Aliosha and Andrei Stern are the unstoppable brother duo behind Suviche Hospitality Group — the group behind Suviche, Novecento, and, most recently, Chi Fa, serving Chino Peruvian street fare and bites.
After working and collaborating with Aliosha and Andrei through the launch of their newest concept, Chi Fa, we sat down to talk branding, delving deep into Suviche’s origins, their vision, and what it takes to build successful hospitality concepts in Miami.
View Chi Fa’s design case study here.
Where did the SuViche name come from? What’s the story behind the name?
Aliosha: We were looking for short, catchy names — we believe that simple is more. We were looking for something really catchy, and I think SuViche captured the essence of what we were trying to do, which was very simple, Sushi and Ceviche. My wife, Jennifer — she’s the one that actually came up with the name, SuViche, which represented the combination of both worlds. From there the brand was developed.
Since inception, your restaurants have been busy and you’ve had consistent growth, what do you attribute this to?
Aliosha: I think we like to really be ourselves and be genuine in everything that we do. I think the concept was genuine, the service, the food… so I attribute our success to that, from the branding and the experience, it’s something that is really genuine, unique, and simple. I think that’s what people like.
Andrei: It’s true, since the beginning, the vision was to create something that could be replicated but the intent was always very genuine, so anything and everything we did was because, one, we really believed in it, and two, because we really wanted to make a difference, whether it be in the food, whether it be in the experience, whether it be in how we treat each other. You know, we always tell the team that hospitality is not just with the guests, but how we behave with each other and how we treat each other. If we’re not hospitable to one another, then it’s not possible to be hospitable with the guests.
I think that the common denominator in everything that we’ve tried to do these past years is that, that we do it with passion and with care, and because we’re genuine about every aspect of what we do in the day-to-day. I think that transmits to the rest of the team and they feel somewhat inspired by it. I think that’s what motivates the team to keep growing.
Jose: That’s a really cool philosophy, that you can’t be hospitable to your guests if you’re not hospitable with one another first. I want to know, how does this idea of being genuine translate to the experience — not just the guest experience — , but also to the environment and the design experience that you’ve created?
Aliosha: I think for Suviche, it’s the service, very casual, very friendly, approachable. We try to do Peruvian cuisine, and it wasn’t very approachable when we started. More for people that weren’t familiar with the cuisine. Like if you heard, Aji de Gallina or Chaufa, you might’ve been a little scared, so I think we did a good job in that approach. Simplifying, very straight forward service, nothing pretentious but good, genuine service – that’s what we tell our servers. And it all stems from the culture and how we treat each other as well.
Andrei: As we keep growing, I personally think one of the hardest things is to transmit the message. Because, as we keep growing, the epicenter of where the message is coming from gets somewhat diluted as there are more layers, inherently, because there are more people and responsibilities that need to be shared. I think it’s a struggle, it’s a challenge, but we keep on constantly repeating the message that all we try to do is because we believe in it and because we really want to, genuinely, make a difference. And it’s not just about the fact that we want to open restaurants, invest, make money, and then do it again… it’s not about that. It’s more about being genuine to our guests, being genuine to each other, growing other people, developing other people, teaching other people, coaching – which is a huge part of what we do, and if you’re able to transmit that successfully, we’re able to sustain the growth. The day that we fail to do that, it’s the day that we’re going to be in trouble.
Jose: That idea of sustaining the growth is really interesting and I’ll go into our next series of questions, but I just kind of want to conclude this with, how do you guys manage to, I mean, we all know that in the restaurant industry, a restaurant, a new concept has a lifespan, right? Suviche has now been going strong for 9 years this year, so you’re going for a decade and you keep growing — but how do you manage to keep the concept, the core of Suviche, stay fresh, and keeping it popular?
Andrei: I mean, on everything that we do we use this phrase: ‘Think deliberately on everything that we do.’ So, we’re always inventing, innovating in anything. It could be branding, or it could be in a simple procedure, a checklist, that we do at the restaurant. But we want all the team to continue using their brains and really think, not just follow orders. That way, there’s always innovation from your dishwasher to your Marketing Director, that’s something that we really push for. In this world now, your brain needs to be constantly evolving, and you need to be evolving with the world to remain relevant. It’s not easy, but it’s something that you need to do, and that’s what we like also. It’s an ever-changing industry.
What defines a great brand for you?
Aliosha: I think it definitely needs to connect with people. And especially in this industry, there’s more and more technology, but we’re human, we’re not machines. And we need that connection. We need that attention. Every one of us needs love and attention and “Hey I’m here” kind of thing. So I think a brand needs to inspire that connection. It needs to have a connection. Every brand has a different connection with different people. And I think that’s the basic essence of a good brand.
Andrei: Yeah, I think that people need to relate to a brand to a certain extent. They need to feel, not only connected but inspired by it, and I think that at the end of the day, human beings seek social connections. Even though it’s evolving and, yes, there are more deliveries and more people eating at home — but I think that social aspect of going out to eat and having a plan Friday night for dinner, or whatever that might be, I think people still seek it and they will continue to go to brands where they feel that they have a connection. More recently, we also feel the responsibility of doing something good for the world. Nowadays, we see that brands need to be thinking about the environment and there’s a new level of awareness about eliminating plastic straws, and things like these that. There’s more to it now than just food, it’s also the social responsibility that brands need to have in order to connect with this generation. So I think it’s that. Brands need to have a connection with their guests, and it’s evolving, and growing, it’s not just an established what they want. But it continues to grow and evolve as time passes.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
Aliosha: Me, personally, my team — helping them accomplish something and grow. The guests, too, seeing how they react, what they feel, making them feel something. That’s my source of inspiration.
Andrei: I think sometimes in the day-to-day, you forget about the big picture. But when you start thinking about who’s working next to you, day-to-day and you start thinking about how they got there and how they’ve evolved in the last eight years — it goes back to the same thing, seeing the team grow. Today, the Catering Manager for five Suviche restaurants started as a busser. Stories like our Finance Manager starting as a Server, he did his MBA while he was serving with us. Everybody at the corporate level was a server or manager at the restaurant. So that’s something that we’re super proud of. And even Managers that started as Servers, having them grow into more responsibility. Now going into 10 years, you see people go from being somebody who liked to party to having a family. So you see a whole evolution and how they’ve grown personally and professionally, and how we’ve had a level of impact to do with their development. To see these people really evolve, it’s a really cool thing. And then also to see the guests, when they go to the restaurant, try something different and love the food. That’s obviously awesome, too.
Jose: Talking about the evolution of individuals and the team, I had known you guys before you started Suviche, so before you could attribute it to the team, or even on a more personal level, what exactly was the first source of inspiration for starting this brand? For you, Aliosha, and for you, Andrei, what inspired you to join forces with your brother and become partners in this?
Aliosha: I think for me it was disrupting an industry, just looking at a niche. Personally, I also like to create, so it just happened to be in the restaurant industry where I could create something and disrupt what I saw going on. That was 10 years ago because I started doing this before we opened. Seeing an industry that had been doing the same over and over, and maybe not looking at the whole picture. I’m not generalizing, but in most cases, they were not taking care of their team or their guests, so just creating that connection and being innovative. That was my biggest inspiration.
Andrei: For me, I had just moved back to Miami, and I started working as a server. So I just sort of fell into it and really liked working with Aliosha. We get along well and compliment each other, and it was an awesome project where we thought we could build something new, coming from no experience in the restaurant industry, coming with no preconceptions of how a restaurant operates. Just sort of building it as we went — I think that’s also been our biggest competitive advantage. Then just there are so many aspects, and so many variables in the day to day in the restaurant industry, so you can never get bored because there’s always something, you know? You have to be evolving, you have to find ways of making sure that all your team is doing what they’re supposed to and, how do you do that? So there are challenges every day, but I think the most important thing was that we were doing something together and we were genuinely trying to do a good job, so I think that was the main inspiration for me.
Jose: That’s crazy. The beginner’s mindset is an incredible competitive advantage, no matter which way you put it. Because if you have a beginner’s mindset then you don’t have those pre-conceptions that are limiting by things that may or may not be true, but even if they are true you can change them.
What did you think you’d grow up to be when you were children?
Andrei: I was gonna be a doctor. I even started college doing that, Pre-Med. And then I got to chemistry and I decided not to do it anymore. Then at some point, I was like “OK, I’ll be a doctor but also manage the business part of it.” So I would do both, I always liked that: numbers, finance, and the administrative aspects as well.
Aliosha: For me, I really liked entrepreneurship just because of the creative part. I really like being creative, I’m not an artist, but I like disrupting things that everyone does. So oftentimes I think, why do we do things this way? Why is society this way? I have always been like that. Entrepreneurship is just the spirit of creating and disrupting and doing things differently, and it doesn’t mean bad or good. It’s just a different point of view and respecting a thousand points of view that we have in this world. That’s what makes this interesting because everyone has a different perspective.
Jose: And there’s a big aspect of curiosity that seems to fuel your entrepreneurial spirit in a way? Because you’re saying that you wonder, “Why are things this way?” Or “Why do we make things this way?” It seems like those questions fuel the innovation part, too.
Aliosha: Exactly.
You already have multiple locations and various concepts in Miami and Latin America, considering Novecento is in several other countries. What is the ultimate vision for the Suviche group?
Aliosha: I mean, we go step by step just because in the last year, we just doubled the size of the company. So right now, it’s about consolidating everything that we have. Our ultimate goal? To continue to create and improve and innovate on each brand and, yes, continue to open locations and new concepts but we’re a hospitality group, so seeing how else we can disrupt this industry. Not only on concepts, but on services or technology, or different ways that we can improve and differentiate ourselves.
Andrei: I think that Suviche has huge potential as a concept. It’s something unique, it’s something real. We want to obviously maximize its potential, I think that we owe it to the brand and to the entire team. It needs to be able to reach its full potential, whatever that might be. But I think it has a lot of potential in that sense, and also to be able to really have time to also disrupt in other ways, as Aliosha’s saying, there’s other ways of disrupting the industry, not just in terms of creating different concepts but also how do we involve the community? How do we involve investors at a different level, how do we involve technologies that can help the industry? I think we have this sort of notion of us coming into this industry with absolutely no preconceptions or any real knowledge has given us an edge in terms of, we now have experience operating, we have experience operating on every different level in the restaurant, whether from dishwasher to server to the administrative part to basically the A-Z of the industry. So it would be nice to take a step back and say, ok we have all of this knowledge, how to we leverage it. And I think a lot of ideas can come from that. Yeah as Aliosha says, we take it step by step, we have goals for the next year or two or three years and once we accomplish those goals we can move onto the next one. So right now its just consolidating, making sure the team is happy, making sure we are giving them the right tools, making sure that they’re growing and once were 100% sure the systems and processes, everything is there to take the next step, then we do so, because when we do so, if we do it before its like shooting ourselves in the foot.
And I think that takes us to a very interesting point. What’s one of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned since starting Suviche?
(Both laugh)
Aliosha: Nothing is easy. It takes hard work, and it really is about teamwork, it’s teamwork that you can’t depend on everything on yourself and you really need to surround yourself with people that you’re going to enjoy the journey. Because it’s not fast. You think it’s gonna be the next year. But things take time and a lot of effort, so you need to be surrounded by good people that you like that you think alike and enjoy being with. That’s an important lesson.
Andrei: Yeah I think that we’ve — in the last 10 years, just because of technology, the boom, and the new generation thinks that it’s easy because some people have gotten it that way, because they come up with a new app and a year later its worth a billion dollars. But in reality, it’s very difficult. It’s very difficult to create, to sustain, to grow, to scale. It’s very difficult. So I think one of the biggest lessons is that things take time. You need to enjoy the journey, you need to have fun while you do it. And you need to be patient and that’s it. I mean, we just work hard, we have the goals we want to reach and we know we will get there. But we’re not in the mindset that things come easily because they don’t. It’s very difficult.
Okay, so to conclude, where do you hope to see Miami in 20 years?
Aliosha: Miami? I think a mix between New York meets Chicago, Mexico City, and Europe (laughs)… But yeah, I think we were missing the culture, we were missing diversity, I think we’re getting there, you know, these last 5 years its been a change, a complete change. And so I think in 10 years Miami will even grow that and really develop other industries other than service and tourism and real estate. I hope, I really hope, that we as a community can attract other industries and not depend on South America or other counties or real estate. I think that’s my 2 cents.
Andrei: Yeah, I think it’s missed a lot of substance just because of the way I think Miami came about. It was always sort of the escape for Latin America, so in turn, it made it very expensive obviously to live here and the standard of living is very different than in other parts of the US. But, yeah, I think in the next 20 years it would be really cool to bring substance to Miami besides just being the place where you can go out and nightclubs and beaches. I think we have the perfect weather, it’s geographically really well located in terms of going to South America or even Europe and so I think it has all the elements to be the next big city in the US. It can really be that triangle from New York to LA to Miami. But yeah I mean it’s just about bringing real substance to it and new industries, not just depend on service industries.
