Jake Mogelson

00:00If your leadership team is not on the same page and you are constantly having these long meetings and you're not getting traction, this is your opportunity. Today I'm talking about the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, yes it is based around the book by Gino Wickman and Traction. We use it at our restaurants, they use it at Frothy Monkey, they use it at Edley's BBQ, they use it at Carrington Row, Germantown Cafe, Park Cafe, lots of restaurants are using it because it helps and let me tell you today, Justin Cook is a great facilitator. Justin helps business owners and their leadership teams implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a set of simple, practical tools, disciplines to help you get better at three things, vision, traction and to be healthy. Vision is getting you and your leadership team 100% on the same page with who you are, where you're going and how you're going to get there. Traction is helping your leaders become more disciplined and accountable to execute on the right things that will make your vision become reality because a lot of times you're doing a lot of stuff but not the right stuff. Healthy is helping your leaders become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team because unfortunately leaders don't function well as a team. If you start with the leaders the rest of the organization will follow and you'll get to a point to where your entire team is crystal clear on vision. Everywhere you look people are executing the things that make your vision come true and it's a great, healthy, fun place to work. If that resonates with you, you can email Justin right now at Justin.Cook at EOSWorldwide.com or you can call him 615-336-7133 to see if EOS is a right fit for you. He will come down and do an initial kind of introduction and ask you a bunch of questions. It is totally free.

01:49Definitely call Justin today. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by the amazing people over at Gordon Food Service. Thank you, thank you Gordon Food Service for all of your sponsorship and help and love and and just everything that you guys do. Really love those guys over at GFS. We've got a great show for you today. This is, we're speaking with Jake Mogelson. Jake is the, he's a partner over at Butcher & B in Fancy Pants and then he's involved with Red Headed Stranger. I think operationally he's not a partner for Red Headed Stranger as he outlines here shortly and I could have done this interview for four hours. This was just a fun one. Somebody who's so, like our brains think so similarly but so completely different is always a fun conversation and that is what happened today. I think you're going to love it. We hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving this past weekend. Hopefully if you were able to not be at work you got to spend some time with family or loved ones or whatever you like to do on Thanksgiving. We are very excited. Went to a bowling tournament last night for CORE. It was on Giving Tuesday. CORE is of course, CORE GIVES.

03:40They were just on the show with Christine Miles and Maddie and that bowling tournament was a lot of fun. A lot of great people there and I bowled horribly. I touted myself as a good bowler and I really, I just, I shit the bed. It wasn't good whatsoever but I had fun and the food is good and a neat little place over there at King Bowl in Cool Springs. We are working super hard right now with Nara. We've got some changes coming up in my life that I'm going to be talking about in the next few weeks but for now I will tell you that we are just going full on, full bore with Nara and we've been working with so many restaurants in the past week and I'm seeing real traction and it is a lot, a lot of fun. Thank you to some amazing restaurant owners out there. I want to give a shout out to Michael Hanna over at St. Vito Picacheria. This guy is about as passionate as you can get and I'm gonna get him on the show soon. He's just so damn busy but that place, St. Vito Picacheria, it's in the Gulch. It's back behind Eberian Pig I think. I think that's where the restaurant is right next to it but man it is the coolest space and the Svensson pizzas are so damn good. What he did, he makes focaccia. If you go back and listen to the episode I did with him, I mean this guy started in the pandemic making focaccia bread pizzas out of his garage and there was a line of cars, unless he had to buy two ovens and put them in his garage and he was making these and then he was doing pop-ups over at Hathorn. They were sold out. He was helping John over at Hathorn do a bunch of different things and then he got this brick and mortar and man the guy's crushing it. His food is amazing. If you have not been, if you're a local restaurateur and you know about it, Michelin Guide recommended St. Vito Picacheria. Go there. Open for lunch and dinner but go over there and

05:43try them out. This place is absolutely amazing. It's the coolest place and the food is delicious and Michael is there like all the time. Let's support him. Let's get him whatever we can do. Tell your friends. Go eat at St. Vito Picacheria because it is fantastic. All right we're gonna jump in with Jake Mogelson here in just a second. Thank you for listening. It's the holiday season. Hopefully you guys are ready for the holiday season or you're getting ready. If you are a restaurant that is, we're trying to figure it out. We're going into the new year. There's a lot of stuff that's crazy right now and if you want to start 2026 on the right track, go to NaraNashville.com. Send a message that just says, hey we'd love to talk to you. We don't know what you do but we want to get involved with the Alliance and I'll come down there and I'll meet with you and we can talk just like Julio Hernandez did at Mais de la Vida and we're talking with Cletus Burger and of course St. Vito Picacheria and we have so many others that we are working with right now and just great people that we love to talk about, love to promote and I want to help you succeed. So another thing if you heard at the beginning of this episode that Justin Cook from EOS, me and Jake were talking about this and I hooked Jake up with Justin and if you're anybody, if you have a leadership team, if you want to transform your business the easiest way possible it is EOS and Justin is the best facilitator in the world. He will hold you accountable, he'll hold your team accountable and he'll set up tools and SOPs to make sure that you can do that on a consistent basis. I am a customer right so I worked with Justin for almost three years with our teams and it is absolutely transformative. The smallest of businesses to the biggest of businesses. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're out there hustling and you're struggling, give Justin a call. I mean that guy is really really awesome. So we're going to jump in now with Jake Mogelson. This is a fun, so I always talk about the first five minutes and after

07:47the episode is like the best stuff. We were just kind of sitting here talking and I just casually clicked the record button and we were talking about sports gambling or something and then I just jumped in and we start talking. You just catch us mid conversation here to start this episode and I checked them in and you'll hear I say hey we're gonna put this in there. He's like that's fine. So you get like a few minutes of us just talking and then I introduce who he is because you get to kind of hear what happens when we first walk in the room and it's Jake Mogelson. I think you guys are gonna love this. You are listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. He'll do the basketball, he'll do baseball, football. To me like I can't like it will it will ruin the joy of the sport for me because then if I make it wrong to say even like going to Vegas like I don't want to do it because it's just not fun anymore. You know what's funny my sister um my sister owns a bottle shop called Killjoy over there in East Nashville. It's a non-alcoholic bottle shop and she just gave a TED talk and she said alcohol is one of those things that steals your joy. Yeah. And she went through some of the science behind it and it's like when you have to drink to do everyday things like it builds this dopamine and it gets you so excited when you're drinking it makes you feel euphoric so that everyday life stops feeling good unless there's alcohol in it. Yeah. So when you're a non-drinker and you don't ever have that and you're on the side of a mountain and you're watching the sunrise you can feel the amazing part of that but if you're a drinker that doesn't match the euphoric that you get from alcohol and it's similar to gambling. If you watch football you can watch football and just enjoy it but if you gamble it does make it a lot better or worse but then if you don't gamble and it's like I don't care about watching it there's no skin in the game I can't do it like and that's the addict brain in me that makes me feel

09:50that and that's what causes all these addictions because you keep chasing that yeah I want to watch football but I just can't do it. I mean the only the only thing I'll gamble on it's not even gambling but I'll play the lotto. Yeah every once in a while. I'll play the lotto because like I love to like I'll buy a ticket and until from the minute I buy a ticket until they draw and I and I lose in my mind. You've won. I won. I won. I am a millionaire I'm planning I'm planning what I'm gonna like legit like what I'm spending it on what I'm doing the the minute I win where it's going first vacation the next restaurant. Okay so what is it so when you sit there and like let's say the jackpot let's say the jackpot's like a billion dollars it's a billion dollars you're sitting there you're like what if my ticket comes yeah what's the first thing you think what are you gonna buy? First I mean I mean first thing right away just any any any any loans to any banks are getting paid off. Everything. Yeah and then probably like like close the restaurant for a month staff vacation. Where where's the vacation to? I mean I'd probably send I'd probably do like a team a team thing.

11:00Yeah but like where? Yeah nowhere nowhere like that's like a crazy flight like I don't want to because like I'm like a New York restaurant trip would be so fun and then they can all come back and I'm gonna go to go to Europe go to Asia go somewhere. Okay so you're you're a different see because I would immediately the same thing but I would do my like family or something but I would go um it's like Bora Bora I would get those little those little the little huts on the water where it's just like a swimming pool as far as you can see like I would rent like that whole thing for a month and just to invite everybody that are like my close friends and family and I would go everything's when you want a billion dollars but that cost you 10 million who cares. We were talking about like addiction right? Yeah. You know what my addiction is like like Excitement Energy restaurant like sitting on a hut in Bora Bora does not sound fun to me like it I can get there and like I will eventually enjoy that like but first thing I do after I'm a billionaire is not that. You're eating you're going to have experiences. I'm going to rent a house in New York like rent out a hotel. There you go. Like champagne, caviar like private dining all of that.

12:11Hard no that's why I ask it's not like you have to be the same as mine I mean that's I love that. Yeah I'm probably like you know I the one thing I don't I've never spent money on in my entire life was like a nice car like I don't see the value in it of a shitty car like dent I want held the other duct tape almost like just doesn't even like doesn't matter it never never bothered me never had a nice car don't see the purpose of a nice car always had like second hand rode a motorcycle for a while that always buy used but if I if money wasn't an issue just like a really nice car would be fun. I was in sales for like 12 years yeah and I was in my car all day and in the restaurants I love control right so I like I want to be in control and I control fucking nothing yeah I don't control and the only thing I control is me in my car yeah so how clean my car is and Mike like when I'm in my car so that's like a major thing to me is like not having like a Lamborghini but like a car that is comfortable yeah that has a good speaker like a good sound because I love like music is my that's my decompression being alone in my car because I'm around people yeah all the freaking time you're in a restaurant and it's just chaos so it's like the only time I find like peace is on my drive to and from work or wherever I'm going like the idea of going for a drive to me is amazing almost like polar opposites right like my restaurant when I'm at the restaurants it's there's I'm I'm I'm asserting structure control organization like trying to create structure well I am too yeah but like but do I actually have it so in my and outside of that that's where my chaos in my car there is just trash all over it I don't have I listen to radio still I don't even listen to an auxiliary cord I just change the radio stations like terrestrial radio like no xm or anything no

14:14just regular old AM FM radio whatever's on and I'll just scan the stations it's just like my car is like where chaos lives so that way I can like I needed that outlet so that way I can have structure at at the restaurants because otherwise I got I need somewhere to like bottle the chaos so I can have so I can like be free to create structure elsewhere that's fast I love that I love different mindsets and just the whole thing and I'm almost I'm a little bit envious yeah of that there's moments where it's like slightly embarrassing where like someone's like I get it right I'm like oh yeah I gotta move a bunch of shit out of my passenger seat first and then I'll that was that that's still a thing totally because it's just that's where the stuff stays in the passenger seat wow all right well we've been recording oh cool great this part this part might make it to the show yeah whatever but I think a lot of times people say you know what's your favorite part of an interview and I go probably like the five or ten minutes before the interview and after the interviews are great and I love sitting and learning about you and asking the specific questions but kind of just the before and after so we get to record a little bit of that nice today we're talking uh Jake is it mogelson mogelson yeah jake mogelson yeah it sounds like it used to be my my grandparents great-grandparents it was moglowski and then they're from from mogliev in belarus and then got changed at ls island to sound more american but like i don't know if mogelson's american or not of course it is you're american yeah yeah sounds american but yeah mogelson jake mogelson is one of the partners at butcher and b fancy pants and uh redhead stranger uh not a partner but working managing the business there still okay but you're involved in those yeah is it just those three and how many butchermes are there just one now oh so you had one in charleston we had one charleston yeah uh that closed down about a

16:20couple years ago oh wow i didn't know that yeah it was um you know i think so during covid michael our founding partner moved to atlanta um so there's no ownership in uh charleston anymore and it just kind of made it hard to execute the vision a little bit i 100 yeah and so it was like a we had a talk was like we could do this it's gonna take a lot of work it's gonna take someone like going there committing to it and we're like none of us really want to do that so people want to walk through a dining room and see a proprietor in a small restaurant coming by and saying hi and welcoming remembering them and the whole thing and if that's just not there plus like you said that mission and vision every day is totally it's massive so tell us about yourself you grew up in sonoma valley california a place that like kind of lives and breeds food wine i didn't realize like i just thought that's what every small town was like until i got until i left and i was like oh that was pretty that was pretty special um but yeah i mean it was awesome um i would get dropped off it sounds so luxurious i'd get dropped off with a school bus and like walk through a vineyard to get to my house um and then it was very i don't know growing up you'd have dinner with your family and they'd open a bottle of wine there'd be a garage wine that was some of the best wine you could get unlabeled bottles people just sharing things uh the name of it is the nickname for sonoma slonoma because it's such a laid back laid back town um and even i think got awarded like one of the few the only like american slow food movements city um recognition i think that started in italy but it was it's great i mean everyone cooked you hung out with your parents at dinner parties uh we would have keggers that were like in vineyards which was we had field parties yeah yeah i think about like have you ever seen dazed and confused hell yeah that uh it sonoma felt like a time warp like that was my high school part of the moon tower man

18:21yeah we called it was the plateau we had the plat that overlooked the entire city or we had the water towers like it was dazed and confused to a t people drove like old school muscle cars just pick up trucks you know it's this great combination of farmers because it used to be a like uh a cow town like dairy farming and then it got converted uh to wineries and a lot of the wineries were not like bougie fancy wineries they were farmers and so this like real authenticity to appreciation for the product appreciation for the production appreciation for like how things were made and that's seems it makes sense we're talking about earlier on vacation what you would do um with new york but like italy you're talking about that reminds me of like italian life because because tuscany to a t yeah when people grow up like kids the culture of alcohol in america is very different than the culture of alcohol in europe because you had wine and wine was there and it was something that just went with dinner and you grew up drinking it and understanding that like it wasn't some scary thing that like was you weren't supposed to do and you learned how to enjoy it appropriately at times yeah yeah and that's something that i just a massive similarity between sonoma what you're describing growing up like you could have grown up in tuscany yeah like that's a similar totally yeah and even just like the familial element you know like your neighbors and cooking you know you'd cook dinner and people like every weekend was a dinner party like that's what there wasn't much else to do like besides eat and socialize and drink wine well again there as you're talking about winning the lottery what would you do i would go do you would kind of recreate that with your friends now if you had the means to just afford to do this at a really high level yeah we would all connect on a real familial kind of a level yeah yeah even just i think that's the you know that's the goal and if we're

20:25talking about restaurants and hospitality like that's every day i in the happiest in a restaurant working service being part of that experience that connection through food through hospitality we're talking you know we're obviously closed for thanksgiving and christmas but i i worked in san francisco for hotels for hotel for restaurants in a hotel and we had to be open 365 so we would serve people on thanksgiving i'm up i operate mary bowl and it's we're open on thanksgiving it's our busiest day of the year actually secretly like i have a lot of staff that i like oh that's crazy i'm like it's kind of nice it's very nice like you get to be part of not just one thanksgiving dinner like normal like you're part of 250 of them and it's it's kind of it's a good reminder of like that's every day for us like every day feels like thanksgiving for us which is awesome i thought will get there did a good job explaining why they did that 11 Madison parking on reasonable hospitality when he said you know so many people in the industry don't have families or they're not away and this kind of is their extended family so they kind of at the end of the thanksgiving shift they did a thanksgiving dinner for all their people i thought it was really uh really interesting so i did something crazy last week and this isn't about me but just what you were saying you said it's so much fun to be in the restaurant over the past couple months i've kind of felt like i'm losing that okay uh just because you're i'm doing so many different things and i felt disconnected yeah from the day to day in the building and this and this so i'm revamping all of our training at mary bowl and i didn't really get pushback or anything but i just felt disconnected so the past week i did the full server training i came in you went through it all i came in in a vest and a tie and apron and i did my day one training and i followed a server and then i did my day two training and then last night i finished it i did a private event it was exactly what the doctor ordered

22:29nice it was so amazing because i was in it i was talking to the guests listening to them and providing that level of service and it was so reinvigorating to me like this is why we do this yeah this is why i'm doing this and it was so much fun that's one of the things that like i you know you don't realize is like the higher up you get the more experience you get the more you grow in this industry the further removed you are from like why you got into it yeah you know and i feel really lucky we're at a point with the restaurants where we just hired a director of operations to do all the stuff that like really like the owner like i as the owner was doing so that way i can go back to just working services and being on the floor and like connecting with staff connecting with guests and kind of like all the fun stuff while still being there and guiding but like i don't want to be doing spreadsheets and payroll in an office it's like the opposite reason of why i got into this yeah well that's what i do i'm the director of operations yeah for my restaurants and it's like there's a there is a disconnect at some point and i i i didn't get into this thing to be the director of operations and i don't don't get me wrong i love what i do it's so much fun i love the vendor relationships and you can still bring a lot of that hospitality but the day-to-day guest interactions and being there and the server interactions and understanding their walk a mile in their shoes kind of a thing i just the perspective has started to leave and i needed to get it back nice it was fun nice yeah i mean i definitely like yeah that training manuals is something that we've when i so when i started at butcher and b i guess we can i i got in with the butcher and b group because i i actually interviewed i moved to nashville we didn't get there we were we were when did you i was like oh just keep going back i can keep going backwards no we do this we we let's let's take it back we will get there okay let's go back to a little bit of a path yeah right so you grew up in sonoma group in sonoma you did all of that when did you first realize that

24:33hospitality was going to be like your life when did you first realize this is my thing i want to do it yeah so i loved cooking always loved cooking growing up uh my mother was a terrible cook uh i remember she was i vividly remember like the only meal she would make for what felt like every day of our lives was this weight watchers skinless chicken with black beans and i was like this is i've had this like 12 12 days in a row now where's the one yeah i was trying to get it there i found it yeah uh but i also just found like cooking was like an experiment i remember point i pulled every spice at a young age pulled every spice down from the spice cabinet and was making fried rice and added a little bit of this tasted it a little bit of that tasted it and added a little bit of everything until i ruined it and mama ordered pizza like that experimentation of like every time you're creating something new fascinated me i got love projects love the creativity of it that was awesome but i didn't understand the like hospitality of it until i was in high school my high school girlfriend at the time her father was a winemaker and an amazing cook and would he was from texas lived in sonoma they did they had done wells they had a beautiful house and he would just i remember the first time i went over for dinner made this phenomenal meal out of thin air and then people just started showing up and he just always had people over and like friends and family and old and young and it was this experience and he was the kind of like patriarchal host of it all and i thought that was so cool and to to i think about this a lot of like hospitality and why we do it and there's there's it's not as selfless as i think a lot of people think it is for me at least it's not

26:38solely because i want other people to be happy it's also because like i wanted to be responsible for their happiness right like i saw him cooking for everybody and everybody having a great time and he was responsible for that and like that was cool i thought that made him really cool and i wanted to kind of emulate that control like be responsible for other people's joy a little bit and it was not as altruistic as it sounds like i just want people to be happy it's like there's an ego to it too like you know like i want to be responsible for it i think there's that's okay i think there's there can be some selfish reasons that result in the benefit for everybody but i remember watching him and seeing how fun it was just to have people always at their house and to be part of that and to be kind of curating that and that's that that's really where i realized like i said i want to be i want to be doing that and so from that point forward you know i started hosting dinner parties in college i would cook lavish meals uh yeah it was a lot of a lot of fun i don't know i don't think i wouldn't call that selfish and just in the sense that you're taking something from it for yourself yeah i don't think that i think that's more of a love language thing cool okay i think that's more of a the way that i because you give and receive love in different ways and the way that you give love is that acts of service yeah and then the appreciation and the gratitude for that and seeing the joy that brings other people is how you're receiving that love and so it's not just an ego thing i think it's it's full circle yeah in the world of like what we do if you made a bunch of food that everybody got mad at you for or if everyone's like that guy's that this is terrible i mean it wouldn't be the same thing you know but i think i think it's also i think it's a i think it's very genuine yeah it doesn't have to i don't i don't think it's selfish yeah i appreciate that i think it's a i think it's a positive i think it's great i think it's so many people out there listening this are going yeah i feel that too yeah and you don't need to

28:38feel any you know when you put it in terms like love language like how you do it receive that sentiment of feeling you know love care for importance it's definitely a version of that before we jump back in with jake i'm going to take a minute to tell you about a brand new opportunity for everybody out there it is called shared spirits and shared spirits has created something really really cool it is owned by my good friend justin maestas you probably know justin he's been all over town and this is what he's been working on for a long time and we are officially ready to launch this is a website that you can go to and buy drinks for people and send them free drinks at restaurants okay that's the most simple way i can do this this is really three phases that go into this one is you get restaurants to sign up for the app you go on the app you feature drinks it's like a marketplace you can be on there and then you get all the people to join the app and they see that you're on the app and then they can buy drinks at your restaurant the cooler thing is if you're a big liquor brand you can send people to your restaurant to drink your new products this is the coolest thing i need you to go to shared spirits dot com we're going to have justin on the show but i would love to see the nashville restaurant radio listeners show up strong this is a huge brand new revenue source if you're looking for new butts and seats that doesn't cost you anything joining this community is huge go to shared spirits dot com learn about it and then stay tuned in ashville restaurant radios we're going to have justin on the show to describe every single aspect of what it does shared spirits all right so back to my prepared questions okay you've done everything from project management so we know why hospitality is going to be your path right so you've done so much in this

30:43this world right you've done everything from project management to creation direction yeah what early experiences do you feel like in the industry prepared you for the work that you're doing today yeah i mean i i don't know i i mean i didn't get into it right away i went to college i did actually after high school wanted to go to culinary school my dad is a second generation jewish immigrant grew up in the south poor parents both he and his sister became doctors and he was like no that's that's for criminals and dropouts like no and so i went to college where'd you go to school uc davis actually went on an athletic scholarship which was great i was like you'd think that's like genealogy there yeah it was i did so i started off in viticulture i started actually actually i went there for um it was the only university there's two universities in the country we can get a degree in brewing science nice so i i in high school i worked at loganita's brewery as like a 17 year old sweeping up broken glass off the production line i wasn't allowed to do anything else i did my senior project on how to make beer which again in high school they weren't super happy with that but it was sonoma i was like we're in this is a real industry because of like where we're at and so they allowed it and so i did a whole i created a fake brewery called feller house my nickname in high school was lumber jake because i used to split wood and wear plaid so i made a fake brewery lumber jake yeah that's gonna stick with you now we're gonna come in like what's up lumber jake lj i need to start wearing plaid again yeah um and uh yeah uh but i made a whole fake brewery and like talked about the science behind it and how you make it and and ended up going to school and studying that after the first year i ended up switching to analogy because uc davis was so uh you know it was everywhere it was it was really fascinating i thought that you know kind of the natural evolution and i almost flunked out of college actually uh i didn't realize how much science

32:48was involved with i was gonna say with even the brewing beer like there's so much science and math physics the microbiology it overwhelmed me and it wasn't i thought it was gonna be a lot more creative and my mother was an artist i grew up in an artist household and i always studied science i think because i had so much art at home but leaving home going to college and just having only science like it overwhelmed me and so i ended up actually i was helping my roommate with all of his schoolwork rather than doing my schoolwork and he was in graphic design and i loved how creative it was it was like arts and crafts basically so i ended up switching into that and i learned all about visual communication um design work studied some interior studied some fashion studied mainly graphics and this notion of like non-verbal visual communication um graduated loved that i thought that was such a cool idea of how to communicate with people without using words right um went to seattle for a year did that job um at a desk and hated my life and still was cooking every night loving food and wanted to decide i wanted to pursue that so i moved to san francisco my mother knew a couple restaurant tours who one of them hired me and basically said like i have to hire you because we know your mom and she's very sweet but this is jessica the manager she can fire you at any time if you suck and i was like okay cool great got it um and i started off as a bus boy and then did every job up until you know serving and bartending over the next like six months and then the owner came in who had hired me and i had again like love projects love this idea of creativity and how to communicate without saying words and so i was working on a project

34:50just on my own it was a restaurant called anchor and hope that had beer and oysters like hundred different beers and and kind of high-end oysters really cool combination this warehouse in san francisco uh and i created these i designed these oyster tags that instead of having oyster information i had different information on all our different beers it's like a really cool kind of oyster tag that had beer information on it and like recommended pairings and kind of could use them as training tools but also for a guest and take them check in search check presenters the boss comes in the owner of the restaurant comes in dining with his kids i happen to be serving him uh with his check i slip in this thing this check presenter that he didn't even know about he calls me over his kids asleep on his chest he's like did you points to he's like did you do this and i think i think i'm gonna get fired i was like yeah i did and he goes it's it's really it's really fucking good and i don't like other people's work normally call me tomorrow so i did and he kind of hired me to rebrand uh all the restaurants and do some of these creative design like intricate unthought of things to communicate our brand his brand and his message to our guest and then he started opening a few more restaurants and designing restaurants not that he was only just to design them and he he brought me on as um part of his kind of basically like mentee i just ended up doing random projects driving to santa barbara to portland helping him design and open restaurants while also managing and running the beverage program of one of his other projects so that's how i really got like into this industry and found my role of like and passion of of this

36:54detail oriented visual side and using that kind of creativity that i studied in college um to kind of communicate like an experience to our guest very excited to be partnering with cnb linen if you know me it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be i am just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry which is why i was so excited when i found cnb linen they're out of waynesboro tennessee and they don't charge any fees so the linen price that you have whatever that first linen price is that's your price and so you may say well every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract right no because they don't do any contracts there's no gas fees there's no clean green service fees there's no replacement cost there's nothing the only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product i know it's too good to be true no contracts they do formats they'll make custom formats for you they do fresh linens cleaning supplies and guys i just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate it is state of the art i'm gonna post pictures on my instagram you can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts it's just absolutely amazing if you're looking for a linen company you can trust who wants to earn your business every single week go back and listen to our episode with jason cruise the owner of cnb linen hear it from his straight from his mouth exactly what they do or you give them a call at 931722 7616 or you can dm me at brandon still on instagram for my exclusive pricing through the nashville area restaurant alliance okay there's a lot to him yeah yeah i

38:57know and i want to look at this from from this side okay you had me at my mom got me this job in san francisco and i was a busboy and jessica can fire me at any point yeah right your mindset at that point because this is this is a motivational thing because some people would say oh he went to college and he had all this knowledge no no no you walked in what were you thinking as a busboy when you showed up to work that day fucking hated me because there was these two it was awful i mean it was awful it was great i loved it uh but there was these they the the busboys that were there could clear a six stop by themselves i had never cleared a plate before so you're learning learning you're curious i want to learn i had to right like i if i didn't it was like sinker sinker swim i was going to be fired if i couldn't learn how to carry three plates i remember taking plates home from the restaurant in my backpack and walking around my apartment trying to learn how to carry three three plate carry yeah yeah um and i just had to i was like this if this is something i want to pursue and i want to own a restaurant eventually i need to be great at all levels of it what how old were you at this what year was this how old do you know i'm 38 now i should 38 so you're talking about 20 years ago you're like 18 or something like uh just out of college 20 21 22 okay so we're uh 18 years ago something like that i mean 17 16 years ago there's a mindset there because i see so many people that you hear so many people complain about oh there's no good people this and this and but there is a mindset walking into the door about that's in you yeah that is a i can't fail and that i'm going to take plates home and i'm going to practice i don't see that a whole lot yeah but these are not things that are super hard if you genuinely care about doing a great job at whatever level you're in and it's that willingness to it's that is that willingness to learn like you said things that

41:00aren't hard right like you can learn how to carry three plates but it's a willingness to do it and not think that you're above it but also just put the put the effort into it and work into it and people saw that and it immediately resulted in promotion after promotion to get to be bartender hey we see this kid care and and that's how you move up i see a lot of people that just i don't know if it's an entitlement but hey i want to be a bartender well sure i mean why do you tell me show me i can teach anybody how to make a jack and coke i can't teach trust and determination and all of the things it takes to do that i think a big part of that too for me was like communicate like relationships with my with the people above me you know i told them my goals and i told them i asked them what i had to do to get there and when they told me that's huge did it you know just just say it yeah and then the the initiative one thing you took this oyster and beer list and you created this it was a take home yeah it was like a basically you know oysters come with an oyster tag that list like where it's from yeah they harvested all that stuff it's a really cool uh aesthetically i think it's really cool because it's the got the holes punched on the side and you know looks very you know utilitarian and turn that into a design a promotional material essentially i think that and and you just you did it you tried something and you said hey i'm gonna go above and beyond this isn't necessarily my scope of work but i can see where this would be really cool and you tried something and then the owner saw it i mean there wasn't some my goal was to do your goal was to do the best job you could at that level and then do a little bit more and be curious about the next one because it was genuine for you yeah i just showed up and this is what i wanted to do i think there's a lesson in that for a lot of people listening who may not already be at that owner level or gm level or whatever that vocalize what your goals are pursue them and then just say it just do the things go a little bit above and beyond you can get really far yeah i think i think that's it's also realizing that there's so much value

43:00and just like perfecting where you're at now you know like i couldn't you know i had to learn how to care it's kind of crawl before you walk i got to learn how to clear table before i could even worry about how to make a drink or how to pour a beer um and then just knowing that even like it's not a one and done like there's still people that can clear a table 10 times better than i can and so continuing to to know and like know that you're there's always something to learn at every level still and then not be too focused on the next thing right away but continuing to like learn from the bottom up every day i have a lot of a lot of new managers who after three months like i'm ready for more for more responsibility and it's like there there are so many things you can't experience you haven't even happened yet like we we talk butcher and be we lost power last week we were we're operating out for generator for for a whole week it was brutal dude i know and we lost power the generator wasn't filled with gas we lost power and so proud of the team because no one panicked they handled it like absolute champs like that only happens maybe once every five years i've been in a restaurant four different times i've lost power i know what to do now i know how to handle it it sucks i know the what what that entails but like you can't you can't train a manager you can get on how to do that you can tell them what's going to happen but sometimes you just got to experience it you know and there's so many things in this industry that you can tell them what to do or you can train until you're in that moment until it happens and certain things are only going to happen once every 10 years you know and so there's there's so willing there's so much value in just i think existing within a role sometimes and being willing to like learn the things that are coming at you

45:03and and just absorb it like a sponge and see the value in the everyday experience that comes along with it this is all really good stuff man thank you for sharing all this stuff i i get inspired through yeah i can talk about like that's the thing man we could do this i could talk all like all day about restaurants about hospitality about like learning it that's one thing why you know i missed that when i first left san francisco i had such a good group of just we would go out after our service and just keep talking about restaurants that didn't exist when i first moved here i felt like it was hard for me to find that group of hospitality people definitely found it now i think nashville's got a there's a lot of people here that care deeply about hospitality and restaurants and creating a really kind of special and like we'll geek out about it you know running a restaurant is tough staff turnover rising cost and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love let adams keegan lighten that load they're privately held tennessee-based restaurant and hospitality focused outsourced hr payroll and benefits firm the team at adams keegan removes the administrative burdens of hr administration payroll benefits management garnishments unemployment claims compliance 401k and so much more from their proprietary hris platform to seamless payroll and competitive benefits that keep your team smiling they've got you covered adams keegan lets you focus on what you do best creating unforgettable dining experiences while they handle the rest essentially think of adams keegan as your back office hr department right here in music city one of the many things i love about adams keegan is that unlike big publicly traded companies out there they have an incredibly high standard of customer service and that that's what we all need is really good customer service in these areas they don't give you a 1-800 number and make you fill out an it ticket submission they surround every client with a team of experts all based right here in tennessee you can call

47:06them today at 615-627-0821 or visit adamskeegan.com that's adamskeegan.com for your free hr consultation and see how they can create a customized solution to help your restaurant thrive well i think that's a good segue into moving to tennessee i mean we're talking 2017 you moved here and why why nashville was it the partnership with brian lee weaver and um michael shimtov that came actually organically after i moved here um why did you move why nashville yeah it wasn't i was very strategic in my country music that's what it is right yeah me and my me and my radio uh no i was in san francisco and i knew i wanted to own my own restaurants but i knew in san francisco i mean usually it's the barrier to entry was insane i just didn't love living there anymore either um and i'd only lived in san francisco or seattle so only west coast and so i i wanted to move to a city that i thought was growing and had potential to be you know to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond so to speak um so i looked at a lot of like what i called third tier cities um you know new york la san francisco chicago like top tier near second tier for food which were you know philadelphia boston new orleans so i was looking for these like third tier cities that i thought austin nashville yeah i think even austin was a second austin from from california's perspective austin had already peaked okay um and so ironically enough it came down to uh nashville or detroit which are two places i'd never been before um but i thought were poised to do well over the over the coming years um and so it's very strategic

49:06why you chose yeah yeah yeah um and it was just like a a launching off point who knew who knew was going to work out but i what i did is i took a month off and rode my motorcycle across the country and went to a lot of these cities i'd never been to before in in the american south and i started off i mean i zigzagged all the way across the country got all the way to charleston and then backtracked to nashville uh before settling in here and it wasn't you know i'd never been here and my first week here was the i went to the wedgwood houston art walk back when like before wedgwood houston was what it what it is now um and man i was blown away at how creative this city was how many makers there were and that's and it's like super important to me i grew up in a ceramic studio it's like finding and like san francisco used to be an artist city and it's not anymore and so coming into a city and seeing people actually making things was really cool to me uh and that's that's what sealed the deal it was like there's there's people painting there's people building there was people making pottery there was you know music design posters like all of that like even like a unique fashion sense like there was there were makers here and that that's really what sealed the deal for like okay i can i can see myself staying here i think for an extended period of time because i consider i think of restaurants and food as were makers as well you know was there a seminal dining experience that you had while you're here during that time that maybe inspired you or you thought wow they're doing really cool things or i could do it better maybe or anything along those lines well what what um what put nashville on my radar initially was my mentor's mentor and first i just want to say like if you're in the hospitality industry finding a mentor is one of the most important things i think that like i will die

51:13on that hill having having a mentor is extremely important um but my mentor's mentor is jonathan waxman who had just opened Adele's yeah and he was like jakey you gotta check nashville out so he and my mentor flew here early on and we went to he took me to bastion and i met josh and had that food and like bastion i mean the little bar the big bar it was just fucking cool man it's the coolest yeah and i was the first time i ate there i was like i am not cool enough to eat here i am like so yeah i felt like a dad and in a really cool place and it's like every time i had a meal like that in san francisco it was very pretentious and like it's not and he and here i was like well this is insane food in a in a warehousing neighborhood by a train track with a loud ass bar next door that i'm gonna go have great drinks at after like it was just cool and that's really like you know what got me excited about potentially coming here and doing stuff like that so you move here yep and then you i how do you partner with honest to goodness hospitality how does that happen yeah so you know you move here i knew no one um i start asking around like where do i who do i work for uh and of course everyone's gonna say strategic hospitality right like that's who were the big i met randy rayburn um which was really cool like i didn't know it at the time and now looking back like wow the fact that he like threw a friend of a friend of a friend was willing to meet me for lunch as a nobody was really cool um and i feel really special i've had that now that he's passed he's an amazing guy yeah like that like just i feel really lucky to have that and he was the one who's like let me connect you with the goldbergs they're they're the guys who are doing cool stuff hey they they have all the michelin stars in town yeah so i so i i got a meeting with them and told them kind of my plans and what i was looking to

53:17do and they're like what we need we had just opened up this bowling alley that's like really nice and like not like anything else like we need someone to help manage it so i i started managing it pinewood pinewood yeah um and you know not really kind of what i was expecting for myself um to be managing a bowling alley um but it was fun it's not like it's not yeah bowling i think like tusculum lanes or something i mean you're it's a high end and it was i mean talk about getting thrown into the national scene though right like that was really what i was excited for and uh at that point matt toka was doing the bar program which was awesome unreal and so it's funny and i look back almost every great like any anywhere any exceptional bar i walk into has a bartender that like came through that program and you know they're making great drinks right like the bar program at pinewood back in the day what do you what's this what's the thing that makes a great bar program like what is if there was one thing unique about at toka's bar program oh his training i think his training was unreal like he would take people had never bartended before and turn them into insane bartenders and they're and they're great because they're fast but they're also consistent right like the consistency i think is what's really really important um and with his program specifically and i see that because my at butcher and b and honest to goodness our beverage director learned under matt toko as well um and there's also there's a he always was great about having a a story behind the cocktails and like there's a there's you're not just drinking a great drink you're drinking a great drink that has a purpose and a reason to it so i think that from a program perspective was great from a bartender perspective the consistency and and and steps to production were unmatched i just wrote his name down i need to get him on the podcast that sounds like a fantastic interview i want to learn more from him yeah so okay so matt pinewood

55:21um you know and i'm learning the Nashville scene i think i was there for a year um ended up partying ways we just just it wasn't the vision you had for yourself here yeah yeah they did or that it was a terrible job it was just that you wanted something different exactly yeah so i actually ended up interviewing at butcher and b for for floor manager role um and the gm and brian interview me don't hire me because they said i was overqualified i was like yeah but like i love your restaurant the restaurant's like two years old at this point and like i want to want to work here um didn't work out fast forward two months later the gm quits uh and tells michael the founding partner like hey i interviewed this guy he should be my replacement so i end up meeting michael um i tell michael like hey i love your restaurant i think it's great i think it's good i think it could be great it's got a lot of potential um i want to give you like two years to help you get there as the gm while i work on my own concept um he said sure so i get hired as the gm um and i start diving in deep turns out brian and i um worked for the same company when we were like 22 in our career so the guy the boss i told you about who i who hired me to do the design work who had his kid on his chest yeah he opened a restaurant his name is doug washington he opened a restaurant in portland called irving street kitchen um portland oregon which is a great great restaurant um brian weaver was a line cook there and so i was driving up to portland helping build that restaurant as like a 21 year old driving a semi truck of like trying to like project manage some design elements of like chairs in the back i'd artwork and i'm just this like

57:23wide-eyed kid trying to figure it out and brian weaver was a line cook for that restaurant and so he and i when we started working together here immediately aligned on ethos and philosophy because we learned it from the same people early on in our career about like how to treat how to approach hospitality how to work to how to work as a team how to you know respect for ingredients like all of that we learned it from the same school essentially so he and i really connected right away um and then the more i spent time in butcher and b as the gm the more i realized like this is if i open a restaurant it's going to be like this is the restaurant i'm going to open and it's going to be a direct competitor yeah like and so instead of doing that i approached mike and i said hey are you open to to me becoming a partner here because i think this restaurant's good but i think it could be could be great and i would like to be a partner and help i don't want to go open something new and compete with you i already love everything that you're doing and i i want to be my partner instead pool resources and make this even better yeah so you know it wouldn't if michael had lived in nashville it wouldn't have worked right the fact that he lived in atlanta and charleston um and there was room for someone to be like we talked about earlier the proprietor in the building talking to people being the presence yeah exactly so remembering the regulars all that stuff yep um so you know if he didn't live in atlanta there wouldn't be room for that but there was and so we agreed to he agreed to let me buy into partnership and you know the restaurant was only three or four years old at that point and since then we've you know we've grown it we expanded we added a 3000 foot square foot patio onto it which people don't even know about like from the street it looks like a small little little

59:26building yeah and the back is huge huge huge and it's we remodeled it's beautiful we do weddings out there we have an outside bar it's great and so we did that we then recently about two years ago we took over where fat button brewery was yeah and we have an event space a 2200 square foot event space back there now too called the rose room i didn't know that you you have a big event space over there too oh yeah i did not know that it is awesome yeah so we have the rose room we can see up to 48 we're doing we're hosting a book event for kevin bomb tonight actually which is awesome out of chicago it's like we do all sorts of things corporate events weddings that's been unreal to add we've been able to expand our our food program our beverage program you know we redesigned our mezzanine upstairs so like we've slowly been able to again like i said take this really good restaurant and to those you know open in 2015 and build it into a much grander like exceptional restaurant and now we're coming up on 10 years and we're actually going to close in january for like 10 days and do a little bit of a remodel refresh and really kind of constantly continue to try to push it to be this like exceptional restaurant which as you know is an everyday like feat you don't just open a restaurant and walk away it's like you're constantly evaluating editing changing pushing growing all that as well so yeah i mean it's been really really lucky to get the partnership like if brian you know just brian and i aligned really well michael had set this great foundation of like ethos for vision of the company created a room and space for me to step in and help grow it and and then we've been able to go on and you know brian open reddit stranger i was able to open fancy pants and so we're still able to grow and our goal is to eventually create space for more people on our team to step in take take partnership and continue to kind of grow that way as well that's so cool

01:01:32i i i did not know all of that yeah part of the story and it's i'm trying to piece together what your role is there and how you do it i think you've done an absolutely amazing job of uh explaining that thank you for all of that yeah hey guys today we are talking about robin's insurance and restaurants carry a very unique set of risks we can customize a menu of insurance solutions to meet your specific needs reviewing the options and developing a plan for restaurant insurance coverage is a perfect recipe every restaurant owner has heard the statistics about how tough it is to survive and thrive in the business but getting adequate insurance at least gives you a fighting chance to mitigate some of those risks it's well worth considering a custom-built restaurant insurance policy as it'll not only make life simpler but it may even overcome some risks you haven't even considered for example you'll usually want to cover risks to property such as the building and equipment along with liability to customers and staff right yeah that's easy but remember there's an important difference between general liability such as a customer slipping on a spoiled drink and a professional liability such as about the food poisoning from bad food or inadequate preparation other elements that are easily overlooked include the risk of fraud and data theft that come with handling cash and card payments the risk of spoiled food you have to throw away if there's a power outage or refrigerator failure and the risk of lost business if you close for repairs after a fire protect your restaurant business by contacting them today it's so easy and when any of those situations happen what you don't want to do is get and dial an 800 number and be put on hold to talk to somebody you have to explain your business to that is why you call Matthew Clements Matthew Clements at Robin's Insurance when any of those scenarios happen you pick up the phone you dial 863-409-9372 Matthew answers goes how can I help you you tell him your problem he's your friend you know him why would you not have an agent that you work with every single

01:03:33day any of these situations right here you need guidance you need support and Matthew Clements and his team at Robin's Insurance are there to provide it you should call him today I'm gonna put that number down one more time that's 863-409-9372 call Matthew Clements today y'all today we are talking as always about Super Source and you know one cool thing about Super Source is did you know that they develop most of their cleaning products and chemicals in their in-house facility they're environmentally conscious and only use dyes that are safe for the employees and the environment they carry a number of products for keeping your dishes flatware services floors restrooms laundry basically your entire facility clean bright and smelling and feeling new this is just one of the many reasons Super Source is taking over this city for dish machine and chemicals you need to call Jason Ellis his number 770-337-1143 and he would love it if you give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation meet him say hi see if there's any way he can help he is here to help you succeed that's Jason Ellis with Super Source 770-337-1143 how much has the restaurant evolved I mean you guys are about to celebrate 10 years yeah yeah I mean 10 years restaurant is like 50 years in any other business I mean it's incredible to make it 10 years how has the restaurant evolved since that you kind of came in at two years you just described the expansion and all of the other things the ethos the core values like yeah what have what have you been able to add as far as the hospitality in that building and what makes it sustainable for 10 years there's a lot of different questions but there's one big answer I'm sure I mean I don't know if there's one big answer I think I mean one of the things it's been really cool to see some people on our team leave and then come back right I think that's a good

01:05:35sign that we're doing something right you know so our executive chef right now Christa Jesus you know left to go work for M Street for a little bit it's great but didn't have the creative freedom yet so he came back and it's like the food is insane it's unreal insane yeah and I think that's like you know you find team members with great skill set and talent and you you create some guidelines for them but you also let them express what they're great at it's like Chris I mean I think the reason why he came back is because he has a lot of freedom to do the food he wants to do and gets to be super creative and run specials and continue to push boundaries right and that that's what brings him joy and we get to benefit from that you know same thing with our beverage director same thing with our AGM who's like super passionate about hospitality and all these things and so I think it's finding team members and it's not easy because there's there's you know like finding the right team members is a lot of a lot of work too but we're lucky full-time job yeah and and I'd be lying if I said we figured out we've cracked the code on how to keep a full a full staff right but we've been lucky to have some people like we just celebrated our executive sous chefs 10 year anniversary with us he started he was a it was a prep cook on our opening team oh and now he's he's been with us the whole time which is crazy you know and so you know I think Michael set a lot of expectations with our values and our ethos about being community oriented you know being there for being food like celebrating the product as well and we have a market shelf that like showcases our relationship with our farmers all that I think husk does a good job of that with their farmers too those are all things that like restaurants were doing but maybe not talking about a lot and so talking about the story was

01:07:39a big part of what what butcher and bee was and it's a continual evolution you know constantly trying to figure out how to do it a little bit better I think right now the the problems we have in 2025 are way different than in 2015 you know so they're quite different yeah now when you say get a little bit better do you mean because there's two things right you can look at it from a business this is what I was talking about earlier that business perspective of a little bit better means pushing EBITDA a little higher and negotiating about a deal and being more profitable versus which they go hand in hand a better more full experience nourishing guest experience well I think so which which area do you focus a little balance of both or is there one that you focus on more than the other both I think you know with butcher and bee I don't think there's ever this vision of it being like a larger company right like for the longest time people just call us the butcher and bee restaurant group but then we opened a coffee shop in Atlanta where there's no butcher and bee and people like what the hell what's that so we that's kind of where you have to like how do we communicate who we are better right so we we became the honest to goodness hospitality group which is one of our butcher and bee slogans was honest to goodness eats right sure and so there's that kind of constant evolution even I talk we have we have our company's core we have four core values for our company what are they connection through food no details too small oh man you put me on the spot didn't you love that when you put it like you say them all the time and then somebody's like tell me your core values yeah foster connection through food no details too small you're I'm playing on the last two you're gonna have to and that's okay you got that no no no look it's a thing I do this we have five and I'll be doing an orientation with somebody and I'm like this is where we love our community yeah do the right thing cheers turbo boost I'm like and what the hell is and it's like I say this all the time it's

01:09:41just a on the spot on a show I get it that's a good example of like so we didn't have this defined until maybe I think post-covid right like it was just who we were and then we're like okay as we grow let's define some of these things how did you do that what was that process like we had a long team meeting in Charleston company-wide with like a lot of like eight or nine of us the management company and and and the management partners and we everyone kind of listed like what we think our values are and how to communicate them and even still I don't think they're dialed in right like some are pretty wordy and lengthy but that's a great example of when we talk about sharpening or getting better improving like how do we define what we're doing and that's a constant constant thing we're working on getting better at within the restaurant even just our ethos about food or or I've had ex-general managers who didn't work out because they're like what is I don't understand the our identity at butcher and be I'm like man it's so clear to me like I know exactly what it is but okay so maybe I haven't communicated it well so how do we do that right and even with our staff right now we're working on how do we communicate better with them so they understand and feel part of the thought process and stuff like that do you guys have like an operating system that you work on like we work on the entrepreneurial operating system eos from the book traction by Gina Wickman it's like a whole yeah entrepreneurial operating system that outlines every single thing in core values and mission vision one of the things he says in the book is that your mission and vision have to be so clear the actual term can you see what I'm saying is not you you literally can't see what somebody's saying it's not a thing but your vision needs to be so sharp that when you say it people can they just see it like you've got it and you've got to keep just going over and over and over and living it that's a great example of like

01:11:44that's a huge area where we definitely don't do that we're not great at that yet but I say yet because we all have identified that that is something that we want to be great at and we are trying to do the work for it right and that's a for anyone who owns a restaurant or a business it's never too late we're 10 years in and we got 12 years left on our lease but who knows when the doesn't mean this is we're not going to move it or open it or keep going like yeah so there's never I think that's what's kept us going still it's like we're always trying to it's never like a we've done the work and we're done now there's always more work to do to improve it you know and we see these opportunities and it's something we you know we don't use the eos is it eos that we said yeah eos eos we don't use that but we have we do a couple of training programs up at in an arbor michigan zingermans okay i don't ever heard of them before super cool so zingermans is this company started off zingermans deli in an arbor michigan so jewish deli and then they slowly grew they have like five they have zingermans roadhouse like five or six different restaurants and and they do a training program management training program and we've sent a bunch of managers there i've taken classes there it's really really cool stuff and every time we go it's like okay it's like inspirational like this there's a better way to do this let's let's do this now you know so how important do you think it is to go outside i think that you get so i call it nose blind you know if something just smells in your animals and you can your house and somebody else walks and they go god it smells like a barnyard in here you don't recognize it anymore because i'm there all the time having somebody who's not emotionally invested and can look at it from the outside go oh you're missing these three things you're like how did i not see that yeah how important is that to you yeah i mean i very important i wish it's hard like i you know i wish i was better at take taking that feedback full disclosure i mean you know like we said we're we're in it so this

01:13:50is our lives it's our earlier we're talking about addiction like this is my addiction when someone tells you you're an addict they're wrong or they're addicted it doesn't go over well and it's it's really hard to take criticism that's something that we're personally i'm working on a lot as like being open to that feedback right um it's hard because you put every ounce of being into it and it feels personal yeah yeah and it is and i've just learned that i have a cool-off period where i know you can i you can give me feedback and i know you're right but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna understand your right until there's like a minute or so that like or even like you know a few minutes for me to settle so even just that communicating working as a team and communicating that to my team or others outside people like hey here's again here's the process that that is going to happen because i know i know myself well enough i know my team well enough when you give x y and z feedback this is how it's going to go and this is the result we'll get to next to that right and so just learning i think ourselves our team and how to work together is is paramount to that forward progress you know charpies bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery providing bread to nashville's best eateries they have operated in nashville since 1986 yes next year will be 40 years they providing high quality fresh bread daily for restaurants catering companies hospitals and universities their bread is also free from any preservatives and artificial flavors they're right off of white bridge road erin mosso and her team been doing this for a long time and you know what i love about them is that they're local and they care they care about your business that's like the number one thing you're going to hear me talk about is do they care about your

01:15:54business and i 100 believe that they do if you would like to be working with the bakery that cares about your business give them a call six one five three five six zero eight seven two that's six one five three five six zero eight seven two now you can always visit them at sharpies.com that's c h a r p i e r s dot com and they have pictures of all of the bread that they can have for you and contact information go check them out sharpies bakery black sheep tequila it shares six exclusive styles with the oldest release tequila with a line of six artisanal handcrafted luxury tequilas labor-intensive old world handcrafted process produces a single estate small batch line of tequilas for perfect flavor and balance no salt no lime required a true flight black sheep tequila cultivates highland blue weber agave that requires seven to ten years to reach full maturity under the brilliant sunshine of los otos de jalisco as done in the old world approach black sheep tequila continues the handcrafted heritage so much so that they have won double gold at the world san francisco world spirits competition this is the best tequila in the world and their headquarters is nashville tennessee so these guys are amazing they're doing amazing product everybody i've tasted on has said this is the best tequila i've ever had there's zero burn it is just delicious you need to call your ajax turner rep today they have a brand new amogrande which is their their entry level line so you can have the best tequila in the world as your well yes this is a true thing so pick it up uh it find liquor stores everywhere look for black sheep tequila or order it today through ajax turner you know what we've been talking for no no how long does it feel like 20 minutes we're at an hour really we've been talking for we've actually been talking for like

01:17:59an hour and 10 minutes i started recording at like 10 minutes we're barely even into anything i know right that's what i'm saying like i got i got nine pages of questions here like looking forward going and we don't have to stop at an hour sometimes we do like these marathon episodes i have had so much fun just kind of getting into this stuff with you learning about you well it's also just like this industry is finding passionate people in this industry to talk about anything with is exciting and fun i think any industry find anyone that you share passion with that you can just geek out on is is fun it just so happens that you and i are talking about restaurants and hospitality and and we could still keep going but we i need to do my job for a second because as much as i and i don't really have a job but i like to make pr companies happy because they they have a job yeah to get you're you're not only here because i just want to learn about you i mean i think that's one of the fun things but you guys are doing a 10 year anniversary over at butcher and b and i want to talk about that a little bit you have some special you like special menus and what are you doing to celebrate your 10 year anniversary so it's funny because we talked about you know i talked about our executive chef chris and his insane creativity and how like that's people can come to butcher and b and get a different experience you know once a month but you sometimes forget like how many just fucking stellar dishes you've come up with in the past that people have constantly asked to come back and so that's what we're doing for the 10 year we're we're doing a supplemental menu so some kind of like specials so to speak of just fan favorites over the past 10 years oh that's awesome yeah and it's going to rotate it's going to change rotate it's going to change uh right now we have three of them on but just all the ones that people constantly like is this coming back is that going to come back when is that coming back

01:20:02and when does this begin uh started it started on monday i think we're doing it so monday the 17th it started today is the 19th this will come out probably like on the 25th cool we're gonna run it all the way through until january 5th i think january 5th and then we're closing for 10 days we're gonna remodel um a light remodel uh paint reupholster stuff give the staff a little time to start the new year get take a break whatever um and then you know maybe do a little bit of training and then we're gonna relaunch uh january 15th i think uh with kind of like uh you know just ready for the next 10 years wow yeah but yeah i'm excited some of these specials we're running are like we we had to put a couple on like a limited quantity because we just we didn't have the space like we're doing a fried chicken we're doing andouille fried chicken so fried chicken tossed in andouille butter topped off with togarashi called tennessee togarashi because that's like tennessee smoked paprika in it yeah uh it's insane but we like we have to limit it to i think like 15 a night because we just don't have enough space to store that much fried chicken if everyone ordered one uh so it's kind of fun it's like a limited special you gotta get in when you can so what time do you open we open at five so you open at five and is it best to make a reservation if i want to come eat there yeah i think reservation especially on the weekends and where would i make a reservation you're on on rezi on rezi okay yeah and the one thing i love about you know butcher and beef specifically as a restaurant one of the reasons why i loved it and why i want to become a partner is it's it's in my mind it's just like perfect everyday neighborhood restaurant the food is unique you can't really make it at home unless you happen to be like a pretty intense spice pantry um but it's not like overly complicated and fussy it's affordable which i think is really important in this day and age uh and

01:22:03and it's like the space itself it can be a special occasion or it can be just you're in your sweatpants and you want a quick meal at the bar right uh and more importantly it's open seven days a week which there is no one i don't think there's an east nashville restaurant i don't think there's like a independently owned nashville restaurant that serves dinner seven nights a week like our busy some of our busiest nights are monday and tuesday because no one else is open our busiest night at the green hills grill sunday night yeah it's random it's like that is a really busy night and it's every weekend it's a sunday night at the grill yeah like again you try to go out i try to go out like a tuesday night because those are my i have tuesday wednesday off you know normally i work half days tuesday wednesday no you don't you might not be in the building there's no days off i'm not working service tuesday wednesday is my goal um but there's like nowhere like no restaurants are open it's like it's tough it is tough yeah and so we're always open which is nice um we like to be there for the neighborhood you know all right well looking forward then i have a quick little lightning round okay it's kind of fun and personal kind of just like a little thing that's don't get nervous nothing bad in it where do you see butcher and be in tenure you said 12 years left on the lease what do you do you see more locations do you have you have three that you're kind of involved with right now and congratulations by the way um in the michelin uh recommendation of but of a redhead stranger yeah who knew a little texmex taco shop getting a bib gorman is is awesome is the oh that's a big bib gorman sorry yeah i got bib uh best hamburger in the city oh yeah in my opinion and it's it's the green chili burger at redhead stranger in anybody who comes town who says where should i go that's the first place i tell yeah it's i mean that you wouldn't think that for a hamburger but it is no it's unreal i mean that

01:24:06dip it in some queso tots on the side you're in heaven i can't go there and just get that i always bring people because people that don't know about it i bring them there i'm like you got to get a crunchwrap supreme you gotta get a burger you gotta try all the tacos you gotta go to the taco shop let me get tacos and it's like yeah you can't because it's a damn good fucking burger you know not only a damn good fucking burger it's the best burger in the city yeah i mean sorry it's bad luck burger club well all right they oh yeah yeah the guy the boys over there they love the green chili burger they will say if you notice on my door over here uh they were the first ones to sign the door nice and they said in their episode that it is the best hamburger in town is the bad luck burger club and then um and then if you look right above it in the middle of the door it says best burger in nashville at redheaded stranger brian lean weaver he had to write it right above theirs and then it became like a whole thing and then you have they're the worst burger nashville is a pharmacy and then you have hot dogs for life big daddy and grilled cheese for life and now everybody's kind of gravitated around that original bad luck burger club yeah we have the best burger and everybody's kind of claimed their own steak too that's awesome we have the best let me forget you to forget to sign the door what's next uh what do you see in the future yeah well tough question uh and i i choose my words carefully because i've noticed part of these why michael my partner and i get along so well and brian and i and we all get along so well as we're able to i think entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit you can hold like two contradictory thoughts at the same time right not everyone can do that so i sometimes have to be careful um when talking to my team because i i if you were to see my my pinterest boards i probably have like a thousand fictitious restaurants designed at any one time when i'm bored also once i get an idea in my head i can't move on to the next idea until i get it out and so i use like pinterest and i've like an obsessive like notepads of just like writing down concepts

01:26:10ideas flushing them out so i can just move on to the next one so there's there's you know i want to make sure that the restaurants we have are operating exceptionally well and that we've you know we talked about this culture piece and this ethos piece and you know i think there's where we're really excited right now is sharpening those elements and fine tuning all of that so that way when the time comes we feel comfortable and confident with the next project right and the next project can happen you never really plan for it to happen even like fancy pants we were showing that space to another restaurateur from dc who was looking for restaurants and brian and i turned to each other this restaurant was like i don't like this space brian and i go should we we love this we put a restaurant here like we weren't planning on doing a restaurant it just kind of happens that way right um and so yeah i mean i would love i think butcher and b is an amazing concept just from like a 10 000 viewpoint right that could do well in any city and there's there's been talks about you know we had one in charleston which again it didn't work out but i think we could do it again in another city knowing what we learned there and can make it great right so there's there's always that thought of like do we want to open more butcher and b's or there's always the thought that you know i think nashville great name by the way yeah there's a fun story behind that um that's not a fun story it's an interesting story uh but it started as a sandwich shop and so butcher and b was a sandwich shop in charleston originally and it was back in the day when sandwiches were not gourmet really like they haven't been given the gourmet treatment yet so butcher and b was one of the first like gourmet sandwich shops yeah nice uh and it was a late night they did they were it was like an industry hunt and like this was like it was super small they stayed up and late like cranked loud music and served sandwiches and it was like almost like a bar kind of like dukes a little bit not as bar type but um he wanted to do like fresh baked bread

01:28:15made their own bread and they sourced all the all the veggies and meat and everything on the sandwich like locally and so the way what he michael chose to like represent them the name was like the butcher obviously for like the local meats and the b through like the metaphor of pollination kind of like represented all the other locally sourced ingredients it wasn't just oh you know it wasn't just uh cheddar cheese from cisco it was like a locally made cheese you know and so that didn't really exist what 12 years ago in charleston so that was the original name and then when when when the national location opened it was a full service restaurant which completely changed the concept and and kind of took them there but all that being said i do see a potential for more butchers in other cities i also see that like nashville has been so good to us and it's still growing so much that i think there's always potential for other concepts here you know i think we'll always do i love my i get my joys from like creating newness something new that doesn't exist yet so maybe you know seeing that's kind of our goal we see if there's a void and the timing's right and we're inspired we can kind of come you put yourself in a position to where when the right thing presents itself you can take advantage of it all right lightning round um what's your favorite bite at butcher and be right now oh i mean the crispy rice hands down crispy rice the avocado crispy rice okay there's there's i i rarely can eat something and never get tired of it i've probably had like a thousand of those and they're still delicious love it uh a design detail that you're secretly most proud about at butcher and be yeah yeah at butcher and be the plants man i've spent so i spent so much of my life just keeping plants alive there are

01:30:17probably like an insane like i spend hours a week tending to the plants really yeah yeah that's probably if it wasn't that in our event space the rose room um we did a really cool technique where we put uh vintage persian rugs on the bar die wall and so the bar wall the wall of the bar itself under the countertop is basically like tiled with persian rugs which is a really really cool which is a really really cool um texture and aesthetic i i love it the greenhouse grill we have uh rugs on the wall it's different it's it's but i think you realize that these were from the owner's mother left and these are original navajo rugs that are on the wall and they're like just there on the wall and people like those rugs are cool like those are original navajo rugs like and it's a neat little design detail that not many people realize what those are yeah just hanging above table 24 that's awesome um a restaurant outside of your group that inspires you um i mean my go-to like my so restaurant that i love to eat at that's gonna sound weird so it's okay fat belly yeah yeah i'm a sandwich guy that's like my go-to so that's your go-to that's my go-to of the i i call the big three like fat belly bills and and east side bond me yeah those are kind of my go-to sandwich shops if i'm in east nashville yeah you're a fat belly guy i am so like this is gonna get oddly personal and weird uh i have i make i make tiktok sandwich videos as like a hobby just for like in my free time okay uh because i love making sandwiches what's your tiktok handle it's called sandwich sweats like like meat sweats but sandwich sweats sandwich sweats all right i'm gonna follow you on tiktok it's weird uh but it's just it's just me making sandwiches and it's a personal project that i just love to do um i've grown up and eaten

01:32:18sandwiches grew up i just they're just like the perfect vehicle fat belly only place in town that makes dutch crunch bread and that is if you're from the west coast and from san francisco dutch crunch is the best bread for a sandwich it like it makes it have you ever had it before i'm gonna say no i'm sure i've had it because i'm originally from the west coast but not when i was old enough to like know anything i moved here when i was nine so but i mean like i've eaten it fat belly several times i don't know if i know the dutch crunch bread crispy crunchy like crackly skin on top of the bread then no okay you got to give it a shot okay i'm in yeah yeah it's life-changing dutch crunch bread so that is the restaurant side your group that inspires you that's what i love most the one that inspires me probably i mean bastion is always going to be just i think josh is so cool the food he does is is awesome you know there's there's simplicity to it peninsula is great um yeah i mean i think those two are pretty up there yeah josh is a uh i mean to think that he's the mind behind the catbird seat and bastion and you get three michelin stars in nashville and he's the mind behind two of them that's a massive yeah i mean and he's just the nicest dude you'll ever meet yeah i know his wife lauren's pretty awesome too the one restaurant not in nashville that i am constantly like looking at to see what they're doing is lazy bear in san francisco i don't know lazy bear two michelin star restaurant dinner party it was a dinner party style i'm lucky enough to someone that i worked at really early on in my career is now one of their partners as well uh and so i just they do very high-end food but in again a more casual setting and so like i just think that what they're doing is always so unique and interesting and approachable in a way unlike some other kind of similar to how bastion is you know and so that's what i'm

01:34:22always watching too what's a dish you wish you'd invented a dish i wish i invented it i mean i didn't invent any dishes so it's kind of easy because i'm not a chef all right we'll skip that one but i do think my what at fancy pants we have a vodka pasta dish which is just it seems so simple but it's the most craveable pasta i will put it toe-to-toe as the best pasta dish in nashville oh shots fired yeah i mean serious it's it's it's not really known for pasta i know i mean you got you got you got iggies and you got rolf and they're they're crushing it you know and yolan and yolan yeah i don't want to leave yolan out of the the story but yes yeah and again fancy pants isn't a pasta restaurant either we have a couple pasta on the menu that we make from scratch but i do think that that vodka shells pasta is i think in my opinion the best pasta dish i've ever had well redhead strangers in a burger joint true there you go so there it is um last thing what is one thing you believe about hospitality that most or that most people don't that most people don't i mean i think it goes back you know i really appreciate i really enjoyed our conversation we had earlier at the start right it kind of it shifted my my perspective a little bit you know i've always felt a little bit like guilty about my hospitality because it felt like you know in the restaurant somewhat self-serving yeah you have so many people that say thank you so much for your sir like thank you thank you and you're like at a certain point some of the thank you start to make you feel a little bit like undeserving you know and so that's kind of why i always preface with like you don't need to think this is self-serving a little bit um but i really enjoyed what we talked about and that shift of like it's not self-serving in a bad way it's self-serving and like this is

01:36:27how i show and receive love you know the one of the love languages so i think just understanding that dynamic of hospitality can go both ways you know um this problem would be my answer i love it well i i oh whoa that's the wrong button that this is the button that that's the wrong one too just pushing all the wrong buttons over here today um this has been so much fun i have had an absolute blast uh really just talking about all this stuff i can keep going forever well well you know what we have to do we have to come back and do this again uh and we can get into some of that i mean i wanted to get into uh the design refresh creativity creativity craveability and hospitality philosophy leadership culture and growth were the two kind of categories that we touched on a lot but like i could spend an hour talking about leadership culture and growth yeah because i think those are things a lot of restaurants do but it's not defined super well and we focus on hospitality and what we do is we react so many restaurant owners you get into this grind and we show up and we just start reacting versus defining what those things are and proactively walking in and executing on a plan and defining what hospitality means inside of our building i mean our our mission at our restaurant is making every guest a repeat guest while nourishing our community and you go what does it mean to nourish somebody like my kind of thing is when people leave our restaurant i want them to feel warm and happy like i want to do that again and when you leave i want you to feel whole and it's not just full or drunk or whatever like yeah i want you to feel spiritually like man they thought about they were so thoughtful with their

01:38:28service and it was customized and it wasn't robotic and one of my favorite things is when we have guests come in from out of town two nights in a row like that's like you know you did something good because they only have so many they want to go see all the places when they choose yours twice they happen on monday i was there monday night working service and a guest that was there sunday brought someone else in on monday i was like this is awesome that's it this is why we do it yeah so the last thing that we do on our show and we can like i said standing invitation whenever you want to come back happy to have you back love to have you and all the guys in here you get to do the gordon food service final thought okay so this is i love putting people on the spot yeah whatever you want to say you can surmise what we've talked about today you could say nib high football rules i don't really care yeah i think it's up to you the mic is as long as you want to talk whatever you want to say don't say as long as i want to talk you get to take a sample it's okay ramble i don't care no i think you know where we're at where i'm at where butcher and b is that it's just this notion of like every day and you talked about leadership a lot and defining it and i i would just say like one it's never too late to start that process right and like two like you might have to do that process several times over and staying in it and doing the work and understanding that it is a process and that to create a great leadership program or great hospitality or great experience like it's it's it's never going to stop you know and it could be discouraging to feel like you're not you haven't done the work we had a manager recently that we sent to training they came back and they were kind of discouraged at how far behind we were as a company from maybe where the other company that was training them was i was like this is we now get to do the the joyous work of getting us there and being responsible for that and so i

01:40:29think just a reminder of like not getting discouraged and staying you know staying present in the work that needs to be done and knowing that it's never going to stop it's always going to be ongoing and finding the joy in that process is going to be the key to success yes i love that um i typically don't respond to final thoughts because that's your final thought you just leave it at that but i find that when you hire managers if they don't hire from within if you bring somebody in like we have a general manager from starbucks yeah she was a regional at starbucks and she manages one of her restaurants and it's difficult because they have an sop for literally everything yeah and it's like we hired some from top golf same thing what's our sop it's like yeah kind of intentionally leave a little ambiguous because we want you to use this kind of and it's and at some point you realize we got to do that we got to do something along those lines because you're going to have people that need to know the answer and we know it's all in my head it's all in his head we joke and say how do you get it on paper gray area because like to me i can there's a ton of gray there's no situate no two no two situations are the same so i can't give you a manual for this because this doesn't exist yet but i can give you the tools to make the right decision and that's that's where it's really that's where i'm at and that's hard for people that are used to having that spelled out for yeah i know and that's a lot of that's a lot of people now in our industry okay i got a new i got a new final thought okay go okay national specifically i think i love the attention this the restaurant scene is getting from all across the nation right now you know i love that we have restaurant groups coming here from chicago and la and new york that means nashville is doing something right my final thought though is if we want nashville to have its own unique culinary identity i just

01:42:31would also i want to urge people that live here to support the locally started restaurants and small businesses as well not saying don't support the other ones just make sure you're also supporting locally owned locally operated unique to nashville concepts so that way nashville can continue to have its unique identity that's my final thought that gets a round of applause ladies and gentlemen that's a whole nother episode we could talk about there and we are not gonna go there we're gonna say thank you thank you thank you thank you um this was so much fun yeah i had a blast go visit butcher and be go say hi to jake mogelson nailed it he is gonna be there every day by tuesday and wednesday pretty much yeah and go say hi tell me you heard about him here on the show and this 10 year anniversary they're gonna be bringing back all the old dishes that everybody loves these are home runs these are guaranteed these are softball pitches they're home run dishes insanely delicious yeah you're gonna love them and uh thank you so much for stopping by today and making the trip out here to talk we will talk to you again soon thanks again thank you big big thank you to jake mogelson for joining us here on nashville restaurant radio stay tuned we are going to be talking with aubrey olaski she is the owner of paren bakery there's one over off sidco drive there's one in downtown franklin and then we are going to have a full episode with justin cook from eos if you hate your manager meetings if you need more structure this is going to be kind of a nara episode where we can help you create a operating system for your restaurants this one is definitely one you are not going to want to miss so uh stay tuned to nashville restaurant radio we've got lots of episodes coming up we're bringing on more chefs we're bringing on more people uh we're not going anywhere this is going to we're

01:44:36ramping everything up so if you follow us on instagram at nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio or if you will go to nara nashville dot com click to subscribe to our newsletter you can get all the information that you're looking for um follow us at nara nashville on instagram that's nara nashville we uh we've got a lot happening uh if you want to learn more about nara obviously go to the website and message us and uh we as always hope that you are being safe out there uh we want you to know we love you guys bye