Mackenzie Hoffman

Mackenzie's Five Rules of Creating a Restaurant That Feels Timeless

Mackenzie Hoffman, co-owner and operator of Stir Crazy, joins me to share her Five Rules for Creating a Restaurant that Feels Timeless. We talk about welcoming solo diners, staying earnest, and maintaining your principles without compromise. She explains why restaurants should avoid chasing trends, remain grounded in their values, and become genuine friends to the people and businesses around them. It is a conversation about creating a sense of place—one that feels deeply connected to its neighborhood while offering guests an escape from the world outside. Together, her rules offer a thoughtful blueprint for building a restaurant that does more than serve great food—it creates a feeling people want to return to again and again.

After nearly twenty-five years of covering and working with restaurants, I have seen that the places that last—both by keeping their doors open and finding a permanent place in people’s hearts—are the ones that embrace their communities. They know their neighbors, welcome regulars and first-timers with the same generosity, and become part of the rhythm of local life. A truly timeless restaurant does not impose itself on a neighborhood or chase whatever is popular in the moment. It listens, contributes, and slowly becomes a place people cannot imagine the neighborhood without.

Photo by Shelby Moore

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Mackenzie Hoffman, co-owner and operator of Stir Crazy and a fixture in the LA food scene. She is here to share her five rules for creating a restaurant that feels timeless. She talks about the importance of tailoring each guest’s experience, especially when it comes to solo diners, the tips and tricks of staying earnest, and how to maintain your principles without compromise. It’s a great conversation for anyone who’s looking to open a place that can embed itself into the community or for anyone who’s been open for a few years and is looking to become an even bigger part of the neighborhood. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN.

BACKGROUND

Mackenzie, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day at Stir Crazy to sit down for the show.

Incredibly honored to be here, Darin. Thank you so much for having me.

My absolute pleasure. You literally went to school for food studies and nutrition, something that is rare in the restaurant world. What unique perspective do you feel it gave you in regards to hospitality?

BY THE BOOKS

The best way to describe the program was comprehensive. There was a culinary portion to it, there was a microbiology portion to it, food in the arts, food writing, a little business piece, accounting and whatnot. So it really gave me a comprehensive view of food, food systems, restaurants. And then being in New York City was incredible because just the access to being able to study something during the day and then go to my job or go out to eat, grab lunch somewhere. It was awesome.

You were in New York at an incredible inflection point in the restaurant scene and you got to work with some of the great names of that time, Four Horsemen, Union Square Hospitality, Major Food Group. What did you learn from working in New York and Brooklyn restaurants that you still practice today?

IN NEW YORK

I get goosebumps thinking about it because 10, 15 years ago, we were trying to get this craft to catch on. Now, it’s just porn. People can’t get enough of it. Within the past 15 years of seeing restaurants grow and evolve, not just in our industry, but how they affect the world at large. It’s a global industry. The diaspora of all these other ideas and flavors, I feel like we won despite all the adversity, not just happening in localized from city to city and city, but also in the industry at large. I do think that this is a long game and I think that we’re going to win.

You’ve been in the industry through incredible adversity like COVID, which affected the restaurant that you moved out to LA for, Onda, but you managed to stay in the game and eventually open up Stir Crazy. How did you take everything that you’d learned and put it into your own place?

MAKING IT MY OWN

I was fortunate enough to be part of restaurants in multiple different cities and seeing some really, really incredible people, professionals with their own long histories. It was almost like an anthropological view of a lot of different ways to do stuff, not just the how to do it and the what to do, but also why it was being done. I really got to see all the options in front of me and then take a look at my internal world and what my values were to shape that into a very personal perspective.

RULE ONE: WELCOME SOLO GUESTS

I love how you’ve taken your experiences, your studies, what you’ve learned from other people and put it into this unique restaurant, especially for LA, which is why I’m so excited for you to be sharing your five rules for creating a restaurant that feels timeless. For all the restaurants that I love, you can easily feel that hospitality is at the center of what they do. It’s not just about the big groups that come there for the special moments like birthdays and anniversaries. It’s for the people who just want to be out in the world, have a dinner, enjoy themselves, and this makes up your rule number one.

My rule number one is welcome solo guests. Yes.

To me, it’s a no-brainer and it also speaks about how creating a restaurant that feels timeless honors your neighborhood too. I always try to find ways to welcome and treasure guest experiences that are varied. Looking for those solo guests, such a great flag when they bring a book and feel comfortable to just linger and read.

Number one. Yeah. The varied turn times also include bookending other experiences, dropping in for a pre-dinner bottle of wine before you have omakase or even finishing your night with us with a nightcap or even dessert after you went somewhere else. Not every experience that we offer is replicatable. Everyone is unique. The fact that guests can feel comfortable walking in is incredible. We have a 33% return guest rate. That’s amazing. Which in LA is mind-boggling. Month after month after month, I’m like, did I refresh the page? The number is the same.

RULE TWO: STAY EARNEST

When you are that welcoming to guests, when people keep returning, a lot of it radiates from staying sincere, having this open arms policy, and really catering to what people want, which now that you’ve been over three years is not the easiest thing to do. But your rule number two talks about the importance of this in creating a restaurant that feels timeless.

Number two, stay earnest. So hard.

There’s a couple of different tongs in my fork of earnesty. Sure. It’s a good reminder that to both your guests and yourself and your staff that food, wine, service, hospitality, they’re crafts. You’re allowed to be a nerd. You’re allowed to make this your career. You’re allowed to invest in yourself. That pride and that joy and that confidence is going to be contagious. And then ultimately, if you continue that with the way that you teach and the way that you serve and the way that you host and have gratitude while doing it, it’s a really, really great feedback loop.

That is the importance of earnesty.

RULE THREE: AVOID TRENDS. KEEP THINGS ANALOG.

Being earnest from the start and knowing who you are allows you to put your best foot forward when And when Stir Crazy opened, I can say it. It was one of the most talked about and hottest restaurants for all of the right reasons. By not chasing this, it has allowed you to stay consistently well-respected and busy as your doors have been opened. What’s your rule number three?

Rule number three is avoid trends.

Keep things analog.

This is my rule for the non-capitalist capitalist in me. You have to have a North Star. The big word here is intention. Yes, we were hot and cool and vibey when we opened, but I would say that the way that I approach growth, it’s a slow burn. It’s like embers in the fire. It’s really making sure that you’re stoking your heat and making sure that you’re giving yourself grace to fail sometimes and make wrong decisions and then always learn from them. Restaurants should always be a feeling. They should not be any bigger than one person inside them. You’re always going to harness something timeless if you’re reaching towards a feeling.

Then the keeping things analog, this is just to not so much think forward in time, but also backwards in time. At Stir Crazy, we don’t have a lot of screens. We don’t have a phone. We don’t have a website. It’s almost as if time collapses on itself. Yes, we’ve been around for three years, but I hope that someone can enter our doors like a threshold to a portal and be transported. The transportative nature of Stir Crazy is what I find to feel timeless as well.

RULE FOUR: BEFRIEND YOUR NEIGHBORS

This ability to feel timeless, welcoming the community really is a key to keeping your doors open. By ingratiating yourself to these people, it’ll allow you to do so for years to come. What’s your rule number four?

Rule number four, befriend your neighbors. So important.

Restaurants need to understand that they have a sense of place. We have terroir. We don’t have to impose ourselves on the neighborhood and scream louder. We can just be more intentional in the things that we say and the things that we do. Don’t operate on an island. Get to know the people on either sides of you, your businesses. They probably have something to teach you, whether it be something about that crack in the sidewalk, something about that crosswalk. A timeless restaurant is not an imposition on the neighborhood. It is a seamless character that befriends a whole cast of people.

RULE FIVE: MAINTAIN YOUR PRINCIPLES WITHOUT COMPROMISE

Being able to truly become a part of the neighborhood means that you have to be there for a good length of time and the business is going to go up and down. Opportunities are going to be presented to you that might seem good in the moment, but you know in the long run won’t make the most sense. Your fifth and final rule talks about sticking to this to allow you to keep running the type of restaurant that you want to have out in the world. What’s your rule number five?

My rule number five is maintain your principles without compromise.

The other big I word that goes along with intention is integrity. You don’t always just have to have integrity to others. You should also have integrity to yourself. Knowing to not bite off more than you can chew. Knowing that no is probably the hardest thing to say, but it’s such an important lesson to learn how and why and when to say no.

Your moral compass or your north star in your business. Learning when, how, and most importantly why you do things and why you execute the way that you do, why you host the way that you do. That allows you to execute seamlessly with confidence.

CLOSING

Well, you can feel that confidence every time you walk through the doors at Stir Crazy. Mackenzie, congratulations on everything. If people want to swing by because they cannot make a reservation through a phone call, some people chagrin, where can they go? How can they see what you guys are up to?

Come visit us at 6903 Melrose Avenue on the corner of Orange, smack dab in the middle of Los Angeles. We also take reservations by email and currently by resi.

I’m so excited for everything that you’ve built and I can’t wait to swing back in for a glass of wine and some small fishes. Thank you.

I’m honored to keep doing it. I hope to see you soon.