Matt Bolus

00:00Hey everyone, it's Brandon Styll, host of Nashville Restaurant Radio, and you know that I'm a big fan of having a plan and proactively using this time to make your business better. Times are tough, but reopening and recovery doesn't have to be. That's why I want to tell you about Kurt's Hospitality Marketing. It's a full service sales, marketing, and public relations agency dedicated to growing revenues for their clients. You've heard Janet right here on Nashville Restaurant Radio, and we've talked about all things, ideas to help restaurant owners, hotel owners stay clean and prepare for when we reopen. So give her a call, 615-456-3953, or check them out on the web, www.kurtshospitality.com. That's k-u-r-t-z-hospitality.com. Welcome 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.

01:08Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll. I am your host, and we have got another two-parter for you today. The executive chef of the 404 Kitchen, Matt Bolish, joins us, and we just get talking, and we're like two school kids, just can't stop talking about all the insanity that is happening right now, and we even get into stock tips. We're just, it's an interesting, interesting episode, but we talked so long. We're splitting it up into two episodes, so part one is coming up. Part two is going to be put out later today, a little afternoon delight for you, and I really appreciate you guys listening. If you like listening to this show, please subscribe to it. Love to have you subscribers, that way you're gonna get every show in your podcast inbox every single day when we put one out. So we appreciate you guys, and enjoy part one of my interview with Matt Bolish, and we are here with Matt Bolish, and Matt, you are the executive chef at the 404 Kitchen, correct? That's it, that is me. So happy to have you here, man. Thanks for doing this. Happy to be on, yeah, absolutely. I want to jump right into it. How is, how is this whole COVID-19 quarantine, stay at home, how's it doing for you personally, and how's the restaurant doing? Yeah, personally, I have a six and three quarter year old, as she would say, and a nine month old, so like any parent, we're going a little stir-crazy trying to figure out how to keep the kids occupied and happy, but enjoying being able to spend time with them, and hang out with

03:10them, and typically there's work in school, and Girl Scouts, and doctor's appointments, and all these other things, so on the positive note, we're getting to spend a lot of time together, which is great. Have you been a homeschool teacher? I have been, not as much as my wife. My wife is definitely taking the lead on that, but I have been, and I believed it before, and positively know it now, we should pay our teachers gross amounts more money. That's something everybody out there, I have a six and almost three quarter old as well, boy, and I saw a meme the other day that said all these teachers teaching kids long-form math, and we're over here like, hey, carry the one, you know, like just basic stuff, and the teachers like, no, no, no, don't do this, don't do that. Sorry, that's what I know. Yeah, I'm hoping that the few lessons that I've given haven't screwed her up too much, but yeah, so we're doing that, and it's been fun, and grateful for all that, but you know, professionally, it's, I don't know, the whole situation is kind of unpredictable at best. You know, you hear news reports from around the world that are seemingly devastatingly bad. You hear local reports that kind of contradict each other. We have the capability of doing one thing, and you say, well, are we doing that? Well, we have the capability to. Yes, I understand that, but are we actually, are we having these test centers, are we doing these tests, are we, and what are we doing? So we're trying to filter through all that, and we. How so?

05:01I mean, there's a lot of people that are like, reopen everything, you know, there's a big, they organized yesterday and said, there's all the people downtown picketing saying like, reopen now, and there's the people that are like, let's wait and see. So, you know, you and I seem to be in a very similar boat. We have young children at home, which I know aren't necessarily as susceptible as they say, but I've seen the reports of children as young as two weeks contracting this. So I worry about that. I have parents that are close to being in their 70s, and one with underlying health issues, so I worry about that. No, I don't think we can just reopen everything all willy-nilly and not worry about it. Herd immunization can be a devastating way to do that, in my humble opinion. And, you know, I think it's one of those things where we're gonna have to tread lightly, I fear, for a while. It's funny, we were talking about this the other day, about whether this is a big conspiracy theory or anything, and I just laughed. I thought, how can, once you start calling everybody family to die, start apologizing them, see how it gets created.

06:15It's horrible. It's horrible to its' least, right? And the ripple effect is just so profound. And I don't care what subject you want to start in, school. What happens to, does your son and my daughter, do they just go from first grade to second grade? Do they never really complete first grade? Well, I mean, yeah, that's a young enough grade that I don't know there's much significance there. But what about high school seniors? I mean, we got a note from a parent the other day up in Virginia whose daughter loved the four-four when they come down. They come down on a regular basis, and they come in to eat every time, and she's turning 18. She's a senior in high school. She's turning 18. She didn't get to finish her senior year of soccer season. She doesn't get to go to prom. She doesn't get to walk the stage. She's turning 18 and doesn't get to have a party.

07:15It's like, you know, that's, those are pretty big moments in a child's life. There's a huge moment in a child's life. Yeah. And, and so that's the ripple effect. And then, you know, you have college graduates, and do they graduate? Do they, do you just stop at midterms and say, hey, that's your grade? Well, I mean, speaking from my own experience, my midterm grade might not have gotten me out of school. You know, so how does that work? And, you know, to the back of that girl, I just wrote her a nice note, and we sent her a big gift card. Okay, come in and eat, come back to the kitchen and say hi. You know, honestly, I think we all have to work together in this. And I think even the ones that don't want to necessarily follow the rules, like the gentleman that was in front of me at the UPS store a week ago, who just wanted to cause trouble about having to stand six feet apart. And I was thinking to myself, Ann, you know, you're not the only one. And we're not saying that we're the only ones. If everybody works together in this, I think we're going to find a better sense of community. I think we're going to get a new perspective on what's important and what's not. And I think we're all going to come out of this for the better. If we do that. But that's a very glass is half full perspective. And I love that because that's the take that I personally take. And I find it fascinating how many people are just so angry. They're so angry at this whole thing. And it's okay. I guess that's okay to be angry, but I just would rather harness my energy for something different.

09:00I'm not going to allow myself to be that mad about it. Like I can't really do anything about it. So I guess I go pick it and stand on the side of the street, but I'd rather be hanging out with my kids or doing something productive. So do you have any friends that opened restaurants yesterday? None that I know of. We've all been talking on, there's a board that's been going on WhatsApp that we've all stayed in communication with. My daily phone calls have decreased exponentially. My daily text messages have increased exponentially. But this is great. This is what I'm talking about. That sense of community. It's this person saying, Hey man, chat it in a minute. How are things? You need anything? How's the family? And we talk for a brief minute. Or me asking, me talking to another chef the other day saying, Hey, I've got my ideas of what's going to be required of our staff as we open up. And I want to chat with you about that.

10:04But I also want to ask you, what are we expecting of guests? And what control do we have of our guests, which is next to none? How are we going to handle all this? Because we can require all of the extreme protocols from our staff. But what about that guest that walks in? I mean, other than you walking in and nothing but tighty-whities. And I can say, hey, Brandon, man, you got to go, right? Because it's inappropriate. But not that you don't look good in tighty-whities. You may look fantastic in tighty-whities. I don't, but I don't think you want to see. Yeah. But so, you know, that's, that's, it's a question. The question that I don't think any of us have answers to, but we're all talking a lot now. We're all communicating. We're all, we're all supporting. And you know, one of the things we want to do is, hey, when we, when, when Mayor Cooper decides to, to start phase one or phase two, whatever phase we're going to be in, we want to be united in the sense of this is what we're going to require of our staff. And this is what we're going to require the guests.

11:14Because we have to take, we have a, we have a responsibility to take care of our staff as well. A hundred percent. So have you brought your staff back yet? Because that's how you're doing, you're doing takeout, right? We're doing first sign and takeout. We do it, we've partnered with Adele. So we're doing two restaurants out of one. That's just for logistics. And also, you know, you want 404, your wife wants Adele. Hey, we've got it for you. Yeah. And it's one stop, right? Much easier. Yeah. We're doing that. And we've brought some staff back. We are working with Second Harvest to help fill their need for meals right now. Oh, great. And that has been, we, we have all the salary cooks, all the salary management and employees at Adele doing the curbside and the specialty menus. We did a big one for Easter and for Passover. We're going to, we're working on one for Mother's Day. And I'm working on some ideas, like, you know, on a day like today, how nice would it be to take the wife and kids out and go on a picnic, even if it's just in your backyard or your front yard? So, you know, come, come pick it. I want to do a picnic menu and all in, you know, mason jars and fun little things and, you know, baloney sandwiches and chilled corn pudding and stuff like that, you know, fun things that you wouldn't normally think about making. You might not do it on your own. Just be like, I don't want to go through the hassle, but hey, somebody's got it. Like, let's go pick it up and, and just want a picnic in our own backyard. Yeah. So we're working on things like that, but all the salaried people are doing that. And then we're bringing in the hourly cooks, um, with second harvest.

13:00And so it's, it's helping second harvest. It's helping our, our, our hourly staff get some, get some time then. Yeah, it's, it's, it's tough and you know, and that's just, it's limited. So were you able to secure anybody's needs? Did you guys secure a PPP loan? No, we have not. Hmm. No, I just, I asked because there's, I had, I had Nick and Audra Guidry on this week and Pelican and Pig and we talked at kind of at length about just how all of this is shaken out. Just if you look at the Nashville hospitality boards, Facebook or socials, you're just seeing a lot of people that are afraid to go back to work and you see a lot of people that I think if you work at some chains, I think you're seeing people that are making more money now on unemployment and stimulus and that kind of are like, Hey, if I go back to work, I make less.

14:01And then people that are making more that would typically make more that don't want to go back because it's going to be half full or there's just so many different stipulations that are going on. Right. That is to know, like I think that's coming from somebody who employs a bunch of people and are bringing people back just kind of what your take on the whole thing was. So that's a, that's just another, like I said, I, I don't care what rabbit hole you want to climb down with this ripple effect. I mean, it, it is like throwing a dart at a barn, side of a barn full of bullseye. You're going to hit one. Yeah. We've, we started talking about this. How, how are we going to bring employees back? And so our guys that are on unemployment right now, you know, they're getting their whatever from the state up to $275 and they're getting this $600 from the government. Right. Yeah. So the scenario is we're going to reopen and phase one is 50% capacity. Phase two is 75% capacity. Phase three is a hundred percent capacity.

15:04And, and again, those are all theories. And I say that not because in theory, it doesn't mean that in theory you, you can or can't open a 50%. The fact is you can open a 50%, but what does that mean business wise? You know, if you have a hundred seats and you can only see 50 of them, are you going to see 50 guests? Are you going to see a hundred guests in the night? Are you going to see 10 guests? Um, honestly, I think people have been home enough that it's going to be a tsunami of business when everybody starts to first reopen, right? Uh, where I also think there's a potential danger. And so you go back to what, what are we going to require of our guests? Everybody has to wear face masks and gloves. I'm in now. How do I eat and drink? You can't, I don't think the guests as a guest, you can't. Right. Right. So yeah, there's already just inherent problems in all the solutions.

16:07I think the good news is that you're going to see a lot of that. There's a lot of that that's going to happen right now in Williamson County and Franklin and Brentwood, like you're going to, or half of Brentwood, but you're going to see a ton of that before you open. You'll know some of those answers because people have gone through it. Yeah, I think so. And, and, uh, we, you're fortunate in Davidson County that we get the, there's some testers, if you know what I mean, like, you know, the, the, the Franklin are going to open up the, the Williamson's are going to open up the Knox counties are going to open up and we're going to be able to see how things go for some people before maybe we reopen. But then you go back to staffing and you say, I say, Hey, Brandon, you know, I was, uh, I was paying you, uh, 18 bucks an hour when, when we had to let you go, we'll bring you right back at $18 an hour and benefits and everything else. Oh, fantastic. And, you know, we're thinking 30 to 40 hours a week, but you know, the game, man, I mean, no business, we got to cut hours. We got to watch costs, especially right now. And so you start thinking, Oh, well, okay. $30 an hour or 30, 30 hours at 18 an hour. Right. And that's $540 a week. My government gives me 600 a week alone. Plus the stake is, you know, the 275, let's say 75 or 540. I mean, what are you going to do?

17:27That's 45, five a year. Yeah. And, and somebody says, Oh, well, the ones that have the passion to cook, they'll come back. Oh, I mean, also that out of an option. Oh, and the ones that, that, that had insurance before don't have insurance now. So they'll come back and go, maybe, maybe. I also, I also think that, you know, they're, they're early 20s to, to early 30s and demographic. And like many in the restaurant business live paycheck to paycheck. And, and I'm not thinking about insurance, excuse me, at that age. I'm not thinking about passion necessarily. I mean, I I definitely chase passion in my career over a lot of stuff. A lot of times money even, but right now, and it's not a finite period because the stimulus law run out, but right now I'm earning a pretty big raise. Oh, and I've got a lot of money in my pocket because I'm not going to the bars every night. Yeah. And I kind of like that, but you want me to go work potentially. And that's the key is you want me to come in potentially for $540 a week where I can not go in and guaranteed get eight 75 a week, even if it's just for another, whatever it is, 12 weeks or 14 weeks. I mean, to me, that's a huge problem. Do you think the government did a disservice to restaurants? No, not in that. I think, I think that was fantastic. I think there's, um, I think this, this stimulus package in, in the sense of, um, you know, the, the, the PPP where you have to have a hundred percent of your employees working, uh, their, their average weekly hours at their current rate of pay or higher. Um, you know, but you, but you're also only

19:30going to allow us to open up at 50% capacity and I have to have a hundred percent payroll, but, but 50% business at the most. I mean, that's the thing too. You know, go back to our scenario, you have a hundred seats and you're typically seating, you know, 200 in a night or 300 in a night. The most you can do is 150. So the most you can do is 50% of your business. Right. But I maintain a hundred percent of the payroll that, you know, that's a handicap. Um, I know we started applying for, uh, the other, um, loans that were out there for stuff. And, and one of the banks said, Hey, by the way, you don't have a credit card. So you don't, um, you don't qualify for this loan. It's white. What do you mean? You don't have a credit card. You don't qualify the loan. So we're going to get, that's weird because we don't have a corporate credit card. So that's, that's where I think the disservice came in. Um, and the whole, and I know that the chaos about least Chris and, uh, uh, Shake Shack and all of them getting millions of dollars instantly. Like, wow, that's, that's bold too. The most amazing story yesterday was the Lakers.

20:48The Los Angeles Lakers gave back their four point whatever million dollar small business loan that they got. I didn't know they got one. The Los Angeles Lakers got a small business loan. Yeah. Yeah. And see, that's, that's the kind of thing, you know, and, and don't get me wrong. Are the, are the sports areas hurting? Gosh. I mean, they're hurting as much as we are. And, and if not more, maybe, you know, they, they can't do, they can't do curbside, right? They can't do specialty menus or games or whatever. And so, um, there's like, you know, a 99% standstill other than the, what is it? The draft that they did the other day that they said the viewership was so high on, but you can't, yeah, we can't have virtual games. It's, nobody wants to virtually watch anything like baseball when there's no war, the crowd or, or, uh, the, the, you know, hearing everybody cheer when there's a grand slam, you know, or the, or the, or the ooze and odds of the football stadium, when there's a good pass or a hard hit or so I'd watch hockey right now in stadium.

22:06I would, I would do anything to see a current sports game. I've seen all the ESPN highlights. I would totally do that. So, and that's a thing. And then it's like the service industry. It's not just, it's not just the athletes. It's the stadium workers. It's the ticket counter, uh, employees. It's the, the, the, the staff that works for the companies that sources all the products that are used there. It's the companies that make the products that are used there. It's all their employees. And, you know, it's like us and we have our, our chemicals for our dish machine and our bathrooms and our, uh, the hand sanitizing stations that we all have to have now. And then you have the linen company and you have, uh, all these other various, you know, the farmers and whatnot and all these people are affected. And this, this ripple just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It does. And so I think the government did a great job stepping in and getting, and actually getting that $600 in people's pockets quickly. I agree. Um, you know, is there something else that needs to be done? I have no clue. I don't. Um, you know, it's, it's, uh, we've had problems where we've had to call landlords cause we've had, we've had line cooks that were facing eviction.

23:23Um, you know, one man would say, Hey, you're going to have to get out tomorrow. We, we just, we called and said, Hey, this is what's going on. And this person said, yeah, I don't care. And so we called the cops and cops went down there and solved it. And this, this, uh, employees safe and sound in their place, you know, for the time being, and, and there's no consequences, but we got a nasty email from this person that said, Hey, you know, stay out of my business. You don't have a clue what's going on. I said, well, no, I, I, I have a clue what's going on with, with our employee. Right. And, and again, we're all in this together. And so let's work on this together. Nobody's saying that anything should be free. Right. I don't think that I should not pay my mortgage and it should just be forgiven. Um, but if people can't pay their mortgages, why can't the bank say, cool. So your mortgage was going to end June of, you know, 20 41. It's just going to end in July and 20 41. Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of that easy. And then you, you hear reports where a third of the banks are saying, yeah, you can furlough or you, what is it called? Uh, it's not deferment for banks. Yeah. You can for put your mortgage into forbearance. A third of the people are saying that's not possible. A third of the people are being told that you can do it without penalty. And it's just extended at the end of the loan.

24:41And a third of the people are saying that at the end of forbearance, you own a balloon payment of all the, uh, mispayments. Two of those three scenarios are pretty harsh. Yeah. Right. Very harsh. And so, you know, again, it's, that's one of those things where I got told, uh, uh, our management team is, is all this started. Oh, what about this? And what about that? And I kept saying, guys, that's tomorrow's problem. What do we need to work on today? And I think that's what I think that's where people are getting mixed up. Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's Tuesday, right? It is Tuesday. This schedule has also gotten me like, I know how many days I'm off and then how many days I'm on. This will, this will be released to the public on Wednesday, but today is Tuesday. I don't know what day of the week it is. It's, it's, it's kind of weird. It's, it's this pseudo vacation mentality of not caring what time or what day of the week it is. And I'm kind of there, which is relaxing. Um, but at the same time, a little confusing because you're like, huh, I wonder when I lost complete touch with reality. Uh, but back to topic, I, you know, it, I, you know, my thing is, and I try to tell people, solve today's problem, right?

25:56Don't, I'm not saying don't plan for tomorrow because everybody should have a little bit of forethought and, and think about what needs to be done or what you would like to do. Um, but there's a difference between planning and worrying, right? When you and I talk about, Hey, let's, let's do this podcast on, on Tuesday. Let's, let's record this on Tuesday. And you just said you're planning on editing and, and producing Wednesday, right? None of that's worry, but if you're sitting there like, God, what, you know, what happens if my computer goes down or, or, or match just a real joke and I got to, it takes me too long to edit it. And you know, you start doing like, well, why would stop? What we need to worry about today is, Hey, do you have an app running? Cause you're, you're, you're getting a little garbled or did you get the email? Can you sign in? Those are today's problems, right? Worry about those. And that's it. And if we all focus on that, uh, and we get today's problem solved tomorrow, we just have tomorrow's problems. We don't have tomorrow's and today's problems. I was on a zoom call, um, her, a Nashville EO group, and there was a guy hosting the group. His name was Dan DePonte.

27:09So if you're out there listening, it's Dan DePonte. He's a guru. He's a, he was a monk, a Buddhist monk, and he has an app. It's called the Dan DePonte app. And it's like daily meditations and all of this stuff, man. And the guy just, he trains your brain to just start the day off with gratitude and joy and how to keep your like, train your brain to constantly be looking towards the positive. And it's not getting out of reality, but it's really cool. But he, he said on this call for positivity. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, if you go into the situation with a negative attitude, you will get negative results. That is 100% guaranteed. Well, he said something super powerful on this call. He said there's three, there's three moments in time. There's the past, there's the present, and the future. And he gave an anecdote to kind of go with it, but the gist of it was why would you be in the present? Take your brain to go to the future, conjure up something that could potentially happen that hasn't happened, and then bring that thing that you thought about from the future back to the present and worry about it. You're living right now, but you're, you're worried about something that hasn't happened, probably won't happen, but it's affecting your present. It's affecting the way that you live your life right now. And I thought that's pretty damn powerful. Like why, why would you do that? Why would you? But it's so true. But if people do it, oh, well what if this happens? Well, if that happens in that moment, you'll, you can plan for if that happens, what you'll do. But there's no point in worrying about it, being fearful, being anxious. That's not healthy. That's not mentally healthy. No, we all go, my family, we all go to the same place each year for vacation, and we rent the same house, and we all stay together. And it's my wife and kids, and myself, and my parents, and my in-laws, and my sister-in-law,

29:12and obviously this year we've already put the deposit down, and this year, you know, trying to figure it out. And there's been a ton of back and forth, and ton of back and forth, and I always once said, hey, when's, when's, uh, when do we have to make the decision? And it was April 20th, and they moved it to May 20th. I said, okay, you'll get my decision on May 19th, because I don't have a clue what Florida's going to look like, or Tennessee's going to look like, or anything else is going to look like next week, which is the beginning of May, much less right now. We don't know what's going to look like at noon today. Right, and I know that you can, you can go to the beach in Florida. That's a factor. I also know that it's illegal to have a chair or a beach towel, because you can't Sunday, if you can only surf, swim, or walk. Well, part of our vacation is we go to the beach, and set up a tent, and watch kids play in the ocean, and sit in chairs. And I think we do that same vacation. Yeah, and so, um, I'm actually not going to try to figure out what May 19th looks like, um, because May 19th is going to get here, hopefully, and when it does, we'll talk about it then and make that decision, and if it doesn't, well, it's just one less decision that I don't have to make. True. All right. Power of positive thinking. The same thing about the past, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to figure out a lot of stuff, like, how did, how did, uh, how did the world fair after the, the, the Spanish flu?

30:46We can read about it, but what does that have to do with restaurants in 2020? Yeah, I think there's some, there's also, to me, a greater sense of community back then, um, which I think we need to learn. There wasn't social media, there wasn't, uh, there wasn't a, a media, media bias towards, um, uh, drama, right? No. Um, and, and so there's a lot of things different back then. Well, social media changes everything. Oh, instant, instantaneously, it does. Everything. It's the biggest thing. And I, I don't, I don't want to say instant gratification. I just want to say instant change. So you went to UT Knoxville, right? And you got your bachelor's in business administration. I did. Does some of this, does all of this, some of this, any of this, and I mean, I'm going to set aside the people side of this, because I think every single person out there feels for all the people, right? There are people that are hungry, that need food. There's a lot of, there's a lot of hurt going on right now. Okay. I'm not discounting any of that, but is there a side of this that absolutely intrigues you being a business guy that kind of also the chef, but there's a side of this that you just like, I don't know, you're kind of eager to learn about and like, it's fascinating. Are you kidding me? I wish I had a, uh, 10 million gallon storage container that I could have pumped oil into the other day when it hit negative $37 a barrel. Gosh, could have retired all day. If I just had like three or four pools in my backyard, I could have filled up.

32:29Yeah, you know, there's, there's, you have to in a business sense. Um, my grandfather, uh, let's see, he was born, he was in his twenties during the depression. Um, and we just thought he was a hard worker. He was a farmer. He's conservative or financially conservative. I don't want you, everybody to get in it up for about politics. He's financially conservative. Um, and where he was, he had the opportunity to buy a lot of land throughout the depression. Then he did. And it wasn't for this quick flipper turnaround. He just bought it. He was, people needed money or, or he found a deal and, and, and proposed it. And the person said, yes, however it was, it wasn't a predatory sense of acquisition. It was just, it just happened. Um, and he sat on it for years and years and years because he was in a part of Western Kentucky that really just wasn't a big thing, right? There wasn't a lot of development or whatnot, but then, but then McDonald's came and they needed land and he had the street corner they wanted. And, and so bit by bit, he made some decent money on that. Right. So, um, I will say that, that, uh, you know, the guy, and I hope he is listening to your podcast, but the guy that charged the lady in East national $27,000 to cut down and haul off her tree after the tornado. Um, um, $27,000, $27,000. Yes. He should be in jail. Yeah, completely. Right. You know, those guys, those predators that are out there that they, they need to be, they need to be checked. But, um, you know, now's the time, you know, if you've been looking at a house, now's the time to really look at it. Money's cheap. Bye. If you're looking to sell a house, uh, which my wife and I are, we still in a house in Charleston and we've had a tenant in there for a number of years. And I reached out just the other day and said, Hey, if you were looking to say,

34:31let's talk about, talk about selling it to you again, money's cheap. So, you know, there's, there's, there's opportunities here and in a very positive, uh, way for both parties, the buyer and the seller, the, or the, the inventor and the, and the consumer, whatever it may be, there's a lot of opportunity here. There's a lot of opportunities to start a market right now. Oh, I tell you, listen, if you can afford to trickle money in, trickle it in, I mean, completely. You know, when I was thinking, when I was at Merrill Lynch, I think the, the Dow reached, uh, gosh, 18, 18,000 maybe when I was there, trying to remember the high, when I was there. I think it hit 29 right before this whole thing happened. Well, it was. Yeah. So, so you think about it, just not even speculating on which stock device, just by the indices, by the S and P, by the Dow, by NASDAQ, right? The Dow Jones right now is at 24,000.

35:36Yeah. I needed dropped all the way down to what? 17. I mean, think about that 7,000 point gain. With 18, just buying that indices. You, yeah, you didn't get, you, you didn't pick the next Microsoft or Amazon or whatever, but also in that by Amazon, how many times does Amazon come to your house today? Well, not yet, but they will. Oh, no, I feel like if, if they ever want to start drone service, they could start it at my house. Cause we get, but it's, but again, my wife doesn't necessarily want to go to the grocery store by herself, much less with two kids right now. Okay. Well, they'll deliver it. Is there a fee? Sure is. But that's supporting somebody else as well. So it's mutually beneficial, right? Amazon, think about, look around. What are the essential businesses that you wouldn't think are essential? Well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking investment wise. I've been thinking about businesses that are sustainable, that have been closed. I mean, I look at like the retail sector, like Nordstrom that trades at like $42 and is sitting right now at like 18. I go, they haven't been sitting at 18. Like if you bought right now, Nordstrom, and it goes back to 30, you're making a 50% increase on your money, your money right there. There's so many, like Southwest Airlines is at $28 right now and it sits at 52 usually.

37:12You go, do you think that Southwest is going to return? I definitely would. 100%. Southwest, especially when you look at them from their history, from the beginning, when Herb Kellner who created it was, became one of the largest distributors of Jack Daniel's because you got a bottle of Jack Daniel's every time he took a flight from Dallas, LA or whatever it was. And the fact that he worked a position in the company, a different position in the company, until he worked every single one of them each year, right? Their business model and the way they've operated is more than going to weather this storm. When you get into the other carriers and especially some of the discount ones, they may not. They may not come back as quickly. So, I completely agree with you. I would look at the, look at the thing we didn't even think about, like the Lysol, the Johnson & Johnson for stuff like that. They've taken a hit with the market, but they're still producing. Let's talk about food companies. I mean, Cisco's at $56 and it normally trades around $80. U.S. Foods is at $20 and they're usually sitting around $42.

38:28PFG is at $27.75 this very minute and they're usually around the $45 range. Like, gosh, if you... All will come back. You and I both know that. All those are not going to quit going up here. Car manufacturers, I would say that they're at a great discount and probably going to get a little cheaper. They probably, you know, gas companies, probably the discount probably going to get a little bit cheaper, maybe. But don't try to predict the floor either, right? And don't get mad to me, you know, I go in and buy a stock right now for $50 and tomorrow it's $45. Don't get mad about that. If you still believe in it, buy some more if you can. Yeah, and still lower that price base. Full disclaimer, do not, like, we're not giving any financial advice here. Like, don't go and buy a bunch of these particular stocks and be like, you told me to buy them. Like, any investment you make out there is your own risk. That is your own deal. I don't want you to spend your stimulus money on stocks and then this thing takes a turn and you lose all that money. That is not what I'm telling you to do. This is your own... Please, do not hold me accountable for anything that you decide to do. But we will take 10% on any gains that you make. A thousand percent. Yes. When you make... What you just said got me thinking, I bet there's somebody out there that is taking the $600 that they're getting a week and straight throwing it at something like the market and they're going to come out of this just wealthy.

40:07When all these big blue chip stocks are 50% off right now and you go, hey, I can put all this money in there and then in six months it's gonna, you know, it's gonna pay me. Yeah. Will you tell me that crude oil and negative 37 a barrel, that there's not an opportunity there? This is how the rich get richer. I mean, that literally, that means... and I called my dad who worked for Pilot Oil for the last 20 years, at least, if not longer. I said, explain this to me because I have my definition in my somewhat educated brain and I feel like it's wrong. I'm second guessing myself. And what does this mean? And he said, basically, it means for these deliverables right now, the futures are different and the market's different, but for these deliverables right now, I have to pay you $37 and whatever it was, a barrel that you take from me. I said, that's exactly what I thought it meant. He said, yeah, there's somebody out there right now just tickled pink. I said, yeah. Well, there's, I saw a thing on theweatherchannel.com that had, there's like hundreds of huge tankers sitting off the coast of California. They're just, these oil companies are paying like $50,000 a day for these tankers just to hold their oil. It's like they're just sitting there parked like, damn, I wish I had a tanker right now. Well, that's it. And you know, people don't think, oh, just stop pumping. Well, so here's the deal. Once you break the seal in a well, you either pump it out or the earth pumps it back into itself. That's it. It goes away, right?

41:56There's a limited amount of time and it doesn't happen, you know, overnight, but you can't just stop and, and through the lid back on the milk carton and put it in the fridge. Yeah. You, you, once you start pumping, you've got to, or it'll dry up. You know, I'll tell you what, we've been talking for 45 minutes and this is Nashville restaurant radio. I don't think we've talked about a restaurant yet. We talked briefly. We talked briefly about a restaurant. Yeah, briefly. Yeah. But this is, this is the interview with Matt Bolas that you're not going to get anywhere else. And I have to say that part one really was the interview with Matt Bolas. You're not going to get anywhere else. Um, in part two, we do get into the 404 kitchen and we talk about what he's doing. But again, we just continue to talk about all kinds of stuff. Um, so I hope you enjoyed part one. We, we definitely went off the rails a little bit and I guarantee you that we are going to do a followup to both part one and part two inside the restaurant while cooking and there will be video involved. So thanks for sticking around. Thanks for listening to part one. Part two will be out this afternoon. So you do not have to wait too long, but just a little bit. I also want to thank Janet Kurtz and Kurtz hospitality. If you're really thinking about what you need to do, if you have any questions, give her a call. She's amazing. Uh, check her out at Kurtz hospitality dot com. As always hope you're doing well. Hope you're being safe. Love you guys. Bye.