So as Janet settles down, I have a question to ask you. Can you list the restaurants you have at the moment on the books with Gusto? Sure. So we have, I opened it as cafe, [ UNKNOWN ] Then Gusto 101, King West area. Pai northern Thai, Kin another royal Thai restaurant, Chubby's Jamaican Kitchen, Felix in Los Angeles, and we're under construction for five more restaurants. So here's the question for all of you how many of you have eaten in one of Janet's restaurants? Here's your audience, they know your food. Wow, okay. I can also put my hand up and ask them the MPW coachella team because we actually merged to get dinner at Ken. So when you have so many restaurants, can I ask the audience, who loves the food at these restuarants and who does? Put your hands up if you love it. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right, for those who've been, who don't love it as much? I think that's pretty obvious. Would they really put their hands up? Eh, they would. It's a pretty honest crowd. Sisters supporting a sister. Eh, but is also a pretty honest crowd. So here's the question You have a loyal fan base in Toronto, you have a loyal fan base in LA now with Philex, where there is a weightless for a while. The party sellers did not believe. How is Philex different to Your entire setup in Toronto. And how do you convince people like Patty that is amazing experience? Well, Patty was a little lukewarm and she told me she was going to LA tomorrow and I said, Well you have to eat at my restaurant Felix and And she was like, yea tell me more like, how good is it? And I said ask your friends because it's a hard restaurant to get into, so when I opened up Felix two years ago Esquire Magazine about three months after we opened said we were the number one new restaurant in all of America, so being a Canadian woman I was just. So proud of myself and the team that we had such incredible accolades. So it's a tough restaurant to get into. We have a wait list of 300 people a night to get into the patty. I got you. Yeah. [ LAUGH ] Getting you in. There you go. So The way you set up your business, the story of it is quite different from the way a lot of businesses I mean in the restaurant industry work. Your strategy is being quite different. Run us through the start, because I know I've read about and we talked about it as well that you took the money that your father set aside for you wedding And put it into your first business nervosa and then you followed a specific path that is not common in the restaurant industry, which is what explain how the success of gusto happens. Well, I was asked to be a partner at Novosa and so I was in partnership with a man who was a, [ UNKNOWN ] for four and half years. And I like to coin that relationship was so destroying. It was an awful, awful relationship And after four and half years of being partners and I used money from an investment I made in my 20s by asking my father to give me money and still not married. Never say never but glad may my father rest in peace but I got the wedding money. Is a smart move. Got to ball, roll in. And the happiest day of my life is when I bought this parter out ., and I decided that point I was going to just do it on my own for a while And took on no partners I didn't take on any financing. I just built a company on my own slowly. I thought the smart idea would be to buy real estate. So I saved my money selling Margarita pizzas, and I bought the corner of your cuddle in bel air and I think it's a very important piece of real estate in Toronto. After I purchased that real estate, I felt that I had a very solid foundation. And from there, that's when I started to go out and buy other buildings and then put restaurants in these other buildings. So I own the majority of the real estate where the restaurants are, and I'm not gonna be purchasing many more buildings. I don't think it's the way to really grow I think my foundation is Solid and i'll just concentrate now on proliferating with restaurants. So explain how the strategy is going to change because at the end of the day this is now becoming a behemoth of an empire five new restaurants to in LA property prices are interesting is a polite way i can say it How do you plan to change the way the company functions? How are you going to raise the millions that this is going to cost? So 5 restaurants under construction each restaurant costing us you know on average. You know give or take about $ 5 million to open up each restaurant self- funded up until this point we'll have 13 restaurants and moving forward. I'm going to look for another way. To grow the company, anyone who want to invest? [ LAUGH ] Anyone know of any private equity companies with unlimited finds? I would probably got to a private equity company, perhaps sell a portion of the restaurant group, and then have access to unlimited funds to grow, because i feel like we're just getting warmed up. You're just getting warmed up with another facet that's changing, which is fascinating for me that the restaurant business. One of the elements in the new business or the new restaurant is going to be cannabis. Tell us a little bit more about how I can eat a meal that's going to be healthy, which is what your entire empire is based on with a heck of a lot of cannabis thrown in. Yeah. So we have a new concept that's opening in downtown L. A.. It's called Gusta green and the focus really is about health and wellness and we truly believe that cannabis is going to play a part in that CBD and cannabis. And right now it's not legal to infuse food with THC or CBD. So the food is infused with adapted genes to help support your health and when it becomes legal we will then infuse the food with THC and CBD, which is really going to be like alcohol is now today. And we do infused dinner parties, private dinner parties now in Toronto. And we will be also catering private dinner parties in LA Infusing. Infusing. Mm- hm. How does that work? You just take THC, you distill it down. You want five milligrams? How do you wanna feel? You wanna feel a little happy or gonna make you feel happy? Is that gonna be on the menu there? Yeah. That's interesting, because it's a fascinating job of balancing Healthy food with what is possibly a new way to look at things. It's a balancing act that you do quite well. You are by Coastal you live in LA and in Toronto, you run business and on both sides. You also somehow managed to balance your work with having a very high profile relationship. How do you do that because it cannot be An easy ride for Janet to be dating, a legend of return up at Tiff, open Tiff with a with an amazing documentary about him and then run back to other restaurants. I know. How do you do that? Life is really exciting right now. With a little title [ UNKNOWN ] I love it. Yeah. So my boyfriend is Robbie Robertson. I don't know if you know him, but he was the lead of the band. And his documentary film opened, which I'm very, very proud of him. And he now did the music score for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. So we go to New York and do that and My life is very full and his life is very full and sometimes I think it's better to have a relationship where both lives are kind of going at the same pace. He's mega famous and I'm not though, so. Do you regret using the wedding money for the restaurants then? [ LAUGH ] Well here's the question for everyone, we've all eaten at the restaurants Any questions from the audience about the very interesting way that Janet's run, her business, built it up. And of course, if anybody wants a table at Felix. Thank you. Hi, so nice to meet you. Scotty Greenwood, Canadian American business council. And I just wanna put this out there for Talking later because I'm on the board of directors of a company called Tilray. It's a cannabis company publicly traded on NASDAQ, and I think we wanna invest in you. Seriously. She found an investor .>> [ APPLAUSE ] This is called sisterhood. Anyone else? Thats awesome. Anyone else either wanna have a question or invest with Janet's company and THC? Well, here's a question right? Wait for the mic. Hey, Paula. I told displeasure we know each other. So I have known Janet when she only had nervosa and I just want to make a comment. So extraordinary proud. Of your accomplishment, and just the way things are going since 20 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. 20 years ago. And in those 20 years, I think people forget when people become celebrities, get on television, judge TV shows, and cooking shows. That there is a whole history that was That was involved in building up that empire. There's another history that you've had possibly access to view, which would be the Me Too movement in the food industry. You very famously love having a clean home. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] And you threw out Mario Batali his books recently. What was the story there? And how do you turn around and say, okay, in my industry, I can be the change, because I've worked from the ground up to build us up. Yeah. I think it's very different when you know, myself being Owning my own company and being a woman, the majority of the leadership in my company are women. We need to Dixon sitting front and center here president of the restaurant group. You know, zero tolerance. You know it's never gonna happen when you have women at the top And you're never gonna have that's just men behaving badly. We don't tolerate it. So it's zero tolerance. And I used to respect Mario Batali and I collect cookbooks, but keeping his Cookbooks it's like bad juju. It's like it just brings me down and it's supporting him. So I have to get rid of that because I don't support that kind of behaviour. But did you see that happen in the 20 years while you were building up the business before you were John Zuccarini. Did you see this happen? Did you Hear about it, did you hear about it from other chefs, from other industry groups, in your own chain? Yeah, I would hear about it definitely in all the restaurants. It's very prevalent in the male dominated industry, of the restaurant business. But definitely zero tolerance in my company. I've never had any incidents of any kind of me too movement. It doesn't make a difference when it's a female leadership team ?. Yeah, the fish rots from the head down. Whatever is happening at the top is going to happen below. So, you set the tone and absolutely zero tolerance. Because it's a heated environment, isn't it? A kitchen Is heated you have all the stress between the front of house and the kitchen in itself. Yeah. How do you balance that if you have a female leader? How's it different from the rest of the industry? It's really hiring great people surround yourself with great people. Surround yourself with people that have the same values, concerns outlooks. And I've never had a minute of this as even a conversation in my company, because I won't tolerate, I don't hire for that I hire the right attitude. And this may sound corny but we run a company based on love. Right we need a wee wee and a lot of meetings saying I love you. Love you too. Does that work? Yeah it really does. I'm just wondering if the front of house is going around saying I love you. That causes another problem altogethe [ LAUGH ] No, it's the right kind of love. Well it's [ UNKNOWN ] It's the right kind of love and people are absolutely key to your your business and that's something that you seem to have learned from family. You can give an interesting family background, your father was Italian Your mother was German. What would your mother say? Because John is one of three sisters and all three of you are extremely successful. If your mom had to look at you now and describe the three of you as a food item that you grew up with, what would the three of you be? Right > Each of you. My my sister, Jennifer. She's a fashion designer out of New York City. She has a brand called flirt a mall. And she's beautiful. She's smart, she's witty, so I think she has many layers to her. So I think my mother would say she's 100 layer of lasagna. [ LAUGH ] How is that. My sister Jackie, who my father brought the first espresso machine into Canada after it was invented. My sister now carries on that business espresso coffee machines. and people think she's really soft, but she's really strong on the inside. So I would say my mother is a she's a tiramisu. Really strong espresso. And I was a child actress and my mother would say I was a ham. But I will say like thin really thinly sliced parachuto though, played a beautiful reshoots and I'm fan of Emily's list parachuto. How's that? I think that's brilliant. I've never heard someone describe themselves as parachuto though but okay. Only Janet can, so thank you Janet. There's a special little announcement that I wanted to make because Janet did something very sweet for our little community. She has a special treat for all of you. So when you leave today, after lunch Gusto 54 special biscotti is going to be gifted as you depart an MPW event. So you have something to snack on your way to work or to the airport. Wherever you're going after this, so thank you Janet for that. Great being here. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Janet Zuccarini Built a Culinary Empire 

Entertainment

The CEO of Gusto 54 Restaurant Group joins Fortune’s MPW International Summit.
