Jair Coser’s employees take pride intheir company, and that pride translates to passion for their jobs at Fogo de Chao restaurants. With a strong entrepreneur leading them and allowing them to beentrepreneurial in their own ways, it givesthem the drive to get up every morning andgo to work. And that’s exactly the kind ofdedication Coser wants for his restaurants,which specialize in a centuries-old Brazilianmethod of cooking meat. After he and hisbrother, Arri, successfully built the companyin their home country, they brought theconcept to the United States in 1997.
A decade later, their passion and drive,combined with that of their 800 employees, have helped them grow the businessto nine locations around the country —with a 10th scheduled to open later thismonth — totaling $96 million in 2006revenue.
Smart Business spoke with the co-founder and CEO of Fogo de Chaoabout why simply picking up thephone is important in business.
Q: How do you grow a company?
I think it is people, vision and passion.
Q: How do you develop a vision?
It’s a dream. If you don’t have this, I’dprobably stay in Brazil. I dream withmy company that it’s a good companyand a good team and hiring the rightperson.
Work, work, work, work, and share the dream with the associates. I think if you don’t talk and don’t pass these to theguys, you don’t have it. Alone, you don’t goanywhere.
Q: How do you prepare for growth?
You need to have the right team. Build agood team. If we have a good team, we cango work. If not, we cannot go work. This isthe first thing we’re looking for. When wehave the schedule for some location oranother contract, the first thing we look at isif we have the right person and the rightteam.
Have a team to do all the steps — to findthe right location, do the construction, openthe right way, have good marketing — to take care of that location — good managersand happy managers.
Q: What do you look for when you’re hiringmanagers?
If they have the passion. You say, ‘OK, doesthis guy have it?’ You hire people, and thepeople only need that job. If the guy is looking for a job, but this job is only a temporaryjob, and he dreams with another team, it’snot the right passion.
You will have lost time with training andeverything. Take time and talk with this particular person, not just once, but two, threetimes with interviews.
The guys need to have ambition, to have apassion for learning. You don’t need to doeverything. When I put a new manager inone location or transfer a manager to another location, that guy doesn’t need to knoweverything, he needs to have passion forlearning.
Q: How do you keep managers happy?
With money. You cannot only talk, youneed to pay.
Q: How do you communicate with youremployees?
We have, every Monday, one meeting, andwe say what we need to do this week.Quarterly, we have all the managers we bringhere to Dallas or some new location and putthe goals in place; say, ‘We are here. We needto be there.’
If you don’t have good communication, it’shard. If you don’t have communication, youcannot grow.
The people need to know the goal of thecompany. I cannot put one goal for thecompany if I don’t communicate this tomy managers and everybody. The teamneeds to know everything. Open thebooks. These guys need to know if wemake money, how is the position of thecompany and everything.
Q: How do you ensure the vision andvalues are practiced at each location?
This is the communication. If you havegood communication, everybody can continue this. We have people go every weekand look at all the locations, not all thelocations the same day, but we have a fewpeople that go to one or two locations thisweek and next week, one or two locations.
What we have in the goals, everybodyneeds to talk the same language. It’s not oneway at one, and another, it’s another.
Q: How can other leaders better communicate?
Use the phone. Don’t send e-mail. Pick upthe phone, and in five minutes, we can talkmore than e-mail, e-mail, e-mail, going backand going back, and we don’t have a decision. It’s faster, and we decide everything theright way.
Q: What keeps a company from growing?
If you don’t have the right timing and theright people. I saw a lot of companies gopublic, and they need to open 10 restaurantsa year, and they pick a bad location and badpeople, and the company is not good. We goour pace and have good people and goodlocation and good money.
HOW TO REACH: Fogo de Chao, www.fogodechao.com or (972)960-9533