Ben Whitlock

00:00Hi, it's Brandon Styll, host of Nashville Restaurant Radio, and I'd like to relay a message from What Chefs Want. They know this has been the craziest past two months any of us have ever experienced, and they are excited to work together to get our industry back on its feet. They've been working hard this whole time to make improvements and feel like their service model is even more helpful than ever to help you manage your food cost and difficult to protect inventory needs. Now, they'll still be breaking every single case. No minimums on orders, 24-7 customer service to help you, and deliveries when you need them the most. In addition to that, they've expanded their to-go selection as well as partnering with local farms who desperately need help right now. And finally, if you have any questions or anything that you need, please contact their 24-7 customer support team at 800-600-8510. They look forward to getting you moving again and continuing to be What Chefs Want. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene.

01:07Now, here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host, and we are back to Inside Baseball. And what the heck does that mean? That means that this show is, if you're a restaurant person, this show is gonna be right up your alley because this, we're talking to Ben Whitlock today, and he's the president of Mobile Fixture, and they are a company that sets up kitchens all over the country, but we're gonna talk today. We got lots of good stories, lots of inside industry stuff going on today. You know, if you're not an industry person, I think you're gonna like this episode. We have so much fun just going back and forth telling stories, and I think this is gonna be, I had so much fun creating this episode, but I do want to talk to you guys real quick about Springer Mountain Farms Chicken. You know, they're the first poultry lab in the U.S. to be certified to test for pesticide residues. They're the first large-scale producer in the nation, in the nation, to eliminate antibiotics and broiler chickens. Over 20 years ago, the first in the industry to gain certification by the American Humane Association, providing, proving advanced animal care. And you know what? There's a lot of firsts here. These are a lot of things they're doing proactively to make sure that they are putting out the best quality chicken to you. That's why the best chefs in the city choose Springer Mountain Farms Chickens.

02:54And you can too. Find them in your local grocery store. If you see Springer Mountain Farms Chickens, you know you're getting the best chicken on the planet, and they're doing it the right way. So if you have any questions, join the flock. Go to Springer Mountain Farms Chicken, springmountainfarms.com, and put your email address in. Get amazing recipes sent straight to your inbox, news about what they're doing, all kinds of good stuff there. So, Spring Mountain Farms Chicken, thank you guys so much for supporting Nashville Restaurant Radio. We do have a new website out there, and it is www.nashvillerestaurantradio.com. And from there, you can see on the home page some of my favorite episodes. I tell little stories about them. You can listen to them directly from there. You can see all of the episodes that we've got. I've started writing a blog, so at the end of every week, I'm going to kind of write my thoughts. It's kind of my what I've learned, my Jerry's final thought if you have on all of my episodes for the week. And then next week, we are going to be starting a brand new episode on Fridays that is going to be all about Nashville's restaurant scene. So, it's going to be up to date, everything that's going on, kind of a news episode. I have a new co-host for that Friday episode, and her name is Delia Jo Ramsey, the editor of Eater Nashville. She's going to be joining me, and we're going to be talking about everything that's happening in the city. So, it's so excited to bring that to you. That's going to start next week. But for now, let's bring in Ben Whitlock, and let's have a good time. So, inside baseball, folks, batter up. All right, everybody. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. We are here with Ben Whitlock, and Ben is the president of Mobile Fixture. Ben, how you doing today, man?

04:51I'm wonderful, yourself? I just got back from the dentist. So, I'm good. They didn't have to numb anything, but I'm just, I have some PTSDs going on, but I'm okay. I'll tell you, if we talk about anything today other than the dentist, I will be completely satisfied. I would rather catch the falling knife than talk about the dentist or even listening to somebody talk about the dentist. Done. I am so happy to put this in the rear view and keep going. So, let's get started. I think that we should talk about it is exactly what you do. And first of all, I always thought your company name was Mobile Fixture for some reason, and it is Mobile Fixture. I'm sure. Is that common? Do you get that a lot? It is very common. The farther away you get from Mobile, Alabama, the more common it is. We actually get people who come into our showrooms all over the southeast saying, hey, I need to buy some mobile equipment. And we say, well, we're mobile. We'll do whatever you want, but we are not Mobile Fixture. We are Mobile Fixture. Perfect. So, we got that out of the way. This episode today is going to be kind of fun because when I started Nashville Restaurant Radio, I've kind of been loose with that because it's kind of encompassed a lot of different things recently. But this is what, like I said, my dad calls inside baseball conversation. So, if you're an industry person, this is an interview I think you're really going to enjoy. The side of what we do in restaurants that isn't, I mean, maybe it's not as sexy. It's not as sexy if you envision like really cool clubs and bartenders and really cool food and high fashion and drinks and the whole thing. All of that is possible after they talk to you. So,

06:51you're kind of one of the people that we have to talk to before we get going. So, I'm going to go into detail as to how you do your job. And I'm not sure people, like even restaurant people, really realize how important kitchen design and equipment is. So, let's get into exactly, give me the elevator speech, exactly what Mobile Fixture does. It is about as unsexy of the restaurant industry as it can get. There's no hiding that. So, our company specializes in all facets of the restaurant and hospitality industry. But what we try and really focus on is designing the right kitchens for the right clients to help them succeed in their restaurants. I mean, that is, you can call it a mission statement. You can call it whatever you want. But in a nutshell, that's what we do. We try to give our clients every opportunity and every resource possible for them to succeed. Now, once they open the doors, it's on them. They've got some skin in the game. And if they don't execute, then they are not going to make it, especially in this town. So, we come in with a blank canvas. We work with all of the other trades involved during construction. And then, hopefully, by the time they're ready to open their doors, we're done and gone and moving on to another project while staying in touch with that same client. That's what we do in a nutshell. What you do is, so here's an aspect, I don't know if a lot of people recognize. What you do is so vital to the success of a restaurant because flow in a kitchen really means everything. If somebody's dialed in on their concept and what they want to do, how you put your kitchen equipment and what individual kitchen equipment you need, where Dishland is, what type of chemical you're using, the hot water you're using, mostly chemical. Exactly how all of that is laid out really is an attribute to efficiency and how

08:57fast I can. If I know on the front end how fast I want food to come out and I know that I'm going to have 90% of my meals fry and 10% is saute and 1% is grill, I don't need a gigantic grill. Having all of that stuff on a line exactly placed perfectly is so vital. Tell me about that process. Yeah, it's kind of like your experience at the dentist. We have to pull teeth sometimes to get our potential clients who have never been in the restaurant industry before, to get them to explain to us what their menu dynamic is, what is their menu. Everything starts with the menu and I would tell you seven out of ten times there's no menu even being discussed when a restaurant is at its genesis moment. We'll have a client say, well, I'm going to open up this restaurant. It's going to be in the gulch. It's going to be super sexy. We're going to do this, this, this, and this. We'll say, okay, what's your menu? Well, we're not really sure what the menu is, but we know we want it to be chef-driven. There are certain trigger words that we hear every day, chef-driven, American cuisine, fusion, mixology, those kinds of things. We really have to dig into meeting after meeting after meeting with clients to figure out what it is that they're going to be serving so that we can then reverse engineer what that kitchen is going to be like.

10:25Again, it's not a very sexy process, but you're right. It is vital and we see lots of restaurants in this market that don't utilize, I'm not the only company that does this, but there are tons of restaurants in this town that don't utilize a company like mine and they end up just hodgepodging a kitchen and then they wonder why a year later their ticket times are twice as long as they should be and the revenue sucks and they are losing money every month. I know why. It's the vendor's fault. Somebody's screwing me out there. It's not my fault. Can't be my fault. Food costs, food costs, food costs, food costs, labor shortage. Yeah, all of those trigger words too. Those are my favorites. It can't be my foresight in planning that I didn't really do before I opened said restaurant. It can't be that I had a terrible concept that I did not think through. No, it's never that. Tell me, tell me the best concept that you've heard. Somebody's, so somebody's pitched you and they've said, Hey, we're going to do a blah. What is it? What's the best thing you've heard? Um, so the best word, the best worst concept. So there's, there's two, I had a feeling you'd ask this. So there's, there's two that stick out. The first is the husband and wife who have walked into our store. It's been a few years, but they walked into our store one day, probably in their late fifties, early sixties. And they said, we have cashed in our 401k.

11:55We're going to open up a meatloaf restaurant in downtown Nashville. Yes, that is exactly what this town needed. Um, you know, and then my wife is a great cook. She makes the best meatloaf ever. So that's what we're going to serve. Um, yeah, neither of us have ever worked in restaurant and we don't plan to be there, but we're going to hire a great staff. You know, that's strike two. Um, and then strike, strike three on that concept is, is usually, you know, we've got unlimited funding. We, we want to do, to do it right. And you know, we have to sit back and, and these people's dreams are being spilled to us. So we have to, we have to be genuinely involved with them. So that, that was a pretty bad concept. Luckily that never, that never happened. Um, somebody you have to talk them out of that. Um, we did not talk them out of that. Luckily they had some, some issues arise that caused them to quote unquote, put it on hold and it never happened.

12:58So that, that was good. We were happy about that. You know, I almost wanted to offer to, um, take half their money and just take them out back and beat the hell out of them. You know, at a point you have, they, they have to be, they have to be invested in that. So, um, but the, the absolute worst concept, um, the, the best worst concept was, um, ham like ham. So we, we had a, we had a restaurant. Um, we, we had a, this is the honest to God story. Um, we had a customer come to us and say, I'm going to do this place. I need some help on designing the kitchen. I said, okay, what's your menu? Ham. It was like total silence. That's okay. So ham, what, what, what else? He goes, no, just ham. That's okay. Well, ham sandwiches, ham salad, you know, I'm trying to just draw any kind of information out ham. Okay. So, so we're going to design a ham restaurant.

14:01Um, you know, he, he, he goes, have you ever designed a kitchen around ham? Yeah, sure. It's, you know, it's, it's nothing to it. Um, it's really the ham kitchen. It was just ham. You need, you need a slicer and a cooler, I guess. I don't know. I, I don't know what you need for ham. So, um, it was just straight up ham. I want to, after this thing's over, I'd like to role play that with you on it after the zoom call. And then I'm going to release that as a bonus footage. Just you and I role playing that just to be walking in going, yeah, I'd like to open a restaurant. Well, sir, what's it going to be about? Ham. Just ham, ham, just straight up ham. Are you going to have cheat? No, just ham, ham. We'll do that. I mean, at this part, it's got potential. It's going to be awesome. Okay. So, um, best worst concepts. Those are awesome. Thank you for telling those stories. What's the thing that restaurants in your opinion, so you've seen that you've seen a lot of this and I'm going to get into some of your background, how you got into this. What's the thing, if you were opening a restaurant and let's just say, I do have a good idea. I'm a restaurant guy.

15:13I've been around for a long time. What's the first thing I need to be looking at as far as when I come to you, the really prepared people who have a great concept that know what they're going to do. Is it a menu? What's the thing that you really need to have done when I show up at your door? Well, you got to, you got to hope that a menu is a given. You hope that a menu is a given and that it will always be in a conceptual format. The one thing that somebody needs money, I mean, I hate to say it because, you know, when it, when it comes down to building restaurants in this city, especially you need to be well-capitalized. It's going to cost you a lot more than you think. It's going to cost you more than what most people say it's going to cost because during construction, you're going to run into issues with, with permitting or, or codes or whatever the bureaucracy in this town is requiring on that day. So you got to be well-funded. We see a lot of clients who get in pinching pennies at the end and to a point where they cannot even afford to do a friends and family because they are, they are 100% invested. They have no money. They can barely buy opening inventory. That's scary. They have no chance of survival if that happens. So, you know, having a nest egg sitting there or an emergency fund, call it what you want. Money is, is key in this, especially in this town.

16:43What is an average bill that cost? An average restaurant kitchen in this town. I wish I could go back to the days of saying 150 to $250,000. It's more like 200 to 500,000 easily. And, and really that's just driven by the competition that's already out there. Everybody's got to one up the last restaurant that opened because you guys are all fighting for the same clients where you were before the world ended. So everybody that the next restaurant has to do a little bit better than the last restaurant, whether that's in the front of the house or the back of the house or both. And so this is a nice segue in your business too. You said you have competitors as far as what you do, you have to remain competitive in one-upping. What innovations does Mobile Fixture bring to the table? I'm not going to try and compete with the, the, the web restaurants and the Amazons of the world. That's just not, that's not who we are. So I've got to, I've got to differentiate myself by making sure that our reputation in this town and in all of the locations that we're based is it's, it's the best around and we are going to do what we need to do to make the client happy. We have lost money on, on sales. We have lost money on projects because we tell the customer we're going to take care of them. And by God, we're going to do it.

18:15If it costs us the profit in that project, we're going to do it. So that's the only solution that we have is, is making sure that our reputation is upheld and we, we take care of the client at all costs. Recently, 2020, you didn't get to actually have the award, but in 2020, you guys were named the Dealer of the Year by Food Service Equipment and Supplies Magazine. That's a huge honor and that's a, that's a really big honor in this industry. And in order for a company to win an award like that, you've got to be firing on all cylinders. I mean, there's a bunch of competition, like you said, you've got to be really good. And if you ever owned a company and you wanted to win an award like that, it doesn't just happen because you have a good personality. It doesn't just happen because when it's not, it's not politics. It happens because you've executed on multiple levels at a high level. And I want to know what are, as the president of the company, what are the core values that you operate under and how does your leadership style itself lead to that type of success? Yeah, so what we tell all of our employees and all of our coworkers is no matter what your position is within the company, you're in sales and you are representing Mobile fixture to its vendors, its customers, it's everybody, their competitors even. So we have to portray a level of customer service with everybody, no matter who it is and what the position is that that employee is in. And hopefully that speaks to the reason why we won that award. And that award came as a total shock to us.

20:07We didn't even know that we were nominated. We had no idea that we had won. It turns out that the award is driven by vendors that we deal with and competitors. Oddly enough, there's a core group of competitors in the industry that had their finger on the pulse that this magazine contacted and somehow our name kept coming up. So hopefully we're doing some stuff right. We will find out after all of the next few months shakes out, we feel like we're in a good position to come out of it on top. Let's talk about you for a minute. You were a professional golfer, correct? I was, I was. I graduated college in 1997. I played professional golf for about three years and absolutely hated those three years of playing golf. I look back as it was the best time I ever hated at the time. Professional golf was, it was a job. And I know that sounds really corny, but you go out and you play well and you get your ass kicked by a bunch of guys you've ever heard of.

21:17It sucks and it gets old. And when you're playing professional golf, you're bankrolling yourself. And if you have a bad week, you don't get paid anything. So it sucked. I really hated it. And towards the end, when I knew I was not going to do this for a living, I remember staying in a hotel room in Noonan, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. There were eight guys staying in a hotel, one hotel room. And for seven days, there were eight of us in one room. And the rule was the best four scores of the day got the two beds. So think about that for a minute. The best you could do is sleep in the same bed with another guy that has been on the golf course with you all day. That's the best scenario. I don't know why you didn't hate that. Yeah, I know it's shocking. Now, there were a couple of those guys that were in that room with us for the week that they hung in there and they ended up making it on tour and they're on TV. And some of them have a lot of zeros in their bank account. So kudos to them. That just wasn't for me. Well, did you play against back in the day?

22:27Have you played against any of those who are those people? Yeah, so I was I guess I was born at the wrong time to be a professional golfer. Being 45 years old, I grew up with Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, excuse me. Basically, anybody on the top 10 leaderboard on any given week, I've got my ass kicked by growing up from I was from the time I was 10 years old to the time I gave up professional golf and what 23 years old. So what? Yeah, what year do you start playing golf? How old were you? I was 12 years old. So 30, what 33 years ago, I've been playing golf for 33 years. Wow. So it's interesting because I, when I used to interview people, especially for sales, I have one of the questions I would always ask is, are you competitive? Do you have a sports background? And some of the best salespeople that I've hired were athletes and really simple fact and I was kind of getting to this that being a professional golfer, some assumptions I would make about you are is that you're very competitive person and that you have a tenuous attention to detail because golf isn't just something you can just pick up a stick and just go. Like you have to work on so many tiny minute aspects of the game and it's a game of millimeters and you get that thing so close. I mean, everything has to be, it's like so far but so close in so many different ways. How do you feel like, I mean, am I right with thinking that and how does some of those translate into what you do today?

24:10When you play competitive golf or when you play any competitive sport, you need to realize you're going to lose more than you're going to win, especially in golf. Anybody who has ever competed in golf knows you're going to lose more often than win and you never get used to it. The day you get used to losing is the day you kind of become a loser. I hate it. I hate losing. Of the five owners at Mobile Fixer, three of us were professional athletes or high level athletes at one point in our lives and we all have that same mentality. I may have told you this the other day that whether it's an order for a dozen forts or a million dollar kitchen, I want to win and if I don't, I lose my mind. I hate losing more than I like to win. Unfortunately, my co-workers here in Nashville, they know me all too well and they can tell that if I've lost an order or lost something, they can't look me in the eye for a while because I'm a bad loser in business. I hate losing.

25:21I don't know how clear I was on that. I hate it. I completely agree with you on that and I can certainly understand that. What's the reason why you would lose something? I mean, if you hate losing that bad, how would you lose? I mean, what's something that, how would somebody else beat you? I mean, don't give away all the secrets but like when you have, like give me a story of something that you've lost that just drove you wild. Oh god, everybody who knows me knows the story that I really want to tell. I can't, there's a particular story I can, I just cannot tell because it's, it's, it will put me in a bad mood for at least a month but I'll just speak in generality. How's that? Perfect. So that works. So there's, there has been a scenario where we worked with a client for months and months and months and at the end of the day, that client decided to purchase a restaurant from another company like mine based on, I guess you could say, a sales experience that customer had with our competitor. I'm, this story is way too vague but we, we lost because we got outplayed, I guess you could say. Somebody took a different angle with the project and they outsmarted us, I guess you, in a shady ass way. So there it is. So when you do the right thing. I'm in such a bad mood now, even just thinking about it, yeah.

27:01I'm with you. Every one of my clients, every one of my clients in town that I've gotten to know over the past few years, they know exactly what this story is and the level of shit that I'm going to catch from them for the next foreseeable future is unprecedented, which is fine. I'll be a good sport about it but I remember my losses more than I remember our winnings. Well, let's talk about some winnings. We can change this. Tell me about your family life. Married? Kids? Married. Married for 20 years to Stacey. Stacey is a middle school librarian or excuse me, library science, media specialist. I've really butchered that. She's a librarian at her middle school in Murfreesboro. So she's been at that school since we lived here 14 and a half years ago. I've got a daughter, 17. Her name's Abby. She is huge into FFA, which is Future Farmers of America. Neither my wife nor I know where she got that talent from because we can't grow grass. We buy flowers just to watch them die and yet she's into this plant science thing. I mean, she's in the background of my camera. You can see a picture of Ben Hogan and an eight-year-old kid who's now on a six-month summer vacation. He's loving life.

28:40Nice. Tell me about Stacey. Tell me about, I feel like my wife to me is really the reason I'm able to do anything because she is just an absolute, she's amazing. Tell me about her. How is she able to facilitate you being this level of success? Because behind every successful man, in my opinion, is a woman who is just even twice as successful, but she doesn't get, she's not on the interview. Yeah, yeah, she's okay. No, she's fantastic. She knows me better than anybody else in the world. So she knows the moment I walk in the door from work, you know, it's the standard. How was work? And some days I'll say it was fine. Some days I'll say it's terrible. And some days I just start talking and she's great. She knows when to push my buttons and when not to. Usually it's, I'm tired of talking all day because that's all I do.

29:43I'd rather listen to her talk about the kids or what happened in school today because, you know, my industry is pretty boring to an outsider. I love listening to her tell stories about her students or her fellow teachers because these teachers, if you have kids and your kids ever see their teachers in public, it's like seeing Superman. Oh, you're not supposed to be at the grocery store. You're supposed to be in the classroom 24-7. All the time? All the time. So we live in a neighborhood where my wife is the librarian for, I don't know, 50 of the kids that live in our neighborhood. So if we're out walking the dog or playing basketball or just outside trying to kill flowers, these kids are walking by. It's like they want to take pictures of her. Oh, there's Miss Whitlock. Oh my God. Oh my God, she's not in the library today. And then the best part of being married to a teacher is on the rare occasion we get a date night with the other teachers and their husbands, these teachers let loose. And I'm talking about like bachelorette parties on steroids. These teachers, it's unlike anything you'll ever see in your life. You know, we'll go to a bar or a show. The teachers love, they love Rubik's Groove. So we'll go to see them at the Third Lensley or in Murfreesboro. Sure, yeah, they're awesome. Yeah, so these 15 teachers, they're elbowing the 25-year-old girls out of the way to get in the front row. And these teachers are just standing there dancing for four hours straight while all of his husbands are standing in the back just waiting for them to pass out, throw up, whatever it is. They're sowing their wild oats every six or eight weeks. It's well documented on my podcast that one of my

31:44hobbies is driving an Uber on Saturday mornings. And I'm sure your wife probably attended, there was a library, there's a librarian conference in Nashville a couple months ago. Does she, do you know anything about that? Maybe, I don't remember that. There was a library, and you know when these big things come to Music City Center and you get up and you drive Sunday, Saturday mornings and you talk to people and they say, oh, we're here for the librarian conference. And you're like, oh, no, I didn't know that was, I didn't know that was a thing. But man, the stories that I got from the librarians that came to town and their husbands about what happened the previous night, I was like, good god, you guys are crazy. Like just, it was psychotic. It was a whole thing, man. I was like, this is incredible. Yeah, I mean, you think the Bachelorettes and their matching tank tops, they have no chance against a teacher and her friends on a Saturday night in downtown Nashville. They have no chance whatsoever. None, none, none. All right, well, let's pick back up to mobile fixture and a little bit back to your story. We talked about you golfing and kind of some good stories there. Thank you for sharing. But you were in Alabama and you had an opportunity to move to Tennessee. You talked to your wife. She said, yeah, let's do it. You just up and came to Nashville and you didn't really know a ton. I mean, I don't know what your, how much you knew about Nashville. You came to Nashville and you ran into somebody, a chance encounter that kind of snowballed for you. And he's one of my favorite people in the city, Bart Pickens. Tell us, tell us about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Bart and I were, we knew each other back from the Biloxi Mississippi days. He was at one of the casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I lived in Mobile, but I covered the Mississippi Gulf Coast. So Bart and I got to know each other through,

33:46through mobile fixture and him doing what he was doing. And then in August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina came through, it wiped out not only all of my customers, but all the casinos and all the restaurants along the coast. And most of my customers, they all got transferred all over the country and got displaced. So, so when, when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do after Katrina, I decided I was going to give it a shot to move to Nashville and never been here. Anyway, fast forward, we opened up in Nashville in June of 06. And a few months after we opened, I'm sitting at my desk, I'll never forget this, sitting at my desk, doing an email or something. And I hear someone walk in the front door because we have to do the voice floor. Yeah. And he, this guy walks in and I'm not going to say exactly what he said. No, just say it, just say it. Do it. You want me to say it? Okay. Yeah, do it. Guy walks in, guy walks in the front door and he goes, is there a motherfucker here named Ben Whitlock? And I remember standing up from my desk and think, holy shit, we've only been open a few months. How can someone already be mad at me?

34:55So I walked out of my office and there he is. Bart Pickens. I said, I walked out on the mezzanine and I said, Jesus Christ, Bart, is that you? He goes, holy shit, you're really here. He was joking. The guy was driving down the interstate and saw our sign. He turns around probably in the middle of the interstate knowing him. He pulls in and he, you know, he walks in and as a joke, he's asking if I was there because he saw a mobile fixture. So, so yeah. So I run into Bart Pickens in Laverne, Tennessee. What year is this? We had, this was probably summer of 06. So he was at SoBro then. He was at SoBro at the Hall of Fame. Yeah, in the country's Hall of Fame. Mm hmm. Yeah. So he and Tom Morales were running the Hall of Fame at the time. Bart introduced me to Tom, who I'd never met before. And, you know, things just really snowballed from there. We started working with the Hall of Fame. Then we did the Southern, we did ACME, we did all of the TomCats projects, which then snowballed into countless other opportunities.

36:06And, and yeah, looking back, I guess I have to thank Bart Pickens for the success of mobile fixture in Nashville, which is the strangest thing I think I've ever said in my entire life. Bart Pickens is the reason why we won the Dealer of the Year award for the Nashville portion. And now we've come full circle. And now, Bart, whatever boat you're on in Hawaii right now, Bart, catching mahi-mahi out there. What you gotta say, Brandon? I don't understand. Yeah, you know Bart. Peace, love, Donny Osmond. Holla, holla, holla. What you know? I've been working with that accident. I've been working with him for a long, I met him in 2005, 2006 too. I met him then at the SoBro grill in the country's Hall of Fame. I don't know what it is now, but he is so funny. He asked me one time, he said, I was going to Mexico with my new bride two years or like second year went to Mexico. And he goes, hey, do me a favor, get me some one of those, get me a, get me a, he goes, get me on them coconuts that's fashion into a monkey. I want one of those. Bring me back one of those from Mexico. So I did. So we made a special trip out to go find a coconut that was shaved into a monkey. And I brought it back to him and he had that hanging in the kitchen for so long. I remember I took a road trip across the country and I got a little toothpick holder from Oklahoma somewhere or something like Southern, like a little metal toothpick holder. And I got that for him too. And I gave it to him. Last time I saw him, he's at party foul now. And he goes, I still got my toothpick holder. I was like, oh my gosh, still had the toothpick holder. I was blown away. We love, we love bar. I, we, we had a little play. We had a little portion or a little part in that of the matchmaking between Bart and party foul. And it, it's really been a good fit for, for both of them. But Bart is, you know, art is

38:11exhausting, but in a good way, he'll walk into our showroom floor and I'll just get chills because I'm worried that if there's any other customer on the showroom floor, they're never buying from us ever again, because he doesn't care what he says or how loud he says it. I know that whoever is in the showroom when he walks in, I can write them off because they will never buy from us again. But I love the guy, love him to death. He is officially on the top of my list now that you're the third person who's brought his name up on a podcast. He's officially on the top of my list as somebody that has to come on this show and talk because I think he would be a compelling interview. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. You don't even, don't even write any questions down. Just, just, you know, say, Hey, everybody go. And then you don't even have to be there. But Bart's art has taught me what some, some names of equipment items are that evidently only he says them like a fly fan or a, what we call air curtains. You know, when you open the back door, the fan turns on and keeps the flies out. It's called a bubble net to Bart. It's a bubble net. I need one of them bubble nets. Phenomenal wheels. He wants phenomenal wheels on his refrigerators. Okay. That's code or that's Bart for pneumatic wheels. Bart, how the hell am I supposed to know that? Phenomenal wheels.

39:37Come on, this guy know that they're called phenomenal wheels. I came, I grew up in the Bayou. That's what we call them. We call them phenomenal wheels. I don't know why you don't call them phenomenal wheels. You crazy. Peace love out. Peace love. Donny Osmond, holla holla out. Every first time he told me that he goes peace love Donny Osmond out. I was like, who the hell are you? And oh my gosh. So yeah, he still uses his iPhone too. You know, it's, it's about the size of your thumb. He can't see shit. He's got 14 pairs of glasses on his apron. He doesn't know how to use any of them and he still can't see it. So he, now he talks to Siri all the time and Siri doesn't have a clue of what he says. Not a clue. These, these are the people in the industry that I just love. I fall in love. These are the people that I cherish spending time in their kitchen, talking to them about chicken him, get him talking about chicken breast for like 10 minutes. It's a, it's a whole, you will learn more about chicken breast talking to Bart Pickens about chicken. Go try and sell him chicken breast and see what he will turn around and sell you. You will learn, you try and walk in and go, I think you should buy chicken breast from me. And he's going, I don't think so. Let me tell you about my chicken breast. And you're like, oh, here we go.

40:54Not happening. So by the way, he has one last, one last thing about Bart. He has every single quote. He has every single quote that I've ever given him going back to the casino days. He has every single quote in one file. It's like six inches thick, but there are quotes in there dated from 2001 for, for things that aren't even made anymore. I said, Bart, why do you keep these all? Oh, you never know when I'm going to need one of these. Okay. Well, literally he has every single quote printed, printed in a file folder. Now you told me in 1992 that this cost inflation ain't that much. I know what's going on. All right. So you've seen, you've seen pretty much everything in town. You've seen a lot of, you've seen it all. What are you working on now? Anything exciting that you can let people in on that isn't super duper confidential? Sure. Sure. So we're working on obviously hotels. Everybody's, everybody's doing hotels right now. Everybody's doing honky tonk remodels right now. Me personally, I'm working on a couple of new old red concepts for Blake Shelton and Bryman Hospitality. Working on a couple of small East Nashville restaurants that are going to be to go focused, curbside focused, delivery focused. Got a couple of large restaurant projects going into the fifth and fifth and Broadway. Is that what it's called now? Fifth and Broad, whatever it's called. Yeah. Yeah. The old convention center. Yeah. Yeah. So we're doing a couple of restaurants in there. We're trying to get some stuff going with the Nashville yards.

42:40That project is kind of a roller coaster. It's going and it's not, and it's going and it's not. So we feel like once, once the city gets into phase three and four and whatever phases there are after that, the new projects are going to come back. Very few of our projects have been canceled. I would tell you that less than five have been canceled outright. A lot of them have been delayed, pushed into latter part of 2020 and into 2021, which is fine with us. Luckily, very few have been canceled. That's good to hear. And that that's super good to hear. I mean, you don't want to hear that everything's not happening right now. You know that everybody's going to be shifting potentially because of this COVID-19. Anything else you want to tell the people of Nashville? Anything you, I always finish up the interviews and kind of say, Hey man, floor's open to you. You want to say anything about your company? You want to say any words of encouragement, whatever you got, freestyle? I'll say this. I'm not going to talk about our company, but I will say this about Nashville. The COVID-19 stuff that's going on right now, yeah, it sucks for the hospitality industry and a lot of people have lost their jobs. It's going to come back. We see it. Fortunately for our company, we kind of see things 12 to 18 months ahead of when things really happen. We're not seeing a slowdown in growth. We're not seeing a slowdown with restaurateurs utilizing cheap money. We're not seeing a slowdown long-term. The short-term is going to suck and it has sucked, but the long-term, this city's going to come back and I may be, as my partners call it, rainbows and unicorns, but the city and the hospitality industry in the city is going to come back better than ever because it's going to weed out all of the shit hospitality concepts.

44:42I think the level of quality in this town is going to go up. I really do. So that's a tough thing to even talk about. I appreciate you saying it because there was a level of oversaturation in the town. It just blew up and I said it in an interview to Hugh Acheson. I said this has been a market that's been absolutely controlled by the employee. If you work in the restaurants, line cooks to servers, everybody. I'm going to show up to work whenever I want to. You don't like it? Tough. I'll go get 10 jobs tomorrow and I just kind of feel like it's going to correct. The market's going to correct a little bit here and I think that you're going to start seeing better service, better food, a little more concentrated, a little less spread out and I don't want people's lives and dreams and livelihoods to be wasted in any way. These are people that have jobs and lives that contribute to our community and I'm not saying that with their sacrifice I'm going to get better service with my special.

45:48It's not what I'm saying. As a culinary industry increasing the quality level of what we're doing, I think you're going to see that. I totally agree and if we can get the servers and the line cooks, I hate to say it this way, but if we can get them off of unemployment and back into the restaurants, the quality will go up. The challenge that I think the restaurants are dealing with now is as much as we think the labor market has opened up and it's gotten better, a lot of these guys and girls are making more money sitting at home playing Xbox than they could be working in the restaurant. So we need to really make an effort to get the restaurants back open at a higher capacity so the servers can make their tips and that line cooks can get their hours and everybody will benefit from that. There's no question, including me. I agree. Yeah, no, I agree and I think that we, you know, of course have to find a balance and find out when it's safe for everybody to do this and I think we're putting in all the proper measures we possibly can and yeah, lots of debate there, lots of debate. So thank you so much for coming on today and spending this time and kind of telling your story. If you're out there right now and you're thinking about buying a restaurant, you want to start a restaurant, you've got a great idea, you've got a great concept. Are you somebody that people can call to kind of run ideas by say, hey, this is a concept I'm looking for. What do you think? I mean, is that something that people could do with you?

47:27Yeah, absolutely. So they can reach out to me by email or through social media. Mobile fixture has a Facebook page. We have an Instagram page. I have a personal Facebook page and an Instagram page as well. I get calls all the time, you know, referrals from so-and-so and, hey, so-and-so told me to call you. Please call us. We are here to help. This is what we do. So if I have a restaurant idea that I want to have, it's just going to be turkey. And what's it going to be? Turkey. We're going to do turkey. It's going to be turkey restaurant. We're just going to be silly. It's going to be called turkey. Give them a call. We're just going to do french fries. French fries. It's going to be called freedom fries now. Yeah, and it's going to be a sit down restaurant with table service, but we're going to have the best fries ever. Okay, cool. Let's do it. And let me check your credit up front. No, we don't even need to do that. Just pay me up front. Fine. Well, thank you again, Ben Whitlock of Mobile Fixture. Check him out on Instagram. Check him out on Facebook. Give him a call. He'd love to consult, help you with your project. You guys are doing a fantastic job and I appreciate you taking the time today to share all of this with my listeners. I appreciate you having me and giving me the opportunity to talk about our company. I love your concept. I love the podcast.

48:56This town definitely needs this kind of format for sure. Keep it up. Thanks, man. I tell you what, I sure did have an awful lot of fun talking to Ben Whitlock and I wish I could have asked him just a little bit more about his customer service. I asked about core values and he just explained his core values. It's so nice to talk to people who have an absolute hyper focus on taking care of their customers and it's just nice. You can tell that's how people succeed and that's, in my opinion, the right way to do business. You do everything you can to keep your word. Keep your word. You take care of the guests. You take care of your customers the best possible way and that's how you keep business. That's how you keep people coming back. Thank you, Ben, again for taking time today to talk with us here at Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thanks, as always, to our amazing sponsors, What Chefs Want, Springer Mountain Farms Chicken, and as always, Kurt's Hospitality Marketing. These are the people that are supporting me and I'm going to do everything I possibly can to support you, the local independent restaurant owner out there, so hopefully I'm able to convey to everybody something that's going to help you today. So, I hope you're staying well. I hope you're staying safe and I love you guys. Bye!