We were lucky to catch up with Summer Knoop recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Summer, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
As a kid in Mid-Michigan, my dad owned and operated his own excavation business, and we lived on a 40 acre farm that had various different fields of hay, crops and trees. So work ethic for me has been baked in from an early age. My siblings and I went to work with my dad often, and when we didn’t go to work with him there was always a long list of chores at home to get done. I can remember hearing his dump truck driving up the gravel road from about a mile away and my sister and I jumping up off the couch to get outside and make sure the last of our stuff was getting done as he was pulling in after a work day. At the time, this lifestyle was an absolute drag, but it did instill in me a direct correlation between attention to detail, hard work and success. Not only did my Dad always have jobs for us to do, he would always check our work to make sure we had done it properly or we needed to do it over. He likes to think chopping firewood, digging holes for trees and working the hay fields were fun family bonding activities, and now that I am older and don’t have to do them everyday, I sort of agree with that sentiment. Once I left home, it was easy to translate that style of “get up and do something with productive with your day” work ethic into my career in restaurants. At least in restaurants I got to clock out and not take the work home with me! Attention to detail has definitely helped me in my career a lot and I learned the value of doing the job right the first time as a kid. As my dad always said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when do you have time to do it over?” and that has really stuck with me in my career.
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?
I am the co-owner, general manager, beverage director, sommelier, server, host and bartender at Cafe Mamo. It’s a small business, so I wear just about all the hats except the chef hat! We are a 30 seat restaurant in Grand Rapids, MI and we offer dishes that are made from delicious, locally grown produce, meat and fish. This restaurant has been a goal/dream of mine since I started working in restaurants at 18 and to be able to work there every day is really special for me. I am probably most excited about the beverage program as that is what I mainly focus on outside of day-to-day operations. We have a 150 bottle wine list that I have a lot of fun curating as well as local beers, and cocktails. Wine has been my passion within the restaurant industry and having completed my Sommelier certification through the CMS while living in NYC, I have been like a kid in a candy store ordering wine for Cafe Mamo. We get new wines in nearly every week and the list is constantly evolving and growing. Sharing a bottle of wine at dinner is a bonding experience that I absolutely love for our guests, and I get to recommend great wines to pair with dinner every night!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Perseverance is definitely key to success for me. I knew how to operate a restaurant, but I did not know how to build one or acquire the permits for one, so when we got started on the renovation process for Cafe Mamo, I was way in over my head. I have always believed that things can be figured out with research and determination, so that’s exactly what I did. I googled a lot of things and sent about a million emails and asked about 2 million questions. I also had a vision and as a 30 year old woman working with a LOT of men in their 50s and 60s who “knew better than me” it was challenging sometimes to stand my ground and persevere with my vision. Patience falls right in line behind perseverance. During the renovation process is also when patience really helped me. Working with the city and state governments to acquire permits and licenses required a lot of patience, teamwork and humility. Furthermore working with the public requires patience every day in the service industry. An incredible amount of patience and grace is required by servers at all times. I believe strongly that restaurant serving is one of the toughest jobs and requires a lot of skill to be good at. Be nice to your servers!!
Teamwork and a team mentality has also benefited me tremendously in my career. Looking out for your teammates and having each other’s backs is crucial to the flow of a restaurant. Holding up your end of the workload is important and if everyone on the team is pulling their weight then not every person has to be absolutely perfect everyday and that to me is a huge sigh of relief. If I am having a bad day, I know I can count on my team to pick up my slack because they know that I will do the same for them on their bad days.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. I listened to this book right after we bought the building that would become Cafe Mamo. I was nervous to tackle a project that had so many unknowns because I had spent my career working in restaurants as a server, bartender or sommelier, but never as a restaurant owner. The first meeting I had with the city planners and zoning board was intense and thankfully I had done just enough research to sound like I knew what I was talking about when in reality I really didn’t. But, after listening to this book and after having such a clear vision of what I wanted I knew I would figure it out and that there was no sense in feeling intimidated or scared to work alongside engineers, architects and city government officials. Sure, I was significantly younger than them and my full time job was as a waitress, but at the end of the day, these people were no smarter than me, and they certainly weren’t going to work harder than me to achieve this goal. Plus, I have always found confidence in having done my research on something, so when I tell you that I have read a significant amount of the Grand Rapids Zoning Ordinance, you know I was on a mission. It would have been really easy to be bulldozed by the middle aged male architects and engineers who would tell me something about my design wouldn’t work, but I needed to know that it wouldn’t work or wasn’t allowed by law before I gave up. This snowballed into me wanting to tackle some of the projects myself because I was realizing that I was just as capable and actually cared a lot more about the end result than the person I was planning to pay to do the job. Once I realized I could figure things out, that gave me the confidence to grind the floors, lay the tile, install and finish drywall and lay bricks to make the restaurant look and feel how I wanted. Through the process, I learned a ton of life skills about how things work and I also learned a lot about myself and I love being able to rely on myself for things.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cafemamo.com
- Instagram: @cafe_mamo_
Image Credits
Kevin Orellana Photography Leigh Ann Cobb Photography
