Leveraging Change to Grow in Business
For Jamie Thousand, food has always been in the picture. Growing up in the midwest near Kansas City, Missouri, that meant barbecue. Then, during college visits to New Oreans, it became cajun food. Thousand could never quite remember exactly where he went or what he saw on his New Orleans trips, but one thing did leave a lasting impression: the food. “I just sort of became a student of the cuisine,” he explains, “I always loved to read about it, and the history behind it is super interesting.”
When an appreciation of the mountains and the way “college keeps a town fresh,” eventually brought him to Flagstaff, Thousand brought his dual love of cajun and barbecue with him, but he never intended to open a restaurant.
Barbecuing to Build Business
Upon first arriving in Flagstaff, Thousand was working as a home appraiser. He had previously employed a strategy for building a client base in Phoenix where he and his friends would throw a “client appreciation” event for a mortgage company and cook all the food for the event. This strategy had been so successful that once he relocated, he decided to give it a try again. “I stayed up all night long making ribs and brisket and pulled pork. I even pulled the smoker over to [the company’s] parking lot… I did that several times in town, and then I started getting requests about food.”
Although he felt lucky to have his home appraisal income, Thousand’s thoughts strayed to restaurants. He was paying $500 per month to rent commissary space from a local church when he saw a “for sale” sign on a 250 square foot restaurant space on West Street (where the Tamale Pot has previously been). When Thousand learned that this space was renting for the same amount he was already spending on commissary, the choice was obvious.
The first Satchmo’s location had only enough room inside for a kitchen. Thousand ran catering out of the new space where he would also take orders through the drive through or from walk up customers who would sit at the patio tables out front, covering their food to protect it from dust when wind or a passing car stirred it up. Initially the restaurant was open Wednesday through Saturday with a two hour closure between lunch and dinner so that Thousand could do home appraisals or buy meat and supplies in between. In those early days, he would work around 60-80 hours per week with help from only one employee.
Growing and Diversifying
When Thousand had the opportunity to scale up his restaurant to its current location on Fourth Street, he says, “Everything changed.” Having had no background working in a restaurant, he found himself “inventing” strategies or processes that were commonplace in other restaurants:
“What I found was I would be sitting at home at night thinking about work, and I would be like, ‘I’ve got an idea. I’m gonna make this sheet that people will go into the walk-in cooler and they write down what we have and they do the math and it tells them what we need to order.’ That exists in every restaurant. But I didn’t know that at the time.”
Eventually, through experience and through hiring a staff that was more knowledgeable about restaurants than he was, Thousand got Satchmo’s running smoothly. That was about the time he started thinking about other, related business opportunities.
Today, Thousand has four interconnected business entities. Satchmo’s is the main restaurant and kitchen. Roux 66 is the catering arm with an event space on Steve’s Boulevard (set to reopen this year). Grand Canyon Spice and Food Company is the entity that creates and sells smoked spice blends and supplies them to the restaurant. The most recent addition, Roadside Stove, is a food truck partnership with Mother Road Brewing Company.
Although they support each other and sometimes share staff, each business operates on its own model. This is in part because in order to grow, Thousand’s business(es) needed to diversify. According to him, “There are only certain places you can have more than one of them in town… but I don’t think you can do two Satchmo’s.”
That “Everyone Knows Your Name” Feeling
Even as Satchmo’s and its sister businesses grew and as staff changed over the years, one thing Thousand knew he didn’t want to change was “the culture and the vibe and the feeling of ‘everyone knows your name.’” He even required his front-of-house staff to write names on guests’ paper tickets (while they were still using that system) so that he could use people’s names to better connect with them.
But, Thousand really credits the positive guest experiences and overall good feelings throughout the restaurant to an intentionally cultivated culture that values its employees above all else. He remembers asking during interviews who potential employees thought was the most important person in the restaurant. His answer: “We are. Because, you know what, if we take care of each other, it’s easy when people come in. They feel the vibe of wow these people are actually enjoying themselves.”
To that end, Thousand has prioritized keeping pay competitive and even offering healthcare starting the first of this year to his nearly 30 employees. According to him this helps set his business apart: “You’re gonna get what you pay for, and we should take care of people as much as possible. And I think we’ve always been able to stay a step ahead of most businesses with culture and with taking care of our team.”
Co-opetition in Flagstaff
Part of the reason Thousand’s businesses have been able to thrive in Flagstaff is his own love for the place. “I think what I love about doing business in Flagstaff the most is Flagstaff. It’s the people. It’s the mountains. It’s everything about Flagstaff—even the stuff that makes it really hard,” he tells us, adding that “it’s not horrible that we can drive two hours to the south from two feet of snow and be sitting by the pool… or go a little bit farther and we can put our feet in the ocean.”
Beyond simply appreciating the town’s atmosphere and environment, Thousand has found a kind of support within Flagstaff’s restaurant industry that he refers to as “co-opetition.” For him, “the peer-to-peer in this town… makes Flagstaff one of the greatest restaurant communities to be a part of.” In Thousand’s experience, it is commonplace for restaurants to help each other out, providing each other with everything from catering supplies and ingredients to advice and emotional support when they need it. Especially during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they needed it. Ultimately, Thousand believes it was the idea sharing and support of others facing similar challenges that helped him and his restaurant owning friends get through.
Advice for Business Owners
“I would say when it comes to advice for business, never stick yourself to a strict structure. Be willing to bend,” advises Thousand, “That’s the only reason we’re still here.”
Beyond flexibility, Thousand recommends hiring people that are smarter than you, taking good care of your team, collaborating with your crew and other businesses, utilizing the business resources available in Flagstaff, and being patient, particularly when trying to grow.
Thousand’s final piece of advice: “Just be a good person. That’s kind of where I’m at.”
