The Food and Beverage Magazine Guide to Restaurant Success

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank my parents for all the life lessons they taught me. As much as I might've kicked and screamed all along the way, I did learn a lot of lessons about being a self-starter and staying motivated, especially from my father. Dr. Murray Politz was thought of not as an entrepreneur, but as a podiatric surgeon. However, I believe he truly was an entrepreneur, and medicine was his tool and his craft. The practice that he built grew because of his marketing abilities. He acquired great medical expertise, but it was because of his drive and ingenuity as an entrepreneur that he built such a fantastic practice and was able to retire at 53 years old.

I learned from him that it is about being of service. Whether you're talking about a patient in a doctor's office or a customer in a restaurant, it is all about being of service with a smile. My mother, Betty (Cookie) Politz, was a registered nurse, and they started the practice together. Patients would travel to see my parents in the office and chat with them about their family and ours. When I was younger, not a day went by that I didn't come across a patient who told me how they loved my mother's smile or that they used to see me in the office as a baby and how my father fixed their feet. That is the true testament of a great businessman.

I had many friends in the restaurant business, and they became great mentors. Neil Segal and his sons Devon and Noel had a significant equipment distribution business in the ...