Matt Ramos

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01:06Welcome 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 telling you, today's episode was very interesting to me. I met this gentleman named Matt Ramis online and he ran this place, Common Ground, and I didn't know really anything about it, but I said, sure man, come on, let's do this thing. And when he showed up, I was not prepared. I just was like, okay, let's go, just grip it and rip it today, it's gonna be fun.

02:08And I thought Common Ground was a coffee shop. So I get busted in the first 30 seconds of this interview and I'm like, so what's it like running a coffee shop? And he's like, it's not a coffee shop. And I immediately felt like an idiot. We all learn lessons, but I'm gonna leave it all in there because I think this is a fun kind of a thing. The cool part about this is like, I have such a man crush on this guy. He is so sharp. Like I did not, I was blown away after talking to him. And then I actually went, I've been to Common Ground twice. I've been to both locations now and I will tell you, go as soon as you, this week, it's Christmas week, but like go check it out. So they're doing a Nutcracker pop-up at their location on Charlotte. And it is so beautiful inside of that building. It's where the old Chattable used to be. And then there's another location where the yellow porch used to be over in Berry Hill. So they have this Focaccia app that's like the best thing I've ever eaten.

03:09It was so incredibly good. And he is so intentional with everything he does in that building. His staff was amazing. Just blown away that I'd never even been to this place. And this is why I do the show. I wanna find new people, introduce myself to new people. And today was a perfect example of that. You're gonna get to hear it all right after this intro. Thank you for all the kind words and people who have reached out. Based on my past intro, where I talked about my son getting hit by a car and I talked about me leaving my full-time job as a director of operations at the Green Hills Grill in Maribold. That's gonna be, it's official now. I'm done there. But it's official as of January 31st. And I have had so many amazing meetings with so many amazing restaurateurs just sitting down. You know, one of the things that we do with NARA is we like to utilize our vendors and we like to save you money. That is something that is in the works and we are doing that actively.

04:11But the benefit side, it's a GPO, it's a micro GPO, Group Purchasing Organization, as well as a fractional COO business. So if you, part of the idea is a bunch of local restaurants, you guys don't have the ability to hire a director of operations. And then having somebody like myself or Vince come in and spend 30 minutes to an hour with you and talk about what you need and where you're at, we have ideas. We can look over your P&L. We can tell you what, if you're missing something, because every day you're in the building doing your thing and pulled in 42 different ways, you're emotional about everybody there and you tend to look past some things. I met with Matt Ramis and I was like, dude, you're amazing. Everything here is perfect. You don't need this at all. Love to have you as a member of the Alliance do it. But then sometimes I'm like, hey, have you thought about this? Why are you doing this? And I've had those conversations in the past week as well and they've been really, really great. So one of the things I think a lot of people are like is, hey, I just don't know anybody.

05:15I don't know who to call. And that is the point of us doing our NARA Connect Winter Social. It's gonna be January the 13th. It's gonna be at Perrin Bakery. It is over on Sidco Drive in Berry Hill. It's a free event. If you're a restaurant owner, we'd love to have you come and just meet other restaurant owners. We're gonna have several different purveyors. You're gonna hear, coming up very soon, Charlie Nelson from Belle Meade Bourbon has offered to be there and pour out some bourbon for everybody. So if you wanted to meet Charlie Nelson and try some Belle Meade Bourbon, you can do that. If you want to try, it's gonna be dry January. So we're gonna have Wild, which is a THC brand. They're gonna be there pouring their THC brands. You can come meet Andy Herrera and we're also going to have Fat Bottom Brewery. They're gonna be pouring some beers. So we'll have lots of beverages. I think that they said they're gonna do some light snacks from Perrin's. If you haven't eaten that, you can come out and try that.

06:16It's absolutely free, but you gotta register. So go to naranashville.com, click on the NARA Connect tab and register. It's free. It is on Eventbrite and we would love to see you there. I'd love to meet you in person, love to shake your hand, love to share contact information. If there's anything I can do to help your restaurant be successful and you're a local restaurant, I wanna do that. So very excited. We will have one more episode that's gonna come out like on Christmas Eve. It is the episode with B-Hops with Brad Hopkins and Bryson Hopkins and Ollie from B-Hops. And Brad Hopkins was a Pro Bowl offensive tackle for the Titans and that was a really amazing conversation. Sitting there with his son talking about what it was like to win a Super Bowl and almost win a Super Bowl. One yard away, Brad Hopkins was on that team. So really, really cool stuff. He was actually one of the very, him and Steve McNair were the last two Titans who were officially Houston Oilers. He was on the team for 13 years. So a lot of Titans conversation, you get to hear that.

07:18And just lots of neat stuff happening. That episode is gonna come out probably Christmas Eve or the day before. So while you're traveling for Christmas, you can listen to that. It is very wholesome. It is awesome. And I cannot wait to put that one out. That's our next one. But right now we're gonna jump in with Matt Ramis. You are listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. ["Common Grounds"] Super excited today to welcome in our guest. His name is Matt Ramis and he is the owner of Common Ground. Is it Common Grounds? Common Ground, not pluralized. It's not pluralized. Not pluralized, no. Common Ground. I am so excited to have you here today. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thanks for having me. How you doing? I'm good, I'm good. Happy to be here. Yeah, I mean, I think that's like a typical greeting, but you know, this world is kind of crazy right now and you're operating a coffee shop and like, you doing okay?

08:22Like when I say how you doing, like, how are you? Good, I'll tell you what. If me and my partner, Wes, could go back and do anything over, it might be changing the name because our slogan now is Common Ground, not a coffee shop. So that's always funny that people, we went back, we thought so long about the name and it was supposed to be like this common meeting place for lunch or happy hour, dinner, brunch, cocktails, whatever it is, so it's like a common ground for coming together with people. And it turns out when you say ground, people immediately think coffee. I immediately thought, I haven't obviously not been there. So now I'm... It's wild and like our biggest struggle at the beginning was a marketing element of defining what we were because we knew in our head what we wanted to be and if we would have asked 15 people, they probably would have told us, hey guys, when you hear ground, you think coffee and it didn't even cross our minds. Yeah, Common Ground, hearing it without that connotation, I'm like, oh, that's a great name. Cause you're just thinking about what, it's a common ground place, but Common Ground to me sounds like a place you come and have, hey, let's go grab a cup of coffee at Common Ground.

09:22Totally, and that has been, I'd say a battle for us. We do have a good coffee program. Our brunch program is great. We have a good latte program. We partner with 8th and Roast who does all of our coffee and we make our own cold brew in-house. We make our own cold brew concentrate for our espresso martinis that have become very popular. So coffee is definitely an element of what we do. It's been a big push for us to get that marketing piece across where people don't think of us as a coffee shop, but instead that neighborhood, restaurant, bar, happy hour, brunch, dinner, that sort of all day aspect that we were going for from the beginning. Okay, well now I feel like, you know. No, it's perfect. It's perfect intro into some of the battles we've had for the last three years, because almost for us, the biggest problem or road barrier for us is getting people in the door for the first time. And once we get them in the door for the first time, our regulars are very passionate about what we do. We have incredible reviews, like everything goes well. For us, it's how do we get that message out about what we are to get people in the door? And then once they're there, we're pretty confident in the experience we're given.

10:23Tell me about the experience that's given. Where is Common Ground? Yeah, we got two locations, one in Sylvan Park, over off of Charlotte, kind of right next to L&L Market. That was our first one. Nice. That one opened the end of 22. Okay. And then we are over in Berry Hill. When Yellow Porch was closing, we were actually able to get inside of that space. So you're in the old Yellow Porch space. We're in the old Yellow Porch, yeah. My sister just opened a shop right down the street from you guys, Killjoy. Oh yeah. They just opened a little non-alcoholic shop. I was just over there like the other week for the grand opening. Totally. And it's going well over in Berry Hill. We're just past two years there and we're about three and a half in at Sylvan Park and all is going well. I don't know how the hell I haven't been over there and tried that yet. Well, I just leave now, right? And you've got to get in there. Let's go. Absolutely. You've been in Nashville for over 15 years. I think 13, 14 years, somewhere in that range. I moved here early 2012. So a while. I say I moved here. Where'd you move from? Los Angeles. So born and raised just north of LA, a city called Thousand Oaks. Yeah, very familiar with that.

11:24I'm a little south of LA in Orange County. So I understand that area, Thousand Oaks, for sure. Born and raised in Thousand Oaks, college in Arizona and then was actually living in Santa Monica for a while after college before coming out here. Why Nashville? Trying to get out of LA more than anything. I was just bartending, screwing around, not doing much. And I had a buddy coming out here for music and it was kind of one of those, I got another seat in the car, you want to check out the south. Eight days on the road, ended up in Nashville. Adventure, let's go. Totally was. And now married, house, two restaurants and I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon. Married, now you've like planted roots. Totally, yeah. You're here. What's your favorite part about Nashville? Nashville kind of reminds me of what I liked about LA without a lot of the negative things of Southern California, in my opinion. But it's got this great energy, anywhere that's based on entertainment and hospitality to me has a great energy. And in LA, it kind of had that as well with the acting scene and the music scene and really good restaurants and everything. But the biggest difference to me of what I always say in my time in Nashville is in LA, like in the film industry, people want to collaborate so that they can elevate themselves.

12:31We're in Nashville with the music industry and our restaurant industry, I found that people want to collaborate so we can all elevate the industry together. And that like moving here before all of these other larger restaurants did, I find it really interesting when we were doing our Psalm stuff a decade ago, before it was like cool to be a sommelier in Nashville, it was almost like we all wanted to elevate the wine scene together. And so now seeing what's going on with Michelin in town and James Beard and all these big groups coming in, it's almost like the work we put in 10 to 15 years ago, we're seeing it now happen of what we all thought Nashville could be and now we're all kind of seeing it come to fruition, if you will. No, I love that. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen a lot of this. It's one of the things I'm trying to carry on right now is to keep that fabric of everybody together. How do we continue and put a name to it and let's all be a part of something that's bigger than ourselves to help? Because I really feel like local restaurants are under attack right now with all of the chains coming in and all this private equity money is just, they can afford to pay this stuff and they've got 15 locations and their deals are better and it just makes it really hard for mom and pop places to stay afloat.

13:43The perfect example of that for me is what's going on 12 South is you have this place that was these really cool one-off restaurants that now are much bigger groups just based on the financial aspect of what it takes to open a restaurant on 12 South. Like the Henry. I don't know of any local restaurateurs opening the Henry. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how that's even done. Yeah, it's the Henry on 12 South now instead of Josephine. That's a great example to me. It's not Josephine anymore. Andy Little is still in town doing a lot of work, like Josephine, what an unbelievable restaurant that was and they get to the end of their lease and it's like we just, we can't do this anymore. But something with us when we were moving into the yellow porch space, like you want to talk about a restaurant that helped define restaurants in this city, that's one of them. And so for us to go over there, we knew that we'd be able to capture passionate regulars, people that want to frequent a restaurant once a week, twice a week, happy hour brunch. Community people. People in their community, right? And be part of a neighborhood. And that's what we wanted Common Ground to be was we want it to be the place that you want right down the street from your house.

14:43How do you go there once a week, twice a week, whatever that might be? I think it was like one of my first 15 episodes back in 2020 where I had Gep and Katie Nelson. The best. I think I had Katie Nelson, Gep joined the show, but I think it was like Katie Nelson, owner of Yellow Porch and their history of cross corners and the Wild Iris and these other great restaurants. And they were, but I knew back then, like this is a community place. And I want to know their opinion. I want to know what they're going through right now because I respected the hell out of them for what they did at the Yellow Porch. A Yellow Porch was there 27 years. And you want to talk about, you're going 25 years on a restaurant, which is next to impossible to do. And then COVID hits you. And now you're probably nearing the end of when you're wanting to retire anyways. And then you're left with that sort of battle, like in the middle of it. What a difficult time. And the fact they were even able to dig Yellow Porch out of COVID and reopen again is incredibly impressive and speaks to the passionate regulars and clientele that they have. So it's a great location for that.

15:44And it's a neat little Berry Hill, all that area over there. I love it. Berry Hill is still growing constantly. And we're a mile and a half away from 12 South. And so sometimes people who live like in 12 South or in Eighth or something like that, don't want to get out of that. They can very easily get up to Berry Hill, that 100 Oaks area where we're at. Super Source develops and distributes high quality cleaning products and supplies, as well as delivers wear wash, housekeeping, laundry programs and food service training. They partner with restaurants, golf and country clubs, hotels and resorts, schools, universities and healthcare institutions. Save time and money and reduce inventory by utilizing their high quality products and engaging with their highly trained service specialists. If you're looking for wholesale cleaning products like dish machines in Nashville, Tennessee, they have you covered. Listen guys, this is way more than a dish machine and chemical company. They do not make you sign a contract. They earn your business every single week. And let me tell you, I will personally vouch for Jason Ellis and his entire team over at Super Source.

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20:50I like that. Matthew Ramus. Nailed it. We talk local and you say back in 2012, let's talk about your history so far in Nashville because you've been around town a little while. A little bit. Before it was cool to move to Nashville, I moved to Nashville. Before it was cool to move to Nashville, yeah. I hit it in 1988. So I. You got me by a little bit. I'm like the, when I say I'm from California and I live out here and it's like, everybody's from California out here. And there's still, anytime you're not out here and I'm in Franklin and you're outside of Franklin, you're like, oh, I'm from California. They go, there's like an eye roll because all these California people are moving here for this political refuge that is the Red South. And I'm like, I'm not that guy. It's not why I moved here. I was nine. I didn't have, so I feel confident saying it. And you could too. You didn't have that many strong political beliefs at nine years old. Not, I mean, I think I probably did, they weren't my own. They were, they weren't my own for sure.

21:52So you moved here and you immediately jumped in. Was Watermark your first place that you were at? Yeah, so like two weeks after moving to Nashville, I got a job bartending at Watermark. So I wasn't managing yet. I had been doing some leadership type roles in Los Angeles, in the hospitality industry, but just needed a job right when I came out here and started bartending at Watermark pretty much right away. So Watermark, for those of you who don't know, was one of the trailblazing local restaurants in Nashville. When Watermark opened, it was like this, what is this? It was gorgeous. Chef Joe Shaw, who's been on the podcast, opened that place and it was where the 404, the 404 kitchen is currently there. Still there, yeah, still there now. But previous to the 404 kitchen, it was Watermark. And it was the Watermark. It was the place. And so you started there. What was your experience like at Watermark? Is your introduction, because that really wasn't Nashville in 2012. That was like LA in Nashville in 2012.

22:55That's kind of common now for a place like Watermark, because Nashville's grown, but what was your experience like at Watermark? I mean, it was great. I had never worked in fine dining before and Watermark, white tablecloth, candle lit, a 300 bottle wine list, the whole deal. And I had never worked in that environment. So coming from fast paced bartending in Santa Monica and some catering work and things like that, just getting thrusted into that, it was a learning curve for sure. But I enjoyed that because I'm just kind of the type where I can't really be stagnant with something. I have to constantly be moving forward, constantly be growing or elevating in some way. And so being able to take on that educational piece of being in that environment to me was something I really enjoyed about it. And that was right around the time I started getting much more into wine and the wine world. And that then led to testing for my SOM certification, which kind of changed my trajectory, I guess, in my career. So what are you, did you, you did level one? I did level one and level two in the same week. Quarter Masters? Yeah. You did level one and level two quarter masters in the same week. Yeah, I've never really doing anything with it before. I spent about six months diving into it all.

23:57And we had this cool group of people in Nashville that were all kind of doing it together. And it was passing through Atlanta. And Monday, Tuesday was the level one, two day course. And Wednesday was the level two exam. I was able to register for both and ended up going pass pass and came back to Nashville. Dude, that's incredible. I did my level one in 2003 at the Beau Ravage in Biloxi, Mississippi. And it was like the hardest thing I'd ever done. Doug Frost was the guy doing it. And I thought I knew about wine. I went in there and I was a bar manager at Amerigo in Jackson, Mississippi. And then we heard about this thing and I was like, I gotta go. And I studied, I didn't gamble. I studied, we had flashcards. And it was really the 10 villages of Beaujol. I thought I knew wine cause I knew California wine. I knew a little bit of New World style wine. And then I got into that thing and I go, they make wine in California. Let's get back to Portugal. And it's like, what?

24:57Totally. Everything is everywhere else but California. The whole two day class was like 90% the rest of the world. I basically referenced that occasionally, grapes are grown in Napa. Outside of that, you're good. Yeah, they're growing grapes from all these other places anyway. There's no indigenous grapes there. It's all French. So let's just deal with France. They'll say at the time, my parents had retired and then moved to Napa. And so they were living in Napa Valley at the time. So I was taking a couple of trips a year to go stay in Napa, which was great. And my dad started collecting at that time and getting really into it. And so as I was studying, my dad was then also getting more into it as well. And so it was this great way to kind of combine the both together. Oh, like bonding too. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Something other than sports. That's pretty bad ass. I'll tell you, my level one in Atlanta, just by happen stats, the person that I was sitting next to for those two days was Alex Birch, who now has a Michelin star in wine. And so it's kind of funny, the two different paths that we took to be owner operators in Nashville, doing totally different things that we met 2014 in Atlanta to level one our class.

26:04That's a small world. Totally is, yeah. And then- That's so cool. Well, one of the other people that I met in Atlanta during that process for the level two was the current, or at the time, the current bar manager at Cane Prime. His name was Rob Rose. And then Sean McGee, who was also working at Cane Prime at the time as well. So then I came back to Nashville and kept on working at Watermark. And about a month later, they had an opening position for somebody on their staff at Cane. They called and offered to me. And that's how I ended up going over to M Street. So you went to M Street. You were at Moto. You were at Virago, Cane Prime. And it says you were the general manager at all of this. So did you go straight from bartending into being a GM at M Street? I served at Cane for about a year, year and a half. Okay. And so went in there as a server assistant, coming off of being a level two SOM, working at Watermark. Then you start from scratch and become a server assistant at Cane Prime and dive into the steakhouse world. At the time, I mean, that was 2014. So that was before there was 27 steakhouses in the downtown area, right? It was if you want a locally owned high quality steakhouse, it was Cane Prime.

27:07I mean, Cane Prime was hands down the best restaurant in Nashville. Well, and that's why you could get a bunch of people that were absolutely overly qualified to be server assistants or food runners or even servers at the time to be in there and do that because the standard and the level of expectation that was there, you wanted to be part of that. Oh yeah. I ended up with M Street for six and a half years and was a server there and became the bar manager at Cane and then had a centralized beverage role for a little bit doing costing and menus and everything company wide for all six restaurants. And we ended up needing GMs more than anything across the company. So at that time it was almost, do I want to keep going with wine? I had an opportunity to go with a distributor in town in a more wine focused sales type role. And do you want to take that route or do you want to go try for the first time to be the general manager of a restaurant and take on more operations and use this wine knowledge, but transition into more of an operational general manager, full holistic restaurant role. And I chose that route and- Why'd you choose that route? There were things to me that were more interesting than just wine.

28:10And I look at like the studying I did with wine and beverage was almost a springboard into being in a more full overall umbrella position in the industry. I was interested in leadership development and I was interested in scheduling and the financial piece of it. And there were all these other pieces to me that were more interesting than just wine. And I think wine at the time for me was a thing to study and a thing to continue growing further. It was a passion. It was a passion. I was interested in it, but it was also a way for me to continue challenging myself in the current position that I was in. And so then when I looked at that sort of path and they wanted me to go be the GM of Modo, it was, here's another opportunity to continue to grow. Can you continue to challenge myself every day? What's next? What's going to be the next thing I do? And ultimately fast forward five years when I was the general manager at Cane Prom. I've never been that loyal to a brand. And I'm gonna explain this, right? If I'm, and I probably, I would have chose this. I did choose the same way that you chose because you, and I went into the food world because I started doing produce back in the day.

29:15When you were doing all these things, I think I was doing food. I probably sold food to you at some point, at Freshpoint or at What Chefs Want. Yeah. But when you go into the wine world, the sales wine world, like I never wanted to have to walk in somewhere and have to just really be all in on my brands. So if you go work for Lippman Brothers, is Lippman Jack Daniels, who does Jack Daniels? Do you know? Lippman. So if you go to Lippman Brothers and you go out to drink and you wanna have a Will It or something, you're like, oh, that's a bad, I can't have that. You have to drink your products. I never wanted, because I just loved wine. I loved the story behind it. I loved the flavors, the textures. I loved all of it. And I didn't wanna put myself in this little box of these are the brands that I represent. And for some reason, these brands are better than every other brand. And I need to sell you as to why you need to buy my brands. And I can only buy my brands if I was out somewhere because I'm a company guy.

30:17It just never was a thing for me. I've always been like, if I like the, I wanna try everything. I don't wanna be in this little box that a distributor would put you in. Well, I looked at around that time of not really a crossroads, because to me, I was really bought into the group that I was with. I was learning so much at M Street and they were investing back into me. And so I was really happy and thankful to be there and that they kept on wanting to give me these opportunities. I was almost able to take those things I loved about the wine world and that story and the sense of community and the sense of we're all opening a bottle around the same table and translate that sort of passion I had towards it into running the day-to-day restaurants of, okay, how can we take this and translate it to the team to get them to convey that experience to the guest at the table? And once I was able to continue that sort of passion, but being inside of the restaurant still every day, the decision was really easy. I'm gonna go be a general manager. And you can choose whatever wine in the world you want based around its merit, not because a guy sells. There's like a whole thing there. And I can translate this passion that I have towards it to a team every day, whether that's in lineup or coaching them on the floor, still being to interact with the guests.

31:24I'm able to take this sort of enjoyment I have towards this industry and get my fingerprints on it more so than if I was just off selling wine. So I mean, ultimately, obviously now looking back five years ago, six years ago, I'm glad with the decision I did. And when I was in that kind of more corporate beverage role with M Street, the person I was working alongside, Wes, who's my partner now. And so we met doing that centralized beverage role on M Street, where we were bought into the same message and the same culture and the same mission. And now that's a lot of the same things that we're able to translate between our two restaurants here. What do you think the biggest, so if I'm just gonna phrase this, because this is fun, thank you. I have nothing, this is fun talking to an operator like this. Wine is very hard. It seems to me like you either get it or you don't, right? It's not something you can just kind of like learn. You either start learning about it. I started reading Wine for Dummies when I was 18. I got a job at Merchants in Cool Springs when it was open in Cool Springs.

32:25And the guy said, what do you know about wine? I said, white wine with chicken and red wine with steak. And he's like, no. It's that easy. That's all there is to it. Now, if I've learned anything the last 15 years, that's it. That's it, that's all you have to know. And he goes, no, no, no, no. You need to know the subtle nuance of a Pinot Noir or whatever. And I was like, so I bought Wine for Dummies and I started reading it and I learned how they make white Zinfandel because that was the big grape back in 97 was white Beringer white Zinfandel was, I mean, fucking everybody drank Beringer white Zinfandel. But I was so fascinated by how white Zinfandel was created that it like piqued my curiosity. And I was like, I wanna learn more. And then I wanted to learn about cabs and red wines and white wines. And I just thought white wines, you know, the perception to me when I was 19 years old doing this was that white wines are what girls drink, red wines are what men drink, which is so antiquated and effed up when you're 18, 19 years old, just, but that was my perception. As a server, women would go, I'll have a glass of white wine. Men were like, I want the big cab or whatever.

33:28And once I started drinking white wines, I was like, oh my God, like, they're just as complex and they're amazing. And they're so much, if not even better, like this is total misconception. What do you think the misconception is that most people, how was the easiest thing to teach somebody about wine if you're operating a restaurant or how to get your staff engaged? Because I've tried for years and years to get people to go, if you just lean in a little bit, if you just do something fun, I used to have little parties at my house after shifts. I would say, everybody stop and get a bottle of cab in the 15 to $20 range, brown bag it, and then we'll all pour tastes of it and we'll try it and then we'll open it and see it. We made like little parties around it. We got like, we had like journals and notebooks and we took it kind of seriously and I still see that happening, not in my ecosystem. Yeah, it's, the wine world has a big barrier to entry for especially a lot of younger people because it appears to be very intimidating. And a lot of the good wine are foreign labels and in French or in Italian or something like that.

34:31And you see Cabernet on a bottle, you've never heard of it before you see whiskey, you're good to go there, right? And so it's just a very intimidating barrier to entry. And it was funny, gosh, this was probably about 10 years ago now when I was the bar manager at Cane, we started this thing called Millennial Wine Group and we were gonna have a podcast, we weren't gonna do anything, it ended up fizzling away, but it was how do we make wine approachable to the younger generation? How can they relate to it and feel confident going into a liquor store and purchasing a bottle of something they've had? And then that basically give us the opportunity in this playbook for how do we train our staff on how to discuss wine table side with a guest because you don't want it to be intimidating. And you want guests to try something new and feel like they're learning and feel like they're educating themselves, but you don't want it to be intimidating, you want it to be something that's incredibly approachable. So all of the tests that we gave or studying or pre-shift material was always how does this translate to a guest? How can you get this message of how great this bottle is to a guest very easily without it being very intimidating?

35:35So we just wanted to take that whole connotation about the industry, about how intimidating it can potentially be. And we wanted to remove that to just say, this is just something else for you to enjoy. You might learn something along the way that you didn't know before. 100%. I used to feature like every two months. I would do like a 60 day rotation. I would feature two, like a cabinet shard, right? And it would just be plain easy cabinet shard. And we'd do a big contest around it for like a two month span. And we would be selling the shit of this stuff, but every day Atlanta food taste. And then I would say, this is a Cabernet. Let's talk about the general characteristics of a Cabernet. What are the other Cabernets that we sell? And we would taste on other Cabernets and we would do little things. And then the next two months after that, I maybe I do a Pinot Noir and a Pinot Grigio. What are the difference between these two? I do like a real Italian Pinot Grigio and maybe it's something from France, maybe it's something from California, but you would at least be able to have these conversations. And my biggest thing is I think when you go to a restaurant, I think the most, a nice restaurant, right? Applebee's maybe not so much, but if you're going to Keene Prime and you don't know a lot about wine, when they recommend something, it makes it so easy to go, I'll have that.

36:44Because everybody out there is intimidated by looking at a hundred bottles of stuff they don't know. And they don't want to look stupid. That's exactly it. They're intimidated to even try to pronounce some of the names. So then they'll shy away from ordering it. Where if your staff is educated to the point that they can have this baseline understanding of each one of those things in a way to communicate it to the guest. It's one thing to talk about all of the villages of Burgundy, but can you do that and convey it in a way to a guest who wants to feel like they're potentially impressing the people they're with, but they don't want to embarrass themselves. They don't want to try to pronounce something they don't know how to pronounce. They might not want to try something new, but can you get the message across to the guest in a way where they feel like they're learning, but they're still confident what they're ordering. They're going to get something they like. Yeah, and not something that's going to cost. I think the big fear also is if they recommend something, servers are notorious for recommending shit that's really expensive because they want to build the check. Like if you can find something in that 12 to $15 glass range that's good and say, hey, you'd love to try this Cabernet.

37:54It's $13 a glass and it's delicious. Most people are happy to go, thank you for letting me off the hook. I don't have to act like an idiot now and go, yes, I'll try that. And then it's the easiest cell you'll ever do versus I'll just have a water or just maybe we'll do that. And then two people at that table each get the same glass and it's very easy to say, are you going to have two? Let's get a bottle. And now we've got a bottle on that table for somebody that maybe would have had a glass of classic Cabernet. You've now got a bottle of something new for them to try. And all that's doing is enhancing the experience for that guest. 100%. And if they want to drink Plump Jack or something, they're going to order that. They know wine, they're going to order that. Sorry, I get a tangent on a wine thing. No, I did it. It's good. I haven't gone deep on wine in a while. So anytime you want to dive into wine, I'd be happy to. I haven't gone into it in a while being that the majority of what we do at Common Ground is very cocktail focused. And we have great wines by the glass and they're all very unique. And I don't have a Pinot Grigio, we have a Pick Pool instead. And so it's a way to educate a guest or a guest when they say, do you have Pinot Grigio?

38:57We could say, actually there's this grape in France called Pick Pool. Have you ever tried this before? And now that guest is learning something new, right? And so we're still able to use that muscle at Common Ground, but it is much more cocktail heavy there. I think that this generation's much more cocktail heavy. I think so. And a lot of wines by the glass, a lot of cocktail. And I think that's just kind of the direction things are going, especially like we're like the 35 to $45 per person type concept as well. And so we know that we're not going to be the place people are coming in and ordering $150 bottle of wine all the time. And we want to make sure we have good wine offerings for guys coming in and getting it in old fashioned and his girlfriend or date at the time wants to do a glass of wine, we're going to have great options for you without trying to be too pretentious or over the top. So were you stolen by the Pizzutis? I mean, over or was it, I can't think of his name right now. James Beard Chef, what's his name at Yolande? Tony Montuano. Tony and Cathy Montuano. Was it Tony who took you or was it Joe? It was a conversation I had with Tony that ultimately got me to take the job at Yolande.

40:01It was you sit down with Tony Montuano for a little bit and you go, man, you are the real deal. And there's a lot of what I'll call fake in our industry. And Tony and Cathy are the real deal. And you sit down with them and their energy is just contagious. And you want to be part of what it is that they're doing. And they're gone now out of there, right? They are gone. The saddest thing that ever happened in Nashville is Tony Montuano leaving Nashville. Back in Italy? They're the best. And I think they spend a lot of time in Italy now. I think they're doing a lot of time back in Chicago now as well. But yeah, they're the best. And you spend an hour with them and you realize it's not an accident. They are where they are. It's the real deal. I think he won in 2005, Best Chef Midwest. But he's been nominated a dozen times for James Beard Award. To me, the more impressive thing are the people that came up under him who have also then been nominated. That speaks to Tony. And when Tony and Cathy speak about their experience or their resume, obviously, their restaurants speak for themselves, but they talk about the people who have come up through them and how great of concepts they're now operating.

41:08And to me, that was the sort of culture and mindset that I wanted to be part of. And it's hard to say no to Tony Montuano. Well, now you're part of that story. You came up through Tony Montuano. Now you have your own place. And it was a great time. I never worked in hotels before, but the goal was very clear at Yolande that we were trying to have a Michelin-type experience. That was the goal, and that was the service. And we were gonna do everything we can to be the best hospitality experience you could possibly have. And that was before, I mean, Tony had a Michelin star for Spiaggia in Chicago. We wanted to bring Michelin to the South. And obviously, with now what happened this year, we were doing some things that we felt was going to get Nashville and the South in general considered for Michelin at the time. And it was fun to be part of an environment where that was the standard and that was the expectation. It makes you reevaluate everything you're doing in a different way. The first time I ate there, I walked outside of the hotel. You walk through the big lobby doors, and I walked outside to give the valet guy my ticket. And I was like, we're back in Nashville.

42:10Like, that was crazy. We just left our city to eat dinner. And now we're back out. That was like a time portal, because when you're sitting in Yolande, it does not feel like you are in Nashville. The conversations we were just even having about service were things that people in Nashville, even a few years prior, were not even considering. Not even considering. The experience that Tony and Kathy had that they were bringing to that restaurant, I mean, it was very, very impressive what was happening. And we used to sit in line up and we would say, how do we keep on motivating ourselves to keep pushing forward? And what our message would be to get across is once you get to the top of the competitions yourself, is how much further do you want to push this? How much more detail can we have? How can a regular still feel like they're blown away the ninth time they're dining at this restaurant? And everybody was bonding together and it was some pretty incredible things happening. How do you get that buy-in? It was everybody believing in what we were doing in the direction we're going in. And obviously you get a figure like Tony and Kathy, you get the two of them there every single day working the floor of the restaurant.

43:10And that'll motivate some people to move in that direction. But creating that culture of buy-in was, we saw it happen there and we had people that were committed to what we were doing. And ultimately what that led us to do was be very selective with people who were working there. We're gonna make sure experience is obviously important, but do you have that culture piece? Are you committed to investing in what's best for this team and not what's just best for you on that given shift? And we had a group of about 20 people that were incredibly bought into that. That's special. So now we've established your history, right? You were at Watermark, Moto, Virago, Cane Prime, Yolan. All over the place. Very high pedigree experiences in Nashville. And then when you left, did you leave Yolan to open Common Ground? Director of Operations for Red Pebbles in between that. Oh, that's right. I missed that one. You're Director of Operations for Red Pebbles. Yeah, I'd say that was a difficult leave, but having the opportunity to challenge myself further into a multi-unit position, I felt it was the right time in my career to make that move.

44:18And that's a tough conversation to have with Tony and that's a tough conversation with that team who we were investing in so heavily, but in my sort of goal and mindset of constantly what's next and I'm gonna keep pushing myself and challenging and making sure it's 1% better every single day. In my mind, it was the right opportunity for me to make a multi-unit position. And I was with Red Pebbles, it was a good experience. It was still a challenging time reopening a few of the restaurants outside of COVID and... Let us in on, it's Emmy Squared, 404... Sadie's we opened at that time over in Edge Hill. Adele's is under that umbrella. We had Shep's Deli at the time, which now is an Emmy Squared location. We had Blue Stripes in the Gulch, which I think is Nashville Sunday Club now. And then Bajos Xto Taco in the Country Music Hall of Fame. So all different genres of cuisine, different types of hospitality, different types of service. And that's what interested me about it was, you look at those restaurants I've worked in, it's steakhouse sushi, Italian, a Mexican restaurant, high-end Italian food, like all of these different types of things.

45:22Celebrity chefs, Jonathan Waxman's not, you know what I mean? Exactly. You get to know him at all? Not Jonathan Waxman, Matt Bullis though, who, I mean, that's force of nature working with him as well over at 404. Oh man, he's amazing. He's amazing. And we had great corporate chefs at the time. We had a lot of different types of experiences. And that's what I wanted was continue being well-rounded of all of these different types of experiences. How can you take Yolan-style service and translate that to people that are working in a Jewish deli, right? And how can you take that mindset and relay that to people at Bajos Xto? And so like that was a challenge I was really interested in. Okay, so how'd you do it? Because you, we talked about how you do it at Yolan when Tony and Cathy are there every day on the floor. It's real hard to move away because he's gonna be right there going, that's not the way we do it. That's not the way we do it. As the GM, when you have Cathy and Tony there, it makes a lot easier. When they're not there and now you have multiple locations, how do you elevate that many locations to what you're saying like a Yolan-style, you wanna do that?

46:27It seems impossible. It does and on the surface it is, right? And that's where we adapted to this sort of mindset of it's easy, it's not simple, right? Where it's like, oh, it's on paper. This is very easy to do. Just make sure that guest does everything they need. Okay, well, that's not exactly simple, right? I've got 27 reasons why I can't get there right now. So at that time it was this huge investment into leadership development. And if I could get general managers and chefs and AGMs and bar managers bought into this vision, they're the ones that are gonna translate this to the team. And once you spread to that multi-unit position, the most challenging thing is you can't be inside of the same place every single day. And you can be confident that when you're inside somewhere things are being done correctly. To me, like the value of a good leader is are things being done correctly when you're not there? Are you translating your vision correctly to that team where they're bought into it, knowing that when you're not inside of that exact location, things are still getting done in the way that it would be if you were there.

47:27And that was that big opportunity for me was we've got all these different locations. We're moving a mile a minute. We're moving so quickly, trying to open new stuff. We were opening Sadie's at the time and Shep's was as busy as it's ever been. How do you make sure that opening happens correctly, but the sort of mission that you're trying to get across at Shep's on the other side of town is still being executed correctly? Yeah, I'm a bad leader then. By that definition, I'm a bad leader because every time I walk in the restroom, I'm like, what in the actual fuck is going on in this building? It's almost like when the cats away, the mice will play kind of a thing. And you go in and you're crystal clear on what it is, but I still come in and I'm like, why did nobody blow off the front porch? Like there's cigarette butts in the ashtray. Like, oh, we're gonna get to that. It's like, how come nobody has my intensity? Like, what is this? And it would, to this day drives me crazy some of these details that if I'm not there saying these need to be done, it's clearly communicated to everybody, oh, we just got busy. It's like, this is on a checklist.

48:30And one of the things I still struggle with is I can tell somebody here's what needs to get done. And here's the level of the lights need to be at. If I'm not explaining the reason why the lights need to be at that level, it's not gonna get done because then it's just another thing that I'm telling somebody to do. And to me, I still struggle every single day with every little detail of the restaurants have to be. And here's the reason why. And if the team is bought into the reason why we're trying to do something, they're a lot more willing on their own to do it. Instead of just another checklist of here's a list of things I'm telling you to do, because then it's great, Matt's gonna come in here and I just got all these other things that I have to do. Like, why does this matter? It's, well, if I start with, here's the reason why, here's what we're trying to get across, here's what we're trying to convey to this guest, here's how this is gonna make it easier on the team. Now you're bought into what we're trying to do. Yeah, I mean, I... Oh, it's still frustrating. Yeah, I'm like, I don't... So that worked for you? Like all the place you'd walk in and everything was going the way that you wanted it to go? Well, Wes is in the restaurant right now, so I know it's getting done correctly.

49:31So I can still be confident in it. How often do you spend at Common Ground? Five, six days a week. So you're doing the Tony Montano, the year there all the time? Totally, yeah. We don't have any other salaried leaders other than the two of us. It's the two of us. We don't have salaried back a house leader, we don't have salaried front a house leaders, it's Wes and I. And it's the two of us who are doing it together, split between the two restaurants. And one of our main goals and focus for this year in 2025 was to invest into elevating and promoting key hourly people. And making sure that we have, do we have people that can run the restaurants if we're not there? Can they execute service? And are they bought into the same vision and mission that we're trying to get across? And so a lot of our focus in this past year has been investing into those individuals and making sure that they can carry on what we're trying to do. So that's kind of the EOS method we were talking about earlier. That's similar kind of a process of getting everybody on the bus or on the boat rowing in the same direction. Yeah, and it's been three and a half years and we have gone through growing pains that people would go through over the course of a few decades.

50:37And when we opened, we had an executive chef and after about a year that didn't work out and we realized that we had zero oversight over the back of house of our restaurants. And when we were working with that individual, we were working like it was a partnership. And we got snake bit pretty bad because we realized it wasn't a partnership. EOS and I are a partnership and that individual was incredibly valuable to our organization, but that was still just a highly performing, highly compensated employee. And we started treating that more like another member of the partnership. And once that ended up not working out, we realized we had to get back to ground floor with it all of what is going on in the back of house. We need to hone back in on all of this. So that was a lesson for us to kind of say, we need to really make sure our hands aren't everything we're doing. We're investing in hourly team. We're minimizing our turnover and really getting back to the basics in the restaurant. That's the key. That's the key to me, minimizing turnover. We have next to none. We have next to none. And the turnover that we do have are people that are wanting to transition to something else outside of our industry.

51:39I never want somebody to feel like they need to leave our restaurant to go to a different restaurant. And that even comes to our back of house. We got two locations. One location's open all day, every day. One location's only open for weekday dinner and then weekend brunch and dinner. Well, a lot of back of house employees work multiple jobs. In our mind, it was can they work multiple jobs within our organization? Can we have them do lunch at our Berry Hill location and dinner at our Sylvan Park location? We know prep will always be consistent. We know plating will be consistent. We know that we have this core group of individuals that are bought into what we're doing. Can we invest into these people and have them work multiple positions with us? And I mean, I think we have seven back of house employees that work at both restaurants now. Wow, that's incredible. That's definitely some way to keep your culture going at both places and make sure that they know what they're doing. Is there an overtime situation there? Or is it two separate things? Two separate things. Good. He's like, you can now shut up, dude. It's two separate things. Good deal. Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen.

52:45If 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. There'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.

53:46It 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 CMB Linen. Hear it from his, 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. Sharpier'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 providing high quality, fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals and universities.

54:50Their 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. That'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. If your leadership team is not on the same page and you are constantly having these long meetings and you're not getting traction, this is your opportunity.

55:53Today I'm talking about the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Yes, it is based around the book by Gino Wickman and Traction. We use it at our restaurants. They use it at Frothy Monkey. They use it at Edley's Barbecue. They use it at Carrington Row, Germantown Cafe, Park Cafe. Lots of restaurants are using it because it helps. And let me tell you today, Justin Cook is a great facilitator. Justin helps business owners and their leadership teams implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a set of simple, practical tools, disciplines to help you get better at three things, vision, traction, and to be healthy. Vision is getting you and your leadership team 100% on the same page with who you are, where you're going, and how you're going to get there. Traction is helping your leaders become more disciplined and accountable to execute on the right things that will make your vision become reality. Because a lot of times you're doing a lot of stuff, but not the right stuff. Healthy is helping your leaders become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team. Because unfortunately, leaders don't function well as a team.

56:56If you start with the leaders, the rest of the organization will follow. And you'll get to a point to where your entire team is crystal clear on vision. Everywhere you look, people are executing the things that make your vision come true. And it's a great, healthy, fun place to work. If that resonates with you, you can email Justin right now at justin.cook at eosworldwide.com, or you can call him 615-336-7133 to see if EOS is a right fit for you. He will come down and do an initial kind of introduction and ask you a bunch of questions. It is totally free. Definitely call Justin today. What were the things when you got, when you kind of, the oversight in the kitchen, what's one big thing? So I mean, if you're a restaurant owner out there who is in a similar situation, and you're mostly front of the house, and you got a guy running the back of the house, what should they be looking out for? Well, if we don't have a back of house leader, we need to simplify everything as much as possible. And a lot of times, if you've got a very strong back of house leader, you don't have systems that are incredibly structured because they know that they're gonna be there every day.

58:01They can have eyes on everything themselves. And we, I mean, our order guides didn't have any par levels on them. We were ordering things, just excess products sitting on the shelves. Our recipes were getting a little heavy as far as what the cost of they all were. We were spending extra amount of time on labor, prepping things that didn't necessarily need to be prepped in that way. So when you've got a chef that's back there looking at that stuff every single day, as operators, you're okay, great, I'm gonna focus on our front of house training. I'm gonna focus on our beverage program. I'm gonna make sure our guests are on a good spot. We got that under control. If you lose that individual and you realize you have a single point of failure in the back of house, which is one specific person, well, it was a good lesson for us because it almost forced us to start over with a great team and a great menu. And now we're gonna make sure that our order guides are as clean as possible. Anybody can walk into the walk-in with a clipboard and know if I have that many fingerling potatoes on the shelf, I order this many from this person. And we got everything down back to the basics as clean and simple as possible where there's no more single point of failure in that kitchen, in the prep program, the plating, the menu, anything like that.

59:10And it was a good lesson for us, especially at the time that we were expanding the business. You guys using Margin Edge? No, so we use Craftable. We use Craftable Foodager and that's what all of our recipes are through. That's what our par levels are through. It does predictive ordering. We do our inventory, our costing, pretty much everything through there. So it uses AI? Yeah, it assists with a little bit of AI. I struggle to trust certain things and so me having on a piece of paper a par level of 12 cucumbers and ordering as that works a little bit better for me. But this year, more than we did in the past, we've been investing into outside programs like that of how do we simplify and save time in different areas and trust in different partners that we have in order to get back time to focus a little bit more on the business. Very smart. Yeah, one of your partners is actually a super source. They're the best. Jason Ellis is the man. The absolute man. And just something as simple that you don't realize of if I don't have to worry about the inventory of my chemicals in my dish machines, perfect. One little things like that that you can get off your plate, huge benefit to then getting time back to focus on the guests and the team.

01:00:16Well, yes and no. I'm gonna push back a little bit because a lot of people are still using his competitors and their whole model is based around you not paying attention to what they're doing. You want to do exactly what you're talking about, but you wanna do it with somebody who you trust. And that's, I think the biggest part about Jason Ellis, hey, there's no contract, they earn it every week. But then also I trust him with my business. He can come in and do kind of whatever he wants because I completely trust him. And over the past five years, I've been working with him. Not one time has he ever done anything. And I get people come in here all the time to say this stuff. The next one is CMB Lennon. Are you using them yet? I don't know. I know you're gonna be upset with me for that. I'm not upset with you. Everybody's under contracts with different things. It's okay. I understand. We'll get you changed up. We'll get you. I appreciate that, yeah. It's the same sort of thing. It's just, it's a linen company. Well, and even, okay, I'll tell you another one of your partners, look at this. I'm doing good shout outs for you. Let's go. Since the day we opened Sylvan Park, we use Sharpies.

01:01:18And that's another one where I know that I can get them on the phone immediately. If I have questions about something we can, it's so easy to adjust my orders. We have par deliveries that come three days a week. So our bread is always fresh. Like our burger is one of our signature things. And making sure like how soft the bun and fresh the bun is for that burger is such a huge piece to it. So having a partner like that makes that a lot easier as well. It's just having trust in these specific relationships that we've built makes our job a lot easier. That's the best, man. And then that's what we're doing at NARA is just trying to figure out how to work with restaurant owners like yourself who might have questions. Hey, who's a great person? Who should I trust? Because if you're new to town or somebody doesn't know who to trust, and these are people that I totally trust and have their back in. It's good to hear you say these things unprompted on the show. A little free press there. I like that. But all people that we use and that we trust. And it's not easy, especially as a new restaurateur and new partner branching out and doing it for the first time in an ownership way. It's not easy to entrust people with different pieces of your business.

01:02:20It takes time. And we've switched through a few different main food purveyors for that exact reason. We wanted people that we can rely on. We're very happy where we are now, but those things do take time. It takes trust. It takes building relationships and making sure that you're looking at it the same way. It's just another piece of the business and another partner you're making. So tell me about Common Ground. Let's, I'm going to your location over in Berry Hill. I park in that huge parking lot. 22 spaces. I get into a spot and walk in the front door. What's it like? Am I being greeted? What's the aesthetic? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a full service restaurant. We wanted to open up neighborhood spots that we would want to hang out at. And yet like for us, casual never meant unprofessional. And I think those two words get thrown around together a lot of times, but every single thing that we want to do in our restaurant is supposed to be approachable. We never want anybody to feel intimidated. We play fun music. Our staff wears t-shirts to work, but the service is still very good. And the product is still very good and very consistent.

01:03:20You can get a steak and a bottle of wine. You could also get a smash burger and a beer. You can get shrimp tacos, right? And so whatever it is that you're looking for on that specific day, we want to be able to fit into people's everyday schedule. And our service style relates to that. It's relaxed, it's laid back, but you still know that you're going to have everything that you need. The service steps are still very clear and defined, but our staff utilize their own personalities in order to make that experience for the guest great. Approachable is the main thing that we use. Everything should be incredibly approachable in the building. I always say you can step outside of our system any time you want if you need to make a guest or a big guest. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not a, you have to say, would you like a Coke or a Diet? Like it's, do your thing, but also, it needs to be in these tight parameters. Yep, we have check marks that you need to hit in that service experience along the way, but how you get to each of those check marks, utilize your personality, because you're the one who's making the regulars. It's up to you. Regulars, and people do like that they come in and they see Wes and myself in the restaurant every single day. They really like that and speaking to operators is something people like, but we also are smart enough to know the servers and bartenders are the ones who are really creating those experiences and those regulars.

01:04:28So we want you to utilize your personality because they are coming to see you. If they get us taking care of them, if they get to see Wes behind the bar making his cocktails, that's just extra, but our staff know that they can use their personalities as long as we're hitting the things we need. If we're crashing courses, if we're not marking for our next course, if their water glass is empty, whatever it is, then we're failing what our experience should be. As long as we're hitting all of those key elements, do whatever you want along the way because it's your show, it's your table, you're the one who's building that experience. I love it. Tell me about the food. I don't talk a lot about food on this show, but we're introducing people to common ground and I wanna know if I'm out there listening to this and I'm like, I wanna go check this place out. You said you got smash burgers, you got tacos. Yeah, smash burgers. What's the number one selling on your P-Mix? What is it? Probably our focaccia plate. We make house-made sourdough focaccia every day from scratch. We make our own whipped boursin cheese from scratch every day as well that goes with that. And so we're actually making ricotta from scratch. It's like a take from the old Green Hills Grill. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that whipped boursin.

01:05:29Yeah, and yeah, whipped boursin, sorghum butter, a seasonal jam with the focaccia plate. But our smash burger is right there as well as far as top seller. And then you turn into dinner and we still have that full all-day menu available. So we still sell a lot of period tacos and smash burgers, but that also then leads into our pasta that we do. And you wanna talk about one of those partners we work with, our pasta purveyor is Nicolettos. And so that was a way for us, can we find another local business that we can trust to provide us with a high quality, consistent product? When we opened up our Sylvan Park location, we were rolling pasta from scratch every single day in the kitchen. And then when things didn't work out with our chef like they did and we wanted to hone in on opportunities, I said, you're spending how much time rolling pasta in the kitchen? Let's find a partner and pick up the phone, you call Nicolettos and now two and a half years later, that's a consistent partner that we have that we know that we can rely on. That's fantastic and I am a sucker for pasta. It's like probably my favorite food. I'm shocked at how much we sell. It's a, you know, we have neighborhood bar, bistro, cocktail restaurants, smash burger, all of that.

01:06:34And we sell so much pasta and people love pasta and we have two on our menu now that when we originally only had one, now we have two different ones on the menu and we sell a ton and yeah, Nicolettos has been a great partner to us and that's one of those things of another thing that we don't need to worry about. Submit the order, we know that it's gonna be a consistent product that shows up and we know that we've got good recipes and good prep recipes and systems in place to put out a good item to a guest and that those sort of systems in place kind of takes us to the next level of fitting into somebody's regular schedule. Love the shout out to Nicolettos Pasta. I've shout out a lot of people. Any other great vendors, local vendors you're using? How much time we got? We got time, you tell me. 8th and Roast has been crucial to our business and I know we. Yeah, Q over there, he's amazing. The best, right? And we kind of started this conversation joking about us not being a coffee shop but I'll tell you what, 8th and Roast has been a crucial partner to us. We came out, it was so funny, Wes is more knowledgeable when it comes to cocktails and spirits than anybody I've ever worked with in this industry. He's the best, right?

01:07:34He came up through Patterson House, he worked for M Street for a long time doing corporate beverage stuff and his cocktails and prep recipes and everything are bar none. I've never seen anybody else do anything like it. And then we put espresso martini flight on our menu and it took off and it was so funny for me to basically say, Wes, all of this time and energy you put into all of your cocktail ingredients, espresso martini flight's gonna go viral and take off. And it's funny, it opened up a whole new aspect to the business for us because espresso martini flavors are a huge thing that we do now. How many come on a flight? Three. Three different espresso martinis on a flight? We have six flavors on our menu, it's crazy, right? You picked three. Well, it's. What kind of flavors? I mean, because espresso is a pretty unique flavor. What kind of flavors are you doing? Like a raspberry espresso martini type thing? Yeah, we've done vanilla raspberry before. The seasonal one that we do right now is peppermint mocha. Obviously it comes with a little candy cane. We got salted chocolate mandarin that comes with a Kit Kat as the garnish. So we lean all into it as much as possible. But that to say, Eighth and Roast is such a crucial partner to us because in our espresso martinis is a cold brew concentrate syrup that we make from a ground coffee that Eighth and Roast provides us with.

01:08:43And so all of those little pieces of what we do down to somebody taking a picture of the candy cane on their espresso martini starts with, do we have all of our channels correct? And how's our relationship with Eighth and Roast? How's our ordering from them? Are they giving us a consistent product at a consistent time? So all we have to worry about is getting that cocktail to the guest. So that's how we kind of look at all of these partners that we use, all local as well, which is great. And can we make sure that all of those lines within the organization and the business are correct where we're focusing on the guest and the team? And I'm blown away, man. You got it all, like every little detail. You've got dialed in. I love it. We are certainly still acting like we know what we're doing. Yeah, no, I mean, it sounds like you do. I mean, if I was to give recommendations, you're spot on with where I would be telling you to go except for your linen company, which we got to fix that. We'll work on that, we'll work on that. Do you use a broadliner or what do you guys use for your main food?

01:09:44Like who actually provides our food? So the main company we use now is Chef's Warehouse. But What Chefs Want has been a huge partner to us from the beginning. Evans Meats down in Alabama, they provide our steak and seafood, sharpies. So we feel very comfortable now with the partners that we have. And the thing that's been great and why I was very happy with making a switch that we did a little bit ago was I was very clear from the beginning when we were gonna make this change, our meat and seafood is gonna be coming from Evans Meats. That's just how it's going to be. So I'm gonna have this amount of week of all of these items that we're gonna order from you. What I don't wanna hear is, and have you thought about our New York Strip is because here's what we wanna order from here, here's what we wanna order from here. Are you on board with that? It's not gonna be the biggest account in the world for you, but does that work for you fitting into where that's going to be within our business? You work with Ty over at Evans Meats? Yeah. Ty's the man. Ty is the man. I just reconnected with him last week. I used to sell him food when he was at the Ledges Country Club as the chef in Huntsville.

01:10:47Started working with Ty at Cane Prime. That's how I met him. But so you look at these throughout 15 years of working within Nashville, seeing this industry grow, you develop and maintain all of these partnerships that we branch out three years ago, do it on our own. Well, who am I calling? The people I enjoyed working with before, the people we knew we could rely on. Who we trust. And it's the same thing in the beverage world. We built these great relationships throughout our time at all of these really good restaurants in Nashville, and we're gonna be opening, who are we gonna call? We're gonna call those suppliers and those distributors, because those are the people that we want now to grow our business with. I love that. It's all done the right way. That's how you should be doing it. I love hearing this. Yeah, and it's how local Nashville businesses should be, in our opinion as well. And this city is changing our industry probably faster than any other one in town. And I think it's still important to utilize these sort of things that, it's not on accident that Nashville is where it is right now. And I look back to 10, 15 years ago, what was going on in this town, of all of those people trying to come up together, and all of us trying to grow the industry together.

01:11:47That's why a lot of these sort of partnerships are able to maintain in today's Nashville, which there's a new restaurant every single week opening in town, right? And all it is for us is an opportunity. Everybody can kind of continue growing and pushing that needle together. And I think that speaks true with Michelin coming to Nashville within the last year, right? Like that's not on accident why all of these things are happening to the city. Did Yolan get snubbed? Yolan did not get, so Yolan is, I'll say a slightly different restaurant now than it was before. But I'm like, they didn't get recommended or Bib-Gurman, nothing. No, there's no tasting menu there anymore. They're, you know, they might've put it back on. I don't wanna speak wrong about that, but. But I mean, they were, like, that was the goal initially. And then when Michelin comes to town, they don't get anything. It's almost like a, damn. Yeah, I'll say, I definitely don't wanna speak to Tony and Kathy on this at all. I think the vision for Yolan has shifted to we don't wanna be this high-end, elevated, special occasion location, special occasion restaurant. We want to be more so in the mix with the Loogo, Pilato, Modo, those sort of restaurants where you feel like you can come here more often at a slightly more approachable price point.

01:12:56And I think that pivot kind of happened with Yolan. Because when we were there, I mean, it was expensive. You know, $180 for that eight-course tasting menu or whatever it was. It gets expensive, but we were confident that the product and service we were putting out warranted the price point. It was value for what it was. Absolutely, and I think that model has pivoted within the last year or so there with the exit of Tony and Kathy, with transition in that hotel and that area. I think that has kind of shifted. So I wasn't overly surprised that they didn't hit that list. It would've been cool if Michelin came four years ago while we were there doing that. Yeah, what's your goals for Common Ground? Do you have, does that motivate you? Do you wanna be Michelin recommended? Do you want a James Beard Award? Do you want any of this stuff? Is that part of your goal at all? Our goal right now is still just continuing building up the regulars that we have and investing in the team that we've got. And we know that we're nowhere without the team that we have, and like I said, we have such minimal turnover on our staff, which is great. And that's a huge benefit to us because then when we do have a new employee that comes in, a new team member join that staff, they're being immediately brought up and developed into the culture that was already created.

01:14:02And that's what happens if you have minimal turnover is you know that somebody new coming in just immediately gets swept up into what all of your more seasoned team members are already doing. So our goal right now is continue growing what we have, continue focusing on getting better at the pieces of the business that we already are. Two locations is fine for the time being, and we stay plenty busy with that. I can imagine, two locations, we have two locations and it was like the hardest thing because you can't be in both at one time and it's just, it's a lot, three, three is the only one to begin. I have two kids and I'm like, we play man-to-man defense right now. I don't have to play zone at all. And when you throw that third one in there, it really is hard. But you know, you did the multiple locations at Red Pebble. Yeah, I've been told before and I'm interested to see as we grow our organization more, whatever that looks like, I've heard that the most difficult location to open is the second because when you're at the first, you know that you can be there every single day and have eyes on everything.

01:15:05And the first time you have to test how strong your systems are and how strong your team is and how strong your culture is, is when you open a second and you can't be there every day. And we've had, we tried to hire a manager about a year and a half ago to run our Sylvan Park location. Once we realized that that manager wasn't necessarily holding the same standard that we were, we have to move on from there. And so we had these sort of growing pains around the time of opening our second that I think that holds true of as soon as you step outside of that location, does it still operate the way it would if you were in it? And you're tested when you open your second. I do, that's what I was saying earlier. Like every time I walk in, I'm like, what's happening here? What is the music that is on right now? What are we doing? This is not your own personal Spotify playlist. Come on. Well, we are, yes. You walk, I was in the restaurant the other day and Back in Black was playing. Great song, love ACDC, but this is Merbol. Yeah. This is like a fine dining 7,500 square foot mansion and Back in Black.

01:16:09I was like, no, you guys, no, this is not the vibe here. Like, what are we doing? But like the lighting, the lighting is such a big deal. You walk in at five o'clock, starting to get dark and you're like, why does it feel like it's, like I'm sitting on the sun? Like this, like, lower the lights. Oh yeah, yeah, we're gonna get to that. Like an hour ago, like this is the time to do it. Like come on, this is part of it. But we are, I mean, we are beneficial that there is two of us. There is a Wes and there is a Matt and it's very rare to catch us in the same place at the same time because we're usually each in a different restaurant. And so we know that we're confident in both of us translating and doing what needs to get done within that location. And it's just you guys. You don't have a match. I mean, it's just the two of you making sure every day that it works. That's it. And I think one of the reasons it's been really benefit, or it's been successful up to this point is the two of us do look at things differently. We're aligned on what the vision for the company is, but we're able to challenge and push each other when it comes to decision making because we do look at things differently. Our personalities are incredibly different than one another where if we just aligned and agreed on every single thing, we would struggle to grow the organization because you've gotta have somebody that's holding you accountable and pushing you to be better and auditing your work that you're doing.

01:17:21And so we have this great partnership where we know that we can have tough conversations with each other about this is struggling here, this is struggling here. We need to be better here. I know this is one of your AORs, but we are struggling in this area here. And we- AOR? Area of responsibility. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. It just comes out every now and then. I'm like, well, just for people listening, they need to know what these acronyms are. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of your AORs. Oh, that's an AOR. I wanna know what that is. I'll tell you something we struggled with early on was that sort of partnership, not knowing where that line blurred. And we did not have our responsibilities clearly defined from the beginning of Wes is the decision maker of this, Matt is the decision maker of this. And if you don't have one person who's the final say on it, you're not really gonna get anywhere or you're gonna create friction when you disagree. Well, you'll create the mom and dad syndrome. They'll go to him when they need the decision they know he's gonna make versus the decision because they're not aligned and it's blurred. And those hourly team members are smarter than you give them credit for as well.

01:18:21Oh my God, man. They'll take advantage of any little thing that they see. And that was, I'd say in the three and a half years, the hardest conversation that the two of us have had with each other was when finally we realized there's not consistency in what we're doing. We need to make sure that if it's something that is marketing related, Wes is the final say for that. Matt can offer up ideas and suggestions. Ultimately, it's gonna end here. If it's something that's more on the operational side or financial side, Matt's gonna be the decision maker. Now, Wes is gonna give suggestions and hold me accountable to what I'm doing, but we know who the final decision maker is. So we know kind of where that line starts and ends. And it's been a lot more successful since then because we're able to have those harder conversations and more direct conversations, knowing who's responsible for each area of the organization. I think the one thing that most people are afraid of is something that sounds like you guys are getting really good at and that's healthy conflict. Yeah, and- We have to be able to have those crucial conversations in the moment to say, hey, this is happening because you trust each other that both of you have the same end goal and it's not personal.

01:19:25We're trying to find solutions. Yeah, absolutely. And we know that we each have our own strengths and weaknesses and we know what we're good at. We know, I know different things that I struggle at that Wes is really good at. And so we know if there's a specific conversation that needs to happen with the team, a message that needs to be delivered in a certain way or something that needs to get done, we're now good at knowing who should be responsible and who should be the point person for a specific thing. And that was something that we struggled with within our first year of being open, which I think any early operator, restaurateur, those are the things you gotta learn as you go almost. What are we missing? We've been talking for over an hour. Have we really? That was fast. I rambled too, so that was good. It was, I had a young woman in here earlier today, her name was Jessie Tigas. She's a content creator and we were talking to go, this hour will be the fastest hour of your life. And at the end I was like, we're at 50 minutes. She was like, wow. That's wild. It just goes like that. You could do it. We could do this for another hour, I promise. I haven't even gotten started. No, we're good.

01:20:26What have I missed and what, is there anything you wanna promote, anything you wanna plug, anything you wanna say? When you think we're gonna do the final thought, the Gordon foods for his final thought in a second. So you'll get to do that, but. When do you think this is coming out? Man, probably in like a week and a half. So if it's still in December when it does, we do have. It'll be before Christmas. Okay, we got a pop-up at our Sylvan Park location going on. The whole entire thing has been transformed into a Nutcracker holiday pop-up and it's in direct partnership with Nashville Ballet. So we're actually donating a portion of proceeds at the end of the season to the Nashville Ballet itself. You can get discounted tickets to the Nutcracker. You can donate directly to the Ballet. We've got it sponsored by Tito's, Heaven Hill, Brown Foreman and Love and Exile Winery and they're all making donations to the Ballet as well. And it's been a great way for us to kind of capture a new area of business that we haven't been able to before and a way to cross promote with a lot of great brands and work directly with a nonprofit organization like Nashville Ballet has been a good opportunity for that location as well.

01:21:29Well, I can put that portion of it out immediately. There you go, my wife will appreciate that. I'm recording that part of it. I can put that out on social media now. My wife works for Nashville Ballet. So she spent, I guess it was about 13 years as a principal dancer with Nashville Ballet and then she's their director of operations now. So when we were coming up with the idea and I knew I wanted to partner with somebody, she said, you know, I have an idea of somebody you could probably partner with and we could do and yeah, she's the best. She's way cooler than me. Wow, that's fast. That's really cool that you're doing that. So come check it out. Yeah, it's that location. Kid friendly? Oh yeah, absolutely kid friendly. And one of the big things we're trying to do is before or after they go to the Nutcracker, come in for brunch or dinner. And so it's a way to, all right, I'm caught up in the magic of the Nutcracker at TPAC. How do I stay with this either before or after? And we've got the entire space decorated and each area of the restaurant represents a different part of the Nutcracker. Now where are you in Sylvan Park exactly? 40th and Charlotte. So right across the street from L&L Market, kind of where Double Dogs used to be over there on Charlotte.

01:22:3440th and Charlotte. Or the space that was Chattable a few years ago. Oh, okay, you're in the space that was Chattable. That's it. I've been in there. Yeah. Okay, I know exactly where you are. Yeah, it's cool. And that one, about three and a half years in, it's a much bigger space. I think our concept ultimately was envisioned to be a little smaller, like the Yellow Porch space, but the Chattable space was available and Manit and Vivek were very good with getting us inside of that space and that transition was very easy and we've been happy in West Nashville and it's been good. Yeah, come check out the Nutcracker pop-up. That's so cool. All right, so thank you for coming down here. Thank you for spending the time. I have really... Thanks for having me. I had no idea what to expect today and now I'm like, man, I gotta get this guy more often. This is great. Anytime, you let me know. We'll bring Wes next time, we'll do a whole thing and it'll be good. Love it. Do some more wine stuff, cocktail stuff, because I don't drink anymore, so the idea of talking about wine and spirit, I just don't do a lot of it. I work with a lot of people on trying to sell it and how do you organically do that, so I love getting other people's takes on how they do it, other successful restaurateurs, and maybe somebody can take something out of that that maybe they can use in their restaurants.

01:23:46That's my goal. But now is the time, the time for the Gordon Food Service final thought. You get to say whatever you want. You're speaking to whoever's listening, the community here in Nashville, whatever you wanna say, as long as you wanna say it, Mike is yours. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about our industry is most people accidentally get into it. They wanna be a musician, they wanna pursue something else, they're bartending, they're serving, they're cooking, whatever that might be. 90% of our industry didn't envision that they would make a career in restaurants and then ultimately people get the bug and they like the hospitality piece and they say, oh, maybe I could do this as a career and the way that I've looked at it and the way that we try to have our organization look at it is can you, in a role that maybe is a means to an end, still focus on getting 1% better at it every single day? And our mindset was always, if you're constantly learning, you're constantly pushing yourself, even if this isn't the career or the position that you think that you're going to be in in 10 or 15 years, can you still be pushing yourself every single day within that role to be as good as you could be at it and better than you were the day before?

01:25:01And can you get 1% better every single day until forever? And whatever it is you're doing, if you do it with that mindset, you're gonna be the best version within that position that you could possibly be. So even if it's a means to an end, even if you are looking at it as clocking in and clocking out, if you can have that mindset of being better than you were the day before until forever, you'll still get the most joy and passion out of it and then maybe you'll realize the hospitality industries where you're accidentally gonna end up and open a couple of them and have a good partner and go on from there. Beautiful, I don't think I could have said it any better. A wonderful final thought. Matt Ramis, thank you so much for joining us today on Nashville Restaurant Radio. And there it is, our interview with Matthew Ramis. Amazing guy. Like I said, I just love talking to him. Could talk to him for hours and I intend to over the next several years because he is an instant friend and if you have not been over to common ground, you need to go check it out.

01:26:14Some other people we're working with right now that we would love for you to go support and go check out, Santissimo, which you are going to be able to hear Ana and Josh back on the show. They are over there in Sylvan Park. Go check that place out. If you like authentic Latin food, they're doing some really, really good stuff over there and they would love the support and they're doing a great job. Another restaurant we're meeting with, we just met with the other day is 312 Pizza. Now this is a restaurant that is in Germantown. They're doing original, these are mom and pop place, right? I thought this was a chain when I first saw it. This is a mom and pop restaurant. A husband and wife own it. The wife's mother works there too. They do original Chicago deep dish pizza. They're from Chicago originally. They lived here for I think 13 years, planted their roots and they have this restaurant and they're all working in it. They've got a beautiful little daughter but definitely go support them. Go on a weeknight, go check them out.

01:27:17Original Chicago style deep dish pizza and if you're in the pizza world and you like pizza, go check out St. Vito's Focaccia Ria because they are doing Svencion pizzas, which is a focaccia bread pizza. Of course, I'll tell you, some of the best hamburgers in the city are over at Cletus. They've got an amazing store in Bellevue. They're opening a new location at Eighth Avenue. It's right there on the corner where Party Fal used to be right next to where Arnold's is and then while you're over there, you got St. Vito's over there, you got Cletus over there. They're not open yet. I will keep you posted on that and go check out Maize de la Vida as well. If you haven't been to their brick and mortar yet, it is delicious. We're trying to bring you some of the best food in Nashville and you will not go wrong at any of those recommendations. I'm telling you, go support local. It is vital, it is what we do and I just wanna say thank you for listening. This was kind of a long one and we had a lot of fun and it always means the world to me that you guys are listening.

01:28:18I hope that you guys are being safe out there. This is the last episode you listened to before Christmas. Hope you have a wonderful holiday. We've got so many episodes coming up. Just stay tuned, follow us wherever you can follow us and if you wanna learn more about NARA, go to narnashville.com and click the connect tab and we would love to come talk to you about how we can help your restaurant succeed. So I hope you're being safe out there. Love you guys, bye.