The Cheesecake Factory is giving me and two of my friends money to do a road trip across the country for a personal project. Here's what we're doing.

This summer, a few friends and I are taking a road trip across the country on a mission to find American success stories. We didn’t have enough money to do it ourselves, so we reached out to our favorite restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory, to see if there was a way to do it in partnership with them, and they enthusiastically agreed to sponsor our trip. What we didn’t realize is that The Cheesecake Factory is also an American success story. Over the course of the trip we will interview artists, craftspeople, and entrepreneurs who are dedicated to their work. We aim to highlight a diverse set of talents across a few different regions of the country including the northeast, the midwest, and the west.

Our first interview was with Dave Luz, the Area Director of Operations for The Cheesecake Factory in Boston, who talked to us about some of the similarities between the care and dedication an artist has to their craft and what The Cheesecake Factory does in its restaurants.

This starts with a commitment to excellence at all levels. Dave Luz was previously a server for The Cheesecake Factory in Los Angeles, and he told us about the rigorous quality standard required for servers to deal with such a complex menu. “I think training was three weeks, you had to give up a good part of your life to come and be a server at the Cheesecake Factory… it was like going back to school. And it was legit serious. I mean, if you didn’t pass the tests, you weren’t going to continue with the company.”

At his current job as Area Director of Operations, one of his main concerns is quality control. He says that every time he visits a Boston area restaurant, he orders about 10 dishes, “to make sure that those recipes are being executed perfectly. And if they’re not, then we’re drilling back and saying, okay, where did this go wrong? What can we do better? And I’ll tell you most of the items, if you were sitting down as a guest, you wouldn’t understand they weren’t perfect. But because I’ve been trained, we see it in all of our restaurants we pay really close attention to that and we have really high standards.”

Another similarity we noticed was creativity and a willingness to break from expected molds. As soon as we sat down to talk, I commented on the eclectic architecture style and tried to relate it to the menu. For anyone unfamiliar, The Cheesecake Factory’s menu is enormous, with over 250 options, including Italian food, Chinese food, American food. I wanted to know the backstory behind those choices.

Dave said that a lot of it had to do with the founder David Overton’s distance from the restaurant industry, and says that it was a big reason for The Cheesecake Factory’s continued success. “He didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do. And what you’re not supposed to do at a restaurant is make your menu infinity because it makes it very complex, it adds a lot of problems and things you have to manage and execute. It’s hard to make all that stuff perfect. And then financially, it’s hard to make sure you’re doing it so that you can also make money. But he didn’t know all those rules. I love that. And he’s got such a great palette and has such a great understanding of what people like to eat. And so when he opened up his restaurant he said, You know what, if you want a burger or if you want a Cajun Jambalaya pasta, why not?”

But the thing that really makes The Cheesecake Factory stand out — another final similarity we noticed between what Dave does for The Cheesecake Factory and what, for instance, Len Goldstein does at Keezer’s, or Brooke Lanier does with her art — is a love and dedication to the work. To Dave, “the best thing about the restaurant industry is you’re taking care of people you’re taking care of guests that are coming in the restaurant, you’re taking care of the staff who needs support to do their job or my role. You’re taking care of the managers who need support to make sure that they’re, they have everything that they need. So I just I love the interaction with the people.”

And more than just the restaurant industry in general, Dave loves working for The Cheesecake Factory specifically, and he was happy to talk to us. Because as he puts it, “We’re a great company, and the people here work so hard. So I’m happy to do anything to help us be more successful or get the word out about us. I can’t even tell you how many people still don’t know, everything’s made from scratch. Every single time people come interview for jobs, I’ll take them into our prep kitchen. And I’ll say this is everything you’re eating, we’re it today, you know, and we have over 100 sauces. We probably have over 200 prep items. It’s like, it’s unbelievable. And so anything we can do to get that word out, I think is really important.”

Don’t worry Dave, we’ll get the word out! Be sure to follow us on Facebook at “In Search of America with David, Tom & Jacob” and Instagram @insearchofusa to see the video and stay updated on our trip!