Paul Taber "The Hawaii Rooted Restaurateur"

Paul Taber “The Hawaii Rooted Restaurateur“ was a Hawaii Restaurateur, Talent Finder, and Business oriented thinker who analyzed local Hawaii Hospitality methods with a focus on Restaurant techniques. His approach was based on that of The Weaver Brothers, two of the restaurateurs that gave people pride in Hawaii Restaurant Establishments; Taber’s achievement was to focus and develop employees who had a humble and family-style to them, in particular a few standouts were Gordon Yoshida, Bobby Hirasa, and others. On the mainland he was nicknamed The Hawaii Rooted Restaurateur as he would refer to his time, experiences, and values based on being deeply rooted in the way of life he found, respected, and adapted to as a resident. Taber was part of a circle of preeminent figures in the Hawaii Restaurant scene during the 1960s as he helped build with others a burgeoning hospitality industry that had enormous potential if it was kept intact.

From the Korean War to Hawaii

Taber was born and raised in a quickly growing New York where he worked at one of the many upscale hotels early on where he would build a foundation of skills with proper new york etiquette of dealing with customers. He would go on to go through the strict disciplines, system structure, and position respects as he served in the United States Navy (Korean War 1952). Eventually he would be stationed in Hawaii, and he liked it, so he settled there. He soon met his wife Mary Chambers and started discussions about career and family and they would be married in 1953. After marriage he worked for Spencecliff, the most predominant force in the restaurant business. He would work under Spence Weaver at Queen’s Surf and worked his way to Assistant Manager and then to “HobNob” as the first Assistant Manager of the place.

He was a smart one as he was a graduate of University of Rochester as one of his colleagues remembers that he would move on to own and operate “The Squire”, and then become general manager of “The Gourmet” that served affordable fancy food. He would move again to the “Kopper Kitchen” (1958) as the operations supervisor and start to realize the system of rotation the weavers did for developing multi talented and multi rolled staff. The experience he had at all the different sorts of places in Spencecliff would give him an arsenal of knowledge of knowing how the Hawaii businesses would start from purchase all the way to building up its clientele and the actual running of the place.

Early Years of the Spencecliff Training Program

Paul would be the Operations Manager for Spencecliff. Paul saw it with his own eyes, the Spencecliff business acquisitions, now the businesses popping up at that time and be upgraded through “Aesthetic Localization”. With dealing with the people who would be worked at the places he would see when things were under construction, be part of the meetings to see how the place would operate, and the essential Spencecliff meetings gave him a clear understanding about how it all went down. By using these tools he would envision using this in his own pursuits of business in Hawaii and by doing so he would be later considered to be the top restaurateur in Hawaii at that time. Everybody recognized him, and many already knew him as a former operation manager for Spence Weaver at Spencecliff, so it would allude to people that Spencecliff had a place to build a career

A Hawaii Talent Recruiting Master

The sort of hospitality that was built in the time that taber was there showed aloha at that time by being welcoming in a Hawaii sort of way, but it wasn’t to the point where there was a system for it. It came natural as people in Hawaii had this Aloha with the island-style life and the way people grew up with one another with a social system that could only be described as a Hawaii thing. In this time period it seems like many companies in Hawaii, Paul and the Weavers were still trying to figure out what the customers wanted in hospitality and what traits and things did they naturally notice that made them feel that sense of “Hawaii”.

There was something that Paul had that he would pass on to those who trained under him and that was his eye for talent, because a lot of times training a person they could just leave, but Paul knew who was hungry and who was thinking about things for a long time. He knew who had it in them to succeed. Paul had a focus on finding these people through the university in an already highly competitive market and met with them because he could read people really quickly and had a key eye for detail in the small ways they worked as well as knowing the way they think based on how they would respond to him.

Paul Taber wanted his employees to explore what else was in the Hawaii-sphere of culinary from the front of the house to the back of the house and expose them to a larger world. That larger world would create a thinking sort of person, so it was to make people think what is going on at these other restaurants that make up their food and their service and place that in the back of their mind. Being in the back of the mind things work in interesting ways from recalling it to a conversation, a problem comes up, the idea might come up, or it could be swirling in the mind to find a solution to better organize things that best fit the situation and best fit the restaurant. And in this case it was the Green Turtle.

Paul Taber was familiar with John Bowen who he met when he did a lot of the Spencecliff restaurants where they started to be friends. He would later on be one of Paul Taber's best friends as he would continue his work with Zippy's restaurant design, and then Moby Dicks restaurant design.

“It was my first-job and my first management job out of college. I was a marketing major and accepted by an insurance company. I met the owner of Green Turtle in college. They set up the meeting with the owner Paul Taber. They had these sort of job-interviews with business owners in Hawaii before you would graduate. Because the school wanted to make sure you were taken care of and had a job waiting for you. There wasn’t anyone left without a good job and they didn’t even leave college. So, the thing was, they were interested in looking for a manager and one that he could develop. I wanted to develop, so we hit it off, and I started off as I had to go through the whole thing, the whole darned thing it started from dishwasher, pantry, cook, busboy, waiter, bartender, and lastly host one week at a time. So at the end it was being the manager on duty after training stopped and I started to take over. After the Green Turtle they sent me to their other restaurant Hofbrau and I started doing that.” -Gordan Yoshida

Taber’s Training Program

The Colleges and the Businesses in Hawaii had a strong relationship for preparing students to transition seamlessly into the workforce, which had relevant Business skills and challenges that would make them as good or better than those in the industry. Right out of college Gordon Yoshida began training under Paul Taber, who was the leading Restaurateur at that time, but he was looking to move back to the mainland at this time. Other famous individuals in the hospitality industry would be associated with the training program like: ????, ????, ????, ????. Gordon was exposed to both the management training by restaurant jumping and a wide range of consultation situations from the accounts Taber had acquired over the years.

“I always thought that guy knew everything. Everyone in the industry said, Lucky you're learning from him.” -Gordon Yoshida

Hawaii Consultation

The Consulting trips, Paul Taber wanted to prepare Gordon Yoshida with more skills to give him room for growth as he was already quickly able to perform at a high level in the restaurant and his memory was sharp. He took him on all the consultant trips to see how other businesses worked at different levels of success and see more problems, because the problems and the process of finding the solutions would be key. They were key, because it would show that the techniques learned from one business could be used in finding the solutions for the next business just as the problem solving process was shown openly in the Spencecliff company. The two of them would go to these places every month where everything would be laid out and open to see how the business numbers were, they had to go there and look at the menus in the place itself, see what they wanted to do and help, explain things to the managers there about developing their operations.

Long Term Concept Planning

It would also go to the long term planning for the company to help them think about what they wanted to do, what options they had, and what it would mean if they did it. These weren’t simple problems or development decisions, so it would make multiple visits and months to go through several development iterations until the client was satisfied and that meant more money for consultations for projects. After that he let Gordon do all that, Taber stepped back, so Gordan really learned the business. This is when the two of them became close and he was comfortable enough where he asked if Gordon wanted to be a business-partner.

Green Turtle (1962) 

Green Turtle was located at 1529 Kapiolani Blvd at the corner of Ala Moana, Oahu, as a Sit in restaurant that replaced the previous establishment the “Evergreen Restaurant”. Inspired by the Weaver brothers’ cross-training mentorship program the founder Paul Taber began creating his own concepts for restaurants to make a mark on the food scene in his own vision. He would go on to design his own management development program as he expanded to new locations and do consulting work on the side to get some insight to what other local establishments were doing and how they could help each other without stepping on one another. 

Etymology

Why did people remember the name green turtle? Because the place would give away over 1,000 turtles each year to kids, at a cost of 23 cents each, that’s why. There was also the annual turtle races that would be planned and it would all happen in the parking lot around the 1968. There would be around 60 kids and their turtles competed in a little race of the slow and steady. The winning turtles often covered the 12-foot track in less than 12 seconds.

The First Legendary Piano Man John Saclausa

The person who was the draw was John, John Saclausa, he was really popular. There was a piano bar in the back room with John Saclausa who entertained at the Green Turtle piano bar where it was part of the fun to sing. Saclausa used to call up a person in the audience who would be a singer in the audience and everyone had their songs they liked to sing. Many of these were the regulars and he would go around the room letting all of them have their turn to skiing and he would choose whose turn it was and it was always a surprise. It would always have people wondering when it was their turn if they had always gone there and that meant even if there was a really interesting conversation with a friend the mike might come to you and the spotlight would be on you. John Saclausa list of gigs: Canlis, Queen’s Surf (Spencecliff), South Seas Village (Spencecliff), Cavalier the Eagle’s Nest Bar, and Our Lady of Peace Cathedral. When he went places he would take the John Saclausa Fan-base with him, so when he had gigs the venue would get their money's worth and maybe even more. So, when he left to play at the Eagles Nest it sort of took the crowd, and drained-the-bar of the Green Turtle. 

The Second Piano Player Reading the Notes

So After he left the next one, we had this lady, but i forget her name. She was good, but she didn't. Uh, she had to read the music sheets when a singer says, oh, can you play this song because they can sing. She would be worried and respond “Right... Sing along…”. She would be scrambling and say “oh, let me see if I have the song”, so when she played it was like that. I don't know what happened, but she couldn't come in for a while. 

The Third Piano Player

The Manager Gordan talked to his boss at that time, Paul Taber and mentioned “You know, my girlfriend, she plays music by ear just like Loyal Garner. You know they used to train together?”. At that time people would try to see if people had the mark of a skilled piano player. The Mark of a skilled Piano player people used to say is by playing-by-ear, because people thought it was like magic that people who played could just hear something they never hear before and just start playing the song. They were said to have gift of being able to play songs the first time ever playing them: Japanese song, American song, Hapa-Haole song, Hawaiian song, any kine song. At the Green Turtle there was one girl who said “Can you play this?”, She said “how does it go?, And the girl hummed a little of the song and the piano player would rearrange their keys and start playing the way the song sounded. The girls were amazed and would hum along as the piano player would play the song until they would get it down. Then start playing everything like how it would sound, but it was crazy many of them never heard the actual song. 

Gordan's Girlfriend would say “apparently it goes like this, right?” and the guys in the room would say “That’s it!, thats it!” and thats why regulars would come back.

Moby Dicks

They would go on to open up fast food “Moby Dicks” around 1969 in Waikiki, Royal Hawaiian Avenue, the street leading to Kalakaua. Fast-food at that time would be referred to as a sort of snack shop and we knew “The Dimensions” and on the opening they would play on the sidewalk and all the cars on Kalakaua would halt to a complete stop. The music group stopped traffic and people would be dancing in the streets and coming in to get some food. We created quite a stir.