When the power house, grandfather of beer comes to Baltimore, everybody watch out! Guinness Brewery has opened its doors and has been wowing crowds with its one and only stateside location ever since. When you pass through the resort-style gates, you are met with the feeling of being transported to another country. It’s like every detail has been expertly thought out to answer the question: “how can we give our guests an experience only Guinness can produce?” The outdoor seating is plentiful, the staff welcoming, and the sheer magnitude of the facility overwhelming in the most amazing way. So much so, that it almost forces you to reach for your phone in an effort to capture at least some small part of the moment.

Passing through the bustling first floor with the tasting room on one side and the gift shop on the other, you can just feel the excitement Baltimore has in receiving such an iconic brand like Guinness to our backyard. In the tasting room, there are comfortable seats, a ready staff, and small bites as you would expect for a brewery that welcomes guests.

What you may not expect is the fantastic dining experience Guinness has created upstairs — A full restaurant concept called 1817. Named for a year significant in their history. The menu laden with a variety of options including some infused with Guinness, has quite a sufficient offering for the educated foodie palette, and novice alike. The cold crab salad with avocado, mushroom flatbread, and crab bisque are just a few of the favorite must try appetizers that go perfectly with the ale of your choosing. In addition to the well versed food selections, and the standard full size pours, the restaurant cleverly offers sample 6oz. pours, at roughly $3 each, of the brews on tap — a convenient addition that allows you to eat and drink in the same space.

Our Advice:

1. Order appetizers and maybe one entree to share with your table. That way you get to sample lots of different flavors.
2. Drink the Oatmeal Stout! This brew is by far the most complex tasting and presents a fantastic chocolaty finish at the end of the sip. The description on the website says “Our oatmeal stout boasts a beautiful mahogany color (coming from a rand of specialty caramel, chocolate, and roast malts) with abundant tan head, backed up by aromas of dried fruit and caramelized sugar.” Without being too sweet, the brew lives up to its description! Oh! And it was brewed in Maryland (talk about local)! If you are new to Guinness, take a sample of several varietals to see which ones appeal most to you, but Guinness was built on stout, so that is truly where they excel.
3. Make a day of it! Guinness has built such a tremendous facility that it truly stands alone as an experience worth having while visiting Baltimore. Book a tour, hang out on the grounds, take tons of selfies, hit the tasting room for a quick pour, head over to the gift shop for some merch to remember the day, then take your seat in 1817 for some of the best food and service you will have in the City.

1. Speaking of service, and true to their brand, Guinness has recruited a staff who understands the value of maintaining a high standard of care for the guests who choose to dine in the restaurant. Our server Jack was a gem! Knowledgeable, attentive, personable, and excited about the menu. Each of his recommendations were spot on and his commentary about the dishes truly enhanced the experience. If Jack is any indicator of the standard and quality of care you can expect when going to 1817, we should all eat there once a week.

And speaking of once a week. Guinness has created an exciting way to keep guests returning for more. Our fantastic server let us know that a new brew would be coming out soon. So new in fact that it has not quite been named. For now it is going by the barrel aged Chile stout. Yes that’s right, whiskey barrel aged stout infused with tobasco to create a flavor so advanced yet balanced it could only have been pulled off by Guinness.

Guinness Comes to Play Ball on U.S. Soil was originally published in Forks, Corks & Barrels on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The food industry is ruthless. Foodie consumers like none other are more than willing to be vocal about their experiences. If enough of them compile in the public sphere we now call the internet, restaurant concepts can quickly find themselves out of business. That does not mean the chef or restaurant owner is out of ideas.

A formidable restaurateur can evaluate the challenges from their last experience and create a new concept that makes more of an impact than the first was ever equipped for. However! There are a few musts that need to be in place for this new plan to succeed.

The Obvious

Change the name and the logo
This one doesn’t need much explanation. If you survived one failed restaurant concept, you will probably be the first one brainstorming new ideas, so this is not a place we need to spend time. Just make the new name and logo distinct enough that it is not easily confused with the old concept.

Interior decorating
If it is in the budget, hire an interior designer to come in and offer a consultation for how you can make changes to the facility. If a designer is not in the budget, use pinterest to create a vision board of restaurant designs you like. Identify specific elements and aesthetics you like like faucets, bathroom designs, floor tile, and utensils. The whole bit! Because the restaurant is in the same place, you will want to recapture some of the same local and walking traffic that visited the previous establishment. If this group of people gives you another chance, you will want them to know they have walked into a different place.

The Not So Obvious

Hire an entirely new staff if…
In many cases, you will not have to clean house so to speak, but the role of your staff in the challenges with the previous concept will let you know if that is something you need to consider. Read your yelp reviews, see what people harped on. If there are a ton of mentions about poor, slow, or flat out rude service, you know you have need of new staff. Firing is not always pleasant and sometimes not feasible. Regardless of your final decision, it may prove worth the extra effort to hire a customer service training company to conduct a significant amount of training for your existing staffers. After that, but before you officially open, you can evaluate the staff in a monitored scenario to see who stays and who gets released for their next opportunity.

Yes,you are being graded — But only on three things
Food, booze, and service. That’s it! When new and returning guests enter your establishment, regardless of how pretty the decor, the logo, or the view, if those three things aren’t all checked in the 100% column, you may be on the path to repeated mistakes. With that in mind, get input from the demographic you hope to serve. Get your family members and friends together for a group dinner, have your servers serve, your chefs cook, and your bartenders tend. Set the music the way it would be on a Thursday night, and set the lighting the way you think it will be. When it’s over, ask questions, write down the responses, and then incorporate the best (and most repeated) suggestions. After that, do it again, but for the friends and family of one of your employees this time. If more suggestions are made, do it again for another employee.

Yes, this will cost you time and money, but if you work out the kinks on friends and relatives you won’t get dinged in the public sphere, you will expose people to the new concept before it officially opens, and you will make your staffers feel like an important part of the team — all invaluable things for a relaunching a successful concept.

Re-branding a Restaurant After a “Bomb” was originally published in Forks, Corks & Barrels on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Of course I had an exit strategy. Much like all the other engineers I knew at the time (circa 2006), I planned to start an engineering consulting company. I called it my 5 year $100,000 plan. I was going to work as hard as I could to get that $100,000 salary and whatever job title accompanied that. That plan however would never come to fruition.

Instead of building a consulting firm in the comfort of my 9 to 5 job, I quit! Why? Why would I quit when I had the plan all mapped out? Believe me, it wasn’t my first choice, but there was something inside me that was so unsettled at sitting in a cubicle that it would rather jump off the boat into the ocean and risk drowning than remain chained, anchored to a desk working for a salary.

It took me years to realize that it was my purpose calling out to me from the inside. That day I sat in my cubicle and did not speak to another living soul was the day that I quit my cubicle.

At the time I didn’t know having a job that contradicted my purpose would be so excruciating to my soul. Like many people, I never gave much thought to loving what my work. It seemed normal to dislike my job, after all, everyone else was complaining about their job right? The conversation about salary and advancement was at the forefront for almost everyone I knew.

Hind-sight has been my friend processing this. I now know my purpose knew better. It caused me to be uncomfortable, restless even regardless of the duties I was performing, or the location I worked from. Nothing fit. Nothing about this job, this cubicle felt right whether I was willing to admit it or not.

One day enough was enough and I had to walk away (with proper notice of course). That day my purpose was so loud I could no longer ignore it.

Since then, I have started three companies, and helped countless entrepreneurs brand their big ideas to make them viable businesses. My hope is to share as much of my knowledge and story as possible with the world to help just one more person recognize the voice of their purpose, and to help entrepreneurs build businesses based on that purpose.

None of this is to say that my journey from the cubicle to the middle of the ocean has been a simple one. It is only to acknowledge that it is possible to take the impossible step. To jump off the side of comfort and reliability into the deep of purpose and see what comes of it. I understand that my journey is unique and so is yours. My sincere desire is to help people identify, create, build, and live lives they love everyday.

I Quit My Cubicle was originally published in theshaunak on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m sure the first question someone would ask when they see the name of this publication would be: “Why t-shirts?” Why t-shirts and 6" Heels as a name for my personal blog no less? Well, the short answer is because those two things matter to me. I always tell the clients of my marketing company, who are learning to brand their businesses, that being able to use meaningful things to represent your brand is one of the best parts of becoming an entrepreneur. So in essence, I took my own advice.

The T-Shirt Part

In addition to the marketing company dedicated to helping small business owners learn the concept of branding and implement inexpensive strategies to DO branding within their means (yes, that was a plug), I also started a t-shirt business that donates 15% of the proceeds to organizations that support women recovering from domestic violence, homelessness, orphans around the globe. The motto of that company, Truth Tees Apparel, is “sending love around the globe.” So that is what t-shirts represent to me; They are an opportunity for people to wear their support of other people around the world in different situations than their own. The thought is that we can change this world by helping each other a little at a time.

My Background

Technically, I am an engineer by trade. Surprising right? I graduated from the wonderful Morgan State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering the year 2006 (whew! Time flies). So why not engineering? Simply put, it wasn’t for me. I felt a strong pull away from corporate america and after A LOT of hesitation (which included calculating and recalculating the amount of money I was walking away from), I quit. I submitted my notice and that was it! My only plan was to write a book and make handmade greeting cards. Yes, greeting cards. Before marketing, I ran a graphic design company called Put It On Paper that got its start from my passion for greeting cards. One day I got some advice that I should be making business cards instead, so I took it and never looked at a greeting card again. Some days I question whether or not that was the right decision, but I digress…

The 6" Heels Part

I LOVE fashion! Not the runway fashion, or modeling, or anything that most people may consider the industry of “fashion,” but I LOVE the idea of being able to express your creativity to the outside world every day through what you are wearing! That is what fashion represents to me. I love to shop at target, and I will probably never spend more than $39 (with free shipping) on shoes, but I LOVE to wake up and decide how I feel each day and then dress based on what my internal voice says is in store for the day. Of all the shoes I have, my FAVORITE shoes are the platforms with 6" heels! I became KNOWN for wearing these monstrous, clod hopping shoes, so I figured I would use them to represent this other aspect of my personality — feminine fashion. Together, the t-shirts — my businesses — and the 6" heels — my fashion, femininity, and social life (including my love of food), comprise T-Shirts & 6" Heels.

So there you have it! The explanation about the name of the publication, and a little bit about me all in one. If you find yourself here, I hope to share some insight with you about how I became an entrepreneur, how I manage, the tips & tricks I use to keep my sanity in times of stress, and other random things as I work to balance this thing called life.

Why T-Shirts? was originally published in tshirtsandsixinchheels on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.