Wolfgang Puck’s 6:30 a.m. grind keeps restaurants alive

Wolfgang Puck’s – In a day that starts around 6:30 a.m. with a double espresso and ends with trips between CUT, Spago, and late-night flights, Wolfgang Puck keeps his restaurant empire running on taste, travel, and a strict rule: nothing leaves the kitchen without being tasted

When Wolfgang Puck wakes around 6:30 a.m., retirement isn’t part of the conversation. Not for a chef who has spent more than 60 years building a restaurant business after coming to the US from Europe—and who is still working most nights. tasting food. talking to guests. and watching the smallest details.

Puck. 76. says he starts his mornings with a double espresso. then moves into the kind of routine that depends on where his weeks land. One week he’s home in Los Angeles every day; the next week he’s flying to cities including New York. London. Istanbul. Budapest. Singapore. or Shanghai. Even when new projects are taking shape in places like Abu Dhabi and Malibu. he describes his days as a steady loop between planning and being present in the rooms where food is made and served.

After the espresso, Puck takes a walk for 45 minutes to an hour. If he’s home in LA, his two dogs go with him. Then he works out with weights, stretching, and the elliptical.

For years, those mornings also meant driving his younger children to school. One of his sons began listening to the same music Puck loves—Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and other old rock bands—and Puck says those drives became one of his favorite parts of the day. He misses them now.

Breakfast comes around 8:30 a.m., usually light. He points to what’s available locally in Los Angeles—peaches, nectarines, cherries, blueberries, and strawberries. He also eats yogurt with olive oil, salt, and pepper, along with toasted whole-grain or seeded bread from Spago. Other mornings can bring avocado toast with jalapeño, mustard, and an egg sautéed in olive oil.

Before he heads toward work, he reads the newspaper. Puck gets printed versions of The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and California Post, and flips through the pages, including the opinion sections, with his coffee.

By about 10 a.m., he’s often at his office at the Pacific Design Center. Sometimes he stops first at the farmers market in Santa Monica or the fish market. He still likes seeing ingredients in person, and he tells his chefs the same thing—“if I can still go to the fish market, they can, too.”

At the office, he spends time reviewing financials. He says it isn’t the most exciting part of the restaurant business for him, and that his son Byron—who works with him—handles more of the financial calls these days.

In June 2025, Puck made Byron president of the company. He knew some people around him might have expected they could take that role too. especially since many had worked with him for decades. Over time. Puck says people saw how seriously Byron takes the work: he works from morning until night. listens well. leads by example. and holds people accountable.

Puck frames the company’s internal culture as something built through shared ownership rather than distance. “I’ve learned that if you want great people to stay. you have to share your success with them. ” he says. He has given longtime chefs and partners stakes in restaurants, because he wants them to feel ownership. “To me, we’re building something together, not working for one person.”.

Lunch is simple and short—between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Puck keeps a bag of dark chocolate in his office that helps get him through the day. He also has a big bag of Valrhona 80% dark chocolate. Coffee is part of the mix too.

Afternoons run on phone calls. Puck speaks with chefs and managers from restaurants around the world about menus, staffing, food quality, and new ideas. He doesn’t enjoy emails very much and prefers talking to people directly.

Work at the office wraps by 4 p.m., and then he visits restaurants to see what’s happening. What frustrates him most, he says, is when attention shifts away from details. In restaurants, he argues, the smallest things matter.

He’s especially blunt about what happens when food isn’t checked carefully. He gets frustrated when things don’t get done properly, and he links it to laziness. He says he can’t stand when chefs don’t taste the food before serving it.

“I always tell my teams that you have to taste everything,” Puck says. If a chef doesn’t taste the pasta before it leaves the kitchen, he asks, how can they know whether it has enough—or too much—salt?

Even after 60 years in restaurants, he says he still loves being there at night. Family rhythms changed as his children got older. When they were younger, dinner together happened around 6 p.m., before he headed out to his restaurants. Now he spends an hour or two at home with his wife. Gelila. before stopping by CUT or Spago later in the evening.

Most nights, he’s out until 11 or 11:30 p.m., then heads home.

Travel is constant. Recently. he traveled to Las Vegas. New York. Washington. and Beverly Hills for a series of dinners with Byron alongside Austrian winemakers. When he’s not too tired at night, he reads before bed and uses a melatonin spray. He mostly reads nonfiction and biographies because he wants to understand what makes people do what they do—books about Elon Musk. Mick Jagger. Abraham Lincoln. or famous French chefs. He says he’s always curious about how successful people think, build things, and lead others.

He goes to sleep around 1 a.m.

As he’s gotten older, he says balance has become more important. When he was younger, he could spend every night in a restaurant and think only about work. Over time. he watched people in the restaurant business lose relationships with their families because they never made time for anything outside work.

Puck still spends plenty of time in restaurants, but he also makes time for family. Every summer, he tries to take at least one month off to travel through Europe with them. He has also started taking painting lessons, saying he enjoys the creative process and the focus it requires.

Retirement, he says, rarely enters his mind. “I never really think about retirement because I never wake up thinking, ‘I have to go to work.’”

Being optimistic helps. He says that when people ask why he’s still opening restaurants or taking risks in his 70s, he doesn’t spend much time on the downside. New projects and new ideas are what keep him excited.

He points to a Japanese word, Kaizen—continuous improvement. If you think you’ve already arrived, he says, you stop growing. He still wants to learn new things and hopes to open more restaurants for many more years.

Wolfgang Puck Spago CUT restaurant business Los Angeles fine dining Byron Puck Kaizen food quality hospitality leadership entrepreneurship