Bruce Caprara of Seminole Reef Grill: Sea-to-Table Sourcing and Relentless Market Competitiveness Drive Culinary Success

As part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Bruce Caprara.

Bruce Caprara is the managing partner of Seminole Reef Grill, a new fresh seafood and sushi restaurant opening in January 2022 in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He has been in the restaurant industry for 40 years and has managed Carmine’s Restaurants, Jupiter Ale House, Panama Hattie’s, and Houlihan’s where he gained experience managing staffs of 100–200 employees, consistently increased sales, and lowered operating costs. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Hotel & Restaurant Management from the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restaurateur?

I inherited the restaurant gene from my aunts and uncles who owned Italian restaurants in Upstate New York, which is where I grew up. I first enrolled in a Paul Smith College, a two-year institution. Then, I transferred to William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Hotel & Restaurant Management. While in college, I was selected to participate in the Walt Disney World Management Training program. Disney tried to recruit me after graduation, but I instead accepted a position at the #1 Houlihan’s in the country in Boston. The restaurant chain would send me to locations throughout the country that were suffering to help rehab them. The rest is history. I have been in the restaurant industry for the majority of my career, but have also had a few jobs in sales in the wine and spirits, beer, and cosmetics industries.

Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?

Seminole Reef Grill specializes in fresh seafood. We have a commercial fishing license, so we truly are sea to table. We also have a sushi bar, raw bar, ramen bar, and steaks.

I leave the cooking to our expert chefs, but we were drawn to opening a fresh seafood restaurant because of our geography. We are located in South Florida, where we have easy access to a variety of local seafood and are not as impacted by the seafood shortage as other restaurants and home cooks who rely on major food distributors. We have a commercial fishing license, so we are able to go to the dock and purchase fish right off of commercial fisherman’s boats.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a restaurateur? What was the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

I was managing Houlihan’s in Boston and there were two girls who were ordering a lot of food and drinks. When one of the women went to the bathroom, their waiter came up to me and said, “I think these girls are going to walk.” I stood by door and when the girls went to walk out, they dodged me. I chased one of the girls five city blocks until I caught her and there was a police officer not too far away, so I called him over. I kept her license and another personal ID until they came back and paid me for the check. It was a $100-plus check. I even added in gratuity for my waiter. Moral of the story, watch out for patrons who are going to dine and dash. Don’t trust anyone and train your staff to be on the lookout too.

Also at Houlihan’s in Boston, there was a bartender who sold one regular customer seven bottles of Moet & Chandon champagne and only charged them for four. I made three busboys jump into the dumpster to pull out the seven bottles and fired the bartender.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? How did you overcome this obstacle?

Adapting to the long hours that the service industry demands was a huge obstacle but was overcome by the relationships I’ve built.

In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that customers are crazy about?

It is every restaurant’s goal to have a dish that everyone is talking about and creates a frenzy. You want a line out your door. That is how you know you made it. What is the trick for the success? Scout out the competition to find inspiration. Dine at the restaurants that have a line out the door and a buzzed-about dish. Go there and order it. Figure out their secret sauce and recreate it in your own restaurant’s kitchen, but do it even better. Before you know it, your restaurant will be the talk of the town.

Nowadays, it is not only how food tastes, but how it is plated and how it looks. Influencers and non-influencers alike often take food photos for Instagram and other social media outlets, while dining out. If it’s photogenic, followers who see that photo online start salivating and they’re likely going to be enticed to come try it for themselves.

Dishes with a good backstory, such as recipes handed down from generation to generation in a family, are also unique because you can only get that recipe at that particular restaurant.

Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal for you’?

My perfect meal at Seminole Reef Grill is multiple courses. I know to bring my appetite. I start with our in-house smoked fish dip as an appetizer and then get a fried calamari salad. My favorite soup on our menu is conch chowder. For my entrée, my go-to is our pecan or macadamia nut encrusted grouper with a side of broccoli rabe. I pair my meal with a really good pinot noir and end with our homemade blueberry ice cream, which is so rich and creamy. If I am in the mood for sushi, I order a crunchy tuna roll.

Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?

My mind is always thinking. As we build Seminole Reef Grill, I handle everything from the architect to the general contractor to the designer. I am involved in every step and decision. I have the final say on what the restaurant will look like, what goes up on the walls, what food will be on the menu, hiring, and the plates, glassware, and silverware.

When I eat out at other restaurants, I love taking photos of the food and menus for inspiration. I share these photos with my chef. I traveled with a chef from one of my restaurants for an entire month to visit restaurants that had lines out their doors. That is how we created our menu.

Inspiration doesn’t only come from other restaurants. I can see tables or wall décor I like at a hotel or really anywhere.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?

Seminole Reef Grill will be opening in January 2022, so I am putting all of my efforts into the construction, placing orders, accepting deliveries, and hiring and training staff at the moment. There is a huge void for a phenomenal seafood restaurant and I put together a management team and a chef team that are incomparable. Our goal is to the be the best seafood restaurant in Palm Beach County. We are bringing 100 jobs to the area, so it is good for the local economy, hospitality industry, and tourism.

What advice would you give to other restaurateurs to thrive and avoid burnout?

You have to have balance in your life. Make time for family life and peaceful time off. If you don’t have this balance, you’ll get burned out and wake up one day and wish you did more outside of work. Make sure you have a good quality of life. Work when your restaurant is busiest to make sure things are running correctly. Train and trust your staff members so you don’t have to be present 24/7. If you have to be there around the clock, you didn’t train your staff properly. You should be able to step away from your business and have the confidence it is operating just as smoothly as if you were there. The run of house managers should be able to watch over the servers just as well as the owner can.

Thank you for all that. Now we are ready for the main question of the interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Restaurateur” and why? Please share a story or an example for each.

1) It’s Addicting- There’s something going on every minute of every day. There’s never a dull moment and that excitement is addicting. Once it’s inside of you, you can’t get it out. I’ve tried to leave the restaurant industry and give sales a try, but I keep coming back like a boomerang. When it’s in your blood and you’ve grown up with it, it flows through your veins.

2) Sleep Is Optional- If you are going to be in this business, plan on working more than anybody else on the planet in every other industry. You live and breathe this business 24/7. Even when you go home to go to sleep, many times your mind is racing because there are so many things that you’re thinking about that pertain to this business whether it’s an employee matter or a customer complaint or you forgot to order something or you have a big party the following day. The longest stretch I have worked without a single day off is 45 days in a row. It’s insane. If you have a special party, you might be working from 8 a.m. until midnight. That happens far too often.

3) Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Happen On Your Busiest Day/Night- It’s called Murphy’s Law. What can go wrong, will go wrong. It always happens at the worst time. It’s been proven over and over throughout my entire life. The power going out probably happened 15 times in my career. On a busy Friday night, the ansul system, which is the system that puts out fires in the kitchen, sprayed powder all over our entire prep line. We had to shut down and send all of our guests home. We couldn’t serve food. It took six hours for our cooks to clean it up and then we had to call the fire sprinkler company to repair it.

4) Each Day Could Be A Top 10 Reality Show- As a matter of fact, I always wanted to create my own reality show about a restaurant. There was a show called “The Restaurant” with Rocco DiSpirito in New York and I know there is a show on Bravo called “Vanderpump Rules” about SUR in West Hollywood. The drama and things that happen amongst a restaurant’s staff and customers cannot be scripted and is perfect for TV. I believe I could create the best reality show ever. It would become everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure. Just follow me on a shift one day and you’ll see for yourself. You’ll be laughing and having a great moment and then suddenly, everything will go wrong.

5) Every Day Is An Adventure- So many unforeseen things happen in the restaurant industry. Most of it is positive, otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing this. The good definitely outweighs the bad and I find it rewarding. I’m not sitting at home on the couch watching TV every night. I’m living and experiencing and watching people enjoy food and be happy and meeting new people. When I am not at my restaurant, life seems so much more boring. Since there is always something happening, I get an adrenaline rush from it, especially when I have to overcome a challenge when something goes wrong. If I’m never challenged, each shift would become mundane. Restaurants aren’t just where people come to eat and drink, they also come to be entertained and therefore, I am also entertained by being in that environment.

What’s the one dish people have to try if they visit your establishment?

We hired a master sushi chef. He’s very traditional, but his sushi is off the chain. As I mentioned earlier, I love our crunchy tuna roll. I also suggest our seafood tower that includes lobster, clams, shrimp, and King crab. Not too many places around us have a seafood tower and I highly recommend it.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Prior to my involvement with Seminole Reef Grill, I founded RFuture.com to raise money for schools, charities, and animal shelters. How it worked was, people would buy gift cards and $10 of the proceeds would go to one of the charities. Also, as general manager of Carmine’s, I raised $27,000 to purchase a trailer for a woman with seven children.

I’m a bit of a philanthropist and the thing that makes me the happiest in life is helping people and animals. We will be hosting many charity events at Seminole Reef Grill. We want to do a lot of good for the community.

I received my Bachelor of Arts in Hotel & Restaurant Management from the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri also graduated from there and I am proud to share my alma mater with him. I think it is wonderful what he did with the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. He helped raise more than $21.5 million for more than 43,000 restaurant workers in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thank you so much for these insights. This was very inspirational!