LEADERSHIP
HIGH STEAKS
Britney Ruby Miller honed her leadership style in the pandemic.
—ELIZABETH MILLER WOOD
Britney Ruby Miller’s Leadership Tips
Be still in chaos. Don’t overreact.
New Digs Brittany Ruby Miller at the construction site across from Fountain Square, where she’s moving Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse (below) in 2022.
Leave it to a Ruby to face crisis and come out stronger. For Britney Ruby Miller, CEO of Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment and daughter of restauranteur Jeff Ruby, the pandemic’s crippling effect on the restaurant industry wasn’t her first encounter with catastrophe. But thanks to earlier rocky roads, she had the grit to weather it with grace. Her new book,
5-Star Life: The Faithful Fight to Overcome Obstacles and Pursue Excellence, reveals Hollywood-worthy early years that weren’t entirely charmed. From fires and family scandal to infidelity, infertility, and toxic mental health, she spares no detail of her story’s drama and redemption. But along with peeks behind the Ruby family curtain, her pages are peppered with faith-
16 REALM WINTER 2021
filled coaching. In fact, her gospel is just as gritty as the gossip. “I didn’t feel called to write the book in the middle of my storms,” she says. “Life can be messy, and I felt like I’m at a place where life is really great, when life hasn’t always been great. I wanted to bring hope to people.” Miller wrote the book over three months amidst the thick of the pandemic—just as she (and the rest of the
Empower your managers to run the business like they own the place.
world) was learning to navigate a new normal. When the shutdowns struck, she was one of the region’s first restaurateurs to rally for government support. “Advocacy was not really anything I thought I was going to get involved with until I realized how critical it was that the restaurant industry got relief,” she says. Miller quickly learned that politicians were far more moved by owners “who were feeling the pain” than lobbyists pushing an agenda. So she picked up the phone, hopped on Zoom calls, wrote emails, and appeared on national news outlets, championing her industry’s needs to both sides of the aisle. In the process, she helped unify local restaurateurs for their common cause of survival. “There’s no room for competition during a crisis,” says Miller. Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment introduced take-home
kits that were an instant success, and later a posh delivery experience boasting a uniformed waiter, white tablecloth, and sultry playlist. Both remain strong revenue streams for the company. “I knew that if we were silent and still, we would come up with some innovative ideas that would last forever,” Miller says. Challenges remain, of course. Of the 650-person staff across all company restaurants, approximately 500 were new hires in 2021, and the downtown Jeff Ruby’s Steaks will be moving to Fountain Square in 2022. If Miller’s story speaks to anything, it’s that the hard stuff in life isn’t always bad; it just hasn’t been redeemed yet. “You can choose to wake up every day to that five-star life,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be one- and two-star circumstances.”
Know your business numbers, and be prepared for the worst.
P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . C O N WAY
P H O T O G R A P H ( B O O K C O V E R ) BY N AT E L E O P O L D / ( B O T T O M P H O T O ) C O U R T E SY J E F F R U BY C U L I N A RY E N T E R TA I N M E N T / ( I C O N S ) S T O C K . A D O B E . C O M
THE JUMP
