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RAS In the News

  Main News Page |   Previous   |  Next

The (Restaurant) Doctor Is In

Philadelphia Magazine, January 1996
by Jim Quinn

Most restaurateurs don't have
a clue, says Ron Gorodesky.

They don't even know if you're making money.

He can save them.

If they'd only listen.

-Lucky Guy

"I started working in restaurants, if you count a delicatessen in Northeast Philadelphia as a restaurant, when I was 14, washing dishes," says Ron Gorodesky, CEO of Restaurant Advisory Services in Wayne. "Restaurants got to me, the way theater gets to theater people. And for the same reasons. The squabbles with backers. The fights with the cast. The director sleeping with the janitor of either sex. The opening night, the curtain goes up, everything depends on how the customers like you-but the best show happens behind the scenes. I'm part of all that drama-except I have a normal life. I'm a lucky guy. I try to work 9 to 5, see my kids off to school most days. And I wear a tie without sauce stains all over it from leaning over the steam table."

To area restaurateurs, Ron Gorodesky is the Restaurant Doctor. Restaurant owners call for help-when they need expert testimony in damage suits, when they need someone to help divide the business when partners break up or divorce, when they start a new restaurant, when they sell an old restaurant, when they need somebody, something, anything to keep them from bankruptcy. Gorodesky advises men and women who are, on average, the most aggressive, hard-driving, cocksure, egomaniacal entrepreneurs in America.

Gorodesky (GORE-desky) does it quietly. So quietly it takes a while to realize he's not at all humble. Instead, he is so sure of himself that he
shrugs off the usual Food Business bluster. At 37, he has a kind of good- humored charm an A student has on exam day-when he's really, really, really studied hard.

"You don't challenge clients," says Gorodesky. "You want them to buy in to what you're saying. That doesn't mean you back down or apologize. Our job is being right. Not being right in the past. Right this time. History isn't profits."

I ask Ron if he wants to keep any business secrets off the record. He laughs, quietly.

"We don't have any secrets," he says, shrugging. "Unless information is a secret."

"My background"-Gorodesky puts his hands on his chest when he says this and, as usual, he talks so softly I have to lean forward to hear-"my background is numbers. One of the problems I have is separating myself from...restaurant consultants. You know, typically former chefs, former restaurant managers, guys who are like retired football players who do color commentary on television and tell you how every position should be played. They're operations-driven. For us, the bottom line is profitability. Nothing more. We don't teach you how to bone a chicken, how to pour wine, where to buy exotic salad greens. We show you how to make money.

"Money is something restaurant owners don't like to talk about. They like to think they can serve good food and money will follow automatically. That's not how it works. I have clients who get nothing but ugly reviews. Ask anybody about them, people laugh and say, 'Oh, that place!' They have an almost disreputable reputation. They make money, literally, by the ton. They're geared to tourist business. I have clients who've never gotten a bad review, never served a bad meal, have a very loyal clientele-and they're losing their shirts."

 

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