Brett Traussi
I started foBT Hospitality in 2019 to share my passion for building and elevating restaurants to their full potential.
My entire career has been spent in food and beverage. Currently I am developing several projects in New York City and Florida including the Observation Deck at One Vanderbilt, a skyline-altering building occupying an entire city block adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. Until 2019, I spent 21 years as Operations Director and Chief Operating Officer for Chef Daniel Boulud. Daniel and I collaborated to build dozens of restaurants based on excellence in cuisine and the highest standards of hospitality, winning numerous accolades and Michelin stars along the way. I developed and project-managed the construction and pre-opening of each of our owned and licensed restaurants, in addition to overseeing the entire operations team.
I’ve learned many lessons along the way: the importance of passion, creativity, and leadership. How important culture and training is to a successful operation. The value of having a strong concept, detailed plan, and the determination and stamina to communicate it to everyone.
Opening a restaurant is a graduation. It marks the end of the development phase, but it represents the beginning of a long road ahead. It is so important that your team not arrive at Opening Day exhausted and unable to warmly welcome your paying guests.
Like so many of us, I started as a dishwasher in high school. I was fortunate to attend the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, where I met Daniel Boulud. I took the semester off to work with him as a line cook at the newly opened Plaza Athenee Hotel. Two summers later I worked in the kitchen of Le Cirque at the corner of 65th and Park Avenues in New York City.
Upon graduation I began my career in earnest at the Omni Park Central and I’ve been in the trenches of F&B ever since. I worked my way up to Food and Beverage Director at the age of 23, learning everything the hard way.
After four years I moved to the Caribbean, first to Harbour Village Beach Resort in Bonaire, and then to the Radisson Aruba Hotel and Casino. I lived every day reconciling the gap between our guests’ expectations and the cultures and values of my team. The key was, and still is, genuine two-way communication, continual training, and consistently enforced standards. We repositioned the hotel, renovated our restaurants and won “Best Food and Beverage Department” from the Aruba Tourism Authority.
I moved back to New York City as the Food & Beverage Director of the New York Palace, which was in the midst of a top-to-bottom renovation. We redeveloped the entire hotel, most notably the opening of Le Cirque 2000, but also a Mediterranean restaurant, several lounges, and an additional 15,000 square feet of banquet space.
In March 1998 Daniel came calling. He had recently bought most of the ground floor of the Mayfair Regent Hotel - the former home of Le Cirque – and had plans to move Restaurant Daniel there and open Café Boulud on 76th Street. I joined him as Director of Operations, overseeing the “entire operation”. Little did I know how much we would achieve.
We closed the original Daniel that summer and opened Café Boulud in its place in September 1998. Café Boulud thrived under Chef Andrew Carmellini, earning three New York Times stars and a Michelin star and continues to produce extraordinary chefs like Gavin Kaysen and Aaron Bludorn. Restaurant Daniel opened on 65th Street in January 1999 and went on to earn four stars from the New York Times and three Michelin stars and multiple James Beards awards for cuisine, service, wine service, and pastry.
db Bistro Moderne opened in June 2001 a block west from Times Square. Fueled by the DB Burger, the bistro has become a theatre district favorite for over 18 years. Chef Jean Francois Bruel won a James Beard Award before he moved onto Executive Chef at Daniel and db remains my favorite restaurant to this day.
We went onto open Café Boulud Palm Beach and Daniel Boulud Brasserie in the new Wynn Resort & Casino in Las Vegas which had me commuting to Florida and Nevada on an almost weekly basis. We would open a second restaurant at the Venetian in Las Vegas and another db Bistro Moderne in downtown Miami, converting it to a Boulud Sud in late 2017.
In 2008 we opened Maison Boulud in Beijing, China just in time for the Summer Olympics and then DB Bistro & Oyster Bar in Singapore at the iconic Marina Bay Sands. A second Maison Boulud would open in Montreal in 2012 and a third Café Boulud in the flagship Four Seasons Hotel Toronto.
On New Year’s Eve in 2008 we opened Bar Boulud across from Lincoln Center. Boulud Sud and Epicerie Boulud opened in 2011.
We opened Bar Boulud in London at the historic Mandarin Oriental, and another at the Mandarin in Boston. We opened a second Epicerie Boulud in the Plaza hotel and a third in the World Trade Center Oculus. To accommodate this growth, we built a commissary to USDA standards to support the retail operations and centralize our production of bread, Viennoiserie, and charcuterie.