Bridging the Gap with Grace

Dreamforce…we took a blank canvas and turned it into a gathering place, where people came to connect, refresh and learn. Our guests were happy. Our clients were thrilled. Behind the scenes was precarious at best, but not only did we handle it, we made it memorable and rich. Our client will read these words and learn for the first time that the Acquire team had our work cut out for us in making this event the success it was! For me, Dreamforce exposed a massive need. Restaurants are in crisis. Corporate clients need spaces to connect. How can we bridge the gap?

We arrived on Monday of last week to set up for our three-day event series and learned that the restaurant we bought out has actually not been open to the public for some time. Many restaurants in SF are choosing this route: to only open for private events, which are far more manageable from an inventory and labor perspective than opening to the public nightly. So, we opened a restaurant, in one day, with a new staff, new menus, and a group of people who had never worked together or in the building before. At Acquire, our standards are admittedly high. We come from very tightly run restaurants, we over-communicate in every aspect, and we expect a certain level of organization and decorum. Typically, we only work with restaurants that we’ve vetted, where we know the staff intimately and trust them with our brand as well as our clients. In this case, this was the first time we had worked with this team. We jumped in head first managing the team, creating much-needed SOPs, and acting as a liaison between our client and the restaurant. There were countless roadblocks we encountered over our three days of events, some monumental. Not only did we handle it, but we created something extraordinary. When you host complex events, it can be very easy to get bogged down in the minutia, to wonder why things didn’t go a certain way. It is also easy to slip down the rabbit hole and be emotionally affected by the hand we are dealt. Last week, I was in total awe of our team, who transformed what could have been an absolute disaster into three days of success. 

After some reflection, I know why it worked. For one, we “speak restaurant.” Speaking the language gives you the authority to get things done. We were no longer the client, we became a part of the restaurant team. We also greeted every challenge with love. I do a lot of yoga, so bear with me on this one, but I believe that the best leaders lead with an open heart. They feel deeply and understand all sides. They lead by example. We have a ton of experience in this space. Between myself and my business partner, Megan, we’ve spent a combined 4 decades ‘in the trenches’ in some of the best restaurants in San Francisco. We don’t say no. I know we live in a world where boundary setting is glorified, but when it comes to making our clients happy, we say yes first and we work hard to figure out how to make their vision a reality. The truth is that our clients need a go-between: a team of dedicated, hard-working people who intimately know the restaurant business working on their behalf to make sure that the experience is seamless.

The primary reason people attend conferences is to connect with clients and prospects. By leaving the event details to a dedicated team of professionals, it freed up our client to connect with the people that matter most to their business, which is how we can best play a part in maximizing the impact of their event. 

For context, I wrote a piece recently about the current state of the restaurant business titled: Can Sales Tools Save Restaurants, posing the idea that if we applied the same sales tools we use to build businesses in the corporate world, could we save restaurants? Being in SOMA last week was tough. I spent the 8 years prior to Covid, as a Beverage Director there. Town Hall, which was my home, finally closed last year after fighting to come back post-pandemic. I peeked in the windows and everything was exactly the same as the night it closed: a time capsule, a snapshot of a moment in time that had a profound impact on my life. Restaurants have long been the fabric of what holds communities together. They are gathering places where ideas are shared. They are art forms at the highest level, that offer guests emboldened experiences, but for me, they are home. Restaurateurs don't have outbound sales systems because first, they don't know what they don't know, and second, they don't think they can afford it. Times have changed dramatically, so we must look at the model differently. 

My hope is that Acquire can continue to be the liaison, not only bringing people together over food and wine but bringing the much needed business back to the restaurant community that is so hungry to take care of you.

I don’t have a savior complex by any means, and I have worked hard to leave my co-dependency at the door, but the reality is that restaurants are far too important for us to bury our heads in the sand. Our why has always been centered on connection, on taking care of others in deep and meaningful ways. Bringing people together, in a way that leaves an impression, whether virtually or in person, is what we DO.