Ever wondered what would happen if a motivational speaker opened a restaurant?
Motivate yourself on over to Guru's, the new restaurant in the trendy Ninth and Ninth neighborhood of Salt Lake City, and find out.Guru's is the brainstorm-set-in-motion of Kevin Hall, a man who makes Monte Hall look passive. Nearly eight years ago, Kevin left the employment of Franklin (now Franklin Covey), the time-management/motivational firm, for one simple reason: He could.
He had acquired Franklin stock in the early days of the company and then watched it explode. Time management turned out to be the success story of the '80s and Franklin the success story of time management.
The company took Benjamin Franklin's ideas of day-planning and goal-setting and made a mint. They turned the Ben Franklin motto "A penny saved is a penny earned" into "A penny in Franklin stock is a dream house in Pepperwood."
In Kevin's case, literally.
So the kid who grew up in a trailer park in Provo retired at 35.
He did all the things you dream about. He spent plenty of time with his wife Sherry and their kids. He bought a big boat at Lake Powell. He cleaned the garage. He got himself into King Kong shape and rode the LotoJa 202-mile bike race. He traveled. He became president of the Jazz 100 club. He got seats in the Delta Center behind the visitors' bench.
Kevin was the guy yelling "Know thyself" at the opposition.
Oh, he also bought a 3,500-acre ranch in the Uintas and started work on a lifelong dream: establishing a foundation for disadvantaged kids. Kevin has six kids but they are hardly disadvantaged, and besides, they've heard his speeches about the important things in life so many times that when they see their dad coming, they put on the track shoes.
Kevin needed fresh audiences.
So he and Sherry set up their foundation -- a kind of Boys Town West -- and Kevin returned to the business of motivating others to greater heights.
Foundations need capital as much as they need exposure.
Why not a restaurant to generate that capital? Better yet, why not a restaurant that does all the things they preach at the foundation? A place that gives something back, encourages selflessness, helps others?
Guru's is that place. Its goal is to be the kind of restaurant where you come in for a meal and leave a changed person, inspired to do more, be better, and maybe spend an hour this weekend helping out at the cancer wellness center.
The first thing they tell new employees (whom they call "partners") at Guru's is the official company slogan: "People matter, things don't." Each week, every partner gets paid his or her hourly rate to work at a local charity.
The Hard Rock Cafe wants to save the planet. Guru's wants to feed civilization.
I ate at Guru's the other night with Kevin as he explained the new restaurant's concept and his co-owner, food guru Deven Moreno, served us tortilla soup and teriyaki rice bowl, with a strawberry cheesecake chaser.
I'd never dined with Zig Ziglar, but this was close.
I came out of there wanting to "Simplify" (Thoreau) and "Scatter joy" (Emerson).
There were all kinds of Guru's items for sale with clever sayings. Aprons, T-shirts, key chains, dinnerware.
I asked Kevin if this was the only Guru's restaurant.
"This is No. 200," he told me.
He paused.
"We're counting backwards," he said, "to succeed, you have to envision already being where you want to be."
I should have seen that coming.
Send e-mail to benson@desnews.com, fax 801-237-2527. Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.