Sydney Grims’ Hospitality Journey: From Billionaire Ron Perelman’s New York Estate to Family Restaurant Empire

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
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 Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Sydney Grims. She’s the Director of Business Development at Fearless Restaurants, an expanding collection of independently curated restaurants led by herself and her father, Marty Grims.

Sydney Grims (00:26)
Okay. you

Anthony Codispoti (00:26)
They focus on hospitality, sustainability, and award-winning food, offering creative menus across multiple locations. Their mission is to use fresh, high-quality ingredients that delight diners and create memorable experiences with the assistance

of their unique decor. Sydney became the first female member of her family to carry on its legacy, joining the company in 2017. She initiated the Fearless Femmes program to empower women in hospitality

Sydney Grims (00:50)
.

Anthony Codispoti (00:56)
and was featured in the Philadelphia Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Honorees. Her background spans various roles in restaurant management, where she built a strong foundation in business development. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

Sydney Grims (01:18)
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Anthony Codispoti (01:21)
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Sydney Grims (01:23)
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Anthony Codispoti (01:45)
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All right, back to our guest today, partner at Fearless Restaurant, Sydney Grimes. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Sydney Grims (01:57)
Thank you so much.

Anthony Codispoti (01:59)
Okay, so Sydney, you got your start in

hospitality, as I understand it, as a management intern at the Four Seasons. Was there ever a thought to work in the family business right from the start?

Sydney Grims (02:11)
So I actually started back in, I think around 2002, 2003 in middle school checking coats at my dad’s restaurant. So that was my first ever job. I was 12 years old. And so I certainly started with working with my family, but it was always highly encouraged to go outside of the family sphere and to learn from other people. And I just known that I had always wanted to go to Cornell and the hotel school there. I just felt like learning about.

Anthony Codispoti (02:19)
Okay.

Sydney Grims (02:39)
something that I was really passionate about would be really fun. So I was never gonna be the A plus student in the room or have the 1600 SAT score. So what was really unique about Cornell is that they emphasize work experience. And so that’s what took me to four seasons.

Anthony Codispoti (02:56)
Okay. And ⁓ pick from some of those. And I hear what you’re saying, because I’ve talked to a lot of guests who are in family businesses, and almost everybody has gone out to work somewhere else first. a lot of lessons from those different work experiences back into the family business a little bit later in life. As you think about all those stops that you had before kind of coming back, you know, in between your coat checking days and junior high, what was the most formidable stop for you?

Sydney Grims (03:09)
Critical, yep.

Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (03:26)
And can you think of a specific story that taught you a really powerful lesson?

Sydney Grims (03:30)
Absolutely. think working for Hillstone Restaurant Group, also known as Houston’s, it’s kind of like the Goldman Sachs of restaurant training programs. And ⁓ I made a very conscious decision after leaving Cornell to go and work for Hillstone because I knew that, ⁓ one, I would probably not have the ⁓ enthusiasm for

ever to be physically working in restaurants on a daily basis. Obviously, my dad has always said it’s a young man’s game. It takes a lot of energy. It’s a lot of time. You don’t get to spend a lot of time with your family. And I witnessed that firsthand. So he really encouraged me to get into operations as soon as I graduated. And for me, working with with Hillstone was the single most important part of my career because it set a really strong foundation understanding corporate dynamics, which my family’s company did not have.

So I would say that was critical to business development and what that means for our company.

Anthony Codispoti (04:26)
And was that because you were able to bring back some more formalized corporate structure ideas?

Sydney Grims (04:32)
Absolutely. I think truthfully, I think that the CEO of the company or COO ⁓ was not a very big fan of mine, even though I was like one of the top trainees at the time I was promoted, the fastest promoted AGM in Hillstone history and took over one of their largest locations, which is the Hillstone in Manhattan. But ⁓ really the…

I think that they struggled with the fact that I was coming from a family business because they knew that at the end of the day, I probably would go back to Philadelphia. And I think that for me, I was always just trying to squirrel away facts and understand things as quickly as I could because I really wanted to work for myself. I never saw myself working for other people long term. I think I’m a little bit more of like a go against the grain type. I’m not great in a corporate setting.

Anthony Codispoti (05:26)
So I want to try to connect the dots here on who Sydney Grimes is, because I heard you say, went to Cornell, but then I heard you say I wasn’t the best student, know, not 1600 on the SAT. ⁓ but then I, and so I’m like, okay. But, but then I also hear you say that you were the fastest promoted, ⁓ at Houston’s. so underachiever, overachiever, I’m leaning hard towards overachiever here. What am I misunderstanding?

Sydney Grims (05:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I, you know, I went to a pretty rigorous high school that cut the bottom 10 % of the class every year. So it was, they asked them not to return. So my high school was pretty, like if I was a B plus student and going to Cornell, you can imagine the level of kids that were far smarter than me. I did well academically and I had a 4.0 at Cornell, but

Anthony Codispoti (05:59)
Cut them and did what with them?

Wow, okay.

Sydney Grims (06:20)
Really for me, was, ⁓ I think a lot of the time I felt very stupid growing up because I was just surrounded by incredibly, incredibly smart kids ⁓ in a fairly vigorous ⁓ academic environment and had to really overcome some academic challenges, ⁓ you know, feeling very inferior at a young age academically.

Anthony Codispoti (06:42)
Interesting. ⁓ But as I’m hearing sort of, you know, what came next Cornell, and you graduated with a 4.0, clearly you’re not an unbright person. But being around, you know, let’s say you’re in the top 1%. But, ⁓ you know, there’s the the top fraction of that percent is, you know, those are the people that are around you and above you. And so you’re comparing yourselves to that, and feeling inferior in light of that.

Sydney Grims (07:12)
Yeah, constantly. I think that truthfully, I think that what I loved about the hotel school was it was all about like, practical learning. I’m not learning about chemistry or like organic chemistry or engineering. Like I probably would fail. Everything that I was learning was very much like A plus B equals C. And you can certainly say that for chemistry, but it was like how we were being taught things. I think I was also just so interested in what I was learning because I was learning about restaurants. I was learning about real estate and seeing that

The things that I was learning was so applicable to life after college. That’s what I loved. And so I think I really thrived in that kind of environment where I really saw like actionable. I think I struggled a lot of time in high school because I was like, why am I learning this? Like, I’m never going to use this again versus when I went to college and I was like, ⁓ yeah, like learning about facilities and maintenance and how to like properly work with a work with a air handler. Like that was critical.

Anthony Codispoti (07:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I’m dealing with that with my own kids right now. They’re nine and 11 and my nine year olds like, why do I have to learn about igneous rocks? And I struggle to come up with a good answer because I went through all of that. And I don’t really, you know, here it is, I’m 51 years old, I don’t really, you know, have a need to identify igneous versus sedimentary rocks out in the real world. The only answer I can come up with is because that’s what your teacher asked you to do. And you need good grades to get to the next level.

Sydney Grims (08:17)
Yeah.

you

You know, there are those, no, there’s, it’s funny because I always remember like all the names of clouds that I learned in literally kindergarten. And I can still go outside today and tell you what a cumulonimbus versus a stratus cloud. But it’s like, does it really freaking matter? No. But, I mean, I think being well-rounded is super important. And, ⁓ you know, there’s parts of me that I really loved my education, but my aunt was trying to explain to me the importance of having a

Anthony Codispoti (08:39)
I know somebody’s, go ahead.

Sydney Grims (09:08)
liberal arts degree because it makes you think more is what she told me.

Anthony Codispoti (09:11)
Okay. So

thinking back to your time in high school where you had to deal with some of these feelings of inferiority, how were you dealing with that at the time?

Sydney Grims (09:20)
Oh my gosh. Well, it was the early 2000s, so we didn’t really talk about our feelings and get like help like people are now. I would say that truthfully, I was also bullied a lot when I was a freshman in high school. And so I really struggled. And I think that probably impacted me academically as well. It was a very challenging, really challenging time, like 14 to 18.

But I would say that ⁓ what did I do at the time? I really surrounded myself with a very tight-knit group of friends. had four friends, three girls and a guy, and they really, I surrounded myself with people who had really similar family values. And I would say we, I still do the same thing to this day, especially when it comes to hiring managers even, ⁓ making sure that people really have a very similar value system to me, because I think that that is,

Anthony Codispoti (10:14)
Hmm.

Sydney Grims (10:20)
certainly impacted me very early on in life.

Anthony Codispoti (10:23)
How would you describe your values?

Sydney Grims (10:26)
⁓ I would say that integrity is something that I don’t think can be taught. I think you either have it or you don’t. ⁓ I think ⁓ really like true grit and hard work is something that ⁓ again, I think it’s either like you have it or you don’t. I think that that is taught by your parents or people that are raising you.

And I think I saw two parents, one of which, you know, worked six days a week, owned his own business, worked nights, worked weekends. I went to school with him. I mean, school, I went to work with him on the weekends because we didn’t have childcare on the weekends. My mom worked also in retail for 25 years for Macy’s. So I think I saw two individuals who grew up, you know, very blue collar, mid middle class, like not even upper middle class, like middle class upbringings. My dad also grew up orphaned. So.

I think that when you have parents who work in fields where they are not home nine to five that are truly working hard and like on the floor or in the field doing something, I think you naturally learn hard work and what that truly means.

Anthony Codispoti (11:35)
And how do you interview for those qualities? Are there specific questions that you ask that helps to flesh that out?

Sydney Grims (11:44)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I do ask about people’s family and their upbringing. ⁓ I don’t ask, obviously, if they have children. That’s illegal. But I like to ask, are you close with your parents? How were you raised? I think it tells a lot when somebody is close or not close with their parents. And I don’t think that that really is a reflection on them. It’s a reflection of what they had to go through in their life that brought them to now. And I think a lot of the times,

A lot of the people actually that I work with are not necessarily close to their family. ⁓ But I think what they see when they’re working with my dad and I is that ⁓ we are people who want to provide them that like second family. And we really want to provide them an environment where they also can provide for their own family. A lot of people that I find that I work with, they learn from their family’s mistakes.

⁓ And they want to be like the better version of their parents. ⁓ So I think if anything, if I think my dad is just like an incredible human, he was actually trying to poke his head into the office to come and get, we have shared custody of our dogs. ⁓ So he was like, can I take them home? Do you want me to take them home? Like, I think seeing, seeing a healthy dynamic between a father and a daughter, I think is something that’s also important for people to see. You know, it’s not like I’m some spoiled.

rich kid who drives a Range Rover. ⁓ You know, I had to work my way to get here too. I’m not just here because, and that’s something I’m always going to be fighting as the quote unquote owner’s daughter.

Anthony Codispoti (13:20)
So what was behind the decision to come back to the family business?

Sydney Grims (13:24)
Yeah, that’s a great question. actually had. ⁓ So my dad was really at that time he was a laugh now because he was probably only 53, but he was quote unquote coming to the end of his career. I think he thought at the time he had no idea what was left in store, but we had six restaurants time and he really felt satisfied with his own life and was like, listen, I put.

I can only he always will say to me I can only one one steak a night and I can only put on one pair of pants at a time. So his his reasoning behind that is like, listen, like, I don’t need another pair of pants. I don’t need to eat another steak. I’m very content in my life. Penn approached us to open a restaurant. had a restaurant. have a restaurant down the block that’s been there for over 40 years called White Dog Cafe. It was the part of Alice Waters sustainability.

Formed a table campaign, which started in 1983 on Penn’s campus. And they said, hey, do you want to open another restaurant? And my dad approached me and said, you know, I’m not really interested in this. Do you want to do it? And I said, well, I’m not really interested unless you’re doing it with me. I need to learn and grow. I haven’t opened my own restaurant before. I’ve built them, but I haven’t opened one. I’ve operated as a manager, but I don’t know all the ins and outs of the financials. And so we opened our first restaurant together, which was Louie Louie.

So that’s what really brought me home. And it was a huge risk at the time. I had a significant other who I was really very much in love with and decided to end that relationship to move back to Philadelphia, leave all of my friends at the age of 26. Like that was a pretty rogue decision in my mid-20s, you know. ⁓ It was a very, very, very difficult decision to leave New York for me. ⁓ But ⁓ I would not be as far along in my career if I hadn’t had left.

Anthony Codispoti (15:13)
It felt like one of those opportunities you just couldn’t pass up.

Sydney Grims (15:16)
Exactly. It’s just, I didn’t know if this was going to happen again. So I had to just take it and swing for the stars.

Anthony Codispoti (15:23)
And so you feel like you’re constantly trying to prove yourself because you’re the owner’s daughter, right? And you’re only there because you share a last name. And so how do you manage that? What are some of the things you’ve done to try to prove yourself or what are some of the things you’ve tried to do to move away from or the need to try to prove yourself?

Sydney Grims (15:28)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Right?

Yep. Yep.

Yeah, I think I don’t feel that way as much as I used to. I think when I was younger and I had a lot of people that I was working around who were much older than me, I think it was really hard. And the reality is I did have to prove myself because they didn’t, they’d never worked with me. So they’d always heard my name or they knew me as a young kid who had her 16th birthday party there or, you know, worked coat check as a young kid making, you know, 50 bucks a night. And I thought that was like the best thing, slice bread. But

I think that I really, the reality is I did have something to prove. I also think that I have a pretty strong pulse on dining out and what that looks like and aesthetics and design has always been something very important to my family and has been like a, I would say a love language for my family. So I think when I came back and really brought something to the table, which was actually a nightlife concept on top of Mashulu, which did about a million dollars in my

first month of business, that I think was a strong indicator to them. Like, okay, she knows her shit and this is not just like some dumb kid who’s, you know, and I worked it. I worked the club and it was really fun, but it was also a disaster. think my first night I had 1200 people come to my first party I was throwing and I had like two security guards on. So I learned very quickly.

Anthony Codispoti (17:15)
⁓ And to be that big of a success right out of the gate, what were you doing right?

Sydney Grims (17:21)
Truthfully, I always say that everything goes around the world once and comes back to Philadelphia. It means that ⁓ Philly, you know, it’s like how Paris is so ahead of the fashion trends, they’re like 10 years ahead of New York. The things that people were wearing in Paris when I was in college is what people in New York are wearing now. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (17:27)
What does that mean?

Sydney Grims (17:44)
I would say the same thing goes for like the New York dining scene and then Philadelphia. So I felt like I was coming from the New York dining scene, was really involved in the New York dining scene. And then I came back to Philly, brought a lot of the ideas that I had learned there. There ⁓ is a place out in Montauk called Surf Lodge. And I was like, I want to make Surf Lodge on top of Mashuloo. Like that would be freaking sick. And there was a schooner I used to go on my days off by myself. And I would go sleep on the schooner and drink rose called Grand Banks down the West Side Highway.

I was like, this needs to be a combo of like, I’m going to hang out on this massive 400 foot ship, which is our restaurant called Mashulu. It’s the only four massive fall ship in the world that’s a restaurant. And, ⁓ but I just thought it’s really unique opportunity to create this, ⁓ trendy cool atmosphere that I did not see in Philadelphia at the time.

Anthony Codispoti (18:38)
So you came back to open up this concept with your father, learned a lot in the process. And since you’ve been there, how many other concepts have you guys opened?

Sydney Grims (18:48)
my gosh.

We have 15 restaurants now. started at six, so nine plus on top of the boat. I’ve opened 10 restaurants. Yeah. We have one restaurant opening, which will be our 15th restaurant, which will open in 2026. It’s called Testerosa after, not after the Ferrari. gives a nod to the Ferrari, obviously meaning redhead. So our logo is a redhead.

Anthony Codispoti (18:57)
Okay. And are you slowing down? Are you going to keep going?

Sydney Grims (19:17)
an Italian concept. ⁓ It’ll be our second of that concept. And so that’s our next project. And then from there, I’m going to take a break for a little bit. We’ve been going pretty hard, one restaurant a year since I’ve been here. So I think we’re going to take a break for a little bit. And hopefully, I want to take over and do a hotel project after this. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (19:40)
like a restaurant

in a hotel or like the full hotel.

Sydney Grims (19:44)
Yeah, I can’t speak too much to it because I have something in particular in mind, but it’s ⁓ it would be synonymous and very close to home. So that that would be like my long term goal is to is to operate a hotel. have one boutique hotel, but I would like to do something more more extensive.

Anthony Codispoti (19:45)
Okay. All right.

Okay. And how many you’ve got multiple locations 15 total with the opening coming next year. Some of them are ⁓ the same concept. So how many total different concepts do you have?

Sydney Grims (20:05)
Mm-hmm.

yeah. So we have autograph, Mishulu, Tucker’s, Daddy, Louie, Louie, Rosalie, White Dog, Testerosa with eight concepts.

Anthony Codispoti (20:27)
eight concepts. ⁓

It strikes me that it would be a lot easier to pick one concept and replicate it over and over again. Yeah, but you choose not to because

Sydney Grims (20:37)
So much easier. Yes, so much easier.

Because of my dad, ⁓ quite literally. So he, he’s of the mindset much more of like the Danny Meyer mindset of ⁓ likes to things close to home, just like he does with Union Square Hospitality. He’ll walk to each one of his restaurants. My dad is very similar. He likes to, you know, he is at the point of his life where he wants to be able to drive to each one of his restaurants to hit them in a day. I totally understand that.

that thought process and I’m in my mid 30s and I have no kids and I’m not married so I’m okay spending time on an airplane. So it’s just we’re in different phases of life. I come from corporate restaurants, he doesn’t. He started this company by himself when he was 25. So for him, the artistry of…

new menus, new design, something different. That’s where his passion lies. My passion lies in systems. So we just have different passions. Do I think that fearless will continue to open new concepts? I do. But I also think we’ll continue to replicate ⁓ white dog and Testarossa. I think that those are two great concepts that ⁓ I want to continue to replicate. I really believe in the white dog concept. It’s proven time and time again. We have five of them.

all done well and they’re all very easily understood. It’s been a business for 40 years. It works, you know, but each one of our white dogs are different. So white dog is a farm to table concept. Judy Wicks was the founder of white dog started in 1983. She was friends with Alex Waters, lived up in Alaska, like farming whale blubber with the Inuits and no quite literally, she’s a pretty incredible woman and was teaching ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (22:04)
What is it?

Sydney Grims (22:26)
really how to grow local economy is back in the 80s when everybody was, you know, buying all their food from Cisco and ⁓ she took like her grandmother’s recipes and was cooking out of her house. And so White Dog has remained sustainable. ⁓ We’ll say farm to table, although I hate that word or that phrase. I think it’s just overused. I think it was a trend and that’s not what we are, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (22:46)
Why do you hate that?

Sydney Grims (22:53)
We are much more than a trend. This has been a business that has quite literally helped businesses like Dogfish Head Beer, Metropolitan Bakery, Yingling, like some of the brands that you would know today that started very small in the greater Philadelphia area and ⁓ the owners were really helped by Judy Wicks to become national brands. So pretty cool.

And White Dog, think that, I think it’s just very, I think it’s special. I think the people that work there really work there because they feel a sense of pride and purpose in like the work that we do and have done for the past 40 years. think a lot of the things that we do with White Dog, we don’t talk about because it’s more like,

A way of just like how how we’ve done business. So if it’s collecting shells for oyster farms, it’s like we’re not doing it to greenwash like some other concepts that are out there that are like larger chains, like a true food kitchen or a founding farmers. Like to me, that’s very green washed. It’s not real in my opinion. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (24:03)
What

do you mean you’re collecting shells?

Sydney Grims (24:06)
Like quite literally oyster shells, like after people eat them, eat out of them, we’ll put them in, know, bus tubs and then we’ll ship them down to the Chesapeake Bay to relay the seabed in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. ⁓ You know, we recycle all of our oil. So all of our fire oil is recycled. We do all of that in-house. There’s like a huge machine that we install. It’s a pretty hefty machine that recycles all of our fire oil.

composting, free trade coffee, all this stuff that, it’s real. It was started so long ago. We use only biodynamic wines. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (24:48)
What is

a biodynamic wine? What does that mean, Sidney?

Sydney Grims (24:52)
You know, you’ll have to ask my Brevard’s director. He can give you a better a better answer about it than I can. I don’t.

Anthony Codispoti (24:54)
Okay. It sounds really cool. Something else that sounds

really cool is the fearless FEMS program that you created to empower women in hospitality. Why? What inspired this and what meaningful changes have you seen come from?

Sydney Grims (25:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so it’s actually to inspire just women in entrepreneurship. So it’s not just women in hospitality. I actually find that there’s some really wonderful women in hospitality groups that are local to Philadelphia that actually Judy Wicks is one of the founding members of ⁓ called La Dame Escoffier. And I think that they do a wonderful job. ⁓ But really, my goal was to connect with other women. found that when I was living and working in New York,

People only wanted to connect with me because I was Ron Perlman’s right hand. And they liked knowing that I was working with a billionaire and felt like they could get something out of me. ⁓ But if I did not have something to give them, people really didn’t want to network. And I find that in Philadelphia, networking is a really large staple to this community. Women especially love to network here. They love to get out. They love to do stuff Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights.

people here are very receptive to meeting other people. It may not be like, you know, if you grew up here, you know, I think friendship wise, like it’s a pretty tight knit community, but I think when it comes to business networking, people are really open to networking. And I found that when I moved here, people, I’d never met so many people who were just so open to like wanting to further themselves, specifically young women who own their own businesses. So that’s really why we founded Fearless Femmes was an extension of, you know, Fearless Restaurants, our restaurant group.

I just wanted, I had met some really awesome women in business and I wanted to create a community where people could come together and really have enriched programming.

Anthony Codispoti (26:47)
And how can people find out about fearless fams? More info.

Sydney Grims (26:50)
Yeah, absolutely. So we have ⁓ an Instagram handle, which is just at fearlessfems, F-E-M-M-E-S, Fems. So you can take a look at us there. We do programming pretty much like once a quarter. So we find that we like to put together very meaningful events that have ⁓ a lot of thought behind them in terms of programming ⁓ and where you can really be surrounded by thought leaders, ⁓ corporate executives, ⁓ that kind of thing.

Anthony Codispoti (27:19)
And so you kind of glossed over this, but for our listeners, first of all, tell them who Ron Perlman is and ⁓ what was the work that you were doing with him?

Sydney Grims (27:29)
Yeah, so I was recruited off of LinkedIn, believe it or not, because I had worked for Hillstone. And like I said earlier, like Hillstone is kind of like the staple. you know what Hillstone is, it’s very much known for their like ⁓ regimented militaristic style of service. ⁓ And ⁓ there was a woman there who was working for Ron Perlman in ⁓ his HR department and recruited me through LinkedIn to be his butler.

So received a message on LinkedIn saying, hey, do you want to interview for a Butler position with, with a principal? I had no idea what a principal was. And I was like, okay, like this sounds interesting. Like, why not? Like I’m living in New York city. I’m 24 years old, 25 years old. I have nothing to lose. And at the time I was really, ⁓ but yeah, I’d been with the Hillstone for about three and half, almost four years. And I was, I was ready to make a move and ended up taking an interview with.

with Ron Perlman’s assistance and then his wife, and, they said, you know, we think you’d be great, but we just don’t think that like, this is really what you want to do is being a butler. And I was like, yeah, to be honest, like, I don’t necessarily see myself like doing this long-term. I want to be honest with you guys, but you know, if, if this is something that, ⁓ you know, you think that we would be a good fit, like we can move forward and.

They ended up calling me three months later and said, you know, we we we have a different position for you, which is a director of hospitality and we want you to own all service and food for our entire life. So he has, you know, two jets and he had a mega yacht and he had we had to feed everybody kosher breakfast, lunch and dinner who worked in his own office. His own home office alone was about a thousand people. ⁓ So we were I know it’s wild, right? So his his family office was about a thousand people at.

Ron Perlman is a billionaire who owns ⁓ Revlon, ⁓ was huge in the 80s and 90s, tons of diversified investments and they invested all of his money at this family office. And so on top of just like feeding these thousand people, we had to do it kosher and he wanted it done only by Michelin chefs. So.

we had the chef de cuisine from Moriah and Grand Mercy Tavern left and were hired there. And so I would literally just go around the city speaking with like the most incredible chefs. ⁓ I remember I interviewed Laurent Grasse who is just open Baba with Stephen Starr. We interviewed him to see if he wanted to just cook for Ron Perlman for, you know, be his home chef, which is just.

so wild, you know. So I was exposed to like my friend Nick who was a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park or Chef de Cuisine, you know, they interviewed him and it was just this very wild world.

Anthony Codispoti (30:30)
Any

funny, quirky stories from that time that you can share with us?

Sydney Grims (30:35)
I did not sign an NDA upon leaving because the stories are just too good, but I won’t get in trouble. The only thing that one of things I can share with you is it was Passover. And during Passover, obviously there’s a lot of rules. You have to be kosher for Passover. So there’s certain regimented labels that you have to find. Like you have kosher for Passover, ketchup. Certain things, they have to be kosher for Passover, not just kosher. So it’s like super kosher.

Anthony Codispoti (31:03)
I didn’t

realize there was like a ⁓ sub designation there.

Sydney Grims (31:05)
yeah.

yeah. So kosher for Passover is its own thing. And so you throw everything out in the house. We had to like have this huge cleaning ritual and then we did kosher for Passover items. And that night we had Bono was coming in and he wanted to celebrate somebody at the party’s birthday and he needed a birthday cake. Well, we had had a meat meal. Obviously a lot of icing is made with dairy.

Anthony Codispoti (31:14)
Okay.

Sydney Grims (31:35)
So we had to come up with a vegan birthday cake within 20 minutes that Bono wanted to present to Mr. Perlman in this room. And while we brought it up, Mr. Perlman’s child knocked into Bono, which then spilled a glass of wine on his, we called it the $100 million room because the carpet was worth about $40 million and spilled red wine all over the carpet. mind you, had to also that night, I remember I,

had to ship blueberries from Maine. This is obviously April, it’s a Passover, from Lorne Michaels, like the creator of SNL, Lorne Michaels. Lorne was one of his good friends and I had to get blueberries from his farm up in Maine because Mr. Perlman only liked the blueberries from Lorne’s house. So they were tiny blueberries, not the big oversized.

blueberries that you get in Whole Foods. So I had to get blueberries flown in for Passover from Lorne Michaels house and I had to drive about two hours in an Uber because I didn’t have a car to a port where I had them flown into in New Jersey and then I brought them back and they had been frozen because obviously blueberries don’t come into season until the summertime. So they were frozen. I had to thaw them out by hand so that they wouldn’t shrivel up so he would eat them.

Anthony Codispoti (32:54)
How do you thaw blueberries by hand?

Sydney Grims (32:57)
I was literally taking them and quite literally like warming them up over in a strainer with lukewarm water so that they didn’t shrivel up. And that’s when Bona walked in and saw me. wild.

Anthony Codispoti (33:09)
That’s funny. Do you have other good,

⁓ I don’t know, celebrity type stories to share from your time there in New York?

Sydney Grims (33:15)
⁓

the Roots was our house band, so they were always like a trip. They were really fun to hang out with. ⁓ but I would say I did all the writers for all of the celebrities. And it’s always funny because the celebrities actually aren’t necessarily the divas. It’s their assistants who are making these really crazy writers. and one of them was Pharrell Williams really liked Carl Sagan and he wanted a picture of Carl Sagan in a frame on his

⁓ like the astronomer on his bedside table. So I was going into his house because Mr. Pullman had 18 homes on his property out in the Hamptons. And so ⁓ I was putting a picture of Carl Sagan on the countertop and ⁓ not realizing that somebody was asleep on the couch. And it turns out it was Pharrell who had just come in on a red eye and he woke up and asked me for a cheeseburger.

and he was an absolute doll and I will always remember how nice he was to me.

Anthony Codispoti (34:16)
And where did you get the cheeseburger from?

Sydney Grims (34:18)
⁓ Well, we had kitchens that were built on site with multiple chefs. So, yeah, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:22)
Okay, right there. Okay. Wow, I

don’t even know what to say to all that. Obviously, a world unfamiliar to me and you got a peek behind the curtain of how the rich and famous live.

Sydney Grims (34:33)
Yes,

it is exposure. always say exposure is everything. I was speaking with a friend of mine who plays for the Eagles the other day, Moro Ojo Mo. We were actually hanging out on the Shuloo Monday just having coffee and we were talking about the importance of exposure, exposure for children of all socioeconomic backgrounds, the importance of that. ⁓ And I think exposure is everything. Once you see what’s available out there in life, you

you see the possibilities, you know, you think so much bigger, so much bigger. And I think once I had a taste of that, I remember my first day at work, it was Friday. My first day of work was a Friday. It was really odd. And ⁓ this was working for Ron. And I said to one of my coworkers, it’s such a shame. It’s four o’clock. They’re going to hit a lot of traffic heading out to the Hamptons. And he said, honey, they’re choppering. And I said, huh, chopper, like a helicopter?

Anthony Codispoti (35:04)
You think bigger.

Sydney Grims (35:31)
Yeah, they’re choppering. I was like, ⁓ I didn’t know concept of that. You know, this is also like the start of Instagram days. It wasn’t like what we see now where you think everybody has access to these things, you know. So pretty crazy.

Anthony Codispoti (35:43)
Yeah. That’s funny. ⁓

you know, and you hit on something here. ⁓ I’ve been a member of different masterminds in the past. And one of the big values that I find from them is not only sort of the peer support, right? Cause when you’re at the top, in your business, it could be a bit lonely. Like, you know, everybody’s looking to you for guidance, for decisions.

Sydney Grims (35:53)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (36:06)
You’re making stuff up as you go along shooting from the hip and little do people know. the other, and so you get to sort of, you know, that camaraderie and that support. It’s all right, bring him. Is it your dad? Okay. ⁓ and so, but the other big thing is what you just hit on, like being around people who were creating at a different level and having that perspective of.

Sydney Grims (36:15)
Sorry, somebody just came into my office.

No, it’s not my dad. It’s marketing.

Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (36:35)
Wow, I’ve been trying to grow incrementally. I’ve been trying to figure out how do I, you know, an extra percent, an extra 10%. And it’s like, I’ve been looking at my city, they’ve been looking at the universe and it’s like, okay, now I’ve got to recalibrate my vision. And that’s what I think you’re talking about.

Sydney Grims (36:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, leveling up is is hardly don’t know what is possible. I would say I’m kind of actually getting to that place now. I feel like in my life where ⁓ I’ve taken a lot of the low hanging fruit with the company and standardized it. And now the question is, how do we level up now that we have moved from like a small company to a mid sized company? And

you know, at some point you kind of outstrip your coverage a little bit where you’re like, okay, and you’re flying the plane as or you’re building the plane as you’re flying it a lot of the times. And it’s really fun. But I think you also get to a point now too, where I’m like, I have to surround myself with with different types of people. You know, a lot of the people that I’ve worked with have come from this like more entrepreneur, entrepreneurial free flowing kind of

environment that my dad created, which is really beautiful. But the reality is now we have 1500 employees soon to be probably 1700 employees and it’s a much different company than when I started a couple of years ago, you know, and you need to surround yourself with people that can help get you there because sometimes you don’t have all the answers as a founder.

Anthony Codispoti (38:02)
Yeah. And so you’ve seen, I’m guessing over the years that you’re trying to bring in some people that have sort of that higher level corporate experience. Is that what you’re saying here? Yeah.

Sydney Grims (38:14)
Absolutely. ⁓

I think a lot of the time I took chances on people who were who would see the value in being in being in an entrepreneurial environment. I’ve always hired for personality, not necessarily for experience, because the reality is we’re working 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week. I have to really like you. You know, that’s the that’s the basic basis is like, I have to like you. We don’t have to be friends. I don’t really want to be your friend outside of work. I don’t think that that’s like from a professionalism standpoint.

That’s something that Hilston always taught me and I think was a really strong foundation is like professionalism is everything. Like, ⁓ I think that’s something that my dad has always done really well is like, we don’t go up to the restaurant and take vegetables out of the walk-in or meat out of the walk-in. ⁓ we don’t sit down and have drinks after work. Like that’s not how we operate. It is, it has to be professional, but

⁓ every, anytime that I was working in a department, I always hired myself out of the department with somebody far more qualified than I am. Cause the reality is I’m not the most qualified person in the room. I know how to put the right people in the right places. And I think that that matchmaking part of my job is like, is really. Crucial. And I’ve also realized that I’m not the best at that either. And I hired somebody who’s much better at that than I am. So my dad always said.

to be the dumbest person in the room. You wanna be the dumbest person in the room. So it kind of brings us full circle to how we started the conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (39:40)
Yeah.

A slightly nicer way to put it is that if you find you’re the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. ⁓ But yeah, so ⁓ I want to pivot just a little bit, Sydney, and I want you to pick a big, hard, hairy, serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, personal or professional. What was that? How did you get through it? How are you a better person on the other side?

Sydney Grims (39:46)
Yeah.

I like that better.

Oof. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I would say the hardest thing that I’ve had to deal with professionally was the first restaurant I opened after Mishooloo, which was like the nightlife concept. That restaurant was already open. We were just adding to that concept. But Louie Louie is my first restaurant and it received horrible reviews. Horrible. And it received horrible reviews, not from the guests that were there, but it was from a reviewer who really did not like my chef. And so it was a very biased thing. And this is something I’ve seen a lot in

⁓ in media in general is there’s tons of biases and it’s all pay to play and it’s kind of a racket but ⁓

You know, I would also say that there are some journalists out there who do a really fantastic job. ⁓ I think Michael Klein at the Philadelphia Inquirer does a fantastic job and I really appreciate him. think he’s very honest. ⁓ But I would say there were some people that there was one person in particular who was incredibly, incredibly prejudiced against our chef and then against my dad.

And it happened on two separate occasions, two different restaurants. And it’s a really hard pill to swallow when people are writing about things and they don’t understand how much heart and effort and risk and

hard it is to be entrepreneurial, you know, and it’s very easy to tear people down. But the reality is we’re just trying to help the local economy too. So I think that I had to really step step back after that review came through. And I just had to say, you know what, like, we just have to put our head down and just like make this work because like we can’t have it fail. Like we invested way too much money. And if this fails, it’s gonna be a massive, massive issue for our family financially.

And we worked, we kept working through it and it’s become one of our most successful restaurants. It was funny in the review, he said something to the effect of, well, my review doesn’t probably is not even going to really matter that much because people are probably just going to continue to go there. And that was the truth. Became the most Instagram restaurant in Philadelphia. Won tons of awards. One from Eater for like the most beautiful restaurant. One from Architectural Digest is the most beautiful bar in Pennsylvania. ⁓

it’s become a great success and a great feather in my cap, like going from taking this restaurant that received scathing reviews in a magazine to being one of our most financially successful restaurants.

Anthony Codispoti (42:47)
following the skating reviews, did business dip? Did people stop coming? Did it hurt revenue?

Sydney Grims (42:56)
Listen, at the end of the day, it’s like restaurants are like children, like quite literally. It’s like, if you don’t feed them, they die, you know? And it’s not something that you can take your foot off the gas. So ⁓ as soon as you take your foot off the gas, ⁓ whether that’s with social media, marketing, effort with ⁓ touching tables at night, ⁓

doing secret shopper reports, each one of these little tiny minuscule things ⁓ is critical to the longevity and the success of the restaurant. ⁓ I can’t remember at the time, it was close to nine years ago now when this happened. I’m sure business probably was off a little bit, but we kept plugging and chugging through it. And I think the biggest thing was it was social media. just, I saw the power of social media ⁓ as it was just starting and I

I’ve really leveraged social media at the beginning of its time with Instagram. that was when the algorithm was so fun and you would get like 300 followers a day. It was the best. And real followers. And I think that I have seen and have single-handedly convinced a boomer that the importance of social media and I think social media is really what saved that restaurant.

Anthony Codispoti (44:21)
You know, something that I’ve learned over the years is that it is so much easier to hate than to create.

Sydney Grims (44:29)
thousand percent.

Anthony Codispoti (44:30)
the people who sit there and they point fingers and they, you know, pick on these tiny little minuscule things or make stuff up or, you know, just spin things in a really negative light. have no idea, zero idea what it takes to put something productive, successful, beautiful together.

Sydney Grims (44:47)
Zero idea.

You know, there’s many concepts that I go to that I don’t necessarily like, but I’m not going to write a review. I’m just not going to choose to spend my money there. And that’s it. You know, I think that I’ve learned that the importance of cheerleading and championing. you. Championing. It’s like, need, gosh, I need some coffee.

Anthony Codispoti (45:15)
Championing. Yeah, I’m with you. It’s a hard word to say.

Sydney Grims (45:22)
I think that it’s really important that the reality is nobody’s gonna go to your restaurant seven days a week. They might, but those people are always a little weird. I had a guy in New York, he would come to the restaurant every day for lunch and dinner and he would regurgitate his food on his plate. That was really fun. And because it ⁓ was a health condition, we could not tell him not to do that. ⁓ So he could express his food wherever he wanted to, which was really lovely. So.

So we want to certainly have regulars, ⁓ but I don’t expect everybody to eat at our restaurant every meal, right? So it’s okay to say, you know, I have a restaurant, I have a friend who has a restaurant down the street. And when I see something on Google or on Facebook and Facebook groups asking for Asian restaurants, I say, hey, Pearl has awesome restaurants down the street. Why don’t you check out her restaurants? Because I can’t be everybody’s favorite restaurant, you know, it’s not how it works.

you know, but I think that it’s important that you build partnerships and loyalty with other people in the market where you can champion champion each other.

Anthony Codispoti (46:28)
You know, I want to go back to this review thing because I think this is important for people to hear. So I’ve never been in the restaurant space, but for a number of years, I was big into e-commerce, sold a lot of products very successfully on Amazon. And we would get reviews from people that would give us four stars and say, it was awesome. It was great. It was so terrific. But, you know, it just did what it did. You know, it didn’t didn’t go the extra mile.

Sydney Grims (46:55)
Yeah, the next year,

yeah, the next year expectations.

Anthony Codispoti (46:58)
Right.

And what those people didn’t understand is that for almost every product out there, a four star review actually hurts because, because products, you know, you want to be at a 4.2, 4.5 or higher. If you’re not, you’re not getting on the first page. And so, you know, kind of more to your point though, that if you go to someplace and you don’t like it, you know, unless they didn’t

Sydney Grims (47:06)
⁓ for sure.

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (47:23)
you know, take a dump on your plate. You’re not going to leave a negative review, right? Because you know that that hurts their livelihood. They’re there, they’re trying, they don’t have it all figured out. And I think there’s a lot to be said for that, because I think most people who take the time to write a review are people who are upset. So you don’t get the perspective of all those people who went and had a nice time and enjoyed their food. And so I guess the point I want to make to everybody listening is sort of think twice before you take your bad mood.

out on somebody else’s lively.

Sydney Grims (47:54)
The reality is I could not agree more with you. I think the biggest thing is to give small businesses in particular a chance. And what I mean by that is call them, ask to speak to a manager,

And then you really see the true colors of that business owner. Because the business owner, more times than likely, you’re not going to get the owner on the phone. You might get the manager. But whatever that owner has impressed upon that manager is really what the owner’s opinion is, right? So if I do not tell my staff, every time somebody, nobody should leave our restaurant upset, they’re not going to know to chase them down the parking lot and make sure that they get a gift card before they leave. You know, so. ⁓

I think it’s very important to give businesses of all types a shot, call, speak to the manager before just writing a review, even when you’re very emotional about it. And there are going to be times when those managers have really ⁓ terrible responses and don’t handle it appropriately. And at that point, then you go on and you can be all bitter and write your terrible review online. But allow people the chance to resolve the issue.

Anthony Codispoti (49:00)
Sydney.

I

like that. That seems like a fair approach. Sydney, what is your superpower?

Sydney Grims (49:09)
oof ADHD

Anthony Codispoti (49:11)
All right, let’s hear it, why?

Sydney Grims (49:13)
Yeah, it’s actually ADHD awareness month, believe it or not. And I think that ADHD in general is something that I always struggled with growing up because I always felt like I ⁓ was not paying attention enough or I was getting called out in class or I wasn’t sitting still. But I find that I can multitask and get way more done than other people. I certainly have trouble prioritizing. That’s why I have to have my like handy dandy notebook with me. I have to set

quite literally remind, I live by my calendar and my alerts on my calendar, creating shortcuts in my iPhone, using AI to like make my life more streamlined and organized because if not, like I am, ⁓ I’m highly disorganized, my brain is highly disorganized. But the superpower is that I can accomplish all of these things in one week, right? So I can juggle a lot.

⁓ A lot more I would say than the average person. And I think that that’s why ADHD is so cool.

Anthony Codispoti (50:16)
What’s something you really enjoy doing outside of work?

Sydney Grims (50:20)
I have a horse and he is like the best thing ever. I have found that it’s really important that you have something outside of work that really fills your tank other than people. And like, I know when I lived in New York, it’s like, pretty much what filled my tank was like eating, drinking with friends, you know, going out, partying at the time, cause I was in my twenties.

and yeah, hang out with friends, going to workout classes, but I had no hobbies. And I think finding something that you’re super passionate about, whether it’s building model airplanes or ⁓ learning about winemaking or coffee or photography, for me, that’s horses. And I rediscovered this passion. I rode horses from the time I was three until I was 12, and then I stopped riding because my family couldn’t afford it.

And I rediscovered it when I moved back to Philadelphia and it was COVID and I was like, ⁓ I always used to like riding horses. I should try that again. And lo and behold, for my 33rd birthday, I bought myself ⁓ a horse and every night after work, I go to the barn and that’s my way of like decompressing after the day. So I think having some sort of routine after work to help you decompress might not be horses that might be taking a walk, might be taking a cold shower, taking a bath.

reading, doing something without a screen, you know, after a long day work, I think has has been a really, really key to my mental health, especially in a workspace that can be incredibly, incredibly challenging.

Anthony Codispoti (52:05)
What’s the name of your horse?

Sydney Grims (52:06)
Oscar Wilde.

Anthony Codispoti (52:08)
Why?

Sydney Grims (52:10)
⁓ I always appreciated he’s a gay poet from the UK and I always loved his his poetry. So he came with the name Oscar. So I just added wild because I wanted him to come off very fancy when he went to show. But the reality is he was bred by the Amish, so he’s not fancy at all. But I bought him because he looked like there’s a specific type of ⁓ breed of horse that I like.

It’s called an Irish draft horse and I couldn’t afford one of those. So I found the next best thing, which was I call him an Amish warm blood, ⁓ is a ⁓ spoof on the fact that he’s a backyard bred ⁓ big fat horse, but he looks fancy. So I gave him a fancy name.

Anthony Codispoti (52:57)
All right, I like it. Sydney, I’ve just got one more question for you today, but before I ask it, I wanna do a few things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Sydney, you can find her on Instagram at Sydney Grims, and Sydney is S-Y-D-N-E-Y-G-R-I-M-S. Also, you can find their brand at Fearless Restaurants on Instagram, and there’s a new one coming. Tell us the new handle.

Sydney Grims (53:22)
Yeah, so we just opened our ⁓ restaurant called Triple Crown. Triple Crown, obviously it’s based on the equestrian lifestyle and equestrian. Obviously the Triple Crown winner is a horse that wins the Preakness Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby. So ⁓ it’s really an ode to my equestrian lifestyle and it’s been super fun because I’ve been able to source all of these crazy ⁓ vintage polo mallets and riding jackets from Virginia. ⁓

It’s at Triple Crown Radnor. It’s also a event space that can accommodate up to 1,200 people in the Radnor Hotel. Great wedding destination, Sperry Sail Cloth Tent, which was definitely my most ambitious project to date. So it’s a restaurant, an indoor event space, an outdoor event space, and there’s 200 hotel rooms above us as well.

Anthony Codispoti (54:15)
Nice. Also as a reminder for listeners, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you’ll take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you will hold a special place in my heart forever. So Sydney, last question for you. You and I reconnect one year from today and you are celebrating something big.

Sydney Grims (54:41)
Mm

Anthony Codispoti (54:43)
What’s that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from

Sydney Grims (54:47)
It’s going to be that I added add back benefits, obviously.

Anthony Codispoti (54:50)
I appreciate that plug. How, what else?

Sydney Grims (54:56)
A year from today, I would say that ⁓ we are ⁓ we’ve successfully booked 40 weddings. I would be really, really pumped to have done 40 weddings at this wedding venue. Again, it’s been my most financially ambitious project. It’s put a lot of pressure on my dad and my family. So I would really love to see this this project.

come to fruition. Triple crown, yep.

Anthony Codispoti (55:25)
And this is the new ⁓ Triple Crown

Radner that we were just talking about. So find them on Instagram, folks. Well, Sydney Grimms from Fearless Restaurants, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.

Sydney Grims (55:30)
Correct, yep.

thank you.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure.