Michael Schulson on Staying True, Scaling Restaurants & Redefining Dining

We take Uncorked: Wine-Business-Life on the road to Alpen Rose for a wide-open conversation with chef-restaurateur Michael Schulson. Michael traces his path from his Nana’s matzo ball soup on Long Island to Philly institutions like Le Bec-Fin and Susanna Foo, then to Stephen Starr openings (Buddakan, Pod) and his own breakout with Izakaya at Borgata and Sampan in Center City.

He gets real about nearly shuttering his first spot, the “Stay True” mantra that kept him going, and the operator’s rule he swears by: design first, then service, then food—because dinner is the movie now. We dive into scaling to 15+ restaurants, using analytics (down to dollars per minute per server), forecasting orders, and why his model is asses-in-seats (no ghost kitchens).

There’s plenty of Philly love, some Knicks-Sixers banter, family, YPO/forum lessons, and—of course—wine: Saddlehill Reserve, a 1999 Lafite, and a 2010 Screaming Eagle.

Introduction to Alpen Rose and the Partnership

Jerrold Colton: Welcome to Uncorked Wine, Business, and Life with Bill Green. I'm Jerrold Colton, co-host, and we are at an unusual setting today. We're at beautiful Alpen Rose in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with one of the greatest restaurateurs and chefs anywhere and one of the Philadelphia treasures we have. So I want to let Bill introduce your good friend and business partner, Michael Schulson.

Bill Green: Yeah, this is a unique one. Not only have we been good friends for 15 or 17 years, but we're also business partners. My good buddy Michael Schulson is truly one of the top guys. We met when Michael was executive chef at POD working for Stephen Starr. We then watched him go to Buddakan in New York and open up what I think at the time was the largest fit-out of any restaurant in the United States. It still does like $25 million a year. Michael just did an amazing job.

I'm the beneficiary of just going along for the ride. Our mutual friend asked me to co-invest alongside of him and Michael. I said, "Man, I've been burned in so many restaurant deals already," but this one has just been a terrific investment and a terrific relationship. I think what really is important is that I'm a financial guy at heart. So every month or quarter I'd get the financials for the restaurants and, of course, I busted chops about them. But now that I have some firsthand experience being an operator—oh God.

Michael Schulson: Just think, we've known each other for a while, 15 years as a partner. He says he goes along for the ride. I will share that it's only been for the last two years since he opened his own restaurant that he's actually just gone along for the ride. The rest, he was the ride.

Culinary Origins

Bill Green: So, Michael, for our viewers and our listeners, I really want you to go back because one of the things that just blew me away when I asked how you got into cooking, you said your grandmother taught you how to make matzo ball soup and the rest was history. Go back to that.

Michael Schulson: I grew up on Long Island. My parents were teachers. My Nana came over from the Russia-Poland region, and she was a seamstress when she came over. My Poppy owned a kosher butcher. Food was always in the neighborhood, in the house. I played sports in front of the house, and my Nana would teach me how to cook. She was making kreplach and matzo balls. We were just filling tables of food. She wouldn't teach my mother; she wouldn't teach anyone else how to cook. She said, "Michael has the skill somehow." That was my start in it.

I always had this passion for it. I went to school for architectural engineering because I had two parents that were teachers and I had to deal with a brother who's a lawyer. One day I came home and said, "This shit's not me." This was back in the day before they had computers and all that stuff. They said, "Well, go to school and if you come home with a job, you could go do it and drop out of school." I went in and pulled something off the bulletin board like they used to. Them young'uns don't know, but they had a piece of paper with vertical slits. You pull one off and you had a telephone number on it. I got a job making brick oven pizza, and the rest was history.

Early Career in Philadelphia

Bill Green: The first one was early Susanna Foo in Philly?

Michael Schulson: I started out after I graduated school. I moved from New York to Philly. I got here for food. I started working at Le Bec-Fin. The chef in New York when I was working at Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria had a buddy who was here, and his name was Georges Perrier. He said, "I have a job for you."

Probably at the time it was the start of new restaurateurs in Philadelphia. I remember Julius Erving, who I had the privilege of being a ball boy for the Sixers, came in the locker room one day and he says, "This place Le Bec-Fin costs $100 a person." It was like, oh my God. What would that be now? Probably $500? It's crazy. But that started a trend that changed.

Working with Susanna Foo and Stephen Starr

Bill Green: Then, of course, you started with Starr at some point as well.

Michael Schulson: I did the Le Bec-Fin thing for a year. Across the street was Susanna Foo. As a Jewish kid growing up on Long Island and my parents didn't have a lot of money, Friday night was the only night we ever went out to eat. We went out for Chinese food. I was just fascinated by Chinese food. I saw the restaurant across the street, and I was fascinated by it. I knocked on the door and said, "I'm looking for a job." She pretty much looked at me and said, "We don't hire white people."

Like a week later, I went back and said, "I really want a job here. I'm fascinated by it." She said, "Okay, you could come in and do a trail." I worked for free for a couple of days. She said, "All right, I'll hire you." She gave me a shot and eventually made me a sous chef.

Then Stephen Starr was putting out an ad for an Asian restaurant he was opening in Philadelphia. I never heard of the guy. He had Continental. I met with him, and he said, "Candidly, I'm looking for a white guy who could cook Asian food." That worked to my advantage. I'm white, and I can cook Asian food. We hit it off, and we opened Buddakan Philly together. We just kept on rolling and opening stuff up, and then opened POD.

I lived in Japan for a while. Then he says to me, "Hey, I'm doing New York. Any interest in going home?" I said, "Sign me up. I'm going home." I went back to New York and did that for about a year and a half. It was crazy. It was the biggest opening in the city. I'm blowing up on the Today Show and Good Morning America and the Martha Stewart Show. Somebody came to me and offered me my own show on the Style Network.

Before I left, I started to do stuff on the Style Network, a show called Pantry Raid, and then did Ultimate Cake Off as the judge. Then the Borgata came and said, "Hey, you want to open a restaurant at the Borgata?" I was like, "I've never been to the Borgata, and I don't go to Atlantic City. I'm a Long Island boy." They drove me down. They introduced me to Bobby Flay and Wolfgang Puck and Michael Mina. I'm like, "Damn, this is pretty good. I could see my name on that group of people." So I opened that up. That was Izakaya. That was 17 years ago. That was kind of my first one.

Meeting Investors and Opening Sampan

Bill Green: And I met Bill's dear friend Jeff Harrow when I did a dinner for his wife. She still calls me "cook." True story: Stephen comes to me—I'm at POD at the time—and he says, "I need you to do me a favor. I need you to go to this guy's house. I want to get him as a business partner, an investor. His wife is kind of a pain in the ass. And he's a pain in the ass. Let's just go there and be nice." I said, "Okay, I'm happy to do it."

I went with a GM buddy of mine. We show up, and Amy is like, "Ah, Margo," right? I walk in and this amazing family. Amy's amazing. Her father was there and mother was there, Jerry. It was just awesome. Then I met Jeff and his kids, and we really clicked. They were just the nicest people in the world. Jeff says to me, "Look, if you're ever interested in investing in a restaurant, I'm your guy if you want to build one." I go back to Stephen. He goes, "How'd it go?" I go, "Went really well. I think he wants to invest."

We just kept in touch. After Izakaya, I called Jeff and said, "I think I'm ready to go." He had his forum mates and Bill and some other amazing guys. We opened up Sampan. That was an interesting road. That was the hardest moment of my life. We opened it up in December, 15 years ago. If you think about the media 15 years ago, getting your name out is hard. Today you open something, everyone knows about it with social media.

We opened up, it was December, and it was a snowstorm. I'll never forget. It was empty. Jeff and I are looking at it, I'm taking money out of my bank account, putting it in to fund it, didn't want to go to the guys. I'm like, "Wow, I don't know if we're going to make it." This went on for about four, five, six months.

I was calling my buddies. I spoke with Marc Vetri and Michael Solomonov, great chefs here. They all said to me, "You know what, Michael? We were sleeping on our chairs and we all thought we were going to close and go out of business and not make it. Stick with it." The investors would sit me down and give me some real-life humbling advice. Food is something everyone loves, so everyone has an opinion about it. They were really giving me some tough love.

Bill Green: Oh yeah. Some of it was deserved. A lot, I would say most of it, wasn't. Like, "The sign's too small." Michael was doing things that were just different and not the traditional "put a big sign on your front door." Even here at the beautiful Alpen Rose, it's a speakeasy. You have to ring a doorbell to get in. Someone's face sticks out and says, "What's your name?"

Back to Amy, we really thought that this investment was because Amy thought he was so handsome. Then of course, I looked at him and said, "Okay, she's blind or something." But really, when Sampan opened, we just had wrong management. Michael was doing his thing, but he was one person. He's still running Izakaya. We had a manager that wasn't up to speed. The food was always good. It was just managing the reservations and managing the process and who's the new name in town. It was a year-one learning curve.

Learning from Failure and Design Philosophy

Jerrold Colton: Well, Michael, just on that note, everyone really credits their failures as the lessons that made them.

Michael Schulson: I'll take a quote from Kobe Bryant: "There's no such thing as a failure if you learn from it." I think that's one of the greatest statements ever. It taught me so much: persistence, dedication, passion. Step outside of your blinders. Bill said it, we didn't have the best manager. If I'm down in there trying to run the books and run the kitchen and run the numbers and deal with investors and think I have the right guy, pay attention to it. Listen to what everyone says.

A guy doing my graphics, who worked for Jeff's company called Sparks, came to me and said, "You're all over the place." We came up with this girl. It's called the "Stay True" girl. It was a girl in pink with a little dress, and it said, "Stay True." What it meant to me is: go down doing what you believe in. You can't be everything to everybody. It's become part of our company piece. Stay true to who you are. Stay true to what you're doing. Go down swinging, but you can't be everything to everybody. It's kind of like I always talk about: Do you know what a giraffe is? It's a horse designed by committee. It doesn't work.

Six months later, Sampan started to click, and we started to rock and roll and create a brand. Then it became the other part where I'm no longer in the kitchen anymore. My business partners were a little concerned, like, "Hey, you're a chef, and you do the food, what's this going to look like?" You have to reassure them that it's a numbers game. One of the big things I always told the guys—and they would always laugh at me—is that you have design, you have service, and you have food. I'm a chef. I ask people, "What's most important?" They say food. You're wrong. Then they say service. Wrong. Try again. Design.

Then you go service, and then food. Think about it. You walk into a restaurant, you go, "Holy shit, this place is beautiful." The service is amazing. The food's okay? You're going to go home and tell your wife, "We gotta go check that restaurant." If you go into a restaurant, the food is spectacular, the service is okay, and the design is awful, you feel dirty and gross. You're going to walk out like, "I'm good." You have to put the pieces together. I'm putting food as the top three things in a restaurant, so don't misconstrue that. But you have to understand that to me, you walk in, and it has to be "wow."

The Young Presidents Organization

Bill Green: Michael, you were at my house down the shore, and I was telling you about Young Presidents Organization (YPO). You said the same exact thing that I said when Jeff and Sid said to me I should join. "What do I need that shit for? I don't have time for that. I'm so busy." But I convinced him to explore it. Here's a guy who was running on all cylinders, starting to make money, and now he's asking for advice from some really smart friends who do not have their hands in his pocket. Talk about what YPO has meant to you.

Michael Schulson: It was great. My first introduction to it was when I found Jeff. He said, "I think five of my forum mates are gonna be the investors." I'm like, "Forum mates? I don't understand what this is." It's your group of people who all come together once a month and you tell your deepest, darkest secrets to. It's completely confidential and a safe place.

I met these guys. Bill is a good-looking guy, but his backstory is pretty awesome. Here's a guy who came from nothing. It defines who he is as a person. He's just a gritty guy who says failure is not an option. I was fascinated by these guys. The beautiful thing about those people is that they're friends with like-minded people. I've always looked at every one of them and said, "Hey, send me what your quarterly report is of the best company that you guys have, not the best restaurant. I want to be that or better." That's how we run this business. I'm pretty confident that all the guys get a quarterly report that's as good or better than 99% of their investments.

A Toast and a Wedding Story

Bill Green: I want to take a little break and start the first toast. This is Saddlehill Cellars right over your shoulder there. I just want to toast to you because, man, 15 years partnership. After being burned on a number of restaurant investments prior to Michael, to sit here and be totally optimistic about a restaurant investment that's profitable, that's growing... we opened up Double Knot six months ago in Miami, we're opening up in New York and Delray Beach. Man, we're flying, baby.

Michael Schulson: Typical Bordeaux blend. Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot, and Merlot. Very young. It's nice, right?

Bill and I were just in Napa together. I'm going to tell you a real story. We're at this amazing wedding of somebody he had on the show, Sid Brown, who I love and adore. Bill was agitated because I was sitting next to Sid and Sandy at their kid's wedding, and Bill was relegated to the kids' table all the way down. So it started out that way. Sid had the most spectacular wines at this dinner. Sandy did such an amazing job. We look down and Bill Green has a canned water bottle. He's opening it up, and he's pouring his Saddlehill wine at the table.

So I look at the server. I go, "Come here. Here's 20 bucks. Do me a favor. Go over there and tell him that we see you pouring your wine, and we're gonna lose our liquor license if you bring in wine from the outside." They go down there. He almost had a heart attack. Then Sid gets him even better. Sid sends him an email saying the manager came up to him and said it's a huge problem. The guy's shitting his pants. Finally, afterwards, we told him we were just fucking with him.

Bill Green: I'm going to defend myself a little bit. One of our friends, Michael Forman, texted me and said, "You got anything good?" Because the red wine the night before was Murphy-Goode, which is a nice wine owned by the Jackson family. I had the bottle. I wanted to do a comparison and help my good friend, and I didn't want to put it in their face, so I put it in a water bottle.

Michael Schulson: I will say, Bill and I had a rough start. I was a hotshot chef from New York when I came in, and I had a tendency to be a dick. I wasn't the greatest business partner to Bill, and we butted heads a little bit. I'm really proud of where I'm at with Bill as a friend and a business partner. I appreciate him and all the guys staying with me. I think that's a lot of my success, that I've had such good guys who are okay with recognizing that people evolve.

Business Acumen and Analytics

Bill Green: I really want to touch on all the themes that Michael has thrown out. You start with a background learning how to cook with your grandmother. Then you have this brain that could have made you an architect or engineer, but your passion was cooking. You become this amazing chef, but that's not the same as running a business whatsoever. It is very rare in business where you get somebody analytical who understands finance and is creative and a salesman. Michael is one of the finest chefs in the country, and he gets the business part of it.

Michael Schulson: I honestly don't know where that came from. My parents are teachers. They became principals and assistant principals and have zero business acumen. They were never into the stock market. But for some reason, the financial piece is fascinating to me. The food piece makes it easier for me because I am a chef. I can go on the line and cook the food. You don't demand respect; you command respect. When they know that I could go in there and do it, you command respect.

The financial piece is what I love. We're very big into analytics. We're very big into AI. We're doing things that no restaurant company could do. We break it down in such a way where we could figure out what we need to order without a chef. From the amount of reservations, to the sales of what we normally sell based on cover count, to the recipes, to the forecasting—we are so close to being able to order what we need without a chef.

We know what every server generates in dollar amount per minute. We bring it that far down. So we know whether they should be at an hour and a half turn time, an hour turn time, what the sweet spot is. We take into consideration reviews, comps, and voids. I said to Sid, "Do you know how efficient your drivers are? Do you break it down to minutes?" He's like, "No." Here's a huge company, and here we are just a restaurant company. That's what we pride ourselves on.

Bill Green: Go to the next one. It was slightly more expensive than the first wine. This is a 1999 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. It compares very lovely with the Saddlehill. Kidding on that one. It's probably about 20 times the price.

Michael Schulson: That'll drink, Bill. But I'll drink that dry. It's really, really good.

Expansion Plans and Maintaining Quality

Bill Green: You are opening a few new restaurants. List them for us.

Michael Schulson: We're doing New York by the end of the year. We just opened up Wynwood in Miami, and we're doing Double Knot in Delray as well. So we have three Double Knots outside of Philadelphia that we're moving on.

Bill Green: That touches off so many questions in my head. You start as a chef with one restaurant. You're in the kitchen and doing everything. Now you've got 18 restaurants. Talk to me about how you maintain the quality of food that you want and being able to run all that stuff.

Michael Schulson: It's not easy. The key is people and process. You're only as good as your people. I try and stay out of the operations, and I try and get more involved in the philosophical conversations of, "Okay, this isn't working out. What could we do better? How do we manage this individual in a more professional way to get them to achieve things?"

We put systems in where every single day, we do a chef's tasting. They make three or four items, they take a picture of it, and they send a text to the whole entire group. We could look at it and go, "This doesn't look right." Then we could pop in the restaurants and check it out. But it's all people and process.

Sports Culture: The Knicks and Philadelphia

Jerrold Colton: Michael, let's pivot away from business for a sec. You and I share a love for sports. You're a big-time New York Knicks fan, born and raised.

Michael Schulson: I just want to preface it that of course, the Knicks are close to us. Wes Edens is a Pennsauken/Camden/Philadelphia guy, dear friend running that. Jalen Brunson was a kid in Cherry Hill. So it's amazing to me, the New York Knicks are the most Philadelphia team ever.

If you think about what the Knicks did, it's everything you just spoke about: culture. When Ben Simmons was drafted, I looked at somebody and said, "That guy's going to be a bum." He's never won anything in his life. LSU was terrible. In high school, he never won a championship. Winners win, losers don't win. The Knicks brought in Villanova guys. Why? Because they're winners with great attitudes and culture. Jalen Brunson is not going to tolerate losing. And he's smart about it. Everyone he continues to bring in is that same mind culturally.

Jerrold Colton: You just nailed it. Ben Simmons is one of the most talented people to ever step on a basketball court, and Brunson is not necessarily. But who is the heart, the soul, the brain, the "win at all costs"? Culture.

Defining Success

Jerrold Colton: You have an amazing girlfriend, Sue. She's an entrepreneur in her own right.

Bill Green: Beyonce. Sorry. We love you. He's already made it clear that if this doesn't work out, he's picking Sue. I didn't get the wedding date yet.

Michael Schulson: I get the same question over and over again: "What defines success to you?" I have the same answer every single time. When I can wake up and look in the mirror and know that I'm the best dad to my two boys, I'm successful. It means everything to me. Those two boys are my world. I have Sue in my life, who's also my third everything now. But you're put on this earth as a parent to guide and nurture and love. That's success to me.

Creating an Experience: Dinner as the Movie

Bill Green: This last one is Michael's favorite. I think we had dinner six or seven years ago at Barclay Prime. I brought this 2010 Screaming Eagle.

Michael Schulson: The great thing about me is I don't drink a lot. People think I do. They bring me two or three bottles, and I just take them home and put them in my wine refrigerator. So I have a wine collection that's spectacular from all my friends that I never drink.

Bill Green: Price point wise—my wine is a New Jersey one. It's $60. It's fabulous for the price. The Lafite, when I bought it in 2001, was probably about $180, but it's probably north of a thousand now. And I know for a fact that the Screaming Eagle when I bought it was about $450, and it's worth about $4,000.

Bill Green: Michael, I want to get to philosophy and family. We are sitting at the table that I wind up with my sons for all our family events. Your bone marrow dish is his favorite dish at any restaurant. Tell us your philosophy on how you make everyone's experience here great.

Michael Schulson: My philosophy is this: When we were kids, our parents would go out for dinner and a movie. That was their social scene. Restaurants have now become the dinner and the movie. Nobody's going to a movie anymore. Dinner is the movie. Now parents go out and say, "Oh my God, I checked out this restaurant," and they tell you all about the dining experience. We've become the entertainment as opposed to just the meal.

When COVID hit, I was out to dinner with Sid Brown and Tom Vellios from Five Below. He was telling me about how they're doing satellite kitchens and takeouts and delivery. He asked when I was going to start getting into that. I looked at him and said, "It's not my business model. We're asses in seats. If we don't have asses in seats, how are we going to be successful?" I said, "Tell me how I could deliver Alpen Rose's design, service, and ambiance right in a box to you with our music and our lighting? You can't." So we don't do it.

We recognize that everyone who comes through that door is looking for a special experience, and we need to exceed that special experience. Sometimes we don't, but our goal is to always rectify it so they felt as if a bad experience became special because we fixed it.

One of the big things that I live by right now is that my job as a person is to be better today than I was yesterday. By the time you die, you should be the best version of yourself. Bill has known me for a long time, and he'll tell you very clearly who I was when he first met me and who I am today is night and day.

Family and the Next Generation

Bill Green: How about your sons? Are they chefs?

Michael Schulson: I have one son who's a genius. He's going to Boulder for physics and math. He's a big foodie. He cooks at home a lot. Then my other son is 15. He's at Haverford right now. Everyone calls him Mini-Me. He's me personality-wise, build-wise. He's into pole vaulting. He's doing 14 feet, only been doing it for a year. He takes himself out to Norristown from Center City three days a week to train privately. He's lifting weights, doing cold plunge, won't put any carbs in his body. I've never seen a kid so locked in.

Business Outlook and Private Equity

Bill Green: Michael, what's next for you in business?

Michael Schulson: My number one hobby in the world is the stock market. But if you look at what restaurants are doing right now, the cash flow is like no other business. Private equity companies are eating it up. You're seeing 12 to 15 times EBITDA on restaurant companies. Do I want to sell right now? No. I love what I do. I have great people that I work with. What do I need a PE company for when I could call up Bill Green, Sid Brown, Jeff Harrow, or David Adelman? Maybe in 10, 15 years I'd consider selling, but I don't "go to work." I wake up in the morning and I love it.

Philadelphia as Home

Bill Green: The Schulson Collection, you got to be really proud of your name on it. For me, I love my city of Philadelphia. You are not a Philadelphian originally, but you are now.

Michael Schulson: You know the expression, "If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere"? That is bullshit. If you can make it in Philly, you can make it anywhere. It's a tougher town. Philly does not allow outsiders in very easily. If you're an outsider, good luck. But Philly is my home. My kids were born here. I have season tickets to all the Philly teams. I'm involved in the political climate here. Philly is my baby.

The Mindset of Winning and Losing

Jerrold Colton: Michael, you mentioned celebrating wins.

Michael Schulson: I think part of life is also stopping and reflecting on what you've accomplished. We often don't. The question I always ask in interviews is: "I love to win, or I hate to lose—which is you?" Winning is expected. If I win a game, I walk off and go, "Okay, I won." Losing is just not an option. If I lose, I'm a mess. I used to play a little blackjack. If I lost $20, I was pissed for a week.

Jerrold Colton: It is actually pretty funny because entrepreneurs are inherent risk-takers, and we are gambling on ourselves. I'll take that bet any day of the week. We just had an Eagles victory that was in the last second, and it changes the mood of the entire city for at least a week. Jalen Hurts is 16-1 in his last 17 games, and they're still not giving him all the credit.

Michael Schulson: I was at the game. Second quarter. They just won the Super Bowl. They're undefeated. Big boo. One bad play, one sack—welcome to Philly. It is a tough town.

Jerrold Colton: But you have somehow made it yours and you've made us all better for being here. Thanks for coming.

Michael Schulson: Thanks. I appreciate it. Bill has been trying to get me to do this and I said, "Bill, I love you, man, but I don't go to Jersey." But here we are.

Jerrold Colton: Thanks, Mike. And I'm so glad you asked to do it here because this place is absolutely spectacular. So on behalf of our great guest, Michael Schulson, keep doing what you're doing. And my partner, Bill Green, I'm Jerrold Colton. Thanks for listening to Uncorked. We'll catch you next time.