Matt Molaski

00:00Running a restaurant is tough. Staff turnover, rising costs, and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love. Let Adams Keegan lighten that load. They're a privately held Tennessee-based restaurant and hospitality-focused, outsourced HR, payroll, and benefits firm. The team at Adams Keegan removes the administrative burdens of HR administration, payroll benefits management, garnishments, unemployment claims, compliance, 401k, and so much more. From their proprietary HR IS platform to seamless payroll and competitive benefits that keep your team smiling, they've got you covered. Adams Keegan lets you focus on what you do best, creating unforgettable dining experiences, while they handle the rest. Essentially, think of Adams Keegan as your back office HR department, right here in Music City. One of the many things I love about Adams Keegan is that unlike big publicly traded companies out there, they have an incredibly high standard of customer service. And that's what we all need, is really good customer service in these areas. They don't give you a 1-800 number and make you fill out an IT ticket submission.

01:04They surround every client with a team of experts, all based right here in Tennessee. You can call them today at 615-627-0821, or visit adamskeegan.com, that's A-D-A-M-S-K-E-E-G-A-N.com, for your free HR consultation and see how they can create a customized solution to help your restaurant thrive. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service, and I am excited to bring you this episode with Matt Malansky. He is the account executive over at Margin Edge.

02:09A lot of you know what Margin Edge is, and if you don't today, you're going to find out. Margin Edge is a back office system that helps you keep all of your invoicing. So many things that if you're not using Margin Edge or a system like Margin Edge, then you definitely need to work it out. You got to figure something like this out because it is amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. I caught up with him at the Create event, which was like a restaurant, I don't want to call it a festival, it was a restaurant conference here in Nashville last month at the Omni Hotel. And I just love this interview. This was a lot of fun. I'm really excited about our interview with Seema Prasad. She is the owner and proprietor over at Miele. That episode will be coming out very soon, and what an amazing conversation we had, full hour of us just talking it up, and cannot wait to share that one. I do want to talk today a little bit on this intro about a good friend of mine who passed away recently.

03:11His name was Bart Pickens. I posted on our Instagram page, rest in peace, Bart Pickens, without a whole lot of context, but I wanted to say, I think I said he was a mentor and a good friend, and he was. And I'm gonna go back to kind of talk about him a little bit because he was so instrumental for me to understand, he was a teacher of mine in this sense. I first started in the food world selling food. I was the first managing partner at what was then Creation Gardens. It is now What Chefs Want. This is in 2005, and one of the first people that I called on because it was a big place was the Country Music Hall of Fame. They had a restaurant inside the Country Music Hall of Fame, and he was the chef. And I first met with him, and it was an interesting conversation, but I could tell that there was an interest there, and I could tell that he was really an interesting guy.

04:15And the more I would go in and follow up to try and earn the business, one time he said, all right, I'll give you a shot. And I do a really bad Bart Pickens impression, but just go with me. And from that point forth, I started selling him produce. And then he started identifying that we had so many more items. My favorite thing that he used to buy was isomalt. You know why I love you? Because you got isomalt. I could buy my lettuce, I could buy my milk, I could buy my groceries, and then I get isomalt. You guys are the best. And he was very prickly on the front end because he would, he had a very busy, stressful life, and he's loud and brash, and he would kinda come at you. It was almost combative. And I think it was probably a month or two in when he realized that I wasn't there just to sell him food. When he realized that I liked him, and I really didn't know a lot.

05:18I mean, I was a restaurant manager before this, and I just loved service. I loved to help people. And I think he'd seen a lot of different salespeople that were in it for the commissions or this or that, and I wasn't a commission guy. I was just there to really help him. And it took about a month or so, then he went like, okay, you don't know what the hell you're doing. And I said, I don't. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know my produce. I was a restaurant guy. I understood lettuce, and I understood different things. And as new things would come out that I could sell him, he would explain to me what those things were. And he would take me into his kitchen, and he would show me, this is chicory. This is a curly parsley. This is a flat leaf Italian parsley. And he would start walking me through what all of these things were. And I can't tell you how much I appreciated that, because it wasn't just a vendor, me selling him something. He really leaned in to helping me learn what the hell I was doing.

06:21Because I knew service. I knew how to, and he could tell I wanted to get the thing right. I just didn't know what I was doing. And so we spent so much time. I didn't smoke back then. Like I never bought cigarettes, but he smoked Marlboro Reds. And we would sit on the back dock. I would say, hey man, you want to go burn one? And he would go, all right, let's go. And we'd stand on the back dock of the Country Music Hall of Fame, and we would smoke cigarettes and just talk. And I learned about his history and him being from New Orleans and what it was like in New Orleans and what Nashville was like. And we're talking 2005, 2006, right? This is a long time ago. And whenever I was having a tough day, and there were a lot of tough days back then, it was me, I was this lone guy running Creation Gardens, running around town. I was doing the service. I was doing the sales. I was doing collections. I was driving a truck once a day.

07:21I mean, I was, and this was seven days a week. That was our big value proposition was, we'll deliver seven days a week, which means that I worked seven days a week. I was on an island. That was me alone and three drivers. And so it was a lot of work and some days would be stressful. And every time I'd drive by the Country Music Hall of Fame, well, shit, it's a tough day. I'm gonna pull in there. And I'd pop in and I'd go, what's up, man? And he'd go, what do you want today? And I go, I think I just need to burn one with you. And he'd go, all right, let's go. And we would sit and I would tell him things and he would talk to me. And it was so nice to have somebody who understood that I was just trying so hard. I was just trying so hard to do the right thing and to help. And he understood that about me. And I think we had a different kind of relationship than most people had. A lot of people, he had a reputation. He was tougher. He would yell or he was this, that, and that. I go, well, if you're trying to sell him something and he could see through it. He'd been in this business a really, really long time.

08:22And I just, I loved that. I loved that about him. And it was really, really special. And later in his career, he moved. He left that restaurant. He went to another one. And then he was the executive chef at Party Foul. I think he saw hot chicken as being something that he could create, do really, really well in franchise. I think he saw Party Foul as his big break. This is, I've been grinding in kitchens. I've been doing this thing for a while. He worked for Tom Rallis at Tom Katz and he would do movie sets. And then he saw this Party Foul thing. And I think the idea was, look, we're gonna open a hundred of these things and I'm gonna be the corporate chef and I'm gonna write recipes and I can retire. He went to Hawaii every year. He loved fishing. That was his thing, man. He every year would go to Hawaii with his wife and he would go fishing and he just loved it. He'd show me pictures on his little flip phone. And the guy was like, I don't know. He was just a really incredibly special human being.

09:24And I started this podcast in March of 2020 and I had several conversations with people and a lot of them had mentioned Bart Pickens in their conversations that I gotta get him on the show. And so on June the 4th, 2020, I had Bart Pickens on the show. And one of the things I did there was I would always prep like a lot going into these interviews. And he was like the first interview that I did zero prep on because I knew the conversation wasn't gonna go whatever way I wanted it to go, he would see through that and he would take it in a different direction. So I said, I'm just gonna sit down with him and have a conversation for an hour and I videoed it. So I am gonna release here. If you go to the Nashville Restaurant Radio Instagram, you will see on our stories right now, I'm gonna have like 10 different snippets from that interview. But if you have time, I highly recommend you go back to June 4th, 2020, wherever you listen to podcasts and listen to this episode. It was a big episode, got a lot of listens for back in the day.

10:25Really interesting listening to me talk about, Springer Mountain Farms Chicken and Kurt's Hospitality and Janet Kurtz now is doing so many amazing things. I think it's Nashville Lifestyles she's at as the editor of that magazine. All kinds of great things that Janet's doing now and we were spending a lot of time kind of just figuring out how to help people get through the pandemic. And so today I wanted to say a few words about Bart Pickens because I really miss him. I'm kind of getting emotional just talking about it. I haven't really been able to process any of this because it's just been, this world is so crazy right now, so much insanity. But you know, he saw the good in me. He was able to look through whatever agenda I had and I guess I didn't have an agenda, but he looked at me with kindness and he helped me and he stopped, took time out of his day and welcomed me into his kitchen.

11:30I remember I went to Mexico with my wife. We were, we like to go to Mexico. Our anniversary is on Mexican Independence Day. And he goes, you gotta bring me back a coconut. I want a coconut that has a face shaved into it. And I said, a coconut that has a face shaved into it, okay. And so we went to Mexico and I had to go to the little markets. We walked around the markets for like an hour until I found a coconut that had like a monkey, like shaved into, it was like carved into this face that had a coconut. And it was a coconut that had a face and I brought it to him and he hung it right there in the kitchen. It was like the mascot at the kitchen down there. It's Sobro Grill was the name of the restaurant that he was at, the Sobro Grill. And I took, my cousin moved to Nashville long time ago to live with us for, I think he lived with us six months, but I flew out to California and I drove back from California. And he says, you gotta stop and get me a toothpick holder. I want a toothpick holder. So on my way back, we started like Oklahoma.

12:32I got this Oklahoma toothpick holder that was a little thing and I brought it back and I go, here's your toothpick holder and little things like that. Like that's how much I just love this guy and he's gonna be truly, truly missed. So go back and listen to that episode and go to our Instagram page. You're gonna see a lot of his little clips from this interview and you can get a taste of who he was and save some of them because he's just a brilliant human being and rest in peace, Bart. You're gonna be missed. Nashville's gonna miss you. I sure as hell am gonna miss you. And yeah, that's what I got. So we're gonna jump right in. Matt Malansky, thank you guys for listening to this episode. Thank you for all the continued support. I think that I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude. When you do a look back and you listen to an episode from 2020 and you see how far we've come and you see how many people have been involved in this, when you do over 350 interviews and you've talked to so many people, it's just so much love and so much sharing of ideas and best practices and all of the things and it really defines what this restaurant community in Nashville is and he was definitely one of those people.

13:56So thank you for all of you listeners. Thank you to all of the sponsors. You guys mean the world to me. As the world gets busier, it's harder for me to do these episodes as fast as I want them to, but I'm gonna keep doing them. I'm gonna keep sharing. Hopefully you get something out of these. I'd love feedback. Just tell me I'm doing a great job. Everything helps these days. Because it's just, this world's a lot right now. So again, thank you for listening and enjoy this episode with Matt Molanski. You're listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Super excited. We are here at the Create event in Nashville. We're at the Omni Hotel and we're joined with Matt Molanski. I've already forgot he's a senior strategic, say it again. Strategic account executive. Strategic account executive. And he's my account executive for Margin Edge. This is something that, as I was with Nara, as I'm talking with restaurant owners, I mean, a lot more people are using Margin Edge.

15:03And if you're one of the people who doesn't use Margin Edge and you're, what is Margin Edge? Matt's about to tell you. Absolutely. So Margin Edge kind of blends the best of both worlds. The financial reporting, the day-to-day operational analytics. Our two to three main goals is really to cut out the time spent in the office, updating your own spreadsheets, entering your own invoices, and letting the software give you better daily visibility into all your cost of goods. Yes. That's the short answer. That's the short answer. So if I'm a restaurateur and I have a system manager who's old school, I think restaurant 365, and everybody does it digitally now, but you have to type in the invoice number, type in the account number, type in who it is, and then that gets submitted and it gets put into a file and you can kind of look at it that way. Margin Edge is great. You take a picture of it, send it in, and it does all the work for you. Absolutely, 100%, 100%. And so take a picture, scan or email us an invoice.

16:07Our team does the line item coding and processing of it. So that allows us to always report your most recent purchase price for everything that's under the roof of your restaurant. And from there, the trickle down is write your recipes. We keep the ingredient costs up to date. You always have an up to date plate cost there. Let's talk about that. This is a big topic here at Create, right? A lot of people are talking, there's a company I met with earlier who they can tell you that what everybody else is charging for an item. Hey, look, we have 3,000 different restaurants and what they're charging for a hamburger in your area, whatever else is charging, so you can be in the right price. And I said, well, that's great, but I'm not doing my pricing based on what everybody else is charging. Right? Correct. I'm not because I have to look at my costs and I create a recipe. I said, but most restaurateurs are so afraid to raise their prices based around fluctuation and what their cost is because of the blowback you're gonna get online or if you're too expensive.

17:08It's like, well, I'm not too expensive. I'm being charged too much. But we as a restaurant culture are afraid to do that. With Margin Edge, as I update all of my, as I put in all of my invoices in my recipes, you're gonna update the item cost on a regular basis. So if I know that I have a filet dish with mashed potatoes and asparagus, I know that my plate cost is gonna be $17.24 today, right? So I'm gonna charge that at a 41% and that cost is, I'm not doing the math right now, but that cost is gonna be X amount. Well, if that dish price goes up to 19.24, you need to adjust what you're charging and Margin Edge will tell you when that happens. Oh, absolutely. We actually just recently introduced a new feature for those of you who've been on Margin Edge for a while, where we just pulled out, excuse me, plate cost alerts. So you can actually set an alert range on all of the recipes within Margin Edge. So let's say your dish, you wanna run a 28% food cost on it.

18:11And ingredient price goes up or down, goes up to 31, 32, emails you right away, just letting you know. Just letting you know, hey, your cost has increased. It's just so many people whose spreadsheet are looking at these numbers every day going, hey, my pepper price has gone up. This is automatically telling you when markets change. And it's not that a company is trying to mess with you or they're trying, but markets change. Sometimes you go to the store and milk is $3 a gallon, sometimes it's $4 a gallon. I don't know, I haven't bought milk in a long time. Is that accurate? I don't know. I think so as well. I don't myself. By the gallon, I haven't done this. But I mean, so on the same point, you just pay for it and that happens to us all the time. And you guys help manage that. People automatically will send them alerts when these things happen. Yep, absolutely. And the impact that that can have for an independent business, whether you're a single location, five locations, whatever it may be, over the course of, don't even think about a full year, but think a month, six months, whatever it may be, if you're not paying attention to those things, then you're leaving money on the floor.

19:20You're basically burning money at that point. And the way I did it when I was in restaurants before joining the team here is the goal was every week update all the ingredient costs. The reality was maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter. I said once a quarter. Yeah, and so. If you're doing it right, and that is a goal, I'm talking about some people that don't even know their plate costs. I mean, they don't even know how to enter a recipe into a system. I mean, there's a lot of people that do, but a lot of people that don't know what their theoreticals are. Exactly, exactly. And that's something that Margin Edge will do fairly easily. Fairly easily. And it all starts with taking a picture of an invoice. That's all you gotta do. Yeah, I love that. Because that saves so much. There's always a chef or always a kitchen manager who's saying, I need an admin day so that I can enter in all these invoices that I've got. And also, if you have multiple companies that you're buying from, that can be a real tedious thing. And to just take a picture and upload it, it's like, done.

20:21Exactly. All right, what's the next feature that you guys do? That's not the only thing that you do. No, so. You have lots of features and benefits. We do, so talking about, that's mostly what is going on within the four walls of the restaurant, right? Outside of that, especially a lot of our clients, particularly here in the Nashville area, but also all over the country, they outsource their accounting, right? And the reason they do that is time. Maybe they don't have a bookkeeper that they're personally working with. And essentially, what that can do as well is you're not waiting two weeks after the month ends to get your numbers from the previous month. This is more close to real-time reporting that puts your financial reporting and your bookkeeper in a better spot, as well as they can take more of an advisory role at that point with the restaurant. The restaurant can spend more time doing analytics as opposed to data entry.

21:27Let's give Penn and Ledger a shout out. Penn and Ledger. So we use Penn and Ledger in our restaurants. Tell me about that relationship you have with them. So that relationship started actually where one of their restaurants that they work with, Pinewood Social, actually, and Crema Coffee, both on their own signed up for Margin Edge. And then I got to know Melissa through the onboarding process and we just kind of organically developed that relationship. She saw the benefit of freeing her team's time up so they can spend more time on analytics because they do. They are both bookkeeping and advisory that they do there, but also allowing her business to grow because her team's not spending time punching invoices into QuickBooks all day long anymore. And it's great because they produce our P&Ls for us and when I get a P&L, it's not only just, hey, here's your period nine P&L, it's a here's your P&L, but here's our thoughts with it.

22:32And they send a full on analysis of the P&L that comes with the P&L, which is really valuable. Yeah, and I don't know if many people know this, but Melissa's a restaurant person. She comes from a restaurant family as well. And so she gets it. She understands the importance of having this and having it quickly. I gotta give Sabrina a shout out too over there. Their whole team is fantastic to work with and they're not a sponsor or anything. I just wanted to give a shout out to Penn and Ledger because they work so well with Margin Edge and it all just is so seamless with what it does. Let's talk about inventory. Yep, yeah, so same thing. Your inventory fluctuates in price, right? And keeping your own Excel spreadsheets just like your recipes, whatever it is, making sure that when you count your inventory, you're not just counting how much product you have on the shelf, but those are assets of your business. Those are assets under the roof of your restaurant. Knowing how much money is sitting there on the shelf at the same time.

23:34And alongside inventory, you can start to take an approach where you can get your actual versus, your really actual versus theoretical. You're never gonna get that if you don't count what's on the shelf. True story. And so the way we kind of streamline everything is however you choose to take inventory. If you're like me, pen and paper guy, right? I'll print out the sheet, throw it on a clipboard, but we also have our phone app. So we do it on the app. Exactly, and you just pull it up on your phone. You can organize your count sheet, sheet to shelf. Inventory is always gonna be a pain in the ass, but a little less so implementing all this, all this kind of automation there. And then you're able to compare, okay, this period of time is my usage. And I can compare that against the amount of product that was rung in or sold through my point of sale system. So you can see not only if I'm over portioning something or if God forbid there's theft or waste or loss, whatever it may be.

24:37Well, you can know, you can start that process of elimination when you see that my theoretical food cost, which is a difficult thing, right? And can we, there's, I said 41% on the steak, right? Because that's a real number for steaks typically. Now if it's a chicken dish, it's probably gonna be at 22%. A lot of people look at food cost as a, I need to be at 31%, I need it at 32%, but really you don't take percentages to the bank. There's two different versions of how you're making money. One is a percentage and one is GP dollars, like the actual dollars that you're making. And the way that looks is if I'm doing 41% on a steak that cost me $21, I'm selling that at $64, something along that would be a 30, $55. So $55, but it cost me $21 at 50, 41%. Well, yeah, but I'm putting $32 into the bank every time I sell one of those at 41%. And that chicken dish that you may be at 17%, that cost you $6 to make, but you're selling it for 21.

25:42You're like, well, that percentage is much better, but you're only taking $15 to the bank every time. So while you're focusing on that 21%, you're losing out on the big picture of big dollars. So I think it's dangerous sometimes to look at a percentage when it comes to that, but your theoretical versus actual will tell you where you're missing that number individually. So you can go, oh, my steak was at 70% this week. Excuse me. It's dry in here. We're missing steaks. Yeah, it's a whole thing, but we're missing steaks or this number is off. But creating action items around those things and knowing where to look is half the battle. Exactly, and that kind of made me immediately think of one of personally my favorite features in Margin Edge, which is our menu analysis tool. Other people call it menu engineering. And essentially, there's something where I learned how to do manually in culinary school back in the day. So just shout out Margin Edge, everybody who's client facing, we're not just spineless salespeople like you.

26:47I was gonna ask you, where did you get a spine? So everybody, almost everybody who's customer facing our company has either been a chef, GM, owner, operator, entrepreneur, or even former restaurant CFO or controller, whatever it may be. But back to the menu analysis. This reporting essentially will take for a period of time your recipe costs against the amount sold. So it breaks it out into a quadrant, right? And so these might be- Recipe cost analysis. Analysis. And so the quadrants, these are kind of old school terms, which I'm sure some of your listeners- All-star, dog. Star, dog. Superstar, yeah. Plow horse puzzle. And what that would show to me is, especially if you are kind of like a seasonal or a very creative chef-driven restaurant I've worked with a lot of them and they change menus all the time, right? But knowing what to change and when. So your stars are gonna be your most popular and your most profitable items.

27:51So those should be the ones where you say, okay, like these are popular. We make a lot of money on them. Let's kind of like leave those be for a while. Then you have your dogs, which are taking up space on your menu and you're losing money every time you sell that dish. My two favorite quadrants are actually the plow horses. So the ones that they can kind of drive your sales, but there might be a little bit more room to kind of push, or I'm sorry, not drive your sales, but they have a great profit margin, but they're not as popular. So those are the ones that you highlight and pre-shift. You do a server or bartender contest to move those. And then your puzzles are dishes that are very, very popular, but you might need to tweak the recipe a little bit to increase your profit margin on that. And so that one feature, I didn't realize the importance of that until I was working with a chef who would basically reprint menus every Thursday night.

28:55And so having that type of data back then would have informed those decisions so much more than just like a gut feeling. It's a little more difficult when you print a menu every quarter, or when you print these melamine menus, if you don't have a broad line or paying form, or you don't have a deal where somebody's gonna reprint those for you bi-weekly or something along those lines. It is very advantageous to print your menus weekly. Whatever the card stock, you can say, okay, here's the myth. Well, printing menus is expensive. I'm wasting a lot of paper. I'm printing a menu every week, and I'm just throwing the paper away. Coasters, cut them up. If you use a really nice card stock, yes. But also, if your produce price changes every four days and your meat and dairy prices change every four days based on a market or maybe every other delivery, because I guarantee you, when the dairy market goes up, they don't wait to take that price increase.

29:59It immediately shows up on your, if you're running this report with Margin Edge, you can see what that is and automatically raise or lower. Lowering doesn't happen as much, but you can raise your prices to reflect the market real-time. And when you real-time change your prices up $4 on something or up $2 or up a dollar, 50 cents, whatever it is, it more than covers the cost of that paper. 100%. Because you're leaving money on the table every time that you don't do that. And I think the big question is, well, how do I know? Well, it's real easy. You sign up with Margin Edge and you make this thing happen because we get these dashboards all the time. Yep, yep. And very, very streamlined, curated onboarding, with whatever our clients are looking to get out of the software. That's our focus, right? They might be looking not to jump into every single feature that's available, but we want to find out what's most important to them to start.

31:00And then it's a software that our clients will steadily grow into. And I really wish I had it when I was doing this every day. Tell me, what is your background? You said you went to culinary school. What was your background? When did you? Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me, it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I am just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry, which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee, and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price. And so you may say, well, every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees. There's no clean green service fees. There's no replacement cost.

32:00There's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts. They do formats. They'll make custom formats for you. They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies. And guys, I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state of the art. I'm gonna post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company you can trust who wants to earn your business every single week, go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of C&B Linen. Hear it straight from his mouth, exactly what they do, or you give them a call at 931-722-7616, or you can DM me, at Brandon Styll on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance, NARA for short.

33:04Sharpier's Bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery, providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They have operated in Nashville since 1986. Yes, next year will be 40 years. They're providing high quality, fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals, and universities. Their bread is also free from any preservatives and artificial flavors. They're right off of White Bridge Road. Erin Mosso and her team have been doing this for a long time. You know what I love about them is that they're local and they care, they care about your business. That's like the number one thing you're gonna hear me talk about is, do they care about your business? And I 100% believe that they do. If you would like to be working with a bakery that cares about your business, give them a call. 615-356-0872. That's 615-356-0872. Now you can always visit them at sharpiers.com.

34:05That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com. And they have pictures of all of the bread that they can have for you. And contact information, go check them out, Sharpier's Bakery. Hey guys, today we are talking about Robin's Insurance and restaurants carry a very unique set of risks. We can customize a menu of insurance solutions to meet your specific needs. Reviewing the options and developing a plan for restaurant insurance coverage is a perfect recipe. Every restaurant owner has heard the statistics about how tough it is to survive and thrive in the business. But getting adequate insurance at least gives you a fighting chance to mitigate some of those risks. It's well worth considering a custom-built restaurant insurance policy as it'll not only make life simpler, but it may even overcome some risks you haven't even considered. For example, you'll usually wanna cover risks to property such as the building and equipment along with liability to customers and staff, right? Yeah, that's easy. But remember, there's an important difference between general liability such as a customer slipping on a spoiled drink and a professional liability such as about a food poisoning from bad food or inadequate preparation.

35:11Other elements that are easily overlooked include the risk of fraud and data theft that come with handling cash and card payments, the risk of spoiled food you have to throw away if there's a power outage or refrigerator failure, and the risk of lost business if you close for repairs after a fire. Protect your restaurant business by contacting them today. It's so easy. And when any of those situations happen, what you don't wanna do is get and dial an 800 number and be put on hold to talk to somebody you have to explain your business to. That is why you call Matthew Clements, Matthew Clements at Robin's Insurance. When any of those scenarios happen, you pick up the phone, you dial 863-409-9372. Matthew answers, he goes, how can I help you? You tell him your problem. He's your friend, you know him. Why would you not have an agent that you work with every single day? Any of these situations right here, you need guidance, you need support, and Matthew Clements and his team at Robin's Insurance are there to provide it. You should call him today.

36:11I'm gonna put that number down one more time. That's 863-409-9372. Call Matthew Clements today. Y'all, today we are talking, as always, about SuperSource. And you know, one cool thing about SuperSource is did you know that they develop most of their cleaning products and chemicals in their in-house facility? They're environmentally conscious and only use dyes that are safe for the employees and the environment. They carry a number of products for keeping your dishes, flatware, surfaces, floors, restrooms, laundry, basically your entire facility clean, bright, and smelling and feeling new. This is just one of the many reasons SuperSource is taking over this city for dish machine and chemicals. You need to call Jason Ellis. His number is 770-337-1143, and he would love it if you would give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation, meet him, say hi, see if there's any way he can help.

37:14He is here to help you succeed. That's Jason Ellis with SuperSource, 770-337-1143. Colonial School, what was your background? When did you? Yeah, so my background is a little unique. So I was actually looking for a server job my senior year of high school and got hired at a business that was half a cafe, half a live music venue. So probably very similar to a lot of businesses here in Nashville. Like the listening room or something here in town. Yeah, exactly. It was a spot in Arlington. It's not there anymore. It was called Iota Club and Cafe, but they were very big on the kind of no depression all country circuit that a lot of performers played at. So, but anyways, walked in, got hired as a cook, started training under the chef that worked there, really found my passion in food and the creative side of it. So ended up applying to a couple different culinary schools, got into CIA, which is like the Harvard of culinary schools as we all know.

38:22They just did that Netflix show about it. The dorms are still exactly the same. I'm sure a lot of people noticed that. But I didn't watch it. Yeah, you should. You should check it out. You should definitely check it out. And then cooked for a while, bounced around a little bit, spent some time in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, made my way back to the Washington DC area, which is where I grew up. And then for whatever reason, about eight years into my culinary side, I said, fuck it, I'm going to the dark side. And I wanted to learn the front of the house. So, sorry, can we curse on this? Hell yeah, you can. Okay, okay. So I actually ended up applying for a management training position at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington DC. And since I only had back of the house experience, they actually started me in the room service department, which believe it or not, was probably even more stressful because all the celebrities that stay there, all the politicians, all the people, the movers, they order room service. So really kind of cut my teeth there and then work my way up to the lobby lounge, which is now post renovation of Bourbon Steak Restaurant.

39:31But the only thing is hotels never close. And so, you know, a couple 24-hour shifts in room service, you say, maybe I should go back to independent restaurants. So landed with a... But you can learn some really good fundamentals there. You can learn some really good habits at a place like Four Seasons. Absolutely. We used to always say, because it's not a cheap room, and we always used to say, people are paying $800 a night for a pillow and a toilet. That's it. And so you want to make sure you are just treating them like the best you can. We want to make sure that they feel valued somehow in this $800 toilet. Exactly, exactly. Learned a lot about just the amount of professionalism, poise, and how you carry yourself. And that carried over into my restaurant management career. Then I ended up with a multi-unit restaurant group that's headquartered in the D.C. area called Neighborhood Restaurant Group. Ran one of their restaurants for a little over five years. The lease kind of came out on that. Restaurant closed.

40:32And I moved down the street to another smaller restaurant group, which was more of like a French bistro style that I ran. And then in 2015, I was part of the opening management team of Momofuku in Washington, D.C. Oh wow. So yeah, David Chang's brand. It was a hugely anticipated opening because it was his quote unquote homecoming for him. And Christina Tosi had a milk bar in there as well. Yeah, and when we opened, five o'clock, lying down the block, we would flat seat 150 seats right at five o'clock. Wouldn't stop until midnight when we stopped seating. It was just madness. That'll beat you down, man. That's like downtown Nashville honky tonk business right there on a summer night. Oh yeah, oh yeah. But I mean, I always say that restaurant, I learned so much there. Just how buttoned up that group was, all of the policies, the procedures.

41:33Because in New York City, you gotta have those things. And so we essentially followed New York City service standards, regulations, all of that. And then, yeah, so I was with Momofuku for four and a half years. And little did we know that COVID was right around the corner. But two months before the pandemic hit, I said, you know what? I've done a little over 20 years in restaurants. It's kind of time maybe to take a breath, you know, and got introduced to Margin Edge, which just so happened to be headquartered locally in the DC area. And met with the founders there. And really, just like I said at the top of the call, it was a product that I wish I had when I was in all of those different restaurant roles. And that's really what I believe in. I don't even feel like a salesperson. I feel like it sells itself. Well, you're more of a consultant. I think that when you have that spirit of which people, when you know what the operator's going through, it allows you to have empathy for what they're dealing with and how they're approaching things.

42:39So I love that. With all of that knowledge and what you're doing with Margin Edge, what do you think the mistakes are? Like the biggest opportunities or pain points that a local independent restaurant could be making right now? What are you seeing from your customers? Sure. People that are actually spending money with Margin Edge, what are their challenges? So even just kind of taking one step back from that, I think a lot of people that reach out to us that want to learn more about us, they're in a mindset that, you know, they're running their business on a cash basis. Meaning that if there's money in the bank after I paid all my bills, all my payroll has gone out, then I'm a profitable business. And so they're leaving so much on the table without the additional insight into, well, how can I make this business a little more profitable? If I'm selling $600,000 worth of food a year and I'm running a 33%, you know, all combined food cost, what if I tweak it down to 31 or even 30 over the course of the year?

43:44I'm saving thousands of dollars or putting thousands of dollars more and being able to reinvest that into my business. And I think that's an eye-opening moment for a lot of our clients when they actually get their eyes on the software. And then, you know, some of the challenges here, you know, like I mentioned, I started right before COVID hit and that completely changed our pitch, completely changed the conversation. But people then, you know, started saying, you know, what we found was a lot of like ownership who might've been absent because they had a GM in there. They had, you know, they had their team set up and they were basically forced back into their business. They were like, I need this. Like, I need to know what is happening on a daily basis because things are changing on a daily basis. And even though things have kind of calmed down, settled down, it's still a pretty volatile market. We saw it with the bird flu earlier this year. You know, I remember, you know, saying that, you know, I was talking with an operator and he's like, the way things are going, chicken wings are gonna become a market price item on the menu any day, right?

44:54Wow. And so. It's a thing. It is, it really is. And now chicken wings are back down, I think, right? I hope so, we can look it up, so. $68 a case or something, 70 bucks a case, like I just did a deal with a bunch of chicken wings, which isn't too bad. There's not 138, you know, so that's a thing. All right, so restaurant owners not recognizing that, hey, just a little tweak here or there can make you thousands of dollars a year. What do you think the easiest tweak that they can make is when it comes to running a 33.3% food cost and needing to move it down to a 31? I think it's something that you kind of build upon, but hands down, you gotta have your recipes costed. You absolutely have to. So recipes costed, what do you think about what people are paying? Because you're looking at all these invoices, there's gotta be a massive discrepancy versus what a chain would pay versus what a local and independent restaurateur would pay.

45:59And my contention is, yes, you need less waste. If you're not using an actual scooper, you don't have it portioned out, it's inconsistent, and two ounces of mashed potatoes is not a big deal. Two ounces of mashed potatoes, 42 times 365 days out of the year is a big deal. And so that's where those little things come in. And that is a way to save. But if you're paying $39 for a case of potatoes and everybody else is paying 27, that's an even bigger, maybe it's an equal size deal, but leveraging what you're actually paying and working with a great vendor who can lower those costs, I think is also a really big deal. Absolutely. And knowing what you're worth. And exactly, and even in the Marginette software, you can approach your vendors with all of that purchase history. And you can say, okay, over the past four months, I've purchased X amount of cases of this product for you. The price has changed 15 times over the past month.

47:01Like, what can we do to lock this in, agree on a price, a fixed price, heaven forbid, until another pandemic hits and all those contracts are null and void now, but that's the kind of leverage that having the data at your fingertips gives you, essentially. I love it. And we had a great conversation about how much we hate linen companies yesterday as well. It's kind of my, if you want to trigger me, you want to get me going any day of the week, you go, hey man, what do you think about the way that linen companies do business? We'll lose my shit. Same thing with dish, machine, and chemicals, the Ecolab guys walking towards me right now. Same thing the way that a lot of these dish, machine, and chemical, it's a similar way that they do it, and it's really shady, and it's horrible. It's legal, organized crime, that's what I say. It really is.

48:01Unless your C&B linen are super source, those people are doing the right thing. And that's probably why I get so excited about them. You told me what they were doing. That's a game changer, that's unreal. It really, I mean, it's not just on the podcast. They talk about C&B linen and super source, and a lot of the company, these are the two that I have found because I hate dish, machine, and chemical companies so bad, and I hate linen companies so bad because they come in and they seem so, hey man, we're here to help you succeed, and then they are not. We're here to make as much money on you as we possibly can, it's not gonna be fair, and we're gonna siphon off as much cash as we can get out of your pockets, no matter when, and we're just gonna bend you over. Vaseline, no, you don't need that, we're just gonna, I mean, it's horrible. So you're gonna be going, see how they did? Yep, sorry. Ugh! Kind of going off the rails here, so. All right, well we have one minute left. The thing that we do, Matt Mulaski, senior account executive for Margin Edge, is we do the Gordon Food Service final thought.

49:04And since this is a quick little interview, you get to say whatever you want to take us out. I'm gonna put this out as its own interview. You get, as long as you want, whatever you got, you get the final word, the Jerry's final thought. Do you get that reference? I do a little bit, a little bit. I just wanna say shout out to all of our Nashville clients, had an opportunity to be here last year at this conference and visited a couple, had a drink with Melissa at Penn and Ledger, so shout out to Penn and Ledger as well. They really helped us break into this community of restaurants, but also, yeah, just if, whether you're one location, five locations, 20 locations, just have a second look at your systems. And if you wanna check us out, see what we do, like I mentioned earlier, we're restaurant people. We've been through it, we've been in your shoes. We're not gonna bullshit you. We're extremely transparent. And we're growing, and we want to grow with your restaurant company as well.

50:07And how do people get ahold of you? They can email my first initial and last name, so M. Molaski, M-O-L-A-S-K-I, at marginedge.com. Shoot me an email, we'll pick a time. I'm in the D.C. area, so if this reaches out to anybody in the DMV, I'll drive up to your restaurant, we'll hang out and chat about Margin Edge. If not, we'll meet online, and I'm just, I love learning about people's businesses, and then just seeing how we can put Margin Edge to work for them so they can stay in business and grow their business. This is not a company that I just met here and I think is really cool, which the, Sunday is a great company. I'm excited to tell you about Sunday. They are somebody I just met. I met them at FS Tech, and we reconnected here. But this is the company that I use, that I trust, that is amazing, I'm gonna vouch for. I think that you should definitely email Matt and learn more about it. There's no, this is a free thing. They can do a free demo and just learn about what it is, and it can help you so much in your day-to-day operations.

51:11Matt Molaski, thank you so much for joining us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you. And there you have it. Thank you so much, Matt Molaski, for joining us during the middle of the Create Conference. We're gonna be back here real soon with this episode with Seema Prasad. She is the owner at Miele. I do wanna tell you real quick about, you know, a lot of people talk about operations and how are your manager meetings? Are they the same time every single week? Is there a good cadence? Do you have good action items? Are you working on big projects together? Are you guys a cohesive team? Are you getting traction? Well, we work at our restaurants with a, on a system called the EOS system. It's the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I know that Strategic Hospitality is going to this. Edley's Barbecue does this. Frothy Monkey does this. Germantown Cafe, Germantown Pub. Carrington Row, Park Cafe. A lot of these restaurants work this way because it's simple.

52:13It's simple, it's easy, but when you sit down and you learn about it or you read the book Traction, it's a really good intro to it from Gina Wickman. It really works. It works to get everyone on the same page. If everybody in your restaurant can't tell you what your vision and mission is, then you need EOS because that's what it does. And I'm going to talk about Justin Cook. Justin Cook is an implementer. He's an implementer who worked with us and he's absolutely amazing. He's right here in Nashville. He works with restaurants. He understands the restaurant business and we're going to start working with him to kind of help you operationally. So if you're interested, if you're somebody who, and we're going to talk about it next episode, I have kind of a two minute thing I've got about it. You can email justin.cook at eosworldwide.com. You can also call him at 615-336-7133. If you're somebody who's heard about EOS and wants to learn more about EOS, give him a call. He'll come do a whole demo for you and can ask you a bunch of questions and see if it's something that's right for you and it's free.

53:15You can do that. It's great. Thank you for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed that episode with Matt Malasky. Like I said, Seema Prasad will be coming up next. Thank you for listening. I hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.