Claire Crowell

00:00Y'all, today we are talking, as always, about SuperSource. And you know, one cool thing about SuperSource is did you know that they develop most of their cleaning products and chemicals in their in-house facility? They're environmentally conscious and only use dyes that are safe for the employees and the environment. They carry a number of products for keeping your dishes, flatware, services, floors, restrooms, laundry, basically your entire facility, clean, bright, and smelling and feeling new. This is just one of the many reasons SuperSource is taking over this city for dish machine and chemicals. You need to call Jason Ellis. His number is 770-337-1143. And he would love it if you would give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation, meet him, say hi, see if there's any way he can help. He is here to help you succeed. That's Jason Ellis with SuperSource. 770-337-1143.

01:01Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. And welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service and we've got a fun episode today. We are talking with Claire Crowell. She is the president at A. Marshall Hospitality as well as the CEO of Hattie Jane's Creamery. So last time she was on the show, gosh, I think it was two years ago, she was talking about Hattie Jane's Creamery, brought us some amazing ice cream. And now she's back. She's back at it at A. Marshall Hospitality, which if you're not familiar with A. Marshall Hospitality, that's Puckett's, Deacon's, Americana Tap House.

02:09I think they have like 10 locations. But this was a fun episode because she also does this really cool thing. She has this collective called Out of the Weeds and it's a lot of fun. She just writes a bunch of stuff about how to help you with leadership and restaurant stuff. You can find her on Instagram as well as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where she posts a lot of this content or I think you can find it at outofthoweedscollective.com. So this conversation is a lot of inside baseball, a lot of restaurant stuff, a lot of leadership stuff. And I just love geeking out on this stuff and she was more than happy to oblige in that. So hopefully there's some stuff you can get out of this, takeaways and some fun stuff. I will tell you, we've got some amazing episodes coming up. We've already recorded and these are amazing. Next up is gonna be Sean Lyons. He is the managing partner for Up Hospitality, which is Germantown Cafe, Park Cafe in the all new Carrington Row.

03:10After that, we are gonna be talking with Henry Roberts. He is the owner and founder at Two Hands. They have a location on Eighth Avenue as well as a new location in the factory at Franklin, which I recently ate at and was delicious. It's an Australian concept. So it's fun because he is from Sydney, Australia and his voice is really cool and I love that accent. And just an amazing guy, an amazing conversation. I'm really excited to put that one out for you too. And then we're gonna be talking with Olivia Britton. She is the publisher of In Focus Magazine. And by the time all these come out, I'm gonna have an episode that is all about Tennessee flavors, which was the episode we put out yesterday. We spoke with Marcio and Nick and they are both Nashville State alums. And we talked about Tennessee flavors and what that is. So I will be recording at Tennessee flavors on March the 11th, which is Tuesday night.

04:12Tickets are still available if you'd like to go. Maybe you can come be on the show, be a lot of fun. So that episode will be coming out also. So there's four episodes that are gonna be coming out. If you wanna know when these episodes come out, it's really easy. All you have to do is go to Apple podcasts or Spotify and click that subscribe button. This is important. Please do this, I don't ask a lot of this, but please go subscribe to it and then you'll automatically get notified when new episodes come out. Cause I randomly put an episode out yesterday, bonus episode, episode today. They're gonna be coming out fast and furious. Also go follow us, follow us on YouTube. Sometimes I put out videos. You'll get notified when new videos come out, which is full interviews. When I do interviews on Zoom or we do on StreamYard, I go ahead and put those out immediately and you can watch the interview. So if you ever, I think there's like 200 videos up there right now or something close to that, that you can watch past episodes. Love to have you over there.

05:12Follow us on Instagram. That is at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio. And you can see photos and I always post when new episodes come out there. Wow, lots of stuff going on. Hope to see you guys at Tennessee flavors, Music City Food and Wine Festival is coming up later in April. That's what Olivia is coming on to talk about. She's the executive director for the Music City Food and Wine Festival. And then team Heidi is next Sunday, the 16th and that's in Atlanta. And that's like one of the most premier food events I've ever been to. And I highly recommend you, if you can get to Atlanta to go to that one, it's definitely worth it. Lot of food people there, lot of great things to help restaurant workers. So we love that. That's my nonprofit of choice. I'm on the Tennessee Engagement Council and we're gonna be recording live from team Heidi. So stay tuned for that episode. Definitely gonna have some amazing, amazing people on that episode.

06:13So lots of fun things coming up on Nashville Restaurant Radio. It's just been crazy. Lots of fun things. We've got a couple more interviews that we're scheduling out right now. Crystal still slammed with everything she's doing over at Cafe Cheesery at the Frist. If you haven't been over there, please go check that out at Cafe Cheesery. Our studio is now in Franklin. So it makes it a little more difficult to just do pop-up episodes, which I tend to do often. So that's why you're getting just me. I know you miss Crystal and we're gonna bring her back as soon as we can get our schedules aligned to get these things done. But I wanna create content so that you guys have something to listen to on your way in to work. Okay, so I don't wanna waste any more time. Actually, I do wanna waste some more time. It's not really wasting of time, but I do wanna tell you real quick about CNB Linen. And they CNB Linen, they are brand new to town. And if you are unhappy with your linen provider, this is a company that is doing it differently.

07:18And this is a question I get asked a lot is, is randomly, hey, who do you use for linen? Hey, who's your linen people? And they're just, they've come to town and they're doing it differently. I call them the super source of linen company. So if you took my advice and use super source, and a lot of you have, and a lot of you are really, really happy with what Jason Ellis and everybody at super source is doing because they don't offer contracts and neither does CNB Linen. They don't charge you fees either. I beg you, go look at your linen invoice and see if you can read it without some kind of degree and how to read a linen invoice because there's clean green services, there's service fees, there's gas fees, there's a replacement costs. And the replacement costs sometimes cost more than the actual linens themselves. And what is that? Why am I paying that? CNB doesn't play any of those games. They have a flat rate for just the linens, just a flat rate for what your linens are and no fees, no contracts.

08:20And you can order your linens like you order food. You don't have to work on a par system. So you never have to pay for a linen twice, which is something that happens a lot with traditional linen companies. So they're really crushing it. I have exclusive pricing for NARA members. This is what I'm doing with the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance is I'm finding vendors like this that I can trust, that you can trust and I'm negotiating prices so that as a collective, we can all save money. And I've got several vendors on this and I implore you, send me a message on Instagram at Nashville underscore restaurant radio. And you can also find me on Instagram at Brandon Styll. So just find me, it's S-T-Y-L-L. Send me a message and say, hey, I wanna learn more about CNB Linen and I will get you set up. I'll send you over price list. I'll set you up with Krista, Krista Carroll, who's the general manager over there and they are just crushing it.

09:22So wanted to start there, let you know there's an amazing linen company that will help you in every single way. All right, let's get on with Clare Crowell. Super excited today to welcome in Clare Crowell. Clare is the president of A. Marshall Hospitality as well as the CEO of Hattie Jane's Creamery. Hi Clare. Hey, thanks for having me back. Welcome in. Thank you so much. I feel like it's been like a year since the last time I saw you or more. Yeah, that's about right. And a lot has happened. A lot's happened. Last time you were in, you were the CEO of Hattie Jane's and we talked a lot about ice cream and the creamery and hiring kids and all of the things that you are doing. And now you are back to being the CEO or the president at A. You were the chief people officer previously there, right? I was COO and then a CPO.

10:22CPO and now you're the president. Yes, sir. How did that come about? Well, for those of you that don't know, it is my family business. And I left a little about a year after COVID to focus on Hattie Jane's help rebuild and then build that brand and all of that entailed after the devastation of COVID on all businesses and just really focus in on that team. I had two business partners that really held down the fort there. And felt like they needed the time and frankly I needed the time to really focus on that. And so I stepped away to do that and really enjoyed myself getting hyper focused on that, which I hadn't done because we opened Hattie Jane's when I was COO at a Marshall Hospitality and growing. So it was always a side project. So it was really fun to dive really full on into that. But fast forward about three years, the team was becoming very self-sustaining and, which is great, that's what you want as an entrepreneur.

11:32And I started looking for other things to do with my energy and my time. Can I stop you right there? Yes. How do you get a team to be fully self-sustaining? I mean, that seems to be the ultimate challenge. As the CEO there, what do you attribute to getting to a point to where everybody's kind of self-sustaining and autonomous and doing their thing? Well, absolutely it comes down first to the two partners I mentioned. They're both, all three of us have experience in this world of food. Autumn, who is now the COO, we worked together at Puckets. So we've known each other for years. Rhonda is, she has extensive experience before us with Gigi's and she'd been with us since 2017. So first of all, having trustworthy partners. Yeah, that helps. Number one, that are active in the business. But then also we all have a passion for developing others. And it is a small team. I mean, Howdy James is about, well, you know, there in the summer, it's a little different, but the core team's about 30 people.

12:36And a lot of them are very young, but we have a multi-unit manager who's awesome. It's just developing people. And the advantage, of course, of working in that environment is that you're working with a very green, other than the two business partners, very green people that are very eager to learn and just coachable. And coachable. That's the key. Yeah, absolutely. So that's it, aces in places. Aces in places. Other people use that term too. I love that term. Okay, so I interrupted you right in the middle of it. So you've got Howdy James working in the, it's kind of going in the right direction. And then you are kind of like, hey, I wanna do some more things. You're constantly, you're kind of probably like me, you're an entrepreneur, you just want to keep going. You need to be busy. Yeah. So. Yeah, so, and as you know, I started writing Out of the Weeds Collective, which I still do, of course, slow down a little bit. But conversations with my father, Andy Marshall, of course, the founder and CEO of A. Marshall Hospitality developed into whatever come back and then what would that look like?

13:44And so that kind of happened a little faster than I expected after having that initial conversation. But- Is that conversation that you had with Andy about, or were you like at Christmas dinner? And he was like, man, I really need some help on this. And you're like, well, hey, let's go have a glass of wine after dinner. Like, how do you have that? When does that come up with your dad? Well, we talk about business all the time. And it was just a kind of a casual conversation at first that if you ever did, he's always has a retirement plan that's like three to five years out, right? But it's get pushed around each year. And if you know Andy, he's also highly energetic, full of ideas, doesn't like to slow down, but sort of wants to slow down. Has this dream that one day he'll slow down, but you have to relinquish all of the, you have to be able to step out and that's difficult. Yeah, and I just said that if you are going to eventually look for your quote unquote replacement, though there's no replacing you, I just don't want you to think I'm off the table, that I'm open to that conversation in the future, but you know.

14:58So is that the next step? You come in as president and then when he steps down, you take over the whole thing? We'll see, yeah. But that will be your goal. I think so, yeah. Ultimately what you wanna do? My goal is that he gets to do what he wants to do with his time, whether that is spend half the time in business, half not in the business, or dabble in the, yeah, whatever it is, I want him to be able to do that. He's earned that right, for sure. He's worked so hard, our whole family has, so that's my goal. I feel that same way about Steven at our restaurants. I mean, the guy's done it for so long, he's there all the time, he's a visionary, he does everything, and I'm like, I want you to be able to go travel and go do things that you wanna do, because you've put, oh, he's logged so many hours, and I'm like, dude, go enjoy some life for a little bit. I got this kind of a thing, and I totally understand that mentality. So you come back, I'm now the president. Day one, what is, were you signing executive orders right and left? What were you doing?

15:58Well, it was the holidays, so it was really, it was an interesting time to get back. I think it was actually perfect looking back. It was a lot, we have 10 restaurants, and so lots of holiday parties, and just reacclimating and meeting people. So the first four weeks was really just mostly going around to each team and reintroducing myself, meeting people I hadn't worked with before, but also we still have a lot of people that I had worked with. So just getting caught up, and then really, the real work has started in January. But I've taken on just some projects that needed to move. What could I help with as I reacclimate, meeting with our CEO, Lyle? What hasn't moved, because there's not anybody available to do it, and so I've been working on some of those as I just get back into the business. What's an example of something like that? Do you have an example of what, as a president of a company that has 10 restaurants, what's one of those things that you do on a daily basis? Well, one big project I'm doing right now is our beverage menu for Puckets. So that's kind of complicated, went over eight restaurants in different regions.

17:03So that needed to be updated. So that's a project maybe I wouldn't normally always do, but I know this brand inside and out. I know what works in our different communities and what doesn't. So that's something, like a hard project. So you have different drink menus in different communities based around what product mix is, what you're selling? Yeah, slightly, slightly different, like a core, and then we'll change a little bit according to where, some regions prefer sweeter wines, some don't, the beer kind of changes. Of course, that whole category has changed drastically in almost several years. And the non-alcoholic category is really big now too. Are you adding any of that stuff on there? We are, and seltzers. Yeah, what about THC beverages? Are you guys jumping in that water yet? I can see us doing something with that with Deegans or Scouts, maybe not Puckets, though why not also? I mean, that was kind of my take. There's like this stigma around it, like THC, is that a thing?

18:05And then I did it at Chago's in the Green Hills Grill, and people are loving it. And I haven't had one issue with anybody like getting too high or anything. It's just that if you don't drink and you kind of want something different, it's been a really nice kind of a change. Yeah, that's interesting. Kind of wanted to be on the front end of it. So when it did kind of blow up, it's like we were one of the people that had it at the beginning. I don't know why that meant something to me, but I was like, I just want to jump on and be an early adopter. I love that. It's a thing, I don't know. Now, so when you do that, do you negotiate with your liquor vendors and leverage purchasing? Because hey, look, if I'm gonna put this on the menu, I'm gonna get all of these things. And you don't have to tell me specifics on that, but I think that it's an underestimated part of what we do when you put together a beverage menu for 10 restaurants. Hey, if I put this beer on there, you're gonna sell a ton of it, and then does that help you for allocations, pricing? What do you do in that regard? Yes, yeah, absolutely.

19:05So those of you who don't know, there's a different pricing for bottle versus case versus cocktail. If I'm gonna put it in a cocktail listed on the menu, that price should be lower because we're gonna move more of that product than if it's just on the shelf. And so leveraging those, it is a little tricky working with distributors across being in Middle Tennessee, East Tennessee, and now Alabama, which is a control state. Yeah. So basically what I've done since most of our restaurants are here in Middle Tennessee, I've worked with those distributors and sometimes having to go to the actual product and saying, what can we do? And then saying, who carries you here and there? And that's why Puckets is complicated in that way, as opposed to doing just one menu at one location. So I've taken the prices that we've negotiated here and gone to those distributors to East Tennessee and said, can you match this? And just trying to make sure that all of those pieces fall into place. And then knowing in Alabama, I just don't have that luxury. It's just a different world.

20:07For spirits. Now wine and beer, yes, but spirits, they literally have to go to the ABC store and purchase it. It's so different. Does it just get delivered? Do you have to go to the store and buy it and bring it back? That's how we do it. I'm Coleman opened in my absence, so I'm still educating myself on how that is. If you had multiple restaurants, I don't know, actually, I really just don't know the answer to that question, but I know that we do drive over to the ABC store, get our liquor and then bring it back. It's so different. It's so different thing about anything that we do here. You can't do anything like that here at all. It's almost like that's more convenient. You can just go shopping. From one place. From one place, you can just kinda go, oh, I need one bottle of this or whatever. Instead of having to put in multiple orders, definitely pros and cons I can see. I just think it's interesting. We talked to a lot of restaurant owners that have like one restaurant or maybe two and they're in the building and they're struggling and the sewage is backing up and my dishwasher didn't show up and this and this and this versus really going in and negotiating a menu for 10 restaurants.

21:15There's a lot of moving pieces in there why you would be doing something like that. Yes, absolutely. And why it hadn't been done in a few years just because it needs so much attention and there's not just the negotiation but then you think about just the logistics of, we use Aloha, of getting everything updated accordingly in the back of house is a whole nother, rigmarole. There's a ton of that and then all the recipes for all of the drinks and theoreticals and you have to put all that in place and how are you gonna price them? You're not just gonna go, well, they charged this. You're gonna see what you paid for it and what your percentage is gonna be and that's how you should do it. Yep, absolutely. We do a little market research, try not to overkill. Let's just go to a few different restaurants in each area. Make sure we're not off base and then we work on just exactly the recipes and what the cost of goods are and try to hit it. We're not gonna do anything. Puckets we wanna keep it simple but surprisingly, it's like a level we like to hit.

22:18We don't want it to be oversimplified but not over complicated. It's just right in the middle. You know what we call it? Because we're very similar at our restaurants. You're never gonna learn a new, wow, I've never had that before. We serve good food people like to eat. That's it, we're gonna serve good food, high quality ingredients that you're gonna know and love. It's like comfort food. It's just good food people like to eat and we try and do it the best we possibly can as consistent as possible. I feel like Puckets is similar in that. You're gonna know everything, all the ingredients. It's gonna taste good and it's what it is. Yeah, we don't wanna alienate anybody but we also don't want to phone it in. So like the coffee, Mule Town coffee, shout out, it's good. We want it to taste like that's a good cup of coffee. Just very simple, very straightforward. Same thing with the wine. I wanted the wine to be accessible but good. Yeah, I love that. Our coffee is admittedly not good at our restaurants. Well, we use community coffee. I mean, I would love to use like a Mule Town or an 8th and Roast or Frothy or something like that but we don't sell a lot of coffee.

23:23Well, we have a breakfast restaurant. 90% of our coffee is drank by the staff. Yeah, exactly. So it's like if you're gonna double the price of your coffee, we need to sell more or we have like a jar. It's a consideration for sure. It's a thing. All right, so thank you for indulging me in that. So now you're back, you're the president and are you enjoying it? Are you finding fulfillment? I mean, you were doing, how do you change? You wanted more, have you found more? Yeah, definitely more. There's a beverage and so my focus is strategy and the brand and culture. So I'm working with the marketing teams. I'm working with our HR, our training. We're getting ready to implement our first, well, I shouldn't say first. We did one before, it just didn't work that well. Learning management system. We've decided on ExpandShare. So we use restaurant 365 for all of our accounting and this is a new affiliate of theirs, which is nice because it'll flow like when we onboard or offboard somebody, it'll be in the system automatically.

24:25Those types of little things really, really count by really, we haven't implemented it yet, but I really like the product so far as we're building it out. So, because before we were just using paper and Google Forms and to do all of our tests and training and everything, so this will be something we can track, but it's very simple, which I really like. That's really good. We use ADP and it's not, it's not simple. I mean, it's just, it's a real pain to deal with. Sorry ADP, this is what it is. I mean, I guess it's okay now, but it was a real pain to implement. It was like a year and a half of like, what are we doing? Training platform on there too? Yeah, we've, you can go on there and the handbook is there and all of the different things are there and people can onboard themselves there. You can go online and do all of the things. It makes it a little easier, but it's not, it's not as easy, it doesn't sound like what you're about to start doing is seamless.

25:27We'll see. We'll see. That's how this stuff works, you know? You're like, well, we'll try it. Excuse me. Absolutely. Where did you learn about that? Sharpies Bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They've been operating in Nashville since 1986, providing high quality fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals and universities. Their bread is free from preservatives and artificial additives. Learn more at sharpies.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com or you can give Erin Mosso a call directly. Her number is 615-319-6453. That's Sharpies Bakery. Hi, this is Matthew Clements with Robins Insurance Agency. Do you own a restaurant, bar, catering company? Well, we're the insurance company for you. We have a specific program dedicated to the hospitality industry.

26:29We'd love to work with you. Give me a call today, 863-409-9372. We'd love to see if you'd be a good fit for our hospitality program. Again, Matthew Clements with Robins Insurance, 863-409-9372. So they were already looking at, the team before I came back on was already looking at some learning management systems. So what that just means, LMS is kind of the term, but it's just training. It's a training system. How are you training your people? And it's a platform. And we had tried one before years ago that really wasn't built for restaurants. So even though it had various videos and things already built in, it was really clunky to put in our own materials. Of course, technology has come a long way. Now AI is kind of integrated as well. So what's cool about this, they had already looked at that. We already are invested in Restaurant 365 for our accounting and our scheduling and everything. So Jamie, our HR manager had already done a demo and I asked her just to introduce me and fingers crossed that I liked it.

27:37Because if I liked it, then I knew that it was going to be a lot easier on us to not have a whole nother, you just end up with 20 different logins for various platforms for everything. And then you have to, when you were onboarding somebody, the poor team has so many things to add people to and so many people to take them off when they leave. So this would be one less. It is another app, but the onboarding and offboarding is sync. So what I like about it is there is AI translation built in so they can choose their language to read certain materials in all of the videos. So we can put on our own stuff, videos, whatever, PDFs, but there's some built in like HR training, harassment training, all those kinds of things that are important, but they're made only for restaurants. That's the nice thing about it. Whereas a lot of times you watch those and it's all good. And you watch those and it's like an office setting and it just doesn't really apply.

28:43It's not a restaurant. Yeah, it's a little different in our world. So it's nice. Well, again, thank you for indulging me into that too. What do you do for R&D? Like when you said when you're doing like the drink menus, maybe you'll go check out a plate to make sure that you're not, but where do you get inspiration every day? Like if you're getting up in the morning, going to work, or when you're looking for new ideas, any of it, where do you find that? Yeah, well, I have a lot of friends in the business at this point that are all inspiring and watching what they do for sure locally, but paying attention, you know, I listened to your podcast, obviously, I listened to Cherry Bomb, which is mostly women owned businesses, which can be a gamut between restaurants, chefs, and also writers. And, you know, I just try not to overdo it. It can take up all your time, but just look, you're just paying attention to what others are doing, but I have to give a shout out to Gordon Food Service. They have taken us on trips several times.

29:46Trends tours? Trends tours, exactly. They're the best, aren't they? They are. This is the funnest things that you do. Yeah. So, you know, that is a great, if you're an independent restaurant owner, just like plug in with your main broadliner, they offer so much. And we do work mostly with GFS. So we have a great relationship with them, but they want to educate you for sure. So that's one thing we do as well. I'm glad you did that. So I will go on a little bit of a tangent here. Yeah, please do. But like I, we're doing our vendor to go, we just had all of our presentations. We do an RFP every three years. We put our business out for bid. And we have, I'm very specific. I put all of our usage together. I'm very specific as to what we want. And with our three restaurants, I said the hardest thing, anybody can put a margin schedule together and show me what that looks like. But where does the partnership come from? And I asked every vendor, I said, I want a trip every year for my leadership team where we do like a trend tour, where we go to a different city and we go to like five different restaurants and you'll want to order one of everything on the menu.

30:53And you just, and some of the different vendors were like, well, I mean, that's not something we do. And Gordon Food Service was like, heck yeah, we'll do a major city every year. We'll do this, we'll do this, we'll do this. And they had so many things. And for us, I'm one of three people that works in all three restaurants. And when you have a similar culture across the board, doing stuff like that where you can bring the chef or the GM or whatever from different restaurants and you go to Asheville and you go to five different restaurants in a night and you try like one of everything on the menu. It's a fun thing that brings everybody together and you get to see how other people present plate presentations and you laugh and you talk. And it's like, it's all work, but it's also fun. And I think that's something more broadliners should do. Yeah, absolutely. All of the above. We've gotten so much out of those trips and I'm looking forward to jumping back into some of that type of thing. But when you travel, you're always eyes wide open when you're in this business and looking at everything.

31:53Because it's hard when you're home to get out of your bubble. People always ask me, they always ask me what are my favorite restaurants in Nashville. I'm like, I don't go anywhere. I have kids, I work full time, we live on a farm. If I'm going to a restaurant, it's gonna be one of mine with a few exceptions. So I usually name some of my friend's restaurants that I have enjoyed in the past, but I just haven't gotten to in a long time. And they're going away. Local restaurants are getting few and far between with all the big chains coming to town. It's kind of sad, honestly, sometimes. We were in Colorado week before last. And I'm gonna get into some out of the weeds, collective stuff. I wanted to learn about you and what you're doing coming back in to be the president. What is that? How did that happen? And I think we've touched on that. We can certainly talk more about that. But what I love is that you take your free time and you write, it's called out of the weeds collective, outoftheweedscollective.com.

32:59And then you can follow Claire on LinkedIn where she posts different things about that. But it's really a really thought provoking as you're going along and you see something that people might not focus on, you do it. So I want to get in the weeds with you and just kind of geek out on some real inside baseball stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned, you mentioned going out to eat when you're out of town or seeing stuff, your eyes are always wide open. We were in Colorado, we went to the Gaylord, we were in like, we were skiing and we came back and we were staying at like the airport, early flight the next day. So we came back and stayed in Denver, but the Gaylord Rockies was like right next to our little hotel we were staying in. And so we went there and there was a steakhouse and we walked to the, we sat down at the bar and we sat there for 12 minutes. Didn't leave, I'm just waiting, no bartender. Finally the bartender shows up, he's right in front of us on a POS and he's slammed. You can just tell, he's got five tables on top of the bar, definitely needed another bartender.

34:01And he looks at me, he's like, I'll be with you guys in a minute. And we're like, okay, you know, I'm just kind of, I'm watching everything at this point. I'm just going, what is going on right now? I'm not mad, I'm just, I want to now find the root cause. Of what is happening. And finally he says, okay, what do you guys want to drink? And I said, I'll do a Heineken 0.0 and he got like a Negroni or something. And he goes, okay, and then he pulls 10 tickets off the printer and sets them there and starts making those drinks. I also ordered an appetizer at the same time. He makes all of the drinks on the well first. Doesn't make our drinks. We're two people, there's four people sitting at this long bar. There's not, let all the people sit at the bar. Appetizers come, we still haven't had waters. It's 27 minutes after we sat down. And I'm watching servers do flybys of the well. They're kind of walking by looking. The manager comes by and stands there and is kind of like watching. And the manager is like, hey, I'm gonna go down to housekeeping for a minute, you know, and then they walk away and I'm like.

35:06My palms are getting sweaty. Right, and I'm sitting here with the owner of our restaurants and he's like, what the fuck is going on? And I'm like, hey, they're short of bartender. Somebody called out today. And my contention was, this is why it is so important to have a plan as a leader going into the shift. If you know you're gonna be short of bartender, don't be the manager that just stands there and watches. Hey. Watches him drown. Literally the manager is just standing there watching. But also, well, so long story short, the guy that brought our food brought us silverware and app plates and a water. And then finally the guy turns around, opens a can and hands it to me. I mean, two seconds to do for my little drink. And 30 minutes later, hey, can we order food? You know, we wanna order entrees too. We're hungry, we're eating dinner. And the long story short, we finished the meal and I took a picture of Steven signing the check like this because his plate was still in front of him. The guy handing the check over his plate, so we had to sign it like this.

36:09And I was like, this was just terrible. On the way home, I said, whose fault was that tonight? Whose fault do you think it was? And Steven said, I think it was the bartender. And I said, I think it was the manager. I think it was A, not having enough staff and B, not helping. And he goes, he should have asked for help. What do you think? I think it's so layered. There's so much going on there. Yeah, the manager should have helped. It was a nice restaurant. Yeah, should have helped and also should have recognized and also wondering how well was this person trained if they're not thinking through steps of service. You know, yes, common sense is really important. Not everybody has it or it doesn't come naturally at everybody, I should say. So recognizing that as a manager and not just piecing out the housekeeping is really, really important. And maybe that- There's two managers. They both were just kind of like walking around. Yeah, yeah. I do think it ultimately always falls on the leader, whether it's having the wrong person in place or not helping or what have you.

37:18But it sounds like somebody was really drowning and couldn't see the forest for the trees. They were in the weeds. They were way far in the weeds. Once you get there, there are a lot of people, especially if they're not really experienced with handling that, just whatever's right in front of me. And that's a natural place to go. And so he had these 10 tickets in front of him and that's just plodding through those. Everybody's staring at him. I mean, he was where you are right now to me. He was standing right there just making drinks. I was like, I can see that it's right there. Will you just hand it to me? Like, and it was like this. And I said, do you think I could get that? And he goes, these were in before you. And I was like, I think I saw them all. But anyway, it's okay. I know. But it was a tough- I feel bad. I know it was a tough situation. And I wasn't, like I said, I wasn't like mad, but I was- But you can see it all happening. As a restaurant guy, I'm sitting there watching and the servers doing the drive-bys was the thing they kept coming by, see if their drinks were there. Then they just peace out. And I'm like, nobody said, hey, do you need some help? Can I go greet your table over here?

38:18Can I water your table? What do you need? Are there any drinks? I can't make the complicated ones. Are there any beers I can pull for you? Yeah. It was an interesting situation. Yeah. It's okay to ask for help, but sometimes you just get so far down that asking for help feels impossible. Like I don't even know what to ask for. I think that's where he was. And that's my contention. I was like, oh, the guy was hustling. He wasn't like on his phone messing around. Like the guy was full on in the weeds. And I knew that. And then what do you do? I mean, I wanted to jump back there and help him. I'm like, can I get you some ice? What do you need? Like let me get in there. Obviously we can't do that, but what do you think the biggest issue, like the biggest thing that people don't recognize they're doing wrong is in restaurants. Just in general that you may observe if you go out or you think that just from talking to other restaurateurs, what do you think is something that is some knowledge you can spit? Well, I think we just touched on one which is asking for help. Big one. It's a huge one.

39:19Cause a lot of people just don't know who to ask. It's embarrassing to ask. And you know, I'm talking more about, yes, on a shift, that's one thing, but also just as an operator, whether you're a manager or an owner is just, what is everybody else doing? And that is really what I started writing about. Cause I felt that so hard young in my career is like, I grew up in my own family's business. We had our little bubble. We were developing things on our own, just little things, checklists, side work, all of those things were just made up. And then at some point I got introduced to restaurantowner.com, which was like in its early days. And they had all these templates. I was like, oh, thank God. You know, I use that because I didn't know anybody else in the business. Now I do and developing those relationships of trustworthiness, because I think people just don't want to look stupid and ask what they think are stupid questions when we're all doing the same thing.

40:20Unless you work for a big corporate restaurant that has those systems, as independent restaurants, we're just all making it up as we go and trying to make educated decisions and put systems in place. But most of it's being built from the ground up. And some of the people who were hiring, I mean, I'm not, I don't want to disparage a community. I'm not saying that this community is, it's the most amazing community I've ever been a part of. That's why I continue to be a part of it. But sometimes the people that are there as servers or bartenders or anybody have been told in their life that they weren't good enough, have been told that they weren't whatever, and they don't want to ask for help. They're prideful. There's a side of it that you have to almost create a culture that says, raise your hand, raise your hand. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to not do that. And you have to like write that in and really let people feel safe. And model it. And model it. You have to model it. You can't just say it as a leader. If they don't see you asking for help or they don't see you taking time off or don't see you turning off your notifications every now and then, they're never gonna do it because they want to emulate what you do and they want to, and not only emulate it, but also want to impress you as a leader.

41:33And if you don't do that yourself, if you don't model what you want to see and you want to make okay in your business, it's never ever gonna happen. Hey guys, wanted to tell you about Black Sheep Tequila. Yes, it is a Nashville-based tequila, but they are from Mexico and they are producing a premium tequila. They own the fields. They own the distillery. Actually, this tequila won double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition four years in a row. That means it is the best tequila in the world. And you can get it today through Ajax Turner. You know, we just had Henry Roberts, who's the founder and owner of Two Hands in the studio. And I said, hey man, do you drink tequila? Why don't you have a sip? And he took a sip and he said, man, this is the best tequila I've ever had. And I said, yeah, I apparently, that's what everybody keeps telling me. That's what the World Spirits Competition says. So he loved it. And I know that you will too.

42:35You need to have it on your back bar or pick it up at your local liquor store. It is called Black Sheep Tequila. Another beverage you are thinking about doing right now, I know you're like, do we need to do THC? The non-alcoholic movement is strong. Ask my sister over at Killjoy. She's getting tons of press and she is selling tons of Calexo. Calexo is a premium non-alcoholic hemp derived THC beverage. It's a low dose. It's only five milligrams of THC, but it also has five milligrams of CBD. Very low dose, very nice option to have. They have three flavors, cucumber, citron, semi-tropic, as well as citrus rose. This is the best tasting THC beverage I've ever had. It is that good. You can go back a couple of weeks and hear the entire story of Calexo when the owners, Ken and Ian, came on the podcast to tell their story.

43:37They're one of the originals. Their idea for formulating it was organic and it's an amazing product. You can pick it up through Lipman Brothers or you can find it at Killjoy in East Nashville or you can find it at fine liquor stores everywhere. I tell leaders, new leaders, one of the things I said, when you walk in the door, whatever you're doing, whatever mood you're in, whatever you're doing gives permission for the entire team to do that. You set the pace. If you come in and you go, oh, I hate this lady at table 24 and oh, we have so many reservations, this shift's gonna suck. Guess what? The shift is gonna suck because that gives permission to every other personal staff to go, the manager thinks it's gonna suck, it's gonna suck and then you have bad shifts. They're gonna mirror whatever you're feeling for the day. And that feels heavy and it is heavy. And I think that's really important to understand as a leader is that it is a heavy lift. You can still do it but it's not that you have to be peppy all the time but you need to be encouraging as much as possible.

44:42Yeah, at least a positive way or find a solution. I had a situation a couple weeks ago where Sunday morning we had three people call out and I used this example when we were in the car when I said, whose fault do you think that was? And I will give this manager props because I was pretty tough on her that morning but we had three people call out and I came in, that was a Sunday morning and I said, why are we short staffed? I couldn't give mails on the phone, the flu was going around and these three people just called out and I can't do anything and I was like, what could we have done differently? Could you have contacted, because this is like the third week in a row, something like this had happened and I said, could you have contacted everybody yesterday? Could you have talked to three people and said, I need you on call, will you answer your phone in the morning? There's a way you can proactively, this is the third week in a row, we keep letting this happen, we've gotta lead people to be here and while we were short, she came up to me five minutes later and she goes, I know that I'm short and I understand that but here's my plan.

45:43I have a party that comes in at one, I've got this person in this section and they're gonna take these six reservations in this time and then they're gonna transfer to this party. I've got two bar, I'm pulling a bartender and putting them in that section. Other than that, I've got every single table plotted, everything should be okay, there should be anything, I'm on the floor, I'm watching this, I know when the bartender moves over here, I'm gonna move towards watching the bar and I was like, well, that's a hell of a plan. I was like, that's a great plan in place for what cards you were dealt today and I thought that was just really a great thing to do, to have that plan and I go, I don't think that manager at that restaurant had a plan. They were just like, oh, we're short somebody, we'll be fine and then didn't do anything about it and that's where I said it was the manager's fault. Absolutely. So I don't know if there was a question in there, it's just a story. No, I agree. Wholeheartedly. So when I said what are the things that you think that people do, like the biggest issue, you said. Asking for help.

46:44Asking for help, yes. What are some other things you write about out of the weeds? What are some other things you've noticed? I think today, or just I know, I screenshotted something that you wrote and I thought it was really cool. Just like, this is the kind of stuff you put out there. Most restaurant managers don't feel like they manage their time, time manages them. Between running shifts, handling vendors, writing schedules, responding emails, the extra work piles up fast and what's the usual fix? Do it from home, lose out on personal time or burn out. But what if you could take control instead? Here's how, create time slots to shift, block out when they must be on the floor, build in time for deep work, be realistic about interruptions. This won't make every day perfect, but it will give you the framework you need to get things done and actually enjoy your time off. That's just really good practical advice. Yeah, and I think it's really hard, because I don't know, I think over the years that I am a bit of a nerd in terms of like organizational culture and everything and listening to or reading, you know, time management and being productive. Only like 50% of that applies to our world because point in case the story you just told, every day gets disrupted by you never know what.

47:53And it's so- You never know. You never know, and so it's hard to tell somebody, schedule your deep work first thing in the morning and you know, and it's just like all of those things that you hear that sound awesome just don't apply to shift work and to interruptions and call outs and guests, you know, holding you kinda- Equipment breaking. Equipment breaking, you know, it's just- HVAC, I mean- So doing the best you can to work with the time that you have is really, really important so you don't just look up and the day's gone and now I still have to write the schedule and so I guess I'll do it at home and you know, and all those, and that's, it is going to happen, like that's going to happen, but if you can prevent it from happening so that you can have a life outside of the restaurant, it's so important, because that is why people burn out is it just, they allow it to take over their lives or they have bosses that push it to make them, it takes over their life. So, you know, it's really, really important to try to safeguard your time and to work with what you've got and be intentional with the time blocks that you can create and scheduling that time, you know, when I worked downtown at Puckets in Nashville, we did get to the point where we were so busy that I had to schedule an admin day or I wasn't gonna get anything done.

49:09Now, if I were working at a slower restaurant, I wouldn't recommend that, I would just recommend using the one or two hours on the shoulders of your, you know, before and after your shifts or your, you know, your busy time rush, that's the word I was looking for. And, you know, doing it then, so it just really depends on your situation and being able to, but I'd like, you know, in that particular post, I link to a longer form article that has a template where you can just kind of plot out what does an ideal shift look like, depending on close, open, mid, and sketching that out so that you have some kind of framework that you can fall back on when you do have the time. And I think not showing up every day and just responding. Yeah. I mean, so, I think so many people, this business is so crazy and it can wear you out, especially, I mean, I am beat down today. Yeah. It was a hell of a weekend. Yeah. I mean, Valentine's weekend. Always. All time record at Maribou and sales on Friday night.

50:12Congratulations. For Valentine's day. That's great. But like, I got home and I was like shaking. I was so tired. I mean, that was just beat, and then here you are on Monday and let's keep it going. But it's not, when you wake up every day and you just show up to work and then you start responding, you stay in the weeds. Yeah. I think you have to work a day in advance. I think if you open the next day, you need to look at who you have scheduled and you need to know what you're looking at opening. If you have that team, if you have people, if you can look at the reservations, you can know what's gonna happen the day in advance. You can start planning for that. So you're not walking into a shit show of, well, great, nothing's done. Nothing's happened. You can plan that. And I think that's a way I need to do the schedule between two and four. I've got this person coming in. Maybe you need to call the other manager and say, can you come in 30 minutes early because I have to get this done. That will cover me on the floor so that I can go. Whatever it is, I just think that you have to be proactive. Yeah. And I just don't, I don't see a ton of that.

51:14I mean, we have really good managers, but it's just a, it's a hard thing to do. Yeah. It's easier to say than to be done. Well, what you just said was asking for help. That's another thing. It's like, hey, can you come in early? Some people feel pretty bad, but here's what I've got going on. And then you can reciprocate. Yeah, I'll come in tomorrow or do whatever I can to help out. Yeah, exactly. We call that loving your community. Yeah. It's our core value that's based around that. Do you guys have a listed core values at Puckett's or A. Marshall? Yeah, absolutely. You know, personal growth is one of them, like developing people, growing others from an inside out. Culture of excellence is something we talk about a whole lot. Servant's heart is probably not Andy's number one. And, you know, just kind of, we use those types of things to vet people too. And I think servant's heart being- Like when you interview people? Yeah, when the part of the screening and how we put the listings out there, how those are worded, how we screen, and then how we interview.

52:15But those two things probably, well, yeah, all of them are really important, but servant's heart being the number one. That's our niche. Which kind of falls into the community. Yeah. Yeah, serving each other. We have interview questions based around the core values. How do you think you'd be remembered at your previous job? Yeah. Because remember me as one of ours. We want to remember the guests. We want you to be memorable for the right reasons. So we have these little ways in which that's, and it's funny because if you believe in those core values and it really drives your business, it's amazing how you can fall back on them in any of these moments. And so many people don't have them listed. It's not something, it's just, oh, we know what they are. Like, hmm. Yeah, somebody is determining your core values. So is it you? Or is it, you know, the lowest person, but like the person at the lowest level of energy that is dragging everybody else down? Usually it's the one who's... Yeah, whoever's the most vocal really is who it is.

53:17And so you have to be vocal about it. You gotta build it in. You gotta repeat it all the time. Otherwise somebody else is doing it for you and it might not be what you want. I have this, I do another podcast. It's called Shut Up and Thrive. And it's with my, I have a business coach. Her name is Deborah Sunderland. And she teaches the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Are you familiar with this book? I've heard that, but I've not read it. It's fantastic. But she has this thing that she says, the world's gonna whirl and you can't stop it. You can't control the world. It's not, every day, it's just the world's gonna whirl. And there's nothing good, there's nothing bad. There's only results. Everything is a result, right? So whatever your wine cost, beer cost, what time you show up for work, what you're wearing. I mean, whatever it is, it's just a result of whatever it is. And she says, what part do you play in the results you don't want?

54:17And it was like the most powerful thing I'd ever heard in my life when she said that to me. I was like, well, I don't understand that. She said, everything is a result. If the food cost was 34% and that's not what you want, what part did you play in that? And if you can back that out, you kind of put you in every single thing in the world. It's not a micromanaging thing, but it's a really powerful statement. And I try and teach, I'm trying to teach that to every person of this personal accountability. If three people didn't show up for your shift today for the third week in a row, what part do you play in the result you don't want? How can you proactively go through and fix that so it doesn't happen again? And I think it's been helping. Instead of just letting it happen to you and throwing up your hands. Well, I think that's enough. There's an element to that, certainly, but how much can you influence the results? There's a part of the 15th movement that says, what are you above the line or below the line? And below the line is the to me world where everything happens to me.

55:20It either happens by me or through me, but by me is where you wanna be, where you're leading intentionally every single day, and not just letting things happen to you because you're a victim of the world. And so it all falls around, but it's really fascinating stuff. It gets very deep. Sorry, I don't wanna get there, but I think that's a big issue is blame, is that everybody's trying to figure out who did whatever they did, and it's not a, what part do I play in this? It's just a constant finding out whose fault something is, you know? Yeah, I think it's important how you frame it to the personal accountability versus blame, or two different sides of the same coin, and teaching people, I'm not trying to blame you for three people not showing up, but how could you have influenced this situation knowing that we have been, just picking at that example, going through, everybody's been sick for the last several weeks, so how can we be proactive to avoid this happening to us again?

56:26100%. And that's the coaching I went through, and I haven't had it happen again. We changed our entire policy around calling out because of it. Like, we went through- Tell me more. Well, this could be controversial. Okay, you don't have to tell me more. No, but I'll say it, I mean, look, when you're scheduled for a shift, it's your shift. You need to get it covered. If you can't work, then get on the phone and call somebody to get it covered. If you just call out for a shift, then you're putting extra stress on the manager. I mean, I have a full digital checklist of things we have to do to open a restaurant, and if you have three people call out, and that's just on the manager to fix, and they've gotta get on the horn, and our mission is what can I do to make every guest a repeat guest, right? It's a simple, but that is a QBQ is the other book we love, but it's a question that asks, what can, put yourself into the solution, right? So what can I do to make every guest a repeat guest? Calling out right before a shift isn't making every guest a repeat guest.

57:29That's your fault. It's also not loving your community. It's not do the right thing, and there's a lot of core values that that doesn't necessarily cover, but if you get on the phone and start calling people, and there's extended circumstances for all of this, of course. There's always an asterisk. If you're in the hospital and you've had a heart attack, no, I'm writing you up, man. You need to make the phone call. Look, there's extended circumstances, I get it, but for the most part, hey, I partied last night, and I don't want to come in today. I'm not feeling well. Then you need to get somebody on the phone. You need to get it covered. So that's kind of our thing, isn't it? I know that's controversial. I think that's pretty standard, but this is something I really thought deeply about, Heidi Janes, and I haven't come to a solution, is because restaurants have a larger team at the ice cream shop, it might be one or two people. If someone calls out 10 minutes before their shift, then it's not opening. It's usually just one person, so we've still trying to figure out that solution. Do we move to an on-call situation? I've talked to people that run hospitals just trying to think through how that works in terms of how they have an on-call system, like a fail safe, so make sure somebody's always there as much as possible, and you're still thinking deeply about that to alleviate that issue.

58:47Yeah, I mean, I said before, again, if you're the manager tomorrow morning and you've got five servers coming on for the morning, and those three of those five servers are working the night before that you're there, hey, you're working tomorrow morning, so make sure you're coming in, right? You're good? We got a busy morning. I like eye contact and two thumbs up. I finish lineups and I say, okay, so everybody understands exactly what we're talking about today. Everybody's good on the fish special tonight. Can everybody sell it? Yep, two thumbs up, look me in the eye. You can sell it, everybody knows it, and then they all go, got it, got it. One person's like, I don't really know it. You go, cool, let's go over it again, but I need visual confirmation from everybody that you understand what the expectations are for the shift, because then I can go back and hold you accountable for those things. I can say, hey, you fully understood. You gave me two thumbs up and you looked me in the eye and told me your focus was full hands in, full hands out tonight, and you haven't done it once. So, and I wouldn't phrase it that way, but also, it's one minute manager stuff.

59:49It's one minute goal setting, and then it's, thank you for doing that, I see you doing it, or it's a redirect. It's a, hey, remember we talked about that? You told me yes, let's do that again. Which is a lost art, the one minute manager, in my opinion, I think it's so easy to just explain what your expectations are. It's still one of our required readings at A Marshall is for all of our leaders, that and Way of the Shepherd, both of those. Way of the Shepherd. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's kind of a very similar, you know, how one minute manager tells it through a sort of a story. Yeah, it's a fable. Yeah, fable, parable, you know, whatever. Whatever it is. Same set up, what I like about the Way of the Shepherd is it gives you a little bit more tools for just guiding and coaching, and I just, I like the framework is a little bit more usable in our world, I think. Highly recommend it, yeah. Who wrote that? Oh yeah, you wouldn't ask me that.

01:00:51I was like, you're gonna write this down. The Way of the Shepherd. It sounds like a religious book. Like a Christian book or something. I don't know what the background is of the author, but it is definitely a leadership book. All right, I'm going to get it, and I'm going to read it, because I need. Yeah, it's short, you know, short, like one minute manager, it's very easy, digestible. It's we, I'm sure it's similar. We use QBQ as our other book. We have one minute manager, QBQ, and then I have all of them read Unreasonable Hospitality because just an amazing book, all through and through. QBQ, if you listen, you know when I talk about this all the time. John G. Miller, it's just. I haven't read it though. Well, it's like an hour read, but it's about personal accountability. It's about rephrasing the question of how come they didn't run my food? How come they never seat me the good tables? How come they never seat in rotation to what can I do to ensure that my food gets ran? What can I do to ensure that this? It's rephrasing questions you ask yourself and to stop asking yourself victim questions where if you just say it out loud, how come they never run my food?

01:01:57You just feel like something's done something to you versus what can I do to ensure that the food gets ran? It's like, oh, I'm empowered now. And it's just a way of rephrasing it. I love that. You know, so those little things are so important. Why isn't my, the table the last to get bussed? Oh, it's because you don't pre-bus and so your table is the hardest one to turn. So they cherry pick the ones that are easy. So make it easier for the bussers and the essays. Yeah, if it's got the entree plates on it, that's harder to bus. But it's exactly right. I didn't even know I was doing it and I was doing it. So there you go. It's a thing. You have to train yourself, but it's something that, that's our work. But I'm looking into the way of the shepherd. I like it. All right, I've been asking all these questions. What do you want to talk about? You know, I don't know. You asked earlier on, like, what does my day-to-day look like? And I'm obviously still figuring out the flow, but what I'm really enjoying is, you know, just getting right back into the family business and that it does feel like home.

01:03:02And then the fact that, you know, the only reason I can do that is because Hattie Jane's is well taken care of. And I tell them that all the time. And we're still, you know, obviously I talked to Autumn and Rhonda weekly, but it has been, I was nervous for sure coming back in. And it has been so fun to know all the teams again, getting back into full service again as well. Oh yeah. Never thought I would miss it, but I did. Isn't that funny? It's a thing. It is a thing. I definitely, the break quote unquote was necessary for sure for me, but I feel like I'm coming back in with a lot of energy and just really enjoying getting to know all of our team members. And I think it's just really important as a leader to sit down and just have like just regular conversations with people, you know, that, you know, where are you from? You know, just getting to the core of who they are as individuals. Connecting, genuine connection with people. And that's what makes the whole job fun anyways, is the people, you know, otherwise it just becomes a bit of a grind.

01:04:10I think that's where leaders miss, is you're just here to do this job for me and you lose out on empathy and you lose out on a lot of really amazing people that are out there that are making a lot of sacrifices just to come into work and serve and do all of the things that if you don't take the time to ask them, you're never gonna know that. Yeah, just get curious. Yeah, curious about your people, curious about your guests. That leads you to a lot more interesting business, I think. I think curious about the business. You know, you said you love Cherry Bomb, you listen to this. I love listening to what other people are doing. That's part of the reason I do this podcast. I just get curious. I'm like, what do you do in these situations? Because it sounds like I'm interviewing somebody. I'm looking for answers. I'm really curious. I wanna know how you handled this situation. Yeah. Yeah, all of it. I think it's all really important. The conversations are important and that's why I love what you are doing. It's our city, but it's also people I know and it's just kind of breaking down those barriers of feeling like I'm out here alone and I don't even know who to ask.

01:05:20And I think that we as a community have gotten better about that, especially in Nashville. I've been in the business now for over 20 years and just the fact that we have a restaurant scene and culture and people and it's a career for people now, not just a pass through helps all of those things. But yeah, I think those conversations are super important. My favorite DMs or emails that I get are from people who listen to a show and they go, man, I felt like I was on an island or I was alone and I listened to episode X and really landed with me. Like there was something really interesting about that person or their life was very similar to mine. I thought I was the only one. Like those- You're never the only one. Messages to me are like, that's what keeps me going. And you know, when you have a full-time job and I have kids and a wife and you have a lot of things in your plate, it's difficult to continue doing this little side thing. To do a podcast and schedule and bring people in and edit and put it out, it kind of has to be a labor of love.

01:06:26Yeah, I don't know how you do it, but- Well, it's for those messages. It's for everybody who's out there in this industry and maybe it's the fact that I don't drink anymore and I see how people struggle. And if I can reduce one person from feeling a certain way and that they don't have to retreat to a drug or something to numb a feeling where they can actually feel something and go, oh, wow, I feel better. Yeah. And if we can help each other, if we can help each other in this industry grow, and I know that's one of your main things is nobody, you've never not, you're always willing to help somebody who needs help. Absolutely. And so much you've done this out of the Weeds Collective to help other people. And that's kind of, I think we're in the same page there is like, how can I help you? I do have this job that I'm able to see things in a different light. I'm not stuck in the weeds every day of the day-to-day stuff. Can I help you with anything? What can I do? Yeah. You like to talk and I like to write, but it's the same thing.

01:07:28Absolutely. And I think you get as much out of it. I'm sure you'd feel the same way. You've learned stuff, you've made connections, but also there's a sense of fulfillment as well. It is. And you get to have this neat studio in my house. I give my wife a reason to let me have one of the rooms in the house for my own little restaurant man cave. I got a guitar. There you go. That was one of the things I got when I moved. I used to play guitar when I was a kid and I had all of our DVDs and stuff that we sold. I'm referencing, we're in my studio in my home, which is where the studio is now. And I have a guitar sitting in here and that was my 45. And I was like, I'm gonna learn how to shred again. I'm gonna do it. So I took all this stuff that she wanted me to take to Goodwill, I just took it to McKay's and I got enough in credits that I got a guitar and amp. And I was like, now I'm getting my fingers back into like callous mode and it's been a lot of fun in my little room. You gotta have those outlets.

01:08:29I think it's really super important. It's a thing. All right, well we're like at our hour. I don't know if anybody out there, I don't know what we've taught people or if hopefully people have learned a little bit more about you, it's always a pleasure to have you here and you have a standing invitation whenever you wanna come on. If you want to, I wanna extend something out to you that might be something you'd wanna do or not wanna do. I love doing pop-up series on the show. Yeah. So you talked about Cherry Bomb, Women in Leadership. If you wanted to host your own series on Nashville Restaurant Radio, hosted by Claire Crowell, and you wanted to bring in, do like a five episode kind of a thing where you bring some people in. Whatever your theme is, it's going to be up to you. But if you wanted to do like an out of the weeds collective pop-up on Nashville Restaurant Radio and make it a podcast, I would love to open that for you.

01:09:29But anytime that you wanna come back. That's a really fun idea. Something you wanna say. I would love to have you be a part of it in any way. Very cool. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And if there's anything I can do for you, obviously we'll put, please feel free to reach out. Gordon Food Service final thought. Thank you for the shout out for Gordon Food Service. It was natural. I wouldn't pay to do it. What do you wanna leave our audience with today? Yeah, I think I just wanna reiterate what I said earlier, which is reach out to your fellow restaurant people, find a community. Whether that's online, if that's more comfortable for you or you just don't have anybody that you know. And then if there are restaurant events in town, try to go to one. Meet some people outside of your four walls and ask questions and be open with your own answers. Cause that's the key. It's gotta be a two way road. I definitely have people in my network that I know when I ask them something, I'm going to get a totally open and honest answer and they know that they'll get it from me.

01:10:35And I think that's really crucial. Are you involved with the Giving Kitchen at all? I know. So we have some people at La Dame Descafier, which is the women in hospitality group that are involved in the Giving Kitchen. So yeah. I would love to get you involved in the Giving Kitchen. You need one more thing. One more thing. You need one more thing. But there, you said food events. They're doing their Team Heidi event, March 16th. And then I think the week before that is Tennessee Flavors. And there's a Music City Food and Wine Festival coming up. Tennessee Flavors needs some more restaurants to step up and join and help out. This is for the Randy Rayburn School of Culinary Arts at Nashville State. It's one night. I would tell you the date if I had it pulled up right now, but I don't. It's that week of, cause we are doing that and it's the week of March 10th. I think is that like March 12th maybe? But we do have a bunch of team members that'll be involved and it's great. You know, it's a great program.

01:11:36Great fundraiser. I'm pulling it up on my phone here and it was from, I have it for last year in here. I don't have it. I wanna say it's March 13th or 14th. I think it's right there. That week sometime. But yeah, there's lots of food events. Go get involved. Volunteer and go there, but that's where you're gonna meet a lot of chefs, a lot of restaurateurs, a lot of people are interested in talking about food, for sure. It's a good call out. Claire, thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Making the trip out here today. Easy trip. Easy trip. Yep. All right, well, wish you the best of success as the, in your new role. Thank you. Newish role. And thank you for coming to talk about it today. Appreciate it. All right. Big thank you to Claire Crowell for joining us on the podcast and being so vulnerable and just talking about everything that she is up to. So much good advice. So much solid knowledge from her.

01:12:38Check her out on LinkedIn. Find her and check out that Out of the Weeds collective because she just posts random stuff all the time that is really, really good. Love, love having her on the show. Again, stay tuned. Henry Roberts, the owner of Two Hands. So I mentioned in that ad earlier. Sean Lyons from Epop Hospitality. Olivia Britton in focus. The executive director of the Music City Food and Wine Festival. We have our Tennessee Flavors episode coming up. We're gonna have our Team Heidi episode coming up. So much fun things to do. And you will know this stuff if you follow us. I'm gonna ask you again. Go to YouTube, go to X, go to Instagram, go to Facebook, subscribe to the podcast. Whatever you're listening to this on right now, go click subscribe on Spotify or Apple Music. All of this stuff helps us out and it helps you out. So you can know when new episodes are coming out.

01:13:39We are going to continue to create new episodes. If you have any topics or ideas or anything that you would like to share, please send me a message at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio, or just send me a message on my personal account at Brandon Styll. So thank you guys for listening. We hope that you have a wonderful week. Hopefully your allergies are not killing you like they're killing me. My birthday is this Saturday and I'm always sick on my birthday. It's just a thing. I'm trying to like, claritin it up right now so that I can enjoy the day. We're going to the Nashville SC game against the Portland Timbers. Maybe I will see you there. Thank you for listening. Again, hope you're being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye bye.