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One of my favorite things
about being a part
of the restaurant community
in Kansas City
is how close-knit it is.
If I'm out of onions one night,
there's four different
restaurants that I can walk to
in five minutes
that would loan me onions.
And I think
that in some bigger cities
it's more cut throat
and people aren't helping
each other.
They're definitely competing
against each other.
I think in Kansas City,
we're competing
and we push each other
to get better
and we definitely wanna--
each of us wants to be the best
but at the same time
we're small enough
that we sorta have to get along.
The Rieger Hotel was built
in 1915 by Alexander Rieger
and, you know, I knew
that it was originally a hotel
when we first started looking
at signing the lease
and doing the restaurant.
What I didn't know was that
Alexander was the son
of Jacob Rieger
who had a whiskey distillery
and a wholesale distribution
company in Kansas City
that he started the late 1800s.
And when his son built
this hotel,
they put a mural
on the south wall advertising
their monogram whiskey
and by the time
we took over in 2010,
it was faded beyond recognition
but we were able to
reconstruct it
and have it hand painted
almost back to
its original form.
We were very interested
when starting our restaurant
that we wanted to tie in
to the history of our building
and our neighborhood
and really be part
of Kansas City's culture
rather than a new, trendy
hotspot that may not last
very long.
We really wanted to feel
established.
So, tapping into this history
was a way to brand ourselves
in a way that seemed,
you know, part of the community
and part of something bigger.
We're in a really
fascinating part
of Kansas City here
in the Crossroads Art district,
which on a national scale
is being marketed
as the creative crossroads
of the country.
We're surrounded
by art galleries,
really great restaurants
and bars,
there's a ton of design firms,
world-renowned
architectural firms,
video production agencies,
and even Google.
Google is now launching
their Google Fiber project
here in this part
of Kansas City.
So, it's a very creative,
very energetic neighborhood
that is perfect for a business
like ours that, you know,
wants to be innovative
and wants to be fresh
and new and have a lot of fun
with what we're doing.
Being a partner
in a restaurant is definitely
a very challenging thing.
I had been a chef
at a couple other places
here in Kansas City and I've
been cooking professionally
my whole adult life.
But it took a whole lot
to go from being a chef
to being a chef/owner,
and it was a real education
for me.
In so many ways it draws you
away from the thing
that you're passionate about
and great at,
which for me was cooking,
and I had to focus
on so many other things
that were new to me.
That, you know,
setting up an LLC
and dealing with lawyers
and dealing with banks,
and investors,
and all of those things
were new to me
and I really enjoyed
the challenges of it
and I really grew a lot from it,
but at the same time,
it's sort of ironic
that to achieve my dream
of being, you know, a chef
and a restaurateur
of my own restaurant,
it really--
I'm cooking less and less
all the time because of it
and I'm doing more meetings
and more training
and planning events
and planning future menus
and things like that.
Well, running a restaurant
is definitely not
the easiest thing.
But I think that if you love
doing it and if you have
a desire to be
in the hospitality industry
and serve great food
and great drinks,
and really appreciate
being around people
and meeting new people
and taking care of them
and giving them
a good experience,
then I think you'll love it.
But otherwise, yeah,
it does take a lot out of you
and it's a very stressful
business.
I mean, if you're just looking
to make a few bucks,
then there are probably
better, safer routes to go
than opening a restaurant.
It's definitely
a hard business.
I think for a restaurant
to succeed you need
to put in hours.
Really for the first
nine months,
I worked open to close
every single day
and it was really
an enormous amount of hours.
I was always here to watch it,
I was always here to correct
things that went wrong
and I think that's a big key
to having repeat business
is to--they know
that when they show up
they're gonna see you
and that you care
and you're there
and you're paying attention.
It takes a huge commitment
but it's also what
I always wanted to do.
So it's easy to do.
So during the day
we're back behind the line
prepping for dinner service.
During the dinner service
I'll be at the expo station here
pulling the tickets
and calling the food out
to the cooks.
They put it up in
the hot window here
and I bring it over
to the servers
who take it to the guests.
Between lunch and dinner though,
I have a lot of downtime
where I do other things
that have more to do
with the business and less to do
with the cooking.
This is my office.
I sit at this counter
and we'll have our, you know,
cell phones out
and the laptop computer
and we get a lot of work done
this way when there is
less to do in the kitchen.
Tonight, for example,
we've got a great
dry-aged T-bone steak on special
and a lamb pasta
that we're working on
that's going to be
on our new menu.
Those are things that I know
our regulars would
want to know about.
So I'll go on to Facebook
and post maybe a picture
or a description
and kind of a teaser,
and I know we'll get
great results from that.
There'll probably be
people in tonight
that saw it on Facebook.
We are very much
big believers in using
social media,
and I think that a lot
of small businesses
these days are going that route.
You know, we don't do
a lot of print advertising.
It's very expensive.
The majority of what we do
is, you know,
more of a direct connection
with our guests
and with our friends
and our clientele
through social media.
We have zero dollars
and zero cents in the budget
for print advertising
because we're really finding
that it hasn't been
very effective.
We can post a special
on Facebook at 11 in the morning
and we get a guest in the door
at 11:25 that came
for that special.
It's amazing how quickly
people respond to it
and I think it is a great way,
not only to post content
about what's happening
at the restaurant
and what you have to offer
that's on specials that day,
but I also think it's a way
to develop relationships
with people.
I've always looked at
print advertising
and marketing of your business
sort of like your business card
but, you know,
using social media
is like a handshake or a hug.
You know, it allows you
to really be yourself and kinda
convey your personality
and I think people have
a greater understanding
of who you are
and I think it really helps
build a brand.
Here in the bar area
we built a new back bar
and we stained it a dark wood.
I think that that works
nicely with the feel
of the--you know,
how the hotel might have
looked back in 1915.
Also, for us, a big part
of our concept
is our cocktail program
and our bar program in general.
We are a restaurant
first and foremost
but you do a lot better margins
on selling liquor
than you do selling food.
And so really,
it was something that was
important to us,
was to get established
as a really well-known bar
so that people can use us
in different ways.
Manifesto opened
in April of 2009
and the idea was really
to create a small,
high-end craft cocktail bar
where we really got to
experiment and have
a lot of fun with making
really beautiful drinks
in a pre-Prohibition style.
And the setting of it
being in the basement
here at the Rieger
was just perfect
because we could have
the entrance back in the alley,
keep it kind of discreet,
didn't really do
any advertising.
It was really a perfect location
for a concept like that.
And then a couple years later,
we were able to take over
the restaurant space upstairs
and open up The Rieger.
The theme of Manifesto
is really a classic
cocktail lounge.
We do take reservations,
which is a little bit unusual
for a bar,
but we do it via text message
so we have a cell phone.
We run the whole business
on that
and you can call or send a text
for a reservation.
We only have 48 seats,
and when we fill those seats,
we're at our capacity,
so there's no
standing room only.
It's not a crowded,
uncomfortable bar.
We want to keep it comfortable,
high level of service,
and we want it to be
a good experience.
The feedback has been amazing.
I mean, early on we did have
a lot of excitement
and a lot of buzz
about what we were doing
because it was so different.
It took a little time, I think,
for a lot of people
to understand what
we were all about.
But after almost four years,
I think that we've really
gotten into a groove,
and not just locally,
but nationally it's been
recognized by a lot
of our peers in the industry.
We really like to maintain
a high level of service
and class.
So, we're really not trying
to pinpoint a specific
demographic.
It's really a bar that
should be for everyone.
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I think one of the best
things for Kansas City's
restaurant scene
is there's a lot of guys my age
who have traveled a lot,
who have worked in some
of the best restaurants
in the country
and in other countries as well,
and have come back home
and are trying to do
our thing here.
The rent's a lot lower,
the taxes are lower,
it's pretty wide open
and you can definitely
build the kind of place
you want to build
and do it a lot more affordable
than you could
in San Francisco
or New York.
But at the same time,
I think the general population
here is really proud
of our local restaurants
and independent restaurants
and they know that we're
doing things that are getting
national attention
and there's really good support
from Kansas Citians.
I got the Manifesto "M"
and this is the original
J. Rieger and Company Whiskey
crest from the late 1880s.
So, this is definitely
a commitment.
I was gonna say,
you won't be moving
any time soon.
No, not at all.
I'm here.
I'm here for life.
A co-production of:
...and Outpost Worldwide,
at home in Kansas City.
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