Claire Crowell

00:00Hey everyone, it's Brandon Styll, host of Nashville Restaurant Radio. You know that I am a big fan of having a plan and proactively using this time to make your business better. Times are tough, but reopening and recovery doesn't have to be. That's why I want to tell you about Kurtz Hospitality Marketing, their full-service sales, marketing, and public relations agency dedicated to growing revenue for their clients. You know you need a strong marketing strategy as you reopen your business. Let them help you put one together. Give them a call, 615-456-3953, or visit them on the web, www.KurtzHospitality.com. That's K-U-R-T-Z-Hospitality.com. Welcome 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.

01:05Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. Today we are going to be speaking with Claire Crowell. She is the COO of A. Marshall Hospitality. She's also co-owner of Hattie Jane's Creamery, and they are open for business. So I wanted to talk to her today, ask her all the questions that you are thinking right now that you would like to ask her. She's done it, she's been there, she's felt the pain, she's felt the joy, and we're going to talk to her right now. And we are here with Claire Crowell, and Claire is the COO of A. Marshall Hospitality. That's the Americana Taphouse, Deakins New South, Pockets, and she is co-owner of Hattie Jane's Creamery. Claire, thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me back. So you are, I just mentioned, you're kind of the canary in the coal mine as somebody who has restaurants in rural areas, Williamson County is not necessarily rural, but it's not Davidson, Nashville, and I have restaurant owners and chefs that I talk to on a regular basis on this show, and everybody is kind of in a wait and see approach, but you've done it.

02:25You have gone in, reopened, and I, and I think everybody is dying to know how it's going. Yep, so we've been open for a couple of days at a few of our locations. We have more opening today in Pigeon Forge, and then it's kind of a slow roll, rolling everybody out. Pigeon Forge today, Chattanooga did get the green light opening on Friday, and actually reopening our curbside in Nashville, which we had previously closed. So it's been, you know, obviously the, it came earlier than we expected. We were, we were geared towards a May reopening and, and then, you know, the governor kind of let us know it was going to be sooner than that pretty quickly, so we scrambled all weekend, but it's going well so far. We're not overwhelmed, which is, which is good. We did not want to be overwhelmed. We're starting to see familiar faces come back in and get our employees, you know, it's, it's been really, really good.

03:30I mentioned that, you know, it's, it was more emotional than anticipated to see our employees coming back and see those faces again. The first few that I saw, I, I, not gonna lie, got a little teary-eyed. It's just, you know, we, these are, these people are our family, and we're used to seeing them sometimes more than our family. So it's, it's been a little bit of an emotional week, but so far, so far, so good. So there's a, but we're really prepared. There's a, there's a lot of people out there who are real nervous about this because, I mean, just the general safety of employees coming back to work, you've got people out there who are being paid by the government to be on unemployment, and you guys are now back open, people to come off unemployment to come back to work with the general safety. How are you dealing with all of that type stuff? Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's a constant conversation as we made the decision to go for it and go ahead and, and, you know, start knocking the rust off.

04:34You know, I think that's the first thing I should, should mention is if we didn't have our process and procedure in place before, we've been, we've been, you know, in this downtime, that's what we've been focused on is what, if and when we're allowed to reopen, what's it look like. So we've been working on that for a few weeks. So we were really prepared for that. We had processes in place, we've already ordered, you know, the materials that we need, got our menus in order. So, you know, we certainly would not be making that decision if we didn't feel super confident in our, in our procedures, and it's a conversation with our employees. So I, on my end, my focus was on the employee conversation, and I have my partner in crime, my director of operations, focusing on the, on the ops side, and we put together basically a frequently asked questions, kind of anticipating what the questions will be, and we have a distinct process that we put out to them to let them know this is our, because we have, you know, having nine restaurants and over 400 employees, we need, we definitely, and I would recommend to anybody that you really need to have a distinct process for how you're, who you're bringing out back and in what order, or at least who's getting that first call.

05:50So we, ours was basically a seniority of position, then position needed, you know, because we might need more of this or that, and then tenure within those. So we let them know what order we'd be calling, and then we're presenting basically as a, you know, are you prepared, do you want to, and we've gotten, it's been completely split between people like, yes, thank goodness, I can't wait, I'm bored, I'm ready, you know, tell me when, between that and hesitation, and we're just taking the standpoint of being respectful of that, we're moving people, if they are hesitant, to the bottom of the call list, and we'll continue to move, we don't need a lot right now, because we're not seeing, obviously, we're not seeing a massive turnout of guests, it's been basically a steady flow, so, but we do, you know, we have the PPP loan for the restaurants, I don't for Hattie Jane's, I actually applied for the EIDL loan for Hattie Jane's, and just got it last week, but, oh my gosh, that's a whole, that's a whole different conversation, but with the PPP loan, I mean, yeah, I got a borrow, I borrowed from Pat Martin for the last two weeks, I heard him say, it's like, you know, the government gave us a full tank of gas to drive to Memphis, and told you that you gotta use it all before you get a Vixen, and that's really what it feels like, so it's a lot of juggling and needing to get people back, basically, on payroll in order to get even a portion of it forgiven, so, you know, it's like a giant, very serious game of chess, but the temperature inside the restaurants has been very positive between employees and our guests.

07:33That's good. Are people, so, are people able to, when they come back to work, what are some of the, I think the big fear is people that work together can't stay six feet apart, and wearing a mask and gloves and changing them out, like, how has that process been, and who are the people that are coming back and dining, are they mostly regulars, do you have people driving in from Alabama to come eat, like, what do you, who are the people that are dining, just kind of all that stuff? Yeah, I would definitely say in the last few days, you know, it's only been a couple, it's definitely been regulars so far, that have just been kind of anxious to see familiar faces, and have, for the most part, been really respectful of the procedures, you know, we've got markings on, you know, on the ground, and reminders everywhere, and also one of the best things I think we've done, or maybe not best, but well-received things is, we have one-use menus, but on each tabletop, there's a, that we are seating, we're not seating all our tabletops, there's a little table tent that has a QR code that you can just scan with your camera, and it opens the menu, and we've actually gotten people from D.C., and Virginia, and Texas have reached out asking how we're doing that, so we put together instructions to send out to other restaurants if they need that, because it's free to build a QR code. I would definitely say it's regulars, employees, you know, we are hyper aware, and monitoring, and reminding them, when you're rolling silverware spread out, you know, you're right, you have to cross paths, in some regard, but we don't have a full staff right now, so it really isn't actually that hard to have everybody stay fairly spread out, and until we get to maximum capacity, that's gonna be the case, so basically we're operating with half of the staff on a shift basis.

09:28You got half a staff back, did you have to do a bunch of training to kind of get people to get the, to knock some of the rest off, A, and B, around all of the new procedures that they're gonna have to do, like how, were you able to get all of the PPEs, are people bringing their own stuff, how is that working? So, I guess to be clear, they're not requiring PPE, for us to wear PPE, but we are requiring masks, and then of course glove use, we are providing, and also allowing with approval for them to bring their own masks, because a lot of people have already done that, as long as they can meet our standards of coverage, and then reiterating the glove use, but training wise, we had, you know, specific instructions for everybody, and we gave them each basically a day of training, all of our, most of our management staff came back last week, the ones that weren't already, had stayed on to do curbside and take out, they came back a week ago, so we've had them really dive into all the procedures, and in preparation and the hourly staff, we kind of did a reorientation for a day, and then, you know, actual operations, it's, you know, riding a bicycle hasn't been that long, but it's the, you know, it's just the reminders, they've been kind of out of practice, they haven't been out in the public as much, so just, you know, the repetitions of when to change your gloves, and all of those things, we know, but we have, we all have to do it as often as we do now.

11:09Yeah, well, that's my next question, is that you're at home all the time, and you're, we're socially distancing, we're not in that kind of environment, what are the things, are there things that people are struggling to adapt, what are the things people are missing, are people not changing their gloves enough, what are the things you'd like to see improvements on? I would say the number one thing people is, I don't think any of us are aware of how much we want to touch our faces, so that has, I haven't necessarily seen it as a problem, but I have had this point, you know, a couple of times over the last few days, like, hey, just, you know, you can't, you have to change your gloves, you just, you know, touch your glasses or whatever, and, and making sure that when they do need to make, because the masks, I mean, when you're in motion, you do have to adjust those when you're in motion, so what we've asked everybody to do is, don't make any adjustments on the floor, go back to the kitchen, make your adjustments, and then wash your hands and get a new pair of gloves, you know, so a lot of it is, you know, just reminders of those types of things, and then also being hyper aware that we are being, you know, we want to be the place where people go in and say, Puckett is doing it right, that's the safe place for us to go, just like I have been with all the period places I've gone to, I have sung the praises of dominoes over and over and over, because they have it down to a science, we want to be that place as a full-service restaurant, we don't want to be the place where someone goes, well, I went to so-and-so, and it was the opposite, they didn't have anything, they weren't doing anything, they weren't, you know, whatever, so a lot of it, you know, it's practical, but as I'm speaking to obviously a rec ops crowd, it's not just practical, it's optics too and marketing, so it's, you know, both going in at hand. Have you had people give you, have you had guests give you feedback as far as, hey, I just saw that person touch their mask, or how hyper vigilant have the guests been in regards to that?

13:15Only from online, from the news, you know, that we've had in the store, everybody has been really great, we have had very positive feedback online, and a handful of people that were watching like the live streams really closely, and we did have one person point out that a server touched her glasses, which actually isn't her face, to be clear, so, you know, but yeah, there are certainly people, you know, I just would say when you are getting to that point, if you are, whether you're operating now or you're waiting for later, that when y'all are posting live videos or pictures or anything that goes online, or if you have a news outlet in, be just hyper aware of whatever's going on in the background, you know, not just what's in the foreground and just pay attention to all the details, obviously, off camera is just as important as on camera, but there certainly are people that are kind of really looking for any minute detail.

14:20And so this is a really good kind of example, so if you are a guest and you're going to go dine at restaurants, and you see like as everybody's adopting to this thing, and restaurant owners are taking a gamble, I mean, I don't think people recognize how much it costs to refill, if you've been closed, to refill your inventory of food, and to get everything going to do this, to train new people who've been at home for a long time, if somebody touches their glasses, there's nothing about that, there's nobody touching their face that you want them to do that, but people are human, and as long as you can see that they're doing everything in their power, there's going to be human error, like, back off a little bit, like, don't go online immediately start chastising people, like, let's let this whole thing play out a little bit, right? You said it. I think everybody's starting to make the best choices for themselves, and it kind of, it reminds me a little bit of the mommy wars, if you're familiar with that whole concept, but because I have chosen to do one thing, therefore, I don't agree with you, that's not the way this should necessarily go, just in the same aspect of this whole thing, everybody's got some very serious decisions to make, we also have the economic pressure, the kind of unintended consequences of the PPP pressure, and also there's just different philosophies behind when to go and when to wait, so I think that a little grace is good, but it is on us to make sure that we are being hypervigilant, because what we have told our staffs over and over and over again is that this is our opportunity to prove ourselves, it's our opportunity to prove that we know what we're doing, and it's also the opportunity to prove that we're ready for this next step, so it's really important, we carry that

16:26very heavily. It's a big gamble, and you kind of just answered some of the questions I was going to ask you earlier, we jumped right into the kind of the employee thing and the HR piece of it, but the decision to open, the governor says you have the ability to open in rural areas, you don't have to, but you have the ability to, 50% capacity, all of these things, what were the deciding factors in you doing that? Did you speak with an attorney? Did they tell, they spell out for everything? Because there's certainly some ambiguity right now around people coming in and contracting the virus and then coming back and are you liable? I mean, there's a lot of stuff surrounding that. What were some of the things that you had to decide when deciding to open and why did you do it? Yeah, I would say obviously a team decision, but Andy Marshall is our team leader and so I have to say that he's handled the decision making on that end and handled it really as a true entrepreneur and leader in our communities and in our company, but we knew that kind of the DNA of our company is, as long as we felt like we had our preparations ready, that when we were told we could go, we would go. If we didn't feel ready, we wouldn't, certainly, but I think that we were already preparing for May 1st and this just pushed it up a few extra days, so we were already in that mindset before the announcement was made and it has been a different story in the rural areas. I think the last I heard, where I'm headed to now is Columbia, Tennessee, and this entire time they've had, I think I've heard 44 cases was the last number I heard. Don't quote me on whether that's accurate today.

18:29Confirmed cases, but it is much lower in the rural areas for sure, so I think those areas are pretty, feeling pretty ready to loosen up a little bit and I think it is, that's the thing about our country is we have such diversity of types of areas, so between rural, urban and the gamut. What was the number one thing that you guys were thinking, like when you're going through this decision-making process, I don't know how many conversations you had with Andy, but what was the biggest thing that would stop you from doing it? Was it just the spread of the disease? Is it sales? I mean, have you guys been able to get concessions on rent, any of that stuff? I think we've done everything everybody else has done possible. Obviously, this has been a huge bomb on the economy of the industry and certainly our company is well included in that. Yes, we're very much in recognition of the importance of the stopping of the spread of disease and that's been a big commerce. How safe do we feel? What do we feel like our procedures are? We've also watched the industries that have stayed open and what are they doing? What are they allowed to do? I would say for better or for worse, they are certainly cracking down on us much, much stronger than the requirements on us are stronger than on say a grocery store or home improvement store. I don't really understand why that is because there are more people going in there every day and I'm not saying at the point, fingers are just, we are happy. Our plan was to go above and beyond whatever the guidelines were.

20:15That's what we're doing and we're happy to do all of those things. I'm not quite sure why that's not the same case for other types of industries that have remained open requirement wise but we're really proud of the fact that we are frankly I think doing more than, well maybe not more than necessary but more than has the government's provided guidelines if that makes sense. It totally does. I don't know if I quite answered your question because I couldn't say there's not one number one thing. No, you did. It's a huge balancing and juggling act between the PPP, the economy, the company's health and the paramount health of our employees and the public. Well, I wish you absolutely nothing but success and I hope that this whole thing is over really soon. I think that I can speak for a lot of people when I say that I'm so excited that you got to bring people back to work. I'm so excited that you got to see those people that you got to share in that moment because I know there's a lot, a lot of people out there who really miss the people they work with, they miss that camaraderie, they miss just seeing people, not just even hugging or anything just saying oh my gosh we're back, we're sharing. I would say that you know the whole thing there's a lot of conversation when people don't want to come back to work if they're on unemployment. You know obviously we have plenty of employees that have made it through the unemployment process. I'm still getting emails as of this week from employees that never got an unemployment check. Wow. Never got one and worked full-time and it's been a complete rush and roulette in that regard so one just got their first payment this last week has been and was full-time for us and they haven't gotten any retro pay yet. I hope that they do. It's just it's been a nightmare. That whole thing has been a complete nightmare. And that's out of your hands, right? That's out, it is. I mean we've done everything that we can. I've resubmitted, I've created amendments for people that we responded to. I've gotten emails from people, as of last week I got an email from somebody that said hey

22:19it still says waiting on employer response. I go in, you know jobs4tn.gov and I submitted it April 7th or whatever the date was and they're still just stuck in this loophole and then others get through fine. It's just been completely confusing you know and yeah I would say those that are back are very excited to be back but also we're very understanding if someone's not ready. Let me ask you one more question about that as we're talking and you may not know the answer to this and I think there's a lot of speculation and it's very unclear as so many things are. If you call people back to work so when you called back half people you said people weren't ready to come back to work for whatever reason. They were afraid, they you know were okay making whatever they're doing, whatever the reason was. You said you put them to the back of the list. Do you have to submit something that says hey we've called people back to work? There's a lot of fear that when people get called back to work and they say they're afraid that they're going to lose their unemployment benefits and I don't think that's the case. You don't have to submit something that says hey we called Joey and he said he doesn't feel safe so there's nothing you have to do, right? Not at this point but I believe that is going to change and what we have and the reason I say that is there's two sources I have. One is the Department of Labor, the Tennessee's website does state that if you have been offered a position your you know obligated your unemployment status could change. I could send you the link if you want I have to find it. I could send it to you.

23:54I also asked this question directly with this wonderful lady. I've somehow got hold of her email and she's periodically answered some questions for me that works for the claims department and she said that they basically were putting together that process. It didn't sound like that was put together at this point. We did temporary layoffs where we did the partial claims process and filed everybody as temporary on a layoff for them and my common sense understanding would be at some point that either becomes and what I put in my frequently asked questions or anticipated questions that I send out to the employees is I don't know what the answer is at this point. At some point it won't be a temporary layoff it either be a permanent layoff or a voluntary separation and I don't know what it's going to be and I unfortunately can't advise on that. My inclination is I don't have a process for it yet and it's a slow moving so you know I don't know that it alleviates necessarily any fears but I don't anticipate that like I have had people come to me and say am I going to lose my unemployment like I don't it's certainly going to be today because they haven't told us how to tell them that you've you know not accepted the position at this time so you know. But at some point they will and at that point you're going to comply because that's what they're asking you to do but you're not out of spite by anybody going you're not coming to work great you're done like there's none of obviously you're not doing that.

25:24I think that's a fear that people have. Everybody on our list to call back are people that you know obviously we want them back and we want to want as a hard of work company to treat people fairly but also we want them to come back and work for us and want to work for us you know we will we do follow the rules if they give us a process we will follow it but we will not do so without letting everybody know okay this is now is the time you know you know I don't I don't wish there was a clear answer but currently there's not. Well of all people I mean I when this whole thing happened I was put on an email the reason why I met you and we talked on March like 20th I think it was that we had a conversation you put together every single resource that you could possibly find on how to help employees you emailed pretty much every independent restaurant operator in the city and you said guys here's a shared folder here's all the information we can possibly find you put it all together but you spearheaded that I mean you are somebody that has constantly been fighting for the employees since day one and I think that is just amazing and I thank you for that and you're just one of the people out there that's really trying to help and do the right thing and I just I just want to say that that's amazing thank you for coming on the show again you are a beacon for awesomeness in this city of Nashville let me ask you one last thing any advice for anybody out there who's contemplating this what are the if you were to give one kind of final this is what you have to do what can you be doing right now to prepare to avoid any of the pitfalls you may have encountered in the past 48 hours what do you got sure I think the first and foremost thing is you've got to go with your instinct in your gut whether you're ready or not you know your staff the best you know your procedure is the best you know how comfortable you are the best and how you are going to lead to the leader is going to set the tone for your staff so if you're not

27:24ready you're not ready if you're ready then you then you know follow your instinct but I think um I think that really need to think through making sure you have a checklist for sanitation a checklist for how you're bringing back employees you know do not take this by the seat of your pants and we can get you really need to have all of the procedures in place and pay very close attention to the details and give your employees the language when you know that's one thing that we've had to do is give them the language to regulate gas you know yeah you know it's a whole other thing um not to get off topic at the end of the conversation but you know it's um you know just over prepare and if you're not open yet now's the time to be preparing I love what you just said I gave the advice of like a month ago but I said as to a GM who was coming into the restaurant I said no matter what you do you need to remain positive because every single person in this building is looking to you to decide how they're going to be that day everybody's scared nobody knows what to do but this is where real leadership comes out and you every single day doing your homework being prepared coming in and leading your team will help everything you walk in one day and go oh this is such BS why do we have to do this stuff it gives every single person the okay to go oh the the leader thinks that this is BS so I can think that way too but they look to you if you're leading people through this and you're doing it the right way people will follow you and that's the way you're going to be able to reopen and I just love that you said that because it's it's essentially that if you know you're going to be reopened you're ready to do it do it don't do it and then kind of halfway through go oh this is stupid because it's not going to work yeah absolutely so thank you so much Claire I really appreciate you coming on today I'll let you get back to your day everybody in Nashville thanks you for giving us just kind of the ones and twos if you come up with anything you think of anything

29:28send me a message I'll be happy to share it all right thanks so much for any time all right have a great day thanks you too big thanks to Claire Crowell for coming on Nashville Restaurant Radio and just kind of talking about her experience she has always been somebody who has been just the pillar of professionalism in this industry and it's an honor every time she does come on the show so thank you guys for listening hopefully this is helpful hopefully it's not clear as mud now if you want to do this if you want to reopen drone decision be ready like she said put checklist together rabbit hunt this thing out try and identify every single scenario and every single thing that could potentially go wrong and find the solution proactively put systems in place to make sure that all of these things happen flawlessly make sure that you're securing masks gloves you have all of those things you're ready to go and god bless you get out there make it happen see your friends but be safe and I hope that you all out there are being safe and I will talk to you soon love you guys bye