When Munsok So sat down with Marc Cohen and Rich Sweeney on the latest episode of Behind the Numbers, the hosts introduced him as one of the Restaurant365 originals, a customer who signed on when R365 had 11 employees and was among the first 20 or 30 restaurants on the platform. So brought a number of his own: his 612North event space in downtown St. Louis had just hosted back-to-back corporate events tied to a technology conference in town, one that did more than $160,000 in a four-to-five-hour window and a second that did $60,000, for $220,000 in sales across two days.
So is president and CEO of So Hospitality Group, the St. Louis company behind Drunken Fish, Kimchi Guys, Stein Haus, and 612North. He has been in the business for more than 30 years and now runs eight restaurants across four concepts with a management team that has stayed largely intact as the group scaled.
Asked what an owner should focus on, So went straight to labor. The market is tough right now, so the company measures operations against budgets and forecasts every day. Stores forecast about two weeks out, the company sets a labor budget from that forecast, and each store gets a dollar amount to schedule against. So was direct about the rule: not a dollar over.
Sales and labor data flow from the POS into Restaurant365, and each morning a report shows whether each store hit the hourly labor budget it was given for the day before. So can see yesterday’s results today, which keeps managers in front of the numbers rather than looking back at the end of a period.
So Hospitality Group was an early adopter of R365’s inventory and recipe modules. Every new menu item is weighed out and costed before it enters the inventory system, the system is tied to the POS, and every store counts every week. With liquor, beer, and wine on top of food, a location’s management team spends three to three and a half hours on a full count.
So called that labor worth it, because the count surfaces waste, theft, and pricing problems that would otherwise stay hidden. The company ties the results to a profit-sharing model: when a store profits, the team shares in it, so a labor save or a cleaner count shows up in their own pockets. Seafood is an expensive line on a sushi P&L, and So added that an eight-restaurant group can negotiate volume pricing a single-unit operator cannot, helped by a reputation for staying loyal to vendors over years.
So got his start promoting college parties, passing out a thousand fliers at a time. At 21 he negotiated for a hotel lounge on the Illinois side that the owner wanted out of, hands shaking through the meeting. Rent was $1,750 a month. Within three months the lounge was a high-energy bar busy three nights a week.
Drunken Fish followed in 2003, when St. Louis had about three sushi restaurants. So planned it as a lounge with a DJ booth, a dozen-item paper menu, and a mix of roughly 25 percent food and 75 percent liquor. Within the first couple of months food was 50 percent of sales, and today Drunken Fish runs 80 to 85 percent food. Early customers did not know what to do with the wasabi, so staff taught most of them how to eat sushi, and So credits that experience with the word of mouth that drove early growth. About 100 places in St. Louis now serve sushi.
So bought the building that houses his corporate headquarters in 2006 and built out a full Drunken Fish there. About a decade later he left for lunch with a friend, and 15 minutes after he walked out, a manager called to say the building had collapsed. He returned to fire trucks and about 100 people on the street. Half the building was gone, and the chair from his conference room was dangling in a window opening where he had been sitting. No one was hurt.
The building was condemned, Drunken Fish closed that day, and the insurance process ran two years. When So rebuilt, the former Drunken Fish space became the first Kimchi Guys, a fast-casual concept, and 612North opened upstairs as an event space.
When So found Restaurant365, Drunken Fish had four locations and was opening a fifth. The company was moving to Toast and wanted a back office to consolidate accounting and inventory, and Toast’s leadership recommended R365. So was candid that the early years were rough and he came close to giving up on the platform more than once, and equally candid that the systems he put in a decade ago are why he is rarely in the restaurants operating them today.
So’s team uses Claude most, along with Gemini and NotebookLM, and the spend is a real line on the P&L, with several people including So on top-tier plans. Spreadsheet work that used to take a long time now takes 5 or 10 minutes. His best example is a site evaluation program he had always found too detailed. He gave the model to Claude and, in a couple of days with modifications, had a complete SOP: the evaluation form, the training for the managers being evaluated and the leaders conducting it, the scoring standards, and how scores feed the bonus program. Scheduled workflows now handle tasks a marketing director or accounting manager used to do by hand, and AI takes the meeting minutes.
So began buying commercial real estate 12 to 15 years ago and owns most of the buildings his restaurants occupy. A 44-unit apartment complex he opened about a year and a half ago is fully rented, and a 10,000-square-foot commercial building in Edwardsville houses one of his restaurants alongside tenants. He estimated the business is now about 50 percent hospitality and 50 percent real estate.
Stein Haus, his American concept in Belleville, Illinois, adds a revenue stream the others lack: a gaming license. Illinois allows video gaming machines in bars and restaurants, and profits split in thirds among the state, the gaming vendor, and the restaurant. So’s team hosts the machines and manages none of it, and with alcohol consumption declining, he said the extra revenue matters. He wants to scale the concept.
Asked whether hiring or retention is harder, So called them equally hard and described a vetting process of interviews, field interviews, 30-60-90-day homework, and reference checks, now being updated with AI. His hot take was about resilience in a flat-to-down year for restaurants: weather through it and set up for bigger success later. So Hospitality Group plans to open a new Drunken Fish next year.
So Hospitality Group operates eight restaurants across Drunken Fish, Kimchi Guys, Stein Haus, and 612North in the St. Louis area. You can find Munsok So on LinkedIn and learn more at sohospitalitygroup.com.
Be sure to subscribe to Behind the Numbers on your YouTube and your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode!
Share this blog:
See why more than 40,000 restaurants use Restaurant365
Restaurant365 brings together accounting, operations, scheduling, and more in a flexible platform—empowering restaurants to choose the solutions they need and scale with confidence.
