How Alec Gropman Built Bodega Brunch Empire After 120-Hour Week Breakdown at Age 25

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispodi and today’s guest is Alec Grotman. He grew up on Long Island and in Fairfield, Connecticut, earned his degree from the Culinary Institute of America in 2017, moved to Charleston and joined Uptown Hospitality Group as the opening sous chef at Uptown Social.

Six years later, Alec is senior partner and director of culinary operations at Uptown Hospitality Group. They have created lively bars, brunch cafes and event spaces across Charleston, all built to bring friends together around great food, cold drinks and upbeat music. Under Alec’s guidance, the group serves thousands each week at venues like Uptown Social, Sharehouse, two bodega locations and Waverly. And we’re going to find out about a new location that just opened up too.

His pandemic pop-up version of bodega grew into brick and mortar sites that now sell more than 1,000 New York style sandwiches per day. In 2024, Star Chefs named Alec a Charleston Savannah rising star, praising his creative menus and smart kitchen leadership. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency. Listen.

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Alec Gropman (02:23)
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:25)
So Alec, where did you get your first taste of the restaurant industry?

Alec Gropman (02:29)
So my first ever taste of the restaurant industry comes from a personal story. I was five or six years old and my parents come to me and say, oh, what do you want for your birthday? And I think most kids of that age are thinking about a new TV, an Xbox, something. And I said, please take me into Manhattan. Please bring me to the nicest restaurant we can afford. And I just want to have dinner for my birthday. And they took me to WD-50, Wiley Frames restaurant.

and I was fortunate enough to actually step into the kitchen, you know, after my parents pulled the whole, my kid, he wants to be a chef, all that stuff. And, you know, walking around this incredible kitchen, seeing them, you know, do literal witchcraft, turn shrimp into noodles and foams and spherification and things that were just, you know, mind blowing to me at that age. And from that second on, I knew that, you know, I was hungry for the industry. And then, ⁓ you know, beyond that, my first job ever, ⁓

was really at this restaurant called Tomato and Basil. It was a little local mom and pop Italian joint in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Anthony Codispoti (03:36)
So how does a five year old already think he wants to be a chef? your parents in the business? Did you have other relatives? What was the draw?

Alec Gropman (03:44)
No.

I think I was a genuine Food Network baby. You know, I my dad was a griller dad No, no industry history just you know passionate about food and cooking and making things delicious for dinner seven nights a week Because my mom was certainly not a cook. So that definitely fell on my father and myself ⁓ But yeah, I mean my my parents have little scraps of paper that they saved for me at you know, three or four before I even

write, allegedly, ⁓ telling them that it was a menu and telling them that, you know, I would come up and show them a paper filled with scribbles and say, this is my sushi menu and, you know, this is my restaurant that I’m going to own one day. So, yeah, I don’t know who convinced me at such a young age, but this is just kind of always what I was destined to do.

Anthony Codispoti (04:34)
It

sounds like you were pre-wired at birth for this. So you graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2017, and then very quickly joined Uptown Social in 2018 as a sous chef. How did that opportunity come about? How did you get connected with this group?

Alec Gropman (04:37)
I think so.

correct.

So my wife and my business partner, Keith Benjamin, might not want me to share this story, but it is a personal favorite. wife, girlfriend at the time, Lindsay, she was a student at CFC, had recently graduated. That’s the College of Charleston, by the way, but had recently graduated. She was hanging out, 4th of July, out on a boat with a couple of friends. And she bumps into this gentleman, Keith Benjamin, who is the senior operator here in Charleston, but was affiliated with our parent group, Eat Your

and be married up in New York. And he was down here scouting out locations for a Charleston restaurant. And the two of them are drinking, hanging out on the Fourth of July. And he says, I’m opening up a bar. I need a chef. And she says, my goodness, my boyfriend is about to graduate from CIA. He’s the best chef in the world. You should hire him.

And, I get a 2 a.m. text after a double from, you know, a less than sober girlfriend saying, hey, I got you a job in Charleston for after you graduate. And I was like, all right, yeah, maybe drink some water, get some sleep, you know, talk in the morning, not thinking that it was, you know, totally solid. And lo and behold, I woke up the next morning to an email from Keith and the rest was kind of history. I interviewed later that month and was in Charleston five days after I graduated to help open up Uptown Social.

Anthony Codispoti (05:58)
serious.

Alec Gropman (06:12)
⁓ Yeah, mean, we high school sweetheart to married, you the whole thing.

Anthony Codispoti (06:12)
Best girlfriend ever. Wow.

Okay. Is she in like recruiting or she was just doing her boyfriend a solid here?

Alec Gropman (06:24)
⁓ At the time, doing her boyfriend a drunken solid. Currently, she’s actually our director of events and works for the company as well and runs the Waverly. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (06:32)
Okay, fun stuff.

So, okay, so what was it that attracted you to this group? What did you like about

Alec Gropman (06:41)
So, I mean, you know, to be quite candid.

Anthony Codispoti (06:42)
Uptown.

Alec Gropman (06:45)
right out of culinary school, it was a job. You know, it was, was security. was knowing that I would be able to move directly to where my girlfriend was living, where I wanted to be. Charleston is an up and coming food Mecca, especially in 2017. You know, was the talk in the nation. You know, there was incredible talent here. And frankly, I thought I was going to move down with my big shiny CIA degree and land a job and work there for a little bit. And then, you know, bounce around and do the thing that most young chefs do and, you know, just

Anthony Codispoti (06:47)
paycheck.

Alec Gropman (07:15)
and work for as many different mentors in as many different kitchens as you can to kind of learn your stripes and gain experience. But, ⁓ you know, after working with this group for really a few weeks to months, I realized that they were so different than your typical restaurant group. And, you know, they had a certain level of dedication and care. And it felt like a mom and pop, but they also have 30 years of industry ⁓ experience. So it almost had a little bit of that corporate side to it, too. It just

felt right and you know I worked my butt off and the accolades and opportunities just kept on coming and I’ve just kind of never looked back.

Anthony Codispoti (07:54)
Yeah. So you mentioned that they do things differently. And one thing I heard you say is there’s sort of this combination of being big enough that they have kind of the corporate structure kind of figured out, but they still take kind of a mom and pop approach to things. Can you say more about what that combo looks like?

Alec Gropman (08:12)
Yeah, absolutely. think a lot of it stems from our partnership opportunities. ⁓ I was extremely fortunate enough to be offered investment and ownership ⁓ after one year. ⁓

And a lot of that comes from, you know, drive and dedication. And I am a little bit of an outlier. There aren’t many others in the company that were offered partnership in such a short stent. But ⁓ essentially, when they see people who are committed and really giving themselves to this opportunity and to this company, they want to they want to show you the worth of your efforts rather than, you know, just a raise or a bonus. They say, you know, become a part of this, become a bigger part of this and help us with our other concepts and help us grow and help

us with your ideas and the way that I was entered into the company and through partnership, finding a way to help inspire others who don’t think they would be able to have those opportunities ⁓ creates this mom and pop dynamic where, you know, rather than the owner being this person who kind of breezes through the restaurant once a month and take some free food and yells at a couple of higher ups and then disappears for another month, you can’t step into one of our operations for a full day without bumping into at

one or two of the operating partners who are there talking to the staff, talking to the guests, creating SOPs and just making the establishment the best it can be.

Anthony Codispoti (09:31)
For listeners who maybe aren’t familiar with the industry, CIA in this context is not Central Intelligence Agency, it’s Culinary Institute of America. So that’s

Alec Gropman (09:40)
No, it actually

is Central Intelligence. Yeah, I’m a covert spy. No, it’s the Culinary Institute of America.

Anthony Codispoti (09:44)
Yeah.

So quick ascension here, right? ⁓ You know, very short period of time, you were offered partner ⁓ ownership, ⁓ became director of culinary operations. What was something that you learned about yourself during this rapid rise, Alex?

Alec Gropman (10:03)
So I really think it just comes down to, and it’s hard for me to kind of compliment myself in this way, ⁓ but I think it just comes down to work ethic. You know, I learned from an early age, both of my parents being business owners, that if you want opportunities and you want the ability to do cool things with your life, a lot of it comes from yourself and a lot of it comes from your own dedication and determination. And, you know, right out of culinary school, especially CIA, which is an extremely, you

high-credited culinary school. A lot of people are on the Michelin trail and a lot of people find themselves caught in this kind of like fine dining spiral where they think that the the highest and most valued food that they can serve is the highest and most valued purpose that they can serve. And very quickly I realized that I would rather work really hard to do something that’s significant to me personally and special to me because whether you’re serving someone a hundred and fifty dollar yu steak or an eleven

and dollar bacon, and cheese, the reaction can be the same, the love can be the same, and the way that it makes you feel fulfilled as a business owner can also be the same.

Anthony Codispoti (11:14)
interesting. I like that. ⁓ Let’s talk about some of the concepts under the Uptown Hospitality umbrella. How many, first of all, how many different concepts, how many total locations around the country?

Alec Gropman (11:25)
Ooh, so we have Uptown Hospitality Group, which is our Charleston specific sector, where we have Uptown Social, Sharehouse, Two Bodegas, Waverly, and by the way, so I guess five concepts, six locations. And then we also have a handful of locations in Chicago and then kind of our flagship locations that have been around for 30 years started by Mitch Banchik and Michael Ash. ⁓ We have eight locations in New York.

Anthony Codispoti (11:52)
Okay, so let’s focus on the concepts there in Charleston. Five concepts, six locations. What’s kind of the common thread amongst these different concepts?

Alec Gropman (12:04)
⁓ I like to think, you know, a certain sense of nostalgia. ⁓

The greater partnership are all from the New York area. So, you know, a group of New York restaurant owners come down to sweet Southern Charleston, South Carolina. You know, we definitely were in Espray’s and to start a shrimp and grits biscuit shop. You know, I think we knew that we wanted to do something that spoke more to us and spoke more to our upbringing. ⁓ And for a lot of us, that was the pizza at Uptown Social. For me specifically, that’s the egg sandwiches at Bodega.

But even still, I think there’s enough transplants from Connecticut and New Jersey and New York that have found their way down to beautiful South Carolina, as well as enough locals who see these new flavors or even maybe nostalgic flavors for themselves pop up in their town and they’re drawn to it. ⁓ But yeah, so I really think nostalgia and just a certain sense of kind of like childlike atmosphere. ⁓

really is kind of a through line for all of our concepts except for Waverly, which is our most buttoned up wedding venue. And I guess you could say, by the way, to a certain extent being our slightly more fine dining concept. But even both of those have a certain sense of just New York energy to them.

Anthony Codispoti (13:24)
Okay, ⁓ so tell me a little bit more about Waverly. It’s a buttoned up wedding venue is how you described it.

Alec Gropman (13:31)
Yeah, so I mean, this was really my wife’s passion project, so I can talk about it forever. She started out in nonprofits, segued into the wedding industry after really just falling in love with watching people fall in love is the way that I like to put it. ⁓ She hasn’t had a single wedding at a…

the Waverly where she hasn’t texted me, you know, sobbing about, you know, the beautiful couple, you know, getting married on her wedding venue. It’s really special. But yeah, it’s just a beautiful blank canvas. You know, it’s more than a wedding venue. We’ve had birthday parties there, corporate functions, but ⁓ it is really just a blank canvas is the best way to put it. You know, it can be whatever you want it to be.

Anthony Codispoti (14:16)
Okay. And let’s talk about Bodega because as I understand it, this first started as a pop-up concept during the pandemic.

Alec Gropman (14:25)
Correct, yeah. you know, it’s August 2020. Business is tough, you know, wherever you are on the planet. And we got to a point where at the time all we had in Charleston was Uptown Social, which is predominantly known for its nightlife, you know, its beer, its pizza. You know, it is a happening spot. And in 2020, most happening spots weren’t really happening all that much.

So, you know, me and my business partners are sitting together and troubleshooting and throwing out any idea that we can. And it was actually one of my business partners, Kara Graves, currently Kara Hammond. Congrats on the second baby. She’s a brand new second mother. But she she threw out the idea and was like, what are we doing in the morning? You know, like we’re opening up at four o’clock. Maybe there’s some, you know, revenue to be found in these early morning hours. And, you know, the entire team kind of pivoted and looked at me like, all right,

food guy, you know, like, what do we do? No one wants pizza, you know, eight in the morning. And I said, well, I mean, we’re the New York group. Let’s let’s do bacon, egg and cheeses and let’s just start a little hole in the wall bodega and see what happens. And, know, about four weeks later, we had the branding together. We had the recipes together. You know, it was really like seat of our pants, you know, throw it together. We need to get something in motion. And, you know, we had a line of about 200 people waiting for bacon, egg and cheeses a few weeks later.

Anthony Codispoti (15:40)
That came fast.

Alec Gropman (15:53)
And we were serving everything individually wrapped through a window. It was very COVID friendly. Order ahead, just snap your bag and leave. And I think it was just lightning in a bottle. It was just the right concept at the right time. And it just took off like crazy.

Anthony Codispoti (16:07)
So being in New York, guys, for people who haven’t experienced what bodegas are, particularly in New York City where they’re everywhere, can you just a quick summary? What is that for people?

Alec Gropman (16:18)
Yeah, so I mean, I also shout out as I always do my local bodega in Fairfield, Connecticut, the country cow can’t miss it. If you’re ever in the area, is a bodega to me is just as much as it is a convenience store as it is a deli as it is a meeting spot for friends and family. Every single time I am back home in Fairfield, Connecticut, a mandatory country cow trip is on the docket. And when I am there, I bump into old teachers, old friends, parents of friends, coaches. You know, it is it is a community

that just happens to be disguised as a breakfast sandwich shop slash convenience store.

Anthony Codispoti (16:55)
I used to do some business in New York City. was there on regular basis and my mind was just blown by best sandwiches in the city were found inside of these little convenience stores. And my business partner first took me into one to get some food. I’m like, no, I don’t like, you know, want like chips or crackers out of a bag. Like I, he’s like, no. Like, so yeah, for people who haven’t experienced before super cool concepts. So you guys were like, Hey, let’s bring an element of that. You weren’t doing the convenience store part of it, but just like,

Alec Gropman (17:25)
Correct. So our second location has a small market. I wouldn’t go as far to say that we’re a convenience store, even though we do have an occasional toothpaste purchase. It is definitely not high up on our P-Mix. People are mostly coming here for the sandwiches. But our original location was purely just deli sandwiches. I think we had three different deli sandwiches on the menu and three different egg sandwiches on the menu, and that was it when we started as a pop-up.

Anthony Codispoti (17:26)
Or were you?

So how was it that you guys had 200 people waiting at the door on your first day open?

Alec Gropman (17:57)
So I think a lot of that I have to give credit to our social media team.

the photos of people opening up the sandwiches and the cheese pull and the runny local egg. And, you know, it had a very dramatic effect on social media. And that was definitely what caught the attention of Charleston, especially at a time where most people didn’t have anything to do other than scroll Instagram and be on their phones. You know, again, this is peak COVID. So I think, you know, you’re a young 20 something year old. You’re in Charleston. You probably recently moved here because it’s the happening town in the southeast.

And then bang, COVID happens. Now you’re bored sitting at home looking for anything new and exciting. And all of a sudden this really cool, fun, ⁓ know, deli pop-up shows up and it’s like, yeah, why not go try it out? You know, you can wait in line outside. You get your food individually packaged and you can go eat it on, you know, a bench or find somewhere secluded. ⁓

And yeah, think it was like, I know I said it before, but just lightning in a bottle. Like it was the perfect moment for a concept like Bodega to arrive in Charleston.

Anthony Codispoti (19:04)
But what gave it longevity? So lightning in a bottle for that moment, but then how did you continue that momentum and build it into permanent locations that continue to succeed?

Alec Gropman (19:13)
So longevity

wise, really have to give, again, credit to ⁓ just the team that was around me. I was slaving away in the kitchen working insane hours cooking bacon with my… We had a team of three people plus myself. So a lot of the baking bread, cooking bacon, the prep work was being done by myself for hours and hours and hours a day to try and save on labor. And it was really my team in the front of house that was building it as a brand and explaining

people what bodega meant, know, frankly, a lot of people thought we were a Mexican restaurant and were expecting tacos when they might have first arrived, you know, just educating people on what bodega culture and bodega lore is was problem one to solve. And then problem two came in the essence of when COVID finally began to slow down a little bit, restaurants are reopening, you can actually dine in. How do we take this fun pop-up that was really invented to be a source of quick, safe food

for people at a time when it was difficult to find that into something where people want to hang out. And that’s when we started introducing DJs and a little bit more of the party brunch atmosphere. And we became known for our signature Bloody Mary served with an insane amount of bacon and incredible espresso martinis and mimosa’s and, you know, made it less of a grab and go experience and more of a sit down, have fun, get back to almost the roots of what I was explaining about bodegas being really a community spot where you go and hang out with individuals or

bumped into friends that you haven’t seen. And we really were able to kind of infuse the concept with that at that time. It also helped that we were operating out of Uptown Social, which was already just kind of this known experience in Charleston for just a great atmosphere and a great vibe and great drinks. And there’s an insane amount of TVs. you know, operating Saturdays and Sundays, football is king here in the South. So being able to come and eat a bacon, egg and cheese, have a Bloody Mary and watch your favorite game amongst friends in a safe environment at the end of

2020 really carried us through into the decision to open up a brick and mortar location in 2022.

Anthony Codispoti (21:19)
Okay, so

at this point you were operating operating out of an existing restaurant location.

Alec Gropman (21:24)
Correct, yeah, so we had utilized that space, Uptown Social, which was really only open from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., and essentially created it into a bodega Uptown Social hybrid for a certain amount of time.

Anthony Codispoti (21:38)
But now does it operate in its own standalone locations? Okay.

Alec Gropman (21:41)
It does. Yeah.

So in 2022, we found the location 23 Anne Street. It’s a very long old train depot. So it’s a very long, slender building. And the kitchen is right smack in the middle of it. And we were looking at it and we were like, we don’t

really know what to do. We have one gigantic space and we have one slightly smaller space. And that’s when, you know, the team said, well, bodega has been operating out of Uptown Social for six to eight months. We really think this has legs. Let’s take the smaller concept, turn that into a proper brick and mortar bodega dedicated to solely bodega items. And then we turn to the other half of the building into share house, which is our slightly more kind of like Jersey Shore boardwalk inspired beach bar.

Anthony Codispoti (22:25)
Say more about that.

Alec Gropman (22:27)
about Sharehouse specifically? Yeah, Sharehouse is really fun. have these, again, like I mentioned, it’s kind of a longer, narrow building. So we put these beautiful garage doors along the entire facade so that on these beautiful Charleston days, which tends to be more beautiful than not here in South Carolina. I don’t know exactly where you’re recording from. not trying to cast stones.

Anthony Codispoti (22:29)
Yeah, yeah, I didn’t hit on that one yet.

Columbus, Ohio, and it’s cold

in January 2026. Yeah.

Alec Gropman (22:54)
Yeah, I bet. ⁓

But yeah, it was 70 and sunny in Charleston yesterday. Again, not to insult the injury, but we roll those garage doors up and it just really elongates the space and it feels light and bright and airy. And we’re serving kind of the Boardwalk classics that I remember growing up with, soft serve ice cream, gigantic pretzels, chicken fingers, french fries. ⁓ And again, tends to be with this company wherever we are located. We are going to have a lot of

and there’s going to be a lot of sports.

Anthony Codispoti (23:26)
Nice. And then today you’re sporting a hat with a giant B-T-W on the front of it. By the way.

Alec Gropman (23:34)
yeah. So

yeah, by the way, this is our most recent concept. It is…

The best way that I can explain it, or at least when I walk into the location, it feels like 1950s New York. It feels very leather bankette, almost like a little, like maybe it would be like the set of like, you know, like a mob movie. You know, it feels like very dark woods, very, it’s just a very sexy vibe. You know, I think that’s the only way that I can really harness the energy that is by the way you walk in and immediately you’re like, whoa, like this is a cool spot. And then you sit down and you start to realize that

It’s not just the ambiance. have incredible cocktails and incredible food program. It was a lot of fun for me being a CIA grad with fine dining background to really be able to kind of shake off some of the rust and, you know, get back to my roots in fine dining, you know, after, you know, about seven years with this company of producing, you know, high volume bar food. And it’s delicious high volume bar food, but it’s definitely not the caviar and truffles that we’re serving it, by the way. So it was really fun to kind of just have some new

new ingredients in my toolbox to kind of flesh out and cook. But yeah, by the way, it’s a lot of fun.

Anthony Codispoti (24:48)
Was there any hesitation about opening a location like this at a time when the economy is kind of a little uncertain?

Alec Gropman (24:57)
Yes, and I mean that all came into play. know, as we sit in our meetings, my group, as I mentioned, is 30 years old and, you know, makes partners after a year like myself and occasion. So there’s a lot of us, you know, when we’ve honed in on a new concept and we’re all trying to decide what it should be, that’s a table with 18 individuals at it.

which can often be difficult. There was a moment in time where, by the way, it was almost a Mexican restaurant. There was a moment in time where we were even discussing it just being a basic kind of like wine shop with cheese and charcuterie to keep costs low. We bounced every idea off of each other for the space to decide what we really wanted to do with it. ⁓ And all of that said, the previous location was an amazing. ⁓

bar called the warehouse, which I used to frequent all the time. ⁓ And it was really a local spot. You know, it’s just off of King Street, the major kind of like thoroughfare here in Charleston. And we knew that we didn’t want to lose that. We knew that we wanted to do something a little more buttoned up and a little out of our portfolio. But we wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose the locals on it and lose the people who loved warehouse such as myself. ⁓ So we kind of wanted to hit this middle of the road where, you know, maybe

you don’t go out to a restaurant every day or even every week and you’re looking for your special occasion dinner for the month. By the way, can be approachable enough for that individual and feel special enough for that individual that they’re not wasting their one night out a month. But we also wanted it to be…

friendly enough and cost benefit enough where if you are an individual in your mid to late 20s, early 30s who’s going out for a drink two or three nights a week or even going out to dinner four or five nights a week, it’s a spot that you can come and know that you’re not going to completely blow the bank and blow the budget for the week, but you still have the opportunities to get a steak fritzer, have a little caviar on your food and have it feel celebratory in that way too.

Anthony Codispoti (26:58)
What was one of the items that you had a lot of fun creating?

Alec Gropman (27:02)
man, I the entire menu, it was just so much fun to me. ⁓ It really like, you know, like I said, after years and years of not being able to flex certain culinary muscles of just having truffles around, ⁓ you know, the entire menu creation process was just so much fun. ⁓ But really one of the dishes that stands out to me is our ⁓ airline chicken breast, which…

I go out to a restaurant and even for me personally, when I see chicken breast on the menu, it’s like, I don’t know if I’m going to order that. That’s kind ⁓ of something I can cook at home. But our airline chicken breast, yeah, exactly. It can be a little, it feels risky. Go for something that seems less safe. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (27:37)
And a lot of times it’s dry when you get it at a restaurant, it’s overcooked.

Alec Gropman (27:49)
Yeah, the airline chicken breast, has a more solid cream with bacon lardons, comfied leeks, ⁓ roasted mushrooms and with potatoes. And it sounds mundane, but it’s just the technique that goes into it. It just reads and eats like the most picture perfect chicken dish you could ever ask for. It’s homey.

It is savory. It’s everything that you want, especially when it does occasionally get a little cold here in Charleston. It just fits the atmosphere, by the way. You you’re sitting in your sexy leather banquet, diving into like some steak frites and like a beautifully prepared chicken dish with crispy skin. just, it just hits all the right notes.

Anthony Codispoti (28:24)
It’s called airline chicken. What? Why airline?

Alec Gropman (28:27)
So that’s, and it’s funny that you mentioned that. It comes from an old, old, old, old ⁓ airline ⁓ where they used to serve this form of chicken on planes because once upon a time when people used to go on planes, they used to wear suit jackets and it was a fancy occasion. ⁓ But it’s just slang for kitchen that kind of like stuck. But really it’s just the chicken breast with the skin on with one of the bones attached. So it’s just a bonnet and chicken breast.

Anthony Codispoti (28:55)
interesting. And what’s special about the technique? You said the technique that you use allows all these flavors to come out.

Alec Gropman (29:00)
Yeah.

So pretty much we take the chicken, apply it in a cold pan, skin side down, and then we put a weight on top of it and cook it in the oven. And between the cold pan and the weight on top of the chicken, it allows for all of the fat to render out between the skin and the breast, which is not only going to create a perfectly moist, delicious chicken breast, but allows for that chicken skin on the outside to get like…

crispier than you’ve ever had. Like we’ll take KFC and give them a run for their money. ⁓ But so it just like, it’s one of those humble dishes that you would just kind of go in and not expect it to be your favorite bite of the entire meal. And you’re walking away and you’re like, I can’t believe the chicken was the best thing on menu.

Anthony Codispoti (29:44)
That’s wild to me. Like how do people figure this stuff out? Cold pan, put a weight on it, then put it in the oven. Like, I don’t know, it’s sort of like you’re pulling things out of the air, but ⁓ I haven’t studied the chemistry or the science behind food. So maybe this is like old hat to you.

Alec Gropman (29:53)
Yeah.

I can promise you it’s worth it. Give it a try at home.

Anthony Codispoti (30:03)
Okay. So you earned a, you and the restaurant, you earned a 2024 Star Chefs Charleston Savannah Rising Stars Award. Tell us more about that, significance of it.

Alec Gropman (30:14)
Yeah, it was.

It was very cool. It was significant for me, especially with my name attached to it. But it was very cool to see Bodega, what was once upon a time, this little kind of like shoot the moon. Hey, we need to put together some ideas. Maybe we can sell bacon, egg, and cheeses to now being two locations supporting staffs at both ⁓ to just see it turn into something that is so important to people ⁓ enough so that it can be accoladed.

for the concept itself ⁓ was just really fulfilling for me. ⁓ As I’ve mentioned before, Bodega and Bodega culture is super important to me. ⁓ It’s where I had my first date with my wife.

⁓ It is where I hung out with all my buddies. I used to walk to my elementary, middle, and high school, and I would pass this one same bodega every single day. So I was there five days a week getting a bacon, and cheese. So to see a concept and a culture that is so important to me specifically now reach not just the Charleston area, but be so significant that it can get an accolade on a national scale ⁓ was just really, really cool.

Anthony Codispoti (31:27)
And is that award given for the taste and the quality of the food, the way you’re running the operation? Like, what are they sort of evaluating?

Alec Gropman (31:36)
Yeah.

So ⁓ they have a bunch of different awards. Some are bartending, some are specifically for food. ⁓ We won the concept award. So that is all encompassing. So it’s the food, it’s the drinks, it’s the atmosphere, it’s the management style, it’s the culture, it’s the everything. ⁓ Which again, significant to me because a lot of the business practices that we’ve put in place at Bodega are not

intentionally breaking down certain barriers and certain walls that you see in the industry at large. But for example, we don’t have a front of house and we don’t have a back of house at Bodega. Everyone comes on and is trained as a team assistant. You learn how to run food, you learn how to wash dishes, you learn how to run coffees, handle guests and interactions. It kind of gives you a good blanket on understanding the entire concept as a whole. And then we have a transparent pay hire

So that for every item that you learn you get an additional dollar on your hourly wage Everyone is in the same tip pool including the back of house ⁓ And it just kind of creates this one team one dream atmosphere where you know certain restaurants tend to clash a little bit between front house and back of house or you even back of house and back of house and What we’ve been able to do here is create just one one family one goal ⁓ one operation

It makes scheduling a breeze. And it also makes coverage a breeze. know, when so-and-so has a life crisis and they need someone to cover their coffee shift, you’re not just looking at the other employees who know how to make coffees. You can reach out to the entire staff because the person who was on Dishbit yesterday was on coffees the day before that and was making sandwiches the day before that. ⁓ And yeah, you know, so I think the concept itself is really special. ⁓

like to tell people that it should feel like Saturday morning cartoons, not just because we literally have my favorite childhood cartoons on the TV in our Mount Pleasant location, but because it’s colorful and bright and there’s graffiti on the walls and when you walk in all of your responsibilities of the Monday through Friday grind should just sort of melt away and you should just be able to like have a bowl of cereal and enjoy yourself and have no responsibilities.

Anthony Codispoti (33:54)
So for people who have never worked in the restaurant environment, explain what that typical friction can be like between back and front of house.

Alec Gropman (34:03)
Yeah, and I mean, I like to think that all of our other restaurants also have incredible cultures because they really, really do. This is a company that has always taken culture seriously. ⁓ It speaks in our turnover rate. Most people that find this group never leave. And that goes from dishwashers all the way up to people like myself who are part owners.

But it’s kind of a dichotomy as old as time. You know, the friction between a server and a cook and a server, you know, wants their food faster and a cook wants more time or a server makes a small mistake and a cook blames the front of house. And, you know, there’s so many opportunities for people who work in the front of house to blame the back of house. You know, a server messes up a ticket and this kitchen does exactly what they were supposed to and sends out the right food. But the server, as a knee jerk reaction, says, I’m so sorry.

kitchen must have messed it up because I can’t really blame them. I’ve been in their shoes as a server. Why blame yourself and affect your own tip out when you can blame the guys behind the door who they’re never going to meet anyways and vice versa. The kitchen has so many opportunities to blame the front of house for the pacing of the restaurant or ridiculous requests on tickets. And it’s just created this friction over time that most restaurants really have to work to avoid. And I think it’s difficult.

to avoid the friction. But restaurants do it and you find ways to mitigate it. And I think a lot of that comes from just an understanding of other people’s work and an empathy for the people and what others job descriptions require. And that’s why at this bodega location, having people trained on both sides of the fence, all of that animosity just disappears because when a server has a really difficult guest, they understand.

you know, they’ve been in their shoes, they’ve been at the counter or at the table taking that order from a difficult guest who wants it a very specific way. And now when that individual comes into the kitchen and says, please make sure that there’s no color on this person’s eggs, they want their scrambled eggs, but they don’t want any brown in some kitchens, the cook might be like, I’m going to cook the eggs how I always cook the eggs. And I don’t really care because that’s my job. But now the cook who was in that same exact shoot, you know, that same exact experience yesterday is going to say,

yes of course I got you I want to make sure that your guest has the best experience so that you can have the best experience so that we as a team can get the best tip out because not only is that tip affecting that server but it’s also going to affect that line cook’s pocket.

Anthony Codispoti (36:38)
So on paper, this approach sounds simple yet brilliant. In practicality, I wonder, is it a lot harder for your team to get up to speed? Because it’s one thing if you’re getting trained in how to be a server, you’re getting trained in how to be a cook here. But when you have to learn every individual thing, it takes longer to get to some level of competency or mastery.

Alec Gropman (37:06)
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that’s the kind of risk reward of the model. ⁓

you know, having individuals that need more training and more time is more expensive. mean, training costs the business money, you know, having someone having two people on payroll doing the same job so that one can be cross training the other. It’s it’s dollars and cents, but it adds up over time, especially when you’re running your business with this model start to finish. But at the end of the day, what I have come to learn is that it’s going to reduce your turnover. ⁓ And the more people that you can

A, the better they’re going to be at their jobs, the more consistency your guests are going to have, but more than anything.

You’re just not training new faces every other day, which is also going to save you money. You know, so I would rather put that time and effort into training the same individual that I trust to make sandwiches, because I’ll also eventually trust them to make coffees, then bring some entirely new face in and just try and get them to learn coffees. ⁓ With that said, it also just creates just a… like, I’m struggling for the best way to kind of…

get it across, but it’s almost this fabric between all of the employees where really that empathy and the understanding of what’s going on allows the cross training to also be stronger. You know, when you understand what the kitchen is doing and the issues that they have, it makes you a better server and it makes you better at your front of house job than having no foundational knowledge of how the kitchen operates. And that can only come with the cross training that you achieve by letting your employees learn everything that they

Thank

Anthony Codispoti (38:49)
Yeah,

like you’re playing a long game, which creates a much more cohesive team. Where did the idea for this structure come about?

Alec Gropman (38:52)
Exactly.

So a lot of it came from my own personal experience, being a traditional back of house employee coming up in kitchens, only working in kitchens, and then being given the opportunity where they said, hey, you you’re really good at the whole bodega thing. We want you to run the entire store. And I said, okay, well, I’m to have to learn how to front of house. I’m going to have to, you know, really get a mastery of touching tables and bartending and floor managing and everything that goes into running the business start to finish. And what I realized very quickly was

that learning how to floor manage and learning how to serve and bartend made me better at my back of house duties as well. And that is what really inspired me to create this process for everyone. ⁓ Step one and then step two, it really came down to me being a back of house guy at heart and seeing the disparity in pay between the front and the back, you know, really being a line cook forever at a base hourly rate. ⁓ Even when I was hired as a sous chef, I was making

$35,000 an hour, you know, annual, but I was salaried and I was working 100 plus hours a week and doing the math, you know, I was making a little bit below minimum wage and I’m seeing, you know, 20 to 25 year old, you know, servers and bartenders walk away with my week’s paycheck from one really good tip out or one really good day. And that disparity creates, again, some of that animosity that I spoke on before, you know, where

It’s difficult to kind of bridge that gap when you know that the servers are making X amount and the cooks are making Y amount and having everyone in the same tip pool and kind of leveling the playing field ⁓ means that there’s no more awkwardness about what people make. even beyond front of house and back of house, you know, there’s plenty of kitchens where you come in and you get hired at an hourly rate based off of your experience or how long you’ve been with the group or how well you can kind of talk the talk, you know, and you run into a situation where one cooks making X amount.

and another cook is making why. And now that first cook comes to the boss and says, why am I not making the same amount that this person’s making? I do the same job. I’ve been here longer. And it just creates this fail of mistrust from employee to employer that they don’t have any structure in. They’re just kind of paying people however they feel to retain them or make them happy at that moment.

And with this structure that we’ve created at Bodega, ⁓ everyone’s hired at the same rate. And the only way to make more money is to learn more stations. like I said, every single time you learn one of our new departments, you get an additional dollar onto your hourly rate. ⁓ And it just creates this very transparent nature where you know exactly what everyone in the store is making regardless of.

who they are because it all comes down to what they know. And it creates this environment where I have younger high school kids on my staff who are making $12 an hour, $14 an hour plus tips because they’re comfortable. They learned how to do three or four departments and some of the other ones are a little more high value and a little scarier. They’re not as comfortable taking orders and they’d much rather just be running food or washing dishes. And that’s fine. That’s their comfort level. And then you also have slightly more seasoned and veteran

people who come in who are like, I want to learn everything. You know, like I will cross train until you tell me there’s no more cross training to do.

Anthony Codispoti (42:18)
So how many different service departments

are there?

Alec Gropman (42:21)
So we break each kind of, you know, like back of house has three, you you learn the deli station and then you learn our protein station and then you learn our egg station. and then we also have an expo responsibility, a prep responsibility. So all in all, there is pretty much 10 different rungs you can kind of climb up to get to the point where, then once you’ve learned all of them, you’re a key holder and we consider you a manager, you get your key. And now I have a manager that doesn’t just know how to do their one department, the only way to become a manager.

with this group is to know everything and I can trust you to be scheduled in any place that I need you.

Anthony Codispoti (42:59)
So Alec, in my experience, ⁓ some of our greatest lessons in life come from overcoming big challenges. I would like to take a moment and explore a big challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, how you got through it, and understand what you learned going through the other side of it.

Alec Gropman (43:16)
Yeah, I mean, this is a challenging industry. ⁓ I think if you met any chef, regardless of their age, and asked them the same question, anyone who says, ⁓ it’s all been peaches and everything’s easy and rainbows, ⁓ I think they’re probably lying. It’s a grueling industry. ⁓

The first thing that comes to mind for me to be completely transparent and a little vulnerable with you, I was 25 at the time. We were opening up our first brick and mortar bodega alongside share house, the locations at 23 Anne Street.

graduated culinary school a years back, know, felt like the world was my oyster. I was an executive chef and restaurant owner far before I ever thought I would be. And it kind of felt like I could do anything. And I made two menus that felt like anything. It was a lot of work. Everything was house made. You know, there was a laundry list of prep tasks, a laundry list of menu items. It was overcomplicated. And I said, yeah, oh yeah, I got it. You know, and my business partners say, oh, how like

it wouldn’t be so cool if we can do this. And I was like, I can do that. And then you say that 20 times, and all of a sudden you’ve backed yourself into a corner where really the only solution is burnout. ⁓ I was at a point where I was working.

100 plus hour weeks consistently, week over week over week ⁓ until it finally broke me. and I was also getting married. ⁓ I had gotten married two months after the restaurant opened. So I was also in the final lap of planning a marriage. ⁓

and realized very quickly that I wanted to take a week off surrounding my wedding and wouldn’t be able to at the rate I was going because there’s no way to successfully run a business with 100 hours of yourself and then strip it away to zero hours of yourself. ⁓

And I had to pull all of my business partners together and have a very open and honest conversation about the fact that I promised too much. I can’t keep doing this. It’s killing me. We’re not serving the quality. We’re not serving the consistency. We can’t hold on to employees because we’re throwing too much at them too quickly. ⁓ And rather than, I think, the voice in the back of my head saying, you’re going to lose your job. You’re going to lose your partnership. ⁓ People are going to look at you differently.

⁓ my partners were receptive and they said, yeah, we know, we can tell, we’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. We see what you’re going through. Frankly, if you hadn’t come to us, we were gonna come to you and say, we need to make some changes because what you’re doing isn’t healthy to your body, to your mind, but more than anything, it’s not good business practice. We’re not gonna get the return on this that we want and we need to find a way to maximize our returns and maximize your longevity.

Anthony Codispoti (46:10)
So what eventually led you to actually have that conversation? My guess is that there was this buildup, right? It’s like, this is wearing on me more and more and more. But was there like a trigger moment where it’s like, OK, this is finally too much, a straw that broke the camel’s back?

Alec Gropman (46:26)
Yeah, absolutely. know, I mean, there’s so much adrenaline around opening up a restaurant. ⁓ And really, I would imagine any business. But, you know, speaking on my own experience, it’s only been restaurants and I’ve opened up six concepts now. Every time you open up one, it’s gas in the tank. You know, you were ready to go. You were ready to achieve. You’re ready to be there day in, day out. Talk to every cook. Talk to every dishwasher. Talk to every server. Talk to every guest you want. You want to experience it all because it’s been something you’ve been dreaming about and thinking about for

so long and it’s finally there and you have that adrenaline, you have that gas. But what I realized is you can deplete that tank very quickly when you were literally there from sun down, sun up to sun down and some every single day. And, you know, I like to think that I’m a good manager and I’m a good leader who likes to get into the kitchen and be there with my cooks in the trenches. And I would do that. And I would also do the admin and I was also doing the bill pay and payroll and the scheduling and all the things on top of it.

Trying to do it all and I felt myself getting shorter and shorter and shorter with My cooks, know, so and so is two minutes late And now it’s me writing them up and giving them an extremely stern talking to you rather than hey Why were you two minutes late? Is everything okay? ⁓ You know, how can we make sure this doesn’t happen in the future? so I felt myself becoming a person that I don’t recognize and a leader that I certainly don’t recognize and then that compounded with some failures in my

department and I’ll never forget we opened up around Super Bowl Sunday and it was a big football day and the restaurant filled up like that and all of a sudden we had 40 tickets on the board and I had a cook call out so I’m trying to expedite, I’m trying to run the kitchen, I’m trying to also cook some of the food, I’m yelling at other employees because they’re not moving fast enough and it just turned into this spiral where I looked at one of my business partners and I was like it’s gonna take us forever to get out of this hole you know there’s gonna be guests outside that ordered their food.

and aren’t gonna see it for an hour and 15 minutes. ⁓ And the weight of disappointing myself personally in the way that I was representing myself and my company, as well as the weight of also failing my job, that was the first time that it ever really felt like…

I wasn’t achieving my goals. I could just work through the pain as long as what I was putting forward was still correct. And that was the first time in my career where I really felt like I was failing myself, but I was also failing all of my business partners, all of my employees, as well as the people that I was serving. And it was that moment where I cleaned up the kitchen and I immediately sent out a mass email to all my business partners and was like, we need to get on a call first thing tomorrow morning because we can’t do this again.

Anthony Codispoti (49:13)
So after you have that meeting with your partners, which you’re understandably nervous to go into, right? Like not sure how they’re going to react. And sounds like their reaction could not have been any better or more supportive, right? They saw it, they recognized it. They were probably in the process of coming to you about it. ⁓ What changes did you make going forward to alleviate that situation, to correct

Alec Gropman (49:38)
So, I mean, yes, of course they were absolutely…

exactly what I needed, you both in the sense of mentors who have been where I was, but also family who just wasn’t there to say I told you so or wasn’t there to blame me. ⁓ But also, frankly, I’m the back of house guy. You know, I am the culinary school grad. Most of the other people in my company come from, you know, backgrounds in marketing or business management or just a more front of house oriented mindset. So really the best thing that they did for me in that moment

was rather than take the wheel away from me and say, all right, we’re going to tell you what we want on the menu. We’re going to tell you what you’re going to do. We’re going to tell you how to fix this. They still let me control. They still said, hey, you haven’t lost our faith. You haven’t lost our trust. We believe in you to tell us what is right for this space. Take the lessons that you’ve learned from the last however long since we’ve been trying to do this and fix it and tell us what you need from us. So they allowed me

rewrite the menus, they allowed me to rewrite the schedules, they allowed me to reduce the size of the menus in half, they allowed me to buy new kitchen equipment that I thought would better utilize the space, and they trusted me to right the ship even though I had just taken us into an iceberg. ⁓ And I think that is really the reason that I was able to not only steer us in the right direction, but also feel confidence coming out of it that

It wasn’t my mistake and someone else fixed it for me and now I have to play by their playbook. It was my mistake. I learned from it and then created a new playbook that allowed us to thrive underneath my leadership still with my confidence.

Anthony Codispoti (51:24)
So powerful.

How long after you had that meeting did you start to notice the effects of the changes that you were putting in place?

Alec Gropman (51:35)
Instantly, absolutely instantly. We closed the restaurant for two days so that we could recalibrate, retrain, talk to the employees, ⁓ give me a day off to rest. ⁓ And the next day back into work, my employees saw a new version of myself. ⁓ My business partner saw a new version of our restaurant. ⁓ And it was instantaneous.

Anthony Codispoti (51:57)
days. You took two days to reconfigure everything. New menu, new approach. Wow, fascinating. So

Alec Gropman (52:07)
Yeah,

I mean, like I said, it was far from just me. It takes a village. know, we had 12 business partners locally at the time. And, you know, this was pulling business partners from our other locations. You the business partners from Uptown Social who were supposed to be at work that day got coverage and came over and helped us. And, you know, we reorganized, we printed new menus. You know, it was it was a full family effort to make it happen. So was certainly not just myself.

Anthony Codispoti (52:34)
But you really stepped into a leadership role at that point. I mean, you had been, clearly, since you had opened the concept and the idea had largely been born of your experiences. But wow, you you shepherded this ⁓ into a pivot that was greatly needed. And then ⁓ right before you and I started recording, you told me that one of the great things that you got to do this past weekend was take a day off.

Alec Gropman (52:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, big time.

Anthony Codispoti (53:02)
for a brunch establishment that does the majority of its business on the weekends, that’s saying something. So clearly these changes have had a lasting impact.

Alec Gropman (53:03)
Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I’ve learned a lot over, you know, again, that was more or less two years into my career, three years into my career with this company. And, you know, now at year eight with an additional four concepts opened behind it. So I like to think that I’m a little bit wiser than I once was, know my limits a little bit more. But really a lot of that comes from just, you know, an expectation of setting personal boundaries and realizing that the people around you, the people above you, the people below you,

are going to respect you more when you actually set those boundaries and you can actually create systems that allow for you to take those days off. You know, if it wasn’t for my longtime friend and fellow CIA grad Marissa Lee, who’s currently running the floor at Bodega for me, I would never be able to take those Sundays off. And if it wasn’t for the rest of the team underneath her that has gone through our systems and learned and cross-trained and become so prolific, prolific?

proficient, prolific at all of the responsibilities here. ⁓ We’ll go with a little bit of both. But ⁓ yeah, know, having employees that can run the full operation gives me the confidence to be able to step away on our busiest day of the week and know that even if a dishwasher calls out or a coffee barista person calls out for the day, there’s other people who will be able to jump in and will help and do it willingly.

Anthony Codispoti (54:11)
prolific.

or proficient maybe. All right.

⁓ What’s your superpower, Alec?

Alec Gropman (54:43)
Ooh, my superpower. ⁓ Really, I would love to fly, but sadly, that’s not my superpower. ⁓ My current superpower, I would say, is really ⁓ organization ⁓ and creating systems that allow…

not only myself to be my best, but also allow the people around me to get the most out of themselves. I’ve met so many incredible individuals who are driven and passionate and make the best food you have ever tasted, but do not know how to answer an email or create a timeline for themselves and stick to a calendar. And really I found that the best thing I can do for those people around me is to be the person who’s sending out the reminder email or be the person that is helping us all work towards

the common goal and stay on the same page. So I would like to say that my system making habits are really my superpower at this point in my

Anthony Codispoti (55:38)
What is on the future horizon for Uptown Hospitality Group? What’s coming?

Alec Gropman (55:45)
⁓ So we did just open up three concepts in 14 months, ⁓ which was a lot, know, I mean took a lot out of this team. ⁓

but really where I’d like to say we are right now is in the process of just kind of enjoying where we are. You know, it’s been five years or I guess six years since COVID now. And it’s insane to think what we’ve accomplished in the time since. And I like to think that where we are right now is just kind of reaping the benefits of all the hard work that we put in since that time.

and being able to step away and take a day off and just enjoy the beautiful concepts that we’ve created and be able to interact with all the people who love going to our spaces.

Anthony Codispoti (56:30)
I like it.

I like I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. First of all, if you want to get in touch with the brand, find out more about them, learn how to contact Alec, you can go to their website at eat, drink bodega.com eat, drink b o d e g a.com eat, drink bodega.com and we’ll have that link in the show notes. Also, as a reminder, if you want to get more restaurant employees access to therapists, doctors,

and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases your company’s net profits, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. And if you’re enjoying the show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover us. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. So last question for you, Alec, a year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrated?

Alec Gropman (57:28)
A year from now, I will be…

Almost 32. So I would definitely love to celebrate a 32nd birthday in style. But really I would love to just continue to celebrate my employees who have continued to grow. You know, we have so many people in this group that started as dishwashers and are now currently sous chefs and head chefs. And I would love to continue celebrating the, just the entire culture and family that we’ve created here with UpTap Hospitality Group. We have our holiday party in a few short weeks and each owner and

operator gets up and kind of hands out some accolades and you know just like some pivotal mentions to employees who maybe don’t get the spotlight nearly as much as they should and don’t get to do super cool podcasts like myself. ⁓ So yeah and I look forward to that every year just being able to kind of shine a light on the individuals who make this entire thing possible and give me the opportunity to take the occasional Sunday off.

Anthony Codispoti (58:29)
But Alec Grotman from Uptown Hospitality Group, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.

Alec Gropman (58:38)
Yeah, thank you.