Carey Bringle

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now, here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. And good afternoon, Music City. This is Brandon Styll. You're listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Today, we're going to be talking with Mr. Kerry Bringle, the Peg Lake Porker himself, and we're going to talk about everything. We're going to talk about being locally operated and locally owned here in Nashville. We're also going to talk about future plans, what's coming up, and it's good to talk about the future. I think talking about what we're all going to do after we're allowed to leave our houses is a positive thing. I'm going to go back probably in two weeks and listen to this podcast and it's just going to sound crazy because everything is changing every minute. But we want to stay positive. We want to stay excited about our future and I think that's what we accomplish here. So my interview with Kerry Bringle starts now. Kerry, thank you for taking time for Nashville Restaurant Radio on St. Patrick's Day and more importantly, your birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you.

01:15So I have a lot to talk about with you today. Okay. You're one of the good guys in the business, in my opinion. And I want to start out with, we're going to talk about coronavirus. We're going to talk about all kinds of fun things that, not fun things, things that are happening right now. Right. But if you wouldn't mind, can you tell our listeners just kind of the 411 on who you are, where you come from, how long you've been in this business, the story behind Peg Leg Porker. Just get all the stuff out there that I don't want to have to ask you. You've asked a million times. No, no, absolutely. Yeah. So, well, I'm Kerry Bringle and I'm the owner of Peg Leg Porker. We have a restaurant here in Nashville, but we're also a lifestyle brand. We have a spirits company. We have clothing, food products, smokers, intellectual property. We're opening another restaurant. And so the name Peg Leg Porker comes from the fact that I've got one leg. So I lost my leg to osteogenic sarcoma bone cancer when I was 17 years old, the summer before my senior year. And I decided to take that negative and make it into a positive with this brand. And so I started cooking barbecue probably 35 years ago. And we opened the restaurant about seven years ago. Before that, I already established the brand under with a competition barbecue team and by bottling our sauces and rubs. You know, my background is I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. My family is all from West Tennessee. And so I spent a lot of time in the barbecue joints of West Tennessee growing up with my grandparents and on both sides of my family.

02:51And then my grandparents were all big, big barbecue advocates and fans and really instilled a very deep sense of commitment to the barbecue world and to barbecue as a, as a tradition. And so, you know, things have been good for us here at Peg Leg. We, we're 100% independent, family owned and operated restaurant, which is a rarity these days. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of big groups now and your independents are just a lot more rare with the cost to open up restaurants in Nashville and the cost to maintain. Well, it's interesting because I hear you say that and if you're one of my hobbies, I'll say it, it's a hobby, but I've been in the restaurant business here in Nashville for 25 years, but I drive Uber, right? So kind of on Saturday mornings, Sunday mornings, I'll get up and I'll just go drive because I wouldn't do it if I didn't get paid. But I get to learn a lot of different things about where people go, why people go places and I get to recommend a lot of places people to go. And the number one thing I get asked from people is, well, I asked, where should I go eat brunch? And then I said, where's the best barbecue?

04:06And while there's a ton of great barbecue in this town, I always say you got to go to Peg Leg Porker because it is one of the independently owned and operated restaurants in town and people go, oh, that place is a tourist trap. And I say, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think, I don't think you, because they've been incredibly successful and because he does it the right way and because he's great at marketing, that doesn't make it a tourist trap, right? I mean, what is your response to people thinking that just that misconception? No, we're not a tourist trap. I'm one of the, you know, we get a lot of tourists and that's just because we get a lot of exposure because we're good at media and sharing and social media and promoting ourselves. But we do barbecue the right way. We're native. You know, I'm a native Nashvilleian. I'm one of the few restaurant owners here in town that is a native Nashvilleian and we are a hundred percent independent. We don't have any, and people sometimes don't understand what, you know, locally owned means. There's plenty of locally owned restaurants. There's plenty of family-owned restaurants. To be a hundred percent independent is a whole different genre or it's a whole different meaning. You know, we don't have any investors. We don't have any backers.

05:27It's me and my family and that's it as the owners and operators. And so that's vastly different. You don't have an investor to fall back on. You don't have an investment group to fall back on. We bought our building. We're here to stay for the long term and we are heavily invested in our neighborhood here and in our city and in what we do. And so we don't like to be called a tourist trap just like anybody else doesn't just because tourists come here does not make us a tourist trap. We probably have 50 percent or greater of our business is local to the area. It's native Nashvilleians that come at lunch or come at dinner or come on the weekends and bring their families. And so I'm glad you pointed that out or made that distinction because it's it is important. It's just a it's just a different, you know, there's a different set of rules and and we're seeing that right now with everything that's going on with COVID-19. You know, when we talk about if we take a hit on this I'm taking 100 percent of the hit. It's you. It's me.

06:36And your family. You mentioned your family's part of this. Yes. How many people in your family are involved with this? So I've got my wife and I have three children and all three of my children have worked here since they were 13 or or less and they don't I've got one working here now. They've all worked here throughout the years at some point. Not everybody's working here now but at some point every one of my family members has worked in pull shifts and if we need them to come in then we we call the family and tell them to come in. We need you to work. So you know it shows in everything that you do that that's your mentality and it's one of the reasons why when I started this podcast and started Nashville Restaurant Radio my idea was let's have a podcast for people in Nashville who work in Nashville restaurants and you're one of the first people that came into my mind as I go if you're talking about Nashville locally owned and operated restaurants, Cary Bringle is the gold standard. He's the guy who's doing it right and I've been in sales in town for 15 plus years and of all just everything that you hear all over town it's he's the guy doing it the right way. So I do want to get into talking about the tornado which we here in Nashville have had a terrible run over the past couple weeks. We had a tornado that went all over town. I want to talk about what relief efforts are still needed and I do want to talk about the coronavirus. However first I mentioned to you as being one of the good guys Nashville native you've seen this scene change over the years and while the landscape seems to be more competitive the barbecue community seems to get closer. Tell me about that.

08:18Well we've got a great barbecue community in town so we've got just a lot of great barbecue now. Nashville really stepped up the barbecue game in the last 10 years and you got you got great players in the market. You got Martins, Edleys, Jacks, you know you got Honeyfire, Marys, you've got you know there's just a lot and then there's some good food trucks. There's Smoke at All, you know there's Zilla's Pit Barbecue. So you have you got a lot of great things going on with a lot of great people in the barbecue world. I think Shaq and Willie's who used to be a food truck is now opening up a brick and mortar. You know so there's there's and we all we're all friends and we all know each other. Pat Martin and I were drinking together since before either one of us had a restaurant over at the end zone in Green Hills and so you know it's a we've got a good community that sticks together that is generally complementary of each other and um you know we all do it a little bit different and so there's room for all of us in this market and we all have our own niche and our own audience and you know there's we we take our cue from from the the barbecue family's always been close but what's nice about Nashville is that not only the barbecue community is close the food community is close and so there's other towns where that's not the case where it's very competitive and people are very cutthroat in Nashville everybody seems to want everybody else to succeed and that's not to say that we're not competitive we are competitive but it's we don't want to see somebody fail and if we if if we know somebody needs help then we would we would help them out and we would do what we can for them you know if

10:21if pat martin ran out of something or will neuman ran out of something then i know that we would help them out and give them whatever we could and i know that they would do the same for me same with jack and same with shane with honey any of the guys in the community would do that which is so unique because i don't know of any other community i mean really it's almost restaurants you said here in town i've noticed there's a lot of people who connect you know wanted to do this to really connect more people but the barbecue community to me it seems like does it the right way and through all the kitchens i've been in over my time and all the people that what's that guy doing with that it's almost like you guys share all of your secrets you get together so you have a barbecue team barbecue team and who's on your barbecue team well a lot of Nashville a lot of Nashville chefs so uh tracy acci and his team at the farmhouse and black rabbit another great guy in nashville yeah yeah he's dynamite and um tyler brown is on it some years cole ellis is on it some years jason mcconnell uh is on it uh some years shane nasby another barbecue guy is on it um we've got guys from charleston south carolina we've got guys from new york we've got um you know just a we have had a lot of different people roll in and out of the team and um really the only competition that we do now or anymore is uh memphis and may because it's just it's the biggest and it's kind of like the super bowl and um you know it's fun having other chefs on that team you know we'll have uh stephen streusky and ryan pewitt come up from new orleans that run cochon and pesh with the link restaurant group and they'll come and bring some of their food or they'll bring oysters you know jason mcconnell his team will bring something you know shane and his team will bring something and so uh everybody contributes and has fun and and it's nice to have great chefs on your team so you eat well so that's gonna be one of my next

12:27questions i you you you're right there at answering it um how does it work how do you get to be on this team i mean it's got to be like somebody drops out and there's got to be like a lottery right i mean this is an all-star team if people you're talking old school hermitage hotel chefs and and do each individual chefs have unique roles so i want to get into the actual act of you're there you're at memphis and may are you kind of the general and do you get people doing the things or how does how does how does it how does the dynamic work down there yes so i'm the captain and i've been cooking in memphis and may for 29 years about 20 this will be my 29th year i believe um and so yes i'm the captain and i make the ultimate decisions uh as i get older i'm handing those responsibilities over to more of the younger guys uh they're enthusiastic they're newer at it um they study it more than i do when you know when i first started cooking in competition barbecue and specifically memphis and may you know you cooked what you'd normally cook for your family or your friends and you pulled it and throw it in the box and you turned it in yeah it was no elaborate strategy to win it was let's just cook the best that we can and and then we'll and we'll turn it in now it's a completely different ballgame um it's been bastardized to some degree uh because the judges have got just one bite and so they're you know people are doing a lot more different and unique things those younger guys are a lot more apt to study up on that and give a lot more of a shit than i do you know you're there to have fun and hang out with your friends at this point i'm there to have fun and hang out with my friends i'm not nearly as i want to win but i'm not nearly as competitive about it as my younger guys are and if we don't win i've been down there so many times to know that it's a crap shoot and so um and so let's talk about awards so you in 2016 you won third place overall in whole hog yes so that was your 20 what 25th year in it 20 yeah 25th or 26 year in it so almost goes to show

14:31everybody who's listening who's going to memphis in may you can go 25 years and try really hard then when you start having fun with it you start winning right it seems like the more the more i'm relaxed about it the more we start winning so and i think and i think that year i was interviewed by somebody and they said what do you think your chances are this year and i looked at the person interviewing and i said i've been losing at this for 26 years i don't anticipate winning this year about about 10 minutes later i got the call that we made the finals and so it was a good year and and somebody else that i didn't mention was billy tarrell was on the team that year and he's got his own team down there but he's rotated in and out of the team before and he's got the beach pig catering here in nashville and so it's what everybody brings is a little bit different perspective and so everybody kind of pitches in we're competing in whole hog now we used to compete the shoulder we were doing two teams that year whole hog and shoulder we did that for two years and finally last year we just made the transition to only whole hog and now now my wife is competing against me with her own whole hog team called i only smoke when i drink so that's awesome so you say that and it's funny because i mentioned earlier that i like to drive ubers my favorite things i picked up a woman and her friends and the woman's name was delania and i happen to know your wife's name and i picked her and i picked these people up at your house because there was a big peg leg porker truck in the back yeah we started driving and i said so what do you what do you do and we started just kind of talking and she said oh well you know i've got my husband's restaurant here we have a restaurant in town and i said yeah which which one and and i was playing coy with her and she goes um peg leg porker and i said yeah carrie's amazing and kind of showered some adulation on what i think of you and then she said so you have a new location coming i'm excited about that and memphis and maine she goes you know i have a team too

16:34she was just not all about him and i said well tell me about it i i imagine she gets that so are you guys competitive how do you oh sure well look we've been together for 33 years this we'll have our 25th wedding anniversary this august and um so we're we are very direct with each other and yes we're competitive she's started to you know she wants to do the competition stuff and in fact i gotta go today and pick up a trailer for her that just got delivered and um uh you know she's she's more she's more enthusiastic about it because she just started competing so you know for her it's new and she's getting into it and she's where i was you know 25 years ago with competing she's tired of seeing me get the spotlights but she doesn't like the you know she doesn't like the camera the spotlight uh like i do so well but she does like her team and she and it's an all girls team and uh and it's it's fun for them well i was mentioning that i and have some friends i get to see on facebook during memphis and may and i'm like these guys are rock stars and literally you're hanging out with rock stars i see you with all of a sudden my feet is full of all these people hanging out with dave grohl kicking it i'm like what i need to do this memphis and may thing i'm gonna take you up on that i'm gonna come down and cover it for the the restaurant radio yeah it's fun hogs for a cause that's another thing that you're big into and that's something that happens before memphis in may yeah and it was slated for march 27th and 28th tell me about the event now that's cancelled by the coronavirus um you said something in a similar interview i think i watched it where you said we're not curing cancer here we're just cooking barbecue that's right and while i believe that yes i beg to differ with what you're doing is so much more you are a real philanthropy there's nothing that you're doing like you are a genuine guy you care about everybody in hog for a cause

18:37hogs for a cause is another way where the barbecue community comes together tell me about that event is there anything that people can do is there where can people help so it's hogs for a cause and it's a uh it's a charity event it's a um it's a barbecue competition in new orleans it was started by renee luop and becker hall and they they founded this charity to help families of pediatric brain cancer victims and so they're out there cutting checks to hospitals and helping out families and houses where those families can stay while their child is undergoing treatment and they had somebody in their family touched by this and so that's when they got the idea to start the event the event's great it's a lot of teams down there competing and part of the competition is how much can the team raise to go towards the charity so in addition to competing for the trophies as best barbecue they're competing to see who writes the biggest check to the charity and some of these teams are writing 200 000 checks i think last year they raised somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars with this contest of real money that's going to families and to hospitals and so down at hogs for the cause one of the nice things is it's not my team i'm on somebody else's team so i don't have to be in charge which is nice i can go down and have a good time and so i've been on team company burger for the past i don't know how many years this year they were not slated to compete so i was going to cook with the guys from kochon and and from the link restaurant group some of the other guys that do it are fox brothers down in in atlanta and they work with taqueria del sol and with home team out of charleston they generally raise a huge amount of money for the charity and so what they do is they hold events all throughout the year that all raises money for the charity

20:39and that's what a lot of these barbecue teams do is that throughout the year they're raising money with special events and all that money is to go directly to this charity into this competition it's a real shame that it got canceled this year i had my plane tickets already bought and i was ready to get down there and so it's a it's a lot of money that's not going to get raised that's right now i think people will continue to have their fundraisers people will continue to stock pile the money that they were going to donate for this year until next year if they don't go ahead and already donate it so i think what you'll see next year is that their donations are going to be through the roof good well that's huge um to pivot a little bit um operation barbecue relief now i know that's something that recently we had a tornado that came through here and it went from all west nashville through germantown north nashville east nashville all the way to putnam county i mean this was an absolute devastation in day one you this restaurant wasn't not necessarily affected right we were not affected we were very blessed that we weren't neither was my home residence and neither were any of my employees so uh that was that was big for us but you immediately jumped to action we jumped to action with obr which we've supported operation barbecue relief in the past they do amazing work they cut through all the red tape they bring a fleet of vehicles and cooking devices and they just they feed people and i'm talking 20 000 people a day it's not they're not the red cross they're not fema they're not you know they come in they're barbecue guys and they come in and they start opening up cans of food and they've got six tilt skillets and they've got an arsenal of cookers on big 18 wheelers they've got a reefer truck and they come in and just start cooking meals and getting them out to the public in nashville in the week that they were here they fed 60 000 people and so what we did to help obr

22:42is we were able to give them a little bit of a jump start and we cooked enough food for about 2 000 people the first day that they landed usually when they get here or when they get to a location it takes them 36 hours to deploy and to start putting out hot meals we were able to give them a day or two head start on that by pre-cooking some stuff and getting out some meals the very first day that they were here and then you had billy taro with the beach pig jason peregan with peregan paradise catering you had john david wheeler come in with memphis barbecue company and then the whole crew from operation barbecue relief was here they even had a lady that her home was destroyed in the california wildfires she was fed by operation barbecue relief in california at her home she was in nashville on vacation learned that they were deployed here gave up two days of her vacation to stand in a tent and cook meals for people to pay it forward and that's how powerful this organization is they really in the past four years i think they've fed over three million people wow and i want you know i wanted to talk about that because we're in a very interesting time right now and i think that i don't want to just jump into that so i want to talk about your new venture how do you it sounds like there's a lot of things that you're doing that are not just cooking barbecue and how do you want to be remembered what do you want your legacy to be uh you know i don't know i don't want people to uh i want people to say that kerry bringle was a good guy you know that uh that's uh that's probably how i'd like to be remembered i think that's a good goal i think you're there right now so let's put it to your new restaurant so you've got a new venture and i think that um one question people ask you all the time is when are you gonna open another peg leg pork can you open one over here and you you've said there's going to be one and one only peg leg porker and we're at it right now

24:46that's correct socially distanced from each other that's right now but we are there right now you're going to open a new place called uh bringle's smoking oasis which i think every single person in the world right now would like to quarantine themselves at bringle's smoking oasis i don't there's any part of the we got bourbon we've got beer and we've got uh smoked meat so tell me how this concept began how'd you find the location just kind of give us a good update as to where you're at uh yeah so i had uh a friend come to me uh elliot kyle that had this location he asked me about it and and said he and some other investors had the location uh there was going to be a goldberg's one of the goldberg's restaurants was going to be on that property they had decided to move it to 12 south and asked if i was interested in leasing it um i like to buy and so i'm not big on leasing and dumping a bunch of money into something that i don't own and so uh i said uh you know i don't really know and i really didn't take the time to go look at it he kept pestering me and said we really like for you to come over into this neighborhood and um he said we would allow you to buy into the property and and i said all right well i'll come i'll take a look and so i went i looked it's an old gas station um i really like the feel of it it feels a lot like peg leg porker because of the cinder block uh you know building and uh it's on a triangular piece of property right in the middle of this neighborhood over in the nations and uh then he finally said look we'll just sell you the property and that's when i said okay now i'm now i'm really interested and so i ended up buying the property and so we're we're invested in the nations now and we hope to be a great neighbor to the folks in the nation's neighborhood we worked extensively with uh their their neighborhood association and with their councilperson mary carolyn roberts on getting uh some variances that we needed and getting an easement taken off

26:51of the property uh that was running through it and so we got through some of those strategic barriers we're finishing all the plans right now but the plans for it are to be a um a texas style barbecue place but also a big almost ice house field from from you know if you see them down in texas where they have a huge yard and you know the building is not necessarily really big but a lot of cold beer a lot of good smoked meats and then a big yard to hang out in outside and so we want people to bring their their kids and their strollers and their dogs and come and hang out all day and it'd be a neighborhood gathering spot uh for that nation's neighborhood there's a lot of dynamite restaurants that are over there already that are great that we love to go to and we're excited about being a part of that community we're going to be surrounded by 800 new apartments and then also new commercial space and we'll have neighbors like southern grist nicky's coal fired 51st deli and corner pub nations and 51st tap room there's just a lot of great ones over there that are that area is you know it's funny if there's a place in town that i would think fits your vibe and who you are like it's exactly what you just described to me sounds like an oasis yeah it sounds like a place you could go if it's a sunday afternoon and i want to go with my wife and i have two small kids and we're going to go and just have a good lunch and sit outside and enjoy a nice day that's exactly where i want to go so you said texas now i've also heard you in interviews when somebody says do you do brisket you go we do west tennessee barbecue here i don't do brisket that's right so now you're you're moving away from well here i mean what are you doing over there well you know like we talked about earlier there's one peg leg pork and peg leg pork will remain the same peg leg pork will not start cooking brisket we've always said if you want brisket go to texas now we'll say if you

28:51want brisket go to bringle smoke and oasis go to the nations go to the nations you know we wanted to do something different that gave a little more variety to our customers because it's in the middle of a neighborhood we wanted to have more options there'll also be a snack bar on the property that'll have burgers and dogs for kids you know wings and stuff it's a little more family friendly than just the sliced meats of the texas style barbecue i think for that neighborhood is the right approach and i think that it will be we hope that it'll be welcomed and we want to be a good neighbor and good addition to that neighborhood so it's just it's a different vibe and a different feel and it's a different concept and and so like i said peg leg pork is not going to change i haven't changed in the fact that what we wanted to do here was a straight west tennessee style place that really didn't compromise that was just a barbecue place and nashville's a big enough city and we're close enough to downtown where that was possible for us because we've got enough population and we have enough variety of people coming through that wanted that over in the nations it will be more of a it's got the right mix of commercial and residential sure be a lot of walking traffic from neighbors so we wanted to do something that was very family neighborhood oriented similar to a place that i cook up in new york in brooklyn called pig beach and so it's a very very similar type of place so for all the people out there that they've heard or anything about there being a tourist trap you just heard it from the man himself while there are airbnbs in that area this is this is going to be a location that's for locals to go out eat enjoy time people will go there that don't live here i'm sure of it and that's that's part of it but if you're going to talk about as local as it gets so carrie i'm so excited about your new venture and i think we have to

30:55talk about the inevitable i think the inevitable that i think that i saw an eater nashville that we're effed was a was a was an actual like headline today the restaurant industry and what we're going through is unprecedented and i don't think anybody knows what to do i think i've been talking about with a bunch of people as to what they are doing and i think there's initial stages of we're going to clean everything we're going to do all of that because that's our responsibility and we have this social responsibility to do all of these things but here we are um saint patrick's day which is a day uh bars should be full you said it's my birthday yeah everybody parties on my birthday everybody parties on your birthday but today they'll be doing it at home they're doing it at home today so the everything has changed like the entire landscape has changed what are your thoughts what's what's going through your head right now uh you know it's there's certainly worry and and the unknown and and so there's a lot going through my head what do i do what what can i do for my team to make sure that they're protected you know how can we make sure that we survive through this and that our business continues to survive and that we keep our good people um it's tough and and everybody in our industry is worried and if they're not they should be we are we feel like we're in pretty good shape and like we can weather this storm and that we'll get through it and be okay there's a lot of people in this industry that don't feel that way that they feel like just what you said we're effed you know this is this could be the nail in our coffin there's a lot of competition in nashville there's been a flood of new restaurants some people have exorbitant rents with the with the way that real estate is gone here in town and some people had exorbitant buildouts so they've got a lot of debt on top of rents and um you know

32:57servicing that debt and trying to keep employees and trying to keep them paid and make sure that they don't uh resent you after this because they had to get laid off it's those are all valid concerns from everybody in this industry nobody knows what's going to happen it's not um you know this is unprecedented i just had my mother and uh stepfather and my father-in-law and his wife um and mother-in-law in uh just a few minutes ago and you know they're both you know my my my stepfather is uh 80 and you know he they they haven't this is unprecedented they really haven't seen anything like this maybe the closest would have been the asian flu in 19 i think 58 but we haven't seen this type of shutdowns and it just it's unprecedented since probably world war ii and so it's got everybody very concerned and scared what is your plan do you have a plan right now i think that the overall consensus if you ask anybody who's been game planning i think that this thing really thursday afternoon when everything closed last week we all kind of went okay here we go this is coming this is real and we are all in for it let's start planning i think everybody started ramping up on to-go materials and figuring out and talking to their employees identifying this is something that where who are the people that get to work right now because with this few guests coming in you can't you can't staff the whole restaurant as if you're going to have a line out the door no we sent you know we we asked people who wanted to go today and we sent three people home we probably could have sent more home we will we'll probably make some hard decisions by the end of the day in in what we plan to do or how we plan to respond to this john cooper is is doing a good job i think but he first came out with a statement that said that

35:07they suggested that bars close and of course there was a lot of blowback on that as there should have been you can't suggest something you either need to take a definitive action or you don't you know and and so that would be like me saying to my employees i suggest you come in but i don't you know and so it's um and and the thing is that nobody knows what to do you know it'll be interesting to see what happens we're seeing whole states shut down the restaurant bar industry like illinois like kentucky and so that's unprecedented and some of them are saying they're going to shut for two weeks and some of them have said they shut for two months and so a two-week shutdown that's livable for most people and i almost feel like if you did a two-week shutdown um you know right now maybe nationwide then you got a little more grip on it but all the states doing different things and and and nobody really doing it together makes it a little more difficult i do think that our national administration is doing a good job i probably have a lot of people in this industry that will disagree with me but that's my opinion i think that they have taken unprecedented steps in a situation that is unprecedented and they're doing the right thing and i think they're taking the appropriate measures and i don't think that they waited too long to do it when we look at things like the h1n1 there was nowhere near this type of response to it and nowhere near as quick of action on a national level and so that whether you like this administration or not the actions that i see them taking are the appropriate ones and i think they did it at an appropriate time frame sure i think a lot of people want to find somebody to blame oh they want to find somebody to be angry at because

37:10there's a lot of fear there's a lot of worry there's a lot of people right now that don't know how they're going to pay rent and they don't know what they're going to do and i think it's human nature to go whose fault is this oh sure and when when something doesn't happen that goes their way they want to say this person did this to me what would you say to people that have that mentality what do you have any ideas as to what is your what does your brain do i i don't like that mentality i'm a i'm a personal responsibility guy and so my mentality is hey it's my job to be prepared it's my job as an owner to be prepared to take care of my staff if i need to and i need to do everything in my power to make sure that that i've got a backup plan for them and for what we're doing before something like this happens and so we've tried to keep enough cash reserves we've tried to make sure that we have measures in place to handle things like this and you know not every owner has that luxury but i think they have that responsibility to try and do what's best for the for the people at work for them we've got 50 people that rely on us for a living you know other places have 200 400 500 i feel a personal responsibility to those people to make sure that their families are fed and that they're taken care of and we try and take care of them on a daily basis let alone in something like a crisis like this and so i sat down a lot of my employees yesterday and said look our number one priority is to take care of you and your families and make sure that you're not worried or scared about paying rent we can't promise you that that we can take care of it but we will do everything that we can do to try and make sure that that happens and and i think most of the people in the nashville restaurant community want to do the same

39:12thing but not everybody's in a position to do that and and that's what's tough because so many restaurants operate on such thin margins that they're just getting by month to month this will be the nail in the coffin for a lot of restaurants mark my words there will be a massive shutdown and shutter in this industry they did announce a i think a trillion dollar aid package today and so i think at a national level they're taking appropriate measures to try and protect the workers of the service industry but who knows what that means or what that looks like we just we nobody knows so i mentioned this last night in another interview with matt simons we were talking about people that own restaurants response and something i know that you're very familiar with because you are a nashville restaurant owner it's finding good help and if you ask anybody i've been in the business around here for a long time and if any of you ask if i ask any operator over the last five years if i said what's your number one challenge the number one answer is finding good help people right getting the right people and being in an operations position the past few years for myself you have so many people that don't do things the right way and i think there's a laissez faire well you know i'll just go get another restaurant job that's fine and i think this i don't i do not want to come across as being preachy by any means but i think you'll understand what i'm saying this is one of those times if you work in a restaurant and you're listening to this podcast right now this is where people when i asked you earlier how do you'll be remembered this is where people are going to remember you and when the restaurant community comes back if you're a restaurant owner your stories of generosity and what you've done for your staff are going to permeate throughout the system if you treat your people right now terribly and you go tough whatever it might be if you if you text people tell them they're not working there anymore if you're not having personal conversations and you don't care

41:17when you do reopen the good people are going to gravitate towards the people who did it the right way this is going to be an ultimate test in my opinion because once this comes back and the the herd is thin so to speak because there's going to be a lot of restaurants aren't going to make it through this pending what kind of stimulus package the the government comes up with but if the restaurant community takes the hit which i kind of think it's going to take there's going to be a lot of workers and the people who've constantly taken personal accountability who aren't blame which people right now who are doing whatever they can to help in any way that they possibly can those are the people that when the jobs come back are going to be the first ones to get the jobs and they're going to work for the people that did all this stuff in the right way yeah i think so i think you're right and and you know look we just saw it i mean you know the national restaurant community just got hit with a one-two punch of course with the tornado and then now with this and so and we saw the restaurant community step up during the aftermath of the tornado so many restaurants did so much and it just it was very apparent that the the restaurants in this town care about the community and they care about their people who might have been victims and they got out and fed people you know almost everybody i know that owns a restaurant did something and continues to do stuff and and so this is a really this is a really big gut punch for a lot of people and i think you're right i think that the people who do the right thing are the ones that you'll see make it and shine and you know which is the majority which i think is the majority of restaurants in nashville yes we've got a really good really good close community we do um i know you've got it's your birthday you've got lots of things you have to do today i can't keep you here all day long is there anything right now as far as tornado relief because i the one thing i recognize is that everything in nashville was about nashville strong tornado relief a week and a half ago and everything right now is about the coronavirus

43:22are you aware of any way right now if you're a restaurant worker and you got time off and you want to donate some of your time right what relief efforts are ongoing are you aware of anything where people can get out and donate right now what can we still do because we still there are still a lot of people out there who are hurting oh sure yeah there is the there is the community foundation of middle tennessee there's hands-on nashville which is an organized volunteer organization there's the nashville food project so there's there's plenty of ways that you can help and although their coffers got filled last week with food and donations and they were kind of overflowing that will thin out and there's a lot of ongoing stuff we like to promote room in the end here in nashville who does a great job of not just housing homeless men but also giving them some skill sets and teaching them and giving them classes and they just do so much the mission is always a good place as well so there's there's a lot of ways that you can help on a daily basis and we like to encourage people to look don't just don't just donate or give your time during the during a disaster try and do it year-round because these these people at holidays they get filled up and then they get forgotten in march you know and so i would say that that those are good organizations to work with year-round that are always doing good things and uh and show really show off the fact that we are the volunteer state and that nashville really does care and you know i was thinking about something today and that's that's all really good stuff and uh i was thinking if you're home we can't go into big gatherings we can't do all of these things because of this virus but you know what you can do you can go get those little i don't know what they're called like the little things that you see people picking up trash with go walk down your street and grab a trash bag and get one of those and pick up trash like i would love to see the service community out beautifying our city i drive people around a lot people go you know what i just love about your city is it's so clean it's so pretty and i go well you know people that live in nashville take

45:26pride in nashville i do yeah i kind of i say i drive because i like to be an ambassador for who we are and tell people the real story of what we're doing sure well that's great that's it i think it's a dynamite idea so get out there and you guys there's a lot of people that need if you don't if you don't have a job you're a bartender you don't know what you're going to do you know what networking and at a social distance getting out there and helping in your community is a really great way to spend some time when you have some time alone yep you're supposed to be away if you can't work get out there and help absolutely donate your time so kerry bringle thank you thank you so much for spending this time with me and on your birthday and i might have to go drink some green beer now yeah that's i think i think you're not alone yeah everybody's just doing it in their own living room i don't know the food coloring is completely gone are you guys doing anything special today for saint patrick's day we're not we're just trying to uh we're just trying to get through this week or get through you know what whatever the next couple weeks is going to bring all right well thank you so much again taking your time and um we'll talk to you guys later thank you thanks so there it is my interview with kerry bringle from march the 17th 2020 and i did get a little preachy there at the end and personal accountability to me is something that i practice and if you know me you've worked with me you know that i practice the qbq and it's everything man you wake up every day right now and you can worry and you can wonder what's going to happen but if you insert yourself into these things and say what can i do today to make a difference it's amazing how just changing your mindset can help you get through these tough times so we're all in this thing together you guys are amazing thanks for listening and i'll keep trying to put these out there if you guys will keep listening so love you guys bye