Andy and Cody

00:00Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I'm gonna start off with a couple of advertisements, but I wanna tell you our philosophy behind sponsoring the show. We do not take $1 from restaurants. Every single day, I get hit up from people all over the place in my restaurants asking for something for free. I never, ever wanna be that person. So we do not take money from restaurants. I don't take free food from restaurants when I go out to eat. The people who support this show, the sponsors for the show are the people who want to support locally-owned and operated restaurants. When they learn that I don't take money from restaurants, they're like, yes, I want to help support you. I want you to continue to get the word out about these amazing people you're talking about. And that's our theory, right? So I'm not getting rich off this. This is allowing me to go out and support you guys. It's allowing me to have a studio, have good equipment to produce these episodes. So the sponsors mean so, so much to me. Sponsors like Aaron Mosso over at Sharpies Bakery.

01:01Check them out at sharpiesbakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com. And people like Jason Ellis, who is at SuperSource, dish machine and chemicals, right? Every time I have somebody here, they go, God, I hate my dish machine and chemical people because they're in five-year contracts and they don't care about you. Jason does not do contracts at all. This guy just comes in, he works week to week. His number is 770-337-1143. And again, I have this studio where I've got, they sponsor stuff up. Everybody who comes in gets merch to take home with them. But most of the time they're like, dude, I love Jason Ellis. Oh my gosh, Sharpies is the greatest thing in the world. They save me so much time and money and just the kitchen gets so dirty when I make bread. They're lifesavers. So I challenge you today, call both of these people immediately and get them to come in and do an audit on what you're doing in your building today. ["The Tastiest Hour of Talk in Music City"] Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City.

02:11Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. ["The Tastiest Hour of Talk in Music City"] Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, powered by Gordon Food Service. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are super excited today to host some people that I didn't know very well, but man, after this interview, I feel like they're some of my best friends. Andy and Cody from the Bad Luck Burger Club. Yes, you've seen them at farmer's markets. You've seen them at pop-ups. You've seen their food truck around town. And today I got to go eat their burger. And I am so sorry to Pat Martin. I'm so sorry to everybody else out there, but it is, I think it's the best burger in the city. I am not kidding. I think it's the best burger I've ever eaten. How about that? That is a bold statement. In this interview, we talk about their favorite places and they said Red Headed Stranger was one of theirs, the Green Chili Burger, which is a really, really close.

03:16I mean, there's some really, really good burgers. This Bad Luck Burger was unbelievable. After the interview, we actually all went. We, me and the Bad Luck Burger guys, we went to Red Headed Stranger and I think we ate like one of everything on the menu. It was so much fun. Posted on Instagram and Brian Lee Weaver shouted out and said, dude, the one time I'm not there, you guys come in. So Brian's gonna actually be on the show next week. So we're gonna have him come in and we're gonna do an interview. It's gonna be a lot of fun, a full interview in studio with Brian Lee Weaver. Get ready for that. Also wanna send a big shout out to Magnolia over there at Red Headed Stranger for taking such amazing care of us. She was so nice. Big shout out to Magnolia Ray. You're the best. And we have so many announcements today. It's just out of control. So the month of July, here we are, July, holy cow. Happy 4th of July weekend. Happy, hope you have a wonderful and safe 4th of July. We finally got a little bit of rain. My yard has just been dying like crazy. And I think that we just need water. It brings life. It's good.

04:18That is 4th of July weekend. So the month of July, we're gonna take it a little easy. I say that meaning I'm only gonna work like 90 hours a week. And we're gonna put out, it's a YouTube month. It's kind of the slowest month for restaurants this month and it's hot as hell. Stay inside and let's watch some videos, right? So I've got all these videos. I put up 148 videos on our YouTube page. I'd love to get to a thousand subscribers. I'm at like 130 something right now. So please go to YouTube, look up Nashville Restaurant Radio and just subscribe to it. I'd love to have you there. I'm gonna be putting up videos almost daily of past interviews. If you're wondering what was going on in the studio, all the shenanigans, we're gonna have those up. Really, really excited to do that. And let's see, what else do I have going on? Jen Ichikawa, if you guys have been wondering, hey, didn't you have a co-host on your show? What happened to Jen? Jen took a break. Jen was, she had a lot going on and she said, hey dude, I need to take a break.

05:19And I totally understood that. And I said, absolutely. I haven't really talked about it, but we're gonna bring her in studio next week and we're gonna get an update. Get an update on Jen. It's gonna be, I'm like so looking forward because I haven't even talked to her. Like I haven't talked to her in like a month. So we're gonna do it live. We're gonna catch up live on the air and we're gonna put that out as a podcast. Just us bullshitting really, just kind of hanging out and talking. It's gonna be a lot, a lot of fun. So hey, if you're also Nashville Restaurant Alliance, I know that you've seen the Instagram page at Nashville Restaurant Alliance. We are still working on the details, but I am getting closer every day and I am so excited to bring this to you. I have so many people that I've told personally, like one-on-one like what this is and they're all in, they're all really excited. Bringing everybody together, guys. Better together. How can we all help each other? I'm putting all the details together. Nashville Restaurant Alliance. Go find Nashville Restaurant Alliance on Instagram. Follow the page. I am doing a follow for a follow. So if you follow that page, I am following you back.

06:21So if you want at least one new follower today, go hit at Nashville Restaurant Alliance and I will follow you right back. Thank you for those who've started following. We've only done one post and I will start working on that. This is gonna be a lot, a lot of fun. A lot of stuff going on out there today. Let's jump in with Cody and Andy. This is such a damn good interview. And pardon my French. I first started off the podcast. I didn't swear a whole lot and now I feel like I'm just like talking normal into the mic, which is a good thing, but I'm sorry if you don't like swearing because I kind of just talk that way sometimes and I'm trying to be the most authentic me possible. So there you go. Deal with it. I hope you guys have a great week and we are gonna be putting some amazing fresh content out there. Again, go follow us on YouTube. We'll talk to you later. Bye-bye. Super excited today to welcome in Andy and Cody from the Bad Luck Burger Club.

07:23What's up, gentlemen? Hello. Oh man, happy to be here. Just broad-eyed and bushy-tailed, they say. I don't think I've ever used that phrase. I was gonna ask, I was gonna say, is bushy-tailed something that you feel like you're feeling today? Yeah, I don't even really know what it means, but I don't think I fall into that category. What does it mean? You know, I think it's maybe- Is it a squirrel reference? Like a squirrel, like every morning, I get up and there's fucking squirrels in my backyard, like everywhere. They're just running around with their eyes open. They got bushy-tails, is that a thing? Maybe squirrel, maybe bunnies. It might be a bunny thing. But bunnies are like nocturnal, I think. Bunnies, I always see them like at nighttime. Okay, okay, okay. That's more Cody speed. Cody's a night guy. The older I get, I'm not. I used to be a night guy. But yeah, I'm definitely broad-eyed and bushy-tailed and happy to be here today, you know? Hell yeah. I'm excited to have you guys here. I believe we've kind of been toying with having you guys on. Like we've kind of been talking, and hey, you guys wanna come on, and now we got a lot of stuff going on.

08:26Hey, let's talk about it next month, but we finally have you in studio here to talk. So let's let people know who your voices are, because as you go along, let's try and do some associations. So Andy. Yeah, that's me. I'm kind of like the nasally guy of the group. Okay, Andy, the nasally guy. What is your, give me like your story in like two minutes. Like where you come from, like which, tell me about you. Okay, I grew up in a small town called Paris, Tennessee, which is like an hour and a half from here. West. Yep. Yes, Parsons, the Parsons exit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Grew up there. There's not much there, you know. Is it 92? Oh, gosh, man. I really can't remember the key. I've blocked it out. I've driven to Memphis so many times. I grew up there at 18. I got out of there. All I cared about as a teenager was playing like punk rock and metal. Got into like playing in bands. What did you play? And I started playing like drums and guitar and stuff, but the thing that I might be known for more than anything is being a vocalist of a metal band.

09:31Really? Yeah, I got into touring pretty early on. So for about a decade into my early thirties, I toured in a metal band as a vocalist. Which metal band? We were called A Plea for Purging based out of Nashville. Nothing huge, but you know, made enough money to like supplement my income as a guy in my twenties. Toured all over the world, been to like 19 countries and multiple records out all over the place. So that's what got me out of that small town and got me into Nashville. And then, you know, as any metal punk rock band, you know, one day it's gonna end. And then just kind of worked like various jobs and got back into the music industry for a while. On the other side, doing like live production and staging, traveling around with, you know, big country artists, you know, like Panic at the Disco, Pentatonix. Big country artists.

10:32Yeah, Zach Brown Band, that kind of stuff. That's a big country artist. So doing that kind of thing. And then when the pandemic hit, the music industry just ended, you know, for a moment. It's a way longer story, but I had a chance to hold on and grasp to that for a minute or to go start fresh. And I was ready to start fresh. And so I left that and then Cody, that's where our story kind of intersects and we started making cheeseburgers together. There's so many, there's so many follow-up questions I have to that. I could, that isn't what you just now said as an entire episode. Yeah, we could break down. Bring me back and talk about me. Or we could just not bring Cody on, dude. Just sit over there and listen to the talk. Why am I even here? Yeah, why am I here? Well, because you're a musician as well, Cody, right? So let's get Cody's voice in here so that throughout the conversation, you guys know who everybody is. Cody, kind of same question, man. What's your story? Well, what's funny about my story is it's pretty much exactly the same story as Andy's. Started playing music in my teens and got in a band.

11:34That band got real serious real quick. We had a record. What was that band? A band called The Wedding. The Wedding? Yeah, it's kind of a riffy rock band. Kind of pop punk in the early days and kind of turned into more of like a riff based rock band later on, but signed a record deal at 17 and started touring like right away. Like skipped my. From Nashville? No, from Northwest Arkansas. Grew up in Northwest Arkansas. And there's a really cool music scene up there that no one would ever expect. I was like the hot bed of pop punk, like, you know, riffy kind of bands. Yeah, there's actually a really awesome music scene in Northwest Arkansas that like is completely unexpected and like a lot of great bands have come out of that area. That's bad ass. So yeah, started touring at 17, like skipped my second year of my senior year high school and like hit the road and did that for a decade. And like Andy said, you know, inevitably that comes to an end, but we were like 250 days a year for 10 years. Like never home. We had an ad in AP Magazine once and it's a, you know, let's say whatever band on tour this fall, ours said on tour always.

12:39Like that was our ad on tour always. So yeah, just toured very, very heavily in the States and that band came to an end and I kept playing. I kept taking gigs and doing other things. I played bass, traditionally. Like most bands I've been in, I've played bass. I play other instruments, which is aids in writing. I also write a lot and compose a lot, but usually as a band member, I'm usually a bass player. So I kept taking gigs and kept playing music after the band was done. And I still am playing in some capacity, much smaller capacity now than I ever have before because of what we're doing now and why we're on a restaurant podcast today and not a music podcast. I, you know, I don't, I was thinking about this at the day. I don't want to get off on a tangent here, but I was like, this is a restaurant podcast, but I like restaurant, but I love music people. We're in the same industry to a degree. I mean, you guys, one of the things that really attracted me to you is that you look like you're having so much fun.

13:43Like with everything that you're doing, it's almost like when you guys are cooking at a farmer's market or wherever it is, whatever this pop-up is, you guys are there. It's almost like you guys are on stage, like you guys are performing so much more than just I'm cooking food. And that's one of those things I, I knew there was something different about what you guys did because you have an energy about what you're doing that translates into my food. And that's super cool. Like those things intersect really strongly. We talk a lot about how funny it is of how, like how similar this is to being in a band, like the load in and load out and all the behind the scenes stuff that nobody sees. And the only time anybody sees you is when you're on stage, you know, like when you're open, when service opens. But there's like, that's like 15% of the work. You know, nobody sees all the other, nobody sees the overnight drives and the load in and load out and the practice and the, and the admin and the books and like running the business and you know, all the things, like I'm talking about being in a band right now.

14:44You could, they're interchangeable. But we're right. They're so similar. Nobody, nobody sees most of the work and it's funny. And you just get this like few hours to like be on stage. And that's when we're like cooking and hamming it up with people. And is that a driving force for you guys? Is that, I mean, because you chase that high. I mean, I was a bartender for years or ran restaurants for years. And then I left the industry to go work in the food business like selling food and produce to people. And I missed being three deep at the bar. I missed the, what do you want? What do you want? And like constantly just, there's a endorphin rush that you get when you see the front door and it's full of people like, oh shit. It's Friday night. I'm about to be slammed for like five hours. There is a rush. Yeah. And I never got that, Mac. It's, but I missed that. I wanted that. Do you guys, do you think that's a transition got you into doing this? For sure. I mean, I think like, as we joked before being on podcasts, like I just, I kind of crave attention and like, you know, look at me, you know, I'm just a loud boisterous dude.

15:50And so like, when we started in the pop-up underneath the tent with the griddles and stuff though, it's cool that you haven't even like been to our thing, but it translates online that people see like, our whole thing is not only you enjoying your cheeseburger, but you enjoying your experience of coming to our tent or coming to our truck. And like the club aspect of our name is something that maybe in the very beginning was just a cool sounding name, but it's something that we've very much taken to heart. Like we want you to feel involved in a part of the thing that's going on. So it is very interactive and just yelling at people and being goofy and like Cody and I like ripping on each other or making jokes. And now that we're in the truck and we're a little more enclosed as opposed to being in the tent, we both have like microphones and can like just grab a microphone at any point and talk to people out in the crowd and it's fun. Yeah, I love it.

16:51Like the adrenaline that you get, you know, and of course when you get in the weeds and you're just like got a line of a hundred people deep and you're just, you know, cruising, like that gets stressful, but I love it, man. Like, you know, and we're super new to it. I mean, we're one year deep into this thing. You know, maybe five years down the road, we'll be talking like all the jaded restaurateurs and line cooks in the world, but right now it's pretty exciting. You know what, you don't ever have to be jaded about it. Like this never, like everything in my opinion is about mindset. And if you walk in to work expecting things to, oh, this is just gonna happen, go find a new place. Like the fuck out of there. You don't, that is not a healthy place you need to be or figure out a way to make that new again. Everything in life is what you approach is what you bring to the table every day that creates that. And if you always have fun with what you do, it never ends.

17:53I mean, I think that that's just for me, but you guys, I mean bands, do you guys feel that way when you're loading in, loading out, did it get old to a point where you're jaded musicians? No. It's okay if you do. No, I mean, to me it was, it was the show. It was like playing that, that's like, okay, cool. Like it's the payoff. It's the reset, yeah. Like even a small show or a crappy show was still awesome. Like I'm still playing music for money and like that rules. But it wasn't about the money. Sure, right. Well, it was like, no, it was like, but you have to pay your bills. And this is how I get to do it. Like I'm paying my bills by doing this thing. That's like awesome. It's like who, it's such a weird job, you know, like to get on stage with an instrument and just like thrash around and jump around and like jump on people and like, you know what I mean? Like just feed off the energy of the crowd. Oh yeah, it's awesome. And you, I would often have a thought like, I can't believe I get paid to do this. I can't believe like, this is my job.

18:54This is the only place where acting like this would ever be like reasonable or accepted. If I was in a parking lot, like doing what I'm doing with my body right now, somebody would call the cops and be like, there's a crazy guy in the parking lot. But like, I get to get on stage and do this and I actually get paid for it. Yeah, I feel that way every day. I come into the studio. I'm like, I actually do okay doing this. Like this is insane. I'll go back to the money aspect of it for a second. It's not so much like doing it for money, but there's some gratification in thinking back to being like a 13 year old kid and all you can think about at 13, 14 years old when you get your first guitar or your first drum set or whatever. You have these dreams of like climbing in a van and driving down the road with your friends and playing music. And when it comes to fruition and you're like, I don't know what his band was making and I can only speak for myself, but we're both very similar levels of success.

19:58Like you're making a very meager amount of money. You're not staying at the Four Seasons when you're traveling around, right? But when you're paying your bills off of this half ass little dream that you had when you were a 13 year old kid, that's insane. It's crazy to say that you were able to do that, especially for both of us for about a decade did that. That book over there, you see that book, the storyteller. I just started it. Holy shit. It's like one of my favorite books I've ever read. And I'm a nonfiction business book, five dysfunctions of a team. How do we gel together? I love all of that stuff, but this book, I could not put it down. Like I just was enamored. And part of the book I'm talking about is Dave Grohl's The Storyteller. And he talks about that when he was a kid in this band Scream, I think it was. He, like all he wanted to do was go on the road and sleeping in the van and not having any money, but just having enough money to smoke weed and like have like Marlboro's was everything to him.

21:09And just meeting his heroes, like being on tour and getting to meet people, like he was so humble the whole time and he was just gracious that he got to do this. Is that kind of what you're saying? It's not like there's a ton of money, but I get to do something I love and I get to travel and I get to see all these things. I think that during that time of your life when you're younger, you gotta do that. I mean, the experiences you're gonna have for the rest of your life based upon what you've got to go do, I don't think there's a value you can put on that. Whatever money you made to live, like the life experience you got out of that has gotta be something that will pay back dividends the rest of your life. Absolutely, absolutely. I don't think there's a day in my life that I don't like live through that lens of those experiences. It's hard to explain. I don't even know how to put it into words. Like it is, it's shaped who I am and not only just who I am, but like how I live from like wake up to go to sleep.

22:10For sure. It informs like every decision that you make. There you go. It truly is. You just learn how to operate with less and figure out very early in life what you need for a sustainable life that you're happy in. And then you take those values to apply them to everything else you do. And I can say personally, like I grew up in like poverty. And like I have a pretty just standard, middle-class American life now. And like that to me is like living in the lap of luxury. And that's all because I learned like one, all the experiences I got traveling the world, learning other people's cultures, learning how to run a business with four other guys. And I mean, everything I have, like my wife, I met my wife on the road. Like literally every aspect that I have in my life came from punk and hardcore metal and just being in a band.

23:11I also met my wife on the road. So you guys are both married. Do you have children? No kids. No kids married. How long have you guys been married? Six years, me. Yeah, I've been with Rachel for 13 years, but we've been married for two. Nice. Yeah. Let me say that I just read a book by the recommendation of a guy named Matthew Clements. And Matthew is with Robin's Insurance. Okay. They got a booth behind me here. I'll hook you guys up with a hat and some stuff today. But the book was called The Comfort Crisis. And it was by a guy named Michael Easter. We're actually gonna bring back, I have a book club, Brandon's Book Club. We're gonna bring it back for the month of August. I think this will be brought to you by Robin's. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna read this book, The Comfort Crisis. But he talks about people who live in challenging times, who go through, who kind of live the life on the road, who don't have everything given to them, who have to, who go through some sort of uncomfortable life, just challenging things and they work through it, live much happier, much more fulfilled lives as adults because they've stepped outside of a comfort zone.

24:25And they know, they find gratitude in everyday things that they don't take for granted. And I thought that was such an amazing perspective, which is kind of what I was talking about, it's all about your perspective going into this thing. If after 10 years, you're like, oh, this is just a grind, well, then step outside, do something different. But it's interesting because it's that exact thing that he's talking about in the book, exactly what you guys are talking about right now, that going through all that, loading in, loading out, doing a pop-up out of a food truck, you're uniquely conditioned to do that. Yeah. And enjoy it and do it really well. So let's, I'm sorry, I get off on a tangent. Let's talk about the Bad Luck Burger Club. Is it an actual club? Can I go online and join this club? Yes and no. No, you can't. But you can be a part of it. You can by coming and experiencing- Being a part of it, being a part of the club? Yeah, just come get a cheeseburger, then you're in the club.

25:25Yeah, it's a vibe more than, you know- You don't get a card. A membership you gotta pay for. There's no dues, you don't get a card, you just be, you just come be a part of it. You just come and be. And there, I think this is way more existential question or answer to the question, but like, you can come buy a cheeseburger and then leave and maybe not immerse yourself into the situation. And then the person behind you comes with a different vibe that is very much there. I don't know how to explain it. We've had some services where, you know, you're like, these aren't really our people. I don't really know how to explain it. We're here for every and all, like our whole thing is about all are welcome. We're inclusive to everyone. But there's some people that just come with this vibe of like understanding, they might wait in line for 15 minutes and they're waiting in line for pretty much one cheeseburger.

26:27We don't have a lot of offerings like, but in that 10 minutes or 20 minutes or however long they're waiting in line, they're meeting the people next to them. And like friendships and relationships have started out of our lines. Like literally a guy posted, we've been in business for about a year. And like right around our year mark, a guy posted a picture of his girlfriend and said, I met her in May, 2021 at a Bad Luck Burger Club pop-up. And now we date and we're together. And like, it's stuff like that. Like, I don't know how to really explain the club, but that's the club. No, that's the club. The club is like coming with an open heart and open mind to not only eating what we consider, you know, the best cheeseburger around, but also to like experience your community and meet a new person, maybe start a new friendship. Like we have so many people now that are our friends that we didn't know a year ago, like that come by cheeseburgers.

27:27You know, like maybe it's a little bit of one-sided relationship because they're coming giving us money to be our friends or whatever. But like, that sounds weird, you know, but like there's dudes like Steven. And like Fred. They wanna be in your orbit, man. Like there's all these people that we know their names and like they bring their parents when their parents come to town because they're like, these dudes are great. I wanna show you them and their product. And I don't know, it's a beautiful thing that we have with the community that we're building. It's not just a cheeseburger. Yeah. Yeah, that's the club. And some people come and they don't get it. And that's okay. I will happily serve you a cheeseburger and like smile at you and tell you to have a good day. And I hope you have a great time. But some people just aren't like, they just aren't down for that or like ready for that or I don't know, whatever it is. All right, so there's different areas of town. You guys have a truck, right? You guys have a food truck now. You started off doing pop-ups and you're going to farmer's markets in different places and you're popping up and here we are. Now you have a truck you can go and set up.

28:29It's probably a lot easier with the truck now, isn't it? It's, I wouldn't say easier. It's different. It's definitely different. It's a whole different set of challenges and it's a different kind of workload. But it is on-site, maybe it's easier. Like we don't have to go set up a whole bunch of stuff. We just gotta. It's way more efficient once we get there. There's a lot of new tasks. So speaking of like, I saw Jack White when he was here in town, played at Ascend maybe a month or two ago. I loved it. He's all over the place and he's a performer and he's up there. But I was with a buddy who was like, this is the worst show I've ever been to. And I was like, what? He's like, the crowd is just not doing anything. And I'm like, what's the crowd supposed to do? Like I'm enjoying that. I don't give a fuck what the crowd is doing. I'm enjoying the show. But he was like bringing me down. He's like, oh, I don't even know this song. I'm like, well, are you a fan? Like, I don't know what to tell you. Just be in the moment, dude, right?

29:29But he kind of was just like bringing me down. And then he posts like, this show is terrible. And it got back to this whole conversation about musicians playing in Nashville. And that the Nashville crowds are a very tough crowd to play in front of because they see it all. Like you go play in Sheboygan, they're really excited to see you. But you play in Nashville and it's like, yeah, we had the Rolling Stones here last week and we had every major country star in the world play here two weeks ago. And we get everything. So you gotta come with something strong. If you need to bring some guests on stage and then the crowds like, oh, is that like that when you guys are going around serving food? Are there different parts of town that are like, that's a burger and then somebody like, holy shit, you're here and are excited about it? Do you notice that different places that you guys pop up? Yes, different places, but I haven't figured out the rhyme and reason to it. Like I think it's just, is what it is on that day for some reason.

30:32Like, I don't know if it's the place we're at or the part of town that place is in or whatever, but some days just don't vibe like other days do. And I haven't been able to really pinpoint it. I don't know if you got thoughts on that, Andy. Yeah, I agree. It's kind of hard to pinpoint down like, because we've probably done more business in East Nashville than anywhere. Like that is kind of our home front, just because there's a lot, the millennial like underground music scene kid kind of person that's where they all kind of gravitate to. And that's where we are from. I love East Nashville. But that's kind of where we got our start, but then we go to all sides of town now and it's just, we built a huge following there. And now it's just, sometimes you go to the nations and like all the people in East Nashville don't travel all the way to West Nashville. So you're just kind of starting all over, getting a whole crowd of people again. And we do all right over there in the nations.

31:35And then now we're starting to hit like Wedgwood, Houston a lot. Okay. And that whole neighborhood is just now starting to fire off and things are starting to pick up there, not just with us, like with other businesses and stuff. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's kind of like the first time you go play and, you know, Wichita, Kansas, and there's like 17 people. And then the next time they told all their friends and there's 24 people and then there's 68 and then you get up to a couple hundred or whatever. So it's just building that audience everywhere you go, you know. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of trial and error. Yeah, certainly. We got really lucky in the very beginning. I don't know how it happened really, but we just like from the very beginning, we just kind of like fired and people like really caught onto what we were doing. I think you had a vibe. Yeah. I think people needed that because we're in pandemic and like you bring energy to what you're doing.

32:35I'm like, I want to go be a part of that. I need that. I need to be about part of something that's really cool. Cause there was just, you know, everybody was locked in their house. Like that's the whole thing is like, we started this business during like the worst of things for the restaurant industry. Like everybody was shut down. Everybody couldn't figure out how to make ends meet. And like we started during that and just kind of blew up and like it's not lost on us that that's a crazy thing. And various, you know, we're very lucky to have had that experience, but. How did you guys meet? We met on the road. Our paths crossed here and there when we were touring. Okay. The first time we ever met is Cody barely remembers, but he slept in my living room. He was on tour with his band and like his tour manager, front of house guy. He was front of house. He was my roommate. And they came through town to stay at my house. That was 15 plus years ago.

33:37That was probably 2005, 2006. Yeah, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super early. So who had the idea for this thing? Like how did it come out? Were you guys like drinking, sitting in the back porch, playing music and was like, dude, you made a hamburger. That was fucking good. And then all of a sudden it was like, hey, we should do this. Like, man, how did this, what was the genesis? I'll tell my half and you tell your half? Sure. Okay. We'll compare. We'll see how the story. We'll see how it shakes out. Okay. When I feel like every dude in their like 20s has this dream of like opening a bar one day, you know, like, oh, like at least me, I've always thought- I was there for sure. Man, I want to open a bar that's got like five cans of beer and a cheeseburger. And I've said that for two decades, but never done any- Like Brown's Diner. Yeah. And I've never done any work to make that happen. I've never even been like a crazy, like I like to cook at home a little bit here and there, but like, I've never been passionate about like, you know, culinary arts or anything like that, you know?

34:42But that's just this idea that I've had forever. Well, during the pandemic, I go to one of my best friend's house and they're trying to make smashed cheeseburgers on a cast iron skillet and on a grill. And it was great, it was a fun night. But when I left, I thought I can do that better. And for some reason, it was just like, got really fixated on how to make a really good smashed cheeseburger. I did the same thing, skillet on a grill. And then I was like, this isn't getting hot enough. So I bought a flat top griddle and started making cheeseburgers at home and just was on this fixated on like, coming up what I think is the best cheeseburger ever. Okay, so how did you, what is the best cheeseburger? What did you come up with? How do you make it? So, you know, all the secrets. I'm not gonna give you all the secrets, but I will tell you that we use 80, 20 ground beef, ground chuck, two ounce balls. So you got two, two ounce patties being four ounces, you know, smash them, American cheese, grilled onions, dill pickles, very thin slice dill pickle and a special sauce and a potato roll.

35:57And so that's what I started doing at home. And like, Cody was like, I actually started like talking to a dude and got some branding and was like, I'm gonna go try to do this pop-up thing like on my own. Yeah. Like knew nothing about anything in the world. I was just like, I want to try to sell cheeseburgers to people and like- That's how it starts though. And I got like a logo of like my face cause I'm all about myself. So like, I just had my face drawn and like Cody and I are like friends, but not close friends. Like somewhere in the line of acquaintance slash friendship at this time. At that time. Sure. Yeah. And Cody and I started talking back and forth cause Cody got a griddle and we start, and Cody comes to my house. I invite Cody over for dinner. Actually, I think our wives. Okay, maybe our wives. We should hang out. We should hang out. And then you actually did it. This is where it gets nitty gritty. People say that all the time. Cody said that he almost didn't want to come over because he didn't know how we would vibe together hanging out, you know, without like some sort of like a buffer, like a friendship buffer, maybe.

37:03Like I'm kind of an intense person a little bit, you know? Probably just didn't really like me that much. What do you intend, what do you mean? What does that mean? I'm an intense person. Oh man. I'm trying to dial it down here, but I'm just loud and like. Are you like, we're going to make America great again. You know, I'm not so QAnon like that, but I am like just, yeah, I probably have some of those tendencies just to be loud and crazy and not know what I'm talking about. And somehow it all ends up at the end making sense. But anyway, so Cody came over and ate dinner with us. And he was like, I think I like you enough that I'm going to try to latch onto this thing that you've already built for yourself. And I'm going to take half of it and start this pop up with me. What do you think, Cody? Is it like that? Kind of like that. That's kind of where, that's where our story is me. So you tell your version. Okay, my version. I've always thought that I would be interested in cooking, but I never had the time, because I was always on the road.

38:05Never had the time or the money to invest in like equipment and you know, and like cookware and stuff. It's expensive. It is expensive. So then I stopped touring and then I got married and cookware and kitchen stuff rains down on you from heaven. That's amazing. Yeah, it's very, very cool. And I was like, oh, cool. I'm going to see if I like cooking. Like I always thought I might. And sure enough, I did. I got super, super into cooking and at home and just really, really, really liked cooking a lot and spent a lot of time in the kitchen and like learning how to, you know, like knife skills and like learning how to chop onions efficiently and stuff. I got real nerdy about all that kind of stuff. And so when COVID hit and we were all locked down at our houses, I got, I was just bored. I was looking for something to do. I decided I wanted to cook outside and be outside a lot. So I got a flat top griddle. And then I just started doing things you do on a flat top griddle, like cheese steaks and smash burgers and burritos, you know, like in tacos, things you can cook a lot of stuff all at once and whatever, whatever.

39:14So yeah, I got into doing smash burgers is one of the things I got into doing and just trying to make a good smash burger. And then I saw on the internet that Andy was also, he had gotten a flat top and he was also messing around with smash burgers. We've already heard how he got there. So then we just started talking about it, you know, just on the internet, just on like Instagram stories or whatever, like, dude, what are you doing? What kind of stuff are you using? What, how do you season it? Like, what kind of tools do you have? Whatever, we started kind of riffing about it. And then sometime, other than that, our wives were like, hey, we should all have dinner together. And I was like, okay, I guess. He didn't want to hang out with me. We'll have smash burgers. So- Did we have burgers that night? Or I know one time I made you steak. I think that was a steak night. What'd you think about my steak? It's pretty good. Okay, tight. All right. So anyway, we were just talking, getting to know my, you know, up until that point, acquaintance, Andy, getting to know him a little bit. And we started talking about burgers because it's like the only thing we have to talk, you know, we already connected about this on the internet.

40:20Like you have music and like so many other things. Yeah, you know. We're making a, we're making, we're blowing this up. The only glue we have is beef. I liked Andy just fine. I spent a decent enough amount of time with Andy. I knew I liked Andy. Felt like this was a good time to take a short break to hear a few words from our sponsors. Hey everybody, I want to tell you all about Maintain IQ. Maintain IQ is an app or you can use it on the web. But what it is, is a checklist. It's a digital checklist system for every single thing you need in your restaurant. This also works for food, temping, the Bluetooth thermometer works directly with this app. So you can have all of your line checks in one place. I love it most for manager opening checklist, mid checklist, and then closing checklist so that everybody does everything they have to do before they get out the door. I'm also gonna talk about my new favorite company, GoTab.

41:21GoTab is, it's a kind of an all in one system. Really, you've got to call and do a demo. I'm not gonna do them any favors right here. I'm doing another demo next week because I just continue, continue to learn. If you're out there and you're tired of getting a million emails from people saying, hey, we've got your next solution. Guys, I follow up with those and I call those people just because I want to learn. If there was a way right now, if there was a phone number you could call and talk to somebody for 30 minutes that would save you or make you thousands of dollars, wouldn't you do it immediately? I mean, that's what your time is for. This is what I, this is my call to action to you. I want you to go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. I want you to click the GoTab button and from there, if you go to that link, the GoTab link, and you let them know, hey, I'm from Nashville. This is, I heard you on Nashville Restaurant Radio. I want to do a demo. For everybody who does a demo, I will give you a Nashville Restaurant Radio t-shirt or a really cool brand new Nashville Restaurant Radio hat.

42:23All you gotta do is send a message and say, hey, did a demo with GoTab or hey, I did a demo with Maintain IQ. Either way, and I will come deliver them to your studio, to wherever you are. I will come deliver them to your restaurant and I want to know how the demo went. What did you learn? Because I'm constantly learning new things myself. So here's what you do. You go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab and from there, you will click GoTab. That's gonna get you set up the demo there. How do you get a demo of Maintain IQ? Well, you can go to MaintainIQ.com or you can call the founder and CEO, Will Joxon. His number is 888-534-0261. These are the people. This is the big time call to action. Go check them out. You will thank me a thousand times. Hey, and get a free t-shirt or a hat. And now back to your regularly scheduled program. So he starts telling me about how he wants to do this burger pop-up. And I was like, man, I've always had a draw to like the food industry.

43:25I just, I never knew how. Like I didn't start in that industry young. I don't think I can start in it now. You know, from the bottom. Yes, you can. Just not in a way I ever thought. And he was like, yeah, I've got this guy working on some branding for me for a pop-up. And I was like, dude, we should do something like that together. I think we could, we could kill because we both have that like grassroots DIY kind of vibe. I was like, dude, we should do something like this. And we just started riffing about it. And we riffed about it for, I don't know, two, two months or three months. And then we started getting together and making cheeseburgers like every week. And we just got obsessed with trying to create like this perfect burger or not. We didn't really think we were actually going to make a business out of it. I don't think at the time, we just thought it would be like fun to figure out if we could. It was like, man, how cool would it be to go set up in a parking lot sometime and sell like 50 cheeseburgers? You know what I mean?

44:25Like that was, that was as far as it was going. Yeah, it wasn't like, hey, let's just do our lives. But it had to be great. So we spent a lot of time. Really making it great. Trying to make it great. And we were like, we finally got to a point. It was, it was weeks later. And we tried a million different things and we pretty much ended up right back where we started. But now we knew that where we started was great. What was the craziest thing that you guys tried that just, that just failed? That was like, this sucks. Man, I don't know if I ever did anything that I thought really sucked. That, yeah, we, we're just prodigies. So most everything we did was, I mean, most everything we did was like, oh, this is okay. But it's not like, wow. What would you do? Like, so as you're testing this thing out, you said two ounce balls, you're smashing them on a griddle. Like, did you try different seasonings? Hey, look, we'll put mushrooms in it. We'll chop up cremini mushrooms and we'll make a mushroom smash burger. They're like, no. Like, what was your trial and error? I was trying, I mean, I was trying a lot of different ways to like top it.

45:26Like my wife was like, you should do one with peanut butter on it. Yes. Okay. And so like, I would try something like riff around with peanut butter and she would think it was awesome. And I was like, I don't love this. I can see how someone would love this. They've had a menu with 10 burgers. This could be one of them. This is not my vibe. But you know, I was trying stuff with like a breakfast burger, like doing stuff with eggs. And then I was doing the onion. We were chopping the onions. And then sometimes we were like thin slicing the onions and doing that like Oklahoma style thing. And like we, you know, just trying a bunch of different ways. Oklahoma style. Yeah. Look at you now. You're like knowing regional burgers. Sure, sure. Regional onion style. We're real pros. We went from we don't know what we're doing to now you know, regional onion slicing. Look at you. You know, just trying in a whole bunch of different ways. And we really spent a lot of time on figuring the sauce out. We probably did. Yeah. 30 plus different versions of that sauce. Multiple days of just like mixing sauces. Small tweaks. And then like trying them and eating a lot of, cause then once you've land a sauce, we were like, oh, this sauce tastes pretty good like by itself.

46:32Then you gotta eat. Like that's the hard thing about this is like, you get all these individual ingredients that, and it's funny. We're just talking about a cheeseburger here. You got all these individual ingredients that all taste good on their own. And then you gotta make sure that they all have the exact same taste and consistency that you want put together. So we're like making so many cheeseburgers just to try different variations of sauce. And we're talking some of these sauces are the same exact ingredients, but just different ratios. And then some of them have like, we did some with some hot sauce and some with some horseradish and this and that. I don't know, like so much stuff that then finally you're just like, man, I can't even remember what we're trying to do here. You know, like. Wait, which one did we like again? Yeah, dude, it was crazy. We just got obsessed. We just got straight up obsessed with trying to make this one really killer smash burger. And when you did it, was there a moment, was there like the clouds opened and like, there was a rainbow and you were like, this is it.

47:38You made the one. I felt that feeling for sure. I had this moment of like, dude, I think we did it. Like, this is really good. Yeah, we're really stoked. And what I always think is really cool is the burger that we're at right now is very similar to the burger we started with. Like we started here and we went on a huge like journey to see if we needed to end somewhere else. And we got really close to like where we started. It was just like. But then we knew. We were like super confident. Well, you have to do that. Yeah. Like, you know, there was tweaks to the sauce and the seasoning, but pretty much like the build and everything. The one thing we did change after two or three services is the build of where we put, we did the onion blanket with the cheese. We didn't start that way. That became out of like a efficiency on the griddle, line cooking going like boom, boom, boom, boom.

48:40Yeah. So it's very small tweaks, but we pretty much ended up really close to where we started. And that's still the thing. I'm so excited. This reminds me of like St. Vito's focaccia. St. Vito's focaccia. Michael, yeah, right. And I just, I think about the pandemic and people all over the world are still dealing. This is a tough situation for a lot of people. A lot of people are still not okay. But I said, when the first episode I did on March 12th, I was a restaurant guide. Now I've got a studio to go through this pandemic. And I didn't know the first thing about recording. I don't know anything about the recording industry. I still don't. But I've done 240 interviews with people and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a little bit. But I think it's so interesting how pandemic and what you can do during that time when you have time that you guys didn't know anything about the restaurant business, but you just did it.

49:41You just said, we're not gonna make excuses. Let's find, we were both passionate about this. Let's try it. And now here you are. I don't know. I think it's inspiring. It's inspiring to anybody out there who has an idea, who has a dream and says, I kinda wanna do this. That's how you do it, guys. You just fucking do it. Get out there and start trying, start doing it. When did you do your first service? How did that come about? When did you guys get to the point where you go, okay, let's do this for a bunch of people. Where did you go? Where was your first service? The very first thing we did after we found the burger, we were like, this is it, dude. We need to test run this thing. So we did, this was still like, COVID was still pretty, things were still pretty COVID-y at the time. So- Is that a term, COVID-y? COVID-y, yeah. The world was pretty COVID-y. Everybody was locked in their houses still. It's very COVID-y. So I found some app that would allow you to, basically, it was like a calendar where you could send a link to people and they could sign up for 15 minute time blocks.

50:47And we did- Like Calendly? It was Calendly. It was. Calendly. Calendly. Yeah, I think that's what it's called. All right. So we did that. I made a Calendly account and we made a list of people that we wanted to invite to this thing. Like just friends, friends and family. 50. Everybody, 50 people. 50 to 80, yeah. And we sent, sent this link out to people and they could sign up in 15 minute time blocks. And it was like, swing in, get your food, get out. How many burgers do you want? And what time do you want them? Yeah. Are you charging people for these? This is just like, making them for free. We needed to practice making a ton of cheeseburgers. Do you have financing at this point? No. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is just- Just the two of us, two running. Bootstrap. Yeah, we're just going to the store and just swiping our credit cards and we're good. Kroger. Like we hadn't even like gotten like restaurant Debo account or anything like that. Okay. Yep. So we just knew that if we wanted to try to do it for real, we needed to practice with people we trusted.

51:47So we just made that list, sent it out, 15 minute time blocks and we put, we made a Venmo account. And it was like, if you want to throw us a tip or whatever. And that's what we did. So we- Made 80 cheeseburgers. 80 burgers that day, which was, you know, when have we ever, when would we have ever made anything close to that amount of cheeseburgers before? The most I'd ever made before that was 12 burgers. Yep. What did you guys learn about each other during that day? Cause you guys were friends, kind of, Hey my wife, now we're doing this thing together. But nothing, it's almost like if you're in a band, right? Like you can practice, we can do all this stuff. But until you get on stage- You gotta do it. Yeah. You gotta know the chemistry, right? So the first time you make 80 burgers in one setting, were you like, speed up, man, hurry up, or hey, I'm left-handed and you're right-handed and I need to be on this side and you need to be, did you learn anything like that? I think we, yeah, I mean, of course. I think we had a pretty good idea. Like I spent a lot of time kind of laying out the land and trying to figure out what the flow would be.

52:48Yeah. And I think we got pretty close. Flow of the quote unquote kitchen before even that service. But- Like I had like sketches on a piece of paper and was like, I think you, you know, if you're here and this is here and this is here, I think that the timing will work. And like on the griddle, this is kind of the flow of everything and then dressing buns. And this is kind of the flow. And I think if we do it like this, we'll all kind of end up in the same place at the same time. And that's pretty much how it worked out. Yeah. Probably just learned a few like that original setup worked, but we could do it better if we like, originally we had one table where all the transactions and the burgers were being built. And then we realized like, oh, there should be another table where you're building, you know, prepping the burgers and then doing the transactions on it. Do your wives come out and do transactions or anything? Do you have any other employees? Is it just you two? Just the two of us from the very beginning. And it's still, yeah, still is just two of us. I think we probably learned maybe not from that day, but for sure that day in the first month or so of doing services is like learning each other's like how to work with each other and stressful, you know, shit, because like we both handle stress in a completely different way.

54:04And you got to learn how to like bring yourself to that person's level, like, you know, and understand the way they deal with stress. And work, you know, in a high tense environment sometimes, you know, like dance around each other and like, cause you can, I mean, we're very much on display too. Like we talked before, like, especially in the tent, you're on display, like 360 degrees, people can walk around and see what you're doing. So one, you need to make sure that you're doing everything correct and up to standards and clean and that, but also like the way we interact with each other has to be the vibe that we want everyone to react to each other, you know, like we want the club, you know? Yeah. So we can't be like bitching and yelling at each other in front of people. I said I need three doubles. Right. Damn it. You know? That would totally kill the vibe, total vibe killer. So yeah, little, little tweaks.

55:05I mean, we're still making little tweaks, but for the most part, for the most part, the flow was the flow and that's what it's been. It worked pretty well off the bat. And then our first public service was May 1st. What year, 2021? Yeah. Yeah, May 1st, 2021. That might have been like a month after that friends came with it. Yeah, maybe three or four weeks after that. Where was it? It was at 4010 Barber Shop in Green Hills. They've got a little, I know the guy that owns the shop. What is that? It's on Hillsboro Pike, like on the, if you're leaving town, it's on the left side of the road. Like I can't, there's a Papa John's in that parking lot. Yeah, it's kind of tucked back on the backside of a building. Okay. And there's a, they've got a concrete patio out there that was like perfect for a 10 by 10 tent. Perfect. And we were like, yo, can we come set up and sell cheeseburgers on your patio? And they were like, okay, sure. It was like one of the only people we knew that owned a brick and mortar business in town somewhere that we could go do it.

56:07We didn't have any friends in like the brewery bar industry yet, you know? So, which is what we do mostly now. So we were just like, where can we go in public and quote unquote legally slow cheeseburgers, you know? So it was there. I made you sell that day. Dude, somewhere around the 80 mark. Yeah, I think like at that point we were confident we knew we could do 80. So and that probably the same people plus a few extra would come back. So like 80 was our number. It's like that 17 people you play in front of. But it was 80 this time. And then you're like, hey, maybe this time we do 110. And then maybe they tell some people and now I got a line. Yep. So we also did like that May 1st, the very next day we did a service. It's crazy that our first public service, we decided let's do two back to back because we did one the very next day at shops at Porter East. Yep, you're right. And we did 80 that day. And sold out really fast. And sold out super fast. And they were like, you should have brought 200 burgers. And we're like, we don't know what we're doing.

57:08You know, Matt from Ranger Stitches who like, I don't even know how he like knew about us or anything. He just like, Matt from Ranger Stitch used to be in the restaurant industry. And now he does like chain stitching embroidery. Nice. And somehow he reached out to us. He saw like the one thing we did do at the friends and family free service thing. We had started an Instagram account. We had branding already. And we just were like, hey, come eat free cheeseburgers, but post about it. So the thing I always like to say is we got a bunch of really cool friends. You know, like tattooed, cool, beautiful looking people. You know, and they got a lot of followers on the internet. So like if, you know, 50, 60 of those people are posting all about this thing, then immediately you're gonna start getting a following of other people being like, I gotta figure out what all these cool people are doing. You know, and so like, I guess that's how Matt found out about us.

58:08I don't know, but Matt, that's how we got our second service. And from that day on, like we pretty much have never had to ask to show up anywhere after our very first weekend. Like people just started reaching out to us saying, hey, can you come here? Can you come here? Like our whole first year was just us saying yes. Like, yeah, we'll come anywhere. And I didn't really have to like ask people and our whole first year was just weekends full, like Friday through Sunday. How many burgers did you sell in year one? Do you have like a, what were your annual sales for the first year? We've tried to figure it out because we started off just doing Venmo. So there was no, there's no like reporting. You know, it was just like dollar amounts just kind of dumped in and people would just add a couple bucks for a tip or whatever. And it was like, there was no rhyme or reason, you know, it just kind of was. And then we were like, okay, this is happening. We gotta get serious. So we, you know, we switched over to a POS.

59:13What'd you use? We use Square. Okay. Yeah, I really like it, but I also don't have any experience with anything else. So, you know, whatever. That's what we use. I can run reports and get all my info. All the analytics we could ever need pretty much. So we can track from like, September on or something when we started using that. But the first like six months, we don't have any analytics down. We don't know. We can just get an, we can just kind of speculate an average, but I don't know. I don't even know. We tried to talk about it yesterday, but we were like working. So we couldn't actually sit down and do it. And I was like, I wonder how many we've done up to this point. I was like, well, we can only actually run a report from September and everything else. We just can find an average. If I had to make a real educated guess, I would say somewhere like year to date from first service today is like somewhere around 20,000 cheeseburgers. And how much is a cheeseburger? Eight bucks. She did a hundred thousand, close to a hundred thousand dollars in sales. Yeah. For sure.

01:00:13Yeah. That's a lot of hamburgers. First year was about that. Wow. You know, with drinks and chips and all that. Yeah. We were in the nineties. That's incredible, guys. Which like, you know, you kind of asked about it in the beginning about funding, like the very first weekend, that free thing, Cody and I paid for whatever, you know, half it. And we got enough tips from those free cheeseburgers to pay off all that meat, to pay off all that food. That's good. And then, you know, we probably paid for the first weekend of services together. But then after we made that money back and then had money in the bank account, you know, we haven't personally invested any money in this other than a few hundred dollars in the very beginning. Like I bought a griddle, he bought a griddle. And the truck we have was like, we paid for that cashflow because of all the money that we made under the tent last year.

01:01:15Yeah, that's great. It's crazy. This whole thing has been a cashflow positive business, like zero debt. Since week one. And no investment. And what's crazy is you own 100% of it as a result of that, that's amazing. That's exactly where you want to be. And what's really cool and like, I don't know, makes you feel, I don't know, justified or whatever. Like we've had multiple people talk to us about like investment. Like we've had like a couple pretty serious conversations, you know, all the way from some dude wanting to give you like five grand to like some millionaires talking to us. And like, that's crazy. It's crazy that there's like people that just, just two dudes started selling cheeseburgers in a parking lot. And there are people in the national restaurant industry that like take us seriously in what we're doing that want to like invest money. And it's not something we're looking to do right now. Like we're hoping to keep the bootstrap thing going. I think you should.

01:02:16And figure out how to make this dream soar by ourselves. You know, unless it makes sense. I think what you've done is you've displayed the hustle. I think that it takes to make it happen. Sure. You know, I think that so many people have ideas and they go, oh, we could do this. And it starts off the way that you guys do. But after a month, they go, I'm tired. It's a podcast. There's 800 million podcasts out there, but like the average number of podcasts actually get made is like seven. Right. Like if you get to 50 podcasts, you're in the 1% of podcasts. Yeah. It's like, people are like, you know, hey, I want to do a podcast. Like, yeah, of course, go for it. And then it's like, oh shit, I got to do this every week. Yeah. Like I got to constantly identify an interesting person and then contact them and then schedule them and then get them on a platform and then research them and have a like. And then edit it. That's all. Yeah, they got to edit it, produce it. And then I got to distribute it. And it's like. It's a ton of work. God, that's a lot of work for an episode.

01:03:16And it's like. When you're already managing two restaurants. Although that's for me. Yeah. And for me, people go, how do you have the time? And I go, I don't. But it's like at midnight on Tuesday, when I'm sitting in this studio and I'm putting together all this stuff, it's like, that's what it takes. I think for you guys, you do this thing for a year and you keep doing it regularly. That's when investors go, oh, hey, these guys are legit. And they have something that. And that's when they go, we want to be a part of this. Yeah. Because they've seen that you can sustain it over an extended period of time. I love that. What's next? Do you want to do a brick and mortar? Do you want to do like 50? Like what's your. Yeah, I think we do. Our lack of experience in this industry means that there's obviously a lot to learn. Yeah. And we don't want to get in too far, too fast where we make mistakes. I think up to this point, we've been learning as we go. And we are.

01:04:16We're learning so much. And what I tend to focus on is what's the next right move for us? The next right move was the truck. So now we are in the truck. So now it's like, let's figure that out. Let's get our. Do it. Let's save a little bit more. Yeah, let's see how this goes. Let's see what cashflow is like in the truck. Cause they're like, there's new expenses with the truck. And there's a lot of new stuff to figure out with the truck business-wise. So it's like, let's get settled and then let's decide what the next right move is and focus on that. Like, let's set that goal and work towards it. Just like we did with the truck. Do you guys have, are you more of like the business manager and you're more, do you guys have like individual roles now? Have you kind of come into your own? Hey, look, I really like numbers. You really like production. Why don't you go buy the food and I'll make sure all this. Like, do you guys have those sort of things yet? Not really. We both pretty much are involved in every aspect. Some people are, you know, gravitate towards others. I get, I like to make calculators and graphs and stuff.

01:05:18Not really graphs, but you know, formulas on Excel and stuff. Spreadsheets, I have a food cost calculator. I just, I go through the receipt and go, and I see what like our current food cost is, stuff like that. I like stuff like that. Yeah. And when it comes to like installing something in the truck, that's Andy's gig and I'll be there to help him muscle something. But he's like, here's the plan for this. I'll help him lift and I'll set screws or whatever, but he's like, yo, this is the plan for this. And I'm like, cool, I'm here to help you. So yeah, we have roles like that, but like we pretty much both do all the shopping and prep and everything. And then obviously serving. Sole source of income for both of you now? It is, yeah. What's crazy that we failed to mention like the whole first year, all of last year calendar year, like Cody was a full-time, had a full-time job and the burger club. And like when I left my job, I was doing about two or three different hustles, you know, like different things to make money.

01:06:20So like our time was spread very thin last year. And you're married, you got wives, you got families, you got everything you gotta do. It was wild. I mean, I worked seven days a week for many, many, many, many, many, many months. But was it February? I guarantee you're an entrepreneur. You probably still work seven days a week. Right. Like there's no, there's no. Just a little bit different. Days off. I mean, there's not a day I don't think about business. I was a operations manager at a merchandising company. So I was overseeing production and operations there and I stepped down from that role in February. So yeah, this is full, this is full time for me. But you're still playing music. Still playing music, yeah. So you're gonna go on tour in Germany? You're going to Germany? I have a festival. I'm playing in Germany in September. Nice. So I'll be out there. Who are you playing the festival with? Is it a band? Yeah, a band called Project 86. Project 86. Yeah, just kind of a heavier kind of rock band that I've played with. Pretty much since my band stopped touring, that was my next gig.

01:07:21I played with that band for a few years and now I just kind of do one-offs with them sometimes. So yeah, music for me is more of a hobby now than it ever has been, which is cool. Cause it was like all consuming. It was my life, it was my income, it was my. Do you guys ever play music together? We've never played music together. We talked about making a Bad Luck Burger Club album. Yeah, I wanna make an album and put it out on a record label and be the first food truck to ever have a record out on a record label. I think it'll happen eventually. I think there'll be bad ass if you guys did. Hey look, we're gonna sling burgers for the next two and a half hours and then we're gonna play a show. So like we're gonna literally go from, we're gonna cook these burgers and then we're gonna take the aprons off and we're gonna play five songs that are original songs that we wrote while we were doing this. So it's kind of like dinner and a show. Like we have a full date night now coming at you. Very sweaty and greasy.

01:08:21Yeah, it'd be gross. We'd be slipping. I think people would have fun with that. I don't know, listen to me over here. It would just be another passive revenue stream. That's the thing that we're always working on is like passive revenue. Like Cody used to run a couple of different merch lines, clothing lines. He could talk about it more than me, but like we have a pretty successful clothing brand like tied to all this. Like our branding was, people were like right in the very beginning was like, yo, I need a t-shirt. And that's the one thing we like made very important in the very beginning. I mean, like our first service ever, we had a tent, a branded tent and a branded like, table cover and t-shirts. What makes you look official? Yeah. Definitely gives them stress. It does. Somebody who's on the fence is like, oh, this looks legit or whatever. Yeah. That was my thing with the podcast.

01:09:22Like I gotta have a logo. I gotta do all the right stuff. And then I didn't plan on doing the podcast until the day that everything shut down. And I was like, well, I have all this shit. I'm just gonna start doing it. It's like a business having a good website. It builds trust with a potential customer. With that being said, we got a bunch of, we got shirts and stickers and all that stuff. And like, it's a thing where like, when we're not selling cheeseburgers today, but probably sometime today, somebody's buying a t-shirt on our website. Like we sell a decent amount of t-shirts that like, that's, you know, if we can figure out more and more ways to like supplement income on the days that we're not serving food, it's gonna just, you know, help. All of that's gonna snowball. And after five years, you're gonna be like, we have 75 employees. And now we just show up at the restaurants and we sign autographs. It's like, can we get there tomorrow?

01:10:23Fast forward that. Can we do that? Yeah, sign an autograph. That'll be a funny day if that ever happens. I hope that day never comes. Why? I don't know. I would think that was silly. I signed an autograph for plea at our burger pop-up. Well, that counts. You've done it. But like- You guys know with shows, do you ever sign autographs to people? Yeah, that was a thing. Yeah. I always felt weird about that, dude. Like, why do you want me to scribble my name on this piece of paper? Like, who am I to you? That is, I'm just the bass player. I saw you playing bass up there. I saw you. I need your name written on the paper. I need you to write your name on a piece of paper. I'm gonna frame it. I don't know, I thought it was weird. For anybody listening, I'll sign anything you got. I like to claim that I'm a celebrity chef, but I really am not, and I only know how to make a cheeseburger. Well, I had Pat Martin in here a few weeks ago and asked him that same question. It's like, you're going on a book tour and you're signing books. Was it weird for you, being a guy from Nolensville who makes barbecue, to go around and sign all these autographs?

01:11:25He's like, it's fucking crazy. He's like, it's insane. It's a weird thing. And I'm like, I don't know if I want that. I don't know if there's some side of me that's like, I wanna sign autographs. I wanna be famous, but at the same time, I kinda don't. Yeah. But I don't know if there's a weird side of me that I'm like, I want that. I wanna sign autographs. I mean, I loved that Pat Martin interview, by the way. Thank you. I love Pat. I don't personally know him, but the humble vibe that that dude puts out, I have this weird dichotomy where like, I want people to see me that way. I want people to feel welcome and included. And I hope that I put out a vibe of love and compassion. That's more important than anything else in the world. But also like super get off on being like this weird, like cocky, funny. I hope everybody sees the duality and just the irony in it all. Cause I can be like pretty cocky, but I think it's all funny.

01:12:28Yes. I know exactly. But you know what? You can go back in your own brain about that a million times. You just gotta go, F it. I don't care. Cody knows the real- That's just who I am. Cody knows how it really comes out. I don't know. He could tell you what it's really like. I don't deal with it all the time. I know the real Andy. He's a sweet boy. There's a darkness in there. He's a sweet boy. There's a darkness deep in. There's a darkness inside. Don't we all have a darkness? We do. Don't we all have that? It's really just a matter of how well we all hide our darkness in front of other people. Or how much you're willing to confront your darkness and bring it to light in a healthy way. Yeah. I did a whole episode, right? Talked about all my darkness. It's scary as shit. It might be the hiding of the darkness that's so detrimental to your- Cody's trying to like break into me right now. Do I need to leave? You guys just want to do this. No, I tell you what, I love this dude. I love Andy so much. And it's been so fun to get to know him and go from like acquaintance, like I feel a little nervous about going to your house for dinner to like, it's my brother, you know?

01:13:37Like this is my dude. We've built this business from the ground up and like, man, there's nothing like doing something like that to throw you in and figure it out, you know? It's cool. We see and talk to each other daily and it's crazy. Like we just throw in a relationship out of this thing. It's beautiful. It really is. It's very, very cool. Well, I tell you what, I didn't know all, I don't know if anybody knows all this stuff, but I'm excited to be somebody that gets to have this conversation with you guys, just to kind of tell your story. I feel like I've really understand where you guys came from and I love that. And I want to know more and I'm excited to see your success. I'm doing something. I'm gonna invite you guys to this thing. I'm building a pit at my house, not like a pit of despair. Yeah, you're gonna do a whole hog? With Pat. Oh, cool. In his book, Life of Fire, he outlines how to do a West Tennessee whole hog.

01:14:38And I already bought, I got the great, it's four by six feet. I've got, I'm going to, I'm picking up the angle irons and I got 95 cinder blocks on the way to my house. Whoa. I don't know about the feeder fire, but I'm gonna do a whole hog. And hopefully he's able to come help me. But you guys gotta come be a fun thing at the house to cook though. I don't know if you guys know anything about barbecue. You guys aren't chefs per se. I don't know how to do it, but that's one of my things. I want to learn. I just want to learn how to manage the fire and what kind of coals you need and to do it the right way. And then I love Pat says that it's the destination, like is great, but like the adventure is getting there. Sure. And the adventure is not, you know, just eating the barbecue when you're done. Like the adventure is the whole process. And I'm like, I want to bring fun people with me to my house and I want to have like a full day where we're all just like learning and enjoying just hanging out together.

01:15:41We're gonna do that in October. That sounds a little too hot to do it right now. I was about to say, but in the cooler weather sounds great. Would be fantastic. Keep a fire going for 24 hours. And I'll try to read the book between now and then. So that way I have a little knowledge. So if you're out there and you're thinking about reading the book, like you just said, maybe we'll make that our September book club book. And then maybe we'll do a contest around it. And then we'll have those people, we'll get like you guys from other people that are like our celebrity, people that are gonna be there and we'll have people from the book club. Signing grass. We did it. Signing grass. There we go. All right, a couple of questions for you both just to get to know you fun stuff. I love to know what your favorite app is on a phone. It's a new question I thought about the other day on a hike. Technology's amazing. There's an app called Pore Cost. P-O-U-R-C-O-S-T. And it will go through and it tell what size is the bottle, how much is the ounces you're pouring, how much did it cost? It will tell you what percentage. It's an amazing app. And I love it. Somebody told me about it. And I'm like, oh shit, this is great.

01:16:42What is an app that doesn't have to be restaurant related? What's the app on your phone you use the most? Man, I am gonna be completely transparent and I feel bad about saying it out loud. Do it. But it is definitely for me, Instagram. And the reasoning is that's like our business. We are not on Yelp. We're not on Google. We're nowhere to be found except for a website and Instagram. And we built a following in one year. We have 12,000 plus followers. And that's like where we do, that's where we post our schedule. That's where we do all of our interacting digitally with customers and marketing and advertising. You like, and it works. I mean, I'm trying to branch out and also to be said, like I'm the dude that I'm very into like social media and all that. So I'm the kind of the dude that runs all of that for our company. But we wouldn't have the success and we wouldn't be where we are right now without Instagram.

01:17:45So I am on there all the time. And I mean, it's sad to say, but I probably got so many screen hours on my phone a day just from, and it's not because I'm going through liking people's pictures. I do very little consuming on there. It's just putting stuff out and then like- Yeah, it's how we market our business. And I have the idea that you can't, you need to reply to every single message and every single comment. Like, so I've spent quite a bit of time and hours just replying to people. I don't feel that way. That's an Andy thing. Yeah. He takes that upon himself. That's the right thing to do. That's why you have 12,000 followers because your people see that you care. That's important. Yeah, Cody. Yeah, I'm just, I have somebody that replies to every single review on every single site that is out there. And we reply to every single one. That's awesome. I love that. I love the good ones at five star reviews, my favorites. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. Two, three stars.

01:18:45Let me know what it is. I mean, I genuinely want to know what I can do, but I can't reply to all of them. Sure. There's hundreds of them. But like we make sure that if you took time to go and make a review, reply to every single one of them. Everyone. Yeah. It's a thing. You guys are right. I'm wrong. You're wrong, Cody. I love being right. It's a good thing. It's fun and hard to reply to the negative stuff because like we've got to ride the line of being hospitable but also like be the true us and be kind of like funny about our reply. You know, like if it's some like dumb thing, like one time a guy got really mad that we put pickles on our grilled cheese but it's very obvious on our menu that there are pickles on our grilled cheese. Now you got to do is say no pickles. Aren't people wacky? You know? Yeah. Wacky. So it's just like, you know, you want to reply back like being like, yo, it's in the description, read, you know but also you want to be like, hey, sorry you didn't enjoy your experience. My favorite are the ones where like people just troll the shit out of one star reviews.

01:19:50Like, wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you for joining us for our pop-up and the one star review as wow. I mean, that's just such a nice thing that you were upset that we put pickles on our grilled cheese sandwich when the menu clearly states that there are pickles and we're happy to not put the pickles on there but you did not read, maybe you're illiterate and that's not something that you can do but apparently you typed this out. I don't know. But the people that just completely troll the person they're like, it's my favorite. I want to have you, if you guys have a good one star view we need to read those. I'll have you guys read one here in a minute. Is that okay? Yeah, I don't, I'd have to find something. Yeah, we'd have to just go through our Instagram messages. It'll be good. What is your favorite movie? Do you guys have a favorite movie of all time? Oh yeah, I think my favorite movie, I think my favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Ooh, we're gonna need a bigger boat. Yeah, we are gonna need a bigger boat. I will not let my children watch that movie.

01:20:51They're seven and eight and they want to watch Jaws so bad. I'm like, we're going to Florida in two weeks. Oh yeah, they won't go in the water. It'll ruin your vacation. So that's kind of my thought and like, with that we want to watch it. I'm like, yeah, it's my job as a parent to tell you no. Cause I want you to enjoy the water. They'll forget about it. They'll forget about it. Though they have, they have now, but they're gonna want to watch it one day. Why is that your favorite movie? Man, so many reasons. I get really into like practical effects. I really like practical effects and I really liked that practical effects and movies have kind of made a comeback and they're starting to use like animatronics again and stuff in movies and that's all they had back then. So it's kind of come full circle and there's this documentary. There's this documentary that accompanies the movie. If you've ever seen the documentary where it's all about, I mean, how they built the shark and like how it never worked and. I haven't seen it. Oh man, it's. I've been to Universal Studios in LA and I've Jaws come out of the water at me and all that stuff.

01:21:54But it's never. It's fascinating. They had so many problems with that shark that they had to like, they kind of had to change how the movie worked because they couldn't like get it to work right. And they were like, that's why you don't see the shark till like the last third of the movie. Cause they were like, we couldn't get it to work. So we just had to allude that it was there. Yeah. And it's like, that actually worked in your benefits. That's terrifying. But yeah, they couldn't get that thing to work. So it's just like not present in the movie. That's hilarious. I did not know that. Yep. It's just not there. It's just, you just know that it's there and it is almost scarier. Do you like scary movies? Is scary movies your thing? Yeah. I like horror. I never been able to do it. That's okay. It's not for everybody. I like psychological thrillers. Yeah. My favorite movie is a Silence of the Lambs. Yeah. It's great. It's like that movie, like where you just, the movie ends, you're like, I'm going to go take a shower. Yeah. Fuck. I don't even want to watch that with your kids. Get that off of me. No, not yet.

01:22:54I will one day though. Cause that movie is not necessarily scary as much as it's just like, and I've always said, there's that scene. You guys have both seen the movie. Sure. Where she like is, they're hitting the buzzer on the houses and they're all going into this dude's house. They think that they're at Buffalo Bill's house and she thinks she's at the neighbor's house. And it's like this simultaneous thing or they show her pushing the button and there's like the electric and the buzzer rings. And you're like, wait for them to go in and get the guy. And then they go into the house and there's like nobody there. And then she opens the door and Buffalo Bill's like, oh, hello. And you're like, oh shit. And like, and I'm getting chills thinking about that moment and that he turned the power off. And like, there's no greater moment in a movie than like that realization watching that for the first time going, oh, whoa. Like, I don't know. There's something about that for me. It's great. It's a great movie. Andy, what about you? Do you have a favorite? Dude, yeah, probably Good Will Hunting.

01:23:56I'm kind of lame, but like- That is not lame at all. I'm like an existential ball. Like there's, I could talk about like crazy in-depth emotional bullshit, like forever. So that movie's like, it speaks to me pretty heavily. It's good. That movie spoke to me when they're sitting on the park bench and he says, I figured you out. You've never left Southie. Because you can tell me any fifth century modern da da da because you've read it in a book, but you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. Right, yeah. It's like you've never experienced anything. You're a coward. You've just read about it. You've never gone and sucked the marrow out of life. And I went, that was like a light bulb for me in my life. And I went, I want to go to the Sistine Chapel. Never been yet. But I went to the Palace of Versailles and I remember being there going, it's musty in here. I know what it smells like in the Palace of Versailles and outside of Paris.

01:24:58And you're like, but that movie was that for me. I was like, I'm gonna travel as much as I possibly can. I want to see as many things with my own eyeballs. And you have a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower, it looks like to me. I do, yeah. That's because I grew up in Paris, Tennessee. So it's like symbolism to that. Okay. Is there an Eiffel Tower in Paris? Here is, yeah. There's like, I can't remember the entire story but like some college engineering class made one, like a replica, you know. Pretty bad, it might be like 100 feet tall or something. And they then like brought it. They donated it to Paris and built it on site and stuff. What is it? Let's talk about this tattoo. It's an Eiffel Tower, then it says everybody. Everybody made my prediction. The Eiffel Tower's getting bombed and like it's falling apart. It's basically like a story of like, it's a deeper heavier thing.

01:25:59Okay. But Paris is in Henry County. Henry County in the year I graduated high school was, had the highest methamphetamine rate in the whole county, in the whole country. Sorry, the whole state. Okay. And there's just a lot of, to anybody that might be listening to this in Paris, I'm not talking shit about you, but like there's a lot of like born there, die there, stay there, be complacent. And that's not what I wanted for my life. I come from a background of like drugs and alcohol and addiction and stuff like that. So I knew very quickly, like when I graduate high school, I'm getting out of here. That everybody made my prediction. There's a really, really big song by Hank Williams Jr. called Family Tradition. I heard, yeah. You know that one? It's like a big party song. You go to any bar on Broadway, everybody's gonna be singing it. But if you like really dissect the lyrics, it's pretty sad. It's, you know, basically this dude's dad was a drug addict, alcoholic, and everybody told him he was gonna be that and he was that.

01:27:06And I wasn't gonna become my dad. So this whole thing is like, get out of Paris, don't be my dad, go be something. So I look at it daily, you know, a lot of tattoos, you just kind of get tattoos and they don't really mean a lot. But like, that's one that like reminds me like, you know, and I'm still a guy, I like, I drink alcohol, might smoke weed now and again, stuff like that. Like, but I have a very like clear view of what is too much for me. And this is a thing that reminds me that like, don't ever cross that threshold. You know what I mean? Wow, that's a great story. Thanks. And now Cody, you get to, you have a bunch of tattoos also. Do you have anything that like, No. Any good stories that's going on here? He just looks cool, dude. He does look cool. No, I don't have any good stories like that. What's the one, what's the one your right arm right there on like the front of your forearm, what is that? This? Or this one? This is a wolf, that a wolf head and it says full moon fever.

01:28:08I got that when Tom Petty died. Okay, I was like, that sounds like a Tom Petty album. Yeah, it is, yeah, Tom Petty album. I also get, my wife says that when there's a full moon, she can tell because I act different. She says I get real fidgety and weird. I don't know. I think Andy has seen it. Yeah, she told me about it. And now I'm taking notice. And the last time it happened, it was, So it is a Tom Petty reference. And it's also just a funny, funny reference to me having full moon fever that people say I have, but I don't know if they're just being weird or not. I have a theory that you have all the full moons scheduled in your calendar. And when you wake up in the morning and you know it's a full moon, you purposely act a little different. Ooh, I get to act up today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's your one day that you get to be like crazy. I get to be crazy today and nobody can say anything about it. That's fucking, I wish I had that like just a day like, well, my wife does that once a month, it's crazy.

01:29:09It's contagious. You can get his full moon fever, dude. Yeah, you can get it from me. No, I wanna play like the newlywed game with you guys. And let's be like, well, now we're like at the end here, but if I was to ask you, Andy, what's Cody's favorite like all time band? Do you know who that is? I mean, I'm asking you the same question, Cody about Andy, so. I feel like I just, I got a leg up because he just showed his Tom Petty tattoo, but it is Tom Petty, right? Yeah, I think Petty's probably my favorite. He loves Tom Petty. Did you get to see, is your meet Tom Petty? Never met him, but I did see him at Bridgestone on that last tour. I saw him at Starwood. Oh, cool. Back in the day, Starwood Amphitheater Wildflowers Tour. Oh God, that's awesome. My favorite song of all time, Wildflowers. Yeah, we listen to a lot of like punk and hardcore and stuff and rock and roll like in the truck. And sometimes when I can sense a vibe where I'm like, Cody needs the Petty today and I'll play some Petty every once in a while.

01:30:17And he just perks right up? Oh yeah. Like it's a full moon. And I appreciate that about him that he can read me like that. Well, what's his favorite, Cody? Man, Andy likes a lot of music that I've never heard. Would he know who your favorite all time band is? Should he know? Should he know? I don't know, probably not. We don't really listen to them. Yes, I don't know that I would know. Yeah, probably. Well, who is it? Man, it's probably, is it 238? No, but God, I love 238. I know, I love 238 too. That's why I picked that one because we have that one in common. What's funny is I name it and claim it even though it might not seriously be true right now. But Nirvana for me, it was like been the all time favorite because when I was like 12, 13 years old, that was the band that made me realize like, holy shit, I wanna play music and you don't have to look a certain way or be a certain way or even have a certain talent level. Like you can do it, you know?

01:31:19And so that hearing Nevermind, that's where I got in with Nirvana, hearing Nevermind for the first time changed my trajectory in life to be like, that's all I wanna do is play music. And the only reason I'm sitting here with you and you is because I played music for over a decade and all the experiences that led me to here, so. But your favorite Nirvana album is gonna be the Unplugged. Dude, yeah, yeah, the Unplugged Nirvana record is very, like very good. It doesn't even have like a ton of Nirvana songs on it. It's like mostly covers. It's amazing. I listened to in utero the other day. I was washing my car and I listened to in utero. I, did you know Nirvana was only a band for three and a half years? Did you know that? That's crazy. The whole Nirvana phenomenon, three and a half years. And Dave Grohl in his book, I mean, he's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.

01:32:20He's one of those, like the five people, like John Lennon, Paul McCartney and like Dave Grohl. That's insane. I mean, they've been a band, Foo Fighters has been a band for 25 years. And I saw the Foo Fighters on their very first, it was like their fourth show they ever did. It was with Mike Watt, who had an album called Ball Hogger Tug Boat. And he did a show at 328 Performance Hall. If you guys aren't from Nashville, 328 was, I don't know, 500 people fit in there. It's a tiny little venue off of 4th Avenue. I think Martin's Barbecue is now where it was. And it was Mike Watt, Foo Fighters and Hovercraft. Okay. And Foo Fighters, their very first brand new tour. And I skipped school that day and I parked behind 320. The rumor was, I heard this on KDF. KDF used to be a rock station. That Mike Watt, Eddie Vedder sang a song on that album called The Kids of Today Should Defend Themselves Against the 70s.

01:33:23And then the Foo Fighters were playing Dave Grohl's band with Pat Smear of Nirvana. And then the lead singer of Hovercraft apparently was Eddie Vedder's wife. And the rumor was Eddie Vedder might be there. And Pearl Jam is my, it's my band. I heard 10 for the first time and I was like, oh my God. That was, for me, it changed my world. So I skipped school that day and I parked there. Oh, this is a fun story. I'll tell you the whole story. And I'm sitting behind the, I'm sitting there. I have a guitar. I have a Stratocaster. I play guitar. I'm not good by any means. I'm 16 years old and I'm sitting in my Nissan Sentra, parked behind 320 at Forward's Hall, just playing my guitar. And I was, I just, I got up to start driving away. I was just gonna do a lap just to kind of stretch or whatever. And as I pull up, a little Toyota Tercel pulls in and Dave Grohl is driving with the woman. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm freaking out. And I pull back, park my car and attached to 328 was a gay bar called The Jungle. And a huge parking lot at The Jungle. And Dave and this person parked their car.

01:34:23And then a van pulls up right behind 328. And I'm like, holy shit, like freaking out. This is my hero. And Dave is getting out and I look over at the van and like this dude with like purple hair is like next to the van. I'm like, not Eddie Vedder. And then Dave Grohl starts walking by and I said, hey, hey Dave. And he goes, hey buddy, what's going on? I said, I'm a huge fan. Can you sign my guitar? And he goes, I can't right now. I've got sound check. But are you gonna be here after the show? And I said, yeah, I guess. It was an 18 over show too. And I said, yeah. And he goes, promise you I'll sign it after the show. And I said, okay. And then I turned around and looked next to the van and Eddie Vedder is standing next to the van stretching. Lost my shit. Literally it's like seeing John Lin. It's like I start shaking. And I walked over to Eddie Vedder and I said, oh, Eddie and he's like, oh, hey man, what's up? And I said, I'm a big fan.

01:35:24My car's right there. Will you please, will you sign my guitar? And he goes, oh, you know, we're not signing anything this tour, but we're giving stuff away. And I said, okay. Like, what are you, you're giving stuff away? And he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out all this change and there's like a pick and there's these old gold coins. And he goes, here you go. And he reached out his hand with all the shit that was in his pocket. And so I'm like rooting around in Eddie Vedder's hand and I grabbed this gold arcade token from St. Louis. And he goes, okay. Then he goes, oh, and he reaches in his other pocket and he grabs a pack of winter green tic tacs. And he eats one. He goes, here you go. You can have the rest of these. There's one tic tac left in there. And he goes, it's been in my pocket for a few days. And I'm like, is this happening? Of course, I look back on it now and I'm like, that's the craziest shit I've ever heard. But like in the moment, I was like, Eddie Vedder gave me his tic tac, you know?

01:36:28Still have the tic tac, by the way. That's so funny. And the gold coin, he goes, at this point, another guy had shown up and was like, Eddie, and he's like, I don't want to tell you no, man. I don't like saying the word no. Please don't ask me because I don't want to say the word no. And he's like, well, do you have a secret code language that you could write Eddie? The guy had a Vitology album cover because this is the most current album that was out. And so he wrote Eddie in a secret code. He goes, do you still have that gold coin? I said, so then he wrote Ed in a secret code language on the coin. And he gave that to me. So that was a really special moment. Fast forward to after the show, there's a million people there now. Everybody in the world now knows Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder are there. There's just, I mean, there's thousands of people. They've blocked off the back behind 328. And there's, I mean, there's just, there's just people everywhere. My car, however, is still parked directly behind. So I'm security, I'm like, that's my car I've got to get. And he's like, okay, go ahead. Dave Grohl walks out after the show.

01:37:28He's got 30 people around him. And they're all like, Dave, Dave, hey, Dave, say, you're listening to the best. And they have these little recorders and he's signing stuff. I mean, it's this pandemonium. And he sees me and he goes, and it's starting to rain. And he goes, hey, man, where's your car? And I went, it's right over here. And he goes, where's your guitar? I go, it's right here. And he goes, excuse me. All 30 people around him, he goes, excuse me. Walks over to my car, sits down in the passenger seat, grabs the guitar, writes, all my best, Dave Grohl on the pit guard of my strat. And he goes, okay, man, how'd you enjoy the show? And I go, it was amazing. Like that was an amazing show. And he goes, really thank you for being a fan or anything else I can do for you. And I go, no, like, oh my God. And he goes, and he's like shook my hand and he went back to this big group of people. But I was like, what a cool dude, man. And after reading his book, I was like that, he just is living in the moment every day, enjoying what he was doing. Like I get to do this.

01:38:28But I think that was like their fourth show as a food. I saw them again at 328 headlining. Then I saw him in Irvine a couple of times. I've seen him in Knoxville. But like that was a really crazy, crazy moment way back. That's awesome. Pearl Jam for me. That's a great story. It really is. Like one, it's awesome, like how present and aware Dave Grohl was of you after the show. That's in its own right, a great story. And then the thing about Eddie Vedder, like when you're at a certain, such a level that you can just pull whatever shit you got in your pocket. I'm just thinking where I got my pocket that I could just give somebody right now. We're not signing anything this tour. That's why I think it's funny. You made that up. You made that rule up. So I did some research into that. And as he was out and his wife, Beth, at the time, his wife's name was Beth, I think he's married to Jill Goodacre now, but his wife, Beth, at the time, was the lead singer of Hovercraft. And she was there and he did, after all the stuff, like my car was still there.

01:39:32I helped Mike Watt carry in all his stuff. I'm just back there. I'm a 16-year-old kid, like hanging out. I'm hanging out with Pat Smear. I drove the bass player to the bank from the Foo Fighters. All this just random stuff. I'm hanging out bumming cigarettes with Pat Smear. Me and Eddie are talking just because there's nobody there and we're talking. He's like, this is my wife, Beth. And now we're just like hanging out. He wouldn't take a picture, but he didn't want people to know he was on that tour. It was kind of like, this isn't Pearl Jam. He was very humble. Like, and the idea of, I saw them in 1993, 94 at Murphy Center at MTSU, Pearl Jamming, King's X. And the crowd started- King's X, dude. Yeah, the crowd started chanting, Eddie. Eddie was like, no, no, no, no, don't make, don't piss me off. Like, this isn't me, I'm in a band. Yeah. Like, this isn't Eddie, this is a band. And I think he was very much in that head space of, this isn't about me. This is much bigger than me. Sure.

01:40:32This is Mike Watts tour with Foo Fighters and my wife's band, Hovercraft. I'm just here. This isn't the Eddie Vedder tour. I'm not here. I don't want to sign things. I don't want a bunch of pictures. This isn't about me. Yeah. Yeah. And I get that. But at the same point, there was nobody around. Right. I'm a 16 year old. I'm fucking shaking talking to him. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, if you get to meet Kurt Cobain or somebody, you're like, oh my God, to me, that was just, this guy got me through so many years of, I identified with everything they were doing and it was such a part of me. That I don't know. But I get that after the fact, like. I met him once and he was, he was so nice. He was so cool. Yeah. Just a very chill kind of guy. And I was like, I wish I could have, I just want to hang out with him. I guess that's everybody with their, their celebrity people they want to do. I just want to kick it with them. He was so cool and friendly and humble and just chill. Just an easy hang. When did you, how did you get to hang out with him?

01:41:33All right guys, we're going to take another quick break to hear a word from my friends over at Gordon Food Service. These guys are amazing. So I've worked, I've worked for Cisco. I've worked for Fresh Point. I've worked for US Foods. And coming into a relationship with Gordon Food Service, I was like, you guys are out of Kentucky. I don't know what you really do. I don't hear a lot about you. And man, when I started working with them, I was blown away. I was blown away because I was used to companies saying one thing and doing another. And that's probably the most frustrating thing in the world is when somebody comes in and they oversell you and then they don't deliver. Well, that is the opposite of what happened with me and with Gordon Food Service. I started a relationship with them and they said that they were going to do all of these things. And then by magic, they actually did all of them. And not only that, but they live their cornerstone values. And I just love them to death. And you know what? I have an amazing sponsorship with them now.

01:42:34And here's my challenge to you. If you're out there and you don't really love the company you're buying food from, send me a message. Let me make an introduction. Let me find out what you're doing. I'd be happy to talk to you first, see what you're doing, and I will introduce you to them. And this is an amazing, amazing thing. Gordon Food Service can not only save you money, but they can help you succeed. They're doing some amazing things because they genuinely care about your success. And I've seen this over and over and over again. And I've helped facilitate a lot of these conversations. Guys, Broadline Food is a big deal. And Gordon Food Service is doing a great, great job. You know, they have these stores all over town too. And now they have vans. They're delivering every day. You can order same day out of their vans if you forget to order something, which is really, really, really cool. So go to the website, gfs.com, click a tab, click there saying that you'd like to be a customer, you'd like to learn more, or send me a message at Brandon underscore NRR on Instagram.

01:43:38Just send me a direct message that says, hey man, I'd like to learn more about Broadline Foods and what you can do for me, because I think we could offer a great deal. When Nashville Restaurant Alliance goes into play, there's gonna be some sweet deals that GFS is gonna be a part of. And we're really excited to bring that to you. So get ahead of the curve and give me a call today or message me and learn about Gordon Food Service. Nice. He was so cool. Yeah, just a very chill kind of guy. And I was like, I wish I could have, I just want to hang out with him. I guess that's everybody with their, their celebrity people they want to do. I just want to kick it with him. He was so cool and friendly and humble and just chill, just easy hang. When did you, how'd you get to hang out with him? My wife's job, I end up in, she works for a record label. So I, sometimes I end up places where I'm like, I shouldn't be here. And one of those places, Eddie Vedder was there. And like, we just kind of ended up talking for a while and hanging. And he was just like, he was just a dude, you know, he's super chill. And then when it was time for him to leave, he went around to every single person in the room and said goodbye.

01:44:43Every person in the room, he said bye to, personally. Whether he knew them or not, he just made a whole lap and said bye to everyone. That's cool. That's like legend. That's so cool, man. That people do stuff like that. Yeah. I love hearing stories like that. Is there any celebrity that you've met that you're just like, this is? Man, not really. When you get to wake up and look at yourself in the mirror every day, there's nobody else that compares, you know? Also, I met Ron Jeremy on a Rodeo Drive one time. Nice. Yeah. I met Ryan Dunn and Don Vito one time. That's pretty cool. I've actually met Ron Jeremy too. We were shooting together one day. Oh, sick, yeah, tight. He did a vodka or something, and I was at an Atlanta food and wine show, and he was there signing bottles of his vodka or whatever his liquor was that he did tequila. I don't know what it was, but I got to meet him. I think he was half asleep when I met him. He was not very nice or kind or cared about. Yeah, no, he's not that.

01:45:44But you know, you gotta say hi to Ron Jeremy if you see him. You got to. You got to. I was really cool when The Passion of the Christ came out. I got to meet Mel Gibson. Before he was crazy Mel Gibson. Yeah. And I'm six foot six. And when I walked into this house in Bellevue where they were screening, my dad was there, where they were screening, he was like, you want to come meet Mel Gibson? I'm like, fuck yeah. This is like a couple of years after Braveheart. I'm like, yeah, I want to meet him. So I walk in and there's a couch in the room, and he jumped on top of the couch, still a foot shorter than me, standing on top of the couch to shake my hand. I thought that was kind of cool thing. He's like, hello, young man. I was like, damn, you're like five foot one. That's funny. I had no idea. I thought you're William Wallace. I never realized that either. Yeah, I didn't know. And he's like tiny. Like him and Tom Cruise. He's a little guy. He's a little guy. They do some tricks on those movies to not let you know. Yeah. All right, well guys. This movie magic. We're in an hour and a half.

01:46:44It's how long? Well, I haven't got an hour and a half in a long time. We got a lot of things to say. I've had a lot of fun guys. This has been a fun interview for me. Thank you for coming in. We barely scratched the surface. Let's go again. I know, right? That's every show I finished together. We got to do this again. I'm just having fun. I don't want to keep people sitting in their car away and like, God, this show's got to end. I got to get to work. And I'm sitting here trying to finish this. So like I said, but to start off, well, thank you guys so much for being here. Like this. Absolutely. For sure. Every day I get to pinch myself that I get to sit and have these conversations with people, with these such unique stories and that you have come in to tell the story. It means the world to me. And you guys are just, like I said, this was so much fun. I wish you nothing but success going forward. But this is the time. This is the time, the Gordon Food Service final thought. You guys are both drinking out of these amazing Gordon Food Service cups. Those are yours now. You get to keep them, take them with you when you're doing live events, show Gordon Food, GFS.

01:47:46They're amazing, amazing people. I'm gonna hook you up with them. We frequent their business. Oh, you go to the store. We do. Yeah, yeah. Andy lives close to it. Where do you live? I live in Goodwill, Spill. Okay. Yeah, yeah. They'll deliver to you now. Oh yeah, that's cool. From that store in a van. I'm gonna make that, I'm gonna hook that up for you. Actually, I think I heard that on here somewhere. Yeah. Yes. One of your episodes. Title sponsors, I'm gonna give you a hat too so you got a hat you can take with you. And I got Carhartt beanies. If you come in and do the show, you got lots of swag you get to leave with. All of my amazing sponsors. We are also drinking coffee from Bongo Java. This was a gift from Bob Bernstein who owns Bongo Java. So all of the coffee that we're drinking here is local coffee from Bongo Java. Gives a couple little shout outs to some people who have loved me out. So the Gordon Food Service final thought is just that. You guys get to take us out. You're speaking to anybody who's still listening to us. Which I think the last 10 minutes is probably the funnest part. But. Yeah, it's great. Whatever you want to say, as long as you want to say it, that this is your time.

01:48:53Andy and Cody, take us out. This is Prep Talk. Prep Talk. Yeah, we've been talking about doing a podcast called Prep Talk. Where we just mic ourselves up while we prep and just record it. That'd be great. All right, Cody, you start. You know, you're the opening act. Now headline. What do you got to say? Man, you know, sometimes and sometimes don't still mind. Why don't you start then? Go ahead. That way, I don't steal yours. OK, great. You know, sit back. We're going to talk for a while. Now, I'll keep it short. I am a firm believer and you truly, you know, within realm of reality, you can accomplish damn near anything you want to accomplish if you are willing to work hard for it, willing to fail, get back up and try again and work hard again and possibly do that process two or three times and fail a couple of times. But as long as you're willing to work hard, you can damn near make your dreams come true.

01:50:00And just being here talking to you is is great. And kind of like a reality, you know, like I listen to your podcast and you have a lot of real restauranteers and like chefs and people that I respect. So just like us being here is kind of like a, you know, a notch in the belt of like, you know, certain people are taking what we've done, you know, started in Cody's front yard, giving away free cheeseburgers. Now we're an active and real part of the Nashville food community. And that's something that we started like I'm 40 years old, you know, like as long as you're willing to work hard and start over, like we started this whole new life together at 40 years old for me. And it's working, you know, and there's still a whole lot to prove to ourselves. But that's amazing. And also a caveat to that is like something I'm truly working on and myself really hard is the older we get, the more cynical we become and the more negative things can be because there's so much shit going on in the world around you.

01:51:18And I'm actively daily working on being present and positivity and giving my all to every second of every day and just being thankful for all the past that's got me here today. So the the the older I get, hopefully I'm growing in positivity and not cynicism. That's a daily struggle we could talk about. We could have a podcast about that. But that's me. That's what I got to say. What do you got to say? That's good, man. The world is crazy. Be good to each other. Be empathetic towards one another. Do no harm, but take no shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Live your life. Do the best you can. Be good. Be good. There's so much bad out there. Just just be good. World needs good. Yes. Kindness, kindness and empathy. Yeah, man.

01:52:20Do you can do almost anything you want? You probably can't be an astronaut. It's probably too late to be an astronaut and be a pro football player. A lot. Yeah, it's probably too late for that, too. But a lot of other things you can do if you're willing to work at it. Andy, I was telling Andy he can be almost anything he wants to be, but not an astronaut. He told me I could probably win the CrossFit games if I really wanted to. Yeah, I probably could. Yeah, I think you could. But I think this I think your time has passed to be an astronaut or a pro football player. And this burger thing takes off. Yeah. And you guys get to where you're walking in a burger place is signing up fucking William Shatner as an astronaut. Yeah, that's true, dudes. I mean, for all intents and purposes, SpaceX and these things are happening. Dude, dude, that is you can be an astronaut, buddy. Anything you can be. I'm going to go ahead and poke holes in your three. I think you could be in that. You never know. Yeah. What about a pro football player? No, I don't. I don't know. I mean, if I if you get famous enough, they might let you play one one.

01:53:24What do you call it? Snap. Snap. Yeah, maybe so. I don't know. Man, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I didn't plan for I didn't plan for anything. You did good. I got one more thing to add. When you read our menu, you come up, we got a scan code. We got all our stuff on our menu. And you obviously see that there's no French fries on our menu. Don't then ask, hey, do you have French fries? Don't you think if we have French fries, they would be on our menu? So if you walk out, I mean, that's the first thing I'm asking you guys, by the way, when I come out, because I'm going to be out like the next time you're open, I'm like, y'all got fries? Oh, it's it's it's it's it's it's a grumpy thing. Yeah, it makes me feel a little bit grumpy. You know, like just, you know, if you haven't read the menu and you ask, OK. But also read the menu. Do you then say when somebody says your friends go, did you read the menu? No, no, you don't. You don't do like the hey, did you look at the menu online? Is there like, yeah, I did. Like, did you see fries? There's no fucking fries. It's faster to just say no.

01:54:25We're very, very kind. And then, you know, under our breaths, we're mad about it. I just remember the question I didn't ask you. Oh, it's not too late. This is this is part of our final final thought. Yeah. Where is your favorite place in town to get a smash burger that isn't you? I thought that was going to come up. Man, it's really hard. It's ever changing because at one time I really, really thought that Hugh Babies was the best burger in town. Freaking good. And I still think it's a good burger. But now that we may and no, you know, no offense to Pat. Now that we've started making cheeseburgers and we have the best burger in town, it's hard to say that his burgers good. We're giving it that you guys have the best one in town. We got the best. Now, Shane Nasby is coming with Cletus Burger coming up pretty soon. Yeah, I want to try it. I'm pretty excited about that, too. His interview sounded cool. I will say that I'll give a shout out to a couple smaller dudes like JP from Cabin Addict. He's a dude that does a pop up. He's got a really good cheeseburger and Cole from Dream Burger, which is a new little trailer.

01:55:31He's got a good cheeseburger. All right. Yeah. I really like the I really like Red Headed Strangers Burger. They're going to say they're green chili burgers. Yeah, the green chili and bacon is he gets me on. Oh, every time I see that shit on Instagram, I'm like, I need to go there. It's a good it's a good cheeseburger. And we eat there so much. We do. We really like our tacos. But yeah, we'll go there. Yeah, I'll get the burger every once in a while. I don't really eat cheeseburgers anymore. Like doing the prep in R&D for this business. I ate a lifetime's worth of cheeseburgers. How much weight did you guys gain during this? I used to be Cody's size a year ago. It's like I actually used to do CrossFit every day. And I had before we started this, I had actually lost a ton of weight. And then I put like half of it back on doing cheeseburgers, you know, whatever. Anyway, all that to say, I don't eat cheeseburgers very often. But so usually when I go to Red Headed, I'm getting the burrito or tacos or whatever. But every now and then I'll be like, OK, it's time to read up that cheeseburger.

01:56:33I'm going there after this meeting, after this meeting, after this interview. I'm leaving here and I'm going straight to Red Headed Stranger. What are you going to order? I'm going to get a burger, a green chili burger. Anything else? Well, I don't know. I haven't decided. I just decided two seconds ago. That's where I'm going to. I was really just looking for ideas as to where to go eat. Yeah. And you guys just made that happen for me. So thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome to join me. If you want to go and flour tortillas. Oh, it's great. Can teach me. They make those tortillas in house, which I just respect so much. I just love that people do that. They got the Brian's. They got a beautiful thing going on over there. Yeah, it's awesome. Have you guys been to Audrey next door yet? I haven't, no. They just opened June, which is upstairs. Yeah, it's amazing stuff happening in that building next door. He's a crazy mad scientist. He. You know, I think for all the people who talk about Sean Brock, this is how this interview goes to two hours for all the people about Sean Brock, I think the thing that most people and maybe most people do get, this is the thing to me about him seeing Audrey is how intentional and how thoughtful and how progressive he is for people.

01:57:46He has a room is a library upstairs, a full library of all the cookbooks that you can go and just learn. It's a quiet room that has a thing that says in use and chefs can go in there. He has an R&D kitchen, which he takes zero. He takes alcohol and he has some machine that removes the alcohol. You Jack Daniels, he can remove the alcohol from Jack Daniels and make zero proof spirits that taste like Jack Daniels. But there's no alcohol in it. Which is cool for a guy like me who doesn't drink. Yeah. And then he has a wellness room upstairs as like shag carpet. And there's like a massage table in there with like noise canceling headphones. And like if you're just I need fight, you can just go up there. And it's just a safe room. You can just go sit in and come back. That's amazing. That's awesome. The thoughtfulness behind all of that, not just, hey, I'm here to make food and experience like genuinely caring about his team and his staff and people, the intentionality behind all that.

01:58:48I think it's just it just shows what kind of a caring person he is. I think that's amazing. I think we need more people like that in this industry. And I think food's amazing. But like the kind of person he is, I think is pretty damn special. Yeah, that's oh, yeah, that's tight. Yeah. Good stuff. Gentlemen, have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you for taking off the hot seat. Thank you for joining us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you for having us. All right. Thank you so much to Andy and Cody from Bad Luck Bird Club for taking almost an hour and a half to sit and talk to us, maybe more than an hour and a half to sit and talk to us. That was so much fun. I could have talked to those guys for hours on end. And we had the best time over at Red Headed Stranger. If you haven't been to Red Headed Stranger, you need to go today. The Crunchwrap Supreme, the green chili, the green chili burger, and then, man, all of their tacos are just on point. Service is great. Food is great. You guys need to go check them out now. And thank you guys for listening.

01:59:49We're going to have a big week coming up. Have a happy Fourth of July. Love you guys. Bye.