Jesse Goldstein

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host and happy Monday to you and yours. Today is a motivation Monday and we have Jesse Goldstein going to be our guest on the show today. He is the owner of Fresh Branding as well as the Food Sheriff Department. So he is going to come on and tell us lots of really cool stories about time working on movie sets with Tom Katz redoing the Loveless Cafe and then some really great ideas and just kind of food for thought as to exactly what you can be doing for marketing and branding of your business. So that's going to be a really exciting interview. It is available right now live on YouTube if you'd like to watch the video. Lots of hand gestures and fun things going on on the video so please feel free to go check it out. Click that subscribe button when you hit to YouTube so you can see all these videos when they come out. First real quick we're going to talk about Springer Mountain Farms and you know putting healthy food in your body is nothing new and putting healthy food into the food you're eating is also something that is relatively new.

01:36So not only the chicken you're eating was raised here but their food is too. 100% of the corn and soybeans used to make the chicken feed is grown in the USA. Their feed is formulated by staff veterinarians and nutritionalists for optimum health and well-being of their chickens and made in their on-site feed mill. The first feed mill in the world in the world to earn the safe feed safe food certification from the American Feed Industry Association to further ensure the quality of their feed. Each load of feed ingredient as well as each load of finished seed is tested in our on-site USDA certified lab. Now that is going above and beyond so when you hear people say Springer Mountain Farms chicken you know what makes the chicken so great it's all of these things. They feed their chickens the best ingredients and you know how you feel when you eat the best ingredients. You eat great food you feel great so these are chickens you want to be eating. We also have a new sponsor today they are called Trust 20 and Trust 20 is a new program so all these restaurants are reopening right now and we're wondering are we doing everything we possibly can to ensure the guests of the the safety of our guests as well as our staff. Well I don't know the answer to that but Trust 20 is a certification program that will come in and do it. They're an independent auditor they will come in and make sure they've identified 20 different areas in which you can 20 different things you need to be doing right now to proactively take care of your guests as well as your staff. So there's going to be an ad in the middle of this episode that I'd love for you to hear. Go visit them at trust20.co that's t-r-u-s-t the number 20.co and you can check out exactly what they're doing. So I mean if you think you're doing a good job awesome we want you to be doing the best job but if you want to know you're doing the best job and you're going above and beyond hit up trust 20 because they are going to ensure that you do just that. So let's get on with

03:40the show today we are going to be talking again with Jesse Goldstein and I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I do. If you do let me know about it head over to our Facebook page or our Instagram page and give us a like let us give a comment whatever you can follow us on Instagram Nashville restaurant radio and we thank you for all that you do and all of your support. So let's jump right in now with Jesse Goldstein. With much excitement I want to bring in Jesse Goldstein who is the owner of the food sheriff department as well as fresh branding. Jesse, welcome to Nashville restaurant radio. Thank you so much. So one of the questions I'm happy to have you one of the questions I'm asking people when they come on the show in a non-greeting kind of a way we're in the middle of a surging pandemic the civil rights movement restaurants are closing bars are closing lots of insanity is happening there's a lot of trauma out there how are you doing like in a real question like how are you doing? Full disclosure I'm hanging on you know it's been a hell of a few months watching so many people that we've worked with that I've worked with for so many years watched them pour their heart and souls into their business and the fright that it might all have been for not is is really pretty heartbreaking but I see some glimmers here and there and tried to cling on to those. I think that's what you can do I mean I think you got in the positive stuff and try and look at the glasses half full but I also don't want to you know I'm not shying away from the fact that there's a lot of things that are messed up out there right now and there's a lot of people that are working really hard to to make it like just hanging on by a thread so I like to ask that question is it like a how are you doing today? Thanks for the answer so I wanted to have you on the show today because

05:40being the owner of fresh branding and the food sheriff department you do a lot of really cool stuff and I wanted to bring you on because I think there's a lot of ways you can help restaurants today with just kind of some advice about what you do and let people know that you exist if there are restaurants out there that didn't know that you exist because you're one of those and you you facilitate a lot of creation in this city and I love it. Man it's been the biggest joy of my life getting to see all of these projects and work with so many incredible people but one of the things I always like to say is that I like to be invisible you know I don't want everyone to know that I did any of the work so that's because of that I'm often behind the scenes a bit but that's the way I like it. Which is precisely the reason why I wanted you on this show today because I'm aware of you and I think people in the industry are aware of you but if you weren't aware of him I wanted to kind of I don't know let people know you do a lot of cool stuff let's get let's let's jump right into some of your history and what makes you you tell me about you have you have a brother and then you have uh your parents tell me growing up when did you first get you know I uh I grew up actually two older brothers I was the baby uh yeah and and uh and I like to say the favorite you know uh my two older brothers are born in South Philly and my folks were like we are not raising kids here and long story short they moved to this uh kind of cooperative community in the middle of the mountains in North Carolina about an hour outside of Asheville um you know more or less hippie commune uh a lot of folks might say but it's been around longer than than hippies and uh I was incredibly lucky I say it all the time one of the lucky ones I was able to be born and raised born at home raised in the middle of the woods where we had goats and drank goat milk and made goat cheese

07:43and ate goat meat and mom would even like tan the hides we had little goat skin vests you know we didn't get picked on for that uh but uh you know we had gardens and grew most of what we ate and you know it's just this incredible childhood uh which was really part of it was the fact that my folks were so into food and so into creative cooking and you know I think to like you know some of my comfort foods when I was a kid were like miso and tofu um you know just because it was the kind of stuff that was around the house and as kids we were never first of all we were way too poor to get away with being picky eaters but the other part of it was that my mom was just way too creative to let us get away with being picky eaters so if there was something we didn't like she'd be like well I'll make it different this time uh and so we never really got away to get away with saying that we didn't want to eat stuff but it made me really interested in it and fascinated by it and you know I just uh you know the nickname food sheriff actually came from my two older brothers uh because we'd be sitting at the table and you know they're two or three and five years older than I and would be kind of taking the strong arm on what was left you know from a from a meal and you know we each had a piece of chicken they go to get those last two and I'm like ah no no no you gotta give me a little bit of that and a little bit of that all right food sheriff and uh and it kind of just stuck but uh you know it was a weird sort of thing I my folks met in art school so you know I grew up in a really creative environment and always was fascinated with that and I'm 44 just had a birthday the other day and uh hit this funny little pocket especially in rural North Carolina uh where people who are older than I was were being exposed to computers in the workforce uh people who are younger than I was

09:44were being exposed to computers in school but I've hit this little pocket where like you know my high school typewriting class was on a typewriter um and so I was really fascinated with graphic design and I was really into it but I knew that it was becoming a computerized thing and was scared shitless because I had never I didn't know nothing about computers you know so I ended up deciding to go to culinary school instead and it was the best decision I ever made you've um um so I'm glad you went there because I I wanted to stop you like you're going too far I want to wait just you I read that you said you were the last generation who could grow up poor and still not know it and that you were raised to apologize to the weeds and thank the vegetables yeah that's that's mom for you yeah we uh it was just perspective yeah you know like it's one of the lucky ones man like my family it's just this incredibly loving group of people um you know my mom's retired now but was a midwife and delivered over 5 000 babies uh before she retired um and you know we were it was just part of this understanding of where you belong in the world right and in having gratitude for things and being uh being able to appreciate things and and you know it's I'm still to this day it's like the littlest things will just give me a giggle you know like back when we could go to restaurants and you get to like pop the cap you're like the first person to use the bottle of ketchup on the table I'm like oh that's me you know so it's like it doesn't take much really to try and get some joy out of life and and I think that very much came from from my upbringing of just trying to find excitement and joy and happiness and things and in that piece you know about the veggies yeah we would it was to this day I believe that

11:53if you kind of are yanking weeds if you take a minute to slow down and just kind of understand that you're ripping their lives out by the roots they kind of release a little easier I don't know maybe it's just me no I I think it's amazing because people um who was it Andy Little over at Josephine was kind of he he wrote a blog one time and I was reading it and he said you know I think if people took the time and they took a seed and they planted it and they grew potatoes right and you you put that potato in the ground and you watered it every day for three to four weeks and you went out and you checked on it and you kind of looked at the sun and you got you babied it and finally it grew you pulled that thing out of the dirt and you cleaned it up you're gonna freaking cook it correctly like you're gonna expect it like these are things that people don't realize these are living things like just that perspective of nature and living and and all this stuff I just I love that apologize to the weeds and thank the vegetables it's again I owe my mom for that one but it's kind of the same philosophy I've always had about food too that like good food is simple food it's just you know like you don't have to do a lot to it and especially when you're working with great ingredients you know how Holden Bache over at Laughlin Table he's one of those guys that does a lot of local vegetables and he does vegetables that you try and you go what in the hell do you do to your vegetables to make them taste this way and he goes I don't do much like I get right good vegetables I just cook them the way they should be cooked and then I serve them and I'm like damn I had no idea that vegetables tasted this way because he gets really good vegetables and treats them well and I just I love that any other shout anybody else in town you know that does a great job with that you want to give a shout out to I mean I think Tandy has always done incredible job with with fresh veg um and you know there's a balance of like simplicity and diversity in the way he cooks

13:57you know it's like each dish on its own is deceptively simple I think sometimes but you're really really simple but then next to the next item on the menu it's so different you know and that's one of the things I've always loved yeah. So you went to culinary school you fell in love with cooking and then you you put that to the test I had Tom Morales on the show and yeah he said famously that he opened restaurants as a training ground for people that wanted to work in the really tough situation out in the field and movie the movies is the NFL of of chefs and you can't understand yeah you can't ever say that no I um yeah I went to culinary school loved it um ended up getting a scholarship to be for um for my bachelor's degree and working as a TA and then a fellow and was doing all these interviews and you know basically I felt like I could have had my pick of jobs you know and I was like going into room after room suit and tie suit and tie suit and tie and I walk in and there's a skylight flopped back on the chair and like Birkenstocks and corduroys and I was like this is so much more my speed this is so much more not a suit and tie guy and uh and it was Tom Morales and it was the first time he had actually gone trying to recruit chefs for the movie sets and for me I was like you know there was something just interesting about that and it the other thing is it didn't feel like it was um a corporate career path right which all these other gigs that I was looking at that was the kind of thing it was like you know move to Dallas Texas and working this you know it's like I don't know about that but I was yeah but I knew at the time that you know they're from a standpoint of the way that business worked back then this was like you know late 90s uh that he didn't have restaurants yet right and those movie sets it was a very stop and go kind of thing right and so I

16:03was like well if I'm going to do this I want to have enough to do I want to work all the time I don't want to just work a couple of months and take off had I known how hard that movie business was I probably would have kept my mouth shut about that but uh so I moved to Nashville in 98 right after the tornado hit and um the first tornado and uh was I would work at Starwood Amphitheater uh doing backstage catering when I wasn't on on the road but I remember my very first movie uh it was Arkansas middle of the summer and after that first day I literally cried myself to sleep because I was like what the hell have I gotten myself into um I I grew up with my two older brothers they were always the ones that were like out doing stuff and I you know I kind of just felt like the lazy one next to them and you cannot work on a movie set and be lazy it's it's the polar opposite of of working in a restaurant in a way you know in a restaurant you're cooking the same food every day uh really for strangers most of the time right and on a movie set you're feeding the same people every single day at least two meals a day at least five days a week um the last thing day one is the same menu every day and and yet all of the things that you take from being in a restaurant like I don't know running water nice machine the fact that your deliveries just come to your back door you know all of those things are out the window and if you're wanting to boil water wash your hands the pasta you name it that means there's a five gallon jug of water that you've had to load onto your truck at you know two or three o'clock that morning um to be able to have the water that you would need so that's obviously dozens of those five gallon jugs of water that you're you know starting your day humping those

18:05things onto the truck but it was just there was something about it that was so cool and quickly I really did fall in love with the human aspect of it when you are feeding those same people you really quickly get to know them and you get to know their likes and their dislikes and you know every menu each day you know it's like four entrees a meat poultry seafood vegetarian entree plus all the sides all the spreads all the salads desserts this and then on top of that all the you know ridiculous fad diets and fake food allergies and real food allergies and all of that kind of stuff and it would be so cool that you know people and there's like some you know grip really digs mushrooms and so you're like oh when you're cooking something you know how much someone's really gonna like that right and then you're there to serve the food to them so it's not like you know it you're standing right there when they're walking through looking at it eating it you're clearing their plates so you can't hide from from a shitty performance either you know and it was just it was a really incredible experience but it was also hands down the most exhausting experience that movie in Arkansas it was I remember having to make a run to a store and passing by actually there were two banks you know the signs outside and the digital thermometers and they both said the same thing so I knew it wasn't a fluke but it was 11 a.m and they both read 112 degrees yeah um contrast that with my very last movie in New York City it was the remake of Shaft in January 2000 Y2K and uh it was three degrees outside with a wind chill of negative 30 god so I hear the story you gotta if you want to boil water you have to get the water there and this it seems very tedious very hard very physically

20:10emotionally draining is the is the grip that likes mushrooms that you get to fix that dish and you get to feed him and you get to see them enjoy it is that is that the motivation like what keep for me it was for me it was and it wasn't just one individual you know it was you you become movie sets so quickly become a family by my second film there were already people on that crew that had been on the first one and you know the next one was even more and so you really get to know these people you see them all the time and a lot of what I think has made Tom successful especially in those early years with what he was doing on the movie sets was that it wasn't just about feeding bellies right it was feeding souls feeding attitudes like they're having shitty days out there you know they're busting their asses too and here's the one chance for them to come and have a bunch of really happy people super excited to take care of them and that experience was what you know thank the vegetables apologize to the weeds it was that same sort of thing of like that give and take of what you can provide to people beyond just the food you're cooking but that experience and this this opportunity to serve you know this empathy for their experience which is what I think makes the most successful hospitality businesses successful I agree with you completely but when you're in that situation where you're being tested to that degree and you come from your background where it seems to me like you're you've got to be awfully gracious you've got to be awfully gracious and excited about the things in life you get back to a real restaurant and you have running water and you have it and you've got all this stuff going for you that everybody in this world takes for granted how do you get back how do you transition

22:11from that mentality where you just you're in it and then you get into a restaurant when somebody's complaining oh well this is they just go you don't understand do you have are you able to take empathy into a regular restaurant does that I'll be honest I I never cooked professionally again after the movie sets that was it for me that it it wasn't that I I didn't want to but when you are again imagine you're on a set for months right and you're coming up with a brand new menu every day with all of that it wears you out you know and people will just always ask what's your favorite thing to cook I'm like I never cooked something twice like you can't you know like it's not and so there was a piece of it for me that after I did that I was like I have to take a break from this but no I do think yeah it does it certainly makes you a hell of a lot less patient with people who are bitching about little things you know like you don't realize until you have to do it that you can bake cakes with sternos right when your propane lines freeze up and you're stuck in the middle of Manhattan and it's freaking Winona Ryder's birthday and they want you to make a cake well I guess we'll try this wow it works you know it's just it's kind of like the there it really for me the best thing about that was again you're growing up I thought I was lazy that experience showed me what I was capable of and more importantly it made me fearless because I knew that the rest of my life I would never be challenged the way that job challenged me on a daily basis from the standpoint of again long hours and physical challenges and it just the the stress of it all it's like if I can do this what can I do I feel I feel so like what you

24:12just said there's so much of a lesson involved there just in what we're dealing with right now we're dealing with a pandemic so many people if I told you in January if I said hey let's close all the restaurants for three and a half months we'll put everybody on unemployment we'll transition everything to to goes we're going to close down broadway we're not going to like but we're going to make it through and then we're going to like figure that out people like there's no way in hell but like we've everybody's had to adapt and we've constantly been I think there's a lot of people who have grown I think that once we get if we get when we get past this there's some people that are going to be like come and see me there's nothing you're going to throw at me again that I can't handle and I think that's kind of that mentality you leave in the movie set so it's just a I didn't think I could overcome that but when I did now I feel invincible do you think that we're going to come out of this with a bunch of badasses who are like I've gone through a pandemic I can do anything I think without a doubt the people that make it through it will become more fearless I think that they will be able to look at perspectives about their business that they they didn't have time to do before right you know when when you're running the typical restaurant those guys don't have time to think big picture about stuff as much as they would like to because they're just dealing with what's in front of them um but yeah it's I think that I hope that um and I think that this experience is also you know I think everyone uses the word pivot right you know about everyone said the pivot of what they're doing but I think that it's going to create a different sort of hospitality and and I think uh Nashville's never been short of this but a more gracious hospitality um you know one of the things I've always loved about Nashville restaurant scene is that for the longest time it's really it's not been about ego you know like we had Josh on and I remember

26:18going to Catbird Seat the first time when he was there and just being having this expectation of what it was going to be and then they're like leaning on the counter and sharing so much of their time and passion and you know and that's one of the things I think is great about Nashville but I think hopefully across the board people will be so much more appreciative of that you know and and guests will hopefully have a better appreciation of it as well that's something I'm hoping for is one of the um kind of the other sides of this podcast I'm hoping that guests get to listen to this this podcast on a regular basis and go I've been doing it all wrong I I'm a bad guest I'm gonna come in and and I'm not just gonna leave a restaurant and just leave a skating Yelp review I'm gonna call him and let him know what my honest thoughts are and we're I'm gonna figure this out we're not just gonna be keyboard warriors but I love I love you said the thing about Josh in this this community and he said on the show I was afraid going into this that when hospitality people came in that they were gonna be oh who does this guy think he is opening this type of restaurant he said everybody walked in with open arms in this community and was like dude we love this this is amazing what you're doing and he said it changed everything for him like being feeling connected feeling accepted from all these people in the Nashville hospitality community and that just I was like that's that's who we are man that's that's it was awesome well I think the restaurant business this is the reason I'm not a professional chef or working in restaurants what if a restaurant is anything that has to be consistent right even if you're consistently shitty you know just be consistent at that and yet every single thing that a restaurant owner deals with is inconsistent their staff the economy their employees the produce the everything is inconsistent and yet try to create this identical sort of repeated

28:21experience out of that it's incredibly challenging and it's not the kind of thing that I I can do right so in a way maybe that brand new menu on on a movie set every day was was a benefit a benefit for me are you do are you an ADD guy oh shit I actually had an employee once tell me I wasn't ADD I was ADOS which is attention deficit oh shiny I'm uh I'm in the same boat is that a squirrel what is that yeah exactly I have to close the blinds I have windows in front of me I have to close them otherwise in the middle of the environment I'm like oh there's a chipmunk look at that right there it's a chipmunk he's digging a hole like I and I go oh I'm back um good when I met you you were at the Sobro Grill in the country oh my god right and Bart Pickens was the chef there and uh hey hey what you know what you're doing right we all love Bart Pickens and so it kind of makes sense me learning a little bit more about your past when I met you you're always just you always had a super positive attitude my perception of you was this guy gets shit done like he makes it happen there you didn't have there wasn't like a lot of converse you were kind of all business to me my conversations with you were were having an intentional conversation about something you were always very friendly but you got to the point and you got stuff done I love that about you but it's kind of learning a little bit more here about you wouldn't tell us about what you were what kind of what you're able to accomplish at the Sobro and the Sobro used to be a really cool kind of grill in the right hobby of the country's call of fame it's not there anymore yes so when I went after working on the movies um I lasted not even quite two years on that before it was I got I got to get out of this it's gonna break me and I moved back to Charleston South Carolina which is where I've gone to school and uh but had really liked Nashville and was interested in it and

30:28fast forward um a couple of years I moved back here New Year's Day of 03 to take over as the general manager at the Sobro Grill the country music hall of fame and museum right and at that point I think the new hall had been open maybe like nine months or something like that um it hadn't even been open a full year and it the it was a contract to run the fruit and beverage within the facility and it was not really being operated that well um there were a lot of challenges with it and I remember day one I'm like well let me see the catering menus right you know the hall of fame is booking events for people all over the world who are coming to this beautiful brand new building in downtown Nashville and we were providing the catering services and I looked at the menus and what's that 2006 ish 2005 no this was 2003 okay yeah and and the word the menus I look at them in the fonts are all over the place and centered and left justified and bolded and then italic and underlined and combinations of all of that on the same page and the word vegetables is misspelled or desserts and I'm like oh my god like they're sending these out to clients all over the world now like those rednecks in Nashville can't even spell you know and so it was kind of one of those situations where it was often like a movie set you know it's like if the attitude if the attitude starts to sour on the crew you've really got to do something you got to break out the paddles and like clear and it was one of those situations where that's what needed to happen we're like okay let's change the name let's change the logo let's change the staff let's do all of this stuff and and I remember we were it was I guess technically this was my first official rebrand and we I was the GM so I was doing all the sales and running all the stuff and the chef that was there at the time pre-bart caught wind and put in his notice give two

32:35weeks notice and Tom said okay well we I want everything ready the day after he leaves and so that gave me two weeks to do new logos a website that had never been done all new menus new uniforms new stuff and I thought he was crazy but it was the best thing that could have happened because that very next day I invited the entire team from the hall the whole staff to a free lunch to kind of just introduce myself officially tell them what was up and for me it was this you know when you're in a situation like that we it we were there to provide value to the visitor of the country music hall of fame and museum we weren't there to make ourselves look good we were there to make them look good and it was this concept that I had brought with me from Charleston that the best business is more than a business it's a cherished community asset right it's this place that someone thinks about when someone's coming in from out of town where they want to take them or where would they celebrate an occasion or a birthday or whatever and and it was really the kind of thing that you may never get there as a business but you should always think about that as you operate but it's not simply profit it's about that relationship with the community and being memorable yeah and being yeah and it's yeah you're there's there's got to be more to it you know there's more put a little more meat on the bone about what you're doing and it's and now I look at it and I think about the terms of you know like Rand's narrative and the story and the voice and the you know all these things back then I hadn't really wasn't in that mode but that's what it's about you know and so we did a full refresh full everything flipped it and turned a great profit that first year and after that that's when the lovelace came into into play and we're going to take a quick break

34:36talk about trust 20 reopening your restaurant comes with great responsibility are you doing everything you can to keep your staff and guests safe with trust 20 certification you and your guests can feel confident you're doing everything you can to keep everyone safe trust 20 is home to the new standard of restaurant safety and consumer comfort by becoming a trust 20 certified restaurant diners will know the practices you follow to create a safe and healthy environment have confidence you're growing above and beyond minimal requirements have comfort knowing your practices have been independently verified to learn more visit trust 20.co that's trust the number 20.co trust 20 restaurants have access to a suite of resources that include expert-led training in four key areas individual consultants communication material and signage for nashville restaurant radio listeners now through the end of july you get free certification when you visit trust 20.co and tell them you heard about them on nashville restaurant radio trust 20 partnering with you to keep everyone safe so tell us that let's let's jump straight into the lovelace because i know this is this was an amazing story and i was i was with you guys when with creation gardens threw a lot of this before i jumped over to fresh point but the work that went into so i i so i live i currently live like a mile and a half from the lovelace yeah and i grew up a mile and a half from love so i've been eating at the lovelace for 35 years and when they came in when you guys came in and redid the lovelace i was a little upset because i like like the original i liked walking in she brought the biscuits out on a sheet pan and it was a whole thing i knew carol faye along you know it's great but when you guys came in i didn't know after after it was all done i was blown away but like i was kind of upset they were doing it talk about what it took to do that and why it was a i remember hearing about it when it first came into play you know it was

36:39newspaper and said it was going to be sold in bulldoze and they were going to put up a strip mall and tom or alice it's like no way he grew up going to it as well and went and found some partners that could fund it and to help as he kind of thought about it save the lovelace and i had never been and i remember driving out there the first time and literally i was like oh this is a cherished community asset that's what it is right it is and so and so tom at the time kind of um was like okay i need you to go out there and just help guide what's happening and so i had a very simple motto uh for the 10 years that i worked with the lovelace don't fuck it up you know and and and i think a lot of times people will come into situations and they want to change things show they've changed things and so the first thing i did was sat with every employee because they had a lot of folks who'd been there many years and the very first person was this waitress marie who had been there um at that point probably 10 years or so and she was like you're not going to make us dump the jams back in the bucket of the at the end of the day are you do you remember they had those soup cups of jam that were on the table yeah and i was like um i can promise you we're not going to do that but i sat with everyone i said what has to change what needs to change what can't change and that was really the the kind of the premise of it and it was there were things that physically had to change you know the the reason it closed because when tom bought it he continued to operate it as is you know without making any changes for a while and finally it closed the reason it closed that day was because the toilet and the men's room fell to the floor yeah with someone sitting on it um yeah yeah and so like it had to get renovated it had to do that and if you were going to make those changes um and invest that in it then you

38:41had to have a large enough dining room to be able to recoup that and so there was for me it was a lot of um of what was right what was appropriate what was you know so making sure that we were carrying things through but like the number one complaint when we reopened was that the jams were in the little plastic souffle cups instead of in bowls on the table and i just got my mouth shut about that one um i was like oh the health department doesn't allow us to do soup cups of jam sorry uh no more nobody to you nobody would complain about that today right exactly but no so the lovelace though was an amazing an amazing experience because it was my first time working with a brand right and kind of thinking about it as a brand from the standpoint of this incredibly rich story and these generations of families that had poured their blood sweat and tears into it and each one built upon the next and the fact that we had this responsibility to carry that torch right and to and so i was the brand manager there um was what it ended up evolving into um and it was everything from just guest service and attitudes and little things like you know i used to train on the stuff that you never ask someone where they're from um assume they're local right y'all local because then the local people are like yeah i'm from so and so the tourists man they love to be thought that they're local but if you if you treat a local like they're a tourist then that's just gonna piss them off so it's all these little things like that but then it was also this experience in seeing how you can kind of extend

40:43that brand engagement again i didn't know these terms or use these terms back then it wasn't as deliberate but to watch what would happen from when we started doing t-shirts and you know and when it was a logo on a t-shirt yeah someone's gonna buy that when it was a funny thing on a t-shirt they really bought that you know when we were doing they had always been making these jams and the bacon and country ham but it's like well let's take this bacon if we put black pepper on it the same cure the same everything now we have regular bacon and pepper bacon well we could do a cajun season and have regular and pepper and cajun and then we get yeah and now someone's buying you know i think when i left we had four flavors they're buying four pounds of bacon instead of pound of bacon it was just a really interesting aspect to see how everything kind of melded together and it was also during that period that marketing on making air quotes here for the folks who can't say transitioned into what i think it is now where prior to that time marketing was basically people just thought of as advertising right and it's like i'm gonna buy an ad in the paper and i think it works right yeah well unless you had like a coupon or something you really had no way of knowing what was working and couponing of still i think is not appropriate for most businesses so it was watching what happened when things started transitioning into digital and to see what would happen when you could look at the analytics of the web traffic and what pages they were going to and how much time they were spending on things and that people were opening these emails that we were sending and they were clicking on their recipes and then you know here they are eight nine ten months later still clicking into these same emails

42:46from these same recipes and then going and buying products it was just wow this mind-blowing kind of shift that there's more to it it doesn't have to be as much guesswork as it as it needs to be or as it used to be well you can from there you can have actual data that you can make informed decisions as to what you're going to do next like well people are doing this i'm going to do this it's not yeah in a room where people are just throwing stuff on a wall and seeing if it sticks it's like no this is what's happening and that's what the digital era has brought in and i was admittedly very very very reluctant to embrace that right i mean i was like why would a six-year-old cafe tweet and then i searched twitter and there was this entire conversation happening about us without us right and it was like okay and started at that point i was like well i guess the people who are on these platforms won't be offended that we're there and the people who aren't really won't know that's kind of my thought right that's 100 so you you tell a story that you bought a logo and it was like 450 or 500 or something no no yeah we were getting ready to reopen i was uh we hired a graphic designer to do a newspaper ad and it was like just this teeny little ad again that's what marketing was back then was a newspaper ad oh newspapers and uh uh and it was 450 bucks that looked nothing like what i had asked for um and i was like well this is ridiculous and at this point i had kind of gotten over my fear of computers um fast forward many years and it's like just buy me the program i will teach myself how to use it it's gonna save us money in the long run and but that started i really started a new 100 for you that was the that that moment is when is if i look back the truth where my entire trajectory changed

44:52because it was the opportunity to do what i was passionate about from art and creativity and graphic design from a kid right but now to do it for an industry that i loved and and to be able to it wasn't just designed for design sync it was designed for a purpose and it was it was you know it started out just doing like the newspaper ad right and then it became the apparel and the t-shirts and the labels for the gems and the package of the biscuit mix and the web and the this you know it kind of grew from there um and at a certain point fast forward many years later i just there were other friends who were out about who were asking for help and uh in the industry and asking if i could do something on the side and and i felt really strongly that you know i had a full-time salary gig um and so i didn't feel like it was really appropriate for me to do stuff on the side if i was twiddling my thumbs maybe right but i was busy i had plenty to do and and so it was i guess 2013 when i was like all right end of 2013 it's time to take the leap and start my own thing so how scary was that um i it wasn't that scary i don't know it's it goes back to apologize to the weeds and thank the vegetables you know it's like i had this expectation that this would work it was um leap and then that will appear is what i just kept telling myself like i'll do it and i'll figure it out again after the movie sets you know it's like what what can i be scared of um you know and so i it was just me working from home and coffee shops and just trying to help people and at that point i thought it would be a lot more about content creation um because i had seen the value of what recipes and things were doing for

46:58the loveless from the standpoint of online content and web traffic and how that would impact um but it quickly evolved from that and then you so how did it evolve well most importantly is i realized you can't really utilize content if your business isn't structured to do so right if your website isn't set up to do it if you aren't you know people are like oh join our email list right why what are you going to send them when are you sending them how often how frequently like they don't sign up so you're just going to try and sell them shit like they sign up because they care about you and they want to know something so have you thought about how you're structuring right and if you're sending an email you shouldn't be putting 100 of that content in the body of your email because you're not going to learn anything from it you're not going to know what they're on what they're interested in right you put those sections there and link them back to your website but then if your website isn't set up right because now they're coming in this traffic is it's not coming into your home page they're not coming into your front door they're coming in to these back little side pages to view this recipe and if you haven't structured your site in a way that's then going to pull them to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing if they're just going to land there and all this there's a recipe or they might check it out and they're going to bounce right but i feel like you need their legs to fall asleep while they're on the crapper you know you need to just keep digging and going whoa whoa whoa you know and how do you do that and so that's what i guess i have to figure out how to build websites for these people because the recipes aren't going to do them any good if they're not leveraging it correctly if they're not utilizing that to they can learn from the data of that information and is that so i mean if i'm a restaurant owner if i'm somebody who has a website and i what's why do i want people

49:00to know why do i want people to stay on my website for a long time oh my god there's a lot of reasons about that and it has shifted a lot over the years um i think about mobile traffic now and how within the past you know five years even the vast amount of traffic that switched to mobile and what that means and the rise of search and other sites the majority of people who are looking even for your business are never going to actually get to your site let's be frank about that they're going to stop at the listing that shows up in google and they're going to see what they need to see right you know give me just the facts jack many hours directions that's what they need but beyond that it's to me what marketing is is about building synapses in the brain right as many of them as possible is dense of a network in as many different directions that will connect their life experiences in some way to your brand or your business right so they're at home eating a salad and they're like damn this salad's good it's not as good as that one at greco though you know it's like whatever it is it's it's how are they little things that it may be and so the website gives you an opportunity a website can give you an opportunity to tell a deeper more nuanced version of your story and in some cases different versions of your story perspectives from employees or staff or you know things that are it's not it's not the kind of stuff that's going to hit all of your visitors right or all of your customers it's the kind of thing it's the kind of thing that will build a more meaningful relationship with the ones that matter right because every business let's hope every business will have customers and many businesses will have fans and at Loveless I used to see that all the time people

51:04like oh I love the Loveless Cafe well when was the last time you went there yeah I used to go all the time as a kid you know right so a fan is great it's not that they don't have value but they they're not you know just buying shit from you right they're not spending money so ideally if you can kind of merge those two groups in together you can create a little bit more well let's face it more revenue right of course because customers are fickle and they are going there's a million shiny objects that will distract them and as a business a restaurant there are two ways to increase your revenue without getting new customers which is expensive and that's frequency and check average right that's it so getting getting them in there more often and getting them to buy more while they're there and that's where content and web and email and social can work if used effectively wow you just said a lot of really great stuff I mean if I'm a restaurant and I'm hearing this and I don't do that I mean how is there a way to quantify that I mean how if I'm a restaurant I go that's still not that important I mean well let's talk about how do you do it like what's going to build frequency right and it's going to be different for different types of restaurants you know but if if you are on let's say kind of the fast casual scale or you know if you're not kind of on the higher end side of it you're more even if it's not fast schedule it was just a chill playback thing one of the things that you can do is loyalty or rewards right we work with a restaurant Sam Jones barbecue in North Carolina and I don't want to give numbers but I will tell you that it's over 100 percent increase their loyalty customers in the frequency that they come in compared to

53:11non-loyalty and their check average is over 100 higher than non-loyalty and because those are the people who are coming in with friends they're bringing folks right so depending on what you're operating your point of sale will often like if you're using square for instance right square has an opportunity that has a built-in loyalty program that you could utilize and again it's not always going to be appropriate for every brand something like that right but that's the that's one easy way to build frequency another would be regular events or you know in a lot of places we'll do like half price wine Wednesdays remember those days and you could have people in your restaurant but things like that or menu specials right as wine dinners you can create events all the time you have to wait for somebody to call and have a party I said this whole thing let's recreate Easter let's all the restaurants get together and say we're going to redo Easter we're going to redo Mother's Day because we're closed during those days we can create stuff like that to bring in well and and I think to that idea of those LTOs or limited time offers right creating some sense of urgency to this idea that like oh I've got to try that before it's gone so if you most people are creatures of habit they're going to go to the rest to a restaurant they're going to order the same damn thing every time well so how frequently will they come in if they're going to eat the same thing every time they're there so really encouraging menu experimentation is another awesome way to build the frequency of that customer so that they think about more than just that burger that they get every time or and they're then more likely to to eat there more regularly and then of course there's the human touch right of people recognizing someone when they come in it makes a hell of a

55:12difference I will not name the place but there is a place I used to go to all the time and I would go in there and and very regularly and every time it was like I was there the first time you know and I would I would go in every morning and I'd get a coffee and a bagel after going to the gym and uh and every single time I'd have to say exactly what I wanted and I was like the first customer in the door like every day and you order the same thing every day right and at a certain point I was like this is ridiculous I'm not I'm not giving them my money they don't give a shit about me yeah that's what you just said is one of the most valuable things I think that people I think it's the easiest thing you can do that most people don't do and that is name recognition is oh yeah hey man what's your name I see you every day every time I walk in hey Jesse good morning would you like your same bagel and coffee like that's what people love to hear their name and when you go to I was I was at a restaurant with a couple restaurant tours in um Florida and we're at Disney at a place called the Boathouse and we were at Disney Springs I think it was called the Boathouse but we were sitting outside we'd ordered around the drinks and the POS system was a couple was close to our table but the server came back with our drinks and she said Brandon you had the whatever and Chris you had this and like gave everybody their drinks they went how did you know our like what did you do like she was there she heard us talking heard our names for the rest of the meal she used all of our names for every single course and I was completely blown away this is a dish she's never gonna see me again right but she learned all of our names and used all of our names and I think she I bet you I bet you tipped the hell out of her but it was insane for our crew now like what a small thing to do would be to learn our names and then use our names and if you can do that on a regular basis Dr. Johnson great to see you again people love to go places where they're gonna you're gonna bring people in to show them hey look

57:16you're gonna walk in like Brandon good to see you oh yeah I've brought Dr. Johnson with me today like and if they get like how easy is that to do and how many times people miss that opportunity well and and it's the kind of thing that let's say things are different so right now you can't do that but you know what you can do if you're doing online ordering you can you're seeing the names that are on those sales are on those tickets right you know I've had times where I've ordered stuff and it's come with a note that's like hey Jesse thanks so much man and yeah it's being dropped off but like wow right thanks again so that sort of aspect is something that I think um it goes we're we're it's a human business you know you have to have that that understanding that that empathy for guest experience and I feel like you know I've been standing from rooftops yelling that you need to go eat at locally owned restaurants right now because those are the people that really need you and I think those are the people that care those are the people that do care who you are I mean on a regular basis and that know who you are and are excited you're there and I've used the name Red Lobster I'm so sorry Red Lobster you're just getting beat up on my show like over like don't go to Red Lobster because your number there you're a number in some company and um yeah that's exactly it I think that you um we got to take care of our people out there and those people need to take care of you don't not let them do that so moving forward to all of what you just said is really really good stuff like I mean that is really good stuff you found this building that you're in currently that I'm looking at you at by the way this video is watch this interview I'm gonna have it out on the YouTube channel and at our website so great I shouldn't have been picking my nose this whole time there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on in this video guys if you gotta click over and watch the

59:16video um when did the when did the actual food sheriff department come about tell me about it because I know the coolest city so I was uh this was I guess 2014 2015 when I'd started first of the month right which was like um three st in the month and myself and some other guys in town um I had this idea for years and they helped me kind of kick it off where essentially it was a every single month the third day of the month regardless of the day of the week uh was a new monthly drinking holiday and every month was a different theme and a different location and all the proceeds would benefit another charity uh a different charity and it was incredible it was really fun tons of work um I had the time to put into it because I had just started my business and I didn't have as many clients and so I had the time to do it but it was a ton of work and part of what we were doing was uh I was working on content right recipe development putting on the site putting my emails putting in this but what this ended up meaning was that I had like milk crates full of booze and glasses that if I wanted to like wash a load of laundry at my house I'm like it was ridiculous and I'd finally gotten to the point I'm like I can't do this anymore I have to find a place to get out of because I can't work from home and uh it was Khalil Arnold and I was uh with with Hay and Rose and uh was talking to them like guys I've got to find a space and you know I've been asking everyone if you know of anything of anywhere somewhere that I that might work it's time for me to to find an office and Rose was like well you know Bill's place on Trinity and Khalil's like uh Trinity no you know and of course you know I like to emphasize it's East Trinity um but uh long story short I came here and peeked in the windows one day Rose said oh I'm over here come check it out and fell in love with this space um and it's uh you know beautiful

01:01:26natural light was streaming in I was like this is perfect this will work for what I was doing you have from this like recipe development content thing and working on on sites and stuff and uh the landlord was just sweetheart of a guy who was really excited to have someone interested in this building he bought it um basically as a favor to the previous owner he came in and the guy's like I've got liver cancer and nine months to live and no one take care of my life will you buy my building and so he bought it the next day and it basically sat empty for years so he was super excited that someone was interested in it um and I'm in just like a sliver of it but as I started to work on it the space that I liked was in pretty bad shape like the whole concrete slab was all broken up so he was jackhammering this out and was pouring a new slab I'm like while you're at it let's put in some planning so I want to try and build a kitchen in here and then uh Carl Worley with Biscuit Love had come by one day he was like have you asked anybody about equipment donations that's a good idea so I went to the KitchenAid website and sent an email saying hey I'm building this co-working kitchen studio in Nashville and would be interested if I could speak to someone about a potential equipment sponsorship the next day had a reply saying uh yeah sounds good what's your wish list it's like oh shit I hadn't really thought about that uh mixer uh um long story short they ended up providing all major appliances countertop appliances cookware bakeware cutlery um because I asked right and uh so that helped me build out the kitchen and that and draining my savings and um created what at the time I thought would really be more of like a co-working space for other folks like me right I wasn't I knew I wasn't the only person who needed to be able to have a spot to like work on some recipes take photos um you know have a

01:03:31spot to put a laptop um working in coffee shops is great but not always um the best thing uh back then I was less picky about the work I did and I was working on a website for a plastic surgeon and editing before and after photos is not something you want to do in a coffee shop not something you want to do anyway uh but so it it all just kind of fell into place and um opened this in I guess it was September um the 2015 oh wow yeah so you've worked with uh so when people want to take pictures of really cool dishes when people want to work on a craft cocktail menu and taste different things when people want to work on a new menu ideas or film cooking something this is where people could go they can rent your space yeah it's it's specifically a studio for photo and video is is really the most of what happens so um this afternoon there's a cookbook author who's coming in to do photography for her cookbook there's been I guess half a dozen cookbooks that have been shot here um there's restaurants that'll come in and uh food stylist will work on all the food in the back and they'll set up shots up front um but it's it's photo video um and you know every now and then folks um will come in and kind of work in it from a recipe development standpoint um as well but the vast majority of what it is is is photo and video and it works great I'm sure a lot of people don't recognize that there is a place like yours in Nashville that people utilize to do stuff like this that's for a reason because the one thing the one thing it is not is an event venue right and inevitably when I first opened everyone said oh I want to have a party here I'm like no no

01:05:33the full bar is not for your consumption it's correct correct yeah work on creations so wow okay we've got uh we've gone we've gone an hour and uh I know you have somebody coming in to do some work so um we didn't we I think we've covered a lot I think we've gone through a ton I think that I could continue talking to you for like another couple hours see how this happens right I told you like we could just get going and you never know so I have a question so I mean I want to get back to something random you worked at the Starwood amphitheater yeah the backstage area yeah uh Tom told a story of Eric Clapton being on stage doing Tears in Heaven on he has an encore acoustic for like the first time right right after his son died kind of a thing and Clapton was crying on stage and he's standing on the side of the stage watching this and I was just like wow he told us some cool movie set stories golfing with Joe Pesci some cool stuff there you got it let's let's can we finish this off with a couple a couple any really good like memorable stories from your days at Starwood or on the sets you know the I will tell you how things can kind of get out of hand okay so Harrison Ford among other things he had a couple of requirements that were on his his rider that on set so he needed a picture of fresh squeezed orange juice every morning which I later found out was for screwdrivers good for him and that he wanted fresh baked chocolate chip cookies brought to him at the end of lunch every day right so I'm like okay we can handle this you know make up some cookie dough and bake off a

01:07:34couple cookies and so the first day I got to take him to him he's sitting at a table with the director and like the director of photography and the ad and like all these people like shit I can't like give him cookies without anybody else but I didn't have any more and everyone's like where's my cookies I'm like I got you tomorrow so then the next day I come out with cookies for the table and the table was sat and said where's my cookies so within a week we were baking on top of everything else that we were doing over 300 cookies a day to feed the crew to bring out to the crew at the end of lunch and it's like the best laid plans man it's just stuff can get out of hand it really really quick and you can't say like no no it's not in your writer it's in Harrison Ford's writer I'm not making these well and it's also like it goes back to why why is he any more important than the the hairstylist over here right they deserve chocolate you know yeah and that was kind of the thing too is that equalizer of that and there's something about that environment where you know it's it's the one place where most most of the famous people in that environment are pretty normal because it's the one place where they can be themselves you know and so especially there why are they any more important than than anyone else if they don't get their cookies that's a good story I like that good oh no I was just gonna say I could go on and I would love to you know if anyone's out there that needs help or ideas you know happy to share our website we've got some content up there like how do you take decent photographs of food right how do you

01:09:38um how are you going to handle email what are you putting in your email what about loyalty programs so you know if there's any of that that we can help with by all means and then you know I'll also say too that we have basically during this pandemic extended a retainer rate to a lot of our our clients even without retainers and so you know if anyone wants to reach out or if they need help be happy to do it weekend I love that um how would people get a hold of you what is your all of your stuff so in addition to the food sheriff right um department where I am currently the other business I have is fresh branding and that's where really where I spend most of my time and effort with a group of really awesome designers and and marketers that I've kind of collected over the years um and that website is um that's fresh.com so that's m-m-m-t-h-a-t-s-f-r-e-s-h.com so is it people are emailing you directly at um fresh or are they just going to the website so contact the website hit that contact form and that'll come to me excellent excellent and um instagram you're on instagram I am but you know what I feel like what do I have to say that's that damn important on instagram anymore admits everything else that's going on but I'm there I'm food underscore sheriff which is one r two f's on instagram um and uh certainly you know I'm around I'm here so I always end every interview and I give the floor to the guest and I say hey if you were to there it is Jesse Goldstein or Nashville restaurant radio so happy that he decided to take that hour for us and uh hope you enjoyed it I thought it was really educational

01:11:38and I love what he said there at the end that you know what's what do you got I know I do this Nashville is such a special place and I love this it's up to us it's up to us it's up to every one of us to keep it that way I know that we will be because we're a very special community and um thank you for joining us today this video if you want to watch it it's available on youtube go check out trust20.co um learn more about that and we just hope that you guys are staying safe out there love you guys bye large enough to not have that um so let's keep that let's hold on to that and uh we'll be back I love it Jesse Goldstein thank you so much uh for joining today and um best of luck with all of your endeavors and uh through all of this and we will keep in touch thank you have a good one