Jason Crews

00:00Y'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 is 770-337-1143. And he would love it if you would give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation, meet him, say hi, see if there's any way he can help. He is here to help you succeed. That's Jason Ellis with Super Source. 770-337-1143.

01:01Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We as always are powered by the amazing people over at Gordon Food Service. Today we're talking with the owner of C&B Linen, Jason Cruz. And this is a fun one, you know, because we just did a commercial for Super Source to start this thing off. And I love companies that are like disruptors. I deal, if you know me, you know I have a pain point for linen companies in general. The way that they do things is backwards, it's wrong.

02:06And so many companies that make you sign six, seven year contracts, I just want a company that's gonna come out and say, yeah, no contract. We're gonna earn this every week. We're gonna do no weird fees. This is what it is and we wanna help you win. And so it's hard to find companies like that. Because everybody, there's lack of trust on both sides. So when I found Super Source and he was like, man, we are the anti-dish machine chemical company. We produce our own chemicals and we take care of you every week and here's my cell number and I'm the GM of the company. And Jason Ellis was just amazing and he's done that everywhere. And he's exploded. And if you're not using Super Source, then where have you been? Because they're the company you need to be using for your dish machine and chemicals. CNB Linen is the same thing. I wanted to know what the catch was. Everybody has these long contracts. They make you pay all these fees, the replacement costs, the clean green services, all this stuff.

03:07And they don't do any of that. So I love people that are like, so this would make your life easier. I mean, What Chefs Want was that way for a long time. All these big, huge companies made you do, they made all the rules. You had to order by this time. You had to do this, you had to do this. And then What Chefs Want said, no, we're gonna change that. We're gonna do the things that are gonna help you succeed. And so I wanted to learn way more about this. So I took a friend of mine, Vince Lanni. You're gonna learn more about him in an episode coming up shortly. He's the GM at Greenery & Co. And he owns a company called Serve Up Strategies. And we took the drive down to Waynesboro. And we sat down in their conference room with the Wayne halfway house. And we met with Jason Cruz. I did, I did the interview. But he was there with me. It was interesting because we were in this big boardroom and it had like 12 seats at the table. And they had five people from CNB Lennon sitting at the other end of the table. And I set up the microphones and everything at one end of the table where Jason sat down.

04:10And then I sat down. And we conducted the interview. I pull in Christa from, and she was like, I don't know what to say. I don't wanna be put on the spot. So there's a section of it where Christa came on. She didn't say much, but I wanted to incorporate her because I work with Christa a lot. And she's about as legit as they come as the GM for CNB Lennon is somebody who just hustles, wants to get it right the first time and absolutely cares about your success. I've just never met anybody like them. They're great. So this interview was me trying to figure out, is this too good to be true? Like what's going on here? And I think we got the answer to it. So this is a fun one. I do wanna talk about the storms in Nashville. And I'm gonna tie this in because I was in California last week and I'm getting messages from the Metro government. I'm getting phone calls at 1.30 in the morning, California time, which is 3.30 in the morning. And I'm like, good God, I'm talking to my wife.

05:11She's in a safe place in the house. We've got tornadoes coming through. I mean, they're on the news saying, and the tornado is right at the corner of this street and that street. I'm like, that's the street next to us. It's never good when they're calling out the street you live on, on the news that that's where the rotation is. So I feel like we dodged a bullet, but you know, a lot of people didn't and there's massive flooding happening right now. There's flooding all over the city and we had this crazy rain. And at the Green Hills Grill, we got in last Sunday and there was water starting to seep in through the back door and it wasn't bad, but we got squeegees and eight people with squeegees can get stuff and moved around pretty quickly. But I still, I could say it is a thing. If you had flooding in your restaurant, which isn't something you plan on, what do you do? If you have to call your insurance agent are you picking up an 800 number and calling Progressive?

06:12Are you calling some nameless faceless 800 number where they're like, and where are you? We're in Nashville. Okay, and what happened? You're like, dude, we've had massive storms. Do you not watch the news? That is why you need Matthew Clements over at Robin's Insurance. If you had Matthew Clements and you had issues with your restaurant, you pick up the phone and you dial 863-409-9372, or you'd send him an email at mclements at robbinsins.com and you go, Matthew, we've had flooding. You go, oh my God, I know, it's been crazy. Let me get it taken care of. Let's get the whole thing going. To call a person who lives in Nashville, who cares about your business, when you have this stuff happen is everything. And this is what I keep talking about, having an agent who's local, who will care about your business, who will handle everything. You call him and say, this is what happened. He goes, no problem, we're on it. We'll take care of it. Let's get you taken care of. So much better than having to explain to somebody what city you're in and what's happening.

07:15And then they're questioning if that really did happen. And you're like, no, seriously, watch the news. This is what's going on. It's just one of those moments where working with a local person who focuses on restaurants like Robin's Insurance does means the entire world. Robin's Insurance works with Society Insurance and they're just amazing. So if you do need somebody, if you don't wanna be in that position or you have some nameless, faceless, cheap insurance that you picked up, they may not help in this particular scenario. So again, I'm gonna give you that number, Matthew Clements, 863-409-9372. And yeah, so this is a big one. If you're looking for a linen company, there are members of NARA and they're my preferred vendor and I have priceless that we've already negotiated for you. So if you wanna learn more, you can call Krista and we'll put all this information in the notes, but you can also DM me at Brandon Styll on Instagram. As many people have, it's been amazing how many people have messaged me about this stuff.

08:18It's just absolutely crazy. A lot of you are unhappy with your linen companies and it shows because a lot of people are reaching out and I could not be more excited or proud to be able to pass on somebody and they're brand new to town. So if you wanna get the best delivery times and you wanna get all the best stuff, get in now and get your slot because they're relatively new and they're changing the game. So let's jump in right now with Jason Cruz from C&B Linen. (*upbeat music*) Super excited today to coming to you from Waynesboro, Tennessee. We are joined with Jason Cruz. He's the owner of the Wayne halfway house and like you've been hearing me talk about C&B Linen. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, Mr. Cruz. Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me and appreciate you coming down to our little section of the world. You know what? I'm excited to come to your little section of the world.

09:19I like a good adventure. Just taking the drive and then seeing downtown. Did a little research on you on just kind of what you're trying to do with this town square. We'll jump in right there because this driving down here from Nashville, you drive down Natchez Trace Parkway, you get off the highway and it's 10 miles later, we're in this little town of Waynesboro and there's like a little downtown. You're trying to revitalize it. We are. Most of that credit goes to my wife. I couldn't build a skeleton. So we ended up, we were planning on building a new office building and we kept driving by these old buildings. A lot of small towns have dried up and as we kept driving by and driving by, we kind of looked over and thought, is there something else we can do besides building a new office space? Can we kind of reconstruct some of the buildings downtown? And again, I've lived here all my life and it's a way that we're able to go back to the community and feel like that we've, or if she, not we, feel like she's built something that we can be proud of, that our employees can be proud of when it's all said and done.

10:33Now, is she from Waynesboro also? You guys both grew up here? We are. So we've been together since we were in sixth grade. So we're going, she can't get rid of me at this point. It's just, it's impossible. How many years have you been married? 24. So this year it'll be 25 that we've been actually married. Mine is 20 this year. So you've got five years on me. When's your anniversary date? August 12th. I was just to check so she listens to this. She'll know that you know off the, that's my son's birthday. Really? Yeah. So it's a day I celebrate as well. Well, now you remember it's my anniversary. I'll send you a text. Hey man, it's my kid's birthday. Happy anniversary. So I love that. So growing up in Waynesboro, tell me what you did. What was your first job? I worked in the logwoods. So I was timbering. My family cut timber and that's what all summers I've done. And on Christmas break, that's what I've done.

11:34And I liked it so much that when I finally finished college, I threw away my boots. And so that was how exciting it was. But in all fairness, it taught me work ethic and my family. I have a very large family and they were instrumental in teaching me various things. My father died when I was young. And so my uncles really helped raise me and taught me a lot of valuable lessons, good and bad that I learned from. And you know, it was a bad thing obviously that happened, but the positive that happened is I got a little bit of each one of them that was put inside of me. And I think that's always kind of widens who you are. And I think obviously it's a negative, but it become a positive. No, did your father in the timber industry, was that like how he passed? Was it in line of work? He actually, my father was not in the timber. He was a school teacher. So he had diabetes and he lost his sight.

12:34I think I was maybe eight. Wow. He was on dialysis and he still went, sorry, he still went and taught school. So he had an aid. But that's work ethic. If you're going to see that as a kid, like not letting it hold you down. Resilience. You know, if he could get up in the morning and do X, Y, Z, then why can't anybody else and why can't I? So, you know, everybody faces adversity, that's life. Where'd you go to school? Here. I went to school here for high school. And then I played baseball at a little junior college in Harriman up in East Tennessee and finished at the university in North Alabama. Okay, the Lions. The Lions, that's correct. University of North Alabama. Una and Leo are the Lions. They're right there on campus. They sure do. Beautiful campus. If you've never been to that campus, I'm telling you, if you're ever like in Northern Alabama and you want to go to like the Muscle Shoals area, this is for anybody listening. You obviously know this. There's a really cool Marriott there. The Marriott Shoals have a huge 360 restaurant.

13:36And then you can walk right onto the campus at UNA and they have Lions in a big enclosure. You can see Una and Leo, the Lions, they're incredible. You can hear them growling and it's a neat thing. It's a nice campus and of course it's grown like all college campuses recently. It's grown quite a bit over the last 15 years. But it's a really neat day trip if you're just wanting something to go do. It's not that far from here. Well, the Shoals area is a pretty neat area. It is. It has a lot of stuff to do on, like I say, a day trip. All right, why don't we get off topic? Sure. After college, you hung your boots up. What did you go do? So the first business that I started was actually CMB Lennon. I worked for the state of Tennessee for a bit and decided that wasn't what I wanted to do. I was just a social worker, which was rewarding. Taught me, again, experiences of people that was less fortunate. So I got to see a different side of the world and it was very humbling for me.

14:38So CMB Lennon was actually the first business that I started. And we started out as a dry cleaners. And I learned very quickly that I may not be the best dry cleaner in the world. So we kind of migrated from that and it just went straight to Lennon after a brief stint that where we had the dry cleaners. What year was that that you started CMB Lennon? 2002. So you're 23 years in. How has the linen industry changed in 23 years? It's changed quite a bit. You know, one of the things I'm sure that you've noticed is the mom and pops. We used to do a lot of mom and pops when I first started. And, you know, that has changed quite a bit over the year, especially post COVID. You don't see as many of singular restaurants maybe. And it was because they've closed. I didn't know if they were moving to like a paper good or something. I think lots of times, you know, you have franchises now that play a large role. And then, you know, I do think, you know, cause of traffic COVID really, you know, if you didn't have a whole large budget to depend on.

15:43I think that's a, it's a very accurate assessment of what's happened during the pandemic. I went to the RLC, the restaurant leadership conference in Phoenix, I think it was, I forget what city, I think it was Phoenix, maybe Scottsdale, but they opened it up. It was in 2022. And the guy opened up and said, well, now all of the dead wood has been burned off of the forest. It's time for us to thrive. Referencing large chains. The people that weren't very good at this didn't make it through COVID. And it broke my heart to hear that, to hear that so many people's dreams and the big restaurant groups are saying, hey, all the little guys are gone. Now it's time for us to thrive. And it's like, man, what a cold, terrible thing to say. And it's a reality. It sure was. And again, that was, I think one of the biggest changes to just, and sad to see lots of times, during that time period, lots of- A lot of friends and relationships that you built for over years and seeing their dreams go away, it's moving to something different and it's a tough thing.

16:51So did you work with a lot of those type restaurants? How did you guys pivot? We did, so we had several of those, your country stores, those type things. And at that point in time, I was the washer, the delivery driver and pretty much handled most of those things. We ended up getting a nursing home during that process, which again, is different if you're not used to that side of the linen industry. It's totally different from hospitality. And so as we kind of built on that, we started doing some healthcare and those type things and mixed it in, but stayed relatively small. I've always called the linen kind of our sleeping giant that I always felt like we'd done a really good job of servicing customers. It was one of those things, we just had to have the right people in place, I think, to make it take off and I feel like we have that now. What are the values that, you know, when you talk about servicing customers, I mean, I think that that can mean a lot of different things.

17:53What are the things that C&B Linen does to service their customers differently that might be, or just in general? Sure, I think anybody that has our service, I think we're very customer-centric. I do believe that we try to have the utmost integrity that you can possibly have and I know lots of people say that, but at the end of the day, I think we show it based on how we deliver the product and based on, you know, trying to fix, because some things are not always perfect and they go wrong. I mean, we're no different than anyone else. We make mistakes. I think how you fix those mistakes, though, is what is different and telling people the truth, whether that's something that they wanna hear or it's not good for you. I think you just straight up and you're honest with folks and in return, I think it builds very good relationships that, you know, you benefit from down the road. There's transparency. There is. You know, I think that's the biggest thing that I like to have when it comes to a vendor and I love, I believe, in building relationships, but let's have transparency.

18:57Let's be vulnerable with each other. If you're real with me and not just making stuff up, then I think that we can, we're all human beings. I used to work with this guy, Monty Crawford, and he is the vice president for a company called What Chefs Want. He always said to me, he goes, I'm not gonna be perfect. Nobody's perfect, but I can be perfect in my response. And I always thought like, you know what, that's it. Like, the people are fallible. This happens. But if I respond, I can respond in a perfect way that is helpful. I think lots of times, you have to look yourself in the mirror, right? No matter what you're doing, whether you're in business or it's personally, and you have to own what you may not be doing well, and you have to fix those things that you can do better. And I think we've built a culture of trying to do the best you can, no matter what you're doing. And I think that's company-wide. I don't think it's just in the linen. I think across the board, whether it be in the other sectors of what we do, which all tie in together, to be honest with you, you know, our other parts of our business ties into our linen company.

20:03Your what, your auto parts? No, like so. So we have residential business. Okay. You know, and those kids work at our linen facility. They get paid like anybody else. They get evaluated like anybody else. And these kids come from struggling areas, and they get to keep all their money. And they're able to go home and hopefully take the opportunity they've been given and make a different choice. That's kind of the goal. But you know, that's why the linen is really instrumental because you instill what Krista does a really good job of, is instilling those qualities in those young men. So hopefully they carry it out when they leave. I love that. That's a great segue into the halfway house. We're in the headquarters, I guess, for Wayne halfway house. Tell me about that. So in 2003, I had, as I say, I was a case manager at some point in time. And in 2003, I had the opportunity to, my partner that was in the linen at the time, had asked me to come and run the halfway house overall.

21:10And so, which we wasn't the same company at that point in time, similar ownership, obviously me and him was there. And so I had the opportunity to go over there, eventually bought in to the halfway house in 2003. And we integrated linen into the halfway house in I think around 2021. And so it had become a DBA of Wayne halfway house. And what we do over in the halfway house is we have residential treatment centers. We started out just with this little small treatment center in Waynesboro, Tennessee, where we take young men, we have young girls now, but young men who have created some of the headache on their own, they sometimes become involved with the justice system. And so we took those young men and we were able to, over time, figure out how we could move them down to work in Waynesboro to be in the linen. So what we do is we move them from facility to facility.

22:13So a kid that might get in whatever trouble they get into, and some of it is high level crime. But the truth be told, what I went to the state of Tennessee and what we talked about was these kids are going home. You can lock them up all the way from when they're 13 to they're 18 and say, you're going home, good luck. Or you can try to teach them something. And so the commissioner at the time, obviously we worked some things out and she gave us the opportunity to be able to manage several of these. And we're able to move those kids from where it's a higher level crime, almost like a prison, to down to Waynesboro, which you'll see today, which is more of a community style setting. And those kids earned the opportunity, whether it be work programs or they also can go to TCAT, which is vocational. We have them working across the street here at one of the restaurants. We have them working as mechanics.

23:15And so they get the opportunity by themself. In other words, they created that opportunity. And so they've either graduated or they have their high set from wherever they come from. And then they get the opportunity to come down and earn money. And more valuable, I believe, is they learn work ethic, which a lot of them has never had instilled in them. And they learn the fact of working with people. As I tell them when we first started this, was these folks depend on you. This is your job. So when you get up in the morning and you don't feel good, that don't mean you lay in bed. That means you still go into work because these other people, adults around you, depend on you to come into work and do your job. And I think you should do it to the best of your ability. And Chris has done a really good job of teaching our boys that, is no excuses. That's one of our famous sayings is, I don't want to hear excuses because you can have a crutch for anything. Kids have crutches just like adults have crutches.

24:17It's an easy world. Everybody has an excuse for everything in this world today. And we tried to instill in our kids and in our staff is, you know, no excuses. You know, don't use crutches. Is there room for empathy with no excuses? Absolutely, there is. You want to, you feel sorry for the situation. If you read these kids' files and you have staff, right? Staff, same way as the kids. Some staff are broken, just like the kids are broken. So you have empathy, but you don't transfer empathy over into a situation where you give a kid or a staff or an adult a crutch. Because sometimes crutches lead to more bad behavior, right? Sure, interesting. So most of, do all of your employees come from the Wayne halfway house? So, you know, the Lennon, you're talking about from- I'm sorry, yeah, at CMB Lennon. They do not. We have a portion. Most of our employees there, the majority are going to be, you know, staff, just like you would hire staff in.

25:20We supplement that with the kids that have, again, earned the opportunity and choose. If they choose, that's not for them because some kids do not want to work in Lennon. And so if they choose that's not for them, obviously they have other choices that they can get jobs, whether it be, you know, the restaurant business or, you know, mechanic, those type of things. Interesting. Where does this come from? Is this a passion of yours? I mean, working with children and helping them rehabilitate? I mean, where does that come from? Well, I think seeing the system. So one of the things that I learned just by working for the state early on in my life and acting like a fool early on in my life, personally, is that you obviously believe in second chances of those that are willing to put forth the opportunity. As I tell the kids all the time, you get an opportunity. I had a kid tell me, just three weeks ago, he thanked me for doing something for him. And I told him, I didn't do anything because if you had acted a certain way or you hadn't got your education, you'd still be sitting where you were sitting.

26:26You done it, not me. And I think that's a- Empowering moment. To lay out for a kid because they need to feel like they earned something. It's always a much better feeling to earn it instead of be given. And I think trying to teach the kids and your staff that is they should earn opportunities to advance themselves just like the kids do. And so trying to teach that throughout a whole company and have a certain culture, I think, is what you try to accomplish. If I'm getting too into this, let me know. But mental health plays a big role in a lot of these kids. Do you do their individual, I don't know how to put a performance, individual improvement plan based around any mental health issues that might have. Sharpier's Bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery, providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They have operated in Nashville since 1986.

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30:32And they have my personal favorite, the Semi Tropic. It has five milligrams of hemp derived THC as well. These products are available by a Lipman Brothers. If you'd like to order them for your restaurant, or if you want to go try them yourself, you can visit drinkcolexo.co, or you can pick them up at Killjoy in East Nashville. This is an amazing company. They're not some conglomerate who's jumping into the THC game. They are a craft THC beverage company, where just like you and I, this is their only focus. This is the only product that they make. So they put 100% of their detail and love into it. Please enjoy responsibly. I don't know how to put like a performance individual improvement plan based around any mental health issues that might have. So we have, obviously we have mental health therapists, you know, assigned to each facility as they kind of make their way through. And it plays a big role because lots of times, even they created some of their own issue, don't get me wrong, and there's a consequence for that.

31:37But as I said earlier, that consequence should not be that you don't get a second opportunity. And what you do with that opportunity, as I tell the kids, is up to you. Because you can only do so much. And so once that time comes, we hope that what they've been taught, what they've learned, and hopefully what we've been able, therapy wise, to deal with some of the issues that may have drove them to certain things. And it's not always totally their fault, the situation that they come from, plays a role. And so you have to take that into account sometimes when you're dealing with a young man or a young woman of what is driving some of those behaviors and outcome. And I think Krista has done a wonderful job of, you know, a lot of them, actually, one of them calls it his second mom now that we've had since he was 13. And he needs a little jerking every now and then also, by the way, but. That's her job? That's her job. We have kind of an audience here. We are in Waynesboro at the Wayne halfway house headquarters and a conference room.

32:41I think we have five other people in the room with us. You guys all wanna like say hi at one time? Go. Hi. Never really had an audience during, Krista is sitting right over here. We only have two microphones today, but she's been somebody I've really enjoyed working with. And I can tell that her level of excellence is high. Like it's not a, oh, well, we'll just like, she demands a level of excellence. So Krista is a good example of someone taking advantage of opportunity. Krista started just as a laborer on frontline staff and has worked her way up to where she is now. And she's a epitome of what should happen everywhere is when people earn the opportunities, they get the opportunities to advance themselves and to better themselves and to better their family. And I think she is a shining example for the company of what that looks like. I think what you're talking about is personal accountability. It absolutely. It's all the way through. And I think that there's, you watch the news and every day, it's just everybody finding blame as to why everything is the way that it is.

33:46And it's, we talked about this on the way down here, just looking in the mirror, like you said a minute ago, and saying, what can I do to change this? I have a business coach named Deborah Sunderland. And she said the most powerful statement to me. And she said, what part do you play in the result you don't want? That the life is not good or bad. There's just a series of results. Everything that you do is, how much you weigh, how much you make, everything is just a result. So if there's a result that you don't want or didn't want, what part do you play in the result you don't want? And then break that down and identify a solution as to how you can move forward to get the result that you want. There's always a way to get the result that you want, but it's not just gonna fall in your lap. So I coach the high school softball team also. And that was the- Amongst other things. I feel like yesterday. I've had them since they were four. This is my last year. But so for 14 years now, I've had the same group of girls. And this is your last year?

34:47This is my last class. So I had two classes before. That was the group I started with. And so this is the ones that I've had. And it's pretty remarkable. They've all stayed together. Very proud of that. Obviously we know each other very well after 14, 15 years. Yeah, sure. That was the one I gave them yesterday, which was you get nothing for nothing. In other words, there's a famous Nick Saban. It went viral, but basically you're owed nothing. And you get nothing if you put forth nothing. And so it was, you know, to go through that with the girls, you know, that's something that's a regular. At this point, they're tired of hearing that you get nothing. And you know, you gotta make it, you know. I'm sure at this point it may be falling on deaf ears. Well, I have a, I'm a coach of my kid's soccer team. And I just, I don't know anything about soccer. I know not, I never played soccer my entire life, but I'm the head coach of the soccer. It's a U-12 team.

35:48I have nine and 11 year old boys. And somebody they said, how do you train them in drills? I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing. But my entire thing as a coach is teamwork. And you're not getting, this isn't an individual sport. If you guys all work together and you hustle and you do your job, another thing, Bill Belichick, do your job. If you're on defense, do your job. Stop the ball. If you're on offense, find the open man, get in position. It's where you are on the field. But like, everybody needs to work as a team and instilling that hustle and teamwork to the team, which is no different than a restaurant. Same. It's no different than any team environment that if you trust and you believe in the people around you and you do your job and everybody has this impeccable agreement together that we're gonna do our job, you can do anything. Well, that goes back to the same way, you know, as I told the girls yesterday, it's what's fresh in my mind. You control two things.

36:49You control effort and you don't quit. Everything else, when you're competing or when you're in life or when you have a restaurant business or a residential business, baking cookies, fill in the blanks. You control two things. Those are the two things. The effort you put forth and you don't quit. And if you do those two things, generally speaking, that takes some things falling in place. But if you do those two things, I do believe you can be successful. I completely agree with you. I completely agree. I want to move back to the linen business a little bit because that's really what I have restaurant owners out there and the linen business from what I understand has changed a lot as far as the cost structure. You know, linen prices, the actual cost of what you're buying linens for has gone up. Now are you, and you're buying linens from somebody as you're not making your own linens, right? I mean, okay, you're buying them from wholesalers. Those prices have gone up. But if you go into a restaurant and you say, hey, I got linens at 15 cents a linen, which from what I understand is what most people need to pay for a linen, then somebody is gonna go, man, they got it for eight cents over here.

38:00But now linen companies have had to get creative. They've had to get creative because they can't walk in with the actual cost of a linen because it's just too damn expensive. So they've had to get creative with how they make their profits, right? So now we're getting, there's an ARC charge on an invoice, which is an appropriate replacement cost or whatever the accurate replacement, I don't know what the A stands for, the replacement cost of it. And that's 2% of your total spend of our total inventory and your par is 2,000. So I'm charging you 2% of 4,000, which, well, you're gonna throw away, you're gonna lose linens. So we have to replace those and you need to pay for those. So every time you get 2,000 linens, I'm charging you 2% of, I'm intentionally making this very complicated because it is, because they want it to be complicated, because you go on that line item on the bottom and it says linen cost at eight cents a linen times 2,000, you're like, well, that's not bad, but why does that equal $612?

39:01That math doesn't make sense. And then you look underneath it and there's a little line that says ARC 4,000 times $2 or 80 times $2 and then it doesn't break it out. It just kind of fills into that line above. And then you go down and you'll see that's, wait a minute, that's happening on my bar towels, on my terry cloth towels, on my tablecloths, on my linens. And then you see down there, there's a clean green service charge for $57. And you're like, well, what the hell is that? Then there's also a service charge for $57. And that's the same price as the clean green. And then I got a fuel surcharge of $8 per delivery. Then you look at the end of your invoice and you're like, well, I just needed linens and bar towels and I'm paying an extra $375 in additional costs. And if you break that down, if you get your 10 key out and you add up 2,000 linens at the additional $356, well, holy shit, I'm paying 15 cents a linen on my linens. That's how they're doing it.

40:02So when I first met Krista and Alan and then Jonathan and Andrew and all the people over here, you don't charge any of those fees and you have a responsible rate that you're just flat rate charging people. How do you do that? There's a long setup for that question, but I wanted to give context for where it was coming from. Well, so number one, we're pretty simple. We had one red light down here. So we try not to complicate it. It is a beautiful red light, by the way. It is. And it's a red light. It's not a red light. It's a red light. All right. I'm working on that. You're doing great. Don't work on it. I can save it up a little bit. You're doing great. So I do think a lot of it's communication. It goes back to being upfront and honest. So I think at the end of the day, if you're going in and you're supposed to have 500 bar towels and you have 50, then you want to have open communication with the rest.

41:02You just don't want to slap fees and all those things and add them on there just to out of the gate. Because truth be told, if you're restaurants and you're operating very efficient, you're not losing anything. So why are you starting out with a fee before you even know how it's going to turn out? And obviously it's because of creative pricing is what happens there. And again, that's their business model. And obviously they're super successful. So I understand that. But at the end of the day, we always kind of wanted to make it simplistic. This is what you get. We're going to give you a good product and this is what you get in return. There's no hitting fees here. There's no hitting fees there. And a lot of that revolves around, Chris and I do a really good job of communicating back and forth with our customer base. And I think that's helpful. Something can be said just for having a conversation. If something's going wrong, both ways. I feel like open communication never hurt anybody. And I think that solves a lot of the issues, which in turn helps keep us from having to put what I consider some of the foolish fees that are placed on some of the lending bills.

42:13And it's been going on for a while. It's not new. Do you own the facility? Yes. So you own the dirt that it's sitting on. That's correct, yes. So you're not making them, are you making a mortgage payment every month to them? No. That helps. Yes. When you actually own the facility and you don't have a downtown facility or some Nashville thing where you're paying 30 grand a month and you have to cover that. So that helps reduce your costs to some degree. I mean, you have the real estate side of that. And then paying people a fair wage? We do. I feel like we're very competitive with what we pay, with all facets of it, as always. I think if you go back with the history of this company and a lot of the folks that work with me have been around me now for 20 years. They've been, truth be told, those, especially in our administrative structure and our management structure, our turnover rate is probably less than 1%. Wow. It just don't happen very often.

43:16And again, they like somebody else. It's not me. I mean, you've got Krista's of the world. I mean, I can tell you they're not hanging around because of me. And I'm very proud of that, though. I will say that because the less turnover you have, the better business you have. You know that as well. The people that work with you are who make you or they destroy you at the end of the day, especially those that you come to depend on. And I think that also helps your cause because you have sustainability and you have folks that understand the model and understand what you believe in, understand your values, and they implement those on down to the people under them. And all of a sudden, you've got something good going on. 2023, you guys had a fire. Tell me about that experience. Where were you when the fire started? So our Lennon facility is straight across from our residential facility. And I was in bed because it was about midnight.

44:17I think it was about 11.50, if you ever take. But I got a call from one of the supervisors across the road that said, you know, you've got a fire at the Lennon building. So I get out of bed and get in the vehicle and we headed up there and I called him back and I said, how bad is it? He went, so he sent a video. At that point, pretty bad. Would you see the video? You're like, oh, this is bad. It's four alarm fires. I mean, it's a big blaze. It is and- What happened? How did it start? Lightness strike, crazy enough. You don't plan on that, do you? And so, you know, of course we have cameras out in front of our residential and you knew it. It looked like it turned from night to daylight when it hit. The whole sky was, again, it looked like daylight for two seconds. And so it started in the clean room. So, you know, I think it ran through the wiring or something, I don't really know. But so a lightening struck, you know, the inside of it.

45:20And, you know, we have a lot of, we have a small city fire department and volunteer fire departments because, you know, it's a rural area. And, you know, they really done a great job of trying the best they could to save what we had. But it become pretty apparent quickly that, you know, it was in our walls. And, you know, ironically enough, we hadn't been in the facility just a short period of time. So it was new. So that was the heartbreaking part. We just got a new facility that we're very proud of. And I will say, you know, this goes back to the resilience part. And, you know, you can tuck your tail and go in the corner and cry, or you can decide what you're gonna do. And as it was burning, I think Krista, we got it to, I believe we were about halfway when it was on fire watching it burn, you know, and you can't do anything. And so I turned to her, my exact words was, it's gone. What are we gonna do in the morning? Yeah, I mean, you got a bunch of people depending on you to provide a product the next day.

46:23It is, and, you know, so we had a conversation as it was on fire, because at that point in time, our attention turned to what is tomorrow and what's tomorrow look like. And, you know, Krista and all our employees stayed throughout the night. I'm not sure they went to bed all the next day. She's shaking her head no, I didn't go to bed. Right, and so every one of them stayed and helped, you know, clean out what we could as far as carts, got our routes together. We were able to sign on to a subcontract for a few days and we'd missed some mat services, but we never missed a service and an account. So like our mats, it took us a little bit to regroup, so we had to wash those through, but never missed a service the next day after the fire. Krista, tell me your experience there. My experience there is there was no option to quit. There was no option to fail. It was just take care of our customers to the best of our ability, and that's what we did.

47:29Literally, what did you do the next, like the next day? I mean, did all the product not burn? I mean, how did that work? Krista, this goes back to her management skills and credit to her. We actually had what we should have had. We had a second warehouse stored with enough, you know, enough supplies to keep running it until we got ordered in new supplies. And then we live in a small town, which sometimes is not good, but sometimes it's great. And so the city chipped in with us, the retrofitted old industrial area. We had equipment manufacturer that went above and beyond to get us equipment in from Wisconsin. And, you know, we stayed afloat for a couple of weeks subcontracting the process out. And then after that, we had a fully functional facility, I think in three weeks. One day less than three weeks. Back inside, which we could not have done again without the city, and that goes to the approach of a small community, everybody pitches together.

48:35And they went above and beyond making sure that we were in a facility, like I say, less than three weeks and we were back functioning. That's incredible. I mean, that's unheard of, like that you could do something and rally the troops that way. I just, I'm like, I, you hear him talk about Krista and what she can do. And for me, when I first met you guys and I met Krista, I look, everything is all talk, but there was something about Krista that I was like, she's legit. Like she's, when I said, what do you do? Because the big question in Nashville is, well, if you guys are in Waynesboro and something like that happens, how am I gonna get my product? Because Nashville doesn't stop. I mean, it's a machine. And her response was, we'll get it there. We'll make it happen. I believed her. I don't know what it was. She was looking me in the eye and I was like, I believe you it's gonna happen. Tell me, Krista, what that is about you. Like, tell me your, kind of a little bit about your backstory.

49:37I'm gonna switch over to her just for a second because you've mentioned her five or six times as the GM here, as somebody who is instrumental in making this thing happen. Tell us a little about what makes, what instills that inside. What brings that fire inside of you? What brings that fire inside of me? What's your motivation? My motivation is failure just isn't an option. Failure's never been an option for me. We keep doing and keep going until we get it done, period. And I think that's what has made her successful. I will tell you that since the first day, I actually met Krista, we had an older office and it's actually across from the landing facility now and sitting at the table that day, I come home and tell my wife, you know, she's gonna be more than just a laborer at that point in time. So she kind of, that's what she puts away. She's very motivated at what she does and she fits perfectly well into, again, that belief system that I believe that we do well.

50:47She, thank you for joining us, Krista. That was a, Krista jumping over. She's not a lot of words there, but you can just tell that there's a standard of excellence in everything that she does. And that's, that's hard to find in somebody. How long have you been here, Krista? You can just say. Six years. Well, she's much more important, obviously, than I am. So, you know, at the end of the day, when you surround yourself with good people, as you know, you get good results. If everybody has the same mentality, as you said earlier, and you're all pulling the rope the same way, generally speaking, you can make good things happen no matter what you're doing. So you guys are a small, smaller, you're not a national in it. You don't do anywhere else. You're coming to Nashville now. You've got a few restaurants signed up, but you don't do any fees. You don't do the replacement costs. You don't do gas fees. You don't do service fees. Literally, it is just a, we're gonna rent you this linen today, and this is the cost of it, and there you go.

51:51No creative financing. Well, we're not very creative down here. So that could be the problem, but no. Again, it goes back to that straightforward approach, because I feel like we've always been able to work through through conversation if there's issues of saying, okay, you know, is there an employee deciding that they're cleaning their house at night with 300 artiles? Can we see if we can figure that out? And I know it's simplistic, but it does seem to work from the standpoint of open communication with people, because I do believe, as I'm sure you do in your business, that most people are good, contrary to what news may tell you. I do think most people are good, and most people wanna do the right thing. Now, some choose not to, but I always think that as long as you kinda live by that creed, you'll always be okay. I think there's good inside of everybody. Yep.

52:51I think every single person, there's good inside of them somewhere, and there's a lot of circumstance out there, but I love the second chance. I'm a person who's had a second chance before. I mean, I'm not a choir boy by any means. I've certainly made my mistakes, but it's a matter of looking in the mirror and learning from them and saying, oh, I'm gonna do things differently, and I love that you give people a second chance to come out and earn a living and do all of the things that you're doing. We have, company-wise, they get tired of hearing it, so I will say, but the kids and the adults get to hear the same spiel lots of times, and we often talk about the front windshield and the rear view mirror of the difference between why the front windshield's so big and the rear view mirror's so small. It's because you can't control what you just drove past, and what you see, obviously, is a much bigger world, and a much bigger picture than what you just drove past, because it don't matter then, and I think having that outlook helped us after the fire. It's helped us through adversity, because everybody faces adversity.

53:54That's life. That's part of it. How you react is what makes you, and I think, obviously, I'm very proud of our company, because we, like everybody else, face adversity, and we don't always get it right, but it comes down to trying to fix it and figure out what we're doing wrong and bettering what we do, whether that be in the land and sector or the residential, it doesn't really matter. You're trying to do the best you can every day, I believe. Yeah, I like that analogy of the rear view mirror and the front windshield, but it's interesting, that's a smaller mirror that looks back, but if you don't have a rear view mirror, that's a problem, because you kind of need to see what's going on. There's a rear view mirror for a reason, and I think that's, I used to have a Jeep Wrangler, I mean, you take the doors off, you don't have side view mirror, side view mirrors, and I had, I was driving one day, and my rear view mirror was blocked, and I didn't have side, because I took the doors off, and I forgot how important it is to look back, that you can't really drive forward until you look back and see, and I think it's those experiences that you have in the past that help you move forward.

55:06Well, the mistakes are 100%. The rear view mirror's important to your analogy, you gotta remember your mistakes, because mistakes are things you change to get better. That's how you learn. Pattern is something you don't change, you keep doing the same thing, so your analogy is correct. You do need the rear view mirror, just like you do in life, to remember what mistakes you made, learn from them, and try to be better. 100%. Man, I'm excited to go tour, I'm gonna go tour the facility after the interview, and we're gonna go and look at everything. I'm excited that you guys are now coming to Nashville, because, and really the point I wanted today to find out, to sit and talk to you, and this first time I've got to meet you, I've met your team, and I was just saying on the way down here, I can tell the culture of any restaurant when I walk in the back door, and I was in food sales for 17 years, and I'd walk in the back door, and I got real good at looking to my left, and I can tell you, everybody you purchase from, and by the way that prep cook met me in the back, if they went, who are you?

56:08Or if they said, hey man, how you doing? Who are you with, you know? I could tell you the attitude of the chef immediately. Is he a nice guy? Is he a hard ass? What's he gonna do? Is he gonna be welcoming? Is he, whatever it was, by the culture, by the way that I was greeted at the back door by the prep cook, and if I was to judge this company by who I've met so far, and Alan, and Krista, and everybody else on your team, I can tell quickly that this is a business that cares, that cares about their customers, that care about fulfilling their value proposition, and what they, if I say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, kind of a company, and you guys don't do contracts? You can just sign up, I mean, there's another thing, people wanna sign five to seven year contracts. How come that is something that you decided not to do? I think lots of times, especially in the restaurant business, it goes down to, truth be told, we should be doing our job, and just a big believer in, if you're satisfied with us and you're happy, then we don't have to worry about that part of it, and I know it's a, I know it's a different take, but we've been successful, obviously we'd had to change so far with the way we do our practice, but.

57:29I gotta earn your business every week. Well, that's the way, you know, as you tell, I think it's the same mentality, again, going back to the other side of how I look at 15 year old kids, my job is to earn their respect, and I think people go through thinking, well, you respect me, cause, well, no, you don't. You respect me because I earn it, no matter who you are, whether it be an adult or a kid, you respect someone because they earn the right for you to respect them, and I think the same holds true with contracts. I think at the end of the day, especially in the hospitality sector, you know, you guys, you know, when you have a restaurant or one, I mean, you're serving, your business is public relations. You're in the people business on a regular, everyday scale. The last thing you need, again, is a linen company not delivering to you, a linen company, cause I mean, linen is like number 15 on your list as a restaurant of things that you really worry about, unless all of a sudden it's broken. If you worry about it, then it goes to number one really fast.

58:29And I think that's with anything, but you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's way down on the list of things. You go, you know, this morning, I need to check those textiles in there, so. But I do- We do at our restaurants, but I'm not everybody. Right, but I mean, I make light of it, but my point being is that I think that comes in if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, and it's about conversation, again, and communication. I think having relationships, I'm in this digital, I'm still a believer. I hate teams, I hate Zoom. I know it's a necessary evil, but I can't stand that mess. Because I still believe that in a personal relationship, in meeting and talking and having interactions with people, because I think it helps you go through when something is wrong. You talk through it and you fix it and you move on to the betterment of both individuals. And I think that's the way you approach anything, not just business. All right, so that answers that question. No fees, we're gonna be straightforward with you.

59:31There's no contracts, so we're gonna have to earn your business every single week. And we're, if you know Christa, she wants to earn that every single week, and she will hustle to make sure that if they say they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it. Your pricing is very competitive. I mean, it's very competitive with the people who are also charging all of these fees. And I think when you're owned, when you're a smaller, single owned company and you own your land, you can offer that stuff. I think that what I'm trying to get to is, there's the two, this is two, where's the catch? And that's the thing I think that people will, if you go in and you say, this is what we do, they're gonna say, what's the catch? Where are you making that money? Is there some other way that you're getting creative to take the money away from me? No, I think the catch is, you have great people that work for you that cut down and they're very efficient. And that's exactly what I have and been blessed with is great individuals that surround me that do a job that I think, obviously if you've had our service before, that I think is top notch.

01:00:39And I think they take care of the customer aspect of it by constantly communicating and tweaking sometimes of what we need to do better, what we need to do to change, those type of things. And I think when you create efficiency, then you're able to squeeze out every dollar that you have the same way as you know. 100%. It works in all aspects, not just the lending business, it works restaurant business and anything else you do. Well, I always do this right before when somebody says something profound like that. The final thing we do on these interviews, and we'll let you off the hot seat now, the final thing we do is the Gordon Food Service final thought. Right, so what you get to do is whatever you wanna say, doesn't matter what it's about, doesn't have to be, you could say anything that you want, but you get to take us out today of this interview and maybe it's a quote, maybe it's a mantra, maybe it's a general statement on the world. Up to you, the mic is yours, as long as you wanna talk. Well, I think at the end of the day, as I've said many times, I'm very proud of the people that work with me.

01:01:44I'm very proud of what the company has come. And the only reason we have become that company is because of those same people. And of course, my wife controls everything when it comes to decorating, building, everything. The only thing I control is quotes. So, obviously as you can see the quote hanging up the stairs as you walk through, you can't have a million dollar dream with a bad work ethic. And the other thing that we talk about all the time was, you're given this day and this day is what it is. What you do with it is what you do with it. Do something good. And I think the people that surround me live with that mentality and we try to make the most and the best of every day knowing every day is not rainbows, but you make the best out of it till the next day and hopefully it's a rainbow day. And so, you have rainy days too, but you should have more rainbows. So, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you though and appreciate again having me on.

01:02:45It's been my pleasure and love me a good rainbow day. That's, oh, I love rainbows. Those are the best days, I'm telling you. Jason Cruz, thank you for joining us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you. Okay, so there it is. Jason Cruz, thank you for allowing us to come out to your facility. The full tour was amazing. After the interview, we got to go to the actual facility and let me tell you, when I say state of the art, I visited a few linen facilities and this one was beautiful. It's all enclosed, there's air conditioning. It's a great kind of feel in there. All the equipment is brand new. They had a fire, so all the equipment is brand new. It's all state of the art. Even like the dirty wash containers when you put your old linens in the wash containers, they have a sanitizing wash they put it through. It's like a big, huge car wash, but they put these containers in. They look brand new every time that you get them back. If you want to learn more, like I said, you can message me or Andrew Kelly is the sales rep here in Nashville and I want to give you his number.

01:03:49It's 931-676-7153 or you can email him at akelly, a-K-E-L-L-Y at cblinnen.com and what you can do there is you got to tell him you heard about him on Nashville Restaurant Radio and if you're interested in learning more about NARA, send me a message because there's lots of areas that we are working where we can help save you money and bring you amazing companies like CNBLin and like your super sources. And we just want to thank you guys for listening today. This was a double episode. We put out the Olivia Britton episode today and now Jason Cruz, a two for one. Please be safe out there. I know that there's flooding still and hopefully you have been safe and just know. Love you guys, bye.