Eric Ripert Quotes

When restaurants start to mature - and usually the five-year time is the time when the restaurant starts to settle in and have its own personality - your job is to grow it.

The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can't trust it to anybody else, because no one's going to love it like you do.

It's not easy to have success with restaurants in different cities, but I like the challenge.

I'm lucky that my restaurant partners are my wife Liz and Doug Petkovic. We opened our first restaurant over 15 years ago. And we didn't open up our second restaurant for almost ten years. So that gave us a good foundation of employees.

I enjoy what I do because it keeps evolving - when I was a cook, I wanted to be a chef de partie; when I was a chef de partie, I wanted to be a chef; when I was a chef, I wanted to be a restaurateur, and now I am a chef entrepreneur. I am still fulfilling my dream.

My undergraduate degree was in art history! Raising money for Chipotle was really my MBA. The money for my first restaurant came from my dad, the second from mostly cash flow. The third was an SBA loan. After my dad invested $1.5 million to open a few more, he suggested I raise the money myself for the experience.

We're a company that's gone through many cycles and evolutions, and every time we have a major success, we double down and use the money from that to fund our initiatives and so forth.

When our folks focus on exactly what is needed to succeed in the restaurants, they should be able to lead themselves to restaurateur level.

I always had a deep respect for people who started businesses, but now I cherish them. There's a lot of anxiety and blood, sweat, and tears that goes into this, and I love it.

I thought, 'If I can create a business to promote martial arts, that'd sure be a lot of fun.'

The likelihood of success drops dramatically when you expand, especially in the services business. And there's a lot of capital that goes into opening another office.

Chipotle was wildly successful, and I thought, 'Well, let me open one more.'

Every business makes big mistakes along the way.

Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.

Delivering a successful presentation could mean landing a major new contract, better prices for your services, or getting the funding you need. Failure can mean lost customers and a business that never gets off the ground.

Capital was always the struggle. I always had these amazing visions. Had this amazing work ethic. Had this amazing work partner in my wife. But I was always struggling for capital. I owe a lot to local banks who were willing to take chances on Jo and I early in our career.

I love creating new things. It's difficult to be creative once a restaurant's open. People want the same dishes. For me, the creativity is in opening a new place and starting a new menu.

In my experience, entrepreneurship tends to be kind of cumulative, like a layer cake. Taking some time away can make it hard to rev up.

Starting a business is similar to an athletic endeavor, like serving a tennis ball. Telling you how to do it is useless. You actually get better through a combination of practice, coaching, and repetitions with money on the line.

I run businesses all around the United States, all around the globe.

Essentially, for me, the whole point of being a chef is to have your own restaurant.

I've been a business person for 30 years. I started my own companies; I've invested in others.

I believe that every business and company takes two years to establish.

Economically, the business development of the greater Hyderabad region has made the city integral to the state.

Having realised that in cooking there was a vast field of study and development, I said to myself, 'Although I had not originally intended to enter this profession, since I am in it, I will work in such a fashion that I will rise above the ordinary, and I will do my best to raise again the prestige of the chef de cuisine.'