Brandon Styll reconnects with three longtime friends from the hospitality world to take the pulse of the industry as the COVID-19 shutdown begins in March 2020. Chef Matt Simmonds, now general manager and executive chef at 121 In-Flight Catering, describes the rapid collapse of...
Brandon Styll reconnects with three longtime friends from the hospitality world to take the pulse of the industry as the COVID-19 shutdown begins in March 2020. Chef Matt Simmonds, now general manager and executive chef at 121 In-Flight Catering, describes the rapid collapse of airline catering volumes and having to lay off 95 percent of his staff in a single day. Sam McGee of Cafe Makai in the Belmont/Vanderbilt area shares how a tiny vegan cafe is pivoting to prepared family meals after the surrounding student population emptied out almost overnight. Ian Dunn, an actor and hotel bartender in New York City, calls in from a city already shut down, describing the eerie quiet, mass layoffs, and emerging mutual aid efforts among service workers. Throughout, Brandon and his guests talk about loyalty, taking care of staff, and what Nashville restaurants can do to stay afloat and stay human as the shutdown deepens.
"Officially today, because of this, we had to lay off 95 percent of our staff."
Matt Simmonds, 07:51
"The people that have great attitudes, that are willing, that have never said that's not my job, the ones who'll get their hands dirty, those are the people right now in these type situations who are having better opportunities."
Brandon Styll, 21:57
"If the restaurant business has taught me anything, it's learn to adapt and adjust or you're just going to fall on your face."
Sam McGee, 32:34
"I got a call from my manager that said, hey, we just got laid off. I'm calling to officially lay you off so you can file for unemployment."
Ian Dunn, 43:27
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. Hello, Music City. I hope you're safe. I hope you feel well. And I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. One aspect of social distancing is reconnecting. Why not, right? So while we're physically can't like hug one another, I found you can certainly reach out and get a hold of people that you may not have spoke to for a little while and reconnecting with an old friend is always a good idea. So with this episode, I've been able to check in with some people that I care for deeply, and I'm pretty excited. So if you're out there and you're listening, call an old friend. Find out how they're doing. Chances are they're not great. But you know what? A call from an old friend always brightens up your day. So stay tuned.
01:06This will be a lengthy episode. I hope you enjoy. It all starts with Matt Simons, the original Mattie Ice. Right now, I've got Matt Simons. Chef, I'm so happy that you were able to join us tonight. Thank you very much. So I've met, I've met, I've known you for gosh, I want to say 13, 14, 15 years. I think it's probably 15 or 16 years, but yeah. I met you. You were the executive chef at the Marriott Vanderbilt. Yep. Wow. And I was so afraid of you because you were this stature and I was so brand new in this business. And you are so like you, first of all, you're the ice man in town, right? Yes, sir. So tell me, for people that don't know who you are, if you've been anywhere in Nashville and you've seen an ice carving, who by chance, who did that? That would probably be me. So this guy, Matt Simons, what is the name of your ice company? If somebody out there needs an ice carving right now, what is the name of your ice company?
02:13Well, my ice carving, especially ice carvings, but I have recently passed it on to my partner because I've gotten old and my knee doesn't like me anymore. Oh, okay. But you know, if there was something yours as an ice carver that took its toll. So it's a young man's game now, especially living in the freezer. So now it's just culinary. Well, I know. So right now, let's go, I'm going to go over a little bit of your timeline. So I met you, you were the executive chef at the Marriott Vanderbilt, and then you took over the Hilton downtown. Was that right? You went there next? Which is a retirement. I wanted to learn some of the retirement stuff and all the specialty diets. So I was the director of culinary there, food service director, and then took over corporate chef for a place called Local Taco. And the small restaurant wasn't my biggest thing and ended up taking over the garbage area and lead hot for the convention center for a couple of years. And now I've gone to serve as an executive chef for 121 in-flight did not a catering and has been promoted to the general manager. And we do commercial flights, check-in flights. So now you're doing in-flight for you're the general manager and executive chef for 121 in-flight. In-flight catering. Yep. In-flight catering. Owned by Donata. Okay. And we do specialty airlines. We do all, we do British Airways and some of the American Airlines flights to Los Angeles. All the VIP catering for all the airports within a hundred and twenty miles. Anybody that wants anything special, I mean we just did stuff for Mike Bloomberg a couple weeks ago. Oh wow. So whoever wants especially stuff we do that. Yeah for sure. So with this new podcast Nashville Restaurant Radio, kind of one of the cool things that we're doing is we're identifying all of Nashville. It's kind of
04:17the purpose here is if you work downtown you don't really know what's happening in Brentwood. And if you work in Brentwood you might not necessarily know what's happening in East Nashville. And my goal is to bring all the restaurant people in Nashville together. And I think one of the major parts of hospitality in the city is the airport. What's going on in the airport? So I thought that your perspective was pretty unique because you've got airlines and the airline business right now I imagine is going to be affected pretty greatly. Can you go in and can you just kind of tell me a little bit about what you're seeing from the airline industry? What's happening at the airport? What are you dealing with? When did this first come on the radar for you? It came on the radar about three four weeks ago talking about the coronavirus. Our company we're here in Nashville but we also have a unit in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, JFK and one in Canada at the moment and opening in Dallas and Houston. So we're all over in the big hubs and it started off with you know here's what we need to know about all the sanitation things that started happening you know by this time no flights were being endangered you know nothing was really going on and slowly but surely more of the hey here's what you need to watch out for now we need to do this now the drivers need to wear masks on the plane you know especially if we do an international plane now it's gloves with everything and slowly but surely the what we call tax count is what regular restaurants be reservations or you know seat that button seat sure would go down and for the last probably four weeks there's been an average of probably five to eleven percent drop each week and the last two weeks it's been to the point where sometimes I don't know how the airlines was uh some of the airlines were actually paying for fuel you know we had the max flight we
06:23do for British Airways here is 250 people out which 250 meals and some of the flights only had 40 people on or 30 there is some drop in the winter times but nothing like this and so going on going forward we're seeing what's happening and then slowly but surely some of the international flights were being cancelled now it was posted over the weekend and became knowledge as of today at midnight for our company it's the last flight for British Airways coming out of Nashville so just for for people listening right now we're recording this it's monday the 16th of march so as of midnight tonight right okay so we put out our last flight tonight and we got all that information you know we heard everybody heard it for the weekend you know Trump is going to possibly do this which you know I understand for health reasons you know now you see the hotels and everything downtown you know possibly closing bars closing restaurants opera land laying off people now the airports oh it's done they've closed the bars that broadway's closed man right and the airports like our san francisco hub now you can buy some food in certain restaurants but you can't eat in the restaurant in the airport but you still got to go sit down in the seat next to somebody so you know they're taking precautions but you still don't know what's going on but then officially today because of this we had to lay off 95 percent of our staff which is brutal you know environment right now where so many people in the hospitality business are out of jobs there is not a job to be found and you know they can collect some unemployment you know and through our company some of the management that's taking pay cuts or managers you know work five six days will get paid for four which is voluntary you know but that's what we got to do to keep the job and even our higher
08:23ups did the same thing so it's affecting everybody and as far as I saw Tennessee has 51 51 reports right now or something like that you might know better than I do but I mean it's I think it's going up every minute yeah and like when we have h1n1 I mean that was drastic it's an all-time stop I do think yes people's people's lives people's health are very important but however I think the media has blown a lot of this out of proportion which will scare people to death and I do understand you need to take action unfortunately some of this action is devastating is more devastating to the people that work in the fields you're still going to have to go to the store you're still going to have to buy food you're still gonna have to go to the gas station you still most people still have to go to work or they work in the house you're still breathing the air you know and uh I don't know no one goes to a hotel or a restaurant and you know sorry don't take this the wrong way it gets on people's foods or does whatever you know it's one way that it's a path and I understand shaking hands stuff like that but it has devastated the hospitality field right now so I think it's it's definitely devastated I mean so this is something that I've been talking about we've been game planning this thing for for a little while now because I think Thursday it became real and I've said this many times that when everything when the world got cancelled when Italy went completely under quarantine and then all the major sports got cancelled the March Madness is cancelled I think everybody went oh my gosh like this is this is crazy and it's not just like a Nashville thing it's this is nationwide this is across the board and it's not only the hospitality it's every industry and it's so that's why that's kind of why I wanted to do this is I
10:24want to get people's opinions as to what are they going to do what are what is your what is your plan what are you guys doing something for the employees you've had to lay off do you have any recommendations do you have any thoughts like what is what is your um what are you what are you like what are you saying every other business is out there our employees everyone was guaranteed a job when the business picks back up unfortunately we cannot tell you when the business is going to pick back up because we don't know yet we gave everybody authorization letters and approved any uh any uh unemployment that needs to happen but at the moment I mean that's all we are able to do uh the food that was left over that we can't save we are actually donating to the tornado victims of Red Cross or Nashville stable you know so nothing like that's going to go to waste it was that's good uh we've got you know the water that we purchased you know for airlines not the pump there are what we call bonded so that comes in from the airline from international so it stays bonded but whatever we can donate we're going to donate you know so nothing nothing goes to waste and then we'll have a skeleton crew running for the we still have uh planes that go from Nashville to Los Angeles that we're servicing and you know so far when we talk to American those flights are unaffected but they can only say not 10 to 12 days out of the time okay and there are uh we just found out like two other airlines for our company that's out of other uh another uh stations you know they've canceled all of their flights wow are you seeing are you seeing domestic flights do you think domestic flights will start being canceled uh especially since uh i heard today pretty much vegas is closed i don't know if you're allowed to say flights are going down you can say they've canceled just kidding
12:26it's well you're right but uh you know you don't even you know the supermarkets look at the supermarkets you know there people are binge purchasing stuff which stuff is still going to be there the restaurants still have stuff you know if you're afraid to go out and eat why don't they close the drive-throughs they're just closing the uh you know i thought that the dining rooms are closed but you can go up right to the drive-through they don't have gloves on there's no mask there no one's in there you know so it's kind of a catch-22 why you're closing this or doing this you still serving people there well restrict the amount of people in restaurants but you're still cooking so i'll say it this way um i had a conversation today where somebody said hey i still go out i'm young uh i you know i i know i'm not gonna die from this disease i still want to go out and hang out with my friends i have income what why do i have to stop going out to restaurants and you know while there's a side of that that i go i mean that's logical for you to think that but there's no time in our lives that we've ever had to be more cautious about decisions that we make that affect other people and when we are i think the government's seeing that if you look at italy 10 days ago they had like one death and then yesterday they had 350 and it just escalates so quickly and this i think the reaction may be a little too late i don't know i'm not making a political statement here but if you look at what we're doing by not allowing people to go out to dine out and eat we're basically saying that we don't trust the general public to make these decisions themselves and i understand it if we're saying people need to eat in the person working the drive-through is safe and everybody that's coming to work there we have if we're managing just the people that are working there and we don't have to manage the people that come in to dine we can sell food out of drive-through and i kind of understand that because people are gonna need food and i think it's up to each individual restaurant i see a lot of restaurants
14:30are closing until this thing goes look you know what it's our social responsibility we're just gonna close all together and hopefully the people that you know we have to pay rent to are cool and i get that i mean it's it's such it's i don't know what to do i don't think anybody knows what to do it's that's why i'm it's why i want to have these conversations so i'm so glad you came on a great conversation about social responsibility but as you said before about the person that's you know why is this affecting me i mean you and i are not spring chickens anymore and remember when we were 20 years old you can go out and party till two minutes where you have to go to work and you walk in and you're perfectly fine when we acted at least acted like it yeah and we don't recuperate like we used to you know and but you know the smart person now is looking financially i don't know if i should just go out because people right now don't i mean that if my employees do they were gonna not have a job tomorrow morning until they showed up you know people didn't know these are shutting down but the people that in the restaurant business you know trust me i'm not against the restaurant business i believe that we should be safe but how do you know the people that are doing your food is safe i mean i think you don't you don't that's you don't know the people that you're buying the food from at the store is safe so you know the catch-22 is if you're gonna get it you're gonna get it the thing about italy i like i said i i'm like you i don't really get into politics but the demographics the people that died were they all old were they very young we don't know you know uh so i think we're the person gets it but there's also a lot of people that have gotten this and then have recovered from it too well the term that i hear a lot of people and what the world health organization is talking about is really flattening the curve i'm sure you've heard of this and it's this hospitals just don't have the capacity to take a bunch of people at
16:33one time so if we can if we can all stay home as best we possibly can i don't think they're saying that that's gonna stop it but hopefully it's gonna slow it to where the people that do get sick can go to a hospital and they don't have to make a decision to say we have two respirators and we have seven people here you five get to die you know like how do they do that and if they want to make that decision nobody wants to make that decision my wife uh i'm sorry she has an immune disease so her body doesn't you know have her own immune system she has to the hospital told her do not come in you know so they're telling people not to come to the hospital you know you don't you know how is this everybody's setting down question is when is enough you know um yes you said 300 people died okay how many people are there how many people die each day with you know you hear the drunk driving things i'm not i'm not supporting pro or against if you're talking about breathing whatever i don't think there's a way around this if it doesn't it needs to suit itself out or what they say pandemic you know they're you know if you're driving to the gas station you're still got a chance of getting it as you do at work or cooking or being a hostess or a greeter anything like that everyone's susceptible no matter what they do pharmacies are staying open you know those are major things but people can't you know i'm i'm broke just on a different level you know i can't miss two days of work yeah these poor people that now might be everybody might be out for weeks the question is what are people what's the government or the people going to do for them well because you know people that lost their jobs hopefully temporarily there's no answer because there's no job for them to go to anywhere because everything's shutting
18:36down well i put a link out there today i said sign up for uber eats if you're if you're out there that's that seems to be the thing right now that i mean you can at least start delivering food and i think you can make decent money sign up for uber eats and then get that going i don't think driving uber is a safe job to do either right now but i mean if you're in the car by yourself walk into restaurant grabbing food taking it to somebody's front porch that's you're mitigating that pretty i mean and that's going to be a really busy business that's one of the reasons why i want to do this podcast is if you're a restaurant person and you're displaced right now and you don't know what to do hopefully i can get some smart people on this show to talk about what you can do let's be positive what can you do and i what about making sealed meals that's a sealed meal to come pick up yeah you know you can do that you know the one thing i heard this morning which kind of blew me away was we mandate our truck drivers in this country that they can only drive for so long because they get tired might have an accident guess what has been lifted the hours that they have to drive in now there's no law they can drive as many hours as they want that's scary so we can drive as much as we want to make as much as we want that makes it just as dangerous so you're saying that restaurant workers can go get their cdl and there's lots of lots of work out there the work right now is that almost every supermarket is hiring right now because they're stopping the shelves they're closing earlier to restock shelves you know the croaker by our house actually has a debt as you walk in there's a table with sanitary wipes and then uh fill an application and they'll hire you almost on the spot there you go it's ridiculous i think we uh we swallow our pride right now in these times and the job's a job man if you need if you need to make money i'm washing dishes mopping floors doing amen just make sure i have a job you know and we've all as chefs have all washed dishes before in
20:40our life i guarantee you you know and i'm sure servers have done all this stuff but right now you know we had you know on saturday unfortunately i had an employee they refused to do something because for a while the employee felt like you owed them something for working for you you know and they when they told me that there's the door every other employee hey what do you need you know people are realizing what's happening you know they're the people that work with me that stayed they understand what they have to do you know and they're like we're just thankful to have a job and you know what all you hear in this business in this town is it's so hard to find workers and people are you know it's really interesting to me and i may get some flack for this comment right here but i hear so many restaurant workers well i'm just going to leave this job or i'll just quit everybody's hiring and you go right now we had to make a decision this morning with a couple of my clients we're talking about who gets shifts right now because everything's dead well the people that have really done a great job and have worked here the longest those are the people that get the shifts and loyalty and all that stuff goes a long way the people that have great attitudes that are willing that have never said that's not my job the ones who'll get their hands dirty that'll hustle they'll do all the stuff they do those are the people right now in these type situations you can't plan for that are having better opportunities i mean and i'm not that's not everywhere but that's it's a it's a good testament to hustle when you can brandon that is the best lie that's the best statement i've heard in a long time that is so true you know and the people that take care of us in time of need they're the ones are going to help us out you know we have uh you know we were looking we've been looking for a cook and we pay well i'll be perfectly honest we pay well we've been looking for a cook for two months and you either couldn't find one to pass a drug test but one that actually wanted to work
22:42yeah i'm sorry but now it's like the market's flooded the only thing that will happen when this turns around is you could probably have the pick of the litter of the people you actually want because everybody's looking and people will realize what it was like and i think we're gonna get better workers out of this you know i also think that if you're a restaurant owner right now you got to be looking at how you're treating your people what you're doing because you know texting people telling them they're laid off or a personal phone call to let them know that hey look this is a heartfelt decision we've made you know using the food that you have like you said to feed people doing all the things that really good people being good to your people i mean everything that we do is about people right i mean it's it's all about the people and right now the restaurant owners and people that are doing this the right way i'm not going to name any names people that aren't doing it the right way but the people that are doing it the right way are the ones who are going to have the choice of the best people when this thing comes back they're gonna want to come back they're gonna go these stories are gonna get out and people are gonna say hey look i've got a lot of talent and i worked at this place we had to close but all i keep hearing about is xyz restaurant how they took care of their staff and i want to go work for that guy and i think all of this stuff resonates around this community and it's pretty strong i mean i think that this is where you find out what you're made of and everybody that we had to let go today i personally sat down one to one they got the letter but then also a handwritten letter from me with the business card of all my contacts you know hey and then i asked for their email we didn't have it so they'll be updated through our work too you know for you know just so they feel like there is not a severed tie you know because they all felt like they were severed ties yeah but they understood but you know and they all because of those little human emotions was just you know not the biggest step in the world but
24:46hey look i care you know it was very emotional i mean for me to have to let those people go it broke me up inside through each go it was this could happen but you didn't know and then when all the like you like you said when all the sports teams stopped happening that was a wake up call now everybody's on the bandwagon we're stopping we're stopping we're stopping and you know i'm just uh well the owners have a responsibility to their staffs the staff has a responsibility to their owners you know it goes both ways you know uh i will i will always remember you matt as somebody for me in my formidable years in this business in the sales side of things when i was coming up in the produce world i there was nobody that scared me more than you but then once i think i showed you a little bit of hustle and it was almost as if once i proved myself to you there was also nobody that taught me i mean i learned a lot of stuff from a lot of really great chefs and i'm very blessed to be in this city for a long time and work with a lot of people but you're one of the people that showed me that you have to have standards you treat people the way that you want to be treated and while while you were very firm and you had high expectations you're always one of those people that was incredibly fair would always offer me food was always incredibly generous with everything you did i loved seeing you at events all the time always a handshake with that that hurt my hand and i'm not a small guy one of the stronger people i've ever met in my life but i've just always really enjoyed working with you and i've when i saw you message me saying hey i'd love to talk to you on your podcast the one thing i wanted was if you want to talk about a genuine nashville chef who's been doing this in nashville for a long time you're the guy and i just want to thank you so much for spending some time with me today and i can't wait for the rest of the the city of nashville to get to hear your perspective on what's going on thank you and an answer to what you just said the biggest thing for you was you
26:47didn't give up and then if something was wrong you never once made an excuse you said i'll fix it that's the biggest part of the world i'll fix it and you did you know and that's what makes all the world is you're just not another number you know because i remember you could you could sell ice to an eskimo you know it wasn't a problem but you valued the customer and that's what we got to do is value our customers and i appreciate you let me have this talk with you yeah man well let's get together have some coffee some time and um again thanks a lot hopefully this thing will smooth over i mean i'll be praying for you man i know that this whole city needs some prayers and um and yeah man let's let's let's catch up thank you and best of luck to everybody out there that hears this i'm telling you right now we all need it yes sir thanks man another friend of mine that i haven't talked to and as i started thinking i think i said in the podcast 25 years but it has been 30 years we went to the fourth grade together in 1989 when i moved here sam mcgee has uh just kind of been a staple around this business in this town for a long time another positive dude that was great to catch up with so i hope you enjoy my talk with sam so be sure to take care of sam get over there and um get your vegan food for your family um my next person is a friend of mine named ian dunn and ian i used to work at a restaurant in brentwood with ian for a short amount of time when i was like 21 years old uh we kind of hung out partied a lot he was one of the guys would hang out with me back in the day when i had the idea for this podcast before we knew what a podcast was so ian lives in new york now he's an actor and i thought it'd be really interesting for everybody here in nashville to get kind of a new york perspective i talked to ian today and um here you go when they're you know they're suspending them or suspending classes indefinitely and stuff like that
28:54you can prepare for it when you know it's coming in the summer and stuff like that but when it happens in a matter of a few days it was just something i've never seen before and it just it dries up quick it just you know it just kind of but we've uh we've decided to kind of switch over to going to meals prepared to eat um we're going to offer vegan and gluten-free options and um the response so far we just started teasing it has been pretty overwhelming so now we're working with some food uh providers and people to deliver and whatnot so trying to get all the strings ironed out and hopefully get it rolling by wednesday or thursday so what you're doing is you're taking your business model which was coffee vegan food local farm um farm to table products right yeah and now since you don't you don't have people can't come in the mayor said hey we've got to put down a half of your people can come in and really the responsible thing to do is to not have people come into the building right now so you're now going to start doing prepared foods that you're going to be selling like full meals for people families of four five six whatever however many people and they want to do it you know we're going to try giving the pre-order day out and uh we just sent some test ballots and our test menus out and everybody seemed to enjoy them so we're uh just hammering up stuff with square and you know uh we're working with trying to get with doordash maybe ubereats but you know obviously they're getting a lot of calls right now so um just to try to you know keep this you know we just gotta stay afloat you know i feel like this is probably gonna be a two or three month deal and then hopefully as we always do we'll read down nicely i hope as you start this thing i think there's a general process as we get going to go okay how big is it gonna be and i think we all started talking about hey if it gets to this point we'll do this if it gets to this point we'll do this obviously thursday everything closed nba mlb all concerts are canceled march madness is canceled we go
30:55into this weekend and i think that everybody in this business has started to identify that they need to make some changes pretty rapidly when did you realize and what was the first thing that you did when you realized that this wasn't this wasn't a fad and that this is going to get worse and would are you retaining your staff what is the first thing you've done we we we did we did have a meeting and you know being as small as we are my staff there's only six of us total so it was a little easier to get everybody together um but we had a meeting letting know that you know it's gonna talk to ownership and ownership is assured us that they're gonna they're gonna support us do this and then you know they're gonna help make sure a couple of my employees have another job anyway so they're working with their job on that end as well to try to get some extracurricular things going as we are but all my staff you know i have six wonderful employees that have all learned how to cook and prep and now they're excited about learning and getting the preps and new stuff you know other than our normal menu so they're actually kind of excited about the challenge and i couldn't ask for anything better you know that's amazing man given given the circumstances you know you gotta you gotta do you know we had we had a couple of them that are one girl the workforce their house uh they lost power for a week of the tornado and they're getting married this week and then they come back through all that so but we've been keeping them in the loop and they're doing a much smaller wedding than originally anticipated but you know i think that's what we're all gonna have to do for the time being has learned with that and adjust and if the restaurant business has taught me anything it's learned to adapt and adjust or you're just gonna fall on your face you know well see so that's a that's such a empowering message that you're giving out because there's not one time i've heard you blame anybody or anything for this you're saying if you've been in this business for a long time the only thing i think that we know in this business that is certain is that it's going to be uncertain and you've
33:00got to be able to be flexible and adaptable and be able to move and pivot on a on a dime so i mean two weeks before i mean a week and a half ago we had a tornado come through here you guys are in the belmont area but that didn't really affect you how did that uh fair what did you guys do well you know i mean it was it happened on my day off and i never i hardly ever take the early part of the week off but i get a text message from my guys that just said mckay is all right and i'm thinking at 7 10 i hope so we've only been open 10 and then i found out what happened and so i got down there and we just made some breakfast and like everybody else got in the traffic and i mean it was i mean by the time we got there 10 30 hundreds of people martin's are setting up like all your people that you thought you might see were out i mean it was just it was unbelievable we got into the cafeteria this school and they were just i mean they had supplies filling up and this was by like 11 o'clock the morning out it was it was amazing it was truly truly absolutely amazing wow you know the community came together it was so unbelievable i represent i work with a couple restaurants there in the germantown area and i was out there that morning and just seeing everybody come together was just yeah i mean we lost the big part of our city that day but we we showed we showed even a better part well you know that's how that that area pan always reminded me of like the last true one of the last two parts of nashville had a little bit of touch up to it but it was still pretty like pretty much how i remembered it so wow it was amazing to see man let me ask you another question so coming back to current time um vendors that you're using you know in the tornado kind of reminded me that we had cisco kind of lost their warehouse for the time being i know they've been scrambling to get stuff together but you use local farmers and some local vendors right yeah i got a guy uh
35:04ken drennan that i've been using for years that was at nashville city kept doing the best products around that i've ever used and he gets me my eggs my chicken my beef my pork he kind of gets it all for me out there nice and he's been able to supply you with everything yeah i'm i'm pretty much all my proteins except for my catfish i get that from carolina classic that's the one of the dad avocados and lemons are just those are the three things i just get from somewhere else you know all right but um you can't find that local avocado grower i know i'm telling you if i meet one they're gonna be rich i never thought avocados would be the thing that would trip me up so much in my culinary career man they do sometimes hey i sold produce for 13 years in nashville and uh between between avocados bananas and tomatoes uh i had two heart surgeries so i can feel it man i feel it well so let me say you are at cafe makai and uh it's at 1210 wedgewood if people wanted to order family style meals however that how would they do this we're gonna have a link to our our meals popping up here in the next day or so and it'll be on cafe makai.com that's simple and it's just a simple thing we do up there and um yeah that's that's pretty much it man and like i said i appreciate you spell that out it's what you're doing man it's cafe makai how do you spell that yeah c a f e and then makai m a k a i so that's c a f e m a k a i for anybody out there that wants to call sam check in with him support his local business um this is a guy that's been in the nashville restaurant business for 25 plus years and it's clearly out there doing everything he possibly can remaining positive using local vendors and supporting his community in every way he can and sam i really it's good catching
37:04up with you dude i we gotta have coffee sometime we'll come by and see you once we're actually able to stand closer than six feet together tell the family hi tell the family hi for me i most definitely will man and uh you stay safe and it was good talking to you you too buddy and it sure is great catching up with sam mcgee uh literally went to like the fourth grade with sam known him my um my whole time i've lived here in tennessee so if you can get out and support cafe makai good people doing good things for each other so um i'm here right now with sam mcgee and he is the chef and general manager of cafe makai at 1210 wedgewood and sam thank you so much for joining us here on nashville restaurant radio uh gosh man it's been a long time since i've spoke to you how long have i known you 25 years about 25 years yeah i grew up with most of the family wow absolutely so you've been in the restaurant business for how long 26 years 25 years we're all right here together yeah started started when i was 15 just turned about to turn 41 so yeah right at it so tell me tell me what what you guys are experiencing right now i mean obviously we've got this coronavirus is happening but what are you uniquely going through well we uh i'm in a position that i've never been in and i thought i've pretty much seen it all in the restaurant business but i've never worked where so much of my business has been told that they shouldn't come back to school or you know being right between belmont and vanderbilt right there um so i've never had like a math exodus you know other than you know seasonally for schools and whatnot you usually plan for that but this escalated so quickly yeah it's good talking to you i we we haven't spoke really audibly we used to work together and a restaurant in nashville what like 17 years ago yeah 2003 and so you moved to new york and what have you been doing in new york uh i'm an actor and and a bartender actor that's uh that's
39:11my that's my life what have you been in tell the tell the people in nashville what uh what have you been acting in what could we see you in well i do a lot of television um actually there's a new show on hbr called the plot against america i'll be in the third episode of that uh on march 30th i'm also in an upcoming episode of bowl uh also i think maybe on the same day is that same week oh wow um as a plane new york police detective um i'm in another show called mrs america on fx i think that's come in the second episode of that um that'll be on april 22nd i think or maybe april 29th but uh you know it's kind of what it's kind of what to do so you're like a lot of people in nashville uh but you're in new york so you're doing acting and you also work in the restaurant business on the side because acting probably doesn't pay all the bills new york is not cheap to live in and right so you work in a restaurant you work in hospitality also so a lot of people in nashville are musicians songwriters and they work in restaurants kind of as a side gig too and the coronavirus has come now and it's changed everything and while we're in nashville we're experiencing it almost on a delay that the major cities are experiencing it you're there you've been let go of your job what's what's the latest what's happening give us the pulse and what's happening in new york city uh well honestly it's pretty weird out there and um i haven't been on the subway since this day evening um because i didn't work shifts uh since then i was supposed to uh work yesterday um we all got laid off yesterday so we could then file for unemployment i am lucky to work for a hotel bar so the hotel can you know kind of take care of that for its employees we got fired so we can hopefully be
41:13rehired in the future when all this is done so how did that go down did you get a phone call that we might have to plan for a shelter order within 48 hours which means we wouldn't be able to really leave the house except for um essential needs like maybe going to the grocery store so um it's a little strange out there people are for the most part keeping it together um everyone there's a lot of solidarity out there which is good but the vibe is is definitely a little creepy and uh you know new york city is probably the most densely populated city in the united states and uh it's uh it's pretty sparse out on the streets you gotta say you know it's interesting because in nashville while you're looking at the perspective of it being sparse on the streets i'm sitting right now i'm in my car and i'm about to walk in to a restaurant here in east nashville and i'm right at five points and i'm literally looking at five buildings that are gone i mean we here in nashville we had a tornado like last week before last and i'm looking two weeks ago i mean i'm looking right at burger up right now and it's gone i'm looking at the the juice thing it's gone the um skateboarding shop it's gone there's buildings right in front of me that are just gone i mean we've gone through some devastation here and this one two punch this coronavirus is uh it's a tough one yeah where we need people out gathering to help put you know clean up yards which we had amazing people do that in the past two weeks now everybody's told to stay home so i mean this it's we're kind of hitting a one two punch here yeah definitely i was i was thinking about that just today as i was outside feeling you know lucky that we didn't have any natural disasters just this uh this very odd twilight zone sort of it is like thing going on right now it is like
43:20twilight zone do you have any opinions i mean so you're out of the job how do they how do they do it how do they email no excuse me i got a call from my manager that said hey we just got laid off i'm calling to officially lay you off so you can file for an appointment they won't dispute any of it hopefully in a couple of months or whenever these things subside we can rehire you and uh i'm really sorry and good luck and it was pretty quick because i think the manager had probably call you know 50 employees i don't know how many i'm not sure how many people work there but it was it's a lot of people at least 20 between 25 and 50 so i mean they're they're probably not you're probably not getting called for casting calls right now and then there everything is shut down industry has shut down the theater industry shut down broadway shut down um and that was all kind of large scale and then moving to saw scale because first it was broadway anything over 500 you know gatherings 500 people then uh it just became kind of apparent even large gatherings that are still smaller than 500 weren't gonna happen um film productions are shut down because a lot of these crews on tv shows there's 50 100 people that are working in a soundstage or people on location so they basically sent us out whatever episode they're working on it and it's cut until further notice that's you know also a huge industry here in the city so what are you gonna do what are your plans well i uh i found an appointment and um i applied for a grant from the bartenders association it's kind of been going around on the uh on the internet um
45:36um i think you can apply for up to 2500 i applied for that the other day um hopefully that will some of that will come through i heard jameson threw a hundred dollars a hundred thousand dollars into that i think it's five hundred thousand dollars five hundred thousand dollars yeah that's even better so um i've seen there are some google docs going around where you can sign up and put your window on i've already gotten 15 dollars of random venmo payments from just totally random people um you know it's not a lot but it's you know it's it's nice and it's kind of just uh rolling this together kind of thought so which you know it's uh it's tough time and so we all we all need each other right now so it's good to even have that from strangers you know what i mean for sure all right um well thank you so much for spending a couple minutes i think that all the people in nashville that hopefully are listening to this can know that it's not just us here that are dealing with this it's people in new york who are actors and are working in hotel restaurant bars that are saying sorry you don't have a job and um i think it's a it's a it's good to know that there's not it's not just our towns right now with the tornado it was nashville strong and i feel like we're kind of america strong now like all of us coming together for this needs to be and i i'm just curious to see what's going to happen over the next few weeks i mean yeah i'm curious as well i would i would advise uh listeners to watch what's happening in the bigger cities because it's probably going to spread to the smaller ones as well as my guests hopefully it won't have to come to that but um you know stay together be good to one another and uh hopefully we'll come out stronger on the other side right that's that's the goal well thank you so much ian i really appreciate you joining me today and um best of luck to you and i hope it was great
47:36great uh having the chance to talk to you again after so long thanks buddy all right take care man all right so there it is um three friends that i haven't got a chance to hang out with in a super long time and uh thank you so much to matt simons for taking the time thank you so much to sam agui for taking the time and ian dunn all the way from new york city um i've been hearing from a lot of people i've been getting a lot of feedback for this podcast and i'm going to get as many stories as i possibly can out to you guys as quickly as i can and hopefully we can build some solidarity here and if you're somebody who's out there who has a unique idea you're somebody who wants to do something to help out your community give me a call message me on our facebook page which is nashville restaurant radio um at facebook and let me know instant message me my name is brandon still s-t-y-l-l look me up on facebook send me a message i love to hear your story but let's be positive everybody stay happy stay stay healthy and love one another um this is probably going to get worse before it gets better but um like i said connect with an old friend it was so nice talking to these people and um i hope you guys are well love you take care