Meet Sarah Bessade: Restaurant Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sarah Bessade and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, other than deciding to work for yourself, what was the single most important decision you made that contributed to your success?
I think the most important decision I have made in all my businesses is to always do things with love. I have never designed my restaurants thinking how much money can I make but always thinking how can I create the most comfortable and lovely place for people. I truly believe that when you make decision from your heart, it’s impossible to fail and having this as a business statement made us succeed even in the middle of a pandemic. It has allowed us to create a community, our clients became our friends and it almost feel like a giant family now. We are still here thanks to them and its probably because our goal was only to create a space where we share our passion for food and service just with hard work and towns of love

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
When you are an entrepreneur and you do what you really love to do, you find something inside of yourself, bigger, that takes you from the gut and makes you do things with so much love and so much passion that you find a way to fight back any challenges that will come your way. I overcome every challenges we had this year thinking : How can we adapt ? What is it that we need to change right now ? What do people need right now and how we can provide it. have learned so much along the way. First, that again, when you do things with love you can survive anything and then that you really need to adapt. If you dont succed its because you are not providing the right thing at the right moment. As soon as the pandemic started and that we had to become a “To go” restaurant our sales went completely down. It took us a little time to realised that absolutely nothing in our business plan was made with a “To go” state of mind. We change our menu, transformed the inside of our restaurant into a decoration shop and a wine shop and suddenly our sales went back up again. We adapted, we worked really hard while keeping our ethics and values and we discovered that actually our business model was much better this way. And if I want one thing the world to know about me and my story its a quote that I put at the end of every receipt we give to people because I want them to know that. Its a quote from Christian D Larson : ‘Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you greater than any obstacle’ That quote was my mantra during the whole pandemic and its also one of the reason we are still here today.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For wine bar I will go straight to Tabula Rasa, its on Hollywood blvd. The owner, Zach is the only man I know that has such an amazing wine selection. For a casual lunch/diner I will take them to my restaurant 😉 Loupiotte Kitchen, and if I had to pick another, I will go To Melody wine bar. Such a nice place. The ocean : here it is so powerful that it makes any drama or doubts that you have in your mind extremely quiet. Even spent the night there. Santa Monica Mountains are also such an amazing way to show how diverse and amazing LA is. You really can find anything. The beauty of the roads and the mountains is just breath taking.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Every single person I have met in my life helped me to be where I am today. And I think the strongest teachers I had where all the people that taught me hard work. They were for sure not the nicest people but I have learned so much from them. They taught me how important it is to know every single little part of your job, they taught me how important it is to create a safe place for your team and above all to create a place where everyone is respected and at the same level. And as far as today, the biggest shoutout I could do is of course to my business partner, Running a business as a woman in a country that is not yours is not always the easiest things to do. And no matter how strong I am as woman, and no matter how powerful I can be, I would have not been able to stand here today with the strength and the courage I need to run this restaurant, specially this year, without the wonderful man that is my business partner. We meet working together in Paris in my first restaurant and only after a couple of weeks I knew I will one day make him a business partner in my next project. He for sure deserve the biggest credit.

Website: www.loupiottekitchen.com
Instagram: @loupiottekitchen

Image Credits
Qreatrix