Todd Mussman (TM): It’s been like that
every day since.
RT: But we also understood that, if we were
to stay in it and what we like to call “embrace
the suk (for Unsukay),” there’s a good chance
you’ll come out the other side stronger and
wiser. We exist as restaurateurs in uncertainty
every day. You really don’t know who’s
coming and what people are bringing with
them and what they’re going to ask for. And
so we really become experts in logistics
because we’re constantly adjusting our
operations and processes. That’s really what
we were trying to work on with our teams to
prepare for this. It’s going to be scary, but
we’re all in this together. Let’s adjust. And we
knew from the recession as well that, in
business, there’s a natural
selection at play as
Cobb Life (CL): This has been such a crazy
time for restaurants in particular, but you
guys have seen adversity before since you
started Muss & Turner’s right before the
Great Recession. Does this time feel
different or the same, or what did you learn
from that time that you’re taking into this?
Ryan Turner (RT): The Great Recession was
seeing that there was a cliff, feeling that there
was something for a bit. But this was just a
trap door. It was 30,000 feet down. We saw it
happening in Seattle and we saw restaurants
closing there, but it was just like, is this really
going to happen here? And so we had a
mandatory meeting with all of our staff on
Friday, March 13th to talk about,
operationally, what we’re going to do to
adjust and put in hand sanitizer and all this
stuff. But also saying we don’t really know
what’s going to happen and everyone
be prepared.
Todd Mussman, Ryan Turner
and Chris Hall, the three
owners of Unsukay
restaurant group
JULY 2020 | COBB LIFE 27