Hospitality
Frank Bennett
The DNA Required to Clone a Successful ...

Successful full service neighborhood restaurants are rarely duplicated in a second location, even by their original founder. I have observed this phenomenon over and over throughout my forty years on the New York restaurant scene. Whenever a successful restaurant in one neighborhood tries to expand to another location, it rarely enjoys the success of the original restaurant and often fails completely after a short stay in business. Why? Why can't successful restaurateurs do it again? The failure rate for duplicating successful restaurants is too high! What goes wrong when industry leaders try to repeat their success?

 To find the answer, I decided to interview 25 independent restaurant owners who had tried to open a successful second restaurant and had met with varying degrees of disappointment.

Speech Writing

HARVARD-YPO SPEECH

GOOD EVENING….MY NAME IS J------  AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO BE YOUR GUIDE TONIGHT AS YOU ENTER WHAT IS, PERHAPS, THE MOST EXCLUSIVE AND UNUSUAL CLUB IN THE WORLD…
pause…remembering…
 NINE YEARS AGO I SAT WHERE YOU’RE SITTING… FRANKLY NOT SURE WHAT I WAS IN FOR…
pause…remembering
I HAD HEARD HORROR STORIES ABOUT THE CASE METHOD AND THE CLASS DISCUSSIONS HERE AT HARVARD… I WAS NEW TO YPO AND FELT A LITTLE AWKWARD THINKING OF MYSELF AS A YOUNG PRESIDENT…WHAT WAS I DOING HERE? I GLANCED AT THE OTHER PARTICIPANTS SITTING NEAR ME…THEY ALL LOOKED SMART AND CONFIDENT…
pause…
INCIDENTALLY…MOST OF THEM ARE STILL CLOSE FRIENDS AND ACTIVE COLLEAGUES OF MINE TO THIS DAY…THEN I NOTICED