Hunter Hakanson

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I'll be your host today and today's gonna be another fun episode where we're gonna be talking with a couple friends of mine. One is Hunter Hackinson and he's the owner of Nectar Urban Cantina as well as the brand new Tenfold Brewery. We're gonna talk about what he's doing. He's got some cool specials come up this week that we're gonna talk about. They're also talking with Wendy Hewin and Wendy has started a company called Power by the Tea Catering and she's got some cool things. So the episode today is really gonna be what are people doing to help service industry folks. A couple people I wanted to highlight throughout the city that are doing things to help you. So if you work in the industry and you need some help, this episode's for you. So sit back, relax, enjoy and let's introduce Wendy Hewin. And Wendy you're the owner at Powered by the Tea Catering and I'm doing great. Thanks for coming on Nashville Restaurant Radio. So I wanted to talk to you today because you've got some cool things going on but let's get into a little bit about your history. What's your history in the Nashville food service industry?

01:52I was a former kitchen manager, kitchen manager and service manager for Sperry's. That's where I learned a lot of the fancy cooking that we do. And pretty much learned the love and so much more passion behind food there at Sperry's. I worked under Chef Bob Tappen. You know, he taught me so much and I really just strived in that company. I took a job with Merchants Restaurant after that. My son plays college football at the University of Tennessee. So I wanted to take the time away from management to be able to go see him play because we are all about family. That's what brought me into this field was the comfort of food. It's like sitting at the dinner table with my brother and all my sisters and my family. We always had a family dinner. We always sat at the table and they discussed what went on with our days and it just brought comfort to the family.

03:05And that's what cooking is to me. Cooking is comfort. And that's what Powered by the Tea is. Powered by the Tea is a company that I created during the pandemic to be able to feed service industry families. All profits minus food costs is going to feed service industry families. So that's what's most important to me. It really is. I think that what you're doing is wonderful. And for somebody who works in the hospitality industry and cares about people's hospitality industry, creating a company where you're going to feed people who are displaced or don't have a job right now, I think is wonderful. Which is kind of the point of this show today is just what can people do? What are the resources available to people out there? And this is where I want to find out how it works. So people would call you and they'd place a catering. Are you selling it to them at cost or is this for the general public to buy catering and then any money that you make on that catering you're then turning around and feeding people?

04:10Absolutely. What we're doing is if you place an order with me, I will either deliver it that day. I'm putting a menu on daily with a very good price. It's usually around 12 per adult, six per child. And that's delivered or picked up six feet apart. I do non-contact deliveries. And again, I'm working alone so that nobody else is working with me so it's not a bigger chance of spreading a disease. I'm working alone and actually cooking, delivering the food or non-contact deliveries on the porch or somebody can meet me if you live far out. What I do is take the proceeds minus the food cost because I've got to be able to buy the food and I'll Venmo certain families who have reached out to me and then I bring all the extra food and feed the service industry family that I have left for the day.

05:16If I'm somebody listening that's out there right now and I'm a displaced food service worker and I need help, how would I contact you? You would message Power by the Tea Catering or me personally. I've got my name through Facebook. Get it out there. And again, I do check because I am trying to feed service industry families. So I have had some calls from people that need some help that aren't in the service industry and I'll do a little background and check and help them. But I am trying to concentrate on service industry right now because we've been out of work for so long. Lower Broadway was hit first. So a lot of unemployment hasn't even been approved yet. So nobody has gotten any money yet. I've had people calling me crying saying I have no pull ups for my child. I have no money to buy them.

06:24It's just the pandemic. It's just something we have never experienced before. No, it's crazy. There are people starving. I mean, service industry has come from making all this money to nothing. It's just unbelievable. There are certain people that don't even know how to use a computer. I mean, people that I've sat down and had to help them do their unemployment because they've worked in service industry so long that they never had to go on unemployment. When I was 18 years old, I had a dream to go play basketball at the University of Tennessee to play for Pat's Comet. My dream was very real.

07:40I was pregnant with my son and I knew what it was like to be 4, 18 with a child and not have any money. And the service industry is what sent him through Catholic school, fed me, fed my family, and took care of us and brought him to where he is today and me to where I am today. And this is all working on tips and through the service industry and all the people that I've met has just given me opportunity after opportunity to make a difference in myself and be able to educate myself being a single mom with a child. And it's just brought me so far and it's just put a special place in my heart for other people. I mean, I just want to give back. People have given back to me. And if it wasn't for my village and my family support, I would have never made it young with a child.

08:41It was the family support and the comfort of food, cooking. It's always that comfort that when you walk into your mother or father's house, there's a meal sitting there. That's what brought us comfort. And the fact that people go in the refrigerator right now and can't get milk or they have nothing to eat or you're looking around at your children and they're hungry and you can't feed them, that breaks my heart daily. And I will do anything out there, including risk my life on the front lines to feed these people because they are family to me. That's human spirit right there. You hear all the time in the news that this world is so divided and there's so many things that are happening out there. Can't we all get along and when are we going to come together as one? And I don't think there's a more genuine story than exactly what you just said. It's a community that's helped you in your darkest time and now it's a lot of people's darkest time and the thing that you want to do the most is give back to them.

09:49So I love it. Let's get out your information so that people can get a hold of you. So they can visit your Facebook page at Powered by the Tea Catering. That's powered by the letter T as in like UT catering. So if you need to buy food and you want to feed your family, feel free to hook up with Powered by the Tea and they will do a non-contact pickup. And this is one person making your food. You want to talk about a home cooked meal. This is one person making your food. And you're going to be helping your fellow service industry folks. So thank you so much Wendy for coming on and we'll have to do a follow up story and find out how everything went. But thank you so much for spending your time today with us. Hey, thank you Brandon. Thank you so much. He's taking those challenges and turning it into a positive for the community. So have a listen. Hunter Hackinson. Hunter, how are you doing today, man?

11:10I'm doing good. How are you? I cannot complain. The weather, it's stopped raining, which is nice, right? I mean it's been raining for like the past six months so it's nice we had a couple days without rain. So Hunter, you are the owner of Nectar Urban Cantina and the newly opened Tenfold Brewing. Correct. How's that going? It's going good. It's not the best times right now, but they're both restaurants are doing, you know, okay. Well, let's go back a little bit, kind of our relationship. I've known you for a long time. Not to use the word like frenemy. I don't know how that works, but you've been longtime Cisco MA. And how long were you at Cisco? 17 years. And I remember your Facebook post where you kind of posted that picture with you and your original badge for Cisco and you're like, all right, what a long strange trip it's been or whatever it was and we'll see what happens going to the future. Is your post Cisco life anything like you thought it was going to be?

12:20Not at all. You know, that was on my way out the door. I felt like I needed to capture that moment. I spent a lot of, you know, a lot of time with a great company and wanted to go out and do my entrepreneurial thing. And so yeah, that was not what or it's not looking like I thought it was going to look like. Obviously I took off that day, went to Steamboat Springs, went snowboarding for the weekend, came back and immediately the tornado hit and spent a week feeding people in our community free tacos. And after the dust settled a little bit, I said, well, let's focus on tenfold. Try to get the restaurant open. And then obviously the virus, you know, made its way here and your life is kind of strange now.

13:23What was the originally? What was the planned opening day for tenfold brewing? We had we had kind of loosely discussed mid mid March and then we were waiting on a few permits and stuff. So we kind of got pushed back, but we were trying to get open before April was our original goal. You know how it is when you open a restaurant, original goals, months and months and months before this date. But we were we were definitely trying to shoot for before April. And you said mid March and this whole thing really started taking off March 13th was I think the official launch of where everything became real. You've opened tenfold now, right? I mean, you guys are doing it. We opened last Thursday. You know, what we decided was, OK, what can we do? We've spent all this money and all this time preparing and getting ready to open a restaurant.

14:26And we're right here at the finish line. And it's kind of like, OK, you know, the rugs kind of pulled out from underneath you. But our model was beer and pizza. And so I knew pizza traveled well and it seems like the curbside pickup to go is kind of the norm now. And so we decided we were just going to open up and, you know, try to try to put a good product out there for everybody to try. We don't have everything available. We just started with a limited menu, a few pizzas and a couple of beers. We don't have all our beers ready in the tanks yet, but we're in the process. Well, so let's do a little bit of promotion for you. You have the brand new Tenfold Brewing. Where is it located? 2408 Lebanon Pike, Nashville, Tennessee, and it's right here in the heart of Donaldson, Tennessee. So it's not probably not far from Nectar?

15:28No, you can see it. You can see Nectar out the front of our windows there. Nectar is at 206 McGavick Pike, Nashville, Tennessee, and it's right behind the Walgreens there. And so I could walk back and forth between the two. They're very close. That's fantastic. So what is the concept? Let's talk about when you decided to do Tenfold and I want to get into Nectar and I got a bunch of stuff I want to ask you. But tell us about if Tenfold opened to full on fanfare, we're rocking and rolling. What is the exact concept if you were to open full bore? So we're, you know, we are I would say a brewery that focuses on hospitality and the restaurant. You know, a lot of breweries out there have really good beer and they don't, you know, they have a food truck pull up and serve food and or sometimes it's an afterthought. We decided that we wanted to make the food, you know, just as much as a focus as beer.

16:34And so the goal was where we live in Donaldson, there's not much. It's a little underserved area. There's a few chain restaurants and there's a few nice locally owned restaurants as well, but we're still a little underserved. So we tried to create something here that we thought was missing and a really good pizza and really good beer seemed to be the missing link there. I know you have Chef Julio Hernandez over at Nectar and he's like the best. Who's doing your food over at Tenfold? So Edgar Penley is my partner and he is the chef here at Tenfold. Wow. OK, so that's a that's a pretty big name to be doing pizza there at Tenfold. So you're going to get a damn good pizza. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's the goal is to create good pizza, good beer. Is he doing like all of his meats and everything to go on the pizzas?

17:37We're doing a few right now. I think we've got the meatball and Italian sausage we're doing in house, possibly looking at a pepperoni program down the line. But right now, you know, with where we're at in the state of things, we're trying to keep it a little simple. So, Hunter, what's some of the backstory behind how Tenfold came to be? We're a little bit inspired by, you know, it's a brewery that we, there's 10 of us partners in the business and pizza Tenfold is kind of where that came from. And, you know, we always thought about pizza, you know, for the pizza we needed in New York. That's kind of like the things we lived, all things Tennessee. So that's kind of where Tenfold kind of was born. It came from a lot of my affinity to brews came from Asheville, Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina.

18:39Yeah, I grew up in East Tennessee in a little town called Kingsport. And we would go over the mountain to buy good craft beer, you know, back in the day and found a place called Barley's there in those special items, the craft beer and pizza. And later, you know, I moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, I think to score there. And while I was there, I bartended several breweries. And one of the places I worked at was by Barley's because they moved to the second location in Knoxville. And just love pizza and beer like most other folks out there in the world. But that's kind of where the idea came from is that I wanted a kind of a spot here. You know, I live in Tennessee, somewhere close that I could, you know, go and hang out with a nice club that had great pizza and great beer.

19:47Okay. I mean, I love that. I love the fact that it's something you're passionate about. You've always liked growing up and then gaining getting 10 people together who want to go in and do this with you. You're getting great people like Edgar Pendley, who's if you're not familiar with Edgar Pendley, he's one of the original chefs for Urban Grub. And he's just a he's just an amazing chef. And he's solid and much more than a chef. He basically built this place. So he's got Tennessee food all over the place. But he's definitely a key part of this. And we're excited that he came on board. Absolutely. It's a huge, huge, huge get, I guess. I don't know. It's great to partner with somebody like that. You mentioned that you made a bunch of free tacos and the tornado hit and it was a big kind of it was a big you got back from Steamboat Springs.

20:47You went snowboarding. Tell me what that's been like for your community. Do you have people that were in your community that were affected by the tornado? I've got, you know, when you open a restaurant in a community like Donaldson, you become friends with a lot of people. And there's a lot of regulars and there's a lot of folks that support you and your restaurant that you keep up with. And, you know, there's several folks out here that were their homes were totally destroyed. And I mean, just wiped out and it's amazing that there was really hurt on this side of town. But the when we were driving through these neighborhoods and we immediately were like, hey, how can we help? We had all this food. I was like, hey, let's give away some free tacos. The folks that are, you know, either affected by the tornado or helping people that were affected by the tornado.

21:50You know, one of the one of the couples that, you know, I checked on him that morning was like, hey, are you all right? And he just shot me a text back. So we lost everything. And he came to the restaurant that evening. I said, what do we need? We ended up giving them T-shirts. I mean, literally didn't have anything left. And, you know, checked on them a few times. Actually, he comes and still supports us. You know, tenfold got some pizza and some food to take home the other day. So, yes, I keep up with these folks. It's kind of an amazing community. That's awesome. Let's let's fast forward now to what you're doing for the restaurant community. We kind of messaged back and forth today and you've got something coming up this week with tenfold, right? Yeah, we we decided we wanted to help, you know, folks in the hospitality industry that were, you know, either let go or, you know, due to the virus, they don't have any time.

23:03They might need some help. So we're giving away 50 free pizzas on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week on a first come basis. And they can order that online through our website. You'll see there's a little free pizza button there. You can click on that once you click on it. We also have a discretion, you know, we want to make sure that, you know, everybody has a chance to, you know, we only have 50, but we're only limited to one per guest. And hopefully, you know, we can feed some folks that might be, you know, having a hard time right now. That's the goal is to help some of our fellow industry folks out. So let's put some details to it. You said Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? Correct. And is there a time frame between certain hours? Yeah, between four and eight. You can order the pizza.

24:04Are you going to do so many an hour? So it's a four hour deal. Are you going to do like 15, you know, per hour or something? Or is it, can you order 50 pizzas in the first 20 minutes? Because I'm sure that's what would happen. That might be what happens and that's that would be OK. We're going to have to stay there and help people kind of show up to get their pizzas. Well, we've got a good plan for that already with our coach. And if you haven't been to the restaurant, we've got a really unique little setup. I mean, we've got a grab and go area up front and then we've got our main dining area and then at the very back we've got a brewery. But right now, as you drive into our parking lot, there's like a breezeway. When you pass through that, there's six garage doors. And we've set up one of those garage doors as a way to pick up your order. And there's plenty of space for folks to come in.

25:05And, you know, we're very aware of the virus and try to not create an area where people are gathering, if you know what I mean. Of course. We do want to have a spot where people can come pick it up and feel safe and, you know, take off. All right. So if you go to is it what's the website? Is it Tenfold Brewing? Yeah, it's www.tenfold.com. T-E-W-W-W dot T-E-N-N-F-O-L-D dot com. And Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, between the hours of four and eight, you are giving away 50 pizzas each night. And this is for displaced hospitality workers or is this just for anybody? No, this is for, we're trying to help out the hospitality industry. And we're going to request that they bring proof of where they work or maybe if they just know what 86 means.

26:05You know, the goal is just to really help support them. We want to make sure that everybody's got the food that they need. So if you're out there and you work in the industry and you're having some hard times, which I know that a lot of people out there are having tough times. Hunter Hackinson from Nectar Urban Cantina and brand new Tenfold Brewing wants to feed you pizza. This coming Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, between the hours of four and eight, go to Tenfold dot com. That's T-E-N-N-F-O-L-D dot com. Click on the button that says free pizza. Get your free pizza and then come pick it up. And that is such a great thing that you're doing for the community, Hunter. Well, we hope that's the get some free pizzas. Maybe they like our new Instagram or like our Facebook page. Maybe we can get some traction. As you know, when you open up a business, it's tough to get folks to know you're open.

27:10And so one of the things that we would like to do is try to create some buzz. And this might be one way to do it. Well, we're excited about that. That's awesome. Thanks for joining me today. And I definitely want to bring you back in once you guys are open full on. You guys are just rocking and rolling to hear more about exactly how you're doing, what you're doing and get the word out for what you're doing. I appreciate you taking the time today, Hunter. Next time we can talk about it all day, selling against each other. Yeah, which there was no selling against each other. I would just dream of maybe one day competing. There's no competing against you. You're the king. I don't know about that. There's only one Tiger King. I've been watching Ozark season three and been like holding the Tiger King in my back pocket, just waiting for like, because I know we're going to see the gamut of emotions and craziness throughout this thing if we're in our house for another month.

28:14Oh yeah, well, keep that one. It's a good one, man. It's fun. All right, sir. Say hi to your brother for me. You know it. Have a good one, brother. All right, buddy. So a good feel-good show today. We've talked to Powered by the Tea Catering and Wendy Hewin. And we've talked to Hunter Hackinson, the owner for Nectar Urban Cantina, as well as the brand new Tenfold Brewing. Both these people are out there doing what they can to help out the displaced hospitality employees. We're so excited that they joined us today. So if you want to, if you need some help, reach out to Wendy at Powered by the Tea Catering on Facebook and tenfold.com. Tuesday night between four and eight. Wednesday night between four and eight. And Thursday night between four and eight. Fifty pizzas. They're going to be giving away each night. So what a gift to our community. Hope you enjoyed this podcast today. If you did, like it, share it. We'd love for you to tell more people about it.

29:15Listen to some of our older episodes. We've got a big week coming up next week. We're excited to have you guys here and be good to each other. Love you guys. Bye.