Private Club Radio Show
Welcome to the Private Club Radio Show, the industry's weekly source for education, news, trends, and other current developments in the world of private clubs.
Hosted by the talented entertainer and industry expert, Denny Corby,
the podcast offers a unique perspective on the private club industry, featuring expert guests, product spotlights, predictions, and more.
Whether you're involved in a golf club management, yacht clubs, athletic clubs, or business clubs, the Private Club Radio Show is the essential podcast for
anyone seeking valuable insights and information on the latest trends and developments in the private club industry.
Private Club Radio Show
362: The Secrets Behind The Magic Castle w/ Hervé Lévy, CCM, CCE
Ever wondered what it takes to orchestrate a seamless experience at one of the most iconic magic clubs in the world? Join us as we uncover the fascinating journey Hervé Lévy, CCM, CCE, the mastermind behind the operations of the Magic Castle. From his beginnings at the Griffin Club, where he led a $25 million renovation, to his current role as General Manager and Chief Operating Officer at the Academy of Magical Arts, Irv shares the secrets and strategies that keep the magic alive for 550 nightly guests. Learn how he navigates the unique challenges of managing 200 employees in a meticulously programmed environment and the innovative solutions he implemented to enhance internal communication and staff relations.
In this captivating episode, we dive into the daily intricacies and unexpected surprises of running a prestigious and busy magic club. Hervé reflects on his extensive career transformation, offering insights into his transition from hotels and restaurants to the world of private clubs. Discover the importance of detailed planning, the orchestration needed for smooth guest experiences, and the pivotal role of an HR department in maintaining operational harmony. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes magic of club operations and the leadership genius who has revolutionized every club he has touched.
Follow us on the socials
Private Club Radio Instagram
Private Club Radio Linkedin
Denny Corby Instagram
Denny Corby Linkedin
Yeah, man, I think you know it's definitely like the fact that everything works. You cannot just make a change, because if you make that change without thinking something else is going to be affected. Everything runs so well because the timing, the magic, the flow when we have 500 people and 27,000 square square feet, everything needs to run very well the floor manager, the service, everything is really really well programmed to make really the guest experience busy, flowing so well from dining to magic, to more magic, to more magic, to more magic. And so if you change one item, you can just mess up the entire flow.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what surprised me, because I was so involved at the Griffin Club making the changes that I felt I needed to do. When I started to make changes over here, everything started to collapse and so I started to take, you know, a couple of steps back and I'm like, oh wow, let's think more about the involvement with the other departments. And this is how I really kind of tried to step back, try to involve the team, you know, even more for me to understand the operation and making sure that the decisions that we make are not affecting too much on the other end.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to the Private Club Radio Show podcast, the industry source for news, trends, updates and conversations all in the world of private golf and country clubs. Whether you're a consummate professional or brand new to the industry, welcome. We are so glad you're here. I'm your host, denny Corby. If you don't know already, my background comes from the entertainment side of the world. I do a magic mindering and comedy show, primarily very heavily in the private club world, which brings me here, and in this episode I bring on the general manager and chief operating officer of one of the most amazing places in the world, the Academy of Magical Arts, the Magic Castle, mr Irv Levy. I'm like he says his name so well as he should and I just feel like this hick dude from Pennsylvania who, irv Irv, irv Levy, erov Levy oh, that actually sounded pretty Erov, erov Levy. I think we'll leave it at that. Maybe I just won't say his name anymore so I don't embarrass him, don't judge me, don't hate me, but I am so excited because his journey is nothing short of magical himself, from his early days in hotel restaurants to his transformational role at the Griffin Club. His story has some amazing turns because he has a knack for innovation and transformation, which has shown through his tenure at the Griffin Club, where he helped oversee a massive $25 million renovation, turning it into a top-notch facility in California. And when it came to the Magic Castle, initially he was extremely skeptical about taking on the role at such an amazing, iconic venue. But his curiosity won and it led him to managing one of the most unique clubs in the world, and it's not just the club itself. If you don't know the Magic Castle, you have to check it out. Most nights weekly there are 13 performing rotating entertainers and magicians and they serve upwards of 550 guests a night Meals, foods, 550 a night on the regular Wow. The club did have some challenges and things going into it and he helped take it to the next level. He has over 200 employees, over 28,000 square feet, and it's no small feat to run a place like that and his role there has been absolutely pivotal in turning the place around.
Speaker 2:This is a wonderful episode. I'm so excited To have him on. If you have not done so already, before we get to the episode, if you're not done so already, sign up for our newsletter. Head on over to privateclubradiocom. The box will pop right up. Just sign up there. That way, you stay up to date with all of our content, news and updates. And also a quick note, a quick thank you to some of our show partners.
Speaker 2:Brand new, we have golf life navigators, the only resource for golf enthusiasts to discover experience and ultimately secure their ideal club membership and golf community. Their search engines are free and provide instant results and connectivity to match golfers with their dream clubs. They cause there's an overwhelming number of club options and they assist in helping members find their dream clubs and help clubs find members who fit their club. Truly, an amazing platform. If you want to learn more, head on over to golflifenavigatorscom, fill out the form, set up a call with Jason Becker and find out how you can be a part of that amazing platform.
Speaker 2:We have our friends Member Vetting, kenneth, because the member vetting process really hasn't changed much in the past 150 years, almost relying solely on social relationships and casual interactions, but it lacks in factual data. The traditional application process tells very little about someone's behaviors and characters, and that is until now, because Ken has created an innovative, confidential and comprehensive applicant information gathering process that provides an unrivaled depth of information. If you would like to learn more, head on over to membervettingcom. Set up a call with Paul Dank and I guarantee you're gonna be one of the best calls you can have for your club. Also, make sure to check out our episodes of Member Vetting here on Private Club Radio. And we have our friends, concert Golf Partners, boutique owner-operators of private golf and country clubs nationwide. If you, your club, friends club enemies club is looking for some recapitalization, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom. Set up a confidential phone call with Peter Nannula and see if you guys are a good fit.
Speaker 2:And finally, since we're talking about magic, in the Magic Castle myself I'm one of the show partners, me I have my show. It's a magic mind reading, comedy and crowd work show the Denny Corby experience. It is one of the most fun member event nights your club is going to have guaranteed. There's excitement, there's mystery. Also there's magic. It is so much crowd work, so much banter, interaction and engagement with the club. Your members are going to leave going. You just had to be there. That's how they're going to describe it. It's so much fun. I am a bit biased, though. If you want to learn more, head on over to dennycorbycom and hit me up and we'll chat. I'm also very active on LinkedIn as well. But that's that. I am very excited. Private Club Radio. Let's welcome to the show Irv Levy. Irv Irv Levy. Sorry, bud.
Speaker 1:Yes, my name is Irv Levy. I'm the general manager and chief operating officer at the Academy of Magical Arts, which is at the Magic Castle.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. That's awesome. Now bring me back to like 1998. You get into restaurants and then from there you get into restaurants and then from there you get into private clubs. Now, when you were going to school, did you know about clubs and private clubs, or was it just like a brand new thing to you that you found yourself in?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's very interesting because I only knew hotels and restaurants, so my focus was hotel restaurants. And so, when, um, I was working for um the hilton in huntington beach, um, I was looking to to live um, and because I think I was, you know, done and you know was um learning my new skills and so I wanted to do something different, um, and I saw um I remember like I think it was on craigslist at that time, but they were looking, I know they were looking for uh assistant, the actually director of food and beverage for a club in, uh, altadena, number one I didn't know where altadena was and number two, uh, I was like what a club. So right away I thought it was going to be like a nightclub, but after reading the job description it was very intriguing. So I decided to apply and I was able to secure an interview and it definitely got me going.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Now I knew you had the Griffin Club. Can you talk about that? That's a really interesting place.
Speaker 1:Yes, when they hired me it was called Beverly Hills Country Club. It was interesting because it was not in Beverly Hills and it was not a country club. It was basically like a tennis club with fitness and restaurant, fitness and restaurant. So when the new owners hired me, it was to undergo about 25 million renovations. So we renovated the place for my first two and a half years there. We moved everyone out of the building, we moved everyone inside tents. It was very hot in there, especially during the summer. We were doing food and beverage tents, fitness tents. We were doing on the tennis courts a lot of different youth activities. So it was definitely like a good transition where we went from the various country club to a Gryphon club.
Speaker 1:So, as you can imagine, you open a brand new club, so everything is brand new. Not only you have to really focus on the temporary tents and facilities and operation, but you have to actually be strategical about what the new club is going to look like and so after about, you know, looking at how the kitchen should be, looking at how the restaurant and making, looking at how the kitchen should be, looking at how the restaurant and making sure that you make the right decision, because when it's set up and built, there's no going back. So we need to make sure, like you, think about every single detail that needs to be put inside that renovation. And we made some mistakes, you know, and we learned along the way, you know. And then you have to hire the right people.
Speaker 1:You have to hire the manager or the leadership team that actually translates the new culture that's going to be, you know, at the end of the day. So you know, from the new POS system, buying new pens for the kitchen and getting all the office supplies and new computers, you have to do everything from scratch. So it took us about two and a half years to do that, and when we opened up, it was actually from August 2017, if I remember. We were about three months delayed. Of course, construction happened. That's not too bad.
Speaker 2:That's not too bad. All things considered, that's not horrible.
Speaker 1:It was not horrible and so we ended up like opening and we had some horror story, obviously you know from. You know like staff not showing up, you know training was not going, you know the way we wanted it to be or going. But at the end of the day, I think we did a very, very good job building what the Griffin Club is today. Since then, you know, they built, you know, a new pool, so we have two pools now, seven tennis courts, eight tennis courts, I'm sorry fitness facility, two restaurants, banquet space and a huge youth activity. We had a lot of kids. It was supposed to be a club for families where you basically can come with two and a half kids and then just leave them for the clubs to take care of. So it's like a huge daycare, I would say, leaving a lot of chicken fingers and ketchup on the ground. But you know what? That's where the membership won it and so we made it happen.
Speaker 2:I got you Now fast forward. So how did this come about for the Magic Castle and the Academy of Magical Arts? Were you looking like? Did they call you? And is it like when the you know, when the Magic Castle calls, like you have to pick up, like what was that like getting that position?
Speaker 1:so after working there at the Griffin Club six years, I started to become like a little bit bored because we done so many things for the first four or five years and everything kind of came back and it was just like very, it was too easy and I was looking to kind of live and I know I interviewed for a different club, a country club up in the valley, and I actually arrived number two in the process and and so it was very casual interview but they actually gave me the taste of see what's out there and so when I saw the magic answer, looking I inquire first, you know, with recruiter.
Speaker 1:I asked him the question and I basically told him no, actually I'm not going to apply, because I was like I didn't want to be bored, I was like it's going to be just a restaurant and I don't want to be in the same situation I am right now.
Speaker 1:So maybe a month later I had a bad day at work and I was like you know what, maybe I should actually consider going to the Magic Castle. So I actually called a recruiter and it was a Thursday at 7 pm and he told me you know what, the interview is happening Saturday so I can squeeze your application, but you have to send me everything today, including basically all the questionnaires. You know there are a lot of documents to fill out and I think I worked until 1 o'clock in the morning that day, sent everything to him and on Saturday they were able to review application and I was speaking out of 300 applications, I think. So he was like a group of 10 of us and it went from group from 10 to 5, 5 to 3, 5 to 2. And then we went to just a presentation between me and someone else. And, yeah, we did a presentation and I was the lucky winner of the process.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So for listeners who might not know, can you describe the Academy of Magical Arts, the Magic Castle and what you have under your control?
Speaker 1:So when you look at the Magic Castle from outside, from the street, it looks like a tiny castle over the hill. It looks like 2,000, 3,000 square feet you know house mansion over 4,000 square feet mansion. But when you go inside it's very, very deceiving from the outside because we have about 28,000 square feet space. So we have a lot of basement space. It goes underneath. We have a huge restaurant. We have 140 seats in a restaurant.
Speaker 1:But the good thing is we do three turns. Let me explain. When you first walk in as a guest, you go to the main bar, you can have a drink and you go to the restaurant. The first seating is at 6 o'clock. We have a 6 o'clock seating, 8 o'clock seating, 10 o'clock seating. The 6 o'clock seating goes to the 8 o'clock show, then the 8 o'clock seating goes to the 10 o'clock show and then the 10 o'clock seatings go to the 11.30 show. So it basically creates a rush for people to leave because they have a show to attend. So we can flip the dining room three times in the same evening and, in addition to the bar service, we can do as many as 550 people every single night.
Speaker 1:When we actually open on weekends, we have brunch and we do about 300 for brunch and we do 550 for dinner. So you know it's very typical for us to have a $70,000, $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a day, especially on weekends because we are extremely busy. We have about 13 different performers. They actually rotate from one week to the next, so if you come today, you have a couple of different performers next week. So it's actually very good for the membership because they can come as many times as they want and they don't get bored with magic. 13 different magicians include five big rooms and additional rooms for impromptu magic. So it's very, very interesting and most of the people don't understand how the magic castle works until they actually go in and experience it the first time.
Speaker 2:So what does a typical day look like for you? What are some of the challenges that you face on a daily basis?
Speaker 1:So we have 200 employees. That's actually, you know, 200 employees. You know you never know what to get. Um, you know you have a lot of. You know, obviously, issues, uh, from the hr perspective, or making sure that you know like everybody's happy, um, luckily we have actually very high satisfaction satisfaction score on the employee survey. But every single week we have a different day. You know we never know what to get because you know the membership here is very, very interesting.
Speaker 1:I've never been in a club and that's my sixth club with a membership so involved. They want to be part of everything, every decision. They want to give the grain of salt for everything. They basically feel like they own the club. And, yes, you can make a point that most of the clubs out there are equity, but usually the board of directors make decisions for the membership and the membership is not so involved there. The members, they want to know everything. They want to be telling us how to run a club every single day.
Speaker 1:So it is definitely sometimes challenging to make some big changes because you get about 500 emails as soon as you make a change and you have to explain the reason why we're making those changes. So internal communication is very important. We try to send out as many emails as possible to explain why we're doingMs try to kind of prevent the flow of complaints or issues. So you can imagine, between the employees, between the membership, who's very involved, but also the magic and auditions, and we have a lot of different committees. Food you know, we make sure that we change our food menu all the time. We have 28, 29 million operations here. So out of 29 million operations, 20 million is food. So we're one of the top restaurants in Los Angeles. I think it was top three restaurants in Los Angeles. So it's a lot of decision-making and so I don't think I can describe a typical day, because I don't think we have a typical day.
Speaker 2:When you first showed up, what were some things that surprised you? It has to be a little unique, this club and position that you walked into. Were there any things that surprised you early on? You're like whoa things that surprised you earlier on.
Speaker 1:You're like whoa, yeah, man, I think it's definitely the fact that everything works. You cannot just make a change, because if you make that change without thinking something else is going to be affected. Everything runs so well because, um, the timing, the magic, uh, the flow, uh, when we have 500 people and 27 000 square feet, everything needs to run very well. The floor manager, the service, everything is really really well programmed to make really the guest experience um, busy flowing so well, from dining to magic, to more magic, to more magic. And so if you change one item, you can just mess up the entire flow.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what surprised me, because I was so involved at the Griffin Club making the changes that I felt I needed to do. When I started to make changes over here, everything started to collapse and so I started to take, you know, I took a couple of steps back and I'm like, oh, wow, let's think more about the involvement with all the departments. And this is how I really kind of tried to step back, tried to involve the team, you know, even more for me to understand the operation and making sure that the decisions that we make are not affecting too much on the other end.
Speaker 2:What have been some of your favorite or biggest accomplishments or things that you've done at the club that you're proud about?
Speaker 1:I think it's the communication, um, the fact that now you know we communicate with the, with the membership, but also with the staff. It was very important. Also, the creation of the hr department, um, I think before it used to be very hard to file a proper complaint in an organization because everybody was really all the department managers were kind of related in one sense and there were no department managers, so people were kind of scared to go and talk to their managers. So I think we created that flow with HR department, which is completely separated, tried to have this communication going from the employees to the management, opened up policies, tried to change the culture. We hear you, we are starting to send every single month an employee newsletter making sure that everything was listed, starting to recognizing people not only on their birthday anniversary but how long they've been working there, Really try to kind of foster that employee and management relationship. And I think they didn't have that before and I think that became like a huge accomplishment.
Speaker 1:And we started to hire the right department manager who were really focused on the same culture that we tried to create. And we hired an executive chef who was just fantastic. He just was able to change the food. You know, the Magic Castle used to have like a very bad reputation with their food, but now we're getting more and more amazing comments, you know, on Yelp and everywhere, saying how great the food is. Not only was he able to fix the food, but he was able to fix the culture inside the kitchen. The staff love him. They really love not only his leadership but how he trained them, how he spent time with them. He's a human. He's not just like this French chef that's screaming at everyone, right? So I think he's definitely someone that I respect and definitely part of the solution of you know where we are right now.
Speaker 2:How long was the food issue going on for?
Speaker 1:So the food, I think the bad reputation for the food lasted for years and years and I think people were not coming for the food Was there a constant flow of like chefs, like was there just different chefs coming in and then was it just, finally you got you.
Speaker 2:You know, the great chef who had actual leadership skills and the abilities to make amazing foods and dishes.
Speaker 1:And while training and mentoring you know, like when you have maybe like not necessarily the right culture, um, you are seeing more revolving doors. You have people living um and definitely staying and committed to the place. So that is part of that, I believe. You know, like the chefs were staying a year and a half, two years, and they were not able to stay because maybe the culture was not where they wanted to be. And so fixing the culture first having a chef and now we're having, you know, this roadmap to where everything, how everyone should behave and have this open communication definitely makes a difference, and not only with leadership and food quality and because it becomes consistent. You see the passion on dishes. You focus on freshness of the product. You really care about what you're sending out instead of just I have to do my job, I'm sending that food out because I have to do that.
Speaker 1:I think that this chef is really able to come across as the changes that he makes are very methodological.
Speaker 1:He wants to make sure like everything is like from seasonality, he wants to make sure the execution is well done as well. If you can imagine, we almost have a banquet system here, because at 6 o'clock everybody is coming and they all leave at 8 o'clock and we have a little crowd 140 people coming at 8 o'clock and a crowd coming at 10 pm, so you have to execute like a banquet, but at the same time it's a la carte menu. So this is not easy and not every chef can do that. And this chef was able to do it because he kind of changed the system from instead of having the salmon with their own risotto and their own vegetables, and then you have the sea bass with this, and on that he actually changed it to a steakhouse kind of concept. So he was definitely able to execute that large amount of people in a very short amount of time three times during the night with that system. So I think that was a game changer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm assuming a lot of chefs would probably go and go on oh yeah, I got this. And you get in. You're like, oh, this is three shows a night, every night, like this is mental toughness beyond belief. And then having you know, cause you can't have a bad day, cause then you're like the leader, you're the one in the kitchen, like that, oh man, so yeah, that is awesome. I think I want to talk to a chef too.
Speaker 1:But no.
Speaker 2:This guy is.
Speaker 1:French-Canadian, so I'm French myself, so you might not hear his accent. I understand his accent.
Speaker 2:You could translate or whatever. Yeah, exactly, I don't saying his accent. You could translate?
Speaker 1:or whatever. Yeah, exactly, I don't understand his accent either.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, I want to thank you so much for spending some time shedding some light on the Magic Castle and your career and thank you Appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right, Hold on, Give me one second. Let me just make sure this loads. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. This hit so close to home. Such a good episode. Thank you so much for joining us. That was. Thank you so much for sharing some knowledge with us. Sir, Mr Elv Levy, I think I said that, right, I think I said it. Good, I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much for being on the episode. If you are enjoying the content, make sure you like share, subscribe, share it with somebody, sign up for our newsletter, privateclubradiocom. Follow and subscribe on whatever platform you are consuming the content on. It means the world costs nothing and we really appreciate it over here. That's this episode. Hope you all enjoyed that. I'm your host, Denny Corby. Until next time, catch on the flippity flip.
