No Bettah than Mo'Bettah

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Late last year, the Mack brothers wondered out loud if they could keep their little Hawaiian restaurant open another month.  Just one year later, they’ve opened a second, larger restaurant, both restaurants are packed to the gills and they’re looking for a third location.  How did they pull it off?  

All it cost them was their soul.


The tiny flagship Mo’Bettah restaurant is situated barely seventy feet from another teriyaki meat joint – and that other place is failing hard-core.  But, today, Mo’Bettah is routinely packed full of die-hard patrons with another long line of people coming in for takeout.  The Mack brothers are making bank, just eighteen months from the day they opened their first restaurant, basically on a whim.

Let’s be clear:  the steak and chicken served at Mo’Bettah is spectacular.  The boys are Hawaiian brothers AND braddahs (pidgin for “guys.”)  They pack a wallop of Aloha Spirit everywhere they go, including their restaurants.  But in this economy and in Salt Lake City, Utah, restaurants are closing by the bucketful.  How can these guys be crushing it?

Your first guess might be that they have a highly-protected secret recipe that brings folks in droves.  Kimo invited me back into the kitchen and he admitted with an authentically perplexed expression, “I have no idea why other places make such bad Teriyaki.  There’s really not much to it.”  He showed me the bulk of their “secret recipe” and I have to admit, it wasn’t very sophisticated (and the Mack brothers are so open, they’d probably tell their “secrets” to anyone who asked.)  There’s something else driving their meteoric success.

Over the past twelve months, I have been personally referred to Mo’Bettah a half-dozen times by different people.  Three of those six “knew the owners.”  It seems like everyone “knows the owners” of Mo’Bettah Steaks.  Most business owners hide behind their business.  I can’t say I know the names of more than two or three owners of the thousands of restaurants where I’ve eaten.  The Mack brothers invest their soul in each restaurant, in every delicious plate and in every customer.  All their success cost them was a heaping side dish of their souls for everyone to see and feel.

No.  Really.  They know hundreds of customers by name and thousands of customers know them by name.  But there’s more to it than being genuinely nice guys who love people.  There’s Facebook.  Back when the Macks were seeing abysmal sales and they were wondering if they’d make it another month, Kalani revved up their Facebook fan page.  All he did was give the page a bunch of tender loving care – uploading special dishes, cheesy videos and regular updates.  Their fans went from zero to twenty-five hundred in a matter of months, and their sales TRIPLED as a result.

According to Kimo, “Facebook saved us.”  

But, I don’t think we should be so quick to write it all up to technology.  Facebook only AMPLIFIES a personal relationship between a business and its customers.  The Mack brothers put their souls out there.  Facebook just cranked up the connection.

I don’t think I’m being melodramatic when I say that I learned something profound from the Mack brothers:  there’s a new era in business coming our way.  It’s an era when people will turn away from “corporation-ey” corporations and gravitate toward warm, human businesses.  And I think that means businesses that push their owners out-front.  People want to connect in exchange for their patronage.  They want to feel the souls of the places where they shop, dine and pay money.  Efficiency and convenience is giving way to connection and authenticity.  In a way, we’re going back to the future – back to a time when we all knew our grocer, our pharmacist and our carpenter.

It’s a brave, new world.  And, if I’m right, it’s a world dominated by micro-business like never before.

Can I get an “Amen?”{jcomments on}