Chef Wolfgang Puck's Top Six Business Tips For Entrepreneurs

Even 35 years after opening his restaurant Chinois in 1983, chef Wolfgang Puck still remembers making a major gaffe due to stress. “The first day, we did a party and I was so nervous, I forgot to cook rice. People said, “It's a Chinese restaurant and you don't have rice — what's the matter with you?” And I told them, we are going to eat vegetables, because it’s California,” he laughs.

Puck is no stranger to the business realm: with a vast network of over 100 restaurants and retail operations, catering, cookbook and cookware lines, he estimates his gross at over $500 million per year between fine dining ($180 million), catering ($180 million) and licensing divisions. Yet, like many business owners and operators, he has to overcome nerves over each opening. “I eat constantly when I'm stressed opening a restaurant, especially junk food.” he says. “Even M&Ms, if I see them, just because I'm nervous that nobody is going to show up.”

Chef Wolfgang Puck on evolving as a restaurateur and business tips for entrepreneurs. (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images)

Although those nerves are lessened now due to the support structure he’s built up, Puck has learned some hard lessons over the course of 25 years in business. Here are his top six pieces of advice for entrepreneurs, both large and small.

1. Sometimes, worrying does nothing:

Although it’s natural to agonize over business decisions, especially when it feels like everything is on the line, sometimes things end up working out. Puck recalls the tenseness of opening night at Spago and the subsequent reaction from the public.

“I had run out of money, and we were overdrawn at the bank. I could not sleep. I was waking up throughout the night all sweaty because I had bad dreams about the business failing,” he remembers. “But when we opened the first day, all of a sudden, we were all shocked how busy it got the first night. And then a guy named George Christie who used to work for the Hollywood Reporter came the first week and he wrote, “This is the newest restaurant with a totally fresh idea, so here is the number, and if you don't call now, you will never get a reservation’, and sure enough, the phone started ringing off the hook with all these Hollywood types.”

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