Officially Carbone's Most Wanted

Dinner at The Noortwyck with Maggie Tang, Founder of Loyalist

🚨We’re launching a referral program! Get three referrals to be eligible for an invite to a future group dinner with a food industry founder. Stay tuned for more info. For now, read on to learn about Maggie Tang, what she likes to eat, and how she is helping restaurants better serve their most loyal customers🚨

Good morning everyone. Let’s cut to the chase. If you’re reading this, send help. I’m trapped in the broom closet at the back of the Manhattan Carbone. My hands and feet are bound with bucatini. My eyes are covered with a slice of capicola each. And they’ve got me gagged with a ball of their signature fresh mozzarella. To be completely honest, I don’t even know what I did wrong. Maybe I came in too confident. It’s possible they felt threatened by my rented tuxedo and perfectly coiffed hair. Really anyone’s guess at this point. What I do know is it’s been a couple weeks - and I think I’m starting to get tired of eating cold rigatoni alla vodka.

This newsletter, though, is not about me. Before my inconvenient incarceration in New York’s hottest clubstaraunt, I was actually doing something with my life. Grant and I were taking the city by storm. Shaking hands, rubbing elbows, and cracking jokes with some movers and shakers in the culinary world. Today, I want to introduce you to Maggie Tang - a restaurant tech founder and a generally impressive human being. That’s right, baby. It’s Served Profile Time. Strap in.

The collab you never saw coming!

Going to a restaurant with Maggie Tang can feel intimidating. Having only done it once before, I may be overgeneralizing but bear with me here. As soon as we sat down at The Noortwyck in the West Village, it was clear that we were dealing with a pro. The restaurant is run by two Eleven Madison Park (EMP) alums, chef Andy Quinn and sommelier Cedric Nicaise. Maggie was at EMP too back in 2019 as an operations intern. She’s also staged at Atelier Crenn, worked in strategy at Momofuku, consulted at Bain, and co-created a podcast called Gourmand. Gourmand made the list of Toast’s top food podcasts this year. For a 2022 Wharton graduate, she’s already got the resume of a hospitality industry veteran.

When Cedric came to greet our table, it felt like he and Maggie were long time friends, just seamlessly catching up. She knew about his upcoming trip to Europe, events on Long Island, and maybe even his horoscope for the day. Maggie is good at what she does. And these days, that is thinking about how restaurants operate - with an emphasis on their most loyal guests.

The concept of “restaurant loyalty” has become kind of a buzzword recently. Every fast food restaurant wants me to download their app. Cafes all have punch cards. You know what I’m talking about. I swear one of my buddies has enough loyalty points to buy his own brick and mortar Chick-fil-a. In my opinion, these incentive programs do a decent job of changing behavior. If I’m in between two lunch options, and only one gets me a punch - you best believe I’m heading there. A mediocre sandwich and coffee just hits a little different when you’re getting close to a free cookie. But things like punch cards probably don’t make sense in the world of full-service restaurants. It would be cool to text the owner, though.

Maggie with Sueyoung and Cedric, 2019 (GM & Wine Director of EMP, respectively)

The entire revenue model for restaurants hinges around getting money out of the customer’s pocket and into the restaurant. People who depend on that revenue model know that a free cookie every now and then can buy them visits from yours truly. So that’s why they offer it. Spending money to get existing customers to buy extra stuff (or come more often) is generally more effective than spending money to get new customers to come in the door for the first time. Think about all the takeout menus slipped under your door that you’ve thrown away. That’s a restaurant wasting money on trying to acquire you as a customer, and it’s honestly a desperate look. Not cute. Now try to imagine if a restaurant you already like remembered your name, birthday, maybe even favorite menu items. You’d probably go there even more. Right?

That line of thinking sits at the center of Maggie’s company Loyalist. They’re “looking to bring handshake hospitality to the digital era.” High level, the platform helps restaurants take good care of their already loyal customers and converts the ‘sometimes’ customers into devoted regulars. That line of thinking is also the reason why I’m face down in a puddle of prosciutto runoff.

Maggie has been working in kitchens or restaurants since she was a high school student at the Midland School in California - described by her as an “outdoorsy boarding school.” She first tapped into her passion for hospitality by cooking weekly breakfasts and desserts for the rest of the student body. And has since seen the inside of some of the most impressive kitchens and restaurants in the world. To say she knows a few secrets of the industry would be an understatement. Let me teach you what they don’t want you to know!

The line to get into a hot NYC restaurant

The first thing Maggie said that absolutely blew our minds was that the hottest restaurants that you can never seem to get into - yes the Carbones of the world - often don’t open all their tables up for reservations. They hold some back for VIPs and their best guests. Now I know what you’re thinking. You want to rent a tuxedo, buy some hair gel, and march up to the front of the line at Thompson Street’s finest red sauce joint. Trust me it doesn’t work. The red carpet doesn’t just roll out for everyone who looks the part. You need to actually know someone on the inside. If you’re an everyday normal person, it helps to eat at the restaurant a lot. Become a regular, get to know the staff. If you’re Jay-Z, Timothée Chalamet, or a low key billionaire, you should be good. Staff at the front of the house keep detailed guest notes and are probably Googling everyone who walks through the door. The people on the inside will get to know you instead.

Once you’ve achieved status within the restaurant, the staff will start to open doors for you. Maybe they recognize your name on the reservation list and give you a better table. Maybe they go above and beyond when you let them know you’re celebrating a birthday there. Maybe they give you a phone number that you can text - even if there are no tables showing up on Resy. There’s a whole universe of restaurant-patron relationships that exists outside of the online reservation platforms that we are typically confined to. It just takes some dedication to break in.

Maggie and Chef Lee Wolen during a stage at Boka Restaurant in Chicago

Another eye opening thing that Maggie shared with us was just how difficult it is to create a restaurant that has staying power. She estimated that 80% of restaurants close within five years of their opening. They operate on extremely tight margins and in fiercely competitive environments. In a post-COVID world where input costs are higher than ever and supply chains are still a bit unreliable, restaurants could all probably use a boost. Loyalist wants to be there to help them stick around. I found a stat online that boosting restaurant loyalty by 5% increases profits by 80 - 90%. This is likely because, over time, a given restaurant gets most of their revenue from regulars. One illustrative example: Hermes (not a restaurant) gets 40% of their revenue from the top 5% of their customers. Increases in spend from your regulars get hit with that loyalty multiplier. Elevated loyalty revenue also typically falls straight into profits because there’s no money wasted on the aforementioned takeout menus, fliers, or spammy emails. Maggie is working on an important and valuable proposition in the restaurant world. It’s exciting to hear her talk about it, and you’ll get the full story once she’s officially launched. They are currently in a private beta with 30+ restaurants in NYC and LA. For now, you can stay in the loop using her Substack Tableside.

I would be extremely remiss if I didn’t tell you a bit about the Noortwyck and what we ate there. The food centers around locally grown ingredients, and thus the menu is hyper-seasonal. “Noortwyck” is the Dutch word for “North District” - which is where the restaurant sits in what used to be New Amsterdam. Maggie (surprise, surprise) is a regular here and had tried practically every item on the menu that night. The highlights for us were the parker house rolls, the heirloom tomatoes, the char siu duck, and the BBQ duck breast. That’s right, we double ducked!

The spread at The Noortwyck

Every dish at the Noortwyck was prepared in a way that let the quality of the local ingredients really shine through. A very enjoyable meal all around. We want to take a second to thank Maggie for guiding us through the menu, and for taking us on an adventure into the world of hospitality. Grant and I both learned a ton - and hopefully you did too. Since it wouldn’t be a Served newsletter without it, when Maggie isn’t eating at The Noortwyck, she also enjoys Cote, Via Carota, and Yoshino for a special occasion.

Let us know if you enjoyed this week’s newsletter by liking or commenting. And if you know anyone who works in the food world, we would love to chat with them. See you next time we press send (assuming I get out of Carbone in one piece).

Served,

The Supper Club