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 Andrés worked his way up from a convention center restaurant
in Barcelona to an American-based food empire in ThinkFoodGroup,
which includes acclaimed restaurants, catering services and a
food truck.
Now 47, Andres just received two Michelin stars for his
Washington, D.C.-based restaurant minibar, and was recently
honored by President Barack Obama with a National Humanities
Medal.
Andres has even made headlines for a restaurant he did not open,
at President-elect Donald Trump's new hotel in Washington, D.C.,
for which he is still embroiled in a $10 million breach of
contract lawsuit.
Andrés had a chat with Reuters about the life lessons he has
learned along his journey:
Q: What did your first job at that convention center teach you?
A: There were four people in the kitchen and sometimes we were
serving 200 or 300 people at once. What I learned was that as a
worker, when you work and you make yourself useful and
indispensable, your value always increases.
Q: When you were starting your own business, what lessons about
money stuck with you?
A: It was 1994 that I got my first loan from a bank to pay for a
little investment in a restaurant with my partner, Cafe
Atlantico in Miami.
We weren’t super prepared. The restaurant did OK but two or
three years later, it closed. The life lesson was that if you
don’t raise your own money, you don’t really learn the value of
owning something.
We all have dreams but at the end of the day, the numbers have
to make sense. Bills have to be paid and salaries and rent - you
cannot escape that fate.
Q: What did you buy with your first paycheck?
A: I bought a cookbook - "The Escoffier Cookbook and Guide to
the Fine Art of Cookery." Knowledge is power and that book was
like the heart of French cooking. That’s a book that’s been very
important in my life. I also bought a Supertramp cassette of a
concert in Paris. It gave me a lot of joy.
Q: What has become your secret to business success?
A: Make quick decisions. It’s almost like Darwin in the business
world. The strongest will survive and adaptation is key. I’ve
been fairly good at evolving - I never graduated from a school
and I didn’t have a normal studying life but I kept learning as
I kept moving.
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I was a cook, then I became a chef, then I had an investment
partner, then I became an owner. I always knew what I lacked and
always tried to surround myself with people who had what I lacked or
what I needed more of.
Q: As you became more established in your career, what did you learn
about handling your personal wealth?
A: I've never been a good handler of money. In my house, my wife
manages our finances. I don't even know what’s in the book. If she
leaves me one day, I don't even know my bank account number. Once
you believe in somebody, make sure you choose well so you can
concentrate on other things.
Q: You and your wife started a non-profit, World Central Kitchen, in
2012. How does this fit into your philosophy on giving back?
A: Hunger issues are very much at the heart of it for me. I've been
involved in a lot of things like L.A. Kitchen, Capital Food Fight
and Martha’s Table. The lesson here is to put money and commitment
into something you care about - at the end of the day, food is so
much at the heart of everything to me.
Q: What money lessons do you pass down to your daughters (ages 12,
14 and 17)?
A: Sometimes I feel like the more physical things we own, the less
free we are. Making money somehow is easy - saving money somehow is
very difficult.
So don't really spend the money on the things that are that one more
thing you're going to be selling at your garage sale. Time is money
and every day the clock is ticking and every day we have less time.
So I will say that I want to die rich of experiences and moments. I
don't want to die rich with an immense quantity of belongings.
(Editing by Beth Pinsker)
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