The 2025 James Beard Award winners were announced June 16, and the prize for Outstanding Restaurant went to Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado.
Frasca was co-founded by Bobby Stuckey, and in accepting the award, Stuckey said, quote, “if you are new to this country and you don’t speak the language, the hospitality industry is here for you. If you’re a single parent and you ended a flexible schedule, we’re here for you. If you need a second chance because you were incarcerated or just made some mistakes, hospitality is here for you.”
Stuckey grew up in Scottsdale, and he started his career as a busboy in 1983. As he told The Show recently, he views the lessons he’s learned from working in restaurants as a blueprint for life in general.
Full conversation
BOBBY STUCKEY: A lot has changed in the restaurant business in the last 40 years since I started busing tables, but a lot hasn't changed. At the end of the day, it's very hands on, blue collar business that you have to be part of the process. And I just think you can't be a true hospitality leader unless you understand the pulse and the feeling of what our teams do.
Like tonight, I'm working up for Frasca, I will run food, I will open wine, I will do what is needed.
And it's very much a one little piece of the team. And if you're going to be a front waiter at Frasca, you start off polishing glasses. You can come from the greatest restaurants in the world with a resume, and we say, great, welcome. If you want to be part of the team, you start here.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, this makes me think of something I've heard you say elsewhere that, you know, TV shows like "The Bear" and various other shows have kind of created a sense of mystique around life and hospitality. And I know you're not saying that it's not also those things, but this idea of it being a blue collar sort of not about any one person's ego type of profession that seems important to you. Why is that important to you?
STUCKEY: Well, I have a lot of experience. I've seen how it works and we have to show up every night. I mean, the James Beard Award for last Monday. I got on the second flight out of Chicago, so I was here to work with the team the night after winning the biggest award in our company's history. And I just think the restaurant industry is about every night. It's, you reset every night, and you have to be better than the night before. And you can only do that if it's a whole team.
DINGMAN: So is there a connection for you between that and something that you said in the aftermath of winning the Beard Award, you talked about how the restaurant industry, the hospitality industry is a place for everybody.
And in particular, you talked about how it's a place for if you're an immigrant to this country and you have nowhere else to go, you can find a home in the restaurant industry. If you're a single parent, if you were part of some other industry and because of a recession or something, that industry shuts down, there's a place for you in the restaurant world.
Is there a connection for you between that idea and this thing we've just been talking about this idea of not having an ego and doing the work every night?
STUCKEY: Yes, Sam. I mean, I'm a severely dyslexic person who was not academically gifted and the restaurant industry welcomed me as a punk rock kid in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the '80s. And, you know, our industry is this enormous giant of the United States economic ecosystem that no one's paying attention to and no one understands.
And I mean, in the 202, Washington, D.C., the capital, they don't understand what they have in front of them. You have the greatest equalizer of the American economic system, period. It is, if you look at it like biology, we are the cornerstone species.
We are 12 million jobs, dwarfs the airline industry. Every senator knows every CEO of every airline, other than John Hickenlooper because he's an ex-restaurant guy, right? We've got 99 others that have no idea how the restaurant industry really impacts their city, their state, their region, their country.
DINGMAN: So what do you want them to understand?
STUCKEY: I hear both sides of the aisle talk about bringing factory jobs back and all that.
Why don't we look at the reality? Maybe those aren't coming back, but you have this very beautiful industry that can give you a leg up in this country. And you don't need a fancy college education. You don't need to come from a certain socio economic group. It takes everybody.
DINGMAN: Right.
STUCKEY: I mean, I like to think about in 2009, after the recession hit so hard, the United States, I used to joke that was the great equalizer back then. People with Ivy League degrees that lost their jobs working side by side with first generation in this country, people in the restaurant industry, and everyone was the same ability.
DINGMAN: Can I ask you about the immigration piece of this specifically, because you mentioned it in that statement that you put out on social media after the Beard Awards, and I've heard you say it in other places, too.
Do you think one of the things that, you know, folks in power in the 202 area code, as you were saying, do you think one of the things they don't understand is the relationship between the restaurant industry and immigrants to this country?
STUCKEY: 100%. They're starting to understand it in the agricultural sector. Because the agricultural sector has a much stronger lobbyist group and a much bigger voice. Both sides of the aisle listen to farmers and agriculture very well.
DINGMAN: Right.
STUCKEY: And our industry just hasn't been able to communicate to them.
DINGMAN: And what do you want them to hear on immigration specifically with regard to the restaurant industry?
STUCKEY: I think the first thing you do is both sides of the aisle need to come together, put both of their political agendas aside. Look, I grew up in Arizona, 40 years ago, Barry Goldwater knew how to work with Democrats.
DINGMAN: Right.
STUCKEY: They need to come together and go, OK, we don't have the workforce domestically that either wants to understand or has the skill set to be in the restaurant industry. Some of these people from other countries are really good at it. They love it. They're here. They're going to help our economy.
Is there a way where you said, OK, here, we're going to give people who do not have a criminal record access to a work visa, like a J-1 visa, but it's a work visa in the United States in hospitality. And maybe you make it a $2,400 fee paid over a two-year period, that they pay a little bit and the restaurant they're working pays a little bit.
All of a sudden, you've created a revenue stream for the U.S. government, just like they're trying with tariffs. But this is a way to get people documentation to work in our country, in the hospitality industry. And that's just me figuring that out on the run one morning. What if we actually started this?
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, as a last question for you, Bobby. I mean, you have talked about hospitality in a very interesting way and how it's different from service. Service, you have said, is something you do to someone. Hospitality is how you make someone feel. And a lot of people would think of hospitality mostly as customer-facing.
But if I'm hearing you right, you're talking about hospitality not just as a customer-facing thing, but as more of a holistic project in terms of if we're talking about a restaurant, not just how you interact with your diners, but how you interact with the people who work in your restaurant.
STUCKEY: Exactly, Sam. Hospitality is not a light switch that you turn on and off. It's how you interact with society.
DINGMAN: Well, Bobby Stuckey is the James Beard winning founder of Fresca Food and Wine in Colorado, a sommelier, and some nights a busboy.
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