Romy’s team; from left to right: Chef Lucrezia Stella, Evan Luis, Adam Waddell, Spencer Choi Schagrin, Mi Kim, Cobi Levy, Michael Hollis. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Courtesy Romy; Misfit Marketing Agency.
Take a seat at Romy, the high-end steakhouse that opened late last month in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, and your first thought probably won’t be of old-school labor organizing. Diners at the self-styled “supper club” can nosh down on a $195 wagyu ribeye or the $72 lobster with sage lemon butter, then top it all off with $150 Kaluga caviar service. (Adding on the lobster fritter will set you back another $25.)
Behind the scenes, though, Romy’s corporate structure is more egalitarian than its top-shelf menu might suggest. Alongside founders Cobi Levy and Will Makris—the restaurateurs behind Chelsea’s Cucina Alba and NoHo’s Zero Bond—five staffers share equity in the venture, including the head chef and sommeliers.
“They’re all partners; they all have equity,” Levy tells Inc. “Everyone gets paid what they get paid, and then as profits are distributed, everyone gets their equity share.”
It’s not a model that will work for every restaurant, Levy adds, but at a smaller scale, he’s finds it works really well.
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“I own other restaurants where it’s not possible because we just have too many people,” the restaurateur and co-owner says. “I can do it because we have 38 seats and we’re highly specialized. At some point, you’re just not going to be able to find enough people to do that and get them all to work together—sort of why a kibbutz works but socialism doesn’t. At scale, things start to crack, but at this scale, we can do it.”
Part of the upside is in employee retention. Levy says that there’s typically 30 to 35 percent turnover in restaurant staff during the first two to three months after opening—which is, perversely, the most important period for a new restaurant. At the same time, he wanted to create a pathway for talented people in the food and restaurant world to level up their careers, and keep people from burning out.
“The barrier to own your own restaurant now is so high,” he says. “If you don’t have access to, probably, $2 million, there’s a zero-percent chance you’re opening a restaurant anywhere near Manhattan. … So I started looking at the alignment of this thinking, ‘I’m going to get the best people. They’re going to support me in building this vision. The vision will be stronger because I have all these incredible people to lean on, and we’re all going to do it together.’”