Katie Button Talks About Keeping Employees for the Long Haul and Making Room for Mistakes

By the time you read this, Katie Button will be back at her restaurant and bagel shop in Asheville, NC, but she was away for a few weeks, in residence at Chefs Club in New York City. That's a terrifying thing to do when it's your own business, but Button trusts her staff at Cúrate Tapas Bar and Button & Co. Bagels, and they get to develop some new skills while she's away. It's important to her to invest in her team's development in all different ways—like paying a living wage, offering healthcare, creating incentives for employees who stick around for a certain amount of years—both because she cares, and because it makes her take a good, hard look at the kind of life she'd like for herself. During her tenure in NYC, Button opened up about the importance of therapy, the impact of a "vampire schedule" when you have a family, and the pressures of owning a business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices