A Look at the American Classic, The Cheesesteak, with Pat’s King of Steaks’ Frank E. Olivieri

Welcome to the main course. This is Barbara Sealia of modern restaurant management. And today, we're gonna talk about something very American, very, heart of what we do in the restaurant industry, and that's cheese steak. And with me is Frank Oliveri, who is the owner of the creator, the place where the cheese steak was created in Philadelphia of Pat's King of Steaks. So welcome, Frank. So first, you know, What is, you know, what is it that goes into making a really good cheese steak? Well, you know, it's it's not kind of cliche. Everybody says, you know, we use the freshest ingredients blah, blah, blah, But, of course, we do. We use the freshest ingredients possible. We try to source the best ingredients possible. Our bread is baked for us several times a day, so it's always fresh. Our meat primarily is imported, rib eye. It's real rib eye. It's not the stuff that's, you know, pre cut and shaped and frozen, and we're gonna have to chop it to death. And we we caught our onions fresh daily. And, that's basically it. Fresh bread, fresh meat, fresh onions. So what are your go to toppings? Are you a cheese whiz guy or a provolone guy? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, for me personally, I just absolutely love Craft Chaseless. I love it. I think it does something to the sandwich where it gets all inside the nooks and crannies, and it just, adds a different, like, an umami flavor to it. Where we we use Cooper Sharp. Also, we have Grande Pervalone, which to me are really good But I think the cheese miz is the signature cheese and is the cheese they get. So, you know, you've worked everywhere in the restaurant. You started there when you were a kid, and you've kinda learned a lot about what each role takes. So do you think that gave you a better understanding of both what you need to look for in staff? And as well as, you know, empathy because you know what all of these people are going through. Yeah. I know. I yeah. So I started working there when I was eleven years old, my father would take me in on the weekends, and I wasn't allowed inside the restaurant. So I would be outside with a metal milk crate. If anybody remembers those, I'm fifty set fifty nine years old. And I'd had the metal milk crate. And at the time, we didn't have picnic tables. It was all stand up outside service. And I'd stand on the milk crate, and I'd wipe down the counters and fill the pepper bowls and fill the ketchup bowls and sweep up and cut onions and cut bread and cut meat and I've done everything, every job at the store possible. So, you know, even to this day, if I go in and I ask someone to do something, whether it's, you know, an easy task or a difficult task. Not that most tasks aren't too difficult. I already know I have empathy because I've done those tasks, and I know what it takes And I know when people are slacking about it. And, you know, it's it's it's, you know, I'm just one of those people that don't do everything. And have. So I guess tell me a little bit about, you know, the creation of the cheese steak. You know, I don't and again, total history, but kinda like the bullet points. And how your family is all connected in this, you know, from then till now. So how how it goes, my grandfather, Harry, and my great uncle, Pat, were selling hot dogs started impression in an open air hot dog sedan, at this world famous Italian market where the store is located. So if anybody wants to know that it's not from Philadelphia, It's where Rocky was running down the street and they threw him the orange. So every day, they had hot dogs for lunch, and one day uncle Pat wanted something different. We sent my grandfather to the butcher to grab some chopped meat, whatever was left over trimmings, and they cooked it up on the grill and condiments at the time were onions, And they got a loaf of Italian bread because we're Italian, and they made the sandwich for themselves. And a cab driver, we had hot dogs every day. So all the sandwich and say, wow, that's Great. Make me one. So uncle Pat said that, but not for myself and my brother, but I'll give you half of mine. So he broke the sandwich in half. Uncle Pat, and uncle Pat took a bite and cab driver took a bite and he said, you know, Pat, forget about hot dogs. This is the sandwich you should make, and that was the invention of the Philly steak sandwich. So what, you know, we're we're talking and you're on your way going in between different things. So what's your daily routine like at the restaurant? To my daily routine is I get up, make cappuccinos for my wife and I, and then I try to get out of the house as early as possible, which doesn't always work that way, which is fine because I spend more time with my wife. Nancy, and, get over to work. And usually the first question I ask is, what's broken? Because if anybody owns a restaurant or works in a restaurant. I'll know when they come in every morning something's broken and somebody didn't tell somebody that something was broken. So then we we go on a, kind of a scavenger hunt to find out what's broken and what needs to be fixed and what needs to be addressed. And that could be machinery to, a shortage in product delivery or, employees who didn't come into work. We're twenty four hours a day, so We only closed Christmas and Thanksgiving. So it it's constant. You know, how do you find staff who are willing to to work all of those hours and, you know, what what are you looking for? You know, when you meet with someone and you chat with them, you go, okay, this personal work here or you go, I don't know about this person. Well, I mean, if you go two ways, sometimes you like to find people who aren't, coming from another steak sandwich stay steak place. Because in Philadelphia, we're, you know, you can't walk down the street without tripping over a cheese steak. It's just the way it is. And, or employees who previously worked at this unique place. So you you don't wanna unlearn spend time having that person unlearning bad habits to learn better habits. So we try to find people that are fresh or it's usually word-of-mouth where we hire we hire from within. To move up the chain. It's difficult. I mean, staffing staffing is is is a is a difficult thing. So what would what are some other challenges in addition to staffing? I know you mentioned a little bit about supply chain, and we know restaurants over the past couple of years have been dealing with different supply chain and pricing issues and inflation. So what would you say are the challenges that your restaurant is facing? Well, I think one of the challenge well, we don't face it as much. I mean, we have great employee retention. I have You know, there's myself and and three other people that have been there forty plus years by management. We have we have, five managers four of which are, you know, over forty year employees. We all grew up in the business together. I think one of the most difficult thing is I I think generate newer generations is work ethic. I think we have a problem with people who aren't used to the challenges of standing for long periods of time or actually interacting with customers without using their cell phone. And I think that's a problem where you know, you know, I I connection talking to a customer being pleasant. So we're we're trying to find people who can fit that bill. And that sometimes is a challenge. So what is it about the culture there that has kept those people there? Forty years plus. Well, I I would like to selfishly say it's me, because I'm such a nice guy. But, I think it's, you know, being that you're you're working at such an iconic restaurant, I mean, we're known throughout the world as the people who invented both the steak sandwich and the philly cheese steak sandwich, we've been in countless movies, mentioned countless times on TV shows and visited by presidents and other dignitaries, I think it's sort of like a badge of honor to work at Pat Steaks to a certain degree. You know, we talked about, challenges for your arrest on. But what are some challenges that you're seeing for the restaurant industry? Well, the restaurant industry is all. I just, I think right across the board, you can just go with, supply chain issues, getting product. And then, actually, you know, cost of product, cost of cost of product is is insane. I mean, you know, what normally would have been, you know, Chees wiz pre pandemic was, like, seventy four dollars a case. And now it's, like, a hundred and forty a case. It's it's ridiculous. You know, you're talking fry you know, soybean oil will be cooked to steaks with or cooked french fries with has tripled in price and hasn't come down. And that's all due to increased price of diesel fuel and trucking. And, you know, we don't have a problem. We pay we overpay our employees. We I mean, we don't have a problem with that. But, you know, it's it's a matter of just making ends meet, you know, insurance costs to operate within a city there's taxes in Philadelphia. We have something unique. We have the Philadelphia Sugar tax, which is a penny and a half per ounce, which translates roughly for us from our store alone seventy five thousand dollars a year that we have to pass on to the to the customers. So, you know, then price your product at the window, and then, you know, I look when I first started working there many years ago, the price of a cheese steak was a dollar twenty five, and now they're fifteen. Tax included. I can jump. Big big jump. So our our customers kinda feeling that pinch now are are they mentioning that, or are they saying I'm getting value for what I get? Well, we we try to we try to provide the best value we can by having the best product possible. And, you know, it's an experience. But, you know, there's there's people, you know, around the corner that are putting twice as much meat in the sandwich and charging a little bit less But it's actually not the same quality meat that we're using. It's just it just isn't. And, you know, sometimes people go for quantity rather than quality. And You know, sometimes you just we we lose a customer here and there to another place, but eventually, you know, they come back. So we're fortunate not respect we're providing the same product that we've always provided since nineteen thirty. So you mentioned your competition. You know, a lot of people know about the Pat and Gino's kind of, war kind of spy versus spy in a way, being neighbors. But, you know, who do you assess as your competition? And, you know, and how do you think you compare? Well, I mean, Gina is the there's there's maybe four or five, old school cheese steak places still in the Philadelphia area that make it exactly the same. Do you know who's myself? Steve Fritzsteaks, just to name a few. Or we still make the stakes in the old fashioned way where the meats flat, you know, flat as possible. Layer in. It's not chopped up and, like, you know, that poor animal gave its life. Why why beat it again after it's dead? I mean, that that whole chopping thing drives me insane. So anybody who's my competition, the pizzeria around the corner that makes, you know, five sandwiches a day where creates a, you know, creates a a desire for their sandwiches by baking their own bread And they say, oh, we're sold out of bread. We sold so many today. We we sold out of bread, but they're breaking for themselves. Maybe like a dozen loaves of bread, which translates into twenty four halves. Yeah. You I could sell out a twenty four halfs in, like, six minutes. I mean, and then create and then create a desire for the sandwich. And and then, you know, the whole internet thing where people are going around critiquing pizzas, critiquing cheese steaks, you know, and it's all you need to go to this place because it has a seated role You know? And so everybody tries to do something a little bit different, reinterpret what the original is. Everybody's trying to make a more perfect round wheel. But if it's If it was perfect to begin with, yeah, everybody has their own interpretation of it, but everybody seems to come back to the original. So speaking of the Internet, one of the things you do is, gold belly. So how, you know, how does that work? How does that help you kind of find a new audience. So the Gold Valley was something I I have to say I was adamantly against. I didn't want to do it because I wasn't, I wasn't comfortable with or assured that the quality of the sandwich would be perfect when it got there. And my wife, Nancy, who's sitting next to me, insisted that we do it. So we had extensive trials, where we were mailing them to friends all over the country, and, it seemed to work. And then, boom, the pandemic hit. And, you know, like, all other restaurants. We were we were feeling it. We had no walk up customer service. We had, you know, no late night customer anymore because my clubs and bars were closed, and no one was out and about at night anymore. So we, we were so fortunate that we were, you know, we went from maybe selling you know, maybe a hundred and fifty orders a week, you know, four pack, eight pack, and twelve pack to selling you know, making over ten to twelve thousand sandwiches a week during pandemic, which translated to, like, you know, our it was our lifeline. It was our blood it was our bloodline. It saved our business. So have people said they tried it on Gold belly and then visited Yeah. We've had many people, you know, Philadelphia is a great tourist destination, which brings me to another thing, you know, for the tourist trap. But I'm not gonna get into that. We have we have we have great I mean, there's so many firsts in Philadelphia. I mean, so many great things happen in Philadelphia and have happened in Philadelphia. So we have people that travel here from all over the country with their families during the summer. And they come to patch and like, oh, we tried it on Goldbelly. We thought it was amazing. You know, now we have the whole full circle. We have the whole experience of being here watching the bus go by, seeing a pigeon fly by, you know, it's it's different when you're the store. So you talked a little bit about the pandemic, but, you know, how did the pandemic affect the business? I know you had a cash only policy, you know, how how did things for operating the business change? Well, so if you're the pandemic or during the pandemic, I I wanted to do you know, more people are walking around with, of course, people are walking around with credit cards. And we've been, you know, a cash only business for ninety, ninety one years. And that was that was, like, a shtick that people wanted to, you know, they they they knew when they came here, have your money ready. It goes to the ATM across your street. And for me to streamline the business and and have a better control of it, we decided to go to, you know, accepting credit cards as well. And, you know, I I met a lot of I met a lot of pushback, actually, from some of my long time employees about it because they they were so a custom to say, you know, what's yours? Cheesake with onions. Boom. They take the money out of their hand. The sandwich is made in less than six seconds, and the changes in their hand, and they're pushed out of the way, and on the next customer. So they felt as though that that, you know, it was actually slowing down the line. But, you know, I then I explained to them, you know, just like, oh, too many buttons to push. Well, you know, if you pot your phone and you have to call your wife or your husband and you're pushing several more buttons just to make that phone call, then you are on the register to accept the credit card. So now that it's been in place for about a year or so, we we're finding it probably close to fifty percent of our sales are credit card sales now. So in what other ways does technology fit into what you do? Well, the technology fits into a better because you have you have a better better inventory control, rather than the electronic cigar box. So so the electronic cigar box was good while it work won't, you know, while it lasted, but Now it's if I'm not at the business all the time, it it it affords me the ability to if I'm, you know, vacationing somewhere, I can actually just dial in from my phone at night when I'm sleeping, and I could see live what's happening on the register, and I could see live what's happening with my inventory. It keeps honest people more honest. Right. And it it allows you to keep better track of the data that you used to kinda have to know in your head or or call up to get from someone. Yeah. Exactly. It actually it actually streamlines my my sales tax at the end of the month when I'm doing my inventory with my accountant. Because she could just pop right on to clover, our clover system, you know, I'm not getting paid for that endorsement, although it would be nice. So But, she could just pop right on anytime and she could check inventory against what came in with with purchases. And so I could delegate some of stuff out where normally I would do all of it and it frees me up to do other things within the business and, you know, have a personal life, which is Nice. Right. So you talked a little bit about before about Philly being a tourist town. So beyond cheese steak, what makes it a good food town? What makes Philly a good food town? What we have the greatest, diversity in ethnic food here. Actually, I just noticed this morning that we had, four or six James Beard award winners just yesterday, from Philadelphia. We have great Malaysian food. We have great Italian food. We have great Italian food and Asian food. And we have great Mediterranean food and we have great Israeli food. You can find anything you want in Philadelphia. And, you know, I have some cousins that are like, you know, the food in Philly's much better than the food in New York. How do you feel about that? My wife who who loves New York is shaking her head. Yes. It's great. Actually, I just saw another article that we have. Some of the, Philly was voted the best pizza town again. You know, so that's that's pretty awesome. To beat up New York, being a better pizza town, I'll take that. So there are a number of cheese steak franchises out there. Some of which started in Philly, some who knows where they started. You know, but you've kinda kept it to where you are and and haven't really expanded. So is that a something you're planning on doing? Is it something that you just are, you know, comfortable where you are and being who you are and doing the best that you can where you are. Show. My my my uncle Pat was alive and the family was altogether. My family had four She stayed places running in Philadelphia, then my uncle Pat moved out to California. He had one there. And the original store always did better than all of them. So, you know, eventually all of them closed. I see my competitor across your street. He has several locations in an airport and a ghost kitchen. And, you know, I think about expanding. And, it's something that I've always thought about, but I'm thinking, like, how can I how can I make sure that the product is what it's supposed to be, assure the quality of the product? Yeah. You can hire management to be there. But there's nothing like when the owners actually there doing you know, r and d, eating a cheese steak in the morning, saying this isn't right. That bread's gotta go, or that I don't like this meat send it all back. You know, if you're if you're relying on somebody else to make those decisions about the the the livelihood of your business, you could you could be in trouble. Because there's really no we don't have, like, a format. You know, and there's no quote, unquote recipe that we follow, like, you know, you know, like, a, like, one of the big hamburger places where you have to put a square to catch up on. It's like, you know, twenty two grams or the pickle weighs eighteen grams. You know, it's it's not like that where we are. So to expand, I think, I don't know, maybe in the future, I might consider doing something. Maybe like one company owned store, somewhere close that we can manage it, but we'll see what the future holds for that. So are you actually eating cheese steak every single day? No. My wife's neck, but not. No. I don't. I don't I mean, there was a time when I was actually on the grill every day and I would eat a couple all day, but no. I I mean, I do I do taste them, occasionally I have a small piece. I have a hard time finishing one anymore. I it's just I can't do it. I mean, I love them. I I think in fact they kinda actually bleed cheese with. So, I mean, I've had enough of them over the years, but You know, that is it the best thing for you? Probably not, but it's a damn good sandwich. So, you know, where, you know, where if somebody is kinda listening to you and they're like, you know, I wanna be in the restaurant business. And maybe they didn't grow up in it like you did, but they're choosing it as their career. What kind of advice would you give to them? Well, you know, anybody who, Anybody who wants to be involved in a restaurant business is a special person. We are a special breed of people. I I would say, you know, be be careful. If you if you're going into a family business, make sure that, you know, everything's written down on paper who gets what when somebody dies. If not, you'll be spending the rest of your life buying people out to eat it and know we're partners in the business. But I think it's it's one of those things where you need to you need to learn the business in order be a a a a good manager. You need to know how to do all the tasks that you're asking someone else to do. It's easy to read a book and say I'm gonna come in. I'm gonna be the best bar manager or best, you know, restaurant manager in the world. But if you don't know how to physically do those tasks, you you don't you don't gain the respect of the people that are actually doing those tasks. So I would say come and learn the entire business before you move up the ladder or as you move up the ladder, and that'll make you a more conscientious and empathetic boss or owner of a business. And, you know, we mentioned before about the staffing and how younger generation doesn't necessarily have that same face to face ability. So is that something that is teachable that people should if they wanna be in the business that they really have to get a command of? Yeah. I think I think that someone who wants to be a a good server or a good counter person or Cook Cook needs to understand that, you know, there isn't an app for everything. You know, you need to actually learn on your social skills and talking to people. And eye contact is very important because you're you're, you know, you you can't expect somebody to dish out a twenty twenty twenty twenty percent tip to twenty eight percent tip, which comes on the on all these things. Now people handing over and they're they're not even looking at you when they're taking their order. They want a gratuity, like, the twenty eight percent. Like, really? Like, what did you do? You didn't even there was no interaction. You need to have that interaction because And I think that's one of the things that, you know, and I'm kinda going off on a little tangent to that's missing today. There are no career. It's hard to find career bartenders and career servers we used to have when I was younger because, you know, people looked at as more like a stepping stone to that next job where they're gonna be, you know, I'm gonna be in the next TV food network store, and I'm gonna be putting far on a dish or I'm gonna be doing TV shows. It it doesn't work that way. It only works that way for a few people on the planet. So better your skills are, better you can talk to people and, the, the better your job will be. Better. And, and, and, you know, gratuities come along with that, I guess. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you.