The Business of Merrymaking: Sara Connery on Leading Handcrafted Restaurants

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 Sarah Connery, CEO at Handcrafted Restaurants in Kailua, Hawaii. Their mission is to master the craft of food, drink, and merrymaking with Aloha.

Under Sarah’s leadership, they have grown into a thriving group of casual, full-service dining concepts focused on local ingredients and a warm sense of community. Sarah has a strong legal background and previously served as the COO at Handcrafted during her 13 years with the company. Handcrafted Restaurants has been recognized across Hawaii for its commitment to sustainability, high-quality dishes, and creating memorable dining experiences.

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. Imagine being able to give your restaurant employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money into your employees’ pockets and the company’s too.

One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Handcrafted Restaurants, Sarah Connery. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Sara Connery (01:47)
Thanks for having me, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (01:49)
So, Sarah, you actually have a strong background in the legal world. What initially drew you there before we kind of leapfrog into the restaurant space?

Sara Connery (01:54)
Bye!

Yeah, I would hesitate to say strong background, but I did go to law school and that was a big decision. ⁓ My grandfather and my aunt both were attorneys and they were people who I really admired ⁓ growing up. It was a decision ⁓ that I certainly didn’t take lightly. Going to law school is a big deal.

I was never a hundred percent sure that I wanted to be an attorney, but I was a hundred percent sure that I would regret it if I didn’t go to law school. kind of thinking about things in that way is a way that I framed a lot of major decisions in my life ⁓ since that time. And I certainly have never regretted going to school and I’ve never been a practicing attorney. I am barred in the state of Hawaii, but ⁓

It is a, that kind of understanding and knowing that I would have regretted not going is something that really drove me through those most challenging years.

Anthony Codispoti (03:02)
That’s interesting. Where did that line of thinking come from? Was it just kind of innate to you, or did somebody sort of coach you in that way? Like, hey, you may not know that you want to do this, but you will always hold it against yourself if you don’t at least try.

Sara Connery (03:18)
Yeah, I don’t remember a specific person coaching me in that way about it. At the time I had gotten engaged and my now ex-husband is a physician in the military and we were moving to DC together right after graduation and I knew that choosing to be a military spouse was going to come with a lot of moves during our, you know,

during our life together. And so I knew that my career would never be able to come first and really grappled with whether, you know, investing all of the time and money in law school was valuable given that. when I was, you know, kind of framing that for myself and looking at it, I just knew that if I, if I settled and said, well, it’ll probably never really pay off because I’ll have to move, I just knew I would regret it. And so ⁓

I chose to go ahead and go through with that experience, knowing full well what the risks were and the way things turned out, turned out better than I could have possibly imagined to be sure. But ⁓ yeah, I think it was just like that early knowing that my career wouldn’t necessarily be on this perfect trajectory really helped me frame it, frame that decision in a way that gave me a good long-term perspective about it.

Anthony Codispoti (04:42)
I’m a little bit curious about this. Do you think that sense of possible regret came from, were you worried that maybe you were using that as an excuse not to go through the challenging experience of law school? Was that, I’m trying to wrap my head around sort of this sense of regret that you were trying to avoid.

Sara Connery (05:00)
Yeah.

You know, it was that, and I think sometimes when we know that we’re capable of something and we choose not to do it, it’s like, there’s this sense of loss. If you, if you choose to let a path go by you, or you, I never want to feel like I didn’t live up to my potential or what I believe that I could, what my potential could be. And so I saw that as, as kind of part of that of.

you know, even if I decided to become a mom and never work, like I knew that that would be something that was important to me to know that I could do it, could fall back on it, you know, could have accomplished that.

Anthony Codispoti (05:47)
Is there another example of where that line of thinking came up in a major life decision?

Sara Connery (05:53)
⁓ that’s a great question. ⁓ You know, there have been so many points in business along the way, I think where I doubted myself. And sometimes you rely on other people’s, you know, belief in you to get you through those hard times. And sometimes ⁓ I think you can, I at least have really looked at myself and said, okay, who do you want to be in this moment? ⁓ And, you know,

if you behave this way, will you regret it? And if you behave this way, will you regret it? ⁓ Not to get too deep too fast, but ⁓ my ⁓ husband is now my ex-husband and he actually came out of the closet ⁓ a few years ago. And that was, you know, obviously a huge moment in our lives. And I couldn’t be more proud of who he is. And that created a lot of challenges, of course, for us to figure out how we wanted to handle it along the way.

you know, through each of those moments, you have the opportunity to decide who you want to be. And for me, it was, okay, if I behave this way, am I going to look back and regret who I was in that moment? And instead, does this give me the opportunity to be somebody who I’m really proud of? And so I think if you can look at whether it’s a big decision or a challenging moment as an opportunity to

be a person that you’re gonna look back and be really proud of, that’s a tremendous gift. And, you know, we can’t always control what comes at us in life and we can’t always control, ⁓ you know, who other people are, but we do get to be in charge of how we behave and we do get to be in charge of how we react to a given situation. And ⁓ I think there’s a lot of power and a lot of beauty in that. And so,

I try to look at things, not just like, you’re gonna regret this, but like, who do you wanna look back and be proud of? And I knew then that, yeah, that I wanted to be proud of that girl who chose to go to law school, even if her career, even if she didn’t have a chance to become a Supreme Court justice because she was gonna move around a lot or, you know, whatever it was, so.

Anthony Codispoti (07:51)
⁓ I like that.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put quite like that, but I feel like that’s an excellent framework by which to make decisions. Here I am at my life, this fork in the road. If I go this way and I’m a year from now, I’m looking in the rear view mirror. Is that a person I’m going to be proud of? Right? That’s, that’s the decision matrix that you’re using. So like with your husband, now ex-husband coming out of the closet, I’m going to put words in your mouth. Tell me if I’m

Sara Connery (08:23)
Yeah, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (08:34)
hitting this or not, know, big surprise, lots of emotions. You could have chosen to be very angry, bitter, resentful, hateful. And there’s probably a lot of that that bubbled up, but you chose a different path because you were using this framework like, okay, I need to sort of rein in my emotions here and I want to be six months, a year, 10 years from now, proud of who I was in this moment and the way I

Sara Connery (08:34)
Go ahead, yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, you know, I mean, the we were married for 1314 years and you don’t stay married to somebody for that long if you don’t like them, you know, like, we truly both loved each other very much. And we still do. We’re dear friends. And, you know, throughout that whole experience, we both started from the place of, you know, hey, this is really hard because I love you. And, you know, so our goal was, how do we stay friends? How do we stay family and

you can, it was a great opportunity for us to like, feel all the feelings and go through that emotional experience. It’s like, I’m not going to pretend that that was, you know, easy or didn’t confront the core of my being, you know, in every way of, you know, worthiness and what is love and you know, all of these, you know, deep human things. But if you can sit there and say, okay, I’m feeling this way, I’m feeling down, I’m feeling hurt, I’m feeling rejected, whatever, but how do I want to

who do I want to be? know, how do I want to, does that mean I should drag somebody else down into the bucket with me? Or can I say, okay, this is a feeling and I’m going to think about this as an adult and give it some love, but also choose to behave in a way that creates the opportunity for more love in the world, but in a different, you know, in a different way.

I think that that’s, I know this is getting way off track for business, but I think that that’s kind of the core of what humanity is.

Anthony Codispoti (10:26)
We’ll get back to the business in a minute. This is way more interesting and important because I think human psychology and the way that we approach

things outside of the business world have a big impact on how we approach our customers, how we approach our employees and making business decisions. I think this is very relevant if you’re comfortable talking about.

Sara Connery (10:43)
It does.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it’s an opportunity to create more love. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (10:47)
So I mean, what you’re talking about,

yeah, like on paper, that sounds amazing, almost Pollyanna-ish. Like, how did you actually get there? Because you’re hurt, right? This person that you loved, you know, now there’s a compatibility issue there. ⁓ Like, how did you get from that place of hurt to a place of love and accepting?

Sara Connery (10:58)
Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, it’s certainly a challenge, you know, on both sides. But at the end of the day, I think that, you know, these things, I was certainly blindsided by it in many ways. And at the same time, I had also felt not quite connected in our marriage. And I think that we’re all lying to ourselves. You know, it’s a, that could have been an opportunity to be like, this is happening to me. And instead,

I knew and acknowledged and was honest about the fact that I had felt things being off for a long time and I hadn’t figured out a way to address it correctly. And so for me, there was also this sense of relief that it was like, ⁓ this explains our disconnection. And I admire this person for having the courage to address what this is and to dive deep into his own psyche and figure out what was going on with him.

you know, and then bring that to me and, you know, bring it in a heart and hands, you know, loving kind, you know, humble way that really enabled me to do the same back. And I think when you, you just have to keep for me, at least it was, I just had to keep looking back to that. Who do I want to be a year from now? Who do I want to, how do I want to look back on myself a year from now? And then.

for the relationship as a whole, like what’s my North Star? And ⁓ I have a little North Star ⁓ that I wear on my necklace to kind of remind me in situations of like, you know, for me in our split, our divorce, the North Star was we wanna stay family and we’re not gonna be legally family anymore, but how do we make sure we can stay family? And that requires compromise, that requires eating your pride, it requires

a lot of humility. And I don’t know if I did it all exactly right. I yelled at him and I cried a lot too. And there were a lot of moments along the way that didn’t feel good at all. But I’m really proud of those moments. And I’m proud that even when I was crying and yelling at him.

that he was able to move through that with me and that at the end of the day it was like, well, I love you. And, you know, this is how we’re going to evolve that love and that relationship. And I am also appreciative of you and appreciative of the way we have the opportunity to evolve this relationship, because even though it hurts to change it, it doesn’t mean that it should have stayed the same as it was.

Anthony Codispoti (14:00)
Is there, like, was there a therapist who helped coach you through this? Is there a spiritual framework that you rely on for this kind of love first sort of approach?

Sara Connery (14:13)
Yeah, ⁓ you know, it’s fascinating. Fascinating to me. I won’t presume to say it’s fascinating to anyone else, but there was definitely a therapist who my husband had started working with who was really helpful for him in figuring out, you know, what was going on with him on a personal level. And then for me,

I’m really, really lucky. I come from no big T trauma in my household. My parents got divorced when I was 18, but I was very loved by my parents, by grandparents. had a great community. ⁓ I grew up in a really loving, ⁓ supportive household. And yet somehow throughout my 20s and 30s, I felt like I was like a…

I call it being a spiritual girl scout, like collecting merit badges ⁓ for like breath work, yoga, know, going on this retreat, learning meditation, implementing mindfulness practices. Like you want to read a tarot card on your girl, you know, whatever all the things were. ⁓ And, know, there are a lot of, I have, you know, kind of my daily meditation practice that really is grounding for me and supportive. And all of those things I thought were just kind of helping me be.

better at business and life. ⁓ But I really realized, you know, when I was very lucky to be at age 38, and this is the biggest emotional experience, you know, challenging experience of my life when my, you know, marriage is falling apart. It was really that that all of those ⁓ practices were preparing me for, I feel like. And, ⁓ and so I, for me, it’s really relying on

movement, so yoga and walking. And we realized that when we needed to have hard conversations, if we did them on walks, it was tremendously helpful for us. And I think there’s some actually some pretty good science behind, you know, the somatic processing that the body can do by through movement. And if your body is moving, it’s less likely that those emotions are going to get stuck in ways that are harder to deal with.

so walking daily yoga, ⁓ and then finding, you know, when you can figure out how to meditate in a way that allows you to experience even a brief moment of that piece within of like the space where you know, you’re safe and that everything is going to be okay. ⁓ that’s a really special, special thing. And it’s a really helpful feeling to be able to experience that even for a moment, ⁓ to get through hard times, but.

You know, I also have a profound respect for humans in a very different way. It’s like, I didn’t have, I didn’t lose a parent or a sibling when I was growing up and, ⁓ you know, or have any other really challenging trauma to deal with a lot of people do. And you really realize how distracting ⁓ that emotional trauma is for people. And I have so much more empathy for

people in the workplace as a leader, ⁓ having gone through that personal life ⁓ challenge in that way. That, you know, you really, until you experience extreme loss in some capacity, ⁓ you don’t really understand the impact that grief has on your day to day ability to function. it’s ⁓ a tremendous gift of empathy also.

Anthony Codispoti (17:52)
Wow. Yeah. And the way that you can frame it today as a gift ⁓ for what it taught you and the way that it’s shaped the way that you can bring ⁓ empathy into the workplace. And I want to explore that a bit ⁓ by first sort of talking about how you got into the restaurant space. kind of, you know, so not a strong legal background as I originally framed it, but, know, you were checking it out. You, you know, you got you went through law school, you’re

Sara Connery (18:12)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (18:21)
barred in the state of Hawaii, but what opened the door for you into the restaurant world?

Sara Connery (18:26)
Yeah, you know, frankly, during law school, that was like the heyday of the Food Network and law school sucks. It’s hard. You know, I’m glad I did it, but it’s hard. And one of the things that really got me through law school was the was one, the Food Network and then cooking and cooking was so good for me at that time ⁓ because it allowed me to do something tactile. And, you know, you have a start.

with these ingredients, you get to touch it, you get to be creative, you get to, you know, put in the spices however you want. And then you get this, you know, not that long later, you get this wonderful final product that you get to eat and enjoy. And it’s so it’s this very rewarding, short and creative experience. And in law school, everything is long. There’s one exam at the end of the semester.

you’re constantly reading, there’s no end to any of it until that one thing at the end. And then it’s just this huge ball of stress. so cooking was this wonderful, like closed loop gratification experience for me. And the Food Network was really inspiring at that time because you’re like, ⁓ you know, it’s this easy exposure to all kinds of different cuisines and ingredients. And, ⁓ you know, and so then I started cooking as kind of the fun.

a fun outlet during law school. And again, like I said, I knew that my career wasn’t necessarily always gonna come first. And so I thought maybe even for our three year stint in Hawaii or what I thought was gonna be three years and has now been nearly 14, that I thought maybe I’d go to culinary school during that time and then who knows what after that. But I just loved food, I loved cooking.

And that was a really kind of formative thing for me during those years. And I would joke in law school, like when people would ask what type of lawyer I wanted to be, I would be like, restaurants have lawyers? That’s what I want to do. Ha ha. I had a, I’d worked at a, you know, a very mediocre Mexican restaurant in high school or in college. ⁓ and loved that experience. It’s restaurants are chaos and they’re fun.

Anthony Codispoti (20:27)
Hahaha

Sara Connery (20:41)
you know, it’s something different all the time. And the people who work in restaurants are wonderful heathens and just my favorite types of human beings. ⁓ And so I was just kind of drawn to that environment. And when we moved to Hawaii, ⁓ I was looking for a job to fill the time between, you know, like July when we got to Hawaii and then February when I was going to take the bar exam.

And so I was just, you know, looking for a thing to fill the time and, and, an ad on monster.com RIP, I think, ⁓ popped up and my, one of the founders of the company who became my boss ⁓ had his actual business email on the monster.com ad, ⁓ which is hilarious. ⁓ but he was looking rookie mistake, total rookie mistake. I was like, this guy may be an idiot.

Anthony Codispoti (21:33)
rookie mistake.

Sara Connery (21:38)
But, you know, this is cool. Like, I’m going to send an actual email to an actual person. Like, wow. ⁓ And I looked up the company and at the time he was the CEO and looking for an executive intern, either somebody who is ⁓ a recent grad or in a JD or MBA program. And I was like, this sounds perfect. Like, you know, he wants somebody with a higher level of education, but also I’m really into food. Like, this sounds exciting to me.

looked up the company and the other founder of the company is one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. you know, it this incredible chef who’s very focused on ingredients and focusing on local products. And so it just sounded really exciting to me. And so I reached out to the email address and much to my surprise, got an email back and

the CEO of the company said, hey, I just moved from Maui to Oahu today. Why don’t you come meet me next week and we can get together and talk. And I went and met with him at what would become the second restaurant in our company. ⁓ And he was like, actually filled the internship position a few weeks ago, but what I really need long-term is a VP of the company.

And he was like, you know, if you could, you know, start out as my assistant or something, you can see if this works for you and I can see if this works for me. And, you know, maybe we can go from there. And it was a little bit of an inflection point for me for sure, because I was really excited about this brand new company. There was just one restaurant in the company at the time. And, you know, the guy seemed great. And ⁓ I was inspired by the values of, you know, the other partner.

our one of our owners and and it just it seemed exciting but you know I just graduated law school at the time and so the idea of being somebody’s assistant was like I don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to do I felt like a demotion yeah yeah you know like I had been a paralegal at a law firm before law school started and I had an assistant there you know I was like I don’t know if I should be someone else’s assistant at this point I’m you know I got a lot of education but

Anthony Codispoti (23:40)
Felt like a demotion. Yeah.

Sara Connery (23:57)
I decided to take the chance and do it. And I think that that’s one of those, ⁓ that’s one of those moments that if you let your pride get in the way or you let your ego get in the way, you could really cut yourself off from some incredible opportunities, I think. And instead I said, Hey, you know, these people seem great. This company seems inspiring. I’m going to give this a chance. So.

I told him that I just needed to make more money than I did before I went to law school. And he said, all right, I’ll pay you 5K more than you made then. And I was like, all right, great. If it works, I’ll prove to you I’m worth more and it’ll all come together. so I took the bar eight or nine months later and it all worked out great for everybody. Passed the bar and.

Anthony Codispoti (24:43)
and you pass the bar, ⁓ but like

you’ve never been a practicing attorney.

Sara Connery (24:49)
Correct. Yeah, I passed the bar and one of my titles for a while in the company was general counsel. ⁓ And I was focused more on kind of managing our investors and operating agreements and ⁓ leases and looking at new development. ⁓ so I’ve always heavily relied on my on my legal training. ⁓ But I’m also very grateful that I never had to actually be a practicing attorney.

you

Anthony Codispoti (25:19)
So what I

love about this part of the story, Sarah, is how you were able to set your ego aside. I’ve heard lots of examples of this kind of path where somebody makes a lateral move or ⁓ a step down to what feels like a step down. In some cases, it’s a big drop in salary too because they see the vision. They buy into what the longer term opportunity can be. Let me.

go over here and prove myself, let me learn a different skill. In your case, you didn’t have to take a pay cut, but a lot of folks do. And maybe they’re using that framework without putting the language to it that you described earlier. When I look back a year from now, five years from now, who do I want to be proud of? Which decision path is going to give me the opportunity for that? And so you were able to do that, and clearly it’s worked out. Here we are.

Sara Connery (25:55)
Absolutely.

Right.

Anthony Codispoti (26:15)
13 some years later and you went from assistant to VP of development, general counsel, the COO and now CEO.

Sara Connery (26:28)
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I took over for our, my original, boss and co-founder in 2019. July of 2019, I became the CEO of the company. ⁓ and that was a great few months until the pandemic hit, which was, ⁓ became a really exciting year to be a first year CEO, ⁓ of a restaurant group in Hawaii. So.

It was a really challenging time, but again, was one of those times of, I learned and gained so much from that time, and it was tremendously, tremendously challenging on so many levels. Hawaii was not hit hard by the pandemic in the sense that we had tremendous loss of life, but it was hit extremely hard in the sense that

We’re an island community. so Hawaii had to shut down all travel to the island, essentially. We’re a very tourist dependent economy. so from March through, I believe it was November of 2020, if you came to Hawaii, you had to do a two week self quarantine. so people just weren’t tourists weren’t coming to Hawaii, obviously, you know, we were all at home. And so our restaurants had to just

close. You know, on the mainland, you could pivot to doing the to go thing and that worked out fine for a lot of people to get by. ⁓ But for us, that just wasn’t the case. ⁓ know, Hawaii has our islands have about a million, our population is about a million actual humans. But ⁓ on any given day, we’ve got, I think about two to three million visitors who are on the islands. And so

And that’s of course across all the islands. But I say that to say that, you know, the steady population in Hawaii is not what the infrastructure of, you know, restaurants and businesses is built to serve. We have an infrastructure to serve, ⁓ you know, a population that’s much larger than our, you know, the humans who actually live here. And so ⁓ it wasn’t feasible for our restaurants to be open at all during those times.

Anthony Codispoti (28:51)
So you guys shut down.

Sara Connery (28:52)
We couldn’t even,

we had to completely shut down. you know, in my first year as CEO, I laid off every employee in the company, which was a really just gut wrenching and horrible experience. And of course I had the tremendous support of our two owners, you know, throughout all of that. But, you know, I’m the one writing the letters. I’m the one showing up at those, you know, on those zoom meetings to have those conversations with our managers, with our team.

Anthony Codispoti (29:03)
Yeah.

Sara Connery (29:22)
And then of course, figuring out, how do you, as a business, you can’t just lay people off. I mean, you can, but there’s a lot of work that comes with that. And so, you’ve got to do all the unemployment filings all the time and you got to figure out, okay, how do we make sure when the PPP, how do we get PPP money? And then how do we stay afloat with that money? And how do you negotiate with all of your landlords? And how do you make sure that when you are ready to hopefully eventually come back, that people are going to come back.

to you. ⁓ so it was a it was a really challenging year. And there is, as we all know, I mean, there’s so much that is outside of our control at any given time. And I think that that taught me to be grateful for every day. But it also really taught me boundaries with my personal time. ⁓ You know, there’s only so much you can do. And at the end of the day,

you’ve got to do your best and then you need to rest to be able to start again. ⁓ And I learned to protect my, ⁓ I learned to protect my my piece during my time away because I had to to stay sane for everybody else. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (30:38)
And what did that look

like? Is that the meditation that you’re talking about the breath work?

Sara Connery (30:41)
It’s meditation.

It’s going on beach walks. It’s saying, okay, I’m going to actually choose to close my computer by seven o’clock tonight and I’m not going to open it until seven o’clock tomorrow morning, which those are not hours I keep now. I’m much more protective about my time now. But you know, then I really had to, there’s always something more you could do, but at some point it has to be enough for the day. If you’re going to be able to get up and do it again. ⁓

I think, you know, I was how old I was 30. I was 34. That year, so I was still pretty young. I still thank you. Thank you so much. I turned 40 this year, you know, it’s a feels like a big milestone. Yeah. But, you know, I before that time, I think I just pushed, pushed, pushed, you know, it was

Anthony Codispoti (31:22)
still are pretty young by the way.

Happy birth.

Sara Connery (31:38)
go, go, achieve, achieve, achieve more, more, more. And, ⁓ and you burn yourself out doing that. That’s just, it’s not a way to work for longevity. ⁓ and at some point you realize, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (31:51)
So when were you guys able to reopen, Sarah?

How did that process work?

Sara Connery (31:55)
Yeah, so we reopened, it was around Thanksgiving for most of the restaurants and Hawaii still had really rigid restrictions in place. So we were at as restaurants, we were at 50 % capacity for all of 2021. So we were tremendously lucky that everybody wanted to come to Hawaii as soon as they could get out of their houses. But we it was a really different operating environment than we had ever existed in. And we’re we’re big high volume restaurants. And so being at 50 % of our

operating capacity for the health and safety standards was a big challenge. And ⁓ hospitality was a really interesting experience in that era coming out of the pandemic. Everybody was so anxious to be in restaurants, they had also, everybody experienced tremendous stress in their lives during the pandemic. so,

The expectations were extremely high. Tensions were extremely high. ⁓ You you had people coming from parts of the country that they felt masking was offensive. You had people coming from parts of the country where they felt ⁓ not masking was offensive. And everybody was melting into Hawaii where we had pretty high, you know, standards from the government that were outside of anyone’s control. And so it was a really challenging time to try to figure out, you know,

how do you be respectful of your guests and how do you ask them to be respectful of your staff who are also feeling anxious about coming back to work but want to come back to work too? You know, I mean, we all know how challenging that time was, but when you are in a public facing business coming out of a pandemic, when there weren’t vaccines that were widespread yet, that was still felt really scary to a lot of people. ⁓ And so it was a lot.

Anthony Codispoti (33:33)
Ahem.

Yeah, and a lot of staff a lot of I’ve

talked to lot of restaurants, a lot of frontline staff felt like, you know, put in the middle where they’ve got, yeah, one set of customers who are upset that that guy’s not wearing his mask, another group of customers that’s furious that masks even exist. And it’s like, I’m just trying to hear, you know, trying to do my job.

Sara Connery (33:56)
yeah.

Yep.

Yep, and they’re just trying to do their job or just, you know, trying to make it work and trying to make everybody happy. And you just can’t make everybody happy. But so again, it’s kind of one of those times of like, I think I wish we all had a Mel Robbins, let them theory book at that time, because I think it’s like, you got to let them you got to let people be how they’re going to be and let me decide who I want to be back and you know,

But it was really challenging for everybody and challenging for us as leaders, you know, to try to say, you know, make every you can’t always put the guest first in that scenario. And we needed to make sure that first and foremost, we were protecting our staff and then, you know, and treating them with tremendous respect and hopefully let that follow. ⁓ You know, let that trickle to our guests as well.

Anthony Codispoti (34:58)
So now I’d like to hear what makes Handcrafted Restaurants so amazing. And we’ve got to start with the one concept that has, I think, four locations because the name is just so fun. You want to say it. Monkey Pod. What’s the name mean? Where does it come from? And what’s the customer experience like?

Sara Connery (35:12)
Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, it’s what you said at the very beginning, handcrafted restaurants is our mission statement is to master the craft of food, drink and merrymaking with aloha. And that’s what makes us special. Monkey pod kitchen is a really special concept to all of us. And, and monkey pod is a tree in Hawaii. And it’s it’s an umbrella tree. It’s also called a rain tree. And the tree itself is not native to Hawaii, but it thrives in the Hawaiian islands and

We use that as a little bit of an allegory for our two founders, ⁓ Peter Merriman and Bill Terry. And Peter’s one of the founders of Hawaii regional cuisine and ⁓ has been an incredible chef who became famous in Hawaii for saying, you grow it, I’ll buy it to farmers. He was a real pioneer in the farm to table movement back in the eighties. And that’s really carried through the Merriman’s restaurants, but also now on our side and the handcrafted restaurants, which are more high volume and

Peter’s partner, Bill Terry, comes from kind of a more high volume restaurant world and business world. And so they really married those two ethos. And Bill wasn’t born in Maui, but moved here when he was an infant with his ⁓ hippie parents who came to Maui ⁓ in the 70s. ⁓ And so they both, the monkey pod tree, monkey pod is a fun word to say, but the tree itself,

is a non-native tree that thrives here. And the cool thing about that tree is that it has these pods that it drops down. And the pods themselves actually nitrogenate the soil around the trunk of the tree. And so life thrives under the monkey pod tree. And a lot of trees, the shade of them actually prevents grass from growing or other plants. We all struggle with that in our yards, I’m sure. ⁓

But under the monkey pod tree, things actually grow really well. And so we love that, ⁓ that metaphor for saying, okay, at monkey pod kitchen, we want to be a company. want to be a restaurant that makes the whole ecosystem around us thrive. We don’t want to be takers. ⁓ you know, and we want to be. Givers in a way that’s sustainable. So one of our values, we have seven values, but one of them is also sustainable profitability. And, ⁓

I used kind of this analogy for our team during the pandemic, you know, that as we were laying everybody off, which is this, you know, challenging, horrible thing, I was like, look, we’re the monkey pod tree. We’ve got to make sure that this thing can keep giving back and keep working. We’re not the giving tree. We don’t want to chop off our, our branches so that the fruit can’t grow and that we just become a stump because actually that doesn’t serve.

anybody that doesn’t serve our people that doesn’t serve our guests that doesn’t serve our community we want to make sure that we may have to prune back right now but we want to make sure that we can come back fuller than ever and for us the monkey pod tree is a real example of that and it’s a real example of that value of sustainable profitability and for us what that means is looking at the long term and not making short-term decisions so we want to say

you know, hey, we are, we have a local farm out on the west side of Oahu that’s a nonprofit farm and they support kids in getting ⁓ scholarships to go to school. And then the kids who are getting those scholarships also work on the farm. So they learn how to operate the farm while they’re going to school. And it’s this really cool thing for our local community. And so we commit to buying

from them and they grow these, you know, rows and rows of kale for us. you know, sometimes rain comes and screws up that crop and it’s challenging and, you know, you got to figure out how to pivot. But for us, it’s making commitments to, you know, working with our local producers, working with people to make things better and to create ⁓ long-term ecosystems that can all thrive together.

Anthony Codispoti (39:36)
That’s really cool.

Sara Connery (39:36)
That’s

kind of the long-winded way of, and monkey pod is just a fun word to say too. Yeah, we like to have fun. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (39:42)
It’s a fun word to say and hearing how it ties

into the story and the founders and the sustainable movement that you guys are a part of is really cool. So I’ve never been to any of your restaurants. What do I experience when I walk into a MonkeyPod kitchen?

Sara Connery (39:59)
Yeah, great question. So at Monkey Pond Kitchen, whenever you walk in the door, want you ⁓ to see food happening. And ideally, we’d like you to see fire, because that’s really evocative. ⁓ It’s this kind of primal connection to life. And so we do that mostly through our pizza ovens. ⁓ And you can kind of see the flames dancing in our pizza ovens if you’re looking from the doorways.

⁓ We also like you to see or hear live music playing. So we think that live music is a huge part of, ⁓ you know, creating this really special experience. And we care tremendously about our food quality and our beverage quality. ⁓ But we also are really aware that we’re in the experience business. And that’s what makes actually coming to a restaurant special or not is what experience you’re having.

So we do live music between two and four times a day at all of our restaurants. And ⁓ that’s also a way to connect with our community where it’s always, of course, local musicians who are playing. ⁓ We have one musician, ⁓ Isaac, who’s been playing with us since day one at Monkey Pod Koalina. And he’s now put out, I think, four albums of original music. And it’s just this really incredible thing to have these people who’ve grown with us, ⁓ know, whose careers have been

lifted ⁓ alongside our restaurants ⁓ growth. it’s a really special thing for us. And then the other thing that you’re almost certainly going to see when you walk in our restaurants is a tray full of ⁓ Mai Tai’s with honey lily koi foam. So we are probably most well known for our Mai Tai’s and I’m obviously partial, I think they’re.

pretty much hands down the best in Hawaii. And it’s this beautiful ⁓ yellow foam that’s on top of them that we make in-house. So it’s a fun environment. ⁓ We are relentlessly focused on making things from scratch. We make all of our burger buns, our pizza dough, every sauce, everything we make from scratch every day. get local fish that’s of the highest quality. ⁓ And so you can have this incredibly ⁓

thoughtful and ⁓ high quality dining experience, but we think it should be fun. You should be seeing the pizza oven, you should be hearing the live music, and you should be drinking Mai Tai’s and having a great time. It doesn’t need to be pretentious.

Anthony Codispoti (42:32)
So how does MonkeyPod Kitchen compare with your other concepts? And tell me if I get some of the pronunciations wrong. Moku Kitchen, Ooloo Kitchen, and The Beach House.

Sara Connery (42:43)
Yeah, yeah, so both the Beach House and Ulu Kitchen are a little bit more upscale than Monkey Pod is and Moku Kitchen is a little bit more downscale. So Moku Kitchen is our neighborhood ⁓ restaurant and it’s also in Honolulu. ⁓ But the ethos that carries through all of them is that mastering the craft of food, drink and merry making. And so

We always, you know, at every restaurant we do live music, at every restaurant we have our ⁓ signature Mai Tais, and at every restaurant we want you to have this really, ⁓ really high quality dining experience, but we don’t want it to feel alienating or pretentious in any way. Even though at the Beach House and Ooloo Kitchen, your oceanfront dining and you know, it’s a higher ticket.

a ticket average, you’re eating more steak and fish and ⁓ whatnot at those ⁓ locations, but it shouldn’t ever feel, it just shouldn’t ever feel alienating. It should always feel really welcoming and joyful and happy to be there.

Anthony Codispoti (43:56)
wonder if you can think of a specific story or two that illustrate that commitment to the merrymaking. Maybe you saw it come through for a guest experience or for your employees or both.

Sara Connery (44:10)
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think it’s in it’s in the little things that we do every day and then it’s also in the bigger things that we do. So this week and next week, every restaurant is closed a full day for our end of the year employee party. So one of the restaurants we rent boats and they go out on catamarans all day at one restaurant. They rented out a local music venue and had a circus themed. ⁓

party with ⁓ the GM dressed as the ringleader and the staff put on a talent show and they had DJs. ⁓ At one restaurant, I think it was last year, we called it Podchella and they ⁓ rented out a space and had multiple ⁓ artists come and play music and swagged it all out and it was a really fun experience. we do these… ⁓

We do kind of these big things to have fun with our staff and make it an exciting ⁓ environment. But we also really want, and then of course we do great quarterly parties. We do what we call monkey box every day and ⁓ promote a lot of learning. Monkey box are kind of internal cash ⁓ where we’re always giving people monkey box for learning or for going above and beyond for their guests. ⁓ And it just creates this fun environment where ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (45:17)
Monkey Box.

Sara Connery (45:32)
people care about each other and care about ⁓ delivering great hospitality to their guests. And you know, it’s in little things. It’s in figuring, overhearing that it’s somebody’s birthday and bringing a little champagne toast and a birthday pie, which we all know tons of restaurants do that sort of thing. ⁓ But it really does make a difference in people’s day. ⁓

It’s remembering a guest when they come back the next year. You know, we have a lot of guests that are next year. It’s crazy. I don’t know how our servers do it. They are the most amazing people first people. I couldn’t do it, but they are incredible. And, you know, we will have guests who ask for servers by name or servers that will walk over to a table and be like, I served you last year. You know,

Anthony Codispoti (46:03)
Next year, you remember a guest from a year ago?

Sara Connery (46:25)
or send over the same glass of wine they got or whatever it is, you know, just these little things that, ⁓ you know, create this special connection ⁓ for people of, you know, being remembered and being seen and being heard that ⁓ they just, happen every single day. ⁓ And it’s a, it’s a special thing to get to see.

Anthony Codispoti (46:48)
So to pull that off, there’s got to be some kind of a process, a system of how you approach your team, how you recruit folks, how you go through the hiring process with them. Once you find folks that are good, how you hold on to them. What’s the approach here?

Sara Connery (47:07)
Yeah, so we take a really values based approach to hiring. ⁓ You know, we think skills are easier to train than personality. ⁓ And we want people who are enthusiastic about what we’re what we believe in as a company. And when you find people that care about craft and about doing the right thing for their guests and about being incredible crafts people ⁓ and hospitalitarians.

then you are starting at a really good place. So we ask questions in our interviews that try to get at that and try to get at, ⁓ you know, what the words craft and handcrafted mean to people or what inspires them and their lives. ⁓ And try to kind of figure out like, is this the type of person who’s going to be a great teammate, who’s going to be focused on quality for the back of the house and really

great execution and living up to these awesome standards that we’ve set. You know, in the front of house, are they going to be a person that cares about people and cares about making the experience special for every guest they come into contact with? And on all sides, are these people who want to learn and who want to grow? ⁓ We really try hard ⁓ to grow our people from within. And I think right now we have, I think it’s nearly 40 managers.

across our company who’ve been with the company for 10 years or more, which is a pretty cool thing. Yeah. It’s about a third, if not more of our managers that have been with the company for 10 or more years. I was just looking at the list this morning, actually. And so, and a lot of them, most of them started as dishwashers, as prep cooks, as bussers, as greeters, and have worked their way through the ranks. And

Anthony Codispoti (48:38)
What? Yeah.

Sara Connery (49:03)
You I think you can attract great people by being a cool company and by saying you do the things. I think you keep great people by actually doing the things that you say you’re gonna do. And then the other thing that, you know, we can’t pretend isn’t huge is people have to make money, right? Jim Collins in Good to Great and his team ⁓ use what they call the hedgehog concept, which is, it’s three, it’s like a, you know,

Anthony Codispoti (49:15)
Hmm.

Sara Connery (49:33)
tripartite Venn diagram, three interlocking circles. One is ⁓ what ignites passions. One is what can you be the best at in the world? And then the last one is what makes the economics work? And so if you can put together those three bubbles, it’s that that middle point where they all cross is the nexus for your business. And I think for your employees too. And I think as a good business, you need to know

what those, what your answers to those circles questions are and how you answer them on the business level, but also how do you answer them for each of your employees? And so, you know, you can’t keep great employees just by igniting their passions and just by giving them the opportunity to do something that they can be the best at in the world. You also have to make sure that the economics work for them. ⁓ and you know,

we’re all just pretending if we don’t actually look at that piece too. so when we’re looking at that, know, one of the things that we’ve done is, you know, we’re, we’re very blessed to be operating in a place where we have a ton of tourist traffic. And so our restaurants are in great locations and we choose them very strategically so that they stay busy. And when you’re busy, your front of house can make a lot of money because they’re getting great tips because people keep walking in the doors.

But of course you also have to have a great product to stay busy. And there are a lot of pieces that go into that. ⁓ But for the back of house, you know, which isn’t traditionally tipped, we’ve had to figure out how to handle that differently. we years ago, probably ⁓ six or eight years ago at this point, implemented a 4 % service charge that goes on food that goes straight to our back of house. And I know people have a lot of feelings about various service charges.

tips and gratuities right now. But one of the things that is so valuable about that is that as the sales rise and fall, so as sales get really busy and as the back of house team is working really hard to get the food out the door more and more plates in the same amount of time, they’re feeling the benefits of that too. And that instant gratification is really rewarding for people.

Anthony Codispoti (51:57)
Let’s

explore that for a second because I’ve been to restaurants before where they’ll add a service charge in there. And I’m like, well, does that mean that I’m not supposed to tip then? And why is the service charge added on after the fact? Why not just make my hamburger 4 % more? But clearly there’s a strategy here. Let’s walk through that.

Sara Connery (52:15)
Yeah,

there is. you know, you could approach it a lot of different ways. This is the way we chose to approach it. We chose to do it as a service charge on total food sales, not on total sales, but on food sales, rather than just increasing costs for a couple different reasons. ⁓ One of them is that we can treat it like a gratuity and 100 % of that we can give to our staff rather than

paying some of the different fees that come out of total sales with those dollars. So one, we feel like we can make those dollars go farther by doing it that way. Two, it’s that fluctuation in volume that I think is really important. And we could do that different ways on the back end by saying, OK, we’re going to dedicate 4 % of food sale, raise our prices by 4%, and then dedicate that 4 % to this and that.

⁓ it’s a little bit more challenging administratively to do it that way. And this keeps it really, really direct day to day, week to week on exactly what are those amounts that you can isolate very easily and say, okay, our staff was way busier this week and they’re going to get paid more because of it. So it ends up, ⁓ it ends up, we think just being a much more direct, to the back of house.

experience. The other thing that when you just raise your prices, you’re also giving the front of house a raise. And not that the front of house doesn’t deserve a raise. We want our all of our people, all of our teams to make as much money as they can. ⁓ But I think this is one of the interesting things that we see in our industry a lot is that, ⁓ you know, minimum wage goes up. And that’s just a raise for front of house. People think that, you’re increasing minimum wage, all restaurant employees

benefit from that. But really, that’s just the front of house that benefits from that. you know, one of our founders is a chef, and we care a lot about our back of house team and our food quality and getting really great people in our back of house as well. And so, you know, you raise minimum wage, or you raise prices front of house and gets a raise because people are tipping on their total. And we also want our guests to have the opportunity to say, Okay, I was going to give a

20 % tip, but now I’m going to give a 15 % tip because I’m paying 4 % to the back of Halis and I see that right there. That’s okay. And so we want guests to have that awareness of what they’re paying, what that looks like. And again, if you raise prices 4%, then they’re going to tip 20 % to the server on that amount.

Anthony Codispoti (54:52)
and

Sara Connery (55:05)
and then the house could pay the back of house ⁓ from just their normal income, but you’re not creating any sort of wage equity. And one of the things that has just plagued the restaurant industry for a long time is inequity between the front and back of house. You aren’t allowed as a restaurant to just put back of house employees in the front of house tip pool.

Anthony Codispoti (55:19)
Yeah.

Sara Connery (55:35)
if you’re taking a tip credit at all. And so we can’t just say, okay, we’re all taking your 20 % tips and then we’re dividing that. Correct. Correct. so, which consumers don’t know, it’s not anybody’s job to know that, but we have to play by all of those rules. And so if you are the guest and you are choosing to tip 20%, the law is written in a way that says the guest

Anthony Codispoti (55:42)
there’s some law against that.

Sara Connery (56:02)
assumes that they are tipping the front of house staff, the server who was there, you know, providing their experience and the bus or in the greeter, basically the people they saw with their own eyes, you know, the guest thinks that they’re tipping those people, they don’t think they’re tipping the back of house. So you can’t include the back of house is kind of the, the logic on the way that law is written. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a federal. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (56:25)
Is that a federal thing? Do you know? Or is it by state by state? Okay, interesting. Okay,

clearly you guys have put a lot of thought into what’s the right way to do this and lots of different opinions about it. This is the way that you guys have settled on and it’s, you know, you’ve got 40 managers that have been with the company 10 plus years. So that’s like, you’ve got a lot of longevity there seems like something that’s working for you.

Sara Connery (56:32)
Yeah.

I’m for sure.

Yeah.

A lot of longevity and you know, again, there as my grandfather would say there are different ways to skin a cat. But, you know, at some point you just got to decide and that’s what’s worked for us. And so yeah, we’re extremely grateful that, you know, it’s certainly not always perfect. restaurant business is extremely chaotic and there’s some crazy stuff that happens every day. But by and large, you know, we do think that the proof is there in the longevity of people.

Anthony Codispoti (57:16)
So by my count, there’s seven total locations under the Handcrafted Restaurants umbrella. What does the future look like? Any more locations being worked on?

Sara Connery (57:27)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So we have a location that we just started construction on on Maui. So that’ll be another beach house restaurant down on the south shore on Kiyave Kapu Beach. And that one has been a long time coming. had some really, we signed the lease in 2019 and it’s been a challenging experience with the pandemic and changes in the permitting department and permitting laws, et cetera, et cetera. But we’re in the homestretch there. So we’re really excited for that restaurant to open.

⁓ in Q4 of 2026. then, you know, next steps for our company are kind of in the air. We’ve always kind of toyed with the idea of expanding to the mainland, but ⁓ we don’t know if we’re going to do that for sure. Not yet. We’ve looked at some at some sites on the West Coast, but nothing sure yet. You know, it’s I think really challenging as or and exciting as a business to say, okay, what what is our

core and how do we best serve what our purpose is? know, for us, that’s, that by being the best that we can be in Hawaii? Or is that by growing to, to be as big as we can be, um, you know, across the mainland or across other, uh, whether that’s resort markets or, you know, cities. Um, yeah. So we don’t know exactly what the answer to that is, but we are definitely exploring our opportunities.

Anthony Codispoti (58:44)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Connery (58:53)
In the meantime, as we very much have for our history, we are ⁓ pursuing the next location that we think is an A plus for us. So right now that’s focusing on the beach house in Maui and we’re really excited for that to come online.

Anthony Codispoti (59:13)
And you say these are bigger locations,

like what’s the seating capacity?

Sara Connery (59:17)
Yeah, so our smallest restaurant is about 8,000 square feet with a 250 to 300 person seating capacity and our largest restaurant is 14,000 square feet with a nearly 500 person capacity. they’re big restaurants.

Anthony Codispoti (59:37)
What can I even compare that to? I’m trying to think of a restaurant I’ve been to that has 500 capacity.

Sara Connery (59:45)
Yeah, it’s a lot. You ⁓ see those kind of like a Cheesecake Factory size, yeah, like Cheesecake Factory yard house. We take a lot of pride in the ingredients we use and the way we do it, but when we’re looking at what’s our hedgehog concept of what can we be the best at in the world, the way we answer that is the nexus of high quality and high volume.

Anthony Codispoti (59:48)
Is this like a cheese, like a cheesecake factory? Okay. But obviously way better.

Hmm.

Sara Connery (1:00:10)
A lot of people can do high volume restaurants and a lot of people can do really high quality restaurants, but we think it’s pretty special that we can do really high quality at really high volume. I’m obviously ⁓ biased, but I don’t think that there are a lot of players in the market that are hitting the quality that we’re hitting at the volume that we’re doing it in.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:35)
Even you

go back to your sort of Venn diagram speak that those two intersections combining that overlap there of high volume, high quality is very small. Yeah, you’re an elite air. Well, sorry, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to knock out a few things here real quick. If you want to get in touch with the brand, their email address is info at handcraftedrestaurants.com. Excuse me.

Sara Connery (1:00:39)
Right.

It’s a special thing. It’s a special thing. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:05)
info at handcraftedrestaurants.com. Obviously then their website is also handcraftedrestaurants.com so you can learn more about their locations. And if you’re planning a trip to Hawaii, check them out, send me some pictures. I wanna see what this monkey pod place is all about. Also as a reminder, yeah, do you do the virgins for my kids? Yeah, okay, all right. All right, all right. We’re looking for a spring break destination so.

Sara Connery (1:01:18)
Absolutely. Gotta get one of those Mai Tais. ⁓ absolutely. Absolutely. We don’t want the kids to be left out. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:34)
I’m going have to put this in my wife’s ear tonight. ⁓ Okay, so as a reminder for folks, 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 adbackbenefits.com. Finally, if everyone will just take a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you’ll hold a special place in my heart forever. Thank you. Okay, so last question for you, Sarah. A year from now, you and I reconnect because you’re celebrating something big. You’re really happy.

Sara Connery (1:01:34)
Perfect.

Absolutely.

You’re

out in Hawaii. yeah, you’re vacationing with your family. I know. Yeah. ⁓ gosh. I mean, a year from now, for me, the obvious one is getting this next restaurant open. So it’s always, I’m not a parent. I should be very careful about how I use the metaphor, but it’s like birthing a new child. So.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:05)
⁓ Man, that puts a lot of pressure on me to be the big thing that you’re celebrating a year from now. Can we put anything else on that list?

Sara Connery (1:02:29)
You know, we’ve been working on this for six years at this point. We’re right in the middle of building our management team. I’m thrilled the woman who’s going to be the general manager of the restaurant is a Maui girl born and raised, native Hawaiian. She’s been with us since day one at Monkey Pod Kitchen in Wailea. She’s just an incredible person. so we’re really excited to be building the team with her right now.

We’ve been deep in all of the design work, picking out all the kitchen equipment and we just got to some really juicy decisions on tile and colors a couple of weeks ago that I’m excited about. So a year from now, I’m gonna be really, really excited that that restaurant is open and hopefully booming and is everything that we’ve been looking forward to it being for the past six years.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:20)
going to check back in with you and see how that’s coming along. All right, Sarah Connery from Handcrafted 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.

Sara Connery (1:03:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Thanks so much for having me, Anthony. It’s been a great time.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:36)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.