Marc Glosserman '06
Have you ever had a craving for some mouthwatering barbecue ribs
prepared wood-smoked, Texas-style, by a bona fide pitmaster? Serial
entrepreneur Marc Glosserman wants to bring just that to New Yorkers
with Hill Country, his first foray into the restaurant business.
Centrally located near Manhattan’s Union Square and Flat Iron District,
Hill Country will be a full-service restaurant seating approximately
150 people and featuring live music, a private dining space and an
Austin, Tex.–themed bar. The venue will be New York’s first restaurant
to specialize in authentic, Central Texas–style barbecue and regional
Texas cuisine. Glosserman hopes to secure space for the restaurant,
complete funding in the next few months and open Hill Country for
business by early 2006.
How did Glosserman come up with this new urban cuisine? He explains,
“While in the process of moving to New York from London, where I had
started a broadband telecommunications company, I was visiting
relatives in Lockhart, Tex., and decided to have lunch at Kreuz Market,
my favorite Texas barbecue institution. I spoke to the owner, a
childhood friend of my father’s, asking him if he had ever considered
expanding his operation.” While the owner ultimately wasn’t interested
in expansion, the conversation inspired Glosserman to start researching
the opportunity and working on a business plan for an urban concept
based on the meat markets and butcher shops, similar to Kreuz, that had
evolved into barbecue joints in Central Texas at the turn of the last
century.
“I partnered with some really talented restaurant veterans who helped
me develop the idea, so I decided to postpone a career in real estate,”
Glosserman says. “The management team consists of successful
entrepreneurs and professionals with extensive backgrounds in service
operations, restaurant management, concept development and
franchising.” With a world-class barbecue chef on board, Glosserman
plans to expand Hill Country to other markets after a successful New
York launch and initial growth period.
Glosserman has started three companies in various industries, making
him familiar with the challenges of the start-up process. He says,
“Starting a new business requires a lot of patience and perseverance,
and being in the Executive MBA [EMBA] program has been a wonderful
complement to this experience. Virtually every class I have taken so
far has provided me with something that I can apply to the design of
the business—from developing an optimization model for a barbecue
smoking oven (Decision Models) to working out queuing efficiencies at
the take-out counter (Operations Management) to negotiating an
agreement with my executive chef (Managerial Negotiations).” As an EMBA
student in his third term, Glosserman plans on further honing his
entrepreneurial skills with entrepreneurship classes offered in his
final semester.
Going through the Lang Fund process was also an excellent way for
Glosserman to further develop his business plan and sharpen
presentation skills. Glosserman explains, “In the process of preparing,
I had to learn to condense my message into several minutes. That really
helped me pull out the key components of a year’s worth of research and
development of a business idea critical to the funding effort.”
