Tatiana Ettensberger's Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant with Your Best Friend

From Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast · 00:13:01

Show by Darin Bresnitz

“A partnership is also so much about having your own little parts of the restaurant that are actually just yours. Then we bring them together in a way that complements each other.” ~ Tatiana EttensbergerThis week I sit down with Tatiana Ettensberger, co-founder of Wilde’s in Los Feliz, who shares her Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant with Your Best Friend. As Wilde’s celebrates its first anniversary, Tatiana shares what she and her lifelong BFF and business partner, Natasha Price, have learned about building a business while protecting the relationship that started it. From making time for each other outside of service to encouraging time off and knowing when a secret code word is necessary, her five rules offer a thoughtful, funny, and honest look at working with someone you love.I have always loved the idea of building something with your best friend. Taking all those conversations, shared meals, and late-night plans, then turning them into a place where other people can make their own memories is a pretty incredible thing. What I admire about Tatiana and Natasha is how much thought they have put into making that work, giving their friendship the same care and attention they give Wilde’s. Being able to tell each other where they need help, cheer each other on when they take a night off, and recognize that an equal partnership can look different on either side of the kitchen door takes real trust. Hearing Tatiana talk about how their first year has brought them closer makes me even more excited to see what they build together next.Photo by Kort HavensIntroductionHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Tatiana Ettensberger, who is one of the co-founders of Wilde’s, a Los Feliz restaurant that is celebrating its one-year anniversary.She’s here to share her five rules for opening a restaurant with your best friend. She talks about the importance of making time for each other outside of the restaurant to be each other’s biggest advocates and the outright necessity for having secret code words. It is a great conversation for anyone who is thinking about starting a business with a dear friend in their life or for anyone who’s already done so and is looking for a way to navigate their relationship.When you have a moment, please make sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN.Tatiana, so good to see you. Congratulations. One year of Wilde’s. Thanks for making time for the show.Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.Friendship, Hospitality, and Building Wilde’sFor anyone who’s never worked in a restaurant, how would you describe those relationships that you form with the people you work with?There’s a couple ways that I could think about it.Anytime someone asks me how work is and how owning a restaurant is, the one thing that I’ll always say after a slew of negative things, I’ll try to turn it back around and be like, the best part of it and the reason why I entered it is you’re constantly having fun. That is so much to do with the camaraderie that happens when you work in restaurants together and it bonds everybody together. I think that’s what happens when you’re in any form of service industry.There is a bit of us versus them mentality that comes where you just have to be on the same team. Of course. Through that, you just end up truly becoming family.There’s a reason it’s called, as cheesy as it might be, family meal. Then you also end up spending pretty much all of your time with the same people every day. When you’re working dinner service, you’re spending time with people at the time when people are normally socializing with other friends.It just becomes your entire social life. I’m a huge Survivor fan. I feel like everyone who goes on Survivor, they all become obsessed with each other and are lifelong friends, even though they spend 28 days together.It’s because you’re going through intense adrenaline-filled nights, night after night.When you met your longtime friend first, business partner second, Natasha Price, did you immediately think we’re going to open up a restaurant together or did that come later?That is such a funny question because I was one and she was two. I don’t know if my brain even had real thoughts at that point.As we grew up, we spent every single day together. We came up with a lot of different things we were going to do with the rest of our lives. I love that.We were playing with Polly Pockets and every day they had a different story. I’m sure in there, they were owning restaurants for sure. Natasha was the one who knew from the jump that she was going to be a chef.We both found ourselves in New York a little bit later when we were in our early 20s. She was the CDC at Mina’s. I just started serving at these pop-ups that they were doing at MoMA PS1.That was our first time doing something together in service. It was just really fun. So cool.I was doing…

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