Ford Fry

00:00Hey guys, we wanna start today's episode off talking about our title sponsor, Gordon Food Service. These guys have supported me this entire time. And I think that they saw the fact that we're talking with locally owned and operated restaurants and we are building up locally owned and operated restaurants. We want to build community and they're all about that. They said, yes, we wanna be a part of that. And if you're a restaurant out there right now and you're not happy with who your broad line vendor is, I think it's time that you give them a call. It hurts you absolutely nothing. These guys are based out of Sheppardsville and north of us in Kentucky. They're not far. Their facility is second to none. It is all digital. And I will tell you when I say you don't have miss picks, it is no human error. It's all done by robot. It is perfect. It is amazing. And they would love to give you a tour of this facility. So if you're out there and you've never been to your broadliners facility, if they've never brought you out there, if they've never said, hey, we love for you to come see our facility, there's probably a reason.

01:09You need to call Paul Hunter. His number is 615-945-6753. What he's gonna do is he's gonna say, I'd love to show you the facility. I'd love to take you out to Sheppardsville. I'd love for you to see it. I would love to partner with you is what he's going to tell you. And that is what Gordon Food Service does. If you are unhappy, if you're getting late trucks, if your pricing is all over the place, if you're not, if you don't feel like your broadliner is another manager in your business, like I feel like you need to be partnering. They're your biggest expense that you have in the building. They need to understand that and partner with you. And that is what GFS does. That is what Paul Hunter does. His number is 615-945-6753. So if you don't feel like your vendor is doing that, this is the time to pick up the phone and give it a shot. There's no commitment here. This isn't a, you're gonna make the phone call and then you're gonna have to buy anything.

02:11This is an exploratory, I wanna find out more about what Brandon talks about all the time. Why are you guys the title sponsor for Nashville Restaurant Radio? Why do you guys wanna support local and operated restaurants so much? They will give you all of those answers and more. Maybe get to go have a tour. It's a really, really eye-opening, amazing facility that they work with and their whole company is that way. Their cornerstone values from the CEO all the way down. And the CEO has been on the show. I've requested all the other people's CEOs to come on the show. None of them would. And this is before they were the title sponsor. Rich Wolowski came on the show. You can go back and listen to it. He's an amazing guy. So wanted to start the show off today. Long ad to say thank you to Gordon Food Service for being our title sponsor and then you guys should check them out right now. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. The tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll.

03:17Hello 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're gonna be joined shortly with Caroline Galzin, our amazing co-host and owner of Nicky's Coalfired over there in the nations, which you should go check out because it's amazing and they do amazing things. We are talking today with Ford Fry. Ford is a restaurateur. He is the owner of The Optimist here in Nashville and Atlanta. He also owns Super Rica, Le Lu and Star Rover Sound, which we talk about all of these amazing restaurants in this episode. And we're gonna be just catching up with him, learning more about who Ford is, how he became who he is and what his thoughts are on the industry right now. So it's gonna be a fun interview and I cannot wait to get to that.

04:20I will say that it is so happy, so nice to be back in town. I have been in Puerto Rico for the past week and we had the best time. Puerto Rico is an amazing territory of the United States. So you don't need a passport to go there. And we spent seven nights, me and my wife and my two children and they had a blast, we had a blast. And it is so good to be back. This episode's coming too late because I left my computer on the airplane. And so I had to go back to the airport and by the grace of God, somebody found the computer on the plane, turned it in and they had it. They're waiting for me, which is incredible. So sorry for the delay on getting this one out to you, but I'm still kind of getting back into the swing of things. It is Father's Day and I'm putting this together. It's been a fun day at the restaurants. Hope that you had a wonderful Father's Day. If you are a dad out there, I know Ford is a dad.

05:22So happy Father's Day to you, Mr. Fry. And yeah, just a lot going on. And we will talk more about that in upcoming, my vacation. The food that we ate, all of the stuff that had to go with Puerto Rico. We'll talk about that in a future roundup. But speaking of the roundup, hope you guys enjoyed our Father's Day edition of the roundup with Ben Whitlock. Hope that you enjoyed, it looks like you're enjoying the episode with Noelle Marchetti. She's the executive pastry chef over at the Joseph Hotel. Marcia Masula is another episode we just put out. And then Emma and Chris Byard, owners of SS Guy. This month we have put out, we're gonna put out like eight episodes this month. We are just absolutely going to town and we're having a blast. Thank you guys for listening. We're gonna jump in here and do this right now with Ford Fry. Let's go. Super excited today to welcome in Ford Fry. Ford is a chef gone restaurateur.

06:28That's it. How many do you have? 23 restaurants now? I don't know. It just depends on how you classify some. Like Le Lu, do you classify that as a restaurant? Sure. Okay, then maybe 25. Oh, you have the Le Lu in the Optimist here in Nashville. That's right, yeah. Which is like a separate bar inside of the. And then there's Star Rover. Do you count that as one too? I do. I went to a Giving Kitchen event at Star Rover with Gracie and Chad from. Yeah. That place is neat. It was fun. How did you, like the concept of that, did you just want to make, you're in Nashville, Music City, I want to make a super rad acoustically perfect room. Is that what, because that's what it seemed like it was. You know, it's crazy. I mean, I'd love to talk about Star Rover too, because, so first of all, we saw this building, okay? So the building was two levels, you know, about 10,000 square feet on each floor, which is 20,000 obviously. So, you know, it's a little much for the Optimist.

07:31Optimist was the first thing that we knew we wanted to do here. But, you know, it was kind of like that part of Germantown was always kind of a little bit of a stretch, you know, right on the river was kind of on the other side of a bunch of construction. So I just felt like, man, we need a couple more things to add to that area. So we decided to take a little bit. So we took the space upstairs a little bit for Leloup to do a cocktail bar. And then we took the space at the end on the other side of the Optimist for Star Rover. And Star Rover for me was, I wanted this, I wanted this casual place to go eat, which also happened to have a stage. So everything, we always make a story. You know, there's always a story before we create a restaurant. So the story of Star Rover was, there was a guy who started this, he loved live music and he wanted a stage and he made it look like a recording studio from the 70s.

08:31And, but he didn't wanna mess with the food. So he hired, you know, someone to take care of the food. And then I started thinking, all right, what about, you know, you got Broadway and they always have these little snack bars, like, you know, they're doing bologna sandwiches and chicken tenders and things like that. So I thought, what if we just did a really cool snack bar, you know, and what do I wanna drink when I'm watching live music or whatever? And I wanna drink margaritas, cause that's kind of my drink. So I thought, okay, well, let's do some, I love tacos. So let's do tacos and burgers and all kinds of stuff. So we really wanted to make this kind of a restaurant, but then, which also happened to have live music. And so it was kind of our take on whatever, a honky tonk, but didn't necessarily want it to always be country, wanted it to be a little bit different, you know, cause you go to Broadway and you get country, so. Country and covers. And who knows, I don't even think that's really happened yet. So what's happened with Star Rover, it's like, you know, first and foremost, it needs to be a restaurant and the food, like the burger, like I asked you before we got on the show, like who does the best burger list?

09:37And I'm like, oh my gosh, this burger at Star Rover is just ridiculous. Why doesn't, why doesn't someone do this best burger list? Because it's one of these burgers that you make it on the griddle top and then you wrap it in paper and it kind of steams a little bit. So it kind of gets a little bit better as it's traveling from the kitchen to the table kind of thing. So that, but what's happened is, it's turned into this place that people don't know we're open, number one, or they think, oh, I'm just gonna go watch a show there and then I'm gonna leave. And it's like, no, oh my gosh, the food is like so good. I mean, it's like very casual, very cheap food, but it hasn't taken off like that. So I'm really wondering why, you know? So, but that's what it is. I love it and, you know, but it is, we did spend a ton of money on the room for the sound quality. It's funny, because people in Nashville can tell that because people who play there, they're like, wow, this room sounds really good. So, I mean- You have all these different, like these things on the wall and the way the room is shaped. It's like, what's going on here? Then you're like, oh, they did this. This was intentional.

10:37I forgot. I forgot the guy's name, but he was supposedly like a producer in town, Blake Chansey, who did a lot of like, what were the girls, the country girls that got in trouble? The chicks? The Dixie chicks, yeah, he did a lot of Dixie chick stuff and he's done, his dad was, I think, signed like some of the biggest country acts, maybe like George Strait or something like that. So, he turned me on to this guy for the sound room and that guy just dialed it in. Just crushed it. So, yeah. We saw a band at that. We went to a Giving Kitchen event. Yeah. And it was amazing. Just the whole vibe in there. Now, I will tell you that we walked into The Optimist before we ate there. My wife had never been to The Optimist and we were just getting a drink while we were waiting and she looked at the menu and she goes, holy shit, this looks like the best menu I've ever seen in my life because she loves seafood. She was like, this looks amazing. So, I went over and made a reservation for the next night.

11:37Oh, wow. And we had Star Rover that night. We came back the very next night to The Optimist. It was not my first time, but it was her first time and she said it was one of her favorite meals in the entire city. She was very happy. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Just absolutely loved. Oh, we loved The Optimist. The oysters, all the stuff. And whenever we have friends in town, that's just always our go-to place because not only is the food great, but it's just, it's really fun. It's just such a fun space. It's such a fun room to be in. It was a cool building. Just has all these little nooks and little different spots. Yeah. So, you, excuse me, you got your start in Atlanta. You have, how many places in Atlanta? Oh, gosh. 20? No, no, no, no, no. Maybe 11 or 12. 11 or 12, okay. And then was Nashville the first market that you expanded to outside of Atlanta? I think Houston was the first market. I grew up in Houston. Oh, okay. Where in Houston? I lived in River Oaks area. Oh, okay.

12:38I actually used to live in Houston very briefly. I lived in Sugarland. It is the hottest place. The hottest. Yep. So yeah, Houston was the first place we did something right across from the high school I went to called State of Grace. And then we did a Super Rica there. And then we did, right next door to Super Rica, we did a place called La Lucha, which is really kind of Gulf Coast, seafood, fried chicken, biscuits. It's kind of a cool place. Nice. What's the story behind these restaurants? With your first restaurant, you said there's a story behind every restaurant. I want to go through each concept now and go, what was your story behind, let's start with the ones we have here in town. Okay. Can we do that? Yeah. Like so like with the Optimist, what was your story behind the Optimist? Well, so the Optimist started in Atlanta, the first one. And there was the story, what, how I looked at things was I love, I mean, this is my favorite thing to do is like to, just as a film producer produces a film, I kind of feel like, oh wow, you know, this is kind of what I like to do when it comes to restaurants because I love, I mean, food is the number one thing that I like, but I love all other aspects of it.

13:52So the story for the Optimist Atlanta was, Atlanta had all this, you know, corporate seafood restaurants, you know, the manager in a coat, suit and tie and all this. And, and I didn't, I wanted a place, I wanted high quality, but I wanted to feel kind of like they were in like, like Montauk or something like that. They were, they were, they were on vacation and the quality is really good, but you can feel casual going in there. Like we have a little putt-putt course outside and we have an oyster bar. So that's really what it started. I felt like Atlanta could use something like that. And it really just struck a chord in Atlanta. And then nationally, I think we got a lot of accolades for that one. So when this building came up in Nashville, I was talking to, I was doing, I knew I was doing a dinner with Tandy Wilson in New York, actually. And I'm like, is there any seafood in Nashville? And he's like, no, it's a trout and catfish town is what he said, you know?

14:54And I'm like, okay, you know? And you know, that's not wrong. Yeah. But in the meantime, while we were trying to build the Optimist, I mean, there was a bunch of seafood restaurants opened up. That's true. I mean- Henry the Red. Marsh House. Marsh House. Fortunately now we do have some great seafood restaurants, but I don't think that the market is saturated. It's not like you came here to open a hot chicken place. Right, right, right. So that was the story of the Optimist. And so I wanna actually just back up a second and talk really quickly about the building that you're in, because there is such a cool story with this building, which I assume you know, I know because I did an event probably almost 10 years ago now in that building when it was not at all what it is today. It was a lot of kind of shelves of buildings and then one like really cool random apartment. We did an event with Kathleen Cotter of Blue Me Rind for the Cheese Fest and got to really tour the whole building and see the cool apartment.

15:57And do you know this story about the poker game with the building? No. Oh, okay, so- This is exciting. I'm so excited I get to tell you this. I hope that this is a true story, but this is what we were told that day at the Cheese Fest. So it's two sisters that own the building and the building used to be some sort of a manufacturing type of building. And one of the sisters had this apartment in the building that was the coolest apartment I've ever seen. These incredible views of downtown and the river and everything. And supposedly their dad was a bit of a gadabout maybe. Is that what you say? I don't know. What is a gadabout? Like a kind of a, you know, a drinker, a partier, a guy about town type of guy. A gadabout. And he won this building on a hand in a poker game. Oh my gosh. And then the sisters inherited it from their dad. I hope that's a true story because it's a cool story. And that's the story I was told about the building. So there you go. Yeah, it was a, we called it a hammer mill, but it was a building they made the wooden handles for like axes and hammers.

17:05Yeah, there was like some cool old stuff when we walked through that building. It was really interesting. Anyway, so back to your places. So you open the optimist here and then your other two concepts here. We talked about- Yeah, Star Rover and Leloo. And then Leloo. Where does the inspiration for Leloo come from? Leloo, so the optimist in Atlanta had a separate adjoining kind of space that we made an oyster bar and we have like a wood burning oven that you can roast oysters and things like that in there. And so the optimist, we thought, okay, well, we probably need a secondary little spot upstairs. And to make like, we don't have like a bougie cocktail bar. And we had a friend who was from Nashville and Kenneth and he was working in New York for about 10 years or so doing some amazing cocktail work.

18:05So he wanted to come back to Atlanta. So we kind of built this Leloo around Kenneth and he just knocked it out of the park. I think he did an amazing job. He wanted to have like some, all the raw bar shellfish so people could go have cocktails and then little snacks as well. So, I like having like little places that are either pre-dinner or after dinner spots or even like, hey, let's just go there on its own. I think that's so smart to think about that full experience because I feel like from a consumer standpoint, that's something that I think about a lot when, for example, next week we're going to Philadelphia to go to a wedding and we're looking at different places we might wanna have dinner, but I'm not just looking at where I wanna have dinner. I'm like, okay, is there somewhere that we can walk to either before or after dinner for a cocktail or grab a nightcap, something like that. So I love that you kind of have all those different experiences. Yeah, it's just keep them there. You know, it's like give them options to stay there. That's what Star Rover was too. Like, okay, either go there on its own or go there after dinner or whatever.

19:07I loved it. No, I think that I love the three different concepts right there and it's kind of neat because you can create a whole evening. Or go see a show, let's go have dinner, let's go show. Let's go have a drink beforehand and let's go have dinner at Star Rover, see a show. Like you give many options. I'm curious about Super Rica. Yeah. Let's talk about Super Rica because I'm about to open a Mexican restaurant. I love Super Rica. And it's kind of like American style Mexican restaurant. And I wanna know all the details. Help me, any advice, any, but the story behind it, all that stuff. Yeah, so growing up in Texas, Tex-Mex was just food. It wasn't, it was just what we ate, you know, at least once a week. And I'm dating myself here, but I remember Tex-Mex before fajitas were even a thing. We would go to these places and it was just enchiladas and gosh, I don't even remember what the other stuff was, but there was no, there weren't fajitas. You know what I mean? It was just, it was like cheesy. And I love the history of Tex-Mex because it's basically immigrants from Mexico coming into Texas, cooking their food with the ingredients that they have access to.

20:19So they didn't have access to the ingredients that they had in Mexico. So they're making things and it's kind of a hybrid between Texas food and Mexican food. And they're just using what they have. So they're basically spicing up, you know, Texas food and just growing up eating it. You know, when you grow up eating something, you're gonna love it for life. So I always wanted to do, it's not that I've ever done any kind of casual restaurant like that or a Mexican restaurant. We had to kind of figure it out. Like, all right, how do we do this super high volume, lower check average restaurant? But I did it because I wanted to eat there. You know, it's just like, okay, I felt like, I felt the Southeast was missing that kind of thing. You know, it had Mexican restaurants, but it just really gave people the notion of, oh, it's just cheap Mexican food. You know what I mean? And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Tex-Mex is a real thing. You know, like flour tortillas, you have to make them yourselves, in my opinion. If you're from Texas, you have to make them yourself. And it's like, and they have to be good.

21:20And that's like the number, I tell my guys, I'm like, listen, if you fail on every single thing in this restaurant, that's fine, but make sure the flour tortillas are the best in the city. You know, and I don't know that we've quite, I mean, it's hard, you know what I mean? Sometimes those things are, you know, it takes a lot of labor, it takes a lot of time, and it's, so it's a difficult one. So that's where, so Super Rica, I wanted this like, so it was all about taking, okay, so growing up in Texas, when people ask, okay, where's your favorite Tex-Mex? No one can tell them one specific place, because they say, I go here for enchiladas, I go here for fajitas, I go here for margaritas, I go here for whatever. So it was just kind of in my mind cooking from memory of like, all right, where was my favorite this, where was my favorite queso, where was, you know? So that's what it was, just a compilation of my memory of where my favorite Tex-Mex stuff was, you know? But you're that involved with- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, we're gonna take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors.

22:23Hey guys, wanna tell you about Super Source and my buddy Jason Ellis. I thought this was a very appropriate ad to start off this episode with Ford Fry, because the Optimus was one of their first accounts here in Nashville. They had a chef, his name was Ryder, he's been on the show, he's not there anymore, but he called me and said, man, I love this guy Jason Ellis and he's doing amazing things and gave me like this testimonial while I was doing the research. And from that day, Super Source has been absolutely on fire. If you wanna work with the best in dish, machine and chemicals guys, there's no contract. Okay, everybody wants you to sign a five-year deal in order to sell you chemicals and lease a dish machine. He's gonna lease you the dish machine and you have to sign zero contract. He has to earn your business every single week. Because there's nobody else out there doing that. Maybe that's why he's taken over the entire city by storm. Don't wait for him to come by and see you.

23:24You need to call him. His number is 770-337-1143. His name is Jason Ellis. His company is Super Source. He's doing amazing things. So honored to have him be part of Nashville Restaurant Radio. And you know who else I wanna talk about? I wanna talk about Matthew Clements today. Matthew Clements is an account executive for Robbins Insurance Agency. Now, there's a million things that can happen in your restaurant. We want none of them to happen. But if there is a fire in the hood, if something happens in your building, who are you gonna call? Are you gonna call an 800 number and hopefully talk to somebody who might be able to help you who can look up your account? Or do you wanna call a guy who lives right here in Nashville who eats in your restaurant and knows everything about your building? Who is there to help 24-7? That is what Matthew Clements does.

24:24He is a restaurant specialist with Robbins Insurance right here in Nashville. We use them in our restaurants. I know they use them over at Strategic Hospitality. Last time we had Benjamin and Max Goldberg in here, they were singing the praises. They see the Robbins Insurance thing right behind me in the studio. And they said, man, we love Matthew Clements. We love Van Robbins. These guys are amazing local insurance brokers. If you are not using somebody local, these are the people you need to call. Let me give you his number. It's 863-409-9372. That is his cell phone. You're gonna call and get him directly. If you wanna send him an email, it's mclements. That's m-c-l-e-m-e-n-t-s at robbinsins.com. R-o-b-i-n-s-i-n-s.com. Give him a call today. You know, another new sponsor that we have is Volunteer Welding and Supply. If you don't know what Volunteer Welding and Supply does, they are the ones who supply you with your CO2 for your Cokes, your Coke machine as well, or your Pepsi machine, your soda machine, as well as your draft beer system.

25:38And David Perry is the guy, he's been doing this forever. He's an absolute master. His number is 615-306-7455. Listen, if you're with some other company and you're in some kind of 10-year deal, the pricing is very, very wonky. And once you meet with David Perry and you go over their pricing, you're gonna look back and go, wow, these people are charging me way too much money. Use a local company that's gonna offer you straightforward pricing, they're the ones. And they use telemetry. So telemetry, they're gonna be monitoring your system before you even know that you're out of gas. They're gonna make sure if something, if there's a leak, they will inform you ahead of time and get out there to get it fixed. Volunteer Welding and Supply is who you need to be buying your CO2 from. And David Perry is the guy. His number again, 615-306-7455. Should call him today. Concepts and everything, the menu development and all that stuff? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause it's, I hear 24, 25 restaurants, 23 maybe brick and mortars with other things attached to them and how do you classify them?

26:45But I have two, almost three, and it's hard. It's hard to keep things straight. Like there's a point to where like, do you go to different cities sometime and just be like, what the hell is going on here? When you're coming, how many, do you have like directors of operations that run multiple locations? Do you have statewide coverage? Like how involved are you in the day to day of, well, what does your day look like? There's like seven questions in there. Yeah, yeah, so it started, you know, with, okay, so the Optimist in Atlanta was my third restaurant and I would say that was pre-big corporate office. So I probably should have just stopped right there. It would have been a lot better off. But you know, I just love doing this. It's like, I don't look at this as a job. It's just what I really enjoy doing. So I'm like, well, I just want to do more. So you either stop at three or you've got to set your sites on 25 and above, cause we created this corporate office. So that we preloaded ourselves for when we open restaurants, we are prepared.

27:51We have VPs, we have corporate chefs, regional people, we have accounting, HR, I mean, we have everything. But all that stuff is so expensive. So you almost have to like, it doesn't really make sense to create that for like five restaurants. It really, you have to do it for like 25 or so, you know? So as far as my day to day, like I've like worked myself out of a job basically, because it's, I go in, so people ask me like, well, how do you, what's your main struggle? And it's like, my main struggle is keeping my finger on the pulse of the business. And the only way I can do that is social media reviews, geotech pictures. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of people say like, oh, I don't read that stuff. But I'm able, I feel like I can read them and filter out what is legit and what is not legit. You know, for the most part, it is someone's opinion. So I have to take most things as legit. So I'm good with that.

28:52Let me ask you a question about the reviews, actually. I don't wanna interrupt, but I have an interesting question here. How do you walk that line between giving that feedback to your team? Hey, I saw this review, what's up with this? Versus, I don't wanna micromanage and email somebody every single time one three-star review comes in. Yeah, that gets back to that filtering thing. I mean, there's occasion. If I see something that I see, I wait to see like a trend. Once I see a repeated trend, then I go to pretty much a chain and command thing, or depending on if it's a food-related or a service-related thing, and just say, hey, listen, I'm seeing this, or I go in there myself and I experience it. And it's like, and typically they're, yeah, this is what's going on. You know what I mean? Hey, that's right, you know? So it usually has to be, when you get someone who says something like, they're charging too much for this, you're like, okay, it's crap. You know what I mean? You can't really listen to someone like that because they have no idea what you paid for it. So it's like, that's just silly. That's also subjective.

29:53Right. Something is too expensive. I mean, it's like, well, if you make 20 grand a year, a $20 hamburger is probably more than you wanna pay, but if you make three million a year, that's probably a cheap hamburger. How do you quantify that? The word that makes me nuts in reviews is overpriced. Overpriced. I'm like, you don't know that. It might be underpriced. You don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, the comparison is fast food. The comparison is I can go to McDonald's and eat for $7. I can have a burger and fries and a drink for this much and you're charging me. It's like, but they don't have the overhead. There's no way that, you can't do that. You can't, it's not a thing. I mean, that's what I do. I mean, we have a system that collaborates. It takes all the different reviews from like OpenTable to Google to Yelp and whatever, and it puts us in a five-star, it puts it all in one email for us. So we get an email of every restaurant and it says, we take a five-star review as good. A four-star review is, I'd say, good.

30:58A three-star review is just nothing. Anything at two and one is bad. So people are, like our staff is bonus based on their social media scores. What company is that? Who does that? Oh gosh, I mean, I think it's some, oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I forgot the name because I know it changed. But I know, I mean, we're able to compare ourselves. Like I know Danny Meyer's restaurants are using, he uses this system and we're able to compare our overall score compared to all these other people around the country. So that helps us out a lot too. Interesting. It's like an aggregate scorecard that kind of puts everything together to give you one score. It's interesting. We have something, Super Rica is on another one, it's called Wisely, and I just got on that one and that one's driving me nuts because it gets a lot more, for some reason, it gets a lot more reviews. So the ratio is still the same, good to bad reviews, but I see a lot more good reviews and a lot more bad reviews too, so.

32:06I got a random question for you. So Billy Bean, general manager for the Oakland A's. Yeah. Moneyball, right? Yeah, yeah. He came up with, on base percentage, as the stat that correlates the most to winning baseball games. Is there a stat in a restaurant, is there one metric that is the one that is the most important, two questions, one that correlates to financial success and the other one which ultimately leads to financial success is making every guest a repeat guest. What is the metric that makes your guest a repeat guest that you can measure or hire for? Oh my gosh. I mean, that's a tough one. I mean, anything, if any of our restaurants are under four stars, I'm concerned. So that's one metric that I'm thinking about as a whole. If you're under four, if you have a three and a half, I'd be pulling my hair out. That would scare me. You'd look at different cities too.

33:07In certain cities, you gotta get it like, honestly, like Houston, a four and a half star is probably like a four star in Atlanta. Certain cities rate a little bit differently. Their expectation is a little bit different. I'm not sure about Nashville. Nashville could be a little rate and a little bit higher too. It could be. I think you gotta be above four. I think you definitely gotta be above four. But that's a, so that's a lagging indicator. But if you're looking at hiring somebody or what's a trait in hiring that you can hire for that would, that makes every guest a repeat guest. What's the one thing that you think that you could, is there something? You know, the thing that I've held onto is a long time ago, our COO taught me something when he was my boss back in California. And he had a, you know, kind of like a report card or whatever that guests would fill out. And the one thing that stuck with me is value for price paid.

34:09And what that is for me is when someone goes to sign the check, there is a underlying, I think a- A moment of truth. Yeah, it may be subconscious. Where they will think to themselves or just kind of in there like, wow, was it worth that? And will I come back? So, and to me, that is the number one key. Like I want someone, when the bill comes, I want them to either consciously or subconsciously think, wow, that was worth it. Or, cause if they think that was not worth it, you've lost them. So I think that has got to be the key. Now, how you know that- How do you create that value? And I think there's also so much competition too. You have to make them want to come back to you. Like when you were talking about the rating system and you were saying that like three is good. I actually, and I could be wrong, but I feel like if somebody rates you a three, they might not have had a bad experience, but they're not coming back. Because there's just too many- I think three is bad. I agree. And again, three to me is fine.

35:11It doesn't have to be negative. But if somebody gives my restaurant a three-star review, they're not gonna come back. They're gonna go somewhere else. And I just think that there's too much competition. And quite frankly, I just think there's too many restaurants. I think that restaurant culture has gotten a little bit out of control. And all three of us are probably part of the problem. Because we all, you have lots of places. I'm hoping to expand to new places. You're expanding to new places. But what are we gonna do? I mean, I was thinking about that last night. I'm like, I remember Nashville. I think Nashville is a town where you have to rely on the tourism. I just think- You 100% do. We have such a different clientele here that you, the clientele here doesn't follow the patterns of other cities. You take a city like Charleston or New Orleans that are smaller cities than Nashville, but have way more people, may more restaurants, way more people, way more options, and places stay busy.

36:13The dining out culture here is so just different. When we first moved here 10 years ago, somebody told me that it was because Nashville is so Baptist that people don't drink and they don't go out to eat the way that they do in other cities. And I feel like there might be something to that. It dies off earlier. Yeah. Unless you're on Broadway. Correct, yeah. But it does die off earlier here. Yeah, I don't rely on tourists in any of my restaurants. But you are also- Not we are community based. Green Hills and Brantwood is really two neighborhoods where you can. Yeah. I was gonna say, I'm completely different because I don't draw on any of that. If I get tourists, it's like- Bonus. Well, they stumbled into a hyper local place that they're like, oh, this place is cool. Like there's actually, this is where the people eat and they kind of stick out. You're like, oh yeah, you're not a local. And I don't know, we love that. We think we're gonna do that with Chagos too in Belmont, right down the street. It's not in a super, it's in a hyper local area too.

37:15Back to my question. I think that the hiring thing is full-time employees. I think the metric you can, the thing that you can hire for, the thing that makes guests repeat guests, the one thing if you're hiring for is full-time employees because they're there. They engage, they learn the guests. They see the same people. They understand that the special shifted this week or we're 86 this and they know why because they were in line up yesterday and they see it today and they build relationships with their coworkers. You build a stronger cohesive team. Part-timers, nothing wrong with part-timers. I'm not saying that they're bad, but a lot of times they have their real job that they work and this is their side gig and they're just here to make their money then leave. And it's like, I think the people that are there full-time, I think full-time employees. And I think that if you're not successful in your restaurant and you look back and you go, how many people work at least 32 hours a week? And I did this a couple of years ago and I was like, I have three employees in the whole building that work 32 hours and I've got 27 servers. I'm like, I'm being picked off by, I mean just trying to find people where it's just in that space.

38:21So I focus on hiring people that are gonna be there more than 32 hours and it's been a world of difference and guest recognition. People are used to seeing, I came here three times and I always see Ron. I got a guy who works 14 shifts a week. Ron, he's there every shift we're open. And then the day that we're closed, he goes to our other restaurant and works. He's amazing. But I just recognize that it's just an interesting stat that we saw Billy Bean speak and I met GMs with me and I was like, what do you think the one thing is that converts into making that guest wanna come back? And I think it's knowledge and that happens from full-time employees. It was my hypothesis. That's great. I think there's something to that for sure, for sure. So speaking of hiring, how have you seen any kind of differences between the different cities that you have concepts in with different staffing or hiring challenges or has it been tough all over or have you found it quite easy or what's your experience there? I mean, it's definitely tough all over. I know when we were first coming to Nashville, there were a lot of friends of mine who were nervous that we were gonna be stealing all their people and they were saying that Nashville was really a bad town for staffing and all that.

39:32But really Nashville wasn't any different from Atlanta or the one that used to be real easy was Charlotte and then Charlotte all of a sudden just became the hardest. I don't know what happened there or what, but I would say Nashville and Atlanta for the most part, they're pretty similar. It's been a tough hit for the restaurant industry and I did some a little bit of digging and like, what is it people? Why are they leaving? And the common thing I hear is like, people will say, it's just not fun anymore. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute, what does that mean? You know what I mean? In general or at your places? I think in general, they weren't people that worked for us. They were people that worked for like say a bartender worked for another restaurant in town and I know he's not there anymore and he's somewhere else and I had a friend ask him because and he said, it's just not funny anymore and I'm like, okay. And then someone just recently, 70 year old guy told me, he said, he's been in the restaurant business forever. He's like, people don't leave restaurants, they leave people and I'm like, oh, that makes sense.

40:37You know, if someone's leaving to go, now yes, they do leave the restaurant to go to another industry but if they're leaving the restaurant to go to another restaurant, they're leaving somebody or a culture or a problem with the culture or something like that. So I've always been, and that's what's hard because it's like if you treat your staff as if they are your greatest asset and I truly believe that. I mean, they are number one and you're talking about full-time employees. It's the same thing, you know what I mean? You care about them and it's your job to cultivate them, it's your job to promote them, your job to help them in their life and their career as much as it's their job to help you run your business. If you look at it as a mutual partnership like that and treat them with respect and you care about them, to me, that's the key. That'll keep full-time people and they'll be right there, you know? But too many people treat their staff as if they're a tool and they'll just go buy a new tool and it's just not the same way, you can't do that. Now, you've been in this business for a long time and you've been in ownership for a long time.

41:40Do you feel like there's adjustments that you guys have felt like you've had to make to kind of the structure, the operations, the pay, things like that, specifically over the last three years to, hey, the tide is turning, the culture of restaurants is changing, we've got to make these changes. Yeah, definitely pay and for, we've also done some things for, we've noticed when you turn over leadership that it really affects, it affects the rest of the building. So to me, what we've added is like, we're doing a kind of a long-term retention for leadership. We'll pay, as opposed to having a 401k, there's nothing that they put in. It's just basically we deposit 10% of someone's salary into an account or an investment account that on their behalf. So every year they're gaining 10 more percent or 10% of their income. So if they make $100,000, we're putting $10,000 into their account. And then when they vest, then they'll, if they want to leave, then here you go.

42:44Here's a nice little exit stack of cash. Wow, that's really nice. So it's a lot of it. So we're kind of focusing a little bit on the leadership is making sure that we have strong leadership and we retain them. So that's been kind of the main thing. Obviously there was that rough two-year period where no one could do anything right. Do you feel like you're finding that incoming team members have different expectations than they would have a few years ago? And how do you navigate that with kind of the new generation of people coming to work in restaurants? Oh gosh. I mean, it is, it just feels like we're starting over. It feels like we've always been of the mindset of hire attitude and train them. And so right now we're just kind of hiring everybody and trying to train them, but we just don't have the numbers that we had to pick from, I would say. We went, we were tracking like how many people are we coming in, but how many people of those coming in are we actually hiring?

43:50And so it's been very few, so it's been tough. Yeah, I can relate to that for sure. Well, the cost of living in Nashville, for here at least, is so high in towns when you got people to work in this, to pay somebody a living wage to live in the cities that are restaurants, right? I mean, it's insane. I can't afford to do that as you're having to pull people in from 20, 30 miles out, 40 miles out that are driving into work. It's just a challenge all over the city with the way the infrastructure's set up right now. Yeah. Do you think like, what I think about is like, what's gonna happen? Because everything goes up, which means, it is kind of a lag between what the guest perception is. We talk about those reviews where they say, you're charging too much. And I feel like we're in this phase of costs are going up. It's just more expensive to go out to eat and guess when are they gonna understand, when is that gonna come full circle where they're gonna understand, is it's costing, it costs us more to go out to eat.

44:52I can't go out to eat as much, or does that make sense? Yeah, I think that there's something that I think about a lot is along those lines. And I do worry, I was just at the National Restaurant Association show last weekend. And some of the things I saw, I don't know, I feel glad to be the age that I am now running restaurants because I think if I was 10 years younger and I was trying to do this, I have a bit of a pessimistic view on the future of our industry. I hate to say that, but I just worry with, number one, some of the technology that's coming. And number two, I think that the culture of younger people and going out is very, very different than people around our age. I just don't think young people go out anymore the way that we all went out. I really don't, I don't think that going out to dinner, talking face to face, being off of your phone, having that kind of communal social experience is as important to younger generations as it is to people our age.

45:57So as we start to age out of going to restaurants all the time, sorry, I feel like this is getting dark, but I really do, that's what I've been thinking about lately. And I'm just like, man, I feel like we've got another solid 10 years and then let's figure out another plan, you know? I don't know. I don't know. Did you go to the NRA this year? No, no, no, no. Do you like going to shows like that? Do you ever do any big things like that? No. No, you know, sometimes I'll go to the shows just to kind of look at certain equipment and stuff like that, but it's been a while. It was a really good show this year. The thing that really struck me was one of the biggest booths was right in the middle and it was robot servers. And it's, have you seen these? Yeah, it's like a Roomba with shelves that you expedite an iPad and it runs the food to the table. They have them at 615 Chutney in Bellevue. Oh, they do? Yeah, it's like a cat. It's a cat, it's a cat robot. Oh, cool. That comes to your table, like you order your food and then it comes to your table and it starts meowing and you just grab your food off of it.

47:02Yeah. And then it just scurries back to the kitchen and then you load it back up and it just runs out. You get another one that has bus tubs on it and it goes around and people put their plates on the bus tub and then it has like a sensor so when it hits a certain weight, it goes back to the dish room. I guess that wouldn't work in any of my places. It's way too busy. No, they really, yeah. We got turbo boost, man, you gotta move fast. But I think that a lot of what we see now, like a Chipotle or Subway or anything like that, all of that is gonna go robot, which I don't know, maybe that's not the worst thing, but. I mean, right now what you see, coming out of the pandemic and all, we had some restaurants that normally were open for lunch, like say a Super Rico was, but we weren't open for lunch because we didn't have the staff. So our landlord was saying, hey, it's in your leash, you need to be open for lunch. And we're like, okay, how are we gonna open for lunch? And then there was like a, so there was a bar taco was doing this little thing where you would order from your phone and then your food and drinks would just come to the table.

48:04So I'm like, okay, well, they were asking me like, hey, can we do this? Can we just pilot this in one of the Super Ricas for lunch and see how it works? I'm like, well, let me go test it first. So I went to, we went there and ate and it was like, there were some things about it that we really liked. It was like you ordered and just it came, it was fast. The exit, you didn't have to wait for your check. It was very fast, but it really lacked that. The person, it really dumbed down the server. The service hospitality aspect was just kind of like, is this yours? Here it is, drop it. And then I've talked to a GM before and he's like, it's just horrible. It's actually resulted in a lower caliber of staff. Interesting. So I'm like, no, this isn't who we are. This isn't what we do. Well, there was an article yesterday morning in the New York Times that was really interesting. And it was about exactly what we're talking about. So they talked about Chili's, has really been relying.

49:07Did you read this? So Chili's has really been relying very heavily on technology. They have iPads at the tables and they have very limited interaction with- They're one of the first companies to do that. Yeah. So they have what they call in-house a GWAP, which is a guest with a problem. And they said that their percentage rate of GWAPs has been going up like crazy as they are increasingly implementing new technologies. And they had a new director of operations for all the stores come in and he said, we're going to get rid of some of this technology. We're gonna hire more team members. We're gonna have more face-to-face guest interaction and it's been really successful for them. So maybe my very dark outlook is incorrect and maybe we are seeing that kind of boomerang backlash against some of the technology and people want more of that personal connection. With the article said, you know, after the pandemic, that's what people are craving. They want that neighborhood restaurant feel. They're tired of, you know, looking at QR codes and iPads and all of that.

50:08Yeah. I think that there's, the generations are, and you can look at the generational shift. Generation Xers, I'm a Generation X guy. You're probably with me on that. How'd you say, how old are you? 53. You're- That's Gen X. You're Gen X. I'm a Zennial. You're a little younger. I'm a little, I'm 44. So I'm a Zennial. I'm right on the edge of Generation, Millennial and Generation X. And then you have the Millennials within Gen Z. And I'm the first year of Millennial. So we all, you're the- I am, I'm the first year of Millennial. I squeaked by, I'm 82. 82, yeah, you're 82, okay. So I'm right on, I'm 79. So I'm right there on the Gen X. So I think that people like us value human interaction because we grew up with human interaction. We had the internet at an early age. Yeah. You know, I was wagon trained with the big old flat black floppy disk, right? Yeah. In the fourth grade. Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail. Yeah, I wasn't doing those things, Oregon Trail, not Oregon Train.

51:10I don't know what I'm thinking. But Gen Z, kids today, every single thing they do is on that phone. Every single thing. I have eight, nine- Are your kids like that? I have eight, nine-year-old kids, yeah. Every, going into a store and buying something, that's sort of online. That's sort of online. Just do it online. Do you have kids? Yeah. Are your kids like this, too? How old are your kids? No, they're like 26 and 24. Okay. So they're millennials, though. I mean, they're kind of on that same thing. I think when our new restaurant, we're gonna have a section. I'm gonna have a section, almost like you'd have, do you want to sit indoors or outdoors? And I'm gonna have the, because I'm right in Belmont. I mean, right on Belmont Boulevard, right across the university, where I'm gonna have these Gen Zs coming in, who are like, I don't want to wait for 45 minutes for a table. Can I just sit over there and scan my own thing and do my own thing? And you're like, yeah, we're gonna, do you want full service or do you want technology? I don't know what we're gonna call it, but I think you have a section where you have one server for six tables, and that's the section.

52:13If you want to do it yourself, you can go sit in that section, scan the QR code, send everything. It'll go directly to your table, and then somebody's there to answer your questions. But if you want full service, if you want people, then we have the full service section where you can sit down and have a server come by and greet you, bring you your drinks, bring you all of your appetizers, course your meal for you. And so you kind of get it both ways, because I think you're in that balance of, I'm in a school area plus a really nice neighborhood. People are gonna want the full service, but they're also gonna be like, dude, I can just do it myself. And so I think that having both is gonna be a challenge, but. I think the alcohol is the hardest part. Because in a college area, if you scan your own alcohol, you have to card people, and then once you've carded them, they can just scan their alcohol and have it ran to the table. What if they give it to somebody else? Can you card them as you're dropping it? You have to. Yeah. The part of the responsibility is you have to card as you drop the food. You have to card it every single time, because who knows if the person that ordered it's giving it to somebody else or how that works. I mean, there's some weird stuff like that around it, but.

53:15That's interesting. Yeah, because we're looking at a location right off of Vanderbilt campus for something. And I'm like, you know, we haven't had a location like that. We haven't, you know, that's, you know, not a ton of parking. And I'm like, is this gonna be good? Is it not gonna be good? I don't know. We have like no parking. Okay. We're on Belmont Boulevard. Yeah. Right there. I mean, so it's right across from the university. So I'm like, we're gonna have this mix of people, and I don't know, it's gonna be interesting. We're gonna have some fun with it. Yeah. One last time, a few words from our sponsors. We are so excited to be sponsored by Cytex. Cytex is your linen, uniform, first aid kit supplier. They're doing amazing things. And Ross Chandler is the man. You need to call him. His number is 270-823-2468. Their service, their quality is impeccable, and they wanna work with you. If you're a locally owned and operated restaurant, they want to ensure that you are getting the best quality, the best service at the best price.

54:24Those are three things that don't usually happen together, but they want to make all of those things happen for you. Again, Ross Chandler is the one to call 270-823-2468. Are you a hospitality worker looking to purchase a new home? Don't settle for just any realtor. Use someone who understands your industry. Our real estate partner, John Ho, has a history in hospitality and is now able to help our industry through the home buying process. Along with his partner at Foundation Mortgage, they have the products and intimate knowledge of the hospitality industry to assist you in identifying properties to purchase and get you qualified for financing. Too often in our industry, we've been fed lies about the path to home ownership. The truth is, you don't need great credit scores. You don't need tens of thousands of dollars for a down payment, and you certainly don't need two years of employment at one job. Don't take chances with the one of the most significant purchases of your life. Trust people who understand the needs of hospitality workers. A team who is non-judgmental and is flexible enough to accommodate any hospitality schedule.

55:28And for you managers and executives listening out there, reach out to them to inquire for free information you can pass along to your staff. Contact them today to start your home buying journey with the right team. John Ho at 615-483-0315, or you can follow him on Instagram at housepetality. Amanda Gardner with Foundation Mortgage is 865-230-1031. Find her on Instagram at mortgageamanda. Hey guys, we are supported by Sharpier's Bakery, and we've been supported by Sharpier's Bakery for the last year. And I tell you, I couldn't be more proud of this partnership. Guys, they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in Nashville for the last 36 years. Yes, they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's back door. And man, is it good. You wanna know what kind of bread they make? Go check them out at sharpiersbakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com. So they have over 200 types of bread.

56:29And if you're wondering, well, hey, look, it's a special recipe that I like to use that we bake it in our house and it's just, it's a kind of a pain, but we like to do it. They can take your recipe and make that bread for you without any of the hassle, the mess, the labor. They'll just deliver it right to your door every single day. It is freshly baked. They love to give you a tour of their facility. Give Erin Mosso a call. Her number is 615-319-6453. You should do it now. Come to the nations, please. We need more good things. Oh yeah, I remember when Nicky's was, I mean, it was pretty new when I went over there and it was really quiet. Has it changed since then? Yes and no. When we, the problem, the biggest problem with Nicky's is when we opened, everybody is like the nations, the nations, it's the next 12 South. It's the next Germantown. It's popping, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. We are into our seventh year. It still hasn't happened. It's a little bit better, but it really is only a little bit better.

57:33We have had to get- You're putting on a hell of a sales pitch for him, by the way. Exactly. Well, but no. I'm sold. No, no, no, no, but here's why it's only gotten a little bit better is because we don't have enough good things that have opened in the neighborhood. The retail and restaurant growth has been too slow. We have some great concepts, but everything is mostly kind of like bar type of concept. I mean, Bringles is open right by us, which is awesome, but it's another kind of more casual type of place. So I think that if we could get some more kind of chef driven destinations, it's that high tide raises all ships. I think a lot of people maybe, are they looking at Wedgwood Houston? Well, yeah, Wedgwood Houston is like the hotspot for sure. I remember when it was just real quiet and Bashton was there and I was like, this is really cool. And I think it could be something and then Soho house open and it's like, okay, here we go. Yeah, yeah. Pastis is about to open in front of Soho house. And I mean, it's a great neighborhood, but they don't need anything else.

58:36We need stuff in the nation. And there is a lot of development. I think that a lot of the development of like condos and apartment buildings that are being built currently is going to make a huge difference, but they're still under construction. Yeah. You know, so. I think it's gonna happen. I think it's gonna happen too. We just, I think we're under the impression that it was gonna happen in a couple of years and it's been a long seven years. You know, we just had to get creative and make it work in other ways. We have a really, really big private events business. That's been a huge part of, you know, what's made things work for us. And we just had to get creative with different marketing things and events. And, you know, just come on over to the neighborhood guys. Yeah, yeah. Um, tell me about your experience at Star Rover. When you went for your Bond Me takeover. Yeah, I mean. I was supposed to come, but something happened and I couldn't come. It was cool. I mean, I, it's interesting going to a thing like that because you're not in control.

59:38I like being in control of what I'm doing. And it was like, you wait outside, then you sit down and then they'll bring you courses and you're at this table. And I did not like the music. Yeah. I don't even know who the band was. And it was, it was irrelevant who the band. It could have been any band, but you know, it was like $150 a ticket. And then you got four. This was the one you were supposed to go to. Yes. Remember that one for Valentine's day that I invited you and Tony. You guys had some of the, you blew us off. I blew you off. I was in the emergency room with COVID. Oh, that's right. My first case. Yeah, that's right. If you wait three years to get COVID, it really comes for you. Yeah, that's what it is. Okay, so she wasn't able to go, but you know, you spend, it's a decent meal. And I took the owner of our restaurants and his wife and the food came and it was amazing. The ambiance was great. The service was great. Everybody was great. You know, like so guys excited to be here. Then it's like, and it's like the music started. And I was like, well, that's really loud. This is not like ambient music. Like we're at a concert now.

01:00:38And the rest of the entire meal, there was this loud band playing, like excessively loud band playing. And we couldn't have a conversation. So it's like, we were going to go have a nice dinner to hang out and like enjoy dinner together. We got like course one in, and when you're trying all this new food, you want to talk about it. You want to, my wife's, me and Steven hang out all the time, but like our wives are there together. That would be able to talk. And it was just like, the music was so loud that it was just like, all right, let's watch the show. And it just wasn't a dinner. All of a sudden it was now a concert. And I didn't, I thought it was like a background music. So maybe you have like dinner until say nine, nine 30. And then it, then it morphs into a show. That would have been great. Cause then we can stay and watch show, have drinks, whatever you want to do. And then you're like, that's the thing, but like while you're trying to have dinner. Oh, you can't do that. I could do it. Do you guys do a brunch there? That's what we're talking about next is doing like Saturday, Sunday brunch. The reason I thought of that is cause I live in a building where the settler used to be.

01:01:41It's a punch one lefties now. And they always had live, it reminds me a little bit of star Rover, you know, certainly the aesthetic is different, but similar concept where it's, you know, food, great food and kind of, you know, casual food and then always live music. But every Saturday and Sunday morning, there's a line down the block for their brunch when they were open. So I could see people. I think that's the next, that's our next step. That's not cinema cause cinema has a huge brunch. Well, they also, listen, it's brunch central over there. Cause then Femwix is also next door. So it's, it's brunch popping, but, and a lot of tourists, it's like a, I think it's a fun thing for tourists to do. Like, Hey, we can go hear great local music. We can have brunch. And I mean, listen, please don't let me give you business advice, but I just, you know, that's kind of my first thought of, that would just be such a fun brunch spot. Yeah. Cause we were, you know, we've already got it planned out. I mean like breakfast tacos and I don't know if you've had the pancakes at Super Rico, but they are ridiculous. And your staff is probably going to come for me.

01:02:43Like, don't make us, don't do brunch, please. But yeah, I don't know. Nashville is also not that brunch city that I want it to be. You know, I feel like I go to Chicago and it's just like, Oh my, it's brunch city. Is Atlanta like that? Brunch a big thing? Just the spots, you know what I mean? Those spots, people just sit there and wait like two hours for like two eggs over easy. Yeah. Like, why are you doing that? Let's, let's make that our mantra for Nashville. Brunch city. That's all you. I already, I already do brunch. We do a brunch too. I got a brunch at both places. Oh, do you? We do. You've been to Maribor. You think you've been to Maribor's brunch? I've been around it. I have not. Oh yeah. We do a buffet. I do a buffet brunch. Have you been to, you know, Maribor, the restaurant Maribor? It's in Brentwood. It's in a 7,500 square foot mansion. And we take the entire living room and we take out all the tables and chairs and we have four, you know, there's, there's, we do a Benedict action station where you get to make custom eggs Benedict right there.

01:03:46It's a live station. He's making the eggs and the whole thing. And he makes you a custom Benedict. We do two action, two omelet stations. We have prime rib carving station, smoked salmon carving station. We do a crepes to order. Yeah. We've got Belgian waffles, pancakes, any of that stuff to order. You want blueberries in them, the whole thing. And then there's all the savory three different kinds of bacon and sausage and creme brulee, French toast. And then we have a chocolate fountain and a whole dessert. The bar turns into a dessert area. So it's an all-inclusive, go wild kind of a brunch and it's all locals. And it's the same people that come every week. And it's, it's, it's really cool. Yeah. It's a neat experience. Oh, I'm sure you guys are packed for brunch. We do about four to 500 people on Sunday from, you know, nine 30 to two. That's huge. Nice. That's great. That's a good brunch. It's a busy lunch. That's a good brunch. We fill it up. So what has, what surprised you about Nashville?

01:04:47Was there an expectation you had of, of having businesses here that, you know, has, you know, not been what you thought it was going to be? No, not really. I don't think so. I mean, this was like, you know, the optimist was one thing that we just had one thing after the other. And you guys opened at a tough time. What was that timeline? Oh my gosh. So we, so I was here, we opened, we had all our staff in for day one of orientation. On what date? Whatever that date that every restaurant closed down. March 14th. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, 2020. That first day we had, we, we went through day one orientation and then it was like, okay, we're, we can't move forward right here. So, and then, you know, you lose people and whatever. But, so that was just like, but before that it was just like construction problem after construction problem after construction problem. And it was like a four year thing for us. It was like, it took us forever to even get open. We're like, what is going on here? Nothing's really surprised.

01:05:49I mean, I kind of was noticing a little bit that it was an early town and it didn't go as late. And then what's kind of come to my mind now recently is that I feel like it's at a, when I say it's, it revolves around a lot of tourism. It's pretty, it feels kind of saturated. Like we went to a restaurant last night that used to be super busy and I'm like, it just wasn't. So I'm like, wow, you know what I mean? And then, but there's been tons of restaurants open. So. Where'd you go? Oh, I can't say that on the air camera. Yeah, no, no, don't say on the air. But it was good. Yeah, it was good. It was great. They weren't as busy last night on a Wednesday night and I mean, June or the end of May. Well, this is also a tough week because it's Memorial Day week. This is vacation time and that's not a. We've been slow this week. Indicator, I'm just curious. It was Emmy squared. Okay. But it was good. Were you in Green Hills or the Gulch? Gulch. I wanted to see the Gulch. I wanted to see kind of what's going on.

01:06:49That was the one that I remember. It's kind of small, you know, and always was fairly busy, you know? There was like a salad or something in my mind while my wife was whining. So I was like, look up Nicky's, look up Nicky's. Let's go to Nicky's. Aw, thank you. She's like. No, we're going to Emmy squared. No, listen, you guys please come see us anytime. Oh, we will. What do you, what do you, so you're married? You got kids, like you got two kids in their 20s. How long have you been married for? September will be 29 years. Wow. 20. So in the restaurant, did you meet her in the restaurant world? Was she? I mean, pretty, I. You guys were like seven when you got married. You guys were 52. My first job out of culinary school was the Ritz Carlton. I got, I knew the executive chef there and he recruited me there and brought me into, my wife was in human resource hotel, basically. Where in? In Houston. In Houston. So he brought me in her office and said, Hey Stacey, this is Ford. He starts work today. Would you like to interview him? She's like, well, it sounds like you've already hired him, but you're paying him $1 too much an hour, you know?

01:07:54She said I should have been making $7 an hour and I made eight. So I started there and met her there and that was that. So she did like an interview with you and you just fell in love? She didn't even do the interview. She didn't do the interview? No, no, no, no, no. I think she saw me kind of leaving work and going to play tennis or something like that. And she's like, she wanted to set me up with her sister and I'm like, no, I'm not gonna do that. And then, so then we started playing. What about you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were friends for like, I don't know, three months or something like that. I was a slow mover. I'm pretty shy. That was about that. What's the secret to a successful marriage? 29 years. I mean, I'm a big train wreck. You don't even wanna ask me, you know what I mean? I'm in the restaurant business. Well, that's the thing. That's the hardest part is about how do you find balance because you're traveling, you're in three different cities. Does your wife work with you? She's got kids. Oh no, no, no, no. We can't work together. But I, you know, I would say- What's the secret to success? I would say one secret to...

01:08:54I noticed any time that I did anything stupid, there was alcohol related. So I'd say four years ago, I stopped drinking, you know? And it wasn't because I was an alcoholic. It's just, and I wasn't an angry drunk. I was a happy drunk, but I just did stupid stuff. So it's just like, you know, even when you first, like we opened my first, when I opened my first restaurant, it was kind of like, okay, let's go upstairs to the bar and let's start drinking after work, you know? And you just do stupid things, you know? And people will get in trouble or whatever. And it's like, I'm climbing on the roof of the building and throwing bottles everywhere, you know? It's like, this is just dumb, you know? So I, it took me, I don't know, 10, 15, 14 years to kind of realize like, you know what? The common denominator of stupidity is alcohol for me. And I just, you know, I got friends who can drink and they drink well, but I just, I just start getting too happy and to have too much fun. So, and I'm good. I did the same thing about three and a half years ago. Yeah. And it's amazing because that is a common denominator of just completely screwing up.

01:09:58There's a lot of that in the restaurant industry. I mean, I think we went through a phase where it's like, hey, let's get healthy or let's stop, you know? And you see that in music too, I think. Remember back when I was a kid, it was like Van Halen in concert and all these people just going crazy. Exactly. And now it's like, they don't do that anymore. They do crossfit. Exactly, everyone's getting fit. I mean, Sean Brock, I mean, look at him. I mean, that guy has made an amazing turnaround in his life. You know, I mean, I kind of knew him before, but I noticed like such a huge difference of him, you know, after, and it's like, wow, I'm just like so proud of him and for making that call. And it, you look at him, you know what I mean? Like his life is, I mean, and I have a lot of people that I work with, you know, they're getting in shape. They stopped drinking and it wasn't because they were alcoholics. It was, I mean, some of them, yes, they were definitely drinking too much, but you know, the ones who just chose, hey, just keep your mind more fit, you know, then you gotta be, you gotta be on top of things.

01:11:03You know what I mean? Especially to kind of navigate this world now. Alcohol is a literal poison that you're ingesting for a feeling or something that happens. And it's like, I'm gonna stop doing that and see what happens to my body. And it's like, all of a sudden, oh wow, my blood pressure is regulated and all this, my liver was swollen and all these different things. And you're like, this doesn't happen anymore. I meet a lot of people that are in recovery and I don't meet a lot of people who are like, yeah man, when I quit drinking, everything went to shit. Like it's almost at 100% of, I quit drinking and I got all my shit back. You know, I got my job back, got my dog back, got my car back, whatever it is. It's like the- The reverse country song. Yes, it's like the reverse country song. All right, we don't have a ton of time left. Thank you so much for coming in, in studio, being here. Loved it. Anytime you wanna come back, you're in town, you got the new concept in Vanderbilt, you're gonna open, just send me a text. Hey, we wanna do another show. Let's talk some more about this stuff where you have, you can pick our brands.

01:12:06It doesn't matter. Yeah, this is great. We love talking shop with you. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thanks. We do one final thing that you get to take us out. So this is the Gordon Food Service final thought. Gordon Food Service is our fantastic title sponsor. And if you don't use them in all 25 of your restaurants, you should look into it. They're amazing. So whatever you wanna say, you get to talk to our entire audience, whatever you wanna say, as long as you wanna say it, you get the final thought of the conversation. Oh, okay. It doesn't have to be heavy, light, brief, long, whatever you want. I'm starting to worry people about this. I just wanna talk. I want people, maybe they can even like, any ideas about Star Rover? I've had some thoughts and I've been brainstorming some things and what I would really love. Cause Star Rover wasn't something like, not really doing it for the money. I love music. I love live music and I love musicians, you know?

01:13:08And you know, I've even thought and talked to people, friends over at Spotify or Apple Music or whatever, you know, if anyone has any brainstorming ideas, would someone even like, hey, wanna adopt it? You know what I mean? I've been like, adopt it as your room to kind of funnel all your musicians through here. Cause I feel like it needs some, I do feel, I'm agreeing with you that I do feel like it's more of a nighttime thing, but I also want people to come eat the food because it's like, when I eat the food, it's so good, you know? And I don't necessarily always say that, you know, about our places sometimes, you know? We all go through different cycles, but it's, oh my gosh, like the chicken tenders. We do these chicken tenders that are, I don't know, I got on this like chicken tender kick for some reason. And so, and then we made, we're making these crispy tacos and I put the, I'm like, can we make a crispy taco with a chicken tender in it? You know, so it was like so good, you know? So I don't know.

01:14:08And I want someone to do, my final word I'd say is I want someone to do a really, make a really big deal about Best Burger in Nashville. I'm not saying I need to be the best burger. I just like looking at those lists and I like knowing where they are. And I know Nashville has a ton of really good burgers so it should be bigger. Maybe y'all do this. You can look at the door and you can see all the people that have written Best Burger on here. So you got the Bad Luck Burger Club. Yes, those guys are, I wanna eat one of their burgers. They are crushing it. I wanna eat one of their burgers. Their burgers are beyond good. And right above it, you see the Best Burger in Nashville is at Redheaded Stranger. Brian Lee Weaver. Brian's awesome. Signed that one right there. And then, I don't know who wrote there. Yep, that's a really good burger. And we got different spots on here, but there's, we both had, we had this coming. We had Montel Jordan, who's in another, is it Atlantan? Probably, yeah. What do you call people from Atlanta? Atlantians? Atlantan. Atlantians, Atlantan. I think so. You're an Atlantan. I don't even use that word.

01:15:09He's a fellow Atlantan. Okay, there you go. And he said, what's the best burger? I heard the pharmacy was really good. And we're like, yeah, the pharmacy's great. But we both have settled that we love Hugh Babies. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love Hugh Babies. Have you had Hugh Babies yet? No, but I've heard, and our photographer does them too, so. So if you wanna go get a great, read their classic, I get the double cheeseburger and bacon. It's a way to go. It's just, it's classic. It's like his version of a double double at In-N-Out. But it's. What's the bar? It's a bar kind of near the Optimist, but kind of like a street over. Oh, Jack Brown's. I've heard that that's a great burger. I hear they have a really good burger. And then Mother's Ruin, I don't hear. I had one during pandemic. I think I got one for the ride home. And that was a bomb. I've never had the Mother's Ruin. I've had Jack Brown's. Jack Brown's is good. I hear it's pretty good. One dude back there just kinda flippin', you know? You know what, honestly, you know what I love?

01:16:10I love across the street. I love Brown's Diner. Brown's Diner. Have you been to Brown's Diner before? I don't think so. Brown's Diner across the street is absolutely classic. If you've got time after this, I'll take you over there for a burger, because I'm starving. I know she can't stay, but I'd be happy to. So thank you for coming in today, Ford Fry. Thank you. We will see you again soon. Great. Big thank you to Ford Fry for joining us in studio, taking the time out of his day to talk about all that he is doing. Wanna tell you guys right now about The Giving Kitchen? Giving Kitchen is here to help workers, restaurant workers. If you are a manager, if you're an owner, if you are a worker and you're in crisis and you need help, The Giving Kitchen is here to help you. Go visit them at thegivingkitchen.org, and you can learn more about what they can do. You can also place a claim there. So here's the deal. If you get hurt, if you have cancer, you get diagnosed with some sort of disease and you're out of work for a period of time and you work in a restaurant, they want to support you.

01:17:17They wanna end homelessness. They want to be able to take care of people in this industry. That's it. So if you're out there and you're hurt or you're able to work or you need help or you need to go to rehab, that's one of those things too. I wanna go to rehab, but hell, I can't miss a month's worth of work because I'll lose my apartment. They'll pay for your rent. They'll pay for your light bill. They'll pay for groceries while you're gone. They won't pay for the rehab, not to my knowledge, but they'll do that for you. They also, you can go to betterhelp.com and there's I think like a free month of counseling when you work with The Giving Kitchen. If you just mentioned The Giving Kitchen, there's lots of great things. So go to thegivingkitchen.org. These are amazing partners with us and we just, I love them, love to support them. Go back and listen to our episode with Jen Heidinger Kendrick, who's their co-founder. She tells all about it. I also wanna tell you guys about Ben's Friends. Ben's Friends is meeting every Monday at 11 o'clock. Substance abuse recovery for the hospitality industry.

01:18:19They meet every Monday at 11 a.m. at the Oak Steakhouse. You can valet park at the Westin and they will, you can validate your parking so it is free for you to park at the Westin and it's a one hour time for people to sit down, meet, talk. So if you know somebody who's in recovery in the hospitality industry, this is a safe place for them to get together. All right, housekeeping is done. Thank you for listening. We will be back. Gosh, we have so many episodes coming at you. I'm so excited about the Brandon's Book Club with Dr. Alex Jahungir. That episode was so much fun. It's coming up soon. So many amazing conversations and we just thank you for joining us through them all. I hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.