04: Building a Restaurant to Fit Your Lifestyle | Mat Schuster, Canela

My First Restaurant

Mat Schuster is the Chef and Owner of Canela Bistro & Wine Bar, a Spanish restaurant in San Francisco specializing in ingredients and dishes from Spain and California. Mat also serves as the President of the Board for the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and generously lends his talents to helping restaurants succeed in the Bay Area. In this interview Mat shares how he became interested in becoming a chef and restaurant owner, menu tweaks he made based on customer feedback, and his thoughts on building a restaurant to fit the lifestyle you want for yourself.

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Where to find Canela:

• Website: https://canelasf.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canelasf/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CanelaSF/

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Where to find Mat:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mat-schuster-16a92ba4/

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Where to find Bryan:

• Website: https://www.myfirstrestaurant.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-tublin-03548910/
• Twitter: @btublin

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Where to find Kitava:

• Website: https://www.kitava.com/
• Instagram: @kitavakitchen

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Referenced:

• Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
• Jamón Ibérico

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In this episode, we cover:

• (04:28) Where Mat was in his life prior to starting Canela
• (08:36) How he developed the dream to open a restaurant
• (10:27) The initial concept for Canela
• (12:55) Using early customer feedback to inform menu changes
• (14:58) Canela’s opening story
• (16:34) Finding the right location and funding the restaurant
• (17:45) Paying yourself as a business owner while putting money back into the business
• (19:19) The importance of hiring experts that have experience working with restaurants who will save you money long-term (interior designers, CPAs, etc.)
• (23:48) Developing an initial menu, and when to make changes vs. stick to your guns
• (29:40) When he knew the restaurant was going to be sustainably profitable
• (30:10) The misconception that restaurant owners walk around with big pockets; “most of my time is spent making money for other people”
• (30:43) The challenges and tradeoffs of operating a restaurant as a small business owner
• (33:03) How Mat’s role in the restaurant has changed over time
• (37:43) The future for Mat and Canela
• (44:43) Mat’s process for organizing his work each day
• (45:31) Ways to get things done: Either you do them, you hire someone else to do them, or you decide they’re not important (“do, delegate, or deprioritize”)
• (47:11) What Mat does to take care of himself
• (54:37) “At some point you have to jump in the pool”