buildings and Food. A shot and beer bar that’s dark with great lighting and great music. it’s a bar in the purest form of the word and represents the reasons Will, Sin-Jin and myself fell in love with bars in the first place. The bartenders are cool but approachable and most importantly, know how to throw a great party every night with every crowd. We also have a clothing company that is marketed to the restaurant/bar business and in 2023 we welcomed a coffee company into our group called Peristyle coffee that focuses on subscriptions and providing coffee to restaurants.

We closed down the Spotted Owl in May of 2023, not because it wasn’t doing well, but because sometimes great things need a pause. The Owl was always about innovation and change and that’s exactly how we are going to leave it for the moment. You will still see hints of the Owl around, but it will not be in the same space it once was. That space is going to be filled by the resurrection of another Cleveland staple, La Cave du Vin. A wine and high-end beer bar that was originally in Coventry for 23 years and will reopen very soon in the old Spotted Owl space. Tremont hasn’t had a wine bar in quite some time and I really think that the neighborhood is going to enjoy this renewed concept in such a beautiful space.

I have been in the restaurant/hospitality industry for 25 years. It’s my whole life. I’ve never worked in any other field (other than a brief summer at Blockbuster!). I starting off in the kitchen of a nursing home, worked in fast food all the way up to fine dining, I love being a host and the key to being good at every job I’ve had has always been to be a gracious host.

At the nursing home learned how much a kind word and listening to people can change someone’s outlook. At the pizza shop I learned precision and customer service skills. KFC taught me Servsafe level of service and how close a staff that goes through the trenches with you can become, it even created lifelong friends. Aladdin’s taught me how to up-sell and how to prioritize my work load. At Lolita I learned how to hone my skills and the importance of discipline. Lolita was a life changing job for me. I grew up there, my coworkers took me under their wing and showed me how great this industry can be. I broke down whole pigs, learned how to listen to my palate by tasting and learning about incredible wines and met some of the most incredible, talented, hard working people in the business. The person who held the lead server position I call my aunt, I was 1 of 2 people who stood with the head Chef and his wife when they got married, I built a restaurant group with Will Hollingsworth and Sin-Jin Satayathum – I’m actually marrying Sin-Jin on Halloween, Will being the officiant. None of that would have happened without Lolita, I will always cherish Lolita.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

I think that in the restaurant and bar industry, going to other places, observing the crowds and talking to your peers is incredibly important.

The Spotted Owl was located in Tremont, which is a great neighborhood filled with restaurants and other bars. Something we used to do that I think was extremely helpful to conducting the flow of business was that we would take breaks and walk around the neighborhood. If someone was coming in later in the shift, we would send them around to pick up food for the staff from one of restaurants in the neighborhood and talk to their staff about how their night was going. This was not to poach customers or to promote our bar, but to listen to the neighborhood and observe the crowds that were rotating through. This gave us the opportunity to know what kind of music to play, predict the time of the rush, cut or bring in employees accordingly . Paying attention to your surroundings and listening to how people are feeling in the moment is an extremely helpful and important skill to have and it can help you understand your business and its place in the industry and usually you’re going to get a better understanding right outside your door.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn is really a story about pride. I’ve fought my way up in every job I’ve ever had and in order to do that I had to always prove myself as the best choice. What I had to unlearn was telling everyone I was the best.

Once you’re put in the position to manage people, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about your people and lifting them up and teaching them how to be the best. They don’t care about how good you are, they either want to learn from you, or they want you to give them the space to learn on their own.

There were many times in the first few years of being in a management position that I was too tough on my staff, holding them to my standards and the way I would do things, not letting them have their own voice. I couldn’t see it because I was still in that fight mode that got me where I was. I had to learn when it was time to slow down and learn to listen. I knew my deliverables and what my goals were. In order to get there I had to put my pride away and try to look at it from my staff’s perspective and where they were coming from. It took a lot of meditation and a lot of reading, but I think not only am I better at my job for it, but I think it’s given our company the ability to grown quicker and better behind it, too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://buildings-food.com
• Instagram: @_sullykat @buildings.food
• Facebook: Kathleen Sullivan | Buildings and Food
• Other: here are the rest of our companies facebook/instagram accounts, In case you’d like all of them… facebook/instagram Prosperity Social Club / @prosperitysocialclub Good Company / @goodcompany.cle Good Company Akron / @goodcompany.akron Old 86 / @old86bar Peristyle Coffee / @peristylecoffee To The Bar / @tothebarco Spotted Owl Tremont / @spottedowltremont La Cave du Vin / @lacaveduvin

Image Credits
Heidi Rolf Aaron Sechrist Lee Sechrist Jude Goergen