Zach Sherman (00:10)
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Handling the Heat. This is the show by restaurantequipment.bid, where we dive into how people in the food and hospitality space overcome the pressure and keep moving forward. Today’s guest is Nick McMillan, co-owner of the legendary Golden Steer Steakhouse in Las Vegas, a place that served everyone from the Rat Pack to modern day steak lovers. Nick shares with me how he and his wife, Amanda, stepped in to preserve and evolve this iconic restaurant. From modernizing operations and building a digital storytelling engine,

to launching at home products and now expanding to New York city. It’s a story of legacy, reinvention, and what it means to deliver hospitality at every touch point. Let’s jump in.

Zach Sherman (00:51)
Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining Handling the Heat. Very excited to bring you on and talk through your experience with the ⁓ Golden Steer. But before we get into that, ⁓ what’s something that you’ve eaten recently that has really tickled your fancy?

Golden Steer (01:08)
Well thank you for having me Zach, it’s great to be on.

So something that I have eaten recently ⁓ Well, I guess I would say There’s I have two answers. I live very close to Cafe Pana and It’s always been a ton of fun to go in and eat some of their delicious Creations so that’s been excellent and then we were just at a gelato store

Yesterday morning and I can’t for the lie wish I could remember the name of it, but they had cookie monster crunch, which is a blue chocolate chip and Oreo ice cream that We used to eat when I lived in Chicago and so it was very reminiscent So those have been my a little bit of a sweet tooth lately

Zach Sherman (01:57)
Yeah, a real sweet tooth for a steakhouse guys.

Not what I was expecting, but it’s good to have diversity of flavors coming in. right. Yeah, no, I can empathize with that for sure. So Nick, you the story obviously the golden steer is very well documented. think also, you you all do a really great job of telling that story across all of your brands, but I’m.

Golden Steer (02:06)
My wife rubbing off on me.

Zach Sherman (02:23)
more interested in the story of Nick and obviously Amanda, your wife. So can you start me at the beginning of when you got to Vegas and when you really clicked in with the Golden Steer?

Golden Steer (02:35)
Yeah, my wife and I, I’m originally from Chicago area. My wife and I met in Chicago and we got married in 2018 and I sold the technology off for my previous business in 2018 and my father-in-law called. He had bought the Golden Steer in 2001. So he called and in 2018 said, I need you guys to come back.

Vegas and take over the restaurant or I’m gonna I’m gonna sell it and so mean and I looked at each other and we said well you know it’s such a an icon of Vegas we can’t we can’t let it go at least have to go you know give it give it a year or two and and see what it’s about and I was after the sale I had a little bit of a not compete to

to work out or live through. And so I was like, let’s go do it. So we, and it was gonna be for a year or two and then we’d be onto something else. And so that year started ⁓ March 1st of 2019. And then a year later, of course, the world changed in March of 2020. ⁓ But that was kind of the kickstart to our journey out to Vegas and with the Golden Steer.

Zach Sherman (04:00)
Yeah, And I think, you know, a lot of the people that, that we talked to, ⁓ it’s a perfect storm of things just happen. And then, you know, you really dig your feet in and get it done. So when you were first there, obviously given your background wasn’t as restaurant food service, operationally focused, how did you address that when you were first getting in? Was it more of an observational getting in understanding how a business of this magnitude and

with this legacy ⁓ was working or what was your and Amanda’s approach to that?

Golden Steer (04:34)
Yeah, so a little bit of that. We, in full disclosure, I had, when I graduated college, I had spent nights and weekends for kind of 18 months doing culinary school and then my cousin owned a restaurant in Chicago and I worked in his kitchen for a little bit. So it was about 18 months of nights and weekends doing that. And so a little bit of experience all in the back of the house.

And so that was the limited experience that we had. And so it was a lot of observations. It was a lot of learning. We leaned and continued. We have a tremendous staff that has been in both front house, back house, and at the manager level, folks that have been with us for years. And then in some cases, 20 or 30 years.

So a really good, solid, strong staff. Asked a lot of questions, made a bunch of mistakes and kind of just went day by day. then after, didn’t change anything at all to start with and then slowly just started tweaking around the edges to, we always want to keep the core and the essence of the golden steer the same.

but just looking for small ways that we can improve it. We like to say like 1 % every day. that was kind of how we got started.

Zach Sherman (06:06)
that’s great. And I’m curious, given, you know, with the 18 months of experience in culinary school, and obviously Amanda having partially grown up in the restaurant in particular, were there any mindset perspective shifts you could bring to the table that you felt like were directly applicable from working in more of a technology space to this more, you know, hands-on operational kind of business?

Golden Steer (06:31)
I mean, think some bit, you know, we automated and digitized a large piece of the back office. So the example that we always like to give is check writing. So when we got there, there were manual checks. I think it was something like 1200 manual checks that were being written every year. So we digitized all of that, brought in, you know, bill.com and other FinTech tools to digitize and streamline it.

So that was one piece. But then I think the bigger piece was, which is just a tremendous impact on the business as a whole, is really investing in digital storytelling and social media and finding ways to tell the story of the Golden Steer, the story of the patrons that used to come in and the story of the food in such a way that has been dramatically appealing to

to folks over the last couple of years. would say that’s probably been the, that being very, very comfortable navigating the social world was probably the biggest change and, you know, biggest impact to the business.

Zach Sherman (07:42)
Yeah, I think even on the social media side, on your websites, on the branding of your package goods, I think it’s all very apparent that you’ve spent the time and effort thinking about, here’s this thing that means so much to so many people and meant so much to so many people for years. ⁓ And how do you bring that into the world in today’s day and age where you see something for 20 seconds on your phone, scroll by, and hopefully people stick around for longer on your videos. I know I do when I see them, but.

I think it’s really difficult to take something that is so rooted in this analog world, especially something like a steakhouse that’s, you know, the mob and the rat pack and, know, even going all the way back to the cowboy Western days in Las Vegas and bringing that into the world to as many people as you can through all these channels that we’ve discussed. So.

What was the mentality there? Was it, do we kind of take this and translate it knowing what you knew about modern tools, or was there a lot of differentiating? Here’s what works like on certain channels.

Golden Steer (08:48)
say probably yes to too old. You know there was an element of

Zach Sherman (08:51)
Yeah, sure.

Golden Steer (08:57)
figuring out what is the best way to tell some of those stories of bringing some of those stories to life. You know, we have probably our most requested private room is the mob room because it’s where the mob used to sit and you know, kind of the 70s and 80s when they would come in and there was always stories kind of about, you know, back doors and coming in through the kitchen. But we just kind of surfaced those.

and brought them more front and center. And then I think on the food side, and it took us, it was not something that was, it wasn’t one day we flipped a switch and all of a sudden we had all of these viral videos. It was a little bit of a methodical process of testing, ⁓ testing different shooting styles and content creators before we kind of landed on one that really connected with.

with users. And so it was probably the most apparent is with our lobster tails. know, pre kind of this digital social media renaissance with the golden steer, we didn’t sell a ton of our lobster tails, which was a shame because they’re delightful. And so it was only once we started featuring them more, talking about them more, dipping them in butter, bringing them out on

know, silver platters that it really started to catch people’s eye. And now it’s one of our most popular, most popular items that we sell. And so that’s a really good example, right? Of, it was, it was there. We sold them, you know, prior to us arriving, they’d been on the menu for a while. And we figured out a way to.

you know, bring the, you know, I’ll say repackage them in terms of digital, but also rebuild the menu around it a little bit too, because now one of our most popular dishes that features lobster tail is a surf and turf. It’s our long-horned lobster. So different ways of kind of presenting it on the menu as well.

Zach Sherman (11:03)
what’s really intriguing for me, I’ve spent some time in Las Vegas too. And I think one of the hard parts about working in a location that you really only touch people maybe once, maybe twice a year for your more consistent diners or tourists is how can you keep tabs on them and let them know what you’re doing when they’re not with you? And social media obviously was super important for that, for you all. But I also think…

Obviously bringing that golden steer steakhouse experience home is, you know, the, most critical piece because when I see those lobster tails or when I see, you know, that six ounce filet and the butter on top, want to eat it right now. And I’m sitting in a small apartment in New York city. How can I, how can I actually do that? You know? And I think, um, you know, telling the story is one thing, but really being able to back it up and bring something to the table for.

your diners who, or even people who haven’t had the experience of going to the Golden Steer themselves and want to have that kind of experience at home. So can you talk a little bit about, obviously COVID occurred. That was a big, you know, how do we move through that kind of situation? Would love to talk about you’re telling the story. Well, you’re continuing to develop how you bring that to market on a digital social side. Can you talk now about the, the, package goods?

Golden Steer (12:26)
Yeah, so so COVID of course hits and we we closed the restaurant March 16th of

and we needed to do something and we took a long term view where whatever we were gonna do during the shutdown and immediately after we wanted to…

for something that would have long-term growth potential. And so we started with the selling of steaks. then certainly every, it seemed like virtually every steakhouse in America started doing that as well, which totally made sense. It was a straightforward way to try and grab customers when you couldn’t serve them in the restaurant.

That evolved into, so of course Vegas has a lot of convention traffic that comes through. So all of our private dining canceled, right? As conventions canceled, of course folks weren’t coming in for dinners. So we started to get reach outs and I’m sure that folks remember kind of all the virtual events that went on during COVID. So we did our own iteration, which we called virtual private dining and we would, ⁓ it was largely for corporate clients and we would,

package a three course meal, you know, of our classic. So was our Caesar salad, our ribeye, our creamed corn, our twice baked potato, and our bananas foster. And we would package the ingredients for that. And we would ship it to people’s homes and then we’d all get on a Zoom. And for 90 minutes, we would do a real live cooking class and demonstration where we would, I would walk folks through how to make the dinner. And

One, very tactically, you talked about being in a small apartment, we did, we cooked the steaks all inside, so we seared them on the stovetop with hopefully cast iron or stainless steel, and then finished them in the oven, which was a huge delight to folks, because the number of people that said to us like, wow, I didn’t know I could make a steak this good without having a grill or cooking outside was tremendous. And you can, you can make a tremendous steak on the stovetop and finish it in the oven. So we did that, and one of the things,

We included three things as kind of accoutrements to the steak. Mater de butter, which is still on our menu. Au jus, so we serve a ladle full of au jus over every steak in the restaurant. And then Sergio seasoning. And Sergio had been our lead broiler cook for almost four decades now, 30 plus years. And had developed this seasoning blend that went on every steak in the restaurant. So we’re including the seasoning.

And we get a lot of guests of these virtual private dinners that are saying, hey, can I just buy Sergio’s separately? And after enough of those, it finally got through our thick skulls that, hey, maybe we should offer this and sell this independently. ⁓ Took more people asking than I think we would like to admit. But finally, it got through. And so we productized that. And we launched that in.

Zach Sherman (15:29)
Yeah. ⁓

You

Golden Steer (15:44)
I’ll say either the fall of 21 or the spring of 22. I don’t remember the specific time. But that was kind of our hero product. And from that, it has launched ⁓ a whole seasoning line where we now have, you know, table 40, which is kind of an Italian herb blend. And we have bow tie, which is kind of a lemon with a little bit of spice. And we have ⁓ pepper mafia, which is probably my favorite. So it’s this blend.

of all these different types of peppercorns. So we have green peppercorn and pink peppercorn and black peppercorns and white peppercorns and these super exotic and rare grains of paradise. So it’s perfect for salads and vegetables and steaks and all of those pieces. So yeah, that’s kind of been the evolution for the kind of consumer side of the business.

Zach Sherman (16:27)
Yeah, delicious.

Yeah, so in the initial days of that, where you’re on Zoom or whatever it is, and you’re teaching everybody how to actually cook the meals, and here’s how to actually cook a steak inside in small New York apartments or more suburban kind of houses. But I guess that feels like something you have a lot of control over the experience, right? Because you’re there, you’re wearing your Golden Steer branded polo shirt.

you’re teaching people how to actually cook it and make sure that they can have that, I mean, I don’t want to say authentic, but as authentic of a golden steer experience as you can have in that situation.

How do you do that when people are just asking for the Sergio seasoning or people are just purchasing, you know, a 12 ounce ribeye? How do you make sure that their experience at home when they don’t have the Nick McMillan hand ⁓ at the recipe or whoever was teaching it, ⁓ making sure that they’re cooking things well and they’re using the ingredients as you and the brand intent.

Golden Steer (17:38)
It’s a great question. And it’s honestly, it’s a question that we continue to ask ourselves is how can we, we like to think about it as extending hospitality to the home. And how can we do that? How can we extend the golden steer experience in hospitality in your home? So we do, ⁓ we kind of think about it. And I would say this is like a little bit of kind of the tech product mind for both Amanda and I of.

full customer journey, that full customer experience from when they order to when they receive it and then what they can do with it. And so there was little like my favorite ⁓ kind of

that we added to it was a playlist. So we had a Sounds of the Steer playlist. So when you were cooking your steaks or you’re using your Sergio’s, you scan a little QR code and you can take into Spotify and we have a Spotify playlist that’s, know, Sounds of the Steer. So you can listen to, you know, the Rat Pack, your, a glass of wine and making your steaks. And so… ⁓

It was little things like that. It’s stories on the tins, right? So all of our seasonings have a name and the name has a story to it, right? So we’ve talked about Sergio. So table 40 is our Italian seasoning one. So table 40 is ⁓ the table number that we use amongst the staff to know which table we’re talking about.

for the mob room, right? The room that the mob used to set in the 70s and 80s, right? So that’s table number 40. And so we thought that was a fun way to weave kind of the Italian herb blend into it. Bow tie, of course, is named after the bow ties that the serving staff wears. And so there’s always a story, there’s always a purpose behind kind of the names and ⁓ brand elements that we introduce on that. We try and do it across the brand, but certainly on the CPG side. ⁓

Zach Sherman (19:44)
Yeah, no,

that’s great. And I think the storytelling definitely comes through in all of the different touch points that you have either in person or on social media or in the actual, ⁓ homes of the people that are purchasing these steaks, is, which is great. And now I think, especially with the transition to opening up a new steak house, obviously you’re continuing to develop the Las Vegas experience with the expansions there.

bringing people ingredients directly to their home. And now you’re trying to open up in a equally difficult, high legacy building city, food space, whatever you want to call it. What was the kind of onus of that from your perspective?

Golden Steer (20:23)
you ⁓

so we, for those of you who may not be familiar, we announced in February, I’m sorry, in March that we are very excited to be expanding the Golden Steer. So we’re bringing it to Manhattan and New York City to just absolute historic spot in Greenwich Village at 1 Fifth Avenue. you know, I think there was a couple of pieces, right? I think that…

New York is such a storied city generally. Of course, from a food perspective, it’s second to none, both domestically and internationally for restaurants and for hospitality.

And then there’s of course this link between the Rat Pack and Frank Sinatra and two of his favorite cities and of course the underbelly, kind of the mob, of course ⁓ had a presence in New York just the same way did in Vegas. And so as we started to look at it, we saw a lot of threads ⁓ and commonality between the two. ⁓

And so it really was a natural fit for us. We think and you know, from a, so that’s kind of the story piece. The data piece is we looked at the customer data for both diners in the restaurant, but then also for CPG and outside of Nevada, the next largest group was the East coast, was the New York area.

Right, having that kind of built in clientele and it’s been incredibly ⁓ encouraging and rewarding. ⁓ The number of folks that we’ve spoken to that have been like, know, super jazz that you guys are coming to New York, super jazz that you guys are going into the one fifth space, which has been great. It’s been great to see and has helped kind of reaffirm some of those hypotheses that we had. ⁓

And so we’re excited and you know, there’s no, no better city than, uh, for, as I said, for hospitality than New York. And so we’re, we’re excited to be kind of that first, you know, we’re the, we’re the oldest steakhouse on the Las Vegas strip, always in the same location for 60 plus years. And we see, we talk about this a lot is that we see folks come to Vegas, right? The Gordon Ramsey’s and the Bobby Flays and the Jose Andres’s and they come and they, they bring tremendous concepts, um, and dining experiences to Vegas.

But there isn’t really many that have taken kind of that authentic Vegas, vintage Vegas dining experience and exported it. And so we’re excited for kind of that element of the story as well.

Zach Sherman (23:09)
That is such an interesting concept. And obviously Las Vegas being as transient as it is, both in terms of the people, but also terms of unfortunately the businesses. I think you see a lot of, know, what’s the flavor of the day. And that’s the antithesis of what you all are doing at, the Golden Steer. When you’re coming though, to New York it’s very easy to get swept up in that flavor of the day, for lack of a better term. How do you set your sights on a non-negotiable Golden Steer experience?

in a place that is, you know, it could, it, you walk outside today. It’s different than what you, you walked outside yesterday.

Golden Steer (23:45)
It’s a great question. we, you know, what are, we look at, the way that we think about that question is what are the core pieces of the Golden Stir experience that people love? ⁓ And that’s kind of a service, a service oriented, service first dining experience. ⁓ And you know, that’s table side service, right?

our classic table-side Caesar salad and our flambés. It’s the warmth and you know, what can we do for you style of service that is not ⁓ super formal, I would say, right? It’s not going to, this is not the formalness of a two Michelin star, right? It’s a little more casual, a little more, I would almost all say warm and welcoming. ⁓ And then the classics.

The classics done well. I think one of the reasons that the steer has managed to survive in Vegas for 60 plus years has been doing those things and doing them well. Always serving prime beef. We cut it in house. All so all of our steaks are prime. We cut them all in house, right? So the steak that guests are gonna eat this evening, right? We’re gonna open the doors in a couple of hours. The steaks that they eat.

will have been cut on site today. ⁓ Right, so that classic simplicity done right and done well. And then on the rare case where we miss the mark, we own it and accept it and do whatever we can to fix it that it’s great hospitality. And so I think those are the pieces that.

And of course, know, great drinks and great wine and ⁓ all those pieces. But I think that’s to us, that’s the of the Golden Steer. And it’s fun because, you know, we looked at a lot of places in New York ⁓ and our partners in that were tremendous. A Friend of Chef was the group that we used to find our spot.

One of the things that we love about One-Fifth is the stories. It’s been a restaurant virtually since the building was built back in the 20s. There’s actually a revolving door that’s the main entrance to the restaurant, which was not always for the restaurant. It was actually original when the building was built in a hotel in the 20s. And as far as I know, it’s the only surviving revolving door from the building.

And so it’s got all the same woodwork as the lobby does for the building. And of course the lobby, you know, the building has its own set of history with folks that have lived in it. And the restaurant space has, you know, been the launching pad for a number of just iconic New York restaurant and hospitality folks. And so we’re excited. We’re excited for those stories. think the Golden Steers and Vegas really is a storytelling city. And so we’re excited to bring those stories alive in the space, will

allow us to kind of bring some additional elements that aren’t in Vegas, right, because there’s these new stories, this new space.

Zach Sherman (27:08)
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And I think, you know, based on this conversation, the storytelling, the strong, obviously back it up with the kind of product that you’re bringing to the table or to anyone’s table in your case. And then, you know, an unrelenting desire to make sure that you can achieve your vision is very apparent and what you’ve done Nick. And I’m really excited to see the golden steer in New

Golden Steer (27:32)
We’re tracking for this fall. So hopefully that will continue. There was one other piece I just wanted to mention about how we think about hospitality. And one way I think is phones. ⁓ Managing a phone system can be very hard. We are fortunate to get a large call volume. ⁓ We’ll get thousands per month. And so we think that it’s important.

Zach Sherman (27:34)
Awesome.

Golden Steer (27:59)
that if you’re gonna call in that either you’re able to get connected to someone in real time or that if we weren’t able to get to it that you get a call back as quick as you can. And so we’ve built out our own internal phone team and phone tree to be able to handle that because we think it’s, we talk a lot about and we’ve talked about this during COVID and we’ve talked about the craziness of the times right now.

When folks come into the steer, they come in to kind of forget about what’s going on outside the world, right? They just want to go in, they want to have a cold martini, they want to have a hot steak and a great glass or a bottle of wine. And so ⁓ that’s, they’re coming to forget. And so let’s make sure that that’s a great hospitality experience. And in all of those elements from when they’re trying to make a reservation through dining and post-dining.

Zach Sherman (28:50)
Yeah, I mean, it’s just one of the many touch points that you have with your customers or potential customers. And I’m sure if it’s anything like the at home steak or Sergio seasoning, which I’ve been lucky enough to partake in, I’m sure it’s great. So awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nick, for the time. Great conversation. Really excited for the continual development of the golden steer that you and Amanda are pushing. It’s super great to see.

Golden Steer (29:14)
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for having me on, Zach. It’s been a great conversation.

Zach Sherman (29:15)
Awesome.