We recently connected with Lauren Speier and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lauren, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
We started Marty’s as a team, and that is what really helped us gain the confidence to take this risk of starting a business. When you have good business partners, it makes everything easier. Our team is made up of our friends and family: we truly are a family business. My husband started the restaurant with me and our good friends. We each have our own unique strengths that we bring to the table for our business. Ryan had culinary experince going to culinary school and working in the kitchen of busy NYC restaurants, including a michelin star restaurant. Working at those restaurants, he was able to build culinary skills as well as learn the importance of using good ingredients. He took those skills to Marty and they worked for weeks carefully crafting the recipes, and finding the right vendors to source their ingredients from. When we met Marty, it was clear that he had the ability to be a great business man. With his experience in the restaurant industry himself, and his ability to always see things from the most logically perspective, he truly made great decisions into forming what Marty’s is today. Marty is one of the hardest working members of our team, and thus he is the name sake! Marty’s wife (our business partner Kevin’s sister) is the one who brought the idea to the table of adding banana pudding to our menu and she came up with the famous recipe. Our business partner Kevin, had grown up in the restaurant industry with his parents being restauranteurs themselves. Naturally, Kevin had a lot to contribute in terms of getting a restaurant started and running. Kevin and Ryan went to college together at Fordham both graduating with finance degrees which have been an integral part of them understanding how to operate a business from a financial aspect. Later on we had an additional partner join to help us with our growth: Our business partner Zi, was Ryan’s best friend from childhood. Zi is one of the most intelligent and kind people we have ever known and it was clear that he would offer great perspective and help our business succeed. Zi came in with an MBA, and his knowledge has helped us sustain our business and make informed financial choices. As far as my own contributions, my main would be my desire and passion for the restaurant industry. I had worked in restaurants for 10 years doing every job at a restaurant possible: waitering, cashiering, cooking, bussing, bartending, hosting etc. I have always loved the industry and part of it was my love for connecting with people. It genuinely makes me happy to share small moments of connection with people on a daily basis. My contribution comes from just that, my desire to connect with others including our customers, community and our team!
A large part of how we feel success is in how our team functions as a unit. Each person who works at Marty’s is equally important and part of our team. Without a good team, you can not have a good business. We do what we can to make each member of our team feel heard and respected. We have deep gratitude towards our staff and we truly love working with them. Our staffs abilities give us confidence to propel forward.
A main key to our confidence is hard work. If you are persistent and do all you can to produce the best product you can, at the best price point you can give, you will have success as a business.
Confidence does not come easily or without struggles. It takes time, grit, and an element of introspection. You have to always have the mind set of “What can i do to make this business better” and never be too proud or stubborn to adjust your business or product.
Our team has regular meetings to discuss growth, customer feedback and ideas of what we can do to make our business function optimally.
Having a business is not the easiest thing to do but it is a career filled with passion. Our passion for food, people and providing quality products truly propels us forward to continue working hard and working to improve every day.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
One element of our brand that we dont talk about enough is how we make sure to provide clean ingredients in all that we do.
We all are people that care about health and work to keep ourselves informed about wellness and nutrition.
Many companies in the US unfortunately use tons of harmful ingredients in their food. For the burger industry, this problem is especially relevant. Many places will fry their food in harmful oils. Many will buy frozen mass-produced products that have preservatives and additives to make them have a longer shelf-life and taste more addictive. Many businesses will add harmful dyes and food coloring to make their products look more appealing.
A main reason i think people love our food so much is because they can not only taste the difference of good quality ingredients, but they can feel the difference too.
A lot of times, people tell me they feel their worst after eating from a fast food chain. People feel bad mentally and physically after eating harmful foods because of the mind-gut connection.
I can go on and on about this topic because i am truly passionate about it. We do not brand ourselves as a health-foods brand, because lets be real: we arent selling kombucha or green smoothies. We are however providing a much more nutrient dense and healthier option of american foods that you can eat without guilt.
We source much of our produce from a local NJ farm. Our eggs are pasture raised and locally sourced. Pasture raised eggs are more nutrient dense than regular eggs. We use 100% peanut oil for our fried foods which is one of the healthiest available oils you can use while also providing great taste. We hand cut and freshly make our fries to order. We dont have some bug basket sitting out of premade fries like most places do. We do not add any coloring or additives to our chicken like most fast food places do which is sadly not publicly known information.
We get our meat delivered daily from Pat La Frieda which is a great quality company. We provide homemade drinks as an alternative to ordering a soda. We make homemade peach tea using 100% natural peach puree, and homemade mint lemonade using only real lemons, real fresh mint leaves, water and cane sugar.
We make our own sauces like our house sauce, spicy house, truffle aioli, cheese sauce, chili sauce etc. We could just go to restaurant depot and buy these sauces premade but we choose to make our own so that we make sure to only use good and natural ingredients.
Despite our products not having a long shelf life, freshness is our focus!
Our fries are not coated in lab-made chemicals like most places do. This means that since our fries are natural, they dont last as long as the unnatural fries. But, we care about quality and health so we make the sacrifices we need to make so that we can provide the best quality at a competitive price point.
We sometimes have to deal with feedback of people saying “the fries need to last longer” and that is frustrating to hear. We have experimented with eveey type of packaging on the market. We even reached out to one of the biggest food-science companies in america asking “how can we make our fries stay firm longer while still being natural?” You know what they came back to us with ? They said “it isnt possible without lab chemicals”.
So we said, oh well! Yes, it would be more ideal if we could make it so that our fries stay hot and firm longer for takeout and delivery. But the price we would have to pay would be the health of our customers and the integrity of our product. So we made the decision of sticking to our natural roots despite the occasional criticism comparing us to unhealthy fast food chains.
Many of our customers are fortunately well informed and they are aware and happy that we use quality ingredients. It gives us such pleasure and joy to see people enjoying our food and choosing us over fast food chains! We have so many enthusiastic customers who come up to us daily saying that they love our food!
We are happy to provide classic american indulgence foods that leave people feeling satisfied and maintaining their health standards.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The 3 skills that would be most helpful were: Culinary knowledge, Financial knowledge and Interpersonal Skills.
When it comes to starting a business, the best knowledge you can get is not from a book but from first hand experiences. Being able to learn and experience every facet of that field will help you master it.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Yes, there are always challenges but our main focus right now is making sure that we sustain our businesses while we grow. We always want to grow and expand and build as much as we can. Growing is very challenging. It requires training and hiring many new people. It requires making sure quality of service and products is maintained despite not always having our own eyes on each worker. At the beginning, it was a lot easier. We (the owners) were all able to congregate at one location so we had eyes on everyone and everything. Now, with multiple locations, we can only each be at one location at a time. So we have to put our trust into our staff, communicate with everyone regularly and make sure to keep our eyes and ears open at all times. We do not shut our phones off when we take a day off, or are on vacation. We always have to be ready and able to solve any problem at any time no matter the inconvenience and that is just businesses! You can not get lazy when running a business.
Every time we open a new location, it means much more work. The machine becomes more and more complex and every moving part needs to be maintained and functioning optimally.
We bring work home with us and honestly despite the hard work we love it. When i wake up in the morning or when we drive we all listen to books and podcasts from other business owners. We are all always reading and focusing on how we can improve. I truly can not see anyone going into this industry without the passion element. You have to love a challenge and strive for knowledge to become better and better.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://MartysNJ.com
- Instagram: @martysnj
- Facebook: MartysNJ
- Yelp: Marty’s
Image Credits
Ryan and Lauren Speier
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
