GoKawiilHis restaurant almost didn’t make it. Now he’s passing down the playbook that turned it around.
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Key Takeaways He learned more from almost failing than from any business plan.
He sees hospitality as something deeply tied to how people connect, celebrate and support one another.
Now he teaches hospitality the only way he thinks it can be taught: inside a real restaurant.
Seth Gerber made a promise to himself when he joined a Boston-based restaurant group as a co-owner and restaurant director: he wouldn’t play it safe.
After some risky gambles and hard realizations, Gerber found a way to turn a struggling restaurant, Mida, into multiple locations. Now he passes that wisdom to the next generation of chefs and restaurateurs as a hospitality professor at Boston University.
It started when Gerber joined Mida founders Douglass Williams and Brian Lesser. They signed a lease and began developing a concept for the restaurant. At the time, Gerber was just a general manager and figured the role would be temporary. But he became attached to Mida and personally invested in its success. However, it wasn’t smooth sailing at the beginning.
“To be honest with you, when we first opened MIDA, it did not go well,” Gerber said. “Our first six months of operation were extremely challenging. We actually almost failed.”
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