Q&A: Claire Crowell, A. Marshall Hospitality

A. Marshall Hospitality founder Andy Marshall was officially sworn in as the mayor of Williamson County last week. And now his daughter Claire Crowell is taking the reins of the company.

The restaurant business started with local favorite Puckett's, which has expanded across Middle Tennessee, and now also includes Deacon's New South and Scout's Pub. 

The Post spoke with Crowell to talk about her transition from president to CEO, her history with the business and her plans for the future of the company.

How are you preparing to transition to CEO? How will that differ from your current role?

So I came back as president and was just really getting reacclimated after a three-year absence at the family business. But Andy and I were really working in tandem to run the business. But then when he did decide to run for mayor, I really had to kind of transition rather quickly into more of the CEO-like role because neither of us expected how busy he would be. So, in effect, I do feel like I've been training for the job since he made that announcement, if you will, and more or less doing it. Particularly in the primary season, which was pretty tight, he was doing seven- to eight-plus events a day, so we just had to basically full throttle switch, and I'm really proud that I was able to carve out that time for him and space for him in a way that he felt comfortable to do that.

Have you already taken on a lot of the business operations behind the scenes?

Yes, so we meet regularly, but you know, slowly he's been putting more of those decisions in my lap, if you will, and it can be a little scary and can also be really exciting. It reminds me a little bit of when I took the first GM role that I had when we opened Puckett's in Nashville. I had been assistant manager and I'd really been under his wing the whole time. This is back in 2010. And at some point, I was asking him for everything, like every decision. I was questioning everything. I was in my early 20s, and he just finally looked at me. He said, "I put you in this position for a reason. You can make these decisions." He hasn't had to say that explicitly this time around. I learned that lesson. But it was really bolstering that, "OK, I can do this." And I feel that same way now. You know, I've been in operations before. All my career was in operations, but shifting into more of an executive role has been really fun for me. Maybe a skill set I wasn't really sure that I had until I stepped away to run Hattie Jane's and had an operating team, and then being able to bring that mentality back to A. Marshall.

How have you made the shift from running operations to the broader CEO role?

It is completely a different skill set. When [Andy and I] started Hattie Jane's together — I now have two different partners, Rhonda [Schmitz] and Autumn [Friese], for that — but what he said was, "I want you to learn how to be a CEO," because I'd been director of operations and COO, but I wasn't really fully able to embrace that until I was only doing that. And now I understand why doing both being COO of the family business and CEO of Hattie Jane's at the same time was just completely opposite skill sets. So it's hard for me to turn off the operator brain, but I have a really incredible team and that's really the crux of it — is building a team that is capable of doing the operations and then providing that guidance or vision, direction, just depending on the day-to-day needs, to let them do their jobs well. But it is definitely a mental shift for sure to be able to do that. Couldn't do it without the team I have, though.

As you approach the transition and start to plan for the future, what does the next five years hold for the business?

I'm stepping in during maybe not the best economical situation and climate right now. It's been a hard few years for the hospitality industry. It's been very up and down; this year has been no different. For the last six years, but even the last two years, it has just been a bit of a roller coaster. But what we're doing right now, and what we think about most immediately, is we're looking at the Puckett's brand. I've got a great culinary director, Nick Guidry, [and] Jami Blaney, my director of operations, who's been with the company since she was a host in 2010. We're really looking at the Puckett's brand and going, OK, what can we improve here? And we're in a space right now where we're casually looking at growth, but while we don't have an opening on our plate, what can we strengthen? So we're tweaking some recipes, just really focusing on quality of service, quality of food. Then also keeping an eye on opportunities, because unfortunately, with a bad economy comes opportunities. There are closures happening that could be a potential opportunity in the future for growth outside the Nashville area. Deacon's, I'm really excited about. Nick's doing his first menu rollout under his direction, and we're really shifting that brand to be focused on the new South and being more composed-forward. Steak is still a core part of our menu, but putting the composed dishes on the front end, if you will. Since we've opened in 2017, there have been a tremendous amount of steakhouses that have opened. We were fulfilling a niche, and now we feel like that niche is overflowing. So we're doing a little bit of reinvention there as well.

What elements of the new South food are you most excited about tapping into with the Deacon's menu?

So when we talk about new South, we look at it two ways. It's either traditional Southern dishes, but done in a new way or with ingredients that are unexpected, or it's very Southern ingredients done in a new modern way. Nick gets that just intuitively. He did it with his Pelican and Pig concept and his restaurants. So I'm so excited about this menu. It was the best. We always do a tasting for Deacon's because it is a different menu every time we do a rollout, and it was the best tasting I've sat through for our restaurants, as far as a new menu, so I'm just excited about what that team, under Nick's direction, is going to do.

There's a marinated steak that was one of the best things I've ever eaten, a potato gratin that was beautiful, black-eyed pea fritters, there were stuffed squash blossoms. It's just great. I'm very excited about it.

You mentioned the Deacon's new menu, with Puckett's are you just doubling down on what's there, or is there anything you're reinventing or rolling out there?

So first of all, Nick, I feel like I can say at this point he's one of the best additions to our team that we've made in a while, and because he immediately gets it. He understands what we do at Puckett's, and he understands Deacon's, and he has the capability. Also the team loves him. He's such a good leader, and we were really excited about just the direction and how immediately he meshed with our team. He is obviously really hyper-focused on Deacon's as he launches that menu in the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime, we're also working on Scout's and just updating that menu as well. And then Puckett's, we're doing just some internal tweaks to. This is busy season, meaning nothing that would cause a reprint of the menu, but maybe updating and upgrading existing items, and then looking at maybe Quarter 1 for Puckett's, since it's across eight restaurants, is usually when we do a more substantial update. So that's what we're targeting. If we add anything, take anything away, it's going to happen during that time. I will say one thing that we are talking a lot about is elevating and centralizing the meat-and-three, the history of that, the tradition of that, and being really what we started as.

Is the culinary space where your focus is at?

Yeah, culinary and service. We're working really hard on our training system. So there's all those behind-the-scenes things that make a restaurant tick. That just takes a lot of work, especially once you have multiple units. So I would say we're really focused on strengthening our foundation, so that as the economy swings upwards, we're ready to pounce. We're ready to grow. We're ready to make the most of it, and we don't feel too strained in doing so. We really like to grow organically and in a way that is sustainable.

With Nashville getting more culinary recognition with the Michelin Guide, for example, are you looking at any kind of reinvention or additions to work toward a goal of becoming award-winning or gain any other kind of notoriety?

Obviously we pay close attention to industry news, and I think it's really exciting, and gives Nashville and the South in general the due recognition that is long overdue. So many of our entire nation's food traditions are from here in the South, so that's great. However, and this is going back to my early days and how I was raised by Andy, awards follow what you do. It's never the end goal. It's a pat on the back for the work you've already done. So honestly, sure that would be great, but it's not something that we even discuss as a team, as something we're driving towards. We're really focused on guest experience, from the food, atmosphere, service. We talk a lot about great restaurants have four table legs: It's great food, great service, great atmosphere, and then running a smart business, financially speaking.

Tell me about being Andy's daughter and what it means to have worked up within the company and now work side by side with him.

Yeah, so all three of us, I have a brother and a sister, we were all raised to work. We grew up working. I think our parents did a really great job of raising that work ethic, but also treating us very fairly in terms of no special attention or no special treatment, but also being able to switch quickly into family mode, and we do it constantly. Now I work really closely with my sister Emily. She runs our office and is my executive assistant, as of yesterday, and we innately understand sister mode versus work mode, and we're really good at that. And that's because of the example that we've had from our parents. I did not ever think that I would be in the hospitality industry. I had, I think, four college major changes, and I ended up with a French degree. And it just wasn't on my radar. Hospitality was my career in Nashville, but when we started to open or think about opening beyond Franklin, I thought, "Oh, interesting. Maybe I can be a part of this." And it's been really cool to be a part of every bit of the business. I think that helps me understand the whole picture and all the work that's gone into building the company.

What do you feel are your strong suits as CEO?

I feel like communication and an empathy for our team and a focus on the guest and the experience. Having worked every role — now, could I jump on the line? Probably I'd be very slow and slow everybody down at this point, but I've done it. I've cleaned the restrooms. I've done all those things. So really getting the employee experience as well as the guest experience, I think, is something that is helpful just growing up in the business.

Any final thoughts ahead of the transition?

Well, I'm really proud of my dad. The mayoral campaign was not on his radar. I thought I was coming back for him so that he could retire and travel, and he'll still do those things. But he surprised us all with this campaign. It's been a calling for him, and he sets his mind to something and does it. It's really cool to watch that at this phase of his career he's still doing that, and it's very inspiring. So I'm proud of him.

He leads with a servant's heart. He really sees it as a call to service, and that's the way he's approaching it. And I guess that's another lesson that we were taught too, is that we're providing a service to each other and to other people.