Relentless Pursuit: Future-Proof Your Business
by David Klemt
This image will make sense when finish the article, I promise. AI-generated image.
“This business is wildly rewarding but also wildly capital intensive.”
That’s a hard truth that anyone in hospitality learns sooner or later. It’s also a quote from Dave Kaplan, from one of a trio of presentations and panels he hosted or co-hosted during Bar & Restaurant Expo 2025.
In this case, Kaplan was addressing an important topic: raising capital, including via non-traditional avenues, to expand or future-proof your business.
It stands to reason that the topic of capital conjures thoughts of opening a hospitality business’ doors for the first time. However, it relates just as much to scaling an existing bar or restaurant.
One has only to look at how Gin & Luck has leveraged a series of capital raises to expand Death & Co. for proof.
Do You Want to Scale?
This is an honest question. Do you want to put yourself through the grueling process of expanding your business? Or do you think it’s what’s expected of you once your business is profitable, so you’re going through the motions?
The rewards, of course, are real: Building a brand and an empire from scratch, satisfying a creative itch and putting a different spin on your existing concept, the energy of the process, boosting revenue for longevity (and potentially a lucrative exit).
Equally real, however, are the demands of scaling your business: Longer hours, new and possibly unanticipated pivots, higher stakes (like a new location failing to catch), and higher costs, to name a few.
So, again, I ask you: Do you even want to scale your business? If you do, do any partners or investors you have want to come with you on the expansion journey? Does your leadership team want to come along on this adventure?
Relentless Pursuit
How do you scale in this industry without losing your soul or shirt?
In two words, relentless pursuit. That’s how Kaplan describes his approach to business. [And that of his business partners, presumably; I don’t want to put words in their mouths.]
In this context, that means, as Kaplan explains, waking up each day “and doing hard shit.” Systematize operations. Have difficult conversations rather than avoid them. Tackle challenging, mundane, and unappealing tasks instead of procrastinating. Learn every day how to lead with intention.
Implement and adhere to relentless pursuit so that the list of hard things shrinks for tomorrow. It’s about compounding effort, not chasing a quick win.
Kaplan isn’t shy or coy about his mindset. In fact, he’s more than willing to share what he’s learned about hospitality, business, and himself.
“I do not wake up thinking, ‘I’m going to be the best cocktail bar in the world.’ I wake up thinking about how I’m going to drive value for my brand, my team, and my investors.”
That mindset shift is powerful. It’s less about ego and more about legacy, and legacy starts not with your concept, but with you.
Start with Self
Before you define your brand, define yourself.
What are your values? What’s your mission as a human, not just as a founder?
Identifying core values, developing brand pillars, and crafting mission statements isn’t something we here at KRG do with our clients just for fun. The most impactful hospitality brands are extensions of the people behind them. That means that if you’re fuzzy about what’s driving you, that lack of clarity will impact your business.
If your team doesn’t know your core values or understand your mission statement, they won’t buy in and take a degree of ownership. That impacts the guest experience directly and affects their perception of your brand negatively.
With strategic clarity in place, everything else starts to lock in: your brand DNA, your aesthetic, your hiring philosophy, your service style…clarity coupled with relentless pursuit ties everything together.
And here’s the part too many operators skip, in our experience: documentation. Not just for investors. Not just for the employee handbook, onboarding process, and SOPs. Do it to plan ahead to scale the business in the future, even if you decide never to expand.
Why? Because scaling without structure is chaos. Creativity actually thrives when boundaries are defined. Documentation creates accountability, culture, and clarity. You’ll need all three just to lead your first business to success, never mind when you undergo the process of opening your second, third, or tenth location.
Who, Not How
Another game-changing mindset shift: Stop asking how and start asking who.
Scaling is about building a team of people who are smarter, more capable, and more experienced in their areas of expertise than you. That means you’re going to have to set aside your ego if you want to build a legacy. It also means putting your trust in others, and building a team you don’t feel the need to micromanage.
Who can you add to your team who won’t add to your workload? Who can you trust to stay on mission while you’re away? Have you built, or are you building, a team of people who help you work on your business, not in it?
Another way to look at it: Are you building a business, or have you just given yourself a job?
One of our goals is to help our clients eventually make themselves less essential to daily operations while remaining essential to the mission. We want every one of our clients to be able to step away from the business for a week at a time without chaos ensuing. That means not feeling the need to check emails, P&Ls, taking work calls, or answering work texts while away from the business.
Actual, real, unplugged vacations.
Trusting people does mean there will be failures. People you trust will make mistakes. You’ll make mistakes. Standards will slip.
But as Kaplan put it, “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying hard enough.”
He views the difference between hospitality and other businesses to the difference between wakesurfing and skateboarding. When someone falls on water instead of concrete, it tends to hurt much less, and recovery often takes less time.
Likewise, when you fall in hospitality, it can be easier to get back up. In Kaplan’s experience, this business forgives the ones who keep going.
Revenue Streams and Resilience
When we talk about scaling, it’s tempting to immediately think of square footage. But sustainable scaling often starts by thinking beyond your four walls.
Are you able to envision opportunities that exist outside your doors?
- Can your brand live in e-commerce?
- Are events like pop-up and takeovers authentic to your brand?
- Is licensing a realistic option?
- Can guests experience your brand outside of your venue?
Going further, new revenue streams should mean more than just generating more revenue. Rather, they should make your brand more resilient. They’re a means to drive brand awareness, and to not just convert first-time guests to regulars but transform them into brand evangelists.
However, it’s important to ensure that a new revenue stream isn’t a distraction from your core offering, but an extension of it.
If your systems are dialed in, your brand values are intact, and your team is empowered, scaling isn’t about copying and pasting—it’s about evolving with purpose.
Last Call
Here’s the truth we don’t hear nearly enough from people who speak at trade shows and conferences: They also fail.
Refreshingly, Kaplan had zero qualms about admitting that during his final presentation of BRE 2025.
“We still fail consistently, and we’re good with that.” As he pointed out, not a single speaker has done anything perfectly, and nobody ever will.
The difference appears to be that Kaplan, his partners, and his team have learned to fail, recover, and move forward.
Scaling a hospitality business with purpose means knowing your “why,” surrounding yourself with the right “who,” and never letting perfection get in the way of pursuing your vision.
You may never feel the urge to scale. However, developing and implementing the systems and teams to do so will only benefit your business.
At the end of the day, this business doesn’t reward perfection; it rewards the people who show up, fall down, get back up, and stay relentlessly on mission.
Image: Microsoft Designer
