Matt Leff

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville Restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host and happy Monday to you. We have got an amazing show today. I know I always say that but it's true. We really do. Matt Leff is on the show today. He was my very first interview that I ever did for Nashville Restaurant Radio back on March 16th and he's back seven months later just to kind of talk about all the things that have happened and perspective and where we've come and what he's doing and where the festival industry is and where the beer industry is and just a good catch-up, good conversation. We are so excited that you are here to join us for this.

01:11Want to mention Trust 20. Trust 20 is out there right now. They are visiting restaurants. They are certifying people in 20 tactics to keep your restaurant clean and safe for your employees as well as your guests. They will give you cool stickers to put on your windows to let your guests know that you are certified and they will promote you also. They'll get you out there. Let everybody know that you are certified. So head over to trustthenumber20.com and request your certification today. They'll come out and check it out and I think it's pretty important that you do so. Also want to tell you that we've got t-shirts for sale. Brand new Nashville Restaurant Radio t-shirts. They are in all sizes and you can go to nashvillerestaurantradio.com to purchase one and we also have hats. Bunch of different hats, t-shirts and if you order a t-shirt or a hat I will throw in a couple stickers as a gift to you for helping support us. We certainly appreciate it. The t-shirts are super soft and super comfortable so they're those type t-shirts you touch. You're like yes this is what I want. The Canvas Tri-Blend. They are so soft and comfortable definitely to wear around town but even to wear to bed. Whatever. Love to have you support us.

02:36Thank you so much. Also want to tell you that we have got a YouTube channel. You find us on YouTube. I break down the roundup. I've got all the individual segments on there. Lots of interviews. This interview today is up. Sometimes I edit out the audio a little bit and then the video is just the full video. So out of this episode there's probably two or three minutes that is not in this audio you're going to hear today but will be on the video. So I don't know if you guys knew that that I kind of edit out the audio for the show but then the video is just uncut. Have a good time. Most of the time. Those are like audio issues or something but so there you go. There's a little there's some Easter eggs in the videos if you watch them but please go to YouTube. Subscribe to our channel or go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. Click the watch tab and click the video you want to watch. It'll take you straight there. So thank you guys for listening today. Let me know what you think. I'll always love some feedback and we'll jump right in.

03:36Sweet. All right with much excitement welcoming back into the show Matt Leff the owner of Rhizome Productions. What's up Matt? Good to see you. How's everybody doing? We're you know what we're we're doing great man. We are as I think that we're blessed and we're making it. We're hanging on by the skin of our teeth. How about yourself? It's all we can do right now. Survive right? You know what I feel like you and I have like some similar kind of things going on because this thing happened and I'm a restaurant consultant. I mean every restaurant closed essentially and they don't want to spend money on this kind of thing and your company does events. Yeah we're the last to recover in this mess we're in. The last to recover and you I think that you have a similar mindset that we've both just like pedal to the metal hustling everything we possibly can mowing yards like hey I got kids I have to feed. Who's in? Who wants to who wants to work with me? And that's just kind of been your MO and mine too. I think that's just been my MO for like my entire life. I've just been bred that way by my my family.

05:04They were always business owners and had to make it on their own and not have any help from anybody else so it's kind of my mentality. So if anything it's a good time to have that mentality. Yeah it's definitely been been helpful. So you were back to like March the 16th. You were the very first interview. You were the first guest on Nashville Restaurant Radio. I don't know if you recognize that. You're blowing it up. We both just celebrated last week writers picks in the Nashville scene best of Nashville 2020. Best brewery events. Ryzone virtual beer festivals. Yeah and I would maybe drop the word festival. I would call them more experiences. They're a little more obviously more intimate than what one would think of a festival. But either way honored to to get that. It was a surprise to me. I'm sure it's a surprise for you. Yeah you know innovating is the key right now and pivoting which is seems to be the word of the year. So you know that's what we're doing. We've got actually we got one tomorrow with with Nicky's Co-Fired. I know Caroline was on the show last week. We're doing we're doing a take and bake pizza pairing with them or we did and it's got a nine pack of beer all custom tailored to go with one of their take and bake pizzas. There's three different topping types on this one six slice pizza and we're gonna have people from the breweries on. We're gonna talk about it and drink and we got a concert that's going on in the middle of it.

06:44We've been doing these every month now about twice a month. How was it working with the Galzins? Oh they're the best. I manage a way to work her into every podcast somehow. I mean she's like the the mayor of Nashville restaurants. I don't know I think it's amazing. Yeah I mean I feel the same way you know. I threw this idea at Tony and it wasn't really discussion. He's like let's do it dude. You know they're there they want to do whatever they can do to engage their community and their audience. And there's a lot of you know there's a lot of bleed there between what I can do with them. They've always been great to work with. They've been part of our events in the past that have involved food and always super willing and and able and their food's awesome so you can't go wrong. So last time we talked I want to go over some of this and then I want to kind of catch up to exactly what you're doing. I want to talk more about these home beer festivals. Yeah. You, your life, what life has been like. I got lost to talk to you about. Last time we talked was on March the 16th and it was a, I don't know if it feels like it was a really really long time ago or it was yesterday. It's weird. I feel you know what I'm going to say definitively it feels like it was 2004. First of all because I was talking to you at like nine o'clock at night. I do these interviews in the mornings. I was talking to you at nine o'clock at night. I was holding my cell phone on speakerphone up to a microphone while I was talking to you and it tells. If you go back and listen to our first episode it's like is he on speakerphone? Yes he is. That's what's going on there. I was also like lounging on my couch with the TV on mute in the background. It was a very strange moment. Well I put on Facebook. I put a post on Facebook and I go hey I'm going to start a podcast. Who wants to come on and talk?

08:44There's a bunch of crazy shit going on right now and you were like I'm game dude let's roll and I was like okay cool send me your number let's talk and what came out of that if you go back and listen I ask everybody listening right now to go back to the March I released it on St. Patrick's Day March 17th episode where some pretty amazing things came out of that interview. We talked about all the things you were doing the East Nashville Beer Festival which was supposed to have the 10 year anniversary and you said we're going to do that in a couple of weeks Lord willing if we can make that happen we're going to have that. I mean hopefully we can still do it. You were very cognizant of being responsible and not throwing events. I loved just the integrity of my first instinct is to be safe and I don't want to do anything that's going to be a spreading of this virus. Hey let's try and get one more in before it really hits. You were like no we've really got to take this thing seriously and I love that but the optimism of in a few weeks we're going to do the East Nashville Beer Festival we're going to go one of my favorite comments that you made was you said if we can hunker down for these 15 days it may seem like a really long time but if we can get through these 15 days I think we're going to be all right. God I wish. What does that statement feel like right now? That I had no fucking clue what I was saying. I wish that was the truth man that would have been amazing.

10:23Could you imagine that day I mean beginning of March can you imagine right now just what we're doing today? Could you imagine where we are? Definitely not. I mean look there's such little what you know most people that are alive right now never went through this unless you know you're 100 years old almost and lived through you know the plague in 1918 or whatever it's the pandemic of 1918. I mean none of us have done this before. We're figuring it out. It still sucks but you know I feel like it's a little it's a little more manageable now. We know what to do. We've got the information. You know if you got half a brain it's doable. It's not the same you know. I haven't seen my parents since December. You know like there's some challenges if you don't have family close by. You know we don't get to socialize with friends like we used to but you know we can do this and it's better than nothing. I really feel like this is I feel for people. I'm trying to be empathetic for people. I know you've got to do this too but like I've done over a hundred podcasts since that day. I've had over a hundred interviews since we did that interview and I've got to have such these deep meaningful conversations with so many people like I feel like I've never connected with people before on the level in which I've been connecting with people over this time. I think I think having to do this one-on-one you know you're kind of focused. You're not out at a bar or a restaurant distracted. You know it's it's there's an intensity to doing these things online and we were doing it simultaneously for a little while. I did about four months of of twice a week doing this with people in the beer industry. I've tailored it down just because we've all kind of found our our our our lane and I think everybody's in it and just focusing. It's a little less dynamic right now and I'm sure we'll bring it back when we need to. But there's there's definitely an intensity of doing these sort of you know podcasts and video

12:26conversations where there's less distraction because you know I'm in my garage by myself. You're at home by yourself. You know there's less distraction so it does I think allow for a little more clarity. If you could go back to that interview March 16th March let me wake up the morning of March 17th and you could give yourself advice. Knowing what you know today what advice would you give yourself? Good question. Parenting is a lot harder than I realized. Um diversify your income sources. Probably a good one. I think a lot of people in my world can agree with that now. Um you know god yeah those are probably my uh would be my two takeaways. So parenting is hard. Have you because you know we have children just like you. How old are your kids? Just about six and just about four. So yeah. Yeah you're four and six and I'm five and seven. So um I thought I was a good dad and then then I'm home with them for three months.

13:40Not leaving the house like my wife went to the store. I never left. Like she would like mask up and do she had like plastic gloves on would go to the store like take her clothes off in the garage. We would then burn them and she would walk inside. It was a whole process back in the day. I didn't leave. So I got to know my kids on a different level and it was amazing because I didn't realize how much I had missed. I'm with you there. Yeah it was uh very intense and definitely moments where you didn't know if the pandemic was worse or having your kids home 24 hours a day was worse. And you know the same thing goes for spouses. I mean you know spending that much time with your spouse. I mean the divorce rates and people breaking up has been insane. Yeah yeah yeah it's good time to be a therapist. Good time to be a therapist. Amen for sure. That's the business you uh you want to be in that and I think creating alcohol. People are certainly drinking more. People are certainly drinking more. Yes so um I also asked you I said what is your beer of the moment and you said um I'm gonna drink a lot of sour lambics. Yeah sounds about right. That you were drinking and then you said that you had went to Publix and bought some high life and uh the people at Publix were amazing but the high life was exactly what you needed. You're drinking a lot of lagers and pilsners. Yep and believe it or not I still have three of those high lives in the fridge behind me. Seven months later. I did a shit job of drinking it. Well hey but now that you have them maybe you'll have one tonight to to celebrate the the second interview. I should. I think they may have went on a date by now but I'll drink it anyway because it won't taste any different.

15:27Well that's what you said. You said you know um IPAs you feel a sense of urgency to drink faster because they go bad but Miller High Life you can keep in your fridge forever and they're still good. Yeah I'll stand by that. There it is. What are you drinking today? What's on your uh what have you discovered? Anything you've discovered amazing during pandemic? Yeah so I recently went and visited the guys who um who started Walker Brothers Kombucha here in town. They're out by the airport. Um not too far from King Market actually. Really? Yeah yeah where I actually they're in the same um office complex that I used to work in when I first moved to Nashville before Rhizome uh and I was doing you know in the tech world um they're in the same space right over on Air Park Drive. You probably not far from far from where your brother used to live um and they're doing regular kombuchas non-alcoholic and then they're also doing what they're calling their high gravity kombuchas aka their five percent alcohol so not high gravity in the sense but uh but have some alcohol in them and two brothers great story the uh the um the scoby that they're using is actually from like their aunt who lives up in Connecticut when they were moving here like hey come visit we'll give you some scoby to take with you and they started making it at home and now what is scoby scoby is the actual um organism or the the basically the the uh the bugs that make kombucha you know because it's a fermented beverage um so the the scoby is what actually creates kombucha and ferments it okay so you seem to know much more about this than I do I love kombucha because um two days from now I celebrate my one year of sobriety mazel tov thank you so I drink a lot of kombucha but like I just it's like fermented tea is what I've kind of and there's lots of flavors what is what is kombucha can you help me so in its simplest form it is fermented black tea and it dates back to like I want to say the 1500s in Mongolia is where

17:30it came from so it's an ancient drink um and the the actual like uh the bacteria is that that fermented the name for that is a scoby that's kind of the uh the extent of my knowledge okay there we go there we go and what is the name of these two walker brothers walker brothers I'll introduce you on an email you should do a show with them great people um hang on I'm going to show you a can to your your viewers because I have them right here you're reading my mind I was like uh I want their name I want to interview them so this is one of their high gravity so it's five and it's a watermelon lime they can them all um they just came out actually uh you know I'm whatever I promote everybody they just came out with like a chai kombucha that's no alcohol for the season and I got to taste it before they canned it it was delicious wow okay yeah I'll introduce you to them they're good thank you uh they actually we featured their blackberry high gravity kombucha in our pizza pairing um with nicky's and it was awesome sweet yeah um okay so that's what the kombucha knowledge well what what else you got what else you've been drinking you like the walker brothers high gravity kombucha yeah where could find any liquor store or anything um you know they're they're around town I think they're at like probably some liquor stores they're probably at a turnip truck and whole foods and places okay cool um and I think there's some on-premise places that are starting to pick them up especially with the cans makes it pretty easy there should be more on-premise places they're local yeah right here in Nashville local kombucha that's in a can that's I got got alcohol in it I saw you were drinking uh may pop my buddy Matt Herrick who started may pop making sparkling water delicious I friended him on Facebook I was like yeah I want to learn more about that too I mean I I you know since I guess I don't drink I don't want that to be my defining thing but when I go out I still like to feel special you know I mean I still like to celebrate cheers people and you

19:30know kind of hang out and not feel like I can't be part of the group because I have to have water tea so I always like there to be some kind of other option kombucha is great just the flavor is good gives you kind of an energy I like the bubbles yeah and um you know I like the effervescence of a drink so I'm always looking for new things and may pop was really good he's really impressed by that great job and it's been nice to see him I mean he just started it of course like right before the pandemic um you know rough timing but he's doing a great job he's been out at all the farmers markets every week and I think he's doing a really great job and it's delicious to top it off um I've been drinking a lot of uh German beers obviously you know Oktoberfest came and went I've got a bunch of polliner Oktoberfest behind me you can see it right there no right there yep I see it um so I've been I love I love lagers and pilsners I'm still drinking a lot of those you know it's something just about the simplicity of a good lager that I think uh just kind of kind of where I want to be um but with these virtual events I've been you know I've myself we've been building these packages we've been curating these beers and working with breweries but I've been getting to try a lot of stuff that I may not go and you know buy a six pack of or four pack of so that's been fun we've been so we've been doing these virtual events since June we've been doing two a month um so June July August September so we've done you know about 10 of them so far um I think they're doing really well I mean they're they're small they're not really about making money they're more about engagement and showing people that there are things that we can do during these challenging times that keep us safe but allow us to have some fun so those are usually the general uh program is two hours we do them on zoom everybody gets to dial in we encourage people to use their cameras and sort of build these fun tablescapes and really get into it so they include usually about eight to ten different beers some sort of food the majority of them have been chocolate

21:32cheese and charcuterie that we curate and pair with the beers we get a bunch of cool merchandise from all the breweries we do a concert in the middle sort of like an intermission 10 minute concert um we've had a lot of royale perform we've had the rock and roll residency uh perform uh patrick's not patrick uh got him drawing a blank on his name it'll come to me um these just virtual you just have is it like a band or like a guy and a guitar or a girl and guitar so the rock and roll residency was the three main guys in the rock and roll residency um elana royale it's her and her husband jared who's the guitar player um the other musicians are usually solo but they'll zoom in you know they've got home studios and they'll play for 10 15 minutes people are super generous and tip them well they make you know like 100 bucks in 10 minutes that's great yeah i mean you know look musicians are challenged right now everything's virtual it's hard to make money as a musician um so we've been doing these and again they're surprisingly engaging and fun we we like i said we challenge people to make cheese plates and tablescapes they submit photos we pick a winner and give them a special beer from the rhizome seller um so it's been great and you know we're going to do those through the end of the year and we'll see what happens next year i saw that you have december the fifth was the winter warmer that obviously is not happening well so it's canceled uh i mean december fifth is still a little ways away yeah you know we we so we flirted with the idea of trying to pull it off we looked at a lot of different options we spoke with metro public health we spoke with metro parks and we know from a production standpoint that we can produce a safe and good environment where we can do it right problem is is once you start drinking we can't control you and that's the reality and yeah we just don't want to take that chance so we're going to put together a virtual we'll probably announce that in the next couple days here um where we're going to basically pick

23:34a couple of our favorite breweries from over the years that have been part of winter warmer and put together a package that will feature great winter warmer beers we'll make our winter warmer cups that we make normally and we'll do those virtually so it may be one or two weekends of a virtual winter warmer but it's not in person this is not the year for that unfortunately wow that's that's that's just depressing i mean it's almost as depressing as the first interview just hearing all of these amazing events that aren't happening and you're just like damn yeah but you're doing lost their whole year in terms of in-person events so how are you getting along i mean i know we talked about hustling and just kind of doing things like how can if i got listeners out there who are like dude i freaking love this guy he's awesome and he's doing all this stuff for people i'd love to support him help him financially whatever it might be how do people do that uh participate in our virtual events like i said they're not necessarily about making money but they put a little bit in the bank you know that that works i mean like i said i've been i've always been hustling so i've got two side hustles right now that you know are making sure i can pay the bills and feed the family and that's all that matters right now you know the main thing is we want to still help people so that's why we've so with these virtual events you know we're buying beer from our local and regional breweries you know nicky's like i said participated in one we're paying them for the food so it's just about helping each other and that's what we're doing the when we do the cheese that all comes through the bloomy rind which is a local cheese purveyor here in town kathleen cotter she's been doing it literally about the same time that we started uh rhizome back in in 2011 so we've been working with her on the cheese uh the chocolate that we include is alvin sinclair over in east nashville scott good friend of ours um you should have him on the show by the way i you know what great interview he scott witherill right yeah i've um i've known him for years and i need to i need to i you know what there's like 50 people right now

25:35that are on my list and you know somebody said you're gonna you know you do four shows a week you do three shows a week you're gonna run out of people and i'm like no i feel like uh i i feel like every day there's like 15 more people i'm like oh i want to talk to that person i want to talk to that person and i feel bad sure because i don't want people out there to feel like they're not being prioritized when they hear different interviews but i'm like get in touch with me send me a message that says hey man i'd love to come on the show let's pick a date yeah and i'll lock it in and we'll just do it but other than that it's a it's a challenge to to you know like you said we've got i've got a couple other things i'm doing also almost like a full-time job this is something that isn't you know um i would love this to be my full-time job but um maybe one day maybe one day yeah i mean hey if i if i could do a virtual event every weekend it could become maybe a full-time job um yeah actually what we're working on right now one thing that that kind of could be a cool result of these we worked with an importer that brings in a bunch of products from belgium and germany and england and we we did an event here in nashville with their beers and it was really well received and uh the local or the regional representative for that importer presented the event to the entire company on their national sales meeting and it was extremely surprisingly well received this is a company that's just a little set in their way has been around a long time they're not necessarily dynamic in how they look at things and a lot of their reps from around the country saw this and were like wow when's the last time we had 50 people physically or virtually in a room listening and drinking only the beers we bring into the country and we're working on essentially picking some key cities that they distribute these beers and doing a multi-city virtual event where we'll host it here from nashville but we'll have people dialing in from about six to eight different cities across the east coast they'll all be working with a local host retailer rather in those cities to pick up

27:38these boxes and we're actually going to ship the chocolate and the cheese and the charcuterie from nashville to all of these retailers across the country it'll go in the boxes and then we'll have a multi-city event where we're you know doing this with this importer and that that's actually some real money potentially there could be yeah you know some real opportunity there where you know maybe that's a couple thousand dollars uh you know on a saturday hosting a virtual event for two three hundred people across the country which is really cool that's that's amazing i mean that's just and what a fun event what a fun time that would be just to do all of that you know yeah and we encourage like you know i've done a lot of these where everybody's muted and if if people are talkative we'll mute everybody but we want engagement we want people that be asking questions and really you know diving in on it so to have that many people in on a zoom potentially um that are they're obviously buying this because they want to learn about it they want to drink it they want to experience it so the feedback that can come from that could be really great and you know we record these we share them with the breweries and the importers and accounts so that could potentially build into something where these virtual events may you know become something that live on even when we can get back to in-person events can i ask you something really weird yeah um i'm not trying to be negative but do you have to like to get people on these things do you have to like check ids no i mean because like what if you have like a guy with his kids there they go i don't care if my kids drink they can hang out and drink are you like do you feel are you responsible in any way for that so they have to pick it up at a retailer that retailer has to check their id once they take it home it's not my problem okay good well i didn't know i was like all of a sudden i was thinking like how cool would it be to do these events because there's a lot of things you don't have to deal with i mean you get to do like all of the positives of an event where you get to talk about the beer and have this intimate connection and you get to control the whole thing from one central location instead of ids and drunk people and porta potties and all of

29:44the things that you have to kind of simpler than than it once was yeah i mean do you think this could be the new way in which festivals are done i mean the the the connection the experience the community that our events create in person is definitely not the same virtually um i think people are getting used to it but at the same time i think there's some fatigue um out there you know um but you know in my opinion i think it's going to be a while until we really get back to events in their normal sense it may be like a full year from now in my opinion if not longer that's i mean i'm i'm a realist don't get me wrong i'm not i'm not being negative but pandemics don't end overnight takes a long time i mean read the read the history read the books you know i don't know i think that we're gonna have we're gonna have a vaccine we're gonna have a vaccine in less than a month it's gonna be really good we're gonna all it's gonna be it's gonna be huge at the end of the year it's gonna just go away it's just gonna disappear play the accordion make plans make plans i don't know january vaccine you know i i'm i'm not i'm i don't want to get my hopes up i don't want to get our fans hopes up i'm ready and you know one of the things that a lot of and i think we maybe talked about this in march one of the really lucky lucky things of our business that being rhizome is we can kind of go into hibernation in reality you know we don't have overhead we don't have an office we don't have rent we don't have loans we don't have debt we're you know at the end of the day we're a tiny company and we can really we can hibernate we can push pause and be ready when we can get back at it you know are there financial hardships you know can i pay the people who have supported me can i support all the other businesses that made our events possible no and that is what kind of weighs on me but we you know we can be ready as soon as it's safe to get right back out there

31:45and we know the demand will be there i think there will be some people who still are worried about you know safety and proximity to other people and that's okay we we can we can make that environment safe when the time is right but we're really lucky in the sense that you know we're we're not some giant machine that you know eats money every day like i was i'm going to not to compare myself to an airline but i read an article about southwest they burn literally just fucking light it on fire 16 million dollars a day that's how much it costs to run that airline damn somehow they're still there i don't know how but they are they lost 1.6 billion dollars last quarter that's more than i make in a year it's more than i'll probably make in a year pardon my language but um you know we don't have you know we don't have a burn rate in reality and we're really lucky a lot of businesses do like look at all of our friends in restaurants they have rent they have food costs they have health insurance that maybe they're providing for their employees because they're they're awesome people how do you survive when you've got a burn rate that's 50 grand a month 100 grand a month well i mean that's that that's that's the crux of it i mean that's the question that's one of the main reasons why you know i want to bring people on and promote them and that's why i've been screaming from the mountaintops that you need to be eating local i mean these are people that the the restaurant scene is the cultural center i mean people come to nashville they don't just come to nashville because the grand ol' opera they come to nashville because arnold's meat and three and i come to nashville for these iconic places that create who nashville is and if we're not out supporting those places they're gonna go away and you know what comes in when those restaurants go away red lobster you know like red lobster and these you know big chains come in and we have enough of that garbage yeah and you know when

33:48when you're upset because davis kid is no longer you know davis kid bookstore in green hill is the greatest bookstore and then it's gone and people go oh man that sucks the corporate takeover i'm like when was the last time you were there and they're like i have been there in years and you're like that's why they're closed because you're buying shit on amazon right now and you're buying stuff from borders and these other gigantic bookstores like go support the local places that um take care of you yeah you show up you tell them you're outside they'll put the books in your trunk it's great we do that month with our kids they love it and right there in that little corner the donut den you know i mean fox's donut den is like the best and we went to five daughters last weekend and it was good the donut was great we love the donut and dog too but like there's something about the donut den that's just so damn good every time i go somewhere and i bring donuts like a meeting or something i always make the trip through green hills and i always bring donut den donuts because i i want to send that message yeah that i care have you uh have you tried status dough over in east nashville no i'm writing it down you need they are i love fox's they're classic status dough is like take the classic donut and just elevate it maybe one layer they're not fancy donuts they're not foo foo donuts but they're just like like the chocolate is real chocolate it's not chocolate with 19 chemicals okay status dough in east nashville check them out they started in noxville and then decided to open up a location in nashville it's over on gallatin up it's almost in inglewood i think and they are some of the best donuts i've ever had period what are some other local places any other places that you've enjoyed or been able to go get take out or anything that you want to give a shout out to i will i will say my cooking game which has always been pretty strong has definitely taken it to the next level the past

35:52few months we we have not been doing a ton of takeout obviously we're trying to be wise with our pennies of course you know kroger and kns world market probably get most of my money and cosco i should say we so when we do takeout we have frequented korea house quite a bit we love korea house they were closed actually for quite a while in the beginning of the pandemic they didn't reopen until like may because they're a tiny restaurant you know old school korean family i think they were resident and risk adverse but they're back open we've been doing a lot of takeout from them sona obana our kids love sona obana over on white bridge road so we've been doing some sushi takeout from them what else have we done gosh we eat real ethnic in our house so wong tofu over on charlotte pike is a vietnamese banh mi shop that i go to quite frequently have you been to east side banh mi yet i have fantastic i tried the lemongrass chicken banh mi i really enjoyed it i need to go back and try some of their other stuff i'm trying to think what else we've done recently oh you know you know we're gonna try it not far from from your house either is uh tito's opened up this week they did open it's open can you open the restaurant in the middle of a fucking pandemic like i know what i'm i know what i'm doing tonight so if you haven't been to tito's i've been to camino real over in franklin like west pueblo real playboy real sorry pueblo real it's out of the way it's far but it's some of the best like mexican american food i've had in middle tennessee it's not nolensville road mexican for the real deal but in terms of like beans and cheese and meat melt it on a plate i think it's like top level it's amazing yeah they're right by our house we used to live in spring hill and they opened a tito's in like the right next to our house like we lived in the subdivision right behind that croaker and they opened a tito's right there and then we moved and i was like damn why we are big we're

37:54big el agaveiro people yeah your brother always tells me to go there and i still have yet to try it el agaveiro is fantastic if you live in belview like el agaveiro i mean there's cancun there's u.s border there's all these mexican restaurants in belvia but el agaveiro is like next to the bed bath and beyond back in the corner and it is top notch however now that tito's is open you could walk the tito's if there was a sidewalk tito's is really really i could yeah i could totally walk to tito's it really i i you know i know it's a family-owned business and like i said i've been to poybro real which is like the i guess where they started yeah and you can just tell like it's quality food you order their uh they're they have a special guacamole that's not pre-made the casserole they're legit they're legit delicious food so i'm excited about that we haven't tried it yet but um yeah we you know we we've probably done takeout maybe once every two weeks we really um we keep it minimal i did i was really lucky uh my good friend aaron clemens who i also should get on the show with you uh is starting a new sandwich joint over in englewood called bill's sandwich palace yes they did a pop-up uh two weekends ago uh at sloco uh or insert chef here down in 12 south jeremy barlow's place yeah we talked about them yesterday on the round up or last week on the roundup i forget this is monday really really really good and actually they're doing a pop-up today and tomorrow yeah monday tuesday in east nashville at their location which will be out of they're going to be operating at a tko in englewood um okay so tko today monday and tomorrow tuesday correct you'll be able to order lunch i think it's going to be from 11 to four they'll be doing a couple sandwiches a pasta and some side dishes um all online you just go pick it up um and uh i'll make sure to connect you and aaron you guys should uh should do an interview yes we you know what we should do we should collaborate there's all these chef collaborations we should do we should collaborate and do a couple interviews together i'd love that

40:00we could do like a joint rhizome home production and nashville restaurant radio collaboration and just go live on both of our channels and do it at the same time i love it let's do it i mean why not right i love it yeah chefs can do it why can't we do it i'm i'm in let's do it we'll get we'll we'll get aaron on together we can talk sandwiches and beer yeah i love it that's great this is why we do these things this is so much fun but uh but yeah so outside of that you know like i said we've been we've been cooking a lot uh you know last week not that it's homemade but every now and then when we go to kns we'll just buy like five different kinds of dim sum dumplings and steam it all up one night for dinner my kids love it dumplings have you heard about locust uh it's it's been infecting my social feed so i need to go it has been hasn't it's opening uh opening this week they're open this week so dumplings and and trevor great great chef um it's nice to see that he's feeding people in nashville again it is i think everybody in the whole city is really excited about that place and like six months when you can just walk in and order food i'm going to be really excited about that so i don't want to turn the interview around but i want to ask you a question because you come on to chefs and restaurant owners from now there's still restaurants opening it's really hard for me to understand that because there are so many challenges you don't have dining rooms um on the flip side though we see well you do have dining rooms well but limited capacity 50 whatever it is your rent's not 50 your food costs aren't 50 your sales taxes and 50 um you know it's hard to imagine opening a restaurant when you can't do it what we perceived as normal once um what's been what have you what's been the conversations that you've had in terms of like what it's like not just to operate a restaurant right now but to open one like have you talked to anybody who has recently opened yeah and then we've talked to a

42:02lot of people who've recently opened restaurants and the thing is is that they restaurants take years to open you know so nobody decided to open a restaurant during the pandemic all of the restaurants that are they've continued the process they've continued the process and i think it's a math problem so i mean if you you talked about those expenses southwest airlines printed 16 million a day there's a cost so there's an initial investment that you have when it comes to opening a restaurant and you you do all of the lawyers there's a legal fee to negotiate the space and the lease and you get all of that done and then you start buying equipment you build it out you pay contractors you do all of this work and then you know you're just supposed to like stay and hold me all that stuff was done presumably before the pandemic i mean nobody i mean people saw this coming so i mean do you just stop because you still have all that money you've just spent so i mean the idea here is get it open as quick as possible and stop the bleeding if i can fill my dining room halfway and run you know i think what people are doing is they're being smarter with how they're doing it and the recommendation i put on the show last week was to really do a great job with to go with delivery i mean so many people to go and delivery isn't part of their model but we've all had to kind of the word pivot again you've had to pivot to that but i've been talking about to go and delivery over the past two years i mean people kids today are born with a cell phone in their hand and well i mean it's true i mean people today are born technology is the next wave if you're not in on technology or you think it's a fad you're going to fail so i mean people dining off premise is the wave of the future it is so easy to look at my phone i don't order pizza that way anymore it was the last time you picked up a phone called a place and said yeah i'd like a pizza no you just order it on your phone and you walk in and pick it up that's how and i think the pandemic has fast forwarded this trend because people have realized now this is so easy to do so new

44:05restaurants that are coming in have a strong game plan for how they're going to do to go and delivery it's a huge revenue revenue source and then if you can do your dining room at halfway i think that they're they're not generating profits i think the name of the game right now is to try and break even yeah keep people employed and that's that's the you're opening a new restaurant there's still a buzz i mean we're still talking about it i mean locust is going to be busy as hell um the optimist is doing really well over there in germantown yes i was the bar manager there or bar director there yes i mean these restaurants that are opening are doing pretty good i mean i think the restaurants that are really struggling are the people that nobody really knows about and can't really do a lot of marketing or that don't have a reputation for being safe i think that getting out there and proactively i'm going to do a show this week and my new segment on brand is going to be about mediocrity and how right now so many people i hear the excuse and i say it's an excuse i mean it's legitimate i'm not just being unempathetic but the excuse of oh we're in a pandemic this is really hard like i get it it is that is true however you gotta sit down in a room of people that are really smart and go how do we beat that how do we get beyond it and you know what the restaurants that are getting beyond that who have somebody at the front door who's greeting you who's opening that front door for you so you don't have to touch it that first impression right if i walk into a restaurant and nobody talks to me and there's people standing right in front of the door nobody opens the door because i'm conscious about touching stuff and like if somebody opens the door for me and they check my temp now that you can do it on your wrist and they check my wrist temp and they say welcome to xyz restaurant we're so excited you're here let me tell you a little how the dining experience is going to go this evening first we're going to see each table there's a qr code on the table we really want to do everything touch free want you to feel safe and comfortable we're excited

46:07about you being here if you ever don't feel comfortable let us know but enjoy your dining experience and they just let you in like why are restaurants not doing that and if you're not doing that or you're not being safe that's mediocre and that's you kind of mailing it in and i don't expect those other restaurants that are going to make it right now you've got to be going above and beyond to to show the general public and show your guests that you take this thing seriously and that it doesn't just reflect on the front entrance discos all this reverberates through the entire restaurant the things that we're doing and you've got to be better you've got to be better than everybody else and the restaurants that do that right now are killing it i agree i think technology has saved so many businesses as long as they embrace it i do think this is my my opinion i am a little worried you know coming into winter it's going to be colder outdoor seating is going to be a little more challenging even with heaters and those things like you know you put a hot plate of pasta down on the table and it's 40 degrees outside it's going to be cold in five minutes yeah you know and i think going coming in the winter you know people are going to i think maybe be a little more hesitant to even sit down in a reduced capacity restaurant just between flu and everything else like completely agree it i think i think unfortunately we haven't truly seen the effects that this is going to have on restaurants in the long term i mean even though it's been seven months i think it's only going to get harder especially as we come in the winter you know look the federal government has done a shit job at getting restaurants the help they need music venues the help they need you know my industry not just me personally i meant like events and yeah i mean i i really feel for everybody who owns a venue in this town you know chris cobb good friend josh over at marathon like it's a hard time mike grimey i mean it's such a hard time to think you know they have these great facilities that are historic and host amazing concerts and we can't go and you know their rents do you know my like the only good

48:10thing that came of the tornado for mike grimey is that he hasn't been able to be been open but construction is almost done and guess what rent's going to be due um you know yeah so i think that that's and people have been there's been some amazing stories of landlords that have been incredibly gracious and understanding and people that said look you know again caroline galzin tells me all the time and you know because i ask her like how are you guys doing how are you guys doing and tony over there which you mentioned tony i always talk about caroline but tony and caroline they're both together both amazing but they you know she tells me her landlord she goes he's the best dude like he is so amazing this guy is just giving us like he has been so amazing and she just sings his praises and i know not everybody gets that opportunity but that's why i talk about to-go's i mean if you're not right now ramping up your if you went from all to go to now we're doing dining room if you as a restaurant owner right now are not putting hiring people putting systems and processes to make your to-go delivery the best it can possibly be you're gonna it's gonna get cold it's gonna get dark early and guess what everybody now knows how to order to go oh yeah yeah it's an eat nobody's afraid of it anymore one of the things that's impressed me and i haven't seen it a lot but i'm slowly seeing it is people are really upping the game on packaging of to-go food oh yeah the continental is leading the game on that too i was gonna refer to that one um a friend of mine who lives in atlanta though and i'll try and find the picture and send it to you you can share it with everybody it's a it's a sushi pop-up in atlanta um famous like sushi chef from japan opened up this pop-up in atlanta it was immaculate it was like artwork and it was to-go and i was just amazed and i mean she ordered it it was delivered to her house it came in this special package that had a disposable freezer block in it wouldn't get warm but the rice still was like the perfect consistency it looked like artwork and yeah the continental you know great example of that i mean gold to go

50:15trays like come on get the fuck out but you know like if you hand me a styrofoam box of your food and there's water dripping from the top of it it's not going to taste very good no unless that's what you expect i mean if you i mean there's a cost associated having gold to go containers you're paying for ordering food from from a new hotel downtown if you're if you're paying sixty dollars for it to go play then yeah it's better being a gold thing but if you're getting dim sum from somewhere and it costs 4.99 it's probably going to come in that plastic bag and another thing is you know as consumers as guests we've got to be you know we've got to understand what restaurants are going through right now these one-star reviews that people are leaving for restaurants and i saw three people in a restaurant that weren't six feet apart and i'm taking pictures and i'm going to put it on yelp like get the fuck out of here stop stop with that shit like this yelp yelp is shit oh man it's i you know it's just a tough tough situation for these restaurants and uh that's why we have a tiktok page now and it's a little shameless plug but on our tiktok page you can see chefs reading one-star reviews we um yeah it's called it's nashville restaurant radio on tiktok and uh yeah i've got so i've got a lot of views it's amazing i've got one video about over 100 000 views um but yeah it's chefs reading one-star reviews that are ridiculous pandemic reviews and this is really funny so well matt leff thank you so much man we are um we've talked twice as long as we did in our first interview and i implore everybody out there to go back and listen to that interview and um we are you're gonna this is not the the last you're gonna hear of brandon and matt yeah let's do it again we're gonna we're not only just we're gonna do it together i love that idea i'm gonna i'm gonna think of some guests that we we can sort of like i can bring in my angle you bring in your angle and we'll do it together i think we that could be a lot of fun maybe we should do a um beer edition of the roundup

52:21we'll just bring on like five brewmasters in different places and just say hey look let's let's do 15 minute interviews we'll do some rapid fires and we'll just do like a whole beer nerd out day or something i love that i love this is how ideas happen you see people like how do you do that like can they just do it you just do it you just do it do it you don't think about it you just go we just go i love it dude well hey thank you you've been an inspiration to me with everything you are doing i see other people out there doing similar things and i go i like that i'm on stream yard because of you stream what yeah i started watching your stuff you and jensen cummings but like you i was like wow that's really cool how does he do that i want to do that and now i do that so um awesome thanks for all you're doing man yeah and if for everybody who does watch this if you want to learn more about the virtual events that we do just go to our facebook page just facebook.com forward slash rhizome productions we post them all up there we were in the process of updating our website and it just it's not a priority right now so we do everything through facebook and our and eventbrite so if you google rhizome productions on eventbrite or or facebook you'll find us all right well i always finish the show and i give my guest the final word whatever you want to say as long as you want to say it no holds barred you're speaking to to nashville or all over the world people are yeah it's amazing how many people are all over the world 30 countries have listened to this podcast shit that's awesome yeah crazy isn't it so the floor is yours man take us out wow i don't even know what to say i mean i'm just happy to do this and talk to people and maybe somebody will listen you know i think just to resonate with what you do brandon support your local restaurants understand it's a hard time and from my world support your local and regional breweries they need it more than ever you know on-premise consumption is down so buying a six-pack from a local brewery at their tap room it goes a long way so do that you know obviously the supermarket's

54:25easy they've got some decent local choices and and and it's keeping a lot of breweries alive having beer at supermarkets but go do a curbside pick up at one of our local breweries they need the support more now than ever buy some merch go have a beer in their tasting room if they got outdoor seating they're allowed to be open right now you know and if you want to have a virtual event experience we love you to have your support as well all right that's it there it is that's what you got all right i love it oh and wear a mask please how's that wear a mask it's not hard delia delia always says to finish the round up you can still be pretty with a mask on exactly yeah why not right matt left rising productions thank you sir thanks brandon cheers and there you go thank you matt left for joining us here on nashville restaurant radio uh appreciate you taking the time to catch us up i love what he said there at the end i just you know i think we talked about eating local dining local spending your money with local restaurants as he kind of mentioned but then also local breweries local distilleries local boutiques like we talked about the other day for 12 south just any business where you could potentially purchase something from somebody who lives in the area let's keep it local guys it's so so important and um we just thank you so much for listening to our little local show and uh we hope that you are being safe love you guys bye