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Bloomin' Brands Joseph Kadow says hospitality careers often overlooked

 
Joseph Kadow, chief legal officer of Bloomin’ Brands, was recently elected as chair of the National Restaurant Association’s board of directors.
Joseph Kadow, chief legal officer of Bloomin’ Brands, was recently elected as chair of the National Restaurant Association’s board of directors.
Published Feb. 15, 2016

The restaurant industry employs a lot of people, especially in Florida.

But Joseph Kadow wants more people to know that the careers in the hospitality industry extend far beyond working as a cashier at McDonald's.

Kadow, Bloomin' Brands chief legal officer, was elected as chair of the National Restaurant Association's board of directors this month. As a leader of the American restaurant and food service industry's largest trade organization, Kadow plans to focus on educating more people about the hospitality industry, which employs a workforce of 14 million in the United States.

Before joining Bloomin' Brands in 1994, Kadow was a partner in the Orlando office of the national law firm BakerHostetler.

Kadow recently sat down with the Tampa Bay Times at the Bloomin' Brands office in Tampa.

So what exactly does the National Restaurant Association do?

We support the restaurant and hospitality industry in several ways. We have strong relationships with state restaurant and food service groups that we support on state issues. So in Florida, we advocate for restaurants on issues related to tourism and hospitality. We do this on a national level, as well. In addition, the NRA is a training vehicle for its members. We run several training programs, including one aimed to train young people in high school about industry. We host a national competition for them each year.

You seem very passionate about the industry, but you're a lawyer by trade. How did you get into the industry?

I joined Bloomin' Brands in 1994, but I knew the company's founders (Bob Basham, Trudy Cooper, Chris Sullivan and Tim Gannon) before that. We met while I was working at a private law firm in 1983, before they ever founded Outback Steakhouse. At the time, I was a tax and business transaction attorney. They had the franchise rights for Chili's in the Southeast — and at that time, Chili's was some restaurant out of Texas that no one had ever heard of. So I was helping them with that.

When Bloomin' Brands formed, I came over to work with them. Now I oversee the legal department, government relations, communications and human resources.

So what was it about the hospitality industry that made you want to leave behind a law firm and work for a restaurant company?

I think people overlook the hospitality industry sometimes, but it is a viable path to the middle class. For a lot of young people, it's their first job. Or it's a part-time option while they're in school. But there's an under-realized aspect of the industry. There are opportunities for someone to work as a manager in a restaurant without a college degree and make an upper-middle class salary before they're 30. There are definite advantages to having advanced degrees, but the college route isn't for everyone. What our industry offers is another way to make a decent living. And in Florida, where the tourism and hospitality industries play such an important role, there are a lot of career opportunities.

How do you think Tampa Bay's restaurant scene compares with others across the country?

Tampa has always had an incredible restaurant scene, but it's been hard for us to get a lot of attention when you're competing with bigger cities like San Francisco, New Orleans or New York. We have a lot of companies that started here — like World of Beer and Richard Gonzmart's Columbia Restaurant.

We've had a lot of talent come up through our concepts at Bloomin' Brands and other companies in Tampa and spin off to create really exciting independent concepts here. That's just the way the industry works — it feeds off itself, and new concepts are coming up constantly. We all may appear to be competitors from the outside, but we're just as much supporters and collaborators of one another. This is really a great time for Tampa Bay.

Contact Justine Griffin at jgriffin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8467. Follow @SunBizGriffin.