Kelly Probst

00:00Y'all, today we are talking, as always, about SuperSource. And you know, one cool thing about SuperSource 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 SuperSource 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 SuperSource. 770-337-1143.

01:02Unleash the Wolf with Campo Bravo Tequila. Campo Bravo is a 100% agave tequila with a bold, smooth flavor, perfect for sipping neat as a shot or in cocktails. Campo Bravo is also certified additive free, which means there are no artificial flavors or sweeteners in Campo Bravo like there are in many other brands. Campo Bravo gives you all of the bold, smooth flavor you want in a tequila with nothing you don't. Campo Bravo is actually truly farm to bottle tequila, meaning our fifth generation agave farmers meticulously control entire production process from the farm to the bottle to give you the highest quality handcrafted tequila. Order through best brands and please remember to drink responsibly. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now, here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City.

02:10And welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host, Brandon Styll. And I am your host for a bonus episode on a Friday. We are powered by Gordon Food Service, but today we're talking about what chefs want. And we are talking about seafood with Kelly Probst, who's their director of seafood purchasing over at What Chefs Want. He's also a fishmonger and he's a really interesting guy. And I'm gonna put this episode, we did a couple of commercials at the beginning there, but this episode is gonna be completely commercial free. What Chefs Want is a sponsor. We love them. This is not like a sponsored pay for episode kind of a thing, but since they're a sponsor, this is a really interesting conversation with a guy who's really interesting. I had so much fun.

03:11I went to Louisville and they're at the What Chefs Want warehouse. We sat down in one of their conference rooms and had this conversation. I was really happy with actually the sound quality of this. He did a great job staying on mic and we just had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed talking with him and I would do this many, many, many more times. We're gonna start doing some little voice things. We talk about this, I think, at the end of the episode where he's on the dock, when he's actually on the dock talking to captains on boats and he sees their catch, he's just gonna do little one to two minute interviews and then he's gonna start sharing those with me and I'm gonna start opening episodes with those. So we're gonna make this pretty interesting as we continue to go along and yeah, there we go. I wish I could, I'm not going to, but I would say happy birthday to us here at Nashville Restaurant Radio. This is a, give myself a little round of applause.

04:16We have, we're celebrating four years. Four years ago, we started this podcast, March 14th, 2020. So here we go, wow, four years over 350 episodes later. This has been an absolute honor. I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, they said, dude, what you're doing, nobody else is doing this and it's really cool and I love listening and I said, thank you, that means the world to me, but I selfishly get to just do this for myself. Something has to motivate you. I think I told somebody that I said 99% of podcasts don't get past episode eight and something motivates me and it's selfish because I absolutely love these conversations I get to have. I was telling them the story of talking with Kelly Probst and I said, man, this guy is so interesting to be able to go to Louisville, sit down with him and have this conversation, to go eat at the catbird seat and then the next day sit down and talk to Brian Baxter and talk about all the dishes that he made and what those were like.

05:27That's just cool stuff for me and I just love it and I enjoy sharing it and I thank you guys for listening. If nobody listens, I think I'd probably still do it, but I just, I love what I get to do and you guys allow me to do it and thank you to all of the sponsors. You guys are the ones that really allow me to do it and I've said this a million times, but I don't, if I go out to eat at your restaurant, I wanna pay. I don't want you to give me anything for free and I don't take any money from restaurants by any way. Everybody in the world wants something from you and everybody wants you to advertise. They all want something from you and I really feel like I want you to grow. I wanna support you. When I come out and eat, I wanna pay for my food. I wanna support you guys because we have an amazing community of people here and I just wanna build it and I love that and I love all the people that come in here and talk to me.

06:28It's so much fun. So thank you to every single guest who's been in over the last four years. Thank you to every contributor, every co-host. Caroline, who's here most of the time, is really, our friendship, just the things she's done and helped me with and her just being here with me means everything in the world. She's so special and she's the best. Her and Tony, the relationship, you guys are just so awesome and I'm gonna get into this episode with Kelly Probst. There's no commercials in here so you're just gonna get to sit back and listen to this guy talk about the whole thing. It's so much fun and thank you for your support over the last four years. I would love to do this for another four years or 40 years. I don't know, but it's just, it's a blessing. So thank you guys. Let's jump in right now with Kelly Probst. I'm super excited today to welcome in Kelly Probst and he is the Director of Seafood Purchasing at What Chefs Want.

07:40How you doing today, man? I'm doing great. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you very much. We're doing it a little differently today. Normally we bring people in studio and we have these conversations. I took the trip to Louisville today and I am in Louisville at the What Chefs Want warehouse to do this interview. This is really fun. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know where to begin because I'm so fascinated by so many things that you do. I guess I will, what you do here in the building as the Director of Seafood Purchasing, how long have you been doing this? We've been here about eight years, seven years. You've been with What Chefs Want for seven, eight years? Yeah. Wow. What's your favorite thing about this company? I love the vision. When I first started looking for somebody to be a distributor for my own company, my own seafood company, I was talking with a lot of different people from produce companies to meat companies and then there was this guy, Ron, the legend.

08:53Ron Turnier. Yep, and I fell in love with the guy. He was awesome. He's passionate, isn't he? He was passionate and his passion met so well with my vision and what I wanted to do with my company and nobody else that I talked to just matched that and so we'd sit down, we had a few conversations. What were those synergies? When you say that matched my passion, what is your passion? My passion is bringing the docs to the restaurants. What I get to experience from the day to day, my experiences with the captains, my experiences with the fish, the smells, the tastes. The whole thing. The whole thing. I want that as close as possible in those boxes that I bring up from Florida or Alaska or wherever to when the chef opens up those boxes and sees that and knows the history behind those fish that they get a little bit of vacation right there. They're on the docs with me picking out that fish and they can see why I picked that for that reason.

09:59It was 19 years ago when I met Ron Turnier and it was that same passion that brought me to this same company in 2005. Now, did you know that I used to work for this company? Yeah. In 2005, but it was Ron saying, I want to treat chefs the way that you treat your guests in the building, right? So this is the dynamic was, he goes, all these big companies, they make all of the rules. He goes, we want to break all of the rules. We want to treat chefs the way that you treat your best guest. Nobody does that for them. How do we bring a level of service to your best guests? How do we do that for people in the back of the house? And I was like, oh, hook line and sinker. That's what I want to do. That's cool. And he goes, it's a simple formula. I figured out what chefs want and then we just do it. And I was like, how does that even work? Like what chefs want and then you just do it. And you just do it.

10:59And I was in, I was like, yes, I'm sure you had a similar, this is what you're talking about. So once I sold my company to Ron. You sold it to Ron. To Ron, to what chefs want. And one of the coolest things was, I think personally, after the few conversations that we had, about a year later, I see him in the hallway because I'm in Florida. I live in Florida down on the docks. And he sees me and he goes, oh, how are things going? A year later, a year later, that was the oversight. And it totally gave me autonomy. It allowed me to do what I wanted to do. And it's just continued. It hasn't changed in all those years. All right, so I think that's a good basis for our listeners to say, okay, this is a guy that we know where you're from. Let's get back to your, let's start with your origin story. Where were you born? Like where are you from? What's your story? So I was born in San Diego, a little town called Encinitas. Known as the flower capital and surf center of the world.

11:59Yeah, I've been down there. And so just fantastic. When I was a kid there, there was one stoplight in town. And we could hear cows on the hills. But you're pretty young though. So I mean, that wasn't that long ago. 49 this year, so. Oh wow, you look, you look about my age, I'm 45. I don't feel 45. I feel like I'm like 25. And so maybe that's where I get, I'm like, there's an energy, I don't know, man, yeah. So Southern California, Encinitas. Growing up, we had surf PE in the morning. And you know, we had, if you know surfing, Rob Machado and Kelly Slater would come and visit. And so that was the people that I was surrounded by this. This passion, you know, passion for the ocean was just through the roof. I was a Newport Beach, Laguna Beach guy. I'm originally from Southern Orange County though. Okay. A little north of you. Just up the street. Yeah. It's interesting. So you were in San Diego. You love the beach. That's a thing. And then where did you, tell me about your progression. Where'd you go to school? Yeah, so I grew up spearfishing when the waves were small.

13:03Just absolutely loved it. And spearfishing in Southern California? Spearfishing in Southern California. Did you go in kelp beds or something? Yeah. I mean, we would spend three hours in the middle of the winter. So cold that our laws would be locked around the snorkel and unable to open our mouths, you know? But that just, you know, the ability to be able to see and know the ocean, know it. Like in Spanish, there's saber, which is to know something. And there's conocer, which is to just have this deep, deep knowledge of something. And it was conocer el mar. And to just understand the biodiversity and how things work together. And if you took one fish from an area, how it completely changed the dynamics of that little rock head in the water and seeing how everything always interacted with each other and played off each other. And so, and when the waves were big, then, you know, we're surfing. We're on the top side of the water and seeing just the power of the ocean and being at the mercy.

14:04I remember, you know, being in surf PE and the waves are so big that, you know, a wave coming towards us, you just look to your friend and go, good luck, man. I hope I see you on the other side. Caught inside. So just an absolute, you know, old man in the sea, you know, respect for the ocean and what it is. You know, it's interesting because I hear that. And I remember my parents used to drop us off because we lived in Laguna, right? We were on the beach. We would go to grandparents in Newport and they'd drop us off at 52nd Street at like 10 a.m. and pick us up at like seven. I was like 10 years old. Just dropped off at the beach. But you learn when you're out there, you learn swells. You look on the horizon. You can see, there's a flow of everything out there that you just start to adopt and it's. You know the minute the wind's gonna change an hour before it does because of subtle little changes and it's a magical thing. I don't know if a lot of people don't understand that. They go to the beach and they sit outside, but like there's, when you spend a significant amount of time, like there's a whole ecosystem there.

15:06And that's, was that aquaculture? Is that what you would call that? I mean, I know you studied this. What is aquaculture? So even back before that, you know, everybody would ask me, you know, hey, what are you gonna do when you, what are you gonna do with yourself someday? You know, my future in-laws, you know, the old grandpa, you know, with two PhDs, what are you gonna do you know, with your life? And I said, oh, you know, I'm gonna be a shrimp farmer when I grow up and then you get the scowl and go, just kidding, I'll be a banker. And so I ended up doing an undergraduate at BYU Hawaii in international business management. And I worked in the banking industry for 10 years. Very exciting industry. Fantastic, you know, after the scream phone calls for three hours at a time, you know, in the big banks, you know, you kind of get, it gets old. I can imagine. But you learn the business side of things and you learn diligence and you learn how money works. And, you know, we sold money to big banks is what we did. You know, we're doing investment banking.

16:08And then 2008 happened. And everybody knows that my industry disappeared. It wasn't there, you know, after that. So I had a family at the time and it's like, okay, what do I really wanna do? What do I wanna do with my life? And I always had, I was wanting to continue my education. I always had that shrimp farmer. So I started researching schools and I got a grant to go to Kentucky, Kentucky State University. And they had an aquaculture is one of the best ones in the country, aquaculture and aquatic science program. So spent two years up there and it was fantastic. Just an absolute. What do you learn in that? So coming from a business standpoint, it's a biology degree. So I was very intimidated, you know, not having the background that everybody else did. They brought me in with a more of a marketing side and a business side. So I sat with their teams that would look at different people that wanted to start aquaculture businesses.

17:11And I would sit on that board and tear them apart in a nice way, you know? See if we can put holes in the ship and see if it still sinks or still floats. And if it still floats, then hey, maybe that's a good business plan. Maybe we should take a look at that. Yeah. So that was one of my jobs there. But otherwise, you know, I just had the most fondest memories, you know, bringing my kids and feeding the largemouth bass in the in the rearing ponds. And I don't know if you have you ever heard of a paddlefish before? Yeah. So most amazing fish. It looks like a swordfish. I was at the long nose, long, flat nose, isn't it? Long, flat nose. And they're in our Kentucky rivers and Tennessee. And, you know, just kind of this this area. I think they have them at the aquarium in Chattanooga. They do. They get up to one hundred and twenty pounds. Their eggs are caviar and are fantastic. So a lot of people have looked at raising them here and in the area. And one of the neatest thing is if you look at the nose, they're prehistoric fish, they're dinosaurs. And if you look at the nose, there's a lot of the little pits in the nose and those are electro receptors.

18:19So they can pick up the tiniest electromagnetic fields. And so if there's one in a tank and you have somebody in the tank trying to hold one or something and you take a big metal pole and you put it in the tank, the fish goes crazy. So you've got an 80 pound fish in a circular tank with a guy there screaming, trying to run away from it. So, you know, aquaculture pranks. I was like, was that a prank you would pull on people? Oh, yeah. That's that's that's epic. OK, so you go to Kentucky State, you get this degree in aquaculture. Yeah. What do you do with that degree? You then do what? So it's kind of scary because I had four kids at the time and four children, four children. And you still have just four children. No, there's six now. That's impressive. Ages from what to what? Oh, the the youngest is 15 and she's just about she's she's going through in school. They're all in college, you know, kind of a dual program that they've got in Florida.

19:22And so another that's 17 and two of them that just got into premed and and architecture and then to they're often about doing their own crazy things in the world. So any of them, 25 aquaculture, none of them have any desire. Really? Do you have any desire for them to do that? You know, my youngest, who's 15, has been doing books in the business, you know, since she was like nine and she's brilliant. And so she was, you know, she knows QuickBooks and she knows this and she does does tours with me pretty often. So, yeah, but I don't I don't know. I don't know if she that'd be awesome. But we were talking the other day about somebody saying that why parents never want their children to go into the restaurant business. Yeah, this is what we do. And it's like, but I don't want you to do it. Like, well, why? Yeah, that just just encourages them. I don't get it. OK, so you graduate school. See, I get off track. You moved to Florida. So graduate.

20:23And I'm really worried about getting, you know, with a biology degree, you know, it's like you're lucky if you do thirty thousand a year. And that's hard to do if you have kids. So I had to think outside of the box and be creative. So there was a company in Florida that did business with aquaculture company. So they did everything except for the fish. I mean, we sold the salt to SeaWorld. Wow. So, you know, like everything you could possibly think of. So I was interested, you know, with my international background and working, you know, with their Asian sales and that kind of thing. So I worked with them and was let go after three months. OK, and after that, I should get let go for. They're not in business anymore. So I guess I can talk about it. So I was desperate for the job, absolutely desperate and because of my family. And so I talked to the HR director and she said, you're overqualified for the job.

21:23I said, I'd take any position. There's very few companies that kind of fit for what I do. And you have it. And if it takes me some time to work on it and prove myself and work up the ladder, then I am totally OK with that. She goes, you know, it's not going to work. You know, you're going to hate the job is the the incoming job was a call center. You know, you're just not going to fit. I'm like, I really don't mind. Trust me, I've done I've done bad jobs. That's not a bad job. So I ended up meeting one of the other guys that worked there. A senior VP was from my alma mater. I called him up and I said, hey, you know, would you tell me about it? He set me up with their their vice president of marketing. We hit it off. He hires me. And my first day walking into the job, she's giving me the death glare. Because I went around her. Oh, yeah, you do that. Not HR. And so, you know, I kind of smiled. And so a few months in. I'm in a meeting and she comes into the meeting, the whole company is in there and she goes, can you come out for a minute?

22:29And she said, I said, yeah, sure, I'll come out. And she said, well, I'm looking at these emails from the you're sending outside the company. I'm like, cool, you're looking through my emails. I mean, that's fine. And she goes, I see this. You're writing in first person that you can help this company do their engineering to build a build a whole facility in Arizona for aquaculture. I was like, well, yeah, I write typically in first person. I'm sending it off a company email. I'm a person. I'm a person. And in first person, first person right here. There's no one else around. And so she said, well, you're trying to profit off this. And I said, really? I mean, I can't do any of that. She said, you're going to be on paid leave. I'll talk to you in a week. And if you can prove to me that you weren't doing this, then I'll keep you on board. I said, OK, can I please speak to the to the senior VP? Oh, I'm sorry. He's out of the country right now. Can I talk to the CEO?

23:30He's also out of the country right now this week. And while you're doing this, is there anybody? That I can talk to in senior management? Well, yeah, there's one guy you can talk to him. So I sit down with him, a Brazilian gentleman. He's like, well, I have one day in this company here and I have no idea or authority. So good luck. Don't know you from Adam. You pissed off an HR director. She came back after you. She found some loopholes and let you go. And so I became with my masters and undergraduate degrees, a jet ski instructor for the next six months. Well, I could think of worse jobs. It was one of the best jobs that I've ever had in my life. Yeah, I'm like, come on, jet ski instructor. I think everybody should have to do that for at least six months of their life. Dirty, right? That's a fun job. Which was fun, because literally it was the three best group of guys. And we would go spearfishing while we're at work. And we'd be the owners would come in and I'm like cooking lobsters. And, you know, behind the counter, they're like, what are you doing?

24:33Eating. Do you want some? Yeah. Spiny lobster. Let's go. So luck fortuitously. At the same time, I was I had a USDA grant with the school and I was linking up local fish farmers with high end restaurants in this area. And the whole point of the study was to show that you don't need a middleman, that you can say, hey, farmers, here's the chefs. Hey, chefs, here's the farmers have added, you know, cut out the middleman, go for it. Really, after the study, what I found out was farmers farm. Chefs are too busy. They'd love to. But really, there's a there's a romanticism with, you know, I think there was a time where local produce was so big that we would buy produce and we would say, no, leave the dirt on it. Like, all right. I want the chef to grab these beats with the dirt. No, the loneliness of the soil, you know, there's there's a they want to do that.

25:36They just don't have time to get out and do that. Yeah. So, right. I mean, that's and I think that's a lot of the dream. You know, in culinary school, you're you're imagining this. You know, I'm going to live on the French Riviera on the French countryside and I'm going to be picking grapes for my, you know, pressing our own wines. I'm joking. But but to some degree, right, to have the ability to go out to the farm and say, yeah, can we have this and can we do this and bring back and know the story of, you know, each dish that you have and it means so much to you on that plate. You know, there's passion behind it. Well, there's a there's a there's a watch on YouTube. There was a 19 minute like a documentary style video about what you do in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it because it showed your passion because you you know these fishermen and you know what good fish is. You've been around it your entire life.

26:36You have a degree in it. You know that when a fish comes out and the proper thing to do after it comes out and icing it and then you learned the chefs also and you learn that, hey, this guy and in this particular video was it was a sea is a trout that there and these guys had caught these trout and they're beautiful. And you're like, I know a chef that's going to love these. And you like hand picked out four or five trout. And then it shows you going to the chef. The chef is like, dude, where did you find these, man? These are amazing. Yeah. And you couldn't fake the look in your eye. Like there is no there's no acting. You know, the cameras are like this is what you do. You find these pristine fish and these pristine species of fish for certain chefs and then you're you're kind of the middle man. And you're bringing that day. Yeah, they're there in the morning picking this fish out that day, taking them over to the chef. And I was just like, wow, how how cool is that?

27:37I mean, just the whole video was amazing. But the thing that I got out of it was how much joy it brought you like intrinsically to do that. Yeah. Right. Where does that come from? Life is awesome. The sea is the most of if if I could share the things that I've seen and experienced in the ocean, even in just a small way to people that are internally consuming the ocean. Right. Yeah. And it brings such a depth and excitement and appreciation of what that is. I mean, see, I think fun part part of this whole sync thing was I think Ron saw your passion, Ron, while he's passionate and everything, I think he saw your passion was like, I don't know what this guy's drinking, but I want I want to be part of it. I mean, this is this is this is great. And so you're you still live in Florida, right? Yeah. You live. Is it New Smyrna Beach? New Smyrna Beach. Isn't that the shark capital of like the world?

28:37Is it a shark beach? And it truly, you know, some people say things to draw people in. That's not something you would draw visitors in, but it is come summertime. I mean, every other time we surf, you have a shark encounter. It's not fun. It's you. You go surfing there in New Smyrna Beach. Yeah, we live a block from the beach. So we're there all the time. And I've never understood this. If it's shark beach and there's sharks everywhere and people get attacked by sharks there regularly. Every time there's a shark encounter. Well, do you want to get like mauled by a shark? My son does. He wants a scar. I don't. I've had I've had shark encounters around the world, and especially in my backyard, literally. And no, it's not fun. When I've only what is it? What is a shark encounter entail? So think of it like dogs, like you're walking down the street and you see a stray dog and you can look at them and you go, I'm going to drop on my knees and I'm going to give them a big hug, you know, and scratching behind the ears.

29:41And then other ones you go, I'm going to walk on the other side of the street. And I'm going to walk over here. Sharks are the same way. They have the same body postures. They have everything. They're very intelligent. But when their minds get locked on to something, you don't pull them off of that, you know, they they just get into it. So like probably the most recent experience that I had was my friend had bought a brand new surf. We went to the surf shop. He's like, I want to get into it. You know, he's just got his house down by the beach and it's like, OK, let's go. He's brand new to the sport, brand new to the sport, brand new to Florida. And so we're down there and we go out and there's some days, you know, you we we have an intuition, don't we? We kind of know when something's off and the same thing happens in the ocean. I think the ability is to because we have a tendency to always have that because there's so much unknown in the ocean, especially if you can't see into the water. So it's to separate what you know and understand from experience in the ocean to that feeling of pay attention.

30:48There might be something around you that, you know, that's not good. So, you know, that was pretty much that particular day. He's like, let's go out to the sandbar. You're like, no, it's not like I don't really feel like it. But, you know, you got the new board, you're jonesing to go do it. So, OK, let's go out to the sandbar. So we're out over the deeps, probably eight feet, can't see the bottom. And we're paddling and there's probably 20 feet in between us. And right in between us, I look to the right to look at him. And there's this he's smaller. He's probably four to five feet. He's locked into me full speed shark, right? Just shooting right towards me. And I'm looking at him. And luckily, you know, it's really interesting. Those remember those electro receptors in their nose. Yeah, sometimes they pay attention to them. And so he hits my field, which seems to be about four to five feet outside of you, which is close for comfort. Right. Oh, yeah. And he comes and he hits that and he takes a super right. Super fast left hand turn right in front of me and goes down.

31:49So I look at my friend and I make the shark fin on the head and then the turnaround sign and go in. And yeah, that was it for the day. But what kind of shark do you think it was? You know, it's amazing. It's besides the obvious, the hammerheads and the bulls and the tigers and stuff like that, all the other sharks, when you look at charts and try to decipher the difference, it's like, well, the caudal fin is approximately three centimeters in a different pitch than for this particular shark. And so what why it was a shark. Why are they there at New Smyrna Beach versus all like why? What is it about that beach? And there is there's something about that beach, because if you go to Ponce Inlet, just the north side of the jetty there, there's an inlet at the north side. You don't find the sharks there. But if on the south side, you do. And if you look to look at any Google Earth image, you see that the plume of freshwater that comes out of there bends and goes south in front of New Smyrna. And so it's a mix of where it is, the area.

32:52It's a mix of the freshwater coming out, the increased when you whenever you have fresh saltwater mix together, you have life. Brackish. Yeah, there's more of a brackish. And this particular is more towards salt. Brackish is like 20 parts per thousand oceans, normally 35 parts per thousand. So so you're you're looking at pretty much full seawater, but it's got a heavy influence of freshwater in it. So it creates life. There's that difference that it just creates a lot of life right there. So a lot of food, food opportunities. And so it's kind of this time of year, it's really neat if you go down to the area and you walk in ankle deep water. You see a lot of real small sharks, you know, two or three feet long, and you can walk in and out of them. And it's pretty common to go do that. Really? Yeah. So that's a neat thing to do. Sounds fantastic. I know one of my bucket list things is to swim with sharks. I've seen sharks in the water in California. They don't really skim.

33:53You can look down and you see them every once in a while. It's not the end of the world. They don't bother you. Obviously, if there's a great white somewhere, I mean, that's a little more troublesome. They won't let you in the water. But it's not there eight hours a day. You don't ever think about it, really. But when you see one, it's a little unnerving. The worst is dolphins. You're out there and dolphins come by. Scares the living shit out of me. And you see the fin come up, you're like, I'm just going in, man, I'm going in. I used to go I used to go surf in a lunch break. I went to high school in Huntington and we'd go lunch. I got an hour and a half for lunch, whatever. And I would just head down there and hit the city side and go do an hour of surfing. Come right back. It was a thing. You could do that. Yeah, I don't think people it's different here. You go ride down back roads and anyhow. So you're in Florida. You're in New Smyrna Beach and you are a fishmonger. Yeah. So after after the so that the jet ski six months of jet skiing, a lot of fun and no money.

34:56Seventy dollars a day. I don't think that's legal, but I mean, if it's a three hour day, then, yeah, it's legal. But not an 11 hour day. No. So at that is fortuitous at that exact same time, a chef, a bluegrass chef, Weedle Michael, just absolutely amazing chef. So she calls me up and says, hey, Kelly, you down in Florida, right? I say, yeah. She goes, you deal with fish? I'm like, no, but, you know, there's fish down in Florida. Yeah. What are you thinking? She goes, do you think you could get me real fish up here in Kentucky? Hmm. Let me play with it. So, you know, I was thrilled. I'm excited. I was like, so I'm going to go head down the dock and I walked down the first dock and I'm going to go talk to a fisherman because that's what makes sense, right? I'm going to buy fish off a fisherman. And I start walking down this dock to the shrimp boat at the end. And this guy stops and he goes, hey, walk down to the end of that dock. That guy will shoot you. And I said, oh, I need to learn a little bit about this, don't I?

36:01Why would he shoot you? I don't know. OK, so there's not like a I learned years later that all stumpy leg Tim, who's on the end down there, only could see out of one eye and he saw somebody and I don't know whether there was no story like that. Not far from it. You've seen Florida man, right? Yes. Yeah. OK. So anyway, I'll tell you what, though, my my last 15 years working with those guys at the docks, I love them so much. They're so colorful, so fantastic. Way too many stories. It's awesome. It's awesome. So it took about six months of just playing around and talking to people till I started, you know, getting a feel for for, you know, how things worked and talking to the right people and going through the right channels and developing relationships. And so we started sending up, you know, just FedEx fish up to Weida. And she goes, oh, this is incredible. This is amazing. And so one day I boxed up very lovingly and carefully this box of fish to send up to Weida in between, you know, doing jet skis.

37:11And I get a phone call from the doc. Hey, Kelly, FedEx didn't pick up your boxes. I thought, oh, oh, she needs this for Thursday meal. And it's Tuesday. You know, I love Weida. She's awesome. I don't want to let her down. So I said, I'll be right over there. I told my wife, I'm going to be gone for a couple of days. So I threw him in my little piece of junk car and drove it to Kentucky, you know, knocked on her door and said, hey, I got sorry about that. FedEx didn't pick it up. So here you go. She was like, wow, OK, you're insane, you're insane. Thank you so much. And I thought I had worked with a couple other chefs. And so I went over and talked to them and said, you know, hey, I'm doing this thing. Is that interesting to you? And, you know, their jaws dropped and said, you do what? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yes. And so, you know, I never besides that. Advertised in any way, it just spread by wildfire. And, you know, everybody wanted on board with that.

38:14And for a while, for six months after that, I drove to Kentucky every week with my fish boots on and took fish up to the chef. How far of a drive is that? Yeah, it was three days round trip. So, yeah, it was, you know, I so I have memory. I can imagine with six kids, you want to get the heck out of town every once in a while. Honey, you got this. Honey, you got this. I need some me time. I'm doing air quotes. I got to go to Kentucky to drop off these fish. It's very important. I do it. I don't trust FedEx. Yeah, don't trust this company. I have to drive there. Right. That's going to be three days, honey. Lord willing, it might if it's only three, I'm going to work on it. Don't ride. I love you. So in this for the family, honey, it's for the family. Hey, actually work, work three days off for. That's not a bad schedule. No, that's not a bad schedule. And it was a lucrative. You're making money. It made more money than seventy dollars a day. Well, that's good. So it did.

39:15And I thought, wow, you know, if I if I can replace, completely replace my full time job with three days of work. Done, done. You know, I got four days with the family and that's fantastic here. So I'm not meaning to insinuate that you don't like hanging out with your family. It was a total joke. I'm kidding. For listening, thinking I'm not at all. So you do you're doing Florida. How big does this get? What's the company called that you create? So it was Kelly and Chris Seafood initially. And it was Kelly. Your wife's name is Chris. Yeah. And at the time, it went for six months doing that until it was like three a.m. I'm driving from Atlanta to Florida. You know, my eyes, you know, initially, I think, oh, I can I can do this for the rest of my life. This is this is awesome. And this deer jumps out in front of me. And I don't hit it.

40:15I don't swerve off the road, but I go, I'm going to die if I keep doing this. It's not safe. And so that's when I started talking to chefs. Hey, who do you love? Who are some producers? Who are some people, you know, some of your distributors that you love? And Ron kept coming up, Ron kept coming up, you know, and there's some others. So I started talking with him and then which takes us back full circle to to meeting Ron and buying him, buying Ron, Kelly and Chris Seafood. And eventually, yeah, but Kelly and Chris Seafood. And then, you know, at the time we were I was doing Louisville. I was doing Lexington. It branched out to Cincinnati. Actually, my Louisville, the company that was doing my Louisville routes was this guy named John Thomas, the company called Mattingly. And yeah, which is now our meat company. It's funny. Yep. And then our produce was Lucida Produce up in Cincinnati, which became our Cincinnati hub. And so Ron, world domination for Ron.

41:17Ron. Yeah, Ron. It didn't matter who I worked with. He decided to buy that company. So we kept it in Nashville, you know, picked up national. We already were down in Nashville. So that worked out. So you're in Florida. You're still pick. Are you still picking out the fish? Yeah, I love it. You still go to the dock. I still go to the dock today. Yeah. And you pick out the fish and then pick out the fish and send it here. Yeah. What's this building? Is this the wow center? This is the wow center. This is it. Is this called the wow center? Wow. I've heard about the wow center. And like this is this is that we're at the wow center. That's beautiful. So much when I was there, they're in the ice house that was downtown. And this is a much better facility. So you send you pick out of the fish. Do you use FedEx now or do you use a truck? No, we use a truck. So we overnight two teams drive it up like a what chefs want truck. It's it's third party. OK, so you you hire somebody. Yep. OK, so if I want to buy fish in Nashville, you're you could pick the fish out. If I tell you I'm looking for a yeah, you know, in Alaska or the rockfish, you know, or something like that. Right.

42:22You can say, hey, look, we're looking for these fish for this chef. And you can find those and then you find them on a Tuesday. You overnight them. They come by Thursday, Friday, Thursday, Friday, Thursday, Friday. I mean, that's pretty and that that's if we understood really how the fish industry and how old fish are average fish company delivering your fish to you two weeks in the water. How long? You're right. Is it two weeks? It's two. I would say that's average. So one and a half to two and a half weeks is your span in there. A one and a half week old fish is a good fish. Yeah, a fish last. That's the amazing thing if you treat them right from the get go. But it's like everything else. You go to the grocery store and you want to buy a package of ground beef and you put it in your fridge. How long is it going to last three days? Right. Before it goes bad. Well, it's it's your supply chain management. Right. You set things up so that, you know, because we want grouper when we want grouper, I don't care if there's a moratorium on grouper.

43:25You know, I still want it. So, you know, that's what forces companies to go. Well, we have to get grouper from Indonesia now, you know, because that's we have grouper. Yeah. You if you have to have grouper and you'll pay for it, then, you know, that's where we're going. So, yeah. Or swai or catfish or whatever. Yeah. There's a carbon footprint. The whole thing. So. You're expanding and this is where I kind of want to turn this to. Not a pitch, but when I learned this of like what you're doing, I went, wow, how many people know that you exist in my listening area? And obviously, What Chefs Want's been an amazing partner with me and the podcast since day one. You guys have been incredibly supportive in what I'm doing. And so I'm really excited to dig into some of the more things that you guys are doing here. And this is a fun thing. So if I'm a chef in Tennessee or Nashville, I might not realize that if I buy seafood from What Chefs Want, it's potentially two days old.

44:29Yeah. Which is a 12 days faster than I'm going to get. And what's the difference in quality on a three day old? Fish versus a 14 day old. You know, so if you're going to take that fish, you know, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to cook it right then and there? Yeah. OK, so when I talk to people and they inevitably, you know, one out of four says, oh, or two out of four. Right. I don't like fish. I'll ask them two questions. Is it because of texture or is it because of fishiness? And, you know, one, one. Yeah. Like a fishy flavor. Right. And you had a bad experience with fish. So one out of four will say texture and I'll say nothing I can do about that. Yeah. Fishiness is what you ate old fish. And that's the bummer about it is that we're accustomed to eating fishy fish, and that's because of the age that's on the fish. And so, you know, that's the difference.

45:29The difference is getting a fish that when you get the fish, you stick your nose in its belly and you breathe in deep and you smell the ocean. You look in the eyes and they're beautiful and they're crystal clear. The gills are red. You know, you're transported, you're mentally transported to where that fish came from and everything that it ate and the water around it. I mean, I just I'm thinking about shrimp in my mind. You know, Key West pink shrimp. Right. And you have hopper shrimp. They're the exact same shrimp. They're two totally different colors. It's because of the sand they live in. So not only does their Merroir, you know, their their environment of the fish changed the textures and the flavors, but they also changed the smells and everything. The color, you know, of the fish itself, everything about that. So when that fish is fresh, you still get that and you still get the pureness of that fish. And so you provide that here and you're.

46:34When did you expand to Kodiak? So Kodiak, Alaska, right? Is that Kodiak Island? Kodiak Island, the second largest island in the United States. So purely selfish, purely selfish, Alaska is cool. Do you need me to go embedded with you to Alaska to make sure that this thing we get the full story? I think so. That might be something we need to do. I think so. We need to drive there. We could know. But we could interview some interesting people. Heck, yeah. No, I would I say that tongue in cheek, but I would do that in a heartbeat. Be some really interesting characters on the show. It'd be fun. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it'd be fun. So I had this idea, you know, we so we would get everybody buys all their halibut, doesn't matter who you are. You're buying it from the same couple of vendors, you know, these behemoths. And I didn't understand why we would get these halibut in.

47:37And one would be fantastic. And the next one would look like. Death. You can say shit. No, that and just just look horrible. And, you know, something as delicate as a fish, you know, from where I come from, it's like, what are you doing? This is, you know, the most expensive protein on the plate. This is a fantastic animal. How are we what what are we doing to this fish? And actually, I learned that lesson being up in Kodiak last fall, standing up in our warehouse that we had that we lease up there and standing in the office and looking at one of these big companies. And a boat had just come in. This boat had 30,000 pounds of halibut in there. So, first of all, as my rapper, a lot of hell of it. Right. And how much ice? How do they catch that? It takes a while. Do they have nets or is this? Oh, it's all it's all hook and line. So it's a long line with hooks along the side. That line of those hooks can move along it and the fish come along and they'll eat it and then die on the line.

48:38And they're there. So it's important to get that fish out of the water pretty fast and get them on ice. Sure. So what they, you know, you just use a little bit of imagination as to how long you have to be out there to get 30,000 pounds of halibut. And then once you do that, you know, I watch them put the halibut on the ground. They had a front loader scoop up the halibut and dump it into this huge shipping container with the top like a tractor. Right. Like a tractor with a front load, like a scooper on the front. And just scoop it up and then just dump it, dump it. And I looked at our fishmonger. I was like, Jimmy, look at this. What is this? But he goes, yeah, that's what they that's what happens. And I was like, OK, I think I'm connecting dots right now. So backing up last year in one year ago, I was with John Thomas and we're we're in Boston, the seafood show. And I said, John, you know, I've been running some numbers and I have this idea.

49:41And I just makes sense that we should have our own dock up in Alaska. I said, you can we can do this with what chefs want or I'll do it by myself. He goes, oh, yeah, that that that was my passion behind it. You know that this this makes sense. We shared the idea with Ron. Ron said, do it. And again, that's my, you know, let's go. That's that's what I love about him. It's like if it's a good idea, let's do it. If it's what chefs want, let's do it for an executive for. And he today, obviously, he's grown so much. To keep that at the forefront of your mind, I think that's why he changed the company to what chefs want from creation gardens. There's other reasons, but I think it's to keep it on front of mind. We have this thing in our restaurant where we say, what can I do to make every guest a repeat guest? And that's the answer to every question.

50:42If somebody says, hey, can I do this? I go, do you think that that's what you can do to make every guest? Absolutely. I go, then absolutely. And I think in Ron's mind, when you said he goes, is this what chefs want? And you went, I think this is what chefs want. He's going to go, then do it like that. That's where he makes his decisions. And that's freaking refreshing because he's not a public company. He's not waiting for a shareholder. It's a mom. It's a guy owns it with his wife, Molly. And it's like, this is the thing. And that's his North Star. And it's like, it's gimmicky what chefs want. No, dude, that's his North Star. Like, is that what you want? Well, then let's do it. And that's why I'm here. Yeah. You know, if it wasn't, there's no way. Which is super cool. So he says, let's go. So you buy a dog. So, yeah, we get that we lease the warehouse. It was a fishmonger up there, Jeremy. He's got deep, deep roots in the Kodiak and Jeremy Abina, Abina. I wrote down, what is this? That's a Bina. Jeremy, a Bina, a Bina. So Jeremy's doing what you do in Florida, where you're going to the docks and you're looking at fish.

51:45He's there in Kodiak, Alaska, on the docks, looking at the fish, hand selecting halibut. Yeah. And he was selling it to me. A bunch of other kinds of fish, too. Yeah, all kinds of every. So not only halibut and salmon, right? Not only the second largest, but it's the most biodiverse dock in Alaska, meaning multiple species coming through there more so than any other than any other harbor. So that's cool. That's really cool. And so then you're getting this fish and you're overnighting it here. Yeah. So we have the dock and literally we have the dock, a road and then the harbor. And so we can sit there and look out on the harbor, wait for somebody to come in, run down. Hey, what you got? You know, oh, we caught some. We got our limit of halibut and we got and these are small boats. Yeah. And the Alaska fishing season right now in the last. Well, this last year and coming in this year, they're having a tough time. The fishermen, our boats are getting sold, you know, prices are down.

52:48It's it's just they're having a really, really tough time. So we're going now, we're talking to him and saying, hey, you know, how much are you getting from all the other docs? We'll pay you more. And because we're cutting out multiple middlemen and doing it so we can do that, we can treat them better. And can we can I stop you right there? Yeah. I think we all understand what it means to cut out the middleman. But what middlemen are we talking about? You're talking about talking to Jeremy. He's picking out the fish, sending it directly to this warehouse. How does that work for another company? Where are they sending it to? Because you think it would just come straight to their warehouse. Is that not how it works? Yes. So big manual, they're distributors, big distributors. And so they get it and then they ship it across the country to smaller hubs like what chefs want. So OK, so yeah, so like I remember I used to run I left creation gardens to work for a company called Fresh Point, which is a big competitor.

53:51But the Fresh Point has a tomato packing house. They buy all the tomatoes for the whole entire west or east coast, and they take the 15 semis a day of tomatoes in and they sort them. But then they ship all those out to all the CISCOs. So all the CISCOs in the whole southeast, all the tomatoes come from that one little dock in Nashville. Similar kind of a thing. All the fish get shipped to them and then they sort it out. And then it gets shipped to the individual to all the what chefs wants or in whoever else. Got it. Yeah, you're just cutting them out. Yeah, there's a cost. I mean, when you say costs associated with that, the people on the docks, they're going to take it, they're going to create a price, they're going to send it to that company, they're going to purchase it. And then they're going to either cut them, they're going to process them and then they're going to sell them again to these people and there's going to markup on those. So there's and maybe there's another one in between there where you're adding another markup from the freight guy. And this is like every time you ship something, there's a freight charge.

54:52Every time you cut something, there's a there's a charge. And so by the time it gets to you, there's two or three. Yeah, you're looking at $30 a pound in place. Yeah. And but if you just buy them directly and send them over, you could pay more because you're not doing that. I just wanted to go over how that exactly worked, because I'm not 100% sure. And I wanted to clarify. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. OK, good. So you're getting them now shipped. You're having Jeremy pick them out on the dock. And she shipping them directly here. So you're getting Alaskan halibut and all these other species. The same thing like two to three days out of the water. Now, this is crazy. So we'll pick it up off the boat and there's a little town dock with a crane. And so we'll put it on our flatbed truck. We'll drive it to the other side of the little harbor where our warehouses, we pack them up, gel packs, you know, on there. We drive 15 minutes to Alaska cargo or UPS. Nine o'clock flight in the morning. It lands here at four p.m. Next day, same day, since to the chef next day, we would take it, we break it down and get it ready.

56:02And it's there early, early in the morning. Now, we're very strategic in why we're talking today. I think if I'm not wrong, March 15th starts halibut season halibut season. We're excited for that. So this is happening. Is this an annual? I mean, is there multiple seasons throughout the year? Because I go to Florida and it's like, hey, it's snapper season for the next 20 minutes, and then it's not today. They have a random day where you can catch snapper or they don't. Or it's not like that. No, a halibut season pretty much opens up the 15th of March every year. And then it's more so of a quota. So it usually ends. It depends either. Last year was December 15, you know, right around there or November 15. So pretty much all year minus the cold, miserable Alaskan winter months. So, OK, yeah. And so March 15th, you guys are going to start having. So if I buy halibut March 20th, yeah, hear from what chefs want. It's going to be halibut from the docks in Alaska, handpicked by Jeremy.

57:02And if you really wanted to, you know, we'll give us a text and we'll tell you. I'll tell you which fisherman brought it in, you know, the temperature of the water, the size of the circle hook that he used. And all that good stuff. That's part of the cool thing is that you get to. Learn about the fish, talk to the fishermen, and then you get to talk to the chef and tell them that story. And then they the chef can then tell you, I had this guest came in and I had this celebrity, I had this person come in. They loved it. And then you get to go tell that story to the fishermen, kind of completing this circle of, hey, I caught this. And now I know where it went and the guest enjoyed it. And then that comes back to them. And you get to be the one telling that story. That was one of my favorite experiences was I got a call from a chef and say, hey, I'm so glad you came down. You told me about the story. We had Bill Murray in. And I was able to tell him the boat and the captain and all that. And he raised his hands in the air and said, we got news from the docks. So, yeah, when the when the chef shares that forward, you know, that information with with his with his servers.

58:09And it gets to the people. I mean, when I go out, I don't care what I'm getting. I want to be passionate about. I want you to be passionate about what you're serving me. I want to be excited about it. Hell, yeah. I'm excited talking to him like, well, should I got to call my chef? Guess we're going to have hell a bit on special at Maribor for the next little while, while this season is going, because I don't want to miss out on that. I want to be serving that hell bit in my restaurant. All of them. Yeah. And that's something we that that's a no brainer. It's checking the boxes. You're helping them, the little guys. I mean, like genuinely, these guys were so grateful. They were having, like I said, a lot of the distributors, some are closing. Geez, one of the big ones shut down their brand new giant, you know, million pound a day facility in Kodiak. It's for sale. Wow. And so, you know, there's this big upheaval. So it's just don't tell Ron. No, we already have. We don't need it that big. There's robots in that one. It could be both. It's going to be dangerous. Yeah. Let's keep it simple. Right.

59:11What chefs want Kodiak Island to start our new facility, other restaurants up there. Like, can you go eat a new reality show? Yeah. See, that's that's for my brain. I'm like, let's go shoot it. Are there restaurants up there if you go eat up there? What's what's what's the culture like up there? Oh, it's it's all fishermen. It's well, it's also the largest Coast Guard station in the U.S. Really? But in town, I mean, it's right. Right next to our warehouse is the oldest bar in Alaska. And it looks like it. And that's a charm, I imagine. Oh, my gosh. That that whole town is just you walk in. You're like, is somebody going to get in a fight? Does is anybody you're clean shaven is anybody there clean shaven? I imagine a bunch of dudes with big beards drinking mugs of beer like in Pirates of the Caribbean. And when they get to Tortuga, yes, that's what I'm envisioning. It is. And it looks like it.

01:00:12Henry's is the restaurant where everybody goes. It looks just like Tortuga and that restaurant down there. I mean, not even kidding. I mean, that's yeah. And the stories, you know, you sit there just to listen, right. And I stick out like a sore thumb, you know, who is this clean shaven? What are you doing in here? Yeah. Get out of town. I'm sure they know who you are by now. They know Jeremy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody knows Jeremy up there. But this so to this Jeremy fishmonger that you have there, Jeremy Abina, Abina still can't remount riding. He's been doing this for most of his life. His dad owned boat. He's been doing it his whole life. His dad moved up there and he bought back in the 80s in the heyday of fishing in Alaska. He had the big blue. That's Jeremy's middle name. His middle name is Big Blue. His blue, Jeremy Blue Abina, you know, and so the big blue and it was the biggest boat in Kodiak Harbor. And he had it commissioned in in Washington and built for him.

01:01:16And he said that first season he paid for it in full in cash. Wow. It apparent to the stories you hear in the 80s, what that, you know, Alaskan gold. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it was it was incredible. And so that's what Jeremy grew up in. You know, this respect and this Alaskan fishing culture and working his tail off. And he does. Let's we're getting close. We I typically talk for an hour. I I swear I could talk to you for hours on end. I went I did have some things I want to talk about. I want to talk about the Alaskan salmon and that you can purchase this from what chefs want. And that March 15th is the beginning of the season. And I want to put this out on the 15th to let everybody know, hey, you can go get this stuff now, like order it from what chefs want. And if you you also create a newsletter. Yeah. Right. And on that newsletter, you have your cell phone number on there. Yeah. So I mean, if people if chefs want to get a hold of you, they could call you like, hey, I'm looking for this type of fish or whatever.

01:02:18You know, I think it's just cool. You know, how neat is that to offer to a chef if he's got somebody in and they say, hey, you know, we'd really like to get some Florida pompano. What's going on? And he can say, hold on, let me call my fishmonger in Florida. Let's find out and put me on speaker. Yeah. You know, I'd say, oh, yeah, you know what? There's a couple down here. But, you know, I've seen a lot of guys on the beach fish in the last few days. The water temperature is finally in that 64 range. So we're starting to see them come in. And so, yeah, I'll keep an eye out. And if they come off in the car at the dock, they're yours. That's so cool. Yeah, that's so cool. It's just I don't know. I don't know a lot of fish. I'm not the one who orders the fish, but I. That's me. I'm going to have our chef listen to this episode. Did you got to learn this stuff? This is great. What what do we need to know? What do you want to share with us, man? I've been just peppering you with questions. Anything that we need to know about fish or your life or what? Best ordering practices, best ordering practices. Geez, you know, we all want not all of us, but, you know, we would like to bring, you know, have fish in season, you know, in our restaurants.

01:03:26And that can be so difficult to do. Because so many times, I mean, there's, you know, you get a fish, you know, in like the newsletter that I do every week or a couple of times a week, you know, I'll explain what's going on with the fish and a little bit more, because I understand that not everybody has worked with sheep's head. Yeah. Or Pacific Coast. You catch those off California. Yeah. Well, and we have a Florida version, too. So like hardly anybody knows about the is it black and white versus California's pink and red. Right. It's the coolest fish in black stripes. It's a wrasse. It's got these huge teeth. It's a hermaphrodite. So each fish will have like a harem of, you know, five to seven other sheephead. And they'll be the dominant male and he'll have his rock. And that's his dominance, you know, his rock. And they eat sea urchins with the big spiky, you know, dangerous sea urchins. Right. It's I've had stuck in my body and it's horrible. And so and then if he gets killed, shark takes him out, a diver takes him out or whatever.

01:04:28There's if you look at that here and there's always the second largest and he's starting to change because the the females are pink and long and slender and that male has a big bulbous head, huge teeth for crushing and it's black. Like you said, black, red and black, just beautiful fish. California sheephead. And the next one in line is slowly it's like jockeying for position. It's like, I'm going to be the big man on campus here. And if he's gone, he makes that change. He steps up and they're able to perpetuate that school of fish there and keep protecting the other females in that in that group. If you want to, I know you probably have time for any of this stuff. But I I think for aquaculture and there's a there's a BAP certification, best aquaculture practices. One of the things I imagine you are really into is sustainability in the ocean, which is why you said fish in season when you there's a reason for all of this, right?

01:05:32Fishing in season helps the other off season fish mate and grow and reproduce. And then it helps the ocean replenish itself. Tell me how that works. We've got to release some of the pressure on the ocean. We have to. And some of the obvious ways is aquaculture. You know, it's it started in the 70s, hot and heavy, and we did it wrong. We did it in the fjords, which, you know, big, narrow, not a big current. You know, all the effluent, the poop, you know, felt that killed everything on the bottom of that. There was, you know, the lice that are packed in so close together. The lice could jump from fish to fish and then into the wild. And then, you know, your DNA structure on an aquaculture fish is different. So you have escapees going out and messing up the the environment in that way. So we're talking aquaculture fish is they have huge nets, essentially. And they net pens. Yeah. And they have these net pens in the they they they farm fish in the ocean. Yep. You hatch them on land until they're big enough to put in these pens and they can't escape through it. Right. And so and once you're big enough, some can.

01:06:34And then you they you grow them to size there. And so in the 70s, you know, we did this horrible job. And there's a lot of companies out there and like BAP certified best aquaculture practices. You know, putting guidelines out there and saying, hey, these companies are following the guidelines. They're doing good. Are they perfect? No, they're not perfect. Are they a good guide? Yeah, they're a good guide. And so that's really I mean, when was the last time you had a wild chicken? A wild chicken. Exactly. Right. No. Or a wild cow. You know, we have wild cow on the menu. You know, it's like, no, but wild fish. Yeah. But it's the last right. We really don't have anything else that we do that's like that. So we're behind in the ocean and doing it. Why? Because Mother Nature doesn't like nets. Mother Nature does what it wants to do, when it wants to do it. So it's that's that's the final frontier, right? Taming the seas, which we're never going to do. But we're doing it better. And so, yeah, that's that's the frontier that fishing and fish need to focus on, and they're doing a much better job with that.

01:07:39So wow. If you wanted to, like, do you do a market report? If you once a month did a voice recording where you just went on your phone and said, Hey, guys, this is Kelly with what chefs want. This is the fish you need to be ordering right now that is in season. These are the fish that are leaving season. I don't know if everybody knows. I mean, I think some chefs absolutely know I'm not saying that, but I think in general, if I was able to put out there a 30 seconds, a 30 second voice at the start, hey, guys, we're going to start the show. We're going to go to Kelly. Kelly, tell us what's happening in the the fish world. What's happening right now? And I could play that 30 second. This is what's going on. Order this. Don't do that. Don't do this. Yeah. Thanks, Kelly. And then we move forward. Yeah, absolutely. Would you do something like that for me? For for sure. Yeah. And that's probably the one of the biggest questions that I have. I was just talking with David David Breeden from French Laundry a couple of weeks ago, and he asked me that question.

01:08:43And I said, wow, it's I keep saying that, right? It's more of a guideline because, you know, this Golden Tile season may be open right now in Florida, but we haven't seen any in two weeks because of weather and storms and, you know, fishermen's boats, you know, that one keel fell off his boat. So he's got a hand forge, a new one. Yeah. You know, it's not like these massive fleets, thank goodness. Right. These are small fleets and individuals and they get out when they can. And nature dictates what happens. So the answer is, yes, absolutely. They're guidelines. But yeah, there's a lot of good information that can be shared. How do people find your newsletter? Talk to your rep at what chefs want and say, I want to get on the boat direct newsletter, the boat, direct, direct newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. I think everybody out there needs it's not just on what chef want dot com. I can't look it up. I can't search boat, direct newsletter. No, no, because I do it personally.

01:09:45You say it out. I send it. I write it up. I every fish I'd not I'll put the product codes in the, you know, for filet, for whole and prices, but also give it my own description on the fish and more about the fish. And then at the beginning, I always talk something interesting about, you know, what's going on or the weather or the fish or fish species or, you know, what I'm learning, I'm teaching what I'm learning because I'm always learning something new down there. So it's so fun. And I do that every week once or twice a week. You just brought something up that's interesting to me. You send whole fish here, right? Yeah. You buy whole halibut, whole salmon or whatever, and you're shipping it directly here. You have a facility here that cuts fillets and cleans the fish for chefs, and then you package it and sell it. And I was talking with those cutters. I cut a lot of fish. So much respect. Oh, yeah. Two thousand one guy, two thousand pounds in a day. I can't I was watching him and he is skilled.

01:10:47I mean, I'm good, but not like that. You're ten thousand hours in here. That's what you do, man. So the Olympics, that's how it works. You're not shipping. It doesn't come here. And then you send it to a processing facility who then repacks to the cells that back to you. Because I would add again, that would add more. No, you want me to blow your mind. Yeah. So. Shrimp here in the United States, it's cheaper. If you're going for cheap, it's cheaper to catch those shrimp, freeze them on the boat, put them in a container, send them to China, have them processed and send them back here and resell them. And you can do that cheaper than having it processed here in house. Sometimes it just makes sense to pay a little bit more. That's crazy. Yeah. You guys don't do that. Now, you have a brand, you have a new line called Marablou. Yeah, I saw that. That's your own brand of shrimp, proprietary brand of shrimp, shrimp farms.

01:11:49And they graze them for us. We bring them in direct. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. They're great. Yeah, I saw downstairs kind of a little tour and they're doing some photos and some other marketing stuff. And everybody was so excited about this Marablou shrimp. And it's beautiful. And it's our brand. And this is us. And there's some excitement around it. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. That's so cool. It's fun. OK, man. Well, there you go. We've been talking for an hour and five minutes. OK, can you imagine that? That's how fast this thing goes, man. Thank you so much for joining us. We do one final thing. And it is the Gordon Food Service final thought. This is where you get to take us out. Whatever you want to say, whatever you get, the final word of the episode, as long as you want to talk, whatever you want to say, the mic is yours. OK, no, I appreciate that. So I think what I would like to share is a story, two stories. I moved to a new home in San Diego and it was on a dock.

01:12:51And this dock in our backyard that we had was it's called Agua Edionda Lagoon, Stinky Water Lagoon, right? So this lagoon was closed because there was an invasive plant, an invasive species that was in their Cholera pituxifolia that was brought in from the Mediterranean somehow some way. It bloomed like crazy and took over, you know, the San Diego Lagoon. And they shut it down. They sent divers out there and they picked out every single plant. They scrubbed every bit until they knew it was gone. So this lagoon was not touched by man for two years. It was shut down at the end of these two years is when I moved in. I had no idea if there was any fish there, you know, in the little area that we were jokingly. I mean, if you're going to go fish in the ocean, you don't put a piece of steak on a hook and throw it out over the side. No. So I put a piece of steak on the side and threw it in almost as a joke.

01:13:53Came down red meat like like steak, like steak, like, yeah, like steak. Came down and there was a spotted bay bass on the back on the end, and it weighed four pounds. It beat the world record spotted bay bass by over a pound. You have the world record and spotted bay bass. I didn't know it was a world record at the time. But we went out and we fish and we caught multiple spotted bay bass that were world record, which is it was a four pound bass. It's like, wow, that's really nice. You know, it wasn't until like a year later that I'm looking it up and it's like, oh. Anyway. But two years is all it took to produce world record fish and the amount of California halibut that we cut off that dock was mind blowing. Two years was all that it took to not put pressure on that ocean and that little part of that ocean. I didn't keep any of the fish. I turned them all loose. But just my pressure of catching it made them go someplace else.

01:14:57They're still out there, but they just they moved away and we weren't catching them anymore. Second story, great friend growing up, one of my idols, he worked for Sea World, Sea World, San Diego, their big giant aquariums where they had the huge fish in it. And he was also in charge. He was the guy. If a great white shark got caught in a net, he and he led his team. They would go out, save the great white shark. And I saw pictures of him like straddling this great white, you know, in this little tiny tank. He's insane. So he was my spearfishing legend. And I would learn everything from him, Jim Venera. And they caught a tiny little mahi. We've all eaten mahi, right? Tiny little mahi. And he goes, oh, I'm going to put this in our tank. So he went to Sea World and he stuck it in the tank. One year later, they brought the mahi out and they ate them. It weighed 70 pounds. Whoa. So feed conversion ratios, et cetera, et cetera. That is the chicken of the sea.

01:15:58But to be able to go from practically an egg in a year's time to 70 pounds, mahi are sexually mature at three months old. They can lay eggs three times a year and two to three hundred thousand eggs per time. If our mahi populations, which they are incredibly depleted in the ocean, could you imagine if we didn't touch the ocean? We can't do this, right? But if you didn't for two years, the ocean would be packed, packed. It would be phenomenal. And we've done this in little areas, you know, the ocean where it's like, don't touch this, you know, and they brought back where I grew up in Encinitas. It's a reserve now where I grew up and would go spearfishing. And that was in the in the 80s and 90s. And when I go back to there, I remember last time I was walking on the bottom of sand and this lobster comes up in between my feet and hangs out and is like sheltering in between my feet in about four feet of water in sand.

01:17:05Never seen anything like that growing up. You know, to find the lobster was like incredible. Nature finds a way, right? Jeff Goldblum, right? Jurassic Park. But it really does. And, you know, what we do in the decisions that we make, you know, going back to that one sheep head sitting on that coral reef head and how you remove that, it totally changes the ecosystem. Putting less pressure on fish, fish in season, caring more, using more of the fish. The little things that we do makes a difference on the whole ocean. And it's one ocean. I mean, they've proven that with currents. It's it's everything is tied to each other and it's one. So can we make a difference, especially restaurateurs? Yeah. Can we make a difference in what people want to eat? Yeah, it's all about what we're excited about. Oh, my gosh, you got to try this. You know, we've never had it before. We did this once in Nashville.

01:18:06We brought in she fish in canoe. We had found out from what we've seen, nobody had ever brought it into the continental United States. It was from an Inupiat Eskimo tribe up above the Arctic Circle. I asked him, I said, hey, do you have anything besides salmon that looks interesting, you know, that I'd be interested in? He's like, no, we just do salmon. We're talking about some other things. And he goes, oh, you know, yeah, there's this one fish called it in canoe. My family's been eating it for three thousand years. And it's the best thing in the world. It's like, send it to me, please. Try that. Tell that story. You know, when you when you have a restaurant site, you know, you've got to try this. It is fantastic. You'll love it. And are they going to? Maybe. Who knows? Probably not. Yeah. But I love your enthusiasm. I just you're telling the story like they found this, but your eyes get big. You smile. I love your passion. It's been so fun to talk to you. I we got to do this again. The next season, we do this quarterly.

01:19:07I don't know. This is fantastic in different parts of the world. Yeah. Whatever you're going, we're starting this season now. And Kelly's going to come talk about it. What kind of fish they're going to get. Yeah. So if you want to learn more about this, find your what chefs want rep where you can call the wow center or whatever it might be and ask for figure out a way to get boat direct sent to you. And then you'll have that direct line with Kelly and you can up your seafood game and you don't really have to do anything different. It's already offered to you. And I I don't know how many people know this. And so I'm really proud and honored today to have you on the show to share this information. Now, thanks for coming all the way out here. That's great. Fantastic. Enjoy it. Thanks for having me. I can say thanks for having me today. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you for your time and best luck this season. Thank you. All right. Thank you to Kelly Probst for joining us here on Nashville Restaurant Radio.

01:20:10Thank you for Sarah and everybody, Lauren, everybody up in Louisville for making this happen. You guys are awesome. And thank you, the listener. Again, thank you for listening. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. We'll be back with you next week with Chad, Newton and Gracie Wynn. They are from East Side Bond. Me, you are here. Hospitality. We hope that you had a wonderful spring break this past week. If you were on spring break, if you're not, then hopefully you get to enjoy nice weather coming soon. We we hope that you are staying safe out there. We love you guys. Bye.