How to Become a Rock Star Chef in the Digital Age: A Step-by-Step Marketing System for Chefs and Restaurateurs to Burn Their Competition and Build Their Brand to Superstar Level

Introduction

One can never know too much; the more one learns, the more one sees the need to learn more and that study, as well as broadening the mind of the craftsman, provides an easy way of perfecting yourself in the practice of your art.

—Auguste Escoffier

Are you ready to bump your business up to the next level in revenue? Are you a chef looking to boost your profile and get a cookbook deal, open your own joint, or have your very own cooking show? Are you ready to be instantly recognizable? If your answer to any of these questions is an unequivocal, enthusiastic YES! then read the following list:

Wolfgang Puck, Eric Ripert, Emeril Lagasse, Paul Bocuse, Charlie Trotter, Grant Achatz, Scott Conant, John Besh, Dean Fearing, Aaron Sanchez, Kent Rathbun, Stephen Pyles, David Burke, David Change, Todd English, Jöel Robuchon, Ferran Adrià, Anthony Bourdain, José Andrés, Bobby Flay, Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boloud, Mario Batali, Paul Qui, Guy Fieri, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Ming Tsai, Paula Deen, or Rachel Ray. Okay, what images come up in your mind when you read those names?

You may be asking yourself what these famous people all have in common. I mention these names because every one of them is much more than just a chef of rock star fame, a TV personality, or a restaurateur. Each of them is a brand unto him-or herself. From Wolfgang Puck, with his stable of restaurants, frozen-food concepts, cookware, and high-profile catering gigs, to Rachel Ray, with her almost overnight stratospheric career launch from supermarket demo chef to Food Network megastar, cookbook author, lifestyle daytime show and magazine owner, pop culture celebrity, and overall cooking diva, they each have etched their brand indelibly into the consciousness of society today and have built million-dollar empires in the process.

Every Rock Star Chef on this page has built a platform from which they can influence the world of food, and they have thousands, if not millions, of fans all over the globe. They have figured out how to be famous and recognizable around the world—by mastering the art and science of strategic marketing, branding, and licensing. Some have their own cooking show, while others are starring in a big-budget Hollywood movie, selling their latest wares on one of the home-shopping TV channels, or licensing their name and logo on hundreds of products. It is reported that Emeril Lagasse has over 753 licensing agreements alone!

Each of these maverick marketing masters has figured out how to rise above the noise of the wannabes and become an ultra successful ROCK STAR CHEF!

And I’m willing to bet that not one of them has a fancy MBA in marketing from the Wharton School of Business or Harvard Business School. I would also be willing to bet that not one of them was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, a trust fund, or a pedigree from a long lineage of European nobility such as Rothschild, DeBeers, or Windsor.

They’ve never run a Fortune 500 company—or, for that matter, any company that had more than a couple of hundred employees. I think it’s safe to say that most of these people had very humble beginnings and had to work their assets off to get where they are now.

By the way, where do you think these entrepreneurially minded chefs and restaurateurs might have learned how a true rock star brands, promotes, licenses, and markets himself? I’m pretty sure that whatever your age, you have heard of the rock band KISS and its cofounder Gene Simmons. Besides enjoying close to forty years of success with the band (they continue to sell out stadiums all over the world), millions of records sold, and a long-running reality TV show, Gene has built a licensing empire that any Fortune 500 company or world-class athlete would be envious of. To date, he has over 2,500 licensing and royalty deals! And you’ve gotta give props to the guy who also had the insight to register the trademark for OJ (the drink, not the fallen football star).

So why am I telling you to study the example of these individuals and learn from their trailblazing careers? Think about what each one of them has accomplished in a fairly short time. Every one of these individuals rose from nameless obscurity to become an icon in their particular arena of the food-and-beverage world. Most of these juggernauts are recognizable by just one name: Wolfgang, Emeril, Flay, Ripert (that’s Ree-pair), Rachel, and Bocuse. Who doesn’t know precisely whom you are referring to when you mention Ramsey or Keller?

All these Rock Star Chefs became wildly successful in the culinary world because they blazed their own trail. Of course they worked hard, but they also worked smart! They didn’t just plod along the traditional pathways of doing business.

No, they made their own rules as they went along and, in the process, developed major success and worldwide celebrity. In life, success comes to the confident, the bold, and the aggressive. By being unique, strategically positioning their brand and creatively marketing outside the box, they had large consumer product corporations (CPG’s), kitchen equipment companies, TV networks, publishers, hotel groups, investors, and marketing companies beating a path to their door and showering them with money and contracts.

And isn’t that exactly what you want to accomplish in your professional life or business? Maybe you already own a restaurant and you’re trying to attract investors to grow into multiple locations or concepts.

Do you want your restaurant to be known as the hot spot in town? Imagine the envy your competition will feel as their customers and their dollars drive right past their half-empty parking lots on the way to your filled-to-capacity dining room.

When a news story breaks in your industry, or a reporter is looking to interview an expert to comment on recent trends, don’t you want to be the one they go to for an opinion? That is what the Rock Star Chef Marketing System is all about! It’s about learning the tricks of the trade. (Or trucs, for my fellow Frenchmen!) It’s about learning how to market effectively both online and offline. It’s about learning how to build your brand and position yourself or your business to stand out from the crowd. In these pages, you will quickly learn the fastest way to build your personal brand, celebrity chef persona, and mystique.

That’s where I come in. I am going to guide you through the marketing maze on the journey to becoming a Rock Star Chef or a Rock Star Restaurateur. What do I know about being a rock star or a chef? Plenty! I played bass guitar professionally on the music scene during the mid-to late 1980s in Phoenix and Los Angeles. If you recall, this was during the time of the glam metal or hair band scene.

Bands like Poison, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, Guns n’ Roses, WASP, Quiet Riot, Warrant, L.A. Guns, Metallica, and others were all slugging it out trying to get signed to a record deal and become the next it group. The way these hungry bands got the word out about their next gig was by pure guerrilla street-marketing tactics. They didn’t have an expensive PR agent or a large marketing department. Hell, most of them had no money and were surviving on money given to them by band groupies from the L.A. music scene. Every band member became a tireless self-promoting machine—posting flyers, networking, and doing anything else they possibly could (legal and maybe not so legal) to get their band’s name on minds and lips all over town.

You see, the way the game was played back in the day was that almost every concert venue that would book these bands charged an up-front fee to play. That’s right, just about every L.A. band you know of that got famous around then had to pay for the privilege to go onstage in the beginning of their career. No bar owner was going to take a chance on an unknown band, and they sure as hell weren’t going to pay them ANY money. So if you wanted to play Gazzari’s, the Whiskey, the Troubadour, or any of the other clubs, you had to pay (cash, of course) several thousand dollars for your set.

If you wanted to make your money back—which you desperately did so that you could pay rent, eat, or pay off the local small business loan associate you borrowed the money from—you had to sell enough tickets to your show. Otherwise, if nobody showed up when your gig was scheduled, tough!

Now, do you think you might learn how to hustle and flow to get the word out about your band if you were ponying up money that you didn’t have just for the chance to play in front of people? That would be like a chef having to go to a restaurant owner, beg for a night of the week to cook, pay for all the food up front, and then market like hell to get people to come in and eat.

One aspect of the music business that always intrigued me was the concept of residual income and royalties or, as I like to call it,

Mailbox Money

Here’s what I mean. When you write, compose, produce, or create a song you have publishing rights. If you get that song or album on the market and have actual sales of the material, you now have royalties, or residuals, every time your song is played on the radio, purchased at a store, part of a film soundtrack, downloaded on iTunes, featured in a soundtrack, used in a video game or slot machine, used in a commercial, or played on a Muzak track. That is to say, YOU GET PAID! Do the work once and get paid for it over and over again—even while you sleep. Think about that for a second. There are bands and recording artists who have been getting checks in their mailbox every month for years—decades, even! Some of them have passed away, and their estates are still getting this mailbox money.

By the way, this income is recognized and taxed much differently from the money you earn as straight income from a job. But that’s a topic for another book. Let’s just say that when I understood the power of the concept of residual income, I promised myself I would figure out how to make that happen in my life. Later in this book, I’ll discuss how, in the new digital economy, it is actually more achievable and realistic to implement than ever before.

As an award-winning professional chef, I have worked in Five-Star restaurants and Five-Diamond hotels both here in the States and in Europe. When I was cooking in some of the most prestigious and famous New York City restaurants, all the studio musicians and we chefs worked similar hours and hung out at the same after-hours clubs. We were kindred spirits and shared the same creative passion for our crafts. We also shared the same interests in members of the opposite sex who loved musicians and chefs, but that is a "whole ’nother subject for a tell-all book.

So why am I presuming to tell you what it means to be a Rock Star Chef? For starters, I am an honors graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and was awarded a teaching fellowship at this prestigious school right after graduation. It has been called the Harvard of cooking schools, and its faculty and graduates are some of the most influential pioneers in the cooking world. And yes, many of the graduates are also the winners of just about every major reality chef competition on television these days.

The consulting agency I opened over fifteen years ago has worked with some of the largest corporations in the world. I have also been blessed to work personally with five different billionaires (yes, that’s with a b) from the restaurant, NFL team ownership, and gourmet grocery retail worlds. These superstars taught me many lessons in business and finance, but the greatest lesson they inspired me with was the importance of servant leadership and how to be a great contributor to the world instead of just being a consumer. Jonathan, Danny, Charles, Red, and Phil, I thank you every day of my life for your wisdom and your stellar example.

With my Fortune 500 clients and job assignments, I have created recipes, brick-and-mortar concepts, and food items for several major restaurant, manufacturing, retail, food service, and hotel companies. Heck, I’ve even been part of the small team responsible for not one, but two different Super Bowl commercials and campaigns. For any marketer, ad agency or creative, to work on a Super Bowl campaign is considered the Holy Grail of advertising. Millions of dollars and billions of media impressions are at stake. I have been truly blessed in my career to have worked with some of the biggest and most respected brands in the world.

Companies such as McCormick, Brinker International, Darden Restaurants, Avocados From Mexico, Wegmans, Central Market, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Sam’s Club, Jack Daniels, Tyson, Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Publix, Sofitel, and Ritz Carlton Hotels have all benefited from my experience, insight, and knowledge. I have people paying thousands of dollars to come to my seminars; I have coaching and consulting clients who pay me tens of thousands of dollars per year. I have multimillion-dollar product launches for gourmet retailers, as well as celebrity chefs, musicians, beverage companies and sports star clients under my belt.

I have also worked with many of the celebrity chefs that you see on Food Network or other cooking shows such as Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, and many others. As a matter of fact, if you are reading this book, there is a 95 percent chance that you have eaten a meal or recipe that I had a hand in creating. I tell you these things not to wow you and impress you, but to share with you as real-world examples, so you’ll know that I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been doing this for almost two decades—it’s not just theory for me. Believe me, I have had more failures and product duds than I care to remember. The beauty of it for you is that you get to shorten your learning curve by learning from my mistakes and my