How We Created "Summer Camp" for Spotify, Unforgettable Weddings & More - Lisa Karvellas, Cedar Lakes Estate

Lisa: So my sister and I own and run the business and it's a private estate for events. We do primarily weddings and company retreats, but we also operate as a hotel in the winter months, like a boutique hotel. When the event season really dies down, we're able to host individual travelers who may want to come up and experience Cedar Lakes without having to get an invite to a wedding or to have their company have their retreat there. It's a way to kind of get more people and we like to call them sneezers. The winter time is, is really a special time because. We have 30 people on site versus 300. So we're able to flex their hospitality skills a little further.

Josiah: I love that. Why do you stay open during the "offseason"?

Lisa: That's a very good question. So, in all honesty, we lose so much money in the wintertime by staying open. We are a massive 500-acre piece of property. We have 93 buildings. It's a massive undertaking to take care of it, especially in the treacherous New York winter. But my sister and I made the choice about six years ago never to hire seasonal employees ever again. It's not fair to us, not fair to them. You don't get the quality people that you need. I mean, listen, we have college kids that come and work weddings during the summer and things like that. But when it comes to our full-time employees, we really want to give them a year-round career. So, we decided to invent another business for the wintertime. And, you know, we did it, we started in 2018. And we did it for a couple of years. We thought we knew, you know, we, oh, yeah, we're a hotel. Then 2020 happened, and we weren't allowed to have any events. So we were actually a hotel year-round. And then we really cut our teeth. And we were like, okay, now we know what it's like to run a hotel. This is a whole new business. But we learned so much from that experience. And it was pretty incredible. We didn't let anybody go during COVID. We didn't cut anybody's hours. We kept them through from the very first day until we were able to have events again. And we built our playbook during that time. And now we are so confident in our hotel in the winter months. Again, as I said, it's not a money-making thing, but not only do we get to keep people employed, but we keep them really sharp in their hospitality. So, like I said, there's such a smaller guest count, so they're able to really talk about wine, and it's pairings with the food. They're able to really connect with our clients about just random things that they just aren't able to do during event season because a wedding will check in on a Friday and leave on a Sunday. They have rehearsal dinner, lunch, all these different activities, the reception. So, we don't get a lot of face time with them. So, winter is a really special time. I say it's when all of our staff fills their hospitality cups.

Josiah: Well, that's great. Well, I would love to hear about your business, I guess, from the other perspective. Why do events, then? You know, there's magic and there's incredible hospitality you can offer in that sort of boutique hotel concept or approach. Events are also incredibly complex, especially weddings. But why events of all the things you could focus on on your property?

Lisa: Yeah, so events, I like to say, you know, we're not in the ER saving lives, but by hosting weddings and some other memorable events, we are really creating these like lifetime most important day of somebody's life, beautiful treasured memories for people. So for me, and for my staff, that's like, it feels so good, you know, to, to be able to give somebody that memory with all their favorite people. And we're certainly not a wedding factory in any sense, we only do one wedding at a time. And they're all weekend long. So we only do these three-day, very high-production events. So they have exclusivity of the ground. So basically, everyone compares it to a summer camp because that's actually what it was back in the day. It was built in 1929 as a summer camp. But you're there with all of your guests, all of your favorite people in the world, and you have three days to spend with them and make these amazing moments and memories with them. So for us, I mean, there's nothing better.

Josiah: I've been a part of a couple of these weddings where there's a buyout of the property. It feels so good to just like have all your friends there. I imagine it is incredibly complex from a hosting perspective, right? To think about super high expectations, think about kind of all the complexities of that. It's not just the event, but it is the, you know, taking care of people just around the clock, right? It is a lot. I wonder if you could speak, it's going to be kind of a high level or big question, but just how you think about or how you thought about building your business to support these kind of things. Because I'm hearing a lot of talk right now. I think if you look at the macro economy, I was at a couple of investor conferences recently. Everybody's saying, you know, group business, events, this is a big growth opportunity. It's one thing to see it as a growth opportunity, but you've been at this a while. You've built a world-class venue for events, a world-class hospitality business in this over years. And I wonder if you could maybe kind of help us, you know, kind of go back to that moment when you were building up the infrastructure to enable these. How did you think about preparing for the moment that you're in today?

Lisa: It's such a great question. And it is something my sister and I have kind of analyzed throughout the years. And I think the key to growing a business that can real a hospitality business that can really last is do it slowly. You know, I, you go to these new properties and I won't even compare us to that. But we didn't set out and say, this is what we want to do. This is what we want to be in 20 years. We need all these investors. We need to build it all right now. We really took the approach of bootstrapping. And Rome was not built in a day. We started this company 13 years ago. And like I said, it was a summer camp. So, nothing was winterized. Nothing was nice. It was all very much for children. So year by year, we took every dollar we need, every dollar, and put it back into the property and the business and our staff. And that was so important because it gave us the opportunity to really listen to the client. Why are you booking? Why are you not booking? What do you need more of? And so we would just listen and write down everything, every piece of feedback that we have, we reflect on. And so, you know, my sister Stephanie did all the sales and the tours. And so she would say, oh, they didn't book because we didn't have, you know, enough rooms or good after-party space or whatever. And so we would know, you know, at the end of the year, we would look back on all this feedback. What do we have to build? So it was such a slow process. And I think by doing that, it's like we just really let our clients dictate what we became. And because of that, I think now we're exactly what people want.

Josiah: How would you describe your unique approach to the hospitality that you provide now? It sounds like it's been a work in progress for a long time. A lot of listening, a lot of conversations. You described it as like an adult summer camp, you know, kind of very high end production for events. Tell me a little bit more about kind of how you would describe that hospitality you provide.

Lisa: Well, it's certainly unique. Our hospitality approach is certainly unique. And I think that it, you know, people say that it's, you know, you feel like family, and I think a lot of places claim that, but it's really real at Cedar Lakes. I'll give you an example. This past weekend, we had a wedding, and the bride gave a speech thanking us, thanking Cedar Lakes. And she said the opening line was, I didn't know when I was booking my wedding here that I would be joining a cult, but I'm so excited I did. And I think that kind of puts it perfectly. we really like once you're in your in we have a very when it comes to our staff we like extremely low turnover rate it's under 4% in an industry where it's between 80 and 90% we have three full time people who like three like really important special people who left three only and we recently got chickens and we named them after the three of them and we say these are the three chicks that flew the coop. And so it's like, and we're still, you know, best friends with them. It really is a little culty, but no, I think it's so important. I think, you know, when people step on the property, they just feel it. They know everybody who works there loves to work there. It's the most obvious thing as soon as you step on the property, and our clients just never leave. They come back year after year their family comes back like I said, it's such a wonderful memory for them that you know they don't want it to end, and they want to feel like they're a part of it forever and they are and that same goes for companies I mean companies come back year after year and they have this beautiful tradition and bringing new employees and it's a special place and Danny Meyer says, you know, one size fits one for hospitality. It's not, you know, this blanket formula. And I think that's so true. So we really, really get to know our clients, like on a very deep level. And we try to do everything customized for them, which takes a lot of work on the back end to, you know, make it all happen, but so worth it. That's the fun part, you know.

Josiah: I wonder if you could speak to some of the investments that you made on your property, because it feels like everybody wants to attract events. Everyone wants that group business. But if you have been working at this for a while, you mentioned kind of a lot of conversations, hearing from people, what were you, what have you been hearing over the past years in terms of what people needed? And then kind of what have you built, I guess, more on a kind of a property level to cater to those needs?

Lisa: Yeah, a post COVID world, it actually very much looks different in the event world, especially when it pertains to rooms. So in the past, we would have like we had Glossier every year, they would come with like 300 people and Spotify. They would come, and we could sleep 209 people, but we only have 36 rooms. So many of them are multi-bedroom houses. And so they were fine. They would fill the houses, a bunch of beds in them and share bathrooms. Companies are not doing that anymore. So we have 36 rooms. A lot of companies are like, we're bringing 36 people, which is very different because we have 209 beds. It's a lot. So we've had to adjust that and think about what we want to do. Where can we add private entrances, where can we add bathrooms to make people totally comfortable. But it's like we saw how that changed in four years. So we don't want to go all the way in because I do think it'll shift back a little bit. But again, it's just always listening to the client and letting them just dictate what you need to do next. It's crucial.

Josiah: I like the house concept a lot. Actually, tomorrow I'm flying to a wedding, and I'm not, but a number of my friends are renting an Airbnb and are all staying together. I think people like that, especially when you're traveling to kind of be together in a place that it provides a different experience. But you're doing this not in an Airbnb, you're doing this in the context of beautiful property. And I think there's something cool to that. Have there been operational or other considerations that you've had to kind of think about to cater to this unique arrangement of things that you have on your property?

Lisa: Yeah, well, you have to think about, you know, there's going to be an after-party space, but when everyone's staying together, there's going to be parties, you know, in all these buildings, too. So you have to build that when you're designing it. You have to think about all these things and, you know, staff accordingly and understand that, you know, a place where nobody has to drive and leave is going to be a little bit more of a late night, a little bit more of a party crowd. People are going to lean into it. You know, that adult summer camp, but we love it as long as they're safe. And you know, we also have a big benefit that our neighbors are incredible. And in our tiny little town of Greenville, we are the only business in the town, there's not even a post office. So there are no noise ordinances. So we don't like to take advantage of that. But that is a very big selling point for our clients that they can do what they want. Like I said, it feels like theirs. You know, the only people they're disturbing are their own guests. That's pretty rare, to be honest.

Josiah: It's kind of rare to come across something like that. I think, you know, in my research, it just seems that you do a lot to try to create this fun or whimsical environment. I wonder if you could share with our listeners some of the specifics of the ways that you do that. It feels like fun is sort of a key value for what you're offering.

Lisa: You're so right. We, a few years back, I guess it was more like eight years ago at this point, we sat down with all of our senior managers and we went through, you know, what matters to us as a company? What do we care about? What are our pillars? And we called it our compass because it's our true north. Whenever we lose our way, we look at our compass. It's plastered in every room in the company, in our office. And we really, we talk about it all the time. and fun kept coming up fun is one of our pillars it's so important to us and you're at work so much like why not have fun while you're doing it and you know we're giving our guests all this fun and I like we like to have fun you know while we're providing that to our guests as well. And recently we, we actually won, we were honored as one of Inc's best places to work, which was like so exciting to us because my sister and I, our major goal, we always say we want everybody who works here for it to be the best job they've ever had. And so that was like really the first time where I feel so validated and that maybe we are achieving that goal. But anyway, so in that process, they interview everybody who works here. And they do a whole worksheet. And they give you a summary of it at the end. And so Inc. sent us a summary. And it said, the number one word employees used to describe their work at Cedar Lakes was fun. And I was like, yes, that's awesome. Everything's aligned.