Brad Kaemmer: GM trades 'Sin City' for Cincinnati and rekindles his love for food and the restaurant industry

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 26, 2004 by Dana Bowen

Brad Kaemmer, general manager and an operating partner at P.F. Chang's China Bistro in Norwood, Ohio, is a humble guy. When company president Bert Vivian named him star general manager out of 97 restaurant operators across the country, his first response was, "Well, there are an awful lot of great people in the P.F. Chang's family."

Those are the words of a genuine general manager. Kaemmer is quick to turn praise into reaffirmation of the skills and strengths of those around him.

"I owe a lot to the people before me," he says, pointing to Vivian. "He's built such a great restaurant concept by empowering managers to do the best thing for their business. It's an unbelievable infrastructure of support from a corporate level."

Kaemmer wasn't able to grow business his way while he was working in Las Vegas, where he supervised 48 managers and 700 employees as the food-and-beverage manager at the Stratosphere Hotel. With every memo descending from a superior's desk, he felt further and further away from what he loved most about the business--interacting with his staff and his guests.

"When you get to that level, it's more about writing budgets, number crunching, creating forecasts," says the 32-year-old general manager. "I love the business, and I thought, 'If I'm going to invest 70 to 80 hours each week, I want a chance to create my own destiny.'"

P.F. Chang's offered just the equity opportunity Kaemmer was looking for. "Everyone who gets into the business has a desire to own their own restaurant," explains Vivian. "Our friends at Outback took that concept and developed a partnership program."

Vivian notes that Kaemmer, while acting as general manager, also "owns a piece of the business: He makes a capital contribution, and he shares in its successes and its spoils."

Kaemmer grew up in the foodservice industry, following his father's footsteps to a restaurant management curriculum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After graduation he worked in casino restaurant management and frequently traveled to Scottsdale, Ariz., where he observed the rapid growth of P.F. Chang's China Bistro, a publicly held chain of stylish Chinese restaurants founded in 1993.

At the time the company was expanding into the Midwest, and Kaemmer surveyed that culinary landscape and determined that Cincinnati was ripe for the concept. "I saw a need for something different there," he says. There were plenty of established mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants, he explains, but none that offer the relaxed, sit-down ambience and buzzing bar of a P.F. Chang's.

And in a weak economy, when diners may opt to cook at home, P.F. Chang's offered a unique, difficult-to-replicate dining experience. Few kitchens boast a 12,000-Btu wok, let alone a larder of ingredients culled from around the world, he maintains.

Kaemmer started the process of opening Cincinnati's first P.F. Chang's in the bustling Norwood neighborhood. The sleek 120-seat dining room and bar, warmed with earth tones and dramatic lighting, opened in September 2000. Two giant terra-cotta horses welcome the crowd, and massive murals transported them to scenes of 12th-century China. It was an instant success.

"I'll tell you this: If you look at every measurable facet of the business, he's in the top one, two or three," says Rick Tasmen, who is the P.F. Chang's market partner for the Midwest and oversees 16 restaurants, including Kaemmer's. "He's had double-digit sales increases year after year."

Tasmen has watched Kaemmer's business prosper at close range. "He's so passionate about the business, and he's at it all the time, thinking about how to make things better for the employees and the guests."

Brad's philosophy of "continuous improvement," which his employees refer to as one of his mottoes, launched an operational initiative that general managers across the network thank him for: a reservation service he envisioned, tested and implemented.

"We never did reservations," Tasmen says. But after realizing that Kaemmer's computerized system had legs, he brought it to Vivian's attention.

Kaemmer first entertained the idea when his restaurant became so busy that even he and his family--his wife, Amy, and 2-year-old daughter--couldn't endure the long lines. "I'm appreciative of all of our business, and when someone has to wait two hours for a table, I felt I wasn't doing anything appreciative," he laments.

Once the new reservation system had been put in place, guests found that they were able to plan their meals ahead.

"We might have been the first choice for dining in Cincinnati," Kaemmer says. "But we were often skipped over because people couldn't get a seat."

Kaemmer's managers were thrilled, too. "We saw a definite increase in sales," he adds, "and we saw faces again that I hadn't seen in a while."

After a trial basis, the reservation service was rolled out to P.F. Chang's units across the country. Tasmen says it's one of many ways in which Kaemmer's forward-thinking initiatives suit the brand's growth.