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

Mack , appreciate you 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?

My brother, Sam, and I took over ownership in 2017 from our father, so the restaurant was completely staffed. Our goals were to learn every facet of the business and the processes for each of the positions. We wanted to understand what was working well, and what needed to be adjusted all while learning everyone’s personalities. Over the years, we have gotten much better at interviewing, setting expectations, and the ability to articulate what is most important to us. Those factors have been the biggest contributors to us getting great people on our team. When you are in the trenches every day with the team, you truly understand what the most valuable characteristics for being on the team are. Then once we were good at articulating that, our hiring interviews got much better.

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?

Our family has been in the restaurant business since 1921 where there were plenty of concepts over the years. The most recent concept change was from our father, Charlie Lewnes, creating the first Prime Steakhouse in Annapolis, MD in 1994. My brother, Sam, and I grew up in the business going to the restaurant with Dad when we were tiny to working shifts there as we got older. We both had the desire to get into the hospitality world and it ended up being both of our majors in college; hospitality. Sam went to Oklahoma State and I went to Cornell. Sam got right into the business out of college, and I surprised everyone by taking a sales job with Milwaukee Tool after college. For 5 years I worked my way up the corporate ladder and became a much better business professional; became a better person in general too! The experience I had in those roles were invaluable, and it allowed me to bring back a different perspective to running our family’s business. Where Sam had much more experience than me by the time I came back to the steakhouse, I brought a fresh perspective. These two strengths worked out really well. Our backgrounds coupled with Sam and I having a very strong relationship made for a great partnership that continues to thrive. Now, one of the things we are most proud of is aligning our business growth with personal growth; the traits we and our team focus on are very much the same traits that allows you to grow as a person.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We knew our Executive chef in the kitchen was planning to retire at a later date. Nothing wrong with this as he was with us for 25 years, and we built our transition plan with the #2 person in the kitchen taking over. He had been with us for 14 years and everyone loved him so it was a great fit for the next executive chef. Unfortunately, three weeks after we had the meeting with him explaining all the next steps, he was hit by a car and killed leaving behind his wife and four children. This truly gut punched the steakhouse as he was very much loved by us all. One of the biggest demonstrations of resilience was the entire team coming back to the steakhouse. We all were fighting back tears and often unsuccessfully, but we pushed through. It made us all stronger.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Maintaining morale is something we will always continue to improve on and learn new ways. The fundamental component in my mind is the sincere desire to take care of your team. If you truly put your team first, and look to make their lives better, the morale stays strong. Our goal is to align business with our people becoming better versions of themselves. When there is that underlying understanding from the team that we care about them, it aligns the team around many of the decisions we make. It also makes petty squabbles that unavoidably come up much easier to handle.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Lewnessteakhouse.com
• Instagram: @Lewnes_Steakhouse
• Twitter: LewnesSteak