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

Sean, appreciate you joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

The largest challenge to profitability in food & beverage is internal culture and societal misconceptions. In the restaurant industry, staffing and the ability to increase prices are the keys to success outside the basics of creating amazing food and drinks.

An opportunity operators have is accepting that we are a career that has a melting pot of people, many times in transition. Very few industries have high schoolers next to previous criminals as well as single mothers and/or recovering addicts. This diversity requires an environment of empathy, patience and education. If we, as owners and managers, create a culture like a healthy sports team or school with rules, accountability, care and development we can give most team members what they are looking for while passing through our doors – personal growth. This growth is vastly different from one person to another and if we can provide great compensation + growth then we are on our way to success.

When it comes to great compensation, the true and long term solve would be for the government to outlaw tipping. This would force all restaurants to increase prices to include tips at the same time which would force the customer to be okay with this new model. I believe it has not been successful until now because 1. people like choice and 2. at face value if one restaurant has higher prices because they don’t do tipping and another does not include the tip in the price, the guest ends up price shopping and choosing the lower cost option before stepping in the door.

Currently we are getting creative to provide extra funds to our staff without raising prices past the glass ceiling the customer has in their head; however, someday I hope we can simply operate like every other industry where there is one price and consistent wages for all involved.

Sean, 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 am currently the owner of a legacy restaurant in Nashville called Germantown Cafe. Since I was 14 years old, I’ve only ever been passionate about two things – ballroom dance and food. Since that age, I worked in restaurants (every position possible) and handed it all over to my dance teachers.

After school and a short stint in finance (which I hated), I got the bulk of my managerial experience with Hillstone Restaurant Group, took a hiatus to dance professionally and travel across the US and world for a few years and returned to restaurants once my body aged out of the dance career. I transitioned to building the Dream Hotel Groups first internal F&B program in Nashville which included a French American Brasserie, craft cocktails, craft coffee, night club, sandwich shop and dive bar. It allowed me to combine my passions for entertainment and food!

After some time, it was time to do this on my own and therefore I partnered with a famous Nashville restaurant to revamp and expand their restaurant group! We are aiming to open 15 restaurants in 10 years and more importantly create a sustainable model that provides countless opportunities for those who work for us and a scalable high quality & memorable experience for all guests.

We’re proudest of being able to provide opportunities to people who are on their second chances or go-getters who simply did not fit into the corporate mold. We have done this through operational efficiency, creativity and very strict standards.

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

When I signed the papers to become an owner of the restaurant, one month later, the restaurant was destroyed by a tornado and two weeks after this covid hit…

It was a scary time but we decided to push through and bet that it was worth the massive investment to rebuild despite restaurants around us failing left and right. We lost every staff member (most of which never returned), dealt with sketchy contractors trying to take advantage of the situation and the world wide shortages increasing the debt incurred.

It took us nearly two years when we originally planned for 6 months to re-open but with our changes, focus on the new teams and community outreach, we came back stronger than ever! We were more profitable in the first year back than the previous four and old guests say it is the best experience in the restaurants 20 year history!

We are now on our way to open our second concept 1.5 years after re-opening!

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I was brought into build all of the day life at the boutique hotel in Nashville and he was brought into develop the night life. On the surface he and I could not be more different, but when it came to work ethic, knowledge, passion, and conflict resolution we aligned exactly. What I didn’t know he did and vice versa.

We were educating the entire hotel group on what it takes to be successful (as this was our job) and realized we had a special partnership and decided to go off on our own. It took 1.5 years to find our first project at Germantown Cafe but our complimentary relationship has paid off over and over.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.germantowncafe.com
• Instagram: @seandaniellyons
• Facebook: /seandaniellyons
• Linkedin: @seandaniellyons

Image Credits
Sam Phen John Brown