Donald Burns spent a night in a drunk tank at 21 that made him get clean and rebuild his restaurant career from scratch. Years later, COVID nearly forced him to sell the house, but tightening operations and working harder turned that crisis into real growth.
August 4, 2025
Donald Burns
21
Six or seven years
I was bad, man. I had accepted the fact that I wasn't gonna live to be 30, I probably wouldn't have made 25. I was 21 at the time. So getting that look, you know, obviously I ended up in drunk tank one night. Again, one of the best things that ever happened. It looked like the worst at the time. Best thing now because it got me clean and sober, firing our ship. Opening night again seemed like, oh, man, what are we going to do? You know, I'm doing. And it forced me to get back into the kitchen and learn the business from. I was just a waiter for six or seven years before that. So, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, Covid looked like, you know, this existential crisis to us. And, you know, I had conversations with my kids and my wife, you know, I'm. I don't know. We have to sell the house. You know, those restaurants may close. We're moving to a park. We're doing whatever we can, whatever we need to do to keep these things open, keep the people working. And that thing, as bad as it was, you know, made us tighten up, made us work more efficiently, effectively, and actually ultimately led us to you, and we got better. So. Yeah. The worst things in life aren't always the worst things in life taken in the whole picture. That's true. That's so true. Sometimes the things that we think are setbacks are set ups for a great comeback.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
