Chef – A Business & Marketing “How To” Movie

Every once in awhile we watch a movie and take away something that we can incorporate into our personal or professional lives. Now we’re not claiming to be professional movie critics or anything, but we really enjoyed the movie Chef and thought there were some really good business tips in the movie. Chef was released in 2014 (yea, we know, we need to watch more New Releases), but here’s the scoop on Chef.

After a controlling owner pushes him too far, chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) quits his position at a prestigious Los Angeles restaurant. As he tries to figure out what his next step should be, he finds himself in Miami. Carl joins forces with his ex-wife (Sofía Vergara), best friend (John Leguizamo) and son (Emjay Anthony) to launch a food-truck business. The venture provides a chance to reignite his passion for cooking as well as his zest for life.

Chef is entertaining, family-friendly, and you can walk away with some great marketing tips for starting your own business. Here are some we thought were most important.

Like most great achievements in business, it’s a team effort. Chef Carl relies a great deal on his team to achieve success. First, Carl enlists help from his ex-wife to get a meeting with the owner of a broken down food truck, which he eventually purchases. Next, Martin (best friend) stands by his side and helps gut and rebuild the old rust bucket of a food truck, develop a new menu, and find local sources of fresh ingredients. As the journey continues, Percy (son) is behind the marketing and advertising of the business, staying on top of social media posts and promotions. Chef Carl realised early that he can NOT do it all by himself and his team played a key part in the success of the business.

Percy (son) is the only one with a clue as to how social media play an important roll in the promoting of the food-truck business. Everyday Percy takes a snippet of video from their journey and adds it to his collection. He later takes all these snippets and edits them into a valuable and memorable piece of content.

Percy is the mastermind of using Twitter to post about their location for the day and the specials they are running. Percy uses images, hashtags, and tags people for added traction. It’s because of Percy’s use of social media that caused lines to form outside the food truck waiting for them to open.

One of the main reasons Chef Carl left his job at the Los Angeles restaurant is because the owner did not accept his creative vision. Now that he’s his own boss Chef Carl uses his instincts and creativity to create an entirely new menu with food that is unique and fits his style so he doesn’t have to hide behind something that he doesn’t truly believe in.

We believe every business owner should take this stance. First develop a vision for what you want your business to stand for and then go after it with all you got. Make changes, tweak your offerings, develop your own style and push hard to see it come to life.

Chef Carl takes huges risks in developing the food-truck business. First he quits his job, next he purchases the outdated food truck, finally he takes it on the road with no sure sign of success. This is how every business operates. It’s all a risk and once in a while you’ll have a couple things go your way. If you have the drive to see your vision come to life, the risks are well worth the reward.

We think one of the best conversations in the movie is when Percy almost serves a burnt sandwich to a hungry customer and Chef Carl teaches his son a valuable lesson. Here’s how it went down.

• Chef Carl: “Is this boring to you?”
• Percy: “No, I like it.”
• Chef Carl: “Yea well I love it…everything that’s good that has happened to me in my life came because of this. I might not do everything great in my life. I’m not perfect. I’m not the best husband and I’m sorry if  wasn’t the best father, but I’m good at this and I want to share this with you. I want to teach you what I learned. I get to touch people’s lives with what I do and it keeps me going and I love it. I think if you give it a shot you might love it too. Now should we have served that sandwich?”
• Percy: “No chef”
• Chef Carl: “That’s my son, get back in there we got some hungry people waiting.”

Chef is a great movie. It made us laugh, think, and motivate us to incorporate some of the things food-truck team did in our own lives. Remember to enlist the help of a great team, use social media to your benefit, don’t lose site of your creative vision, and continue to take risks.

Check out Chef under the 2014 section of your favorite movie streaming service.

Thanks For Reading.

DZM