The Driftwood Group is thriving in Greater Cleveland’s dining scene, and restaurateur Scott Kuhn is a driving force behind the operation
Scott Kuhn at the bar of his Driftwood Group’s Bin 216 in downtown Cleveland’s Playhouse Square.
Story by Kristen Mott
Photography by Michael C. Butz
Nestled inside the lively hub of downtown Cleveland’s Playhouse Square is Bin 216. Formerly part of the Ohio Theatre’s lobby, the space now offers a pre- and post-performance venue of another kind, one that exudes a warm, swanky atmosphere, complemented by dark leather chairs and rich wood and copper accents.
Relaxing on one of its gilded couches in late October is Scott Kuhn, the 38-year-old founder and managing partner of The Driftwood Group. His quiet and unassuming demeanor belies an involvement in the restaurant business that falls just short of frenetic.
Behind his black-rimmed glasses, Kuhn’s mind is at work, thinking about menu items and restaurant décor or about the next business move for Driftwood, which already consists of more than a dozen establishments, including places like Bin 216, Hodge’s and Cibrèo in downtown Cleveland and 87 West in Westlake’s Crocker Park.
Hitch that mind to a lifelong passion for food, and it’s no surprise Kuhn is making a name for himself in Greater Cleveland’s flourishing dining scene.
It hasn’t always been easy, nor has Kuhn’s path to success necessarily been a straight one. Along the way, though, Kuhn has been able to rely on strong relationships with relatives, friends, mentors and business partners. For him, all act as family, and all have shaped who he is today.
Learning the trade
Cibrèo’s Cinque Terra, which is spaghetti, roasted potatoes, rapini, chiles and pesto sauce, finished with lemon zest, garlic breadcrumbs and pecorino.
Growing up in a Jewish-Catholic household in Solon, Kuhn says some of his fondest memories are of his family sharing meals around the table. Whether he was in the kitchen making latkes with his grandmother during Chanukah or learning how to make his grandfather’s coveted vinegar-based potato salad, those early cooking memories made a significant impact on Kuhn.
“As you get older, it’s amazing how pictures in your mind can fade,” he says. “But every time I make one of my grandparents’ recipes, it’s like they’re sitting next to me again.
“To this day, if I’m in a bad mood I can make that potato salad, and (then) the day isn’t so bad anymore. That’s why I love cooking so much, because of the emotional attachments to people and recipes and heritage and family.”
It was a no-brainer for Kuhn that he would have a career in the restaurant industry. After graduating from Solon High School, Kuhn enrolled in the hospitality program at the University of Alabama. It wasn’t an easy journey.
After making some “young mistakes” and suffering an accident at age 19 that left him with a broken back, Kuhn was forced to drop out of the program.
“Life changed. I had to have a very serious operation and it took me quite a bit of time to get back on my feet again. As I went through that process of recovering from spinal fusion surgery, I had to do some soul searching,” Kuhn says.
He grappled with the fact that many of his friends were moving on with their lives, whether by getting engaged or beginning their own careers. Kuhn knew it was time to start down a better path.
Once fully recovered, he went back to school, and at 26, he graduated from University of Akron’s culinary program and received an undergraduate degree in management from Malone University in Canton.
“For the first time in a long time, I was passionate about something,” Kuhn says. “It didn’t take me long to connect the dots from that point to get my career started.”
Foot in the door
Cibrèo’s Salmon, which is grilled salmon on top of a lentil and wild rice salad, topped with rapini and extra virgin olive oil.
Instead of just choosing to work at any restaurant, Kuhn wanted to wait for the right opportunity to begin his career.
“I was offered every general manager’s job at every chain restaurant you could imagine, and that was not me,” he says. “My dad was ready to murder me because here I was a late bloomer and I was turning down jobs.”
By a stroke of luck, Kuhn was introduced through a restaurant consulting company to Dr. Arthur Steffee, a retired orthopedic surgeon from Cleveland who had moved to western Pennsylvania. Steffee had built The Allegheny Grille in Foxburg, Pa., a timber-frame restaurant looming over the Allegheny River. Steffee, however, had no experience in the restaurant business.
This appeared to be the opportunity Kuhn had been waiting for, so he agreed to meet with Steffee. Not long after, Kuhn found himself living in a log cabin in Pennsylvania and working 20 hours a day at the restaurant.
“I told Dr. Steffee that I would love to buy the restaurant in a year. That’s exactly what I did,” Kuhn says. “I learned so much just by doing and making mistakes and calling my dad for business help over that first year.”
Steffee, now 80, serves as more than just a business partner. Kuhn describes the doctor as a “visionary” and the “smartest man” he’s ever met. He also reminded Kuhn of his grandfather.
“When I moved out to Pennsylvania I was alone. I had no family or friends and I was in a town of about 250 people. I would go to Dr. Steffee’s home, and he and his wife Patricia would make me dinner. We’d ride horses on Tuesdays and just talk,” Kuhn says.
“It was like spending time with my grandfather. There were so many similarities. When you’re around great people like that, who are not only intelligent but kind and good people, they mold you.”
Steffee also owned the Welshfield Inn in Burton, which quickly turned into Kuhn’s second restaurant.
“Once I purchased the Welshfield Inn, I knew that I was going to be back home and continue to grow in Cleveland,” Kuhn says.
Forming Driftwood
Scott Kuhn has a seat at Bin 216.
While Kuhn was in the midst of opening Washington Place Bistro and Inn in Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood in 2010, he received a Facebook message from a young chef named Chris Hodgson. Hodgson, who was relocating to Cleveland from New York, sought advice from Kuhn about starting up a food truck.
“I invited him to come to the restaurant, and here comes this guy who looked like he was 18 and was bouncing off the walls with energy,” Kuhn says. “It was like I was looking at myself when I had started out five years ago.
“When you see talent, it’s clear. I knew that Chris had something special. I said look, let me show you how this business works because I don’t want you to fail.”
The two developed an almost instant big brother/little brother relationship, Kuhn says, and they began to take the restaurant industry by storm.
Hodgson considers Kuhn a mentor and a friend.
“He’s my protector,” Hodgson says. “He doesn’t want to see me go through some of the same frustrations and hardships that made him who he is and turned him into the successful business person he is today. He doesn’t want to see me fail.”
Kuhn, who owned Scott Kuhn Hospitality Management at the time, was looking to change the name of his company as he began to garner more media attention. With Hodgson’s help, the two formed The Driftwood Group.
“I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and for whatever reason, I cannot stop buying driftwood,” Kuhn says. “If you come to my house or office, there are just pieces of driftwood everywhere.
“Chris and I were talking about renaming the company and I said, well, why not Driftwood? Because everyone knows if there’s one thing that defines Scott Kuhn, it’s driftwood.”
As the creative mind behind each restaurant’s décor, Kuhn likes the task of coming up with design concepts – and he’s incorporated pieces of driftwood into many of them.
“I enjoy the projects and looking at a space and figuring out how to give it a facelift and give it a new energy,” he says.
Catering to future
Scott Kuhn’s taste in design is evident at all Driftwood Group restaurants, including Cibrèo in downtown Cleveland’s Playhouse Square.
After opening restaurants across Northeast Ohio, Kuhn decided to venture into a new arena: catering.
While Hodgson competed on Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race” in 2011, Kuhn filled in to cater a wedding of Hodgson’s at Grays Armory in downtown Cleveland.
“It was one of those moments where I felt like I got hit on the head with a hammer,” Kuhn recalls of the experience. “We finished the wedding, and I said man, I feel like we’re missing the boat.
“When Chris got back I told him all of the catering options out there are old. In a matter of three years, restaurant chefs have become rock stars, people take photos of their food and Cleveland is suddenly this amazing dining scene. Let’s do the same thing with catering and let’s give people restaurant-quality food in a catering environment.”
The very next day, Kuhn purchased a truck and catered his first event.
“I’m confident my wife, Amy, thinks I’m crazy to begin with, and that was probably confirmation for her,” Kuhn jokes. “But we did $1 million in sales without a business card. It’s just doubled and doubled, and I think we’ve been able to create a reputation now among the community that we’re an up-and-coming catering company that’s not so small anymore.”
When Kuhn isn’t adding to his dining empire, he’s at his house in Auburn Township whipping up baby food for his 7-month-old daughter, Harper, and testing out new dishes on his wife.
Now that he has a family of his own, Kuhn hopes to follow in his grandparents’ footsteps and make cooking a large part of his household.
“Amy and I have made it a point to always have dinner together at home as a family,” he says. “That’s really a credit to not only my family but also hers. It’s a little rare these days. And we want to raise Harper the same way that we were raised. Without my grandparents, we probably wouldn’t do it.” js