Texas: Supporting Texas’ 50K Restaurants with Texas Restaurant Association President & CEO, Dr. Emily Williams Knight
This week on the Titans of Food Service podcast, Nick Portillo speaks with Dr. Emily Williams Knight, the President and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association. Emily is a powerhouse advocate for the Texas food service industry, representing over 60,000 restaurants and 1.3 million employees. She shares her journey from a military upbringing to her prominent role in advocating for restaurant owners, emphasizing the importance of resilience and adaptability. Dr. Knight discusses the unique challenges faced by the industry, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how her leadership has helped navigate these turbulent times.
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Intro
(03:18) Introduction to Dr. Emily Williams Knight
(09:38) The Impact of a Military Upbringing
(15:02) The Journey to Dallas: A Career Transformation
(23:34) Understanding the Landscape of Restaurant Advocacy
(30:33) Navigating the Restaurant Industry's Future
(34:00) Reflections on the Restaurant Industry
RESOURCES
CONTACT
Transcript
There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry.
Nick Portillo:You just have to find one on the Titans of Food Service podcast.
Nick Portillo:I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top.
Nick Portillo:My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service Podcast.
Nick Portillo:Let's jump right into it.
Nick Portillo:Welcome back to season three of Titans of Food Service.
Nick Portillo:I'm your host, Nick Portillo and I'm continuing continuing my Journey across America in 50 weeks tour where I travel to each state to highlight a true titan of food service.
Nick Portillo:This week, I'm deep in the heart of Texas and I'm excited to introduce my guest, Dr.
Nick Portillo:Emily Williams Knight, the President and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association.
Nick Portillo:With over 50,000 restaurants, applying over 1.3 million Texans and generating over $70 billion in sales, Dr.
Nick Portillo:Knight is at the forefront of one of the most critical industries in the state.
Nick Portillo: this leadership role back in: Nick Portillo:She also secured vital support at both the state and federal levels, ensuring the survival and continued growth of the food service industry within her state.
Nick Portillo:With more than 20 years of national and global leadership experience, Dr.
Nick Portillo:Knight's resume is as impressive as her results.
Nick Portillo:Before leading the Texas Restaurant association, she held key roles in higher education, hospitality, and international student recruitment, including as president of Kendall College, where she expanded access to culinary and hospitality education.
Nick Portillo:Her career has been defined by advocating for technical education and workforce development, always striving to elevate the industries she serves.
Nick Portillo:In our conversation, you're going to really feel her passion and she actually talks about wanting to be in the food and hospitality industry very early on in her life.
Nick Portillo:She grew up in a military family.
Nick Portillo:We talk about lessons that she learned and how that shaped her as a person here today and many, many other things.
Nick Portillo:It's a really, really fun, really cool conversation that I have with her.
Nick Portillo:I think you're really going to enjoy.
Nick Portillo:But before I dive into my conversation with her, I want to talk about the state of Texas and the food service scene that is so unique to them.
Nick Portillo:I do this with every state, give just a quick little background on the state.
Nick Portillo:So Texas, it boasts one of the most diverse and vibrant culinary landscapes in the US from iconic barbecue joints to Tex Mex to fine dining establishments in large metro cities like Houston, Austin, Dallas, Texas.
Nick Portillo:It's a melting pot of flavors that reflect its rich cultural heritage.
Nick Portillo:We even Talk about in the conversation that there's a lot of importing and exporting out of the state of Texas.
Nick Portillo:Being the 8th largest economy in the world, Texas is home to famous restaurants such as Franklin Barbecue in Austin, the Big Texan Steak Ranch, Amarillo and Papado in Houston.
Nick Portillo:Those are just a few renowned names in the Texas food service industry.
Nick Portillo:The state is also a major agricultural hub, being one of the leading producers of beef, cotton and more, making its farm to table movement particularly strong.
Nick Portillo:Now, without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Dr.
Nick Portillo:Emily Williams Knight.
Nick Portillo:All right, Emily, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.
Nick Portillo:I appreciate you taking time to come and meet with me.
Emily Williams Knight:Thank you so much.
Nick Portillo:So I could tell, I know we talked a little off camera.
Nick Portillo:You're on the go here on your way to Florida, correct?
Emily Williams Knight:Yes, back to Florida.
Nick Portillo:All right.
Nick Portillo:Very nice, Very nice.
Nick Portillo:So tell me, do you follow college football at all?
Nick Portillo:I know that University of Texas there in Austin has, you know, risen to the top here in college football.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah, it may surprise people, but believe it or not, so I was at the Bama game this weekend.
Emily Williams Knight:My I have one freshman daughter at Alabama rowing and another freshman at A and M.
Emily Williams Knight:So we're in the mix.
Emily Williams Knight:But we certainly support A and M in Alabama, maybe more than Texas, but we do like our Texas football team.
Nick Portillo:I love that.
Nick Portillo:I love that.
Nick Portillo:So tell me, maybe a little background on yourself.
Nick Portillo:How did you get into the food business?
Emily Williams Knight:You know, it always surprises people, but I go back to the third grade, which is really when my, I guess, journey started, or my dream of being in the industry.
Emily Williams Knight:So raised in a military family.
Emily Williams Knight:And if you know anything about that, everything is the same.
Emily Williams Knight:You're on a base, you have the same cars, the same houses, your parents go to work.
Emily Williams Knight:My dad was a submariner.
Emily Williams Knight:And one night a week a new show came on called Hotel and Connie Celica and James Brolin worked in this fictitious hotel in San Francisco.
Emily Williams Knight:And to me, it was a world that was so foreign from the world I lived in.
Emily Williams Knight:And I obviously had a great life and a great childhood, but it was just amazing and luxury.
Emily Williams Knight:And what I loved was this idea of service, that they would just take care of people and treat them like they were in their own home.
Emily Williams Knight:And so in the third grade, I declared to my parents that I was going to go into hospitality, which I didn't really even know what that meant.
Emily Williams Knight:But that's when I made.
Emily Williams Knight:I never deviated.
Emily Williams Knight:I went to my undergraduate in hospitality.
Emily Williams Knight:I went to work in Key west, both for Pizza Hut, which is where I cut my teeth as an assistant manager and then on to Marriott.
Emily Williams Knight:But really for me it's been a lifetime of wanting to be in what I would call the service and hospitality industry.
Nick Portillo:You know, of all the people that I've interviewed, I've done almost a hundred of these conversations at this point.
Nick Portillo:Maybe 90 to 100 of them.
Nick Portillo:Most people, they kind of, they want to be not in the food business growing up or they don't even realize that it's a thing unless there's familial ties to it in some way.
Nick Portillo:Maybe their parents started the restaurant that they worked in, that they currently still work in, or maybe the distributor, whatever it may be.
Nick Portillo:But I think that's really cool that you wanted to be in the food business, in the hospitality business from a very early age.
Emily Williams Knight:Absolutely.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, my first job was shoveling stalls to get enough money to ride horses and learn how to horseback ride.
Emily Williams Knight:And right after that, at 15, I went into to a restaurant and realized they thought I was a better busser than a server.
Emily Williams Knight:Maybe that was, you know, but.
Emily Williams Knight:But I just have always loved it and I think I've loved the service side of it and have been really unique in building a career that wasn't just in operations and running the restaurant, but every part and facet it feels like all around that ecosystem, which is what I try to educate people on, is that it's not working in a restaurant that's super valuable, but it's a much bigger ecosystem that we're part of.
Nick Portillo:Oh, 100%.
Nick Portillo:You think about all of the different inputs that are there, from production to the restaurant side to even working casinos or hotels or, you know, the food, food service industry is gigantic.
Nick Portillo:And the scope of it, I mean.
Emily Williams Knight:There'S food science and food technology, food, agriculture, marketing, finance.
Emily Williams Knight:Look at me, I was a college president, you know, and then in, with, with really strong programs in hospitality.
Emily Williams Knight:And then now I lobby and make sure that restaurants can operate successfully.
Emily Williams Knight:So I think that's the education part that I didn't know as a youngster.
Emily Williams Knight:I thought I was going to go make everyone's life great and I was going to go run a hotel one day.
Emily Williams Knight:But my career has gone back and forth, which I think I really want the next generation to understand that there's so many options when you get the training, development to work in our industry.
Nick Portillo:Oh, for sure, for sure.
Nick Portillo:When you were growing up, you mentioned that your dad was in the military and you lived on bases.
Nick Portillo:Which base did you live on?
Emily Williams Knight:So I was living in Japan when I guess I was about to be coming to this world.
Emily Williams Knight:And so my mom flew back, had me in the U.S.
Emily Williams Knight:i lived my first three years in Yokohama, Japan.
Emily Williams Knight:Then we lived in Connecticut.
Emily Williams Knight:My dad then went on.
Emily Williams Knight:My dad was a submariner, so he went on and was five, six month deployments a big piece.
Emily Williams Knight:I think of my toughness of being in the industry came from being with a father that was deployed for most of my young life.
Emily Williams Knight:And then my dad did tours in Scotland, Virginia, D.C.
Emily Williams Knight:and Maryland.
Emily Williams Knight:And the Scottish tours we did the summers in Scotland.
Emily Williams Knight:And my mom kept a stateside and she built her career from being also in the Navy on to becoming a community college president.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I sort of had two parents that worked incredibly hard to give us stability in a military family of 30 years, but also watched my mom build a remarkable career making really tough choices.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:And how to balance being a mom and a college executive.
Emily Williams Knight:So I think that that military upbringing is very much the grittiness that I get I think to work in this industry on a day to day basis.
Nick Portillo:1.
Nick Portillo:That's so cool.
Nick Portillo:My, my grandfather was stationed in Japan when my dad was.
Nick Portillo:Was growing up and he was in the Air Force and I think Okinawa I think is where he was.
Emily Williams Knight:Yep.
Nick Portillo:And I know that he spent a lot, he worked on cargo planes, you know, as kind of loading things into the cargo planes.
Nick Portillo:And in his time there he became a pretty good martial artist.
Nick Portillo:I don't know for whatever reason he really got into the martial arts and I think he became pretty successful at that.
Nick Portillo:And then I loved.
Nick Portillo:Yeah, so it was really cool.
Nick Portillo:And yeah, during the Korean War he.
Nick Portillo:He was in the Korean War and the station there through throughout Heroes.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean definitely heroes.
Emily Williams Knight:My dad unfortunately is in Arlington, but I also say fortunately that we laid him to rest in Arlington National Cemetery two years ago.
Emily Williams Knight:And you walk those grounds and you know, as a military dependent or not, and you just realize the sacrifice and commitment from so many.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think anyone who comes up through a military family just has a different toughness about them.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean you're just expected to move and to be resilient and there are not a lot of tears because you're expected to just get the job done.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think that's even when I hire and I find someone that's prior military, I take a second look because I know the sacrifice that we make in the service industry is nowhere near what they've had to make, but they've still been willing to put that work in and that work ethic is so transferable to us in our sector.
Nick Portillo:You've mentioned the words toughness and grittiness when talking about your upbringing.
Nick Portillo:And tell me a little bit more about that.
Nick Portillo:What does that mean?
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for me it's, it's.
Emily Williams Knight:There's.
Emily Williams Knight:When you're a military family, right, the government decides what happens to you.
Emily Williams Knight:They decide if you're, if it's your mom or your dad, that when they get deployed, how long they're gone for, when you're going to move, in some cases for us, how much stuff you could take.
Emily Williams Knight:So there were moves where based on your rank is how many pounds of things you could move.
Emily Williams Knight:So that may be letting go of things that you love.
Emily Williams Knight:It would mean that you would wake up like I did at Charles Barnum Elementary School, and a submarine was moved from New London to Kings Bay and half of your friends are.
Emily Williams Knight:Are gone.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I think that constant disruption and that, Constance, that there's always service before self.
Emily Williams Knight:I think that that's bred into you as a military dependent, that it's always something bigger than you.
Emily Williams Knight:And in our roles.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think about my job now leading the association is that it has to be bigger than me.
Emily Williams Knight:It's not about meeting Emily's needs.
Emily Williams Knight:It's about meeting the needs of the folks that we serve, the 60,000 restaurants across Texas.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think that as much as I think about my own leadership style really gets developed through all my years of being a leader and those that I've leaders I followed.
Emily Williams Knight:I do think that the, the underground and underpinning of always putting others before yourself is something that is rooted in being in the military family for sure.
Emily Williams Knight:And then I married a military officer.
Emily Williams Knight:So I feel like not only did I, you know, my, you know, which many people do, is you realize it's a very tough life.
Emily Williams Knight:And so you decide to sign up for it again, which is what we tend to do.
Emily Williams Knight:But I do think that there, that just makes you a better selfless leader and maybe more humble, which is a blessing when you're serving others, especially in a kind of an influential capacity.
Emily Williams Knight:And not that you're running their restaurant, but you're their voice.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think that's helped me a lot.
Nick Portillo:Yeah, I'm sure.
Nick Portillo:I mean, I can't even imagine what that would be like.
Nick Portillo:Right.
Nick Portillo:You know, you mentioning, you know, your friends one day, you wake up one morning and they're gone.
Nick Portillo:And probably, you know, all of the different life lessons, you grow up probably pretty Quick you learn how to become adaptable, you know, and all of these different things that many people or a lot of people may not learn until later on in life or may never learn, you know, so you're getting lessons and experiences in your life that make you who you are here today, which is an exceptional person.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah, 100%.
Emily Williams Knight:And.
Emily Williams Knight:And realizing that everybody has value.
Emily Williams Knight:I think in the service, you are thrown into so many new environments and go make friends today and go to this event or your father leaves, and so then you're going to see where he is, and you're, you know, the idea that you will find value in every single person on this earth is something else I think you get from being in the military is that everyone has a gift and everyone has something to give the world.
Emily Williams Knight:And so you look for that because, you know, you're trying to connect when you're constantly new or constantly in your environment.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I find myself.
Emily Williams Knight:That's where I thrive.
Emily Williams Knight:The best, right, is meeting other people and finding out what they, you know, who they are, what.
Emily Williams Knight:What can they bring to the table and.
Emily Williams Knight:And maybe then how I can help them or meet them where they are.
Emily Williams Knight:I think that's something else that comes from that, that military upbringing that you don't ask for as a child.
Emily Williams Knight:You're born into it, but I think if you make the most of it, you look for the best parts of it.
Emily Williams Knight:And that's what we can't fail to recognize, I think, in this country is those people and those families that have given up so much right to protect our freedoms.
Nick Portillo:100%.
Nick Portillo:Amazing.
Nick Portillo:So tell me, how did you end up in Texas?
Emily Williams Knight:This is a great story.
Emily Williams Knight:So never thought that I would live in Texas.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:So my formative years and my later years in high school and college were all in Boston.
Emily Williams Knight:I married a Coast Guard officer who we met.
Emily Williams Knight:I met in high school.
Emily Williams Knight:He was at the Coast Guard Academy.
Emily Williams Knight:So his first duty station was New York.
Emily Williams Knight:And that was great.
Emily Williams Knight:I was finishing college, and then we went to Key West, Florida, which was.
Emily Williams Knight:Could be any young person's dream, right, to live in Key west in a beautiful home.
Emily Williams Knight:And he was doing a lot of, you know, drug interdiction and really cool stuff that, you know, are important to the country.
Emily Williams Knight:And then it was time to sort of decide what was the next move.
Emily Williams Knight:And looking at the duty station list, it was.
Emily Williams Knight:He had been raised in the Army, I had been raised in the Navy, and maybe we should build a life outside of that.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I went to Pennsylvania, and that's really when I, I guess built my career in this space, was deciding to kind of figure out, you know, which direction do I want to head.
Emily Williams Knight:And through that process, I kind of took an education track.
Emily Williams Knight:I met an individual, did not actually meet the individual.
Emily Williams Knight:The individual saw me speaking at a conference.
Emily Williams Knight:He was an incredibly wealthy investor from Texas to me at the time.
Emily Williams Knight:And I don't ever want to offend anyone, but if you grew up in New England, Texas is, you know, cows and sparkly and the Dallas Cowboys.
Emily Williams Knight:And it's just so far from what I knew.
Emily Williams Knight:And after about a six month, I call it courtship, he flew my husband down, who took one look at Dallas and said, wow, what an amazing life.
Emily Williams Knight:And so when my twin daughters were four, we made the leap to come join him.
Emily Williams Knight:And the role was really taking us higher ed into developing markets in Latin America, which I loved because again, I'm helping people completely outside of hospitality, but still in the education space.
Emily Williams Knight:And we landed in Dallas and my career sort of from that point just accelerated into a global career and led me to run the association, which is another whole story about how that happened.
Emily Williams Knight:But that was the link to Texas was someone that I had never met, thought I could add value to his business and just didn't stop until I said yes.
Emily Williams Knight:And he was a great leader and mentor and helped me make a big career change.
Emily Williams Knight:I had been with my prior firm for, I guess 12 years.
Emily Williams Knight:Never thought I would leave, ever.
Nick Portillo:Wow.
Nick Portillo:I mean, what a big, you know, to pick up your life and move to Dallas, Texas.
Nick Portillo:You know, I can see how your view of Texas for sure, right.
Nick Portillo:Not ever living there, you know, being born and raised in California.
Nick Portillo:When I think of Texas, I think of it probably very similar.
Nick Portillo:A lot of cows, open land.
Nick Portillo:It's probably pretty hot there.
Nick Portillo:I mean, I've been a few times, but those are kind of the things.
Emily Williams Knight:Oil.
Nick Portillo:Oil.
Nick Portillo:That's right.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:But then you realize once you're here, it's so much more.
Emily Williams Knight:Right?
Emily Williams Knight:It's so much more.
Emily Williams Knight:But from the outside it was, it was a very.
Emily Williams Knight:My family was on the east coast and so it was.
Emily Williams Knight:It was a really big move.
Emily Williams Knight:But again, we were used to it, so we're used to just packing up and going.
Emily Williams Knight:And so it didn't seem as scary maybe because the both of us were raised in families where that was just what we did.
Nick Portillo:Yeah.
Nick Portillo:So you mentioned this person found you at a speaking engagement and he.
Nick Portillo:That liked you for whatever reason that was.
Nick Portillo:There's a lot of people listening.
Nick Portillo:Right.
Nick Portillo:That are Maybe they're in sales or maybe they're in.
Nick Portillo:They or presentation.
Nick Portillo:They need to do presentations or maybe need to do speeches.
Nick Portillo:And I.
Nick Portillo:And I heard you mention earlier that you do lobbying as well.
Nick Portillo:So you have to be.
Nick Portillo:Yes, you have to be comfortable being probably uncomfortable.
Nick Portillo:Right.
Nick Portillo:Being in front of people, like, very.
Nick Portillo:Talking to people who you've never met before, maybe large audiences.
Nick Portillo:When it comes to preparing for a speech and giving a speech, what are some tips, tricks that you use to help you feel comfortable, to help you deliver your message?
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah, that's such a good question.
Emily Williams Knight:First and foremost, it's practice, right?
Emily Williams Knight:It's practice, practice, practice.
Emily Williams Knight:Whenever you can get an audience, big or small, if it's at a family dinner, agree to give the prayer or the toast.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:If it's at a group event, agree to summarize what you're going to do.
Emily Williams Knight:Anytime you have an opportunity to speak in front of more than one person from the earliest age, you need to take that because that's how you get better.
Emily Williams Knight:Because I think public speaking isn't really about the fear.
Emily Williams Knight:It's really about the ability to connect.
Emily Williams Knight:And the more comfortable you are, I think the more authentic self you are, and you only can get comfortable through practice, I think, you know, I reflect back when I was teaching at a community college.
Emily Williams Knight:At one point in my career, I was teaching the sales course and my job was.
Emily Williams Knight:And it was back at the time, it was like Motorola folks and a lot of the cell phone salespeople.
Emily Williams Knight:And they were all coming thinking that they could take this one class on the art of selling with me and become more effective salespeople.
Emily Williams Knight:And what I learned through having a textbook on that is that foundation number one is really about doing it more than anything else that you do.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:So what are all those opportunities?
Emily Williams Knight:I think second is learning if you are a scripted or unscripted person.
Emily Williams Knight:I am much better unscripted if you give me something to read.
Emily Williams Knight:I'm not my authentic self.
Emily Williams Knight:I feel more like, I would say a horse in a, you know, in a barn.
Emily Williams Knight:I can't get out.
Emily Williams Knight:I am much better if I understand the purpose of the audience, if I understand why they're there and what they want to get out of me being on stage.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:So always asking before you speak to a group, who are these people?
Emily Williams Knight:Why did they come to this event and what are they hoping to get out of my session?
Emily Williams Knight:And I think if you agree to speak, you need to have those answers.
Emily Williams Knight:And when you get on stage, if you're a scripted person, then you have a script that makes sure that you leave people with something that is tangible.
Emily Williams Knight:Maybe it's something they can implement, maybe it's a question that you ask them to go back and answer and contact you through LinkedIn independently.
Emily Williams Knight:And if it's not, if it's something that you think you're going to deliver without something scripted, it's really understanding the flow and your comfortableness with the content.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:You cannot get up there and wing it.
Emily Williams Knight:That is not an option.
Emily Williams Knight:But you certainly can also over prepare and that's when it becomes canned and it's not enjoyable.
Emily Williams Knight:So I think it's really understanding your style, how you connect with people, getting as much practice as possible and then realizing, don't be afraid to say, you know, listen, I don't want to have a teleprompter.
Emily Williams Knight:I personally never use them.
Emily Williams Knight:I do most of my presentations by memory because I've done them enough.
Emily Williams Knight:And knowing what your style is and being okay with it, I think is the best advice because you can really be set up for failure.
Emily Williams Knight:If you're a microphone person and they have you on a lavalier, walking the stage, if you like a podium and the podium isn't there, right.
Emily Williams Knight:Figure out how you like to best deliver it and then that's what you ask for every time you speak.
Nick Portillo:I, I heard from somebody one time when it comes to making presentations and speeches as well, staying, staying in your lane, saying the things that you know and understand pretty well, you know, if I had to go out and talk about the state of Texas, I've never lived there, I don't know anything about it.
Nick Portillo:So how comfortable am I going to be presenting how great the state of Texas is?
Nick Portillo:Now, if I talked about California, specifically Orange county, where I grew up, hey, I may have more comfortability in doing that.
Nick Portillo:When you prepare for these unscripted speeches, right, where you memorize or you learn the content or what you're going to say, how do you, let's say it's like a 5 minute or 10 minute, 20, 30 minute presentation.
Nick Portillo:How do you remember everything?
Nick Portillo:How do you keep that in your mind like that?
Emily Williams Knight:I don't know.
Emily Williams Knight:I think this is funny because people are like, how did you just do that with.
Emily Williams Knight:I think, I think if I think about it, I read every morning.
Emily Williams Knight:So I think one of the things if you want to be an expert in your area is that you have to have a diverse set of resources that you're learning every day.
Emily Williams Knight:So when I get up, I get up really early, whether I Listen to the daily podcast on the market.
Emily Williams Knight:So I can understand how the overall market is doing in context of the sector.
Emily Williams Knight:I have very specific publications from the industry that come into my inbox.
Emily Williams Knight:I scan those.
Emily Williams Knight:I know what's happening.
Emily Williams Knight:Chipotle is going to go into Mediterranean.
Emily Williams Knight:This one was sold.
Emily Williams Knight:And you're constantly filing that away.
Emily Williams Knight:But if you're not a good steward of the overall market that you represent, or maybe it's the product you represent within that market, you can't be as effective.
Emily Williams Knight:Because the most effective speakers don't talk about one thing.
Emily Williams Knight:They talk about what that one thing is in the context of something much broader.
Emily Williams Knight:And what you bring to an audience is your ability to connect that thought to a much bigger either situation or environment.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:So if I'm talking about the restaurant industry this month and sales are flat, I want to be able to describe why.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:Well, actually, sales are flat, but Florida, North Carolina and Georgia are driving more than that negative increase because of the hurricanes.
Emily Williams Knight:Therefore, the overall market is actually in good shape.
Emily Williams Knight:And here in Texas, we were positive.
Emily Williams Knight:And so if you're not aware of the broader landscape or the broader industry because you're not reading, you're not up to date on, you know, the measurements of what would be important to your audience.
Emily Williams Knight:You're just delivering a boring presentation.
Emily Williams Knight:Right?
Emily Williams Knight:So I think by being knowledgeable is you're constantly reading and you're constantly learning, and you're filing it away.
Emily Williams Knight:You're hitting LinkedIn for 15 minutes a day scheduled in your calendar.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, you're part of all the top groups.
Emily Williams Knight:You can see what the trends are, and then you start to just connect in your own brain.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, I've heard this thing about the, you know, credit card swipe fees 10 times this week.
Emily Williams Knight:Maybe I want to go look a little more into that.
Emily Williams Knight:Is this something I should be aware of?
Emily Williams Knight:And I think that curiosity is something, no matter where you are in your career, you have to be curious and want to know the why.
Emily Williams Knight:Ask yourself every day, why?
Emily Williams Knight:Why is this happening?
Emily Williams Knight:Why, you know, why to me is like the biggest word.
Emily Williams Knight:And I'm curious.
Emily Williams Knight:I want to know what's happening.
Emily Williams Knight:I want to be able to explain to people in a layman's terms why the industry is good or bad or what things they should be thinking about.
Emily Williams Knight:And also take the noise out of the social media channel for them, which is, yes, there's a lot of noise around this.
Emily Williams Knight:There's a lot of noise around the election.
Emily Williams Knight:Put your head down.
Emily Williams Knight:It's uncontrollable.
Emily Williams Knight:Do your part and vote and then we're going to move on.
Emily Williams Knight:But if you don't have the context, you can't do that.
Emily Williams Knight:And it only comes through reading and listening.
Nick Portillo: busy here in election year in: Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:So for us, you know, it's interesting, the Texas legislature only meets every other year.
Emily Williams Knight:So for us the busiest time is coming up.
Emily Williams Knight:And so we're currently drafting bills, we're signing bill authors, we're figuring out with our, with our constituents and our board.
Emily Williams Knight:What are those key state issues and local issues that we want to work on in this very short period of time?
Emily Williams Knight:You know, just over 100 days in for 89 session.
Emily Williams Knight:And so the spring will be extraordinarily busy.
Emily Williams Knight:Right now is busy because we're thinking about that final, what are the final candidates we want to back?
Emily Williams Knight:Who are those people that we think are going to be very pro restaurant and pro business?
Emily Williams Knight:We have a lot of sit downs right now with potential elected officials talking about and educating them on our space.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, I think restaurants are so ubiquitous but in the state of Texas, and I guess it mirrors every state, we're the largest private sector employer.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean we have incredible number of people, almost 1.4 million employees working in restaurants and food service.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, then you add up 106 billion in economic impact and over almost 60,000 units.
Emily Williams Knight:You can just imagine that scale is so important to elected officials.
Emily Williams Knight:And by sitting down with them either before they're elected or right after and educating them on the importance of the space and what matters to us, all that work is happening now.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I would say a state like state like Connecticut, a state like Texas is never not busy.
Emily Williams Knight:If you know, right now I'm dealing with a noise ordinance in one city and a health issue in one and we have four golf tournaments going to raise money and we have a pack of.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean it's.
Emily Williams Knight:We are a MA.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean we're the 7th 8th largest economy in the world.
Emily Williams Knight:And so there's always something, but right now is really the preparation for the next legislative session.
Emily Williams Knight:That's taking a lot of time and the election.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, I like to try to tell people, we get told that candidate A or candidate B, one is great for us and one is not great for us.
Emily Williams Knight:At the end of the day, so much touches restaurants that, you know, I'm less concerned about that, I'm more concerned about how we drive our issue home, no matter who's in office.
Emily Williams Knight:And so for us, it's really about being very bipartisan, educating our members on what we think the platforms of both parties are, and then from that point, using the results and the deck that we're handed, essentially to ensure that we keep protecting advancing restaurants.
Nick Portillo:Amazing.
Nick Portillo:So when it comes to election, does the Texas Restaurant association, well, they choose a candidate or no.
Nick Portillo:You're pretty.
Nick Portillo:You're trying to stay.
Nick Portillo:You're trying to stay neutral, essentially.
Emily Williams Knight:Correct?
Emily Williams Knight:Correct.
Emily Williams Knight:We try to stay neutral.
Emily Williams Knight:We do very few and far between endorsements directly, but we do have a pack.
Emily Williams Knight:And our PAC will, you know, the PAC board, which is a separate sanctioned board, will look at all the candidates profiles, meet with a lot of candidates, and then decide to put money behind those candidates that we feel like would be the best choice for the industry.
Emily Williams Knight:And that's Republican or Democratic.
Emily Williams Knight:And we have a lot of issues that fall on both sides of the aisle.
Emily Williams Knight:Things like child care.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:Things like workforce development.
Emily Williams Knight:Huge for us because our state is growing so quickly, and that tends to bring both sides of the aisle together.
Emily Williams Knight:So we like to say that everybody should love restaurants and our issues matter because we're essentially critical feeding infrastructure for the entire state.
Emily Williams Knight:And without restaurants, we learned in Covid we can't feed everyone.
Emily Williams Knight:So we all need to care about restaurants, but we don't.
Emily Williams Knight:We're very careful to stay down the middle and really focus on those candidates that want to help us keep the restaurant industry and the regulations in a way that helps them succeed and grow.
Nick Portillo:Yeah, that makes sense.
Nick Portillo:What about in your normal day to day, what does that look like?
Nick Portillo:I know right now you're preparing for next spring upcoming, but in your.
Nick Portillo:The day to day life of you, what does that look like?
Emily Williams Knight:You know, I think maybe what I love about it is that every day is different.
Emily Williams Knight:And I might say that respectfully.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean, we just.
Emily Williams Knight:I just came back last week.
Emily Williams Knight:I was.
Emily Williams Knight:Or two weeks ago, I was at the national Restaurant association board meeting, which are incredible partners, talking about all federal policy, meeting with the largest chain leaders in the nation, talking about what's happening in Texas.
Emily Williams Knight:I then flew to Portugal, where I met.
Emily Williams Knight:I just flew home on, I guess Thursday.
Emily Williams Knight:I met with.
Emily Williams Knight:We had 40 of our board members over in Spain and Portugal doing a, we call it travel with the TRA expos, exposing these restaurant owners to other cultures and food and potential partners.
Emily Williams Knight:We did Italy last year.
Emily Williams Knight:I'm flying down to meet with One of our really important chain, one of the biggest restaurant brands that we have in the country, and talk about policy and employees and how we take care of employees in the meantime.
Emily Williams Knight:In the background, we have a large foundation that's fundraising for all of the hurricanes.
Emily Williams Knight:We have 25,000 students learning restaurant management in high schools across Texas and manage those programs, writing all the policy, writing all the bills.
Emily Williams Knight:We have the second largest trade show outside of Illinois that runs every summer to board me, like.
Emily Williams Knight:So I say that the gift is I have the most amazing team, and that's from the leadership team all the way down.
Emily Williams Knight:It's 26 strong, which always surprises people that it's a very small team to cross this geography.
Emily Williams Knight:And we have 23 chapters.
Emily Williams Knight:So at any given point, a chapter in El Paso is doing something.
Emily Williams Knight:McAllen just had a big skeet shoot and dinner last weekend, you know, about to have their golf event and their gala in Dallas.
Emily Williams Knight:And so we're constantly making sure that relationships at the, I guess, city level are really solid because that's where a lot of advocacy issues happen.
Emily Williams Knight:So we juggle a tremendous amount.
Emily Williams Knight:But I'm only able to do that because of the people that I get to work around, and they're just so good at what they do.
Emily Williams Knight:And my job as a leader is to empower and get out of the way and allow them to run.
Emily Williams Knight:And they just continue to prove their commitment, I think, to the industry and to me and to themselves.
Emily Williams Knight:And that's the best thing you could ask for as a leader?
Nick Portillo:Yeah, that's a big job.
Nick Portillo:I mean, did you mention your economy is the sixth or eighth largest in the world?
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah, we're the eighth largest economy in the world, so bigger than Australia.
Emily Williams Knight:We're bigger than Canada.
Emily Williams Knight:From an export standpoint.
Emily Williams Knight:We do a lot of international work with Mexico and others, because you can imagine, as a trading partner, we really feel like the cultural influence between both food and alcohol is such a natural bridge for us to improve relations and to work more closely together to grow both of our travel economies.
Emily Williams Knight:We love when people travel because they have to eat and sleep, and we provide one of those.
Emily Williams Knight:And so we work a lot, believe it or not, internationally, which for me personally is probably what I missed the most from my prior job, which was totally global.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I still get a flavor by doing some of that connecting, because I think that's where food.
Emily Williams Knight:Food is such a uniter.
Emily Williams Knight:Right?
Emily Williams Knight:It's the one thing that we can all agree on around a table.
Emily Williams Knight:And so those relationships and taking our board Abroad and educating so many of them and bringing some of them for the first time outside of the US Is so rewarding, and it makes us just all better business people.
Nick Portillo:Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Portillo:What about looking into the.
Nick Portillo:Into the distance of things that you still want to achieve that not yet achieved?
Nick Portillo:What would those be?
Emily Williams Knight:I want to continue growing the trade show.
Emily Williams Knight:I think to me, the idea of co locating with other really interesting smaller restaurant shows is very important.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:How do we not just have this where you walk by and meet with our incredible exhibitors, but the education.
Emily Williams Knight:Right.
Emily Williams Knight:Can we continue to build that place where you come for answers?
Emily Williams Knight:You don't come to ask questions, you come for answers.
Emily Williams Knight:You have your question, maybe your questions around, how are you integrating artificial intelligence into your business model?
Emily Williams Knight:And I think about all the independence, which surprises people that, you know, more than 70% of the restaurants in Texas are independent restaurants, so they're not part of a big ecosystem.
Emily Williams Knight:So how do we bring them the answers?
Emily Williams Knight:How do we, you know, leverage all the incredible chain innovation and connect it?
Emily Williams Knight:And so I really see this as the place once a year that I can build and grow with the team and make it the place you come for answers.
Emily Williams Knight:I think that's one I think too, is to continue to grow membership associations.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, our parents joined them because it was a duty and an honor, and that's not the case anymore.
Emily Williams Knight:So really continuing to think about what does the restaurant operator need today?
Emily Williams Knight:What's going to convince them to join an association or really what I call is this network of people where they can learn from and work together and solve problems together.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think, third, I think it's really positioning ourselves as you cannot run a restaurant in Texas unless you are part of the Texas Restaurant Association.
Emily Williams Knight:So every single restaurant brand that opens that brand is going to, you know, going to be a member because they cannot successfully operate without us.
Emily Williams Knight:So that indispensability, I think that's the ultimate goal in my tenure, which I think I have about three to four years in my tenure.
Emily Williams Knight:I think that those are those goals.
Emily Williams Knight:So whoever takes on this role, when I depart one day, or whenever that might be, you know, I want to leave a legacy of not only the financial footing to keep the association for the next 87 years, but also make sure that that impact that those restaurants in our state feel so supported.
Emily Williams Knight:And if you have a great idea and you want to take your grandma's lasagna and start a business that you have every advantage possible by doing it in Texas, that that's my Dream.
Nick Portillo:That's amazing.
Nick Portillo:How cool is that?
Nick Portillo:Fantastic.
Emily Williams Knight:Amazing.
Emily Williams Knight:You feel so great even talking about it.
Emily Williams Knight:Sometimes I just feel really grateful.
Emily Williams Knight:We just can't forget the faces behind these restaurants.
Emily Williams Knight:I mean, they take such risks.
Emily Williams Knight:They take more risk than I have in me.
Emily Williams Knight:I'm always humbled when someone starts and opens a restaurant.
Emily Williams Knight:Think about that.
Emily Williams Knight:It's one of the hardest businesses to run because you're delivering a service that is also perishable, that is a product and a service simultaneously.
Emily Williams Knight:It's just hard.
Emily Williams Knight:And these.
Emily Williams Knight:You have obviously spent a lot of time with restaurant people.
Emily Williams Knight:The employees and folks that own restaurants are the salt of the earth.
Emily Williams Knight:And the people you want to spend time with and, frankly, you want to fight for, because they're just great people.
Nick Portillo:I feel like in the restaurant business or the food service industry, we have to have more entrepreneurs maybe, than any other industry that there is.
Nick Portillo:You know, people, whether individuals or families or corporations or whatever it is, you starting these restaurants or these operations, like, it takes a lot.
Nick Portillo:Right.
Nick Portillo:And they take a risk on themselves.
Nick Portillo:And to have that support of folks like yourself and the tra, that goes a long way, for sure.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:I think that's just the financial losses.
Emily Williams Knight:One of the.
Emily Williams Knight:Probably what still bothers me the most about the pandemic was the phone calls and emails.
Emily Williams Knight:I still get emotional about the loss.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think we were very fortunate.
Emily Williams Knight:You know, we partnered really closely with the governor and his team.
Emily Williams Knight:He did a remarkable job of getting us open.
Emily Williams Knight:We were open very quickly, but the financial losses and the personal losses were so significant.
Emily Williams Knight:And for those of us that sat in those seats every day and sometimes 20 hours a day for weeks on end, you'll never forget that.
Emily Williams Knight:You just.
Emily Williams Knight:You can't.
Emily Williams Knight:You can't ever forget that.
Emily Williams Knight:Those calls, those emotions, and it's.
Emily Williams Knight:It's really tough.
Emily Williams Knight:And so I think it does two things for you, right?
Emily Williams Knight:You either go, this is too hard, and you move on, or you say, if I can do something every day with my team to make those losses less, you know, to reduce the number of losses, but also to maybe give more hope and more direction because we can provide more resources to them, that's a mission worth fighting for.
Emily Williams Knight:And I think if you're going to work in a nonprofit, you have to be mission focused, and you almost have to feel the heart of the people you're serving, at least for me and my team.
Emily Williams Knight:And if you don't, you just won't put the work in and you won't fight like you need to fight when you're in a crowded lobby environment, you gotta make the restaurant industry stand up before other needed industries.
Emily Williams Knight:And you can only do that, I think, if you just care authentically, really deeply.
Nick Portillo:Like, your passion, it definitely shines through.
Nick Portillo:You know, when we were talking, just throughout our whole conversation, I could just feel it.
Nick Portillo:And I really enjoyed our conversation.
Nick Portillo:I.
Nick Portillo:I appreciate you taking time to do this even as you're on the run right now.
Nick Portillo:On the go.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:And I'm so sorry for this terrible background.
Emily Williams Knight:Oh, my gosh.
Nick Portillo:Don't even worry about it.
Emily Williams Knight:The airport's too loud, so I call.
Nick Portillo:It the mobile office.
Emily Williams Knight:Exactly.
Emily Williams Knight:I don't usually do this, but I just.
Emily Williams Knight:I knew the airport was going to be too loud, so I thank you for being flexible with me.
Nick Portillo:Of course, of course.
Nick Portillo:I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and talking with me and sharing about yourself and your story, your upbringing, you know, what you're up to with the tra.
Nick Portillo:Really, really impressive things.
Nick Portillo:So thank you so much.
Emily Williams Knight:Yeah.
Emily Williams Knight:Thanks so much for meeting with me, too.
Emily Williams Knight:I enjoyed it.
Emily Williams Knight:Thank you.
