Lessons from Two-Time Michelin Winners

Will & Nicole Buckman: We’re Will & Nicole Buckman and we've been doing this for 15 years. Before that I was a stay at home home and before that I worked in restaurants. And I'm Will Buckman and like she said we've been doing this for quite a few years now. It started in our driveway while I was working for a telecommunications company. We started this job, this business in our driveway.

Will & Nicole Buckman: From the driveway, wow, it was a hobby. It started out as just a good excuse to be outside and enjoy nature and enjoy our kids playing. While we were doing all that, I was cooking food in the pits. And one thing led to another, and people started requesting that we cook food for them. And it was Nicole's idea to start charging people. She costed everything, made the website, made the menus, did all that stuff, and started advertising our services. And from there, it was a very short three months before we were completely booked for the year. And I was, we were talking about quitting, quitting my job and doing this full time.

Will & Nicole Buckman: Yeah, so that was maybe one of the scariest decisions of our lives because we had two small children at home and we had a guaranteed paycheck. But we decided that we were going to bet on ourselves and that we had the wherewithal and the capabilities to get it done. And we took the leap. We also figured, you know, we were young enough at the time to where we could bounce back if this didn't work out. As you know, hospitality is not the easiest career path to take, but we bet on ourselves and we put everything in and we like to think that we are a success. 15 years. Absolutely.

Will & Nicole Buckman: Having two small children. Yeah, two small children and giving up, you know, health benefits. I worked for a very large telecommunications company and we had a, you know, like I said, a guaranteed paycheck and pretty much all expense paid insurance. So the biggest risk was walking away from a guarantee. You know, it was a big leap for us.

Will & Nicole Buckman: Yeah, I think everything you do that leads up to everything that we did that led up to this point was a building block or a stair step. Whether we knew it back then or not, every experience in life prepares you for where you are right now. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I met a lot of great people. We still have friends that still work for that company that we're still in contact with to this day. But yeah, we learned a whole lot of teamwork and drive.

And we were kind of self-led in that industry anyways. We didn't have a management team that followed us around. So we had to be, you know, very productive on our own. And that helped out with this profession for sure.

Will & Nicole Buckman: I would mean I would say the simplest room that would be consistent. Yeah, for consistency. Focus on the customer. Focus on your product and don't sway from that. You know, it's easy to cut corners when you get busy. It's easy to source cheap products because you're worried about cost. But the shortest, easiest way, the best answer we have is consistency and quality.

Yeah, like you said, not lowering your product quality because, you know, prices have gone up, but to figure out other avenues of helping your costs stay down, you know, like just product to start as far as like to go products and you know how you send out your food and paper products and those kinds of things versus cheapening. What meat that you buy to a lower quality to help make up for it. Cause I know it's really expensive right now and I'm not saying that everybody can do that, but I'm just saying that if, if you're able to do that, then it's definitely somewhere to start.

Will & Nicole Buckman: You know, we had a lot of accolades through the years and we were fortunate enough to garner some attention early on in our career in this industry. I think it was six months into our trailer because we went from the driveway of our home to a trailer as a mobile food vendor. And it was probably six months into that journey that we were featured in the local newspaper where they gave us a full page spread. And it kind of was a rocket ship from that point forward. We kind of knew that we were going to be able to make this work as long as we had our head in the game. Focused on the customer. We have one. 

But when we opened the trailer, we had to make $300 a day to be able to pay our bills and buy food to serve the next day. And six months later into that journey, we had lines leaving our trailer and going out to the street. And fortunately enough, that's never really wavered from that point forward. So for the last 14 and a half years, we knew that as long as we kept that commitment to ourselves that we could be successful doing this. Not necessarily Michelin star successful, but successful nonetheless. That was really never something, you know, that obviously barbecue hadn't been a thing in Michelin. So you never really. We weren't expecting it. Not at all. Not at all. And you asked, you know, about being comfortable. So I don't think you should ever get too comfortable.

I don't think you should ever get too comfortable in anything because if you get too comfortable, then you get like so basically and then you're like, oh, we're good. don't, you if you're, if you, gotta stay at 25 % uncomfortable, you know what mean? So that you can say, I need to make sure that these things are right. My employees are doing the right things. All these things. Cause cause like, I mean, nothing's a hundred percent predictable. So, you know, or a hundred percent comfortable. You just have to work really hard and just maintain the best you can and do the best you can and be as consistent as you can and strive for 90%, 95 % because you can't please 100%.

Will & Nicole Buckman: Yeah, social media has always been our driving force and Nicole has handled that from the start. She, you like I mentioned, started our website before we decided to quit my job. So she's always handed all of our social media, but that was really the driving force in getting the word out of our business. And still to this day, we have zero advertising budget. We've never invested in advertising outside of social media.

It's all driven by social media. Yeah, so mostly we've paid $125 and that's when we were running it out of our house and that was a small little ad in a local paper called Woodlands online and it was. That's that and that was in 2010 and we've never done anything else. We just base ours. We base not doing any paid PR or anything like that because we want to know that if we're staying busy and still getting accolades and everything that we know we're still doing what we're supposed to be doing and staying on top of our game.

Will & Nicole Buckman: I think just a lot like post a lot and don't have a web don't have your website connected like to stuff and it's a Facebook page like have a website that lists up that says stuff that says what your menu is and everything because you know having a link to Facebook from like Google that says website you might not update it all the time you might not put that you're closed you know for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and stuff like that so that's a huge thing for me is have a website, have Facebook, have Instagram, know, X or Twitter, whatever. Take talk, have all that stuff. Post as much, cross post as much as you can. 

You know, people love things that are cheesy and saucy and photos and stuff like that. They love videos. I wish we did more videos. We're just, it's just so busy. It's hard for us to get to it. That's something that we're gonna start promoting more. Cross post with other people. You know, when you have customers who invite you to collaborate with them and you like what they, you like the photos and stuff you think, know, hey, this looks really good. Like collaborate with them. It doesn't matter if they have 300 followers, you know what I mean? Or 25 followers. If they are posting about you and putting you out there for the world, even for their 10 friends, if that's what it is, 10 friends, tell 20, tell 30, tell 100.

So, you know, collaborate with them. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Respond to all of the people who message you and, you know, get back to them, even if it's just your food was fantastic, respond to that. You know, they want that. They want to know that you're, you as the owner or, you know, as the person that leads the restaurant is acknowledging that they come to your restaurant. You know, they are what keeps you where you are. You know, they are the ones that pay your employees and that pay our salaries. So they are the most important thing to anything is your customers. So acknowledge them.

Will & Nicole Buckman: Staying put, we're owner operators, we don't want to be expanded to a second location or a satellite location or a different concept, would take focus away from what we're trying to do here. We, Nicole and I don't let the dollar rule what we do. We really are customer minded and food oriented. So our focus remains on that. And we don't want to take away from that. Yeah, just the same thing as you people don't, they ask why you know we're closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Sunday, Mondays are our days off that, you know, we haven't had.

10 years because we were only closed Sunday, Monday before. But we're closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday because Sunday, Monday, we get to spend time together. We're here together all the time. It's different. We also get to spend time with our children, which are the most important things in our lives. And then on Tuesdays, we work. We're in the restaurant working. We're just not customer oriented. getting everything that they want, the customers want throughout the week. So that's, you know, just to let everybody know the reasons that we do close those days, especially Sunday, Monday is our kids are only going to be young for so long and want to spend all the time that they can with us. So that's important. And it's important in our relationship to stay grounded with each other and have date nights and all that stuff. So I think it's important to take that time. Yeah. Balance. Balance. Very important.