COJE Management Group is a Boston-based design, development, and management company specializing in full-service restaurant and boutique hospitality operations. COJE currently has eight concepts under its umbrella—Caveau, Cocorico, Coquette, Lolita Cocina & Tequila Bar, Mariel, Mariel Underground, RUKA, and Yvonne’s. More are on the way, like the modern Chinese restaurant Mr. H opening this June, and an all-new concept that will tackle Italian fare currently in development.
COJE concepts are known for their innovative menus and maximalist, transformative spaces, which Christopher Jamison, CEO of COJE, says are all just parts of a whole that culminate in an unforgettable guest experience. “We very specifically try to focus on transportive concepts or ideas that make you forget that you're in the middle of Boston, and it's cold outside, and the traffic sucks,” he says. “In order to do that, I think you really have to concentrate on not just what a place looks like, and not just what the food is or the drink, but how people feel when they walk in. And then more importantly, how they feel when they walk out.”
In an age where consumers are seeking out experiences above all else, COJE’s focus is right on target. We talked with the restaurant management group about how they achieve a top-notch experience across multiple locations as well as how they train employees, stay on top of trends, and overcome industry challenges.
Designing an Experience
Operating eight concepts—soon to be nine with Mr. H—is no small feat in a city that’s only about 48 square miles. Jamison says it comes down to knowing their customers. “We do focus on our very specific, core demographic. We're not the touristy place. We don't get a ton of people coming in from the suburbs. We really focus on the urban demographic,” he says. “Boston's a young, educated, intelligent city with a good bit of money; these concepts work because we're here—they might not work in another city. So we really figured out who goes out, who is thirsty for these experiences, who has the money to spend on fine dining or the pseudo fine dining that we do?
“We have a really great core group of people that we see everywhere. They might be [in Coquette] one night and RUKA the next night, and our nightclub after that. There's a ton of crossover,” he continues. “I think until that group runs out of gas, we'll just continue to give them different options.”
As COJE has developed over the years, some of the concepts have blossomed from the needs of that core demographic. “A good example of listening to our customers was when we opened Underground, which is the nightclub that we have underneath Mariel,” says Jamison, who said for years customers lamented the lack of a lounge in the area as afterhours options were a bar or a big nightclub. “There's nowhere that straddles the line between lounge and nightclub, so that was our intention in opening Underground. And that was really from direct feedback from a lot of our guests, our friends, our clientele, who just said, ‘Hey, like, where do we go after dinner?’ And we were having trouble recommending anywhere that we thought they would really like, so we created Underground under Mariel to be that place.”
Managing Multiple Restaurant Concepts
Despite the diversity of COJE’s concepts, the management company notes that behind the scenes, much of the operational backbone is the same. “The systems, policies, and procedures; the way we interact with our employees; the way that we open a restaurant and close the restaurant—these are very similar things. We've tried to build a foundation based on the corporate model,” says Jamison, who notes that COJE builds its own elements on top of that corporate foundation of consistency. “Aside from the menu being different and some little service points being different, our managers oftentimes either transfer from store to store or fill in from store to store constantly.”
COJE also makes use of the data systems and technology now available to track all types of numbers, costs, and trends. “As hard as it is to run a restaurant now with all the different societal challenges, economic challenges, and things like that, the tools that you have to do it are just amazing,” says Jamison, who cites Restaurant365, Toast, and Sling as tech they’re currently using. “There’s never more than a few days that go by that somebody's not looking at the numbers.”
Jamison says he often uses the data and reports to solve or anticipate problems. “The days of, ‘why is my liquor cost high,’ those are gone. Now, you can literally pull up two different reports, and you know exactly why it's high,” he says. “We have dashboards that show us our top 10 movers on price both up and down. So, for example, produce fluctuates all over the place, especially in the summers. We'll be able to see what we paid this week versus last week versus three weeks ago versus year over year. And if we see it trending the wrong way, then it's as simple as either just making an adjustment to a dish or taking something off for a few weeks.
“At the end of the day, we do build beautiful places, but if you're not making money, none of that matters,” he continues. “And margins now are squeezed harder than they've ever been squeezed. So if you're not fighting for that point, you're going to be in a hard place.”
Inflation is one of the things squeezing margins for restaurant owners across the country, and Jamison says they have passed on the added costs through higher menu prices. “The margins that we're running on are so slim that we just can't afford to eat it. So unfortunately, the people that are paying for that most are our guests,” he says. “Our profit margins aren’t improving, but we're just trying to keep them as stable as we can.”
Inflation has also affected traffic into the restaurants. While dining has held up well, Jamison says bar and late night sales have taken a hit. While he attributes this partly to the economy and inflation, the other cause is changing guest behavior. The youngest consumers of legal drinking age are not drinking as much, and the pandemic shifted workers from city to home offices, erasing the midweek bar business of happy hours.
Non-Alc & Other Cocktail Trends
To make up for the traffic loss and match this customer shift, COJE has been expanding its non-alc offerings. “From an operating standpoint, we also just want to find ways to keep revenue coming in when people are not going to drink alcohol,” says Jamison. “You’ve got to find ways to replace those vodka sodas or glasses of wine on checks. And if we can do it with a mocktail that people are going to love, great.”
COJE’s Corporate Director of Beverage Ray Tremblay has taken the lead on implementing a non-alc program across the company’s concepts. “Last year, I made a really big push to make sure every one of our menus across the group has a spirit free [section]. And this year, I'm going to be adding more and elevating presentations for all of those,” he says.
Tremblay says the non-alc program utilizes many of the same ingredients used in the alcoholic cocktails to make it easier to execute the program at volume. “Not only do we have to ask how do I elevate it, but how do I make sure I can do thousands of drinks and keep it consistent,” he says.
Other trends Tremblay is noticing is the continued rise of agave spirits and the move toward savory cocktails. Tremblay encourages his bar staff to have relationships with the kitchen and chefs since much can come out of that sharing of information, including pairings. “One of my biggest things is building cohesive menus,” he says, noting that some COJE concepts are introducing wine and spirits dinners with dishes and paired drinks.
In training his bar staff, Tremblay says he expects them all to make good cocktails, it’s what comes next that he’s most interested in—the cocktail aesthetics and the hospitality around how it is presented. “A lot of the stuff we do we batch. We’re putting these things together because we have to execute. We have a big menu, and we want to execute it in time,” he says. “But it doesn't mean it's a way to cop out and be fast. This allows us to do more. This allows us to have more hospitality.”
With the time saved due to batching, Tremblay encourages his staff to focus on the garnishes, the glassware, how the cocktail is poured or presented, special treatments for the ice, adding floaters or foams—all of the things that elevate the cocktail drinking experience for their guests. He just cautions to make sure these touches are functional and add to the cocktail versus take away from it.
Employee Culture & Training
COJE isn’t only focused on creating an unforgettable experience for its guests—it’s also ensuring its employees are taken care of as well. It offers full-time employees medical insurance as well as a 401k with a match. “We're trying to really change the culture,” says Tremblay.
Jamison says as COJE has grown to hundreds of employees, he’s tried to keep the connection with his staff. “We have a pretty good reputation around the city for how we treat our staff and how we interact with our staff,” he says. “One of the real challenges is trying to keep a small company culture as you grow in a company that's no longer even close to small.”
Of course, COJE is no stranger to the staffing challenges that plague the industry as well. Jamison says he’s had particular difficulty hiring skilled employees in the back-of-house. “Where we're seeing some struggles is in the kitchen,” he says. “There aren't as many people getting into the back-of-house world for love of cooking or desire to cook as there may have been in years past.
“So we're always taking the temperature on what we have, who's back there, what their strengths are, what we can do, what we can't do,” continues Jamison. “We're always trying to educate, push, and make them better. But we're running up against ceilings in terms of what we can execute because some of it is technique driven. And if you don't have people that are well versed in technique, you just can't execute certain things. So we're having to use both equipment and create dishes that have a bit more of a margin of error or require a bit less high-touch technique.”
On the bar side, Tremblay says the staffing problem isn’t about finding good people—it’s about building them and helping them to find career longevity. “We need to focus on building good people. We need to focus on education,” he says. “What makes us special is the people that work for us have an opportunity to grow. We're expanding. We're constantly moving.”
Tremblay is taking his past experience as an educator and trainer for different brands and using it to help train COJE employees on everything from making cocktails to costing to how to interact with guests. For him, it’s not just teaching what they do in the concepts, but why they do it. Tremblay also focuses on the when and how to use the skills he teaches. “Until you create the bridge between the education and how to use it as a tool, it is neither,” he says.
Given the size of COJE, Tremblay can’t individually train everyone, so he focuses on those at the top who are hungry to learn and grow, and “hopefully it starts trickling down to their team.”
In addition to training for work, Tremblay also focuses on personal goals and the overall wellness of the employee with 30, 60, and 90-day goals. “I have principal bartenders, bar managers from across the group, so I'm doing that with them now. Because I didn't have a ton of mentors that taught me not to burn out, to take time for myself, to look at goals, to plan ahead,” he says. “You're not good to anybody else if you're not taking care of yourself.”
And at the end of the day, it’s all about taking care of the guest for COJE and its staff. “I have to stop everybody now and again and be like, ‘Guys, we're here every day. These people, you don't know why they're coming in. They could have just gotten a brand new job and are excited, they could have just gotten fired, they could have gotten into a bad breakup, they could have just got engaged,” says Tremblay. “But they're coming into our space, and we have an opportunity to create something special for them.”
Are you registered for our Crave and Crave on the Menu newsletters? Sign up today!
Plan to Attend or Participate in Our Events:
- 2024 Bar & Restaurant Expo Texas, October 28-30, 2024 in San Antonio, TX. Register today!
- 2025 Bar & Restaurant Expo, March 24-26, 2025, Las Vegas, Nevada
To learn about the latest trends, issues and hot topics, and to experience and taste the best products within the bar, restaurant and hospitality industry, plan to attend Bar & Restaurant Expo 2025 in Las Vegas. Visit BarandRestaurantExpo.com.
To book your sponsorship or exhibit space at our events, contact:
Veronica Gonnello (for companies A to G) e: vgonnello@questex.com p: 212-895-8244
Tim Schultz (for companies H to Q) e: tschultz@questex.com p: 917-258-8589
Fadi Alsayegh (for companies R to Z) e: falsayegh@questex.com p: 917-258-5174
Also, be sure to follow Bar & Restaurant on Facebook and Instagram for all the latest industry news and trends.