Max Goldberg-Owner

00:00Welcome 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 we will not be joined again by Caroline Galzin today. She will be back but we had a few episodes that we had scheduled and recorded and she had a lot of stuff going on and we just we just couldn't quite make it happen. So this episode today will just be myself and the one and only Max Goldberg and he is one of the owners over at Strategic Hospitality and we had such a fun conversation.

01:01He is also the grand champion of our Fantasy Football League this year for the first annual Nashville Restaurant Radio Fantasy Football League. We had so much fun in this league and he was the winner. So he will get a trophy and we'll get a picture of that and the whole thing that'll be a lot of fun. I think the big news around town is the snowpocalypse that we are now back and sorry this episode is coming out late. Typically I put these out Sunday afternoon Monday morning. I was not able to even get here yesterday because I live on a hill and my driveway was a sheet of ice and you know what I said we're just going to do this a day late. It's okay. It's not a big deal. So thank you for your patience. I was wondering how you did you go to work? Did you leave your house? What kind of pressure did you have? Did you have people calling you saying you need to get here? I'm going to put a poll up on Instagram. I want you to know because I'm curious the mentality like if you're a manager did you show up?

02:04If you're a chef did you show up? If you're a server are you like I'm not going to come in? I don't know. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. So go to Nashville Restaurant Radio on Instagram and check out our stories. I will have a poll posted by the time you listen to this and hopefully I get some information because I'm curious. Hey we have a new sponsor on the show and it is Kempo Bravo Tequila and I'm very excited about them and we also are working with Fat Bottom Brewery and I think that there's a question I want to address. Hey Brandon you don't even drink. How are you how do you have sponsor? How are you giving testimonials about why these brands? I don't understand. Are you promoting alcohol but you don't drink? Yes. Yes I am. Let me tell you I've always said this but I personally do not have a problem with alcohol. I personally can't just have one. That is my problem is I can't have one drink. I have to have a whole bottle or I have to have 10 drinks.

03:04So I personally choose not to do that. I know a lot of people out there do have the ability to have one drink or maybe two drinks and then they are fine and then they continue with their life. I don't have that gene. I have the allergy where I have to go and drink like 12 of them and try and ruin my life. So when it comes down to sponsors I recognize most people are not me and I recognize that there are some really great local brands and I have three restaurants that I work in and when I work with these brands and I love them I want to share that with you guys because I think those are important things that we need to do. So when it comes to Fat Bottom Brewery, they're local, they're right here in the nations. Josh Buckley's been on the show. They have an amazing product called Hop Water that is a sparkling water that kind of tastes like beer. That's the way I describe it and it is delicious and I love it and that's something that is non-alcoholic but this Sunday coming up is National Daisy Day.

04:07I didn't know this but it is National Daisy Day and that is the day that they release their Hazy Daisy IPA or it's the Daisy Hazy IPA. It's 6.4% alcohol. Apparently it's delicious. I have not yet to try it. Everybody loves it. It's a whole release that they do on Daisy Day. You can go over to the actual tasting room and you can try this stuff. It's delicious. You should get it and put it on draft. Spring is coming. This is really exciting news coming out of what we just dealt with but I also want to tell you that Campo Bravo Tequila, this is our brand that we are using at Chagos and they're amazing. Everybody loves this product and the price point is there. So if you are looking for a tequila that is 100% agave, that is delicious, everybody that What kind of tequila is this? This is wonderful. I go, that's Campo Bravo and they go, oh, that's awesome.

05:08It's good stuff. Try the Reposado. Try the Blanco and I'm going to have advertisements for them and we're going to be going forward with a partnership with Campo Bravo. So you're going to hear about them and I wanted to give some back story as to why I promote alcohol brands because they're great people and I enjoy working with them and my responsibility is to tell you guys about cool stuff. So that's where that comes from and probably a longer explanation than you needed but I wanted to give it to you anyway. Alright, so check me out this week on the 26th, sometime between 2 and 3, I'm going to be on Local on 2, Channel 2. We're going to be talking about healthy foods, healthy dishes that some local restaurants can offer as you come out of January. You start off the new year, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to do all these things. What do you do going forward? Going into February, we want to keep that trend going. So we're going to highlight some amazing restaurants.

06:10We're going to be highlighting the Germantown Cafe. We're going to be highlighting the Beehive, which is a vegan restaurant. Ben Sticks, our good friend, you may have seen our reel we did about that and that is on our Instagram page and we're also going to be highlighting SS Guy, they've got this great butternut squash dish that we're going to be sharing and then some of the items that the Beehive produces, some of the vegan items over at Nicky's Coalfired and you can get some of their products at Frothy Monkey, which is another great local spot. So we're going to be promoting Local on Local on 2, love for you guys to check it out and I'm sure I'll be posting it online so you guys can see it there too. But we're talking way too long here. I think that you guys all want to hear what Max Goldberg has to say and I want you to hear that. So hope that you all made it safe throughout this thing. Let's jump in right now with Max Goldberg. This is a good radio. Yeah, there you go.

07:11My wife gives me a lot of shit because anytime I get a microphone, I hold it like a rapper in the 90s because that's what I grew up with and it's like up here. So this is perfect for me like LL Cool J. Exactly. Yeah. Is that the reference? I love it. All right. Well, super excited today. We're going to welcome in Max Goldberg. Now, is it Max or Maxwell or is there a full name? Is it because Benjamin is your brother? I was going to try and see how long I could go without mentioning mentioning Benjamin, but I didn't even get through the intro. It's it feels very strange not having him here where we spent a lot of time together. But now Benjamin got the full name and he was named after my dad's grandfather. I remember at Thanksgiving one year we were there watching old videos and my dad's mother said, oh, there's there's your grandfather, Benjamin Steve. You know, he was such a huge inspiration for this family and for your life. And then five minutes later, she goes, oh, and there was your dog, Max. And I can't believe I'm telling this story right now. But my brother just looked at me.

08:11I think I was like 12 years old at this point and just tears flowing down my face. Like, really? And then I found out later it was actually my mom that picked the name and it was great. But it's just Max, unfortunately, nothing else. But, you know, full Benjamin and then just Max for me. Start the this is the grandfather and that's the dog, Max. Yeah, I can't I can't believe this is how we're starting it off. You know, it's been a good week. Things are going downhill fast. All right. Well, welcome in just Max Goldberg. I I don't have a lot planned for today. Good. I'm so excited to have you. It happens. I love it. Time on the show by yourself. That's true. We've had your brother. It's true. Yeah. And we did like an epic two hour and 20 minute. I went over every single restaurant and the stories behind them. And it was very generous of him to do that. So we've already done that. What am I doing here then? You're good to go. Exactly. Well, you guys have done a lot of stuff in the last year. It's been wild. I mean, we had this pandemic and there was a lot of uncertainty and crazy stuff happening.

09:15And now where the pandemic is over and I don't know what's going on with merchants downtown. Did you guys sell that? Is that something that's still yours? No, we're lucky that we've we've got a really, really long term lease there. And we unfortunately had a fire about just a year a year ago. I remember I was giving one of the rare bottles at 3 a.m. to my my newborn baby. And I got a call from a manager at 3 15 a.m. I was like, well, this can't be good. That's never a good one. And our building was on fire. And it was not our fault that what had happened, it was a hood issue that a company was supposed to be cleaning and wasn't. And we had a structural fire that ran through the building and unfortunately have been closed since. But luckily, we will be reopening date TBD, hopefully late spring, early summer. We miss it downtown. I think it's needed in downtown. Yeah, it's truly one of the best locations in the city. And, you know, it's sad that it's not up and out, but we will be reopening. And it's going to be brand new. I mean, we're redoing the floor plans on the first and second floor. We've got a really cool third for private event plan.

10:17I mean, as tough as this is, we're hopefully going to be like a phoenix and rise from the ashes even stronger than when we went into it. Like literally, literally, literally from the ashes. You guys just speaking of like downtown and Broadway, you guys had Paradise Park. Yes, which was kind of the flagship for you guys. And then you pivoted to the sporting club. Yeah. And then you kind of pivoted back to Paradise Park. And now all of that is gone. And now Garth Brooks has friends in low places. He does. And you guys are I keep seeing pictures of you guys at friends in low places. Are you operating? We just love that bar. We spent a lot of time in a bar. It's a good time. Now, we with that building in particular, the actual physical structure is really special to me because that's where I started my career with Benjamin. Yeah, I was almost 17 years ago. We started when came back and partnered up with Benjamin and couldn't afford a car. So I walked to work every day and lived in the cheapest place in Nashville, which was downtown Nashville.

11:17It's kind of crazy on church and seventh in the Benny Dillon building. And we'd walk to work and we had Paradise Park there. And then we had a group that ended up buying the building. And we were part of that group. And then when the pandemic hit and we had an opportunity to sell it, really fortunate that one of the folks that was interested, it was Garth and Tricia, two of the most iconic, incredible human beings in Nashville. We've been really lucky to consider them great friends, almost like family at this point. And we're really lucky that Friends in Low Places, which is some small country song that I hope gets some airtime eventually. One day. It's going to make it. I feel like it's going to break big. You know, fingers crossed. Just a perfect thing for Broadway. And the fact that we get to be on that journey with Garth and Tricia is truly just been one of the greatest things I've ever done in my career. And the fact that after 17 years, I get to still be in that building, helping execute Garth and Tricia's vision has just been a blast. I can imagine. Yeah, I.

12:17So you guys are helping operate this is they're not restaurateurs. You know, Tricia is an incredible chef, one of one of the best chefs I've met for for what she does. We've been really lucky that we are helping operate the business and helping execute their vision and taking some of the things that they would do maybe in their home and help translate it into a restaurant environment. But they're the owners. They are the 100 percent owners. Yep. OK, so when you think about downtown and all of the different places you have, like the TC group who owns Jason Aldean's and they own Luke Bryan and FGL House and then you've got Raymond Hospitality, which owns all red. And then the TC also has the Miranda Lambert. They just sold the Luke Holmes is going to be coming in to the. Is that Luke Holmes coming? I think he's going to the Wild Horse and that's a Ryman. It is. That's a Ryman thing. I think Morgan Wallen has a bar coming and that's going to be a TC bar. It's going right behind Whiskey Row, I think.

13:19So these are these are. Places that use country stars names, almost licensing their names in order to bring people in the door. Yet Garth and Trisha, actually, this is their bar. You know, it's incredible. And I can't speak to other groups. I'm not sure how all those deals are structured. And I think the absolute world of Colin Reed and what he's done at Ryman, he's somebody who I admire deeply and consider a great friend at this point. But for Garth and Trisha, I mean, Garth was in our staff training talking to the staff about why this is different. Garth and Trisha have been so involved in every decision. It's been so cool to see. This is kind of a bit of their their love letter, if you will, to Nashville. And, you know, there's two jerseys hanging in Bridgestone Arena that have been retired. It's Pecker Rennie and Garth Brooks for the sold out shows that he did. Yeah. So you think about the impact on Nashville. It'd be hard for me to think of someone who's put their signature more in Nashville than Garth and Trisha. And so for them to have a honky tonk on lower Broadway, it's got to be pretty dynamic and it's kind of got to feel like them.

14:21But this is not a licensing deal. This is their baby that they are passionate about, that they are intimately involved in. And I think guests can feel it when they walk in. I 100 percent agree. I mean, we have that we have the statue that Garth proposed in front of to Trisha in the bar. I mean, you can go in there and physically see it, touch it and take your picture in front of it. How cool is that? That's that's amazing. And he's got the Circle G that came from the Central Park Show, which was a million plus people actually in the stage that every band gets to step on, similar to kind of what the Grand Ole Opry did with the Ryman, with the stage there. I mean, that exists on lower Broadway in this honky tonk. It is absolutely wild. And when you walk in there, it's it's unlike anything we've seen, like the lighting, the stage, the TV screens, everything. It is so far beyond the comprehension of what Benjamin I understood previously. But with all the experience of touring and selling out stadiums like Garth and Trisha Fad, they put that into a honky tonk. What have you learned from them? I mean, of all all the restaurants and all the things you've done, is there anything you've taken out of that that you've like?

15:23Well, I didn't recognize something that they do that's a best practice or anything. Yeah, I think that I had a sense of this and I thought I did it. But I've never seen someone take care of people the right way, the way that Garth and Trisha do on a daily basis with anyone that interacts in their orbit. Just genuine hospitality. Yeah, it's so far beyond anything I've ever seen. And what's so fun is, you know, you'll be sitting in a meeting and this random guy will be there and Garth will kind of be staring at him and kind of thinking and he's like, how do I how do I know that guy? And he did his concrete work 20 years ago and somehow Garth remembers him and has this story. And you'll tell friends, oh, yeah, I'm really lucky. We're working with Garth and Trisha. I met Garth in a supermarket and we talked for 45 minutes. You know, the first time I met Garth, he held the door where we were meeting for about three minutes because we had a lot of people going in and out. And he just held the door because he's he's the truest gentleman. I mean, it's it's absolutely incredible to see that from them.

16:25And so what I've learned is, I don't know, always do the right thing and always be kind and be hardworking and, you know, be competitive. But in terms of just reinforcement of good things happen when you just do the right thing and you're kind, I've never seen it more than with Garth and Trisha. That's good stuff. That's interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, happy that there are two of my favorite people to talk about. Happy to do it. Well, I just think it's neat to be in their orbit. Yeah, of all the things. I mean, and you said, and I'm going to, you know, puff your chest up a little bit when you say people that have really are icons in Nashville. I see you and your brother that way. Oh, man, that's that. I don't think about. No, but you think about what some of the best restaurants in our city of Tennessee and just to the top 25, I think you have like four of the top five. I mean, you have Bastion, Locust, Kepard Seat, which are all three top five right now. But Henrietta Redman, there's so many other amazing places that you guys have. Your brother did Bar 23 back in the day with Austin. Yeah. And then Paradise Park for downtown and that downtown wasn't what it is now.

17:28I mean, you want to talk about a trailblazer and an innovator. I think what you guys are doing is shaping, making Nashville the food scene destination that it is. And you can be humble about that. And well, you know, that's cool. But I appreciate you saying that. I don't take a comment like that lightly. It's hard to hear because talk about imposter syndrome. I just feel so lucky to even be in the conversation. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my brother. He really was the visionary that saw Nashville and brought me back into the fold. But you list off those restaurants and the things that we've done. And I'm just humbled to be in the conversation because truly I am the least valuable part of that equation to chef teams, the bar teams, the managers, the folks that actually make things happen on a day to day basis deserve all the credit. And the fact that I'm even mentioning the conversation, it's hard for me to hear. I'm grateful. I appreciate it. It's just it's all them. It's all the team that we get to work with, that we're there to support, that get those awards that have people wanting to come in and eat. It's 100 percent the team.

18:28I feel like you've changed the what your model, because back in the day with I think that I would read about you guys a lot in the scene or whatever the paper was or whatever it is was Benjamin and Max Goldberg, the guys behind this restaurant, the guys behind that restaurant. And now I don't hear much about you from. I mean, if it's a thing you see, I see your posts on Instagram. But like, I don't read a ton about you guys. But I hear a lot about your restaurants. It's just now it's Trevor or Josh or Julia or Baxter. It's all these other people. And you guys have kind of is that intentional? It should have always been those people getting the credit for the work that we've been doing. I think that Benjamin and I were very selfish early on in our career that we would try to open places that that we were excited about. And so it was so fun for a long period of time as you look at the portfolio projects that we have. And it was almost the snapshot of what we were excited about at that time. At 25 years old, here's what's exciting. Twenty seven years old. Here's what's exciting.

19:30Thirty years old, et cetera. And we got to a really cool inflection point where we thought, man, this is awesome. You know, Nashville is a huge part of our success. But what's the future look like? And we were surrounded by these insanely talented and kind human beings. The Josh, the Brian Baxter's, the Trevor's, the Julie's, the Brian and Lena's of the world. Yes. And I'm trying to leave them out. Oh, it's so good. But what can we do to work with these folks and support them? And so a new model was really just what are you excited about? And Henry had read is 100 percent Julia. And we get to be a part of that. You know, Locust is 100 percent Trevor. Bastion is 100 percent Josh. Brian Lane, a kisser is their baby. They can't. It's all of them. So they deserve all the credit. And so, you know, the press is always great. And we appreciate it. And the awards are wonderful. And the recognition is wonderful. At the end of the day, we want to have a profitable business that I think is meaningful in the food community and as a good steward of the community. But in terms of the press push and who we're highlighting, it has been intentional to highlight the folks that really deserve the credit. Because Benjamin and I are just humbled to be at the table.

20:31Are you planning on doing anything outside of Nashville? Do you do anything outside of Nashville? We've done some consulting work outside of Nashville. I think that we're Nashville kids and it's going to be hard not playing to a home team. I think that as our career progresses and we think about what the next chapter looks like, I'm not going to say we're not looking outside of Nashville, but it's certainly not anything that I could say, hey, we're doing this today. It's just really hard to leave Nashville because Nashville has been so good to us and we're in debt to the city. We owe so much of our success to the city. We do want to make sure that we continue to give back. But I think that as opportunities present themselves in other markets, if we can take our passions and our convictions and the folks we get to work with and go to other markets, we should look at them. But at the end of the day, we're Nashville kids and we always want to be here. So I love that. And I always, I know I love that about you guys. I'm always, every time I go to one of your restaurants, I'm just like, God, they think of everything. They think of everything. They're so intentional. I'm so glad you feel that way because I walk in, I just have a panic attack of everything I see that's wrong.

21:32So I do the same thing. I do the same thing in my own because they're your own. And I was funny because I was talking to Baxter the other day and I said, you know, one of the things I did the other day was I invited all of my managers that every one of you at some point this month have to come back in and eat dinner. I love that. Make a reservation, bring a date, come in. Nobody go hang out at the table with them. Have the full experience because I believe what we do is we're magicians. I think that we create magic. And what we do in your own restaurant is I'm standing there sawing the woman in half and I know I'm not really sawing her in half. Right. So since I'm doing that show three times a night, I lose the enthusiasm for sawing the woman in half that's not really getting sawed in half. But everybody who's watching is like, Right. And I think that we lose that from time to time.

22:33And I told him, I said, I want all of you to come in and sit down and watch the show. Yeah. And just like the basic, the most basic piece of magic is like position points, like just getting that little point right. And I had dinner at the cabaret seat through the night and they changed out the silverware for every single dish with the only appropriate silver. And it was a different set of silverware, like a whole different. It wasn't like this one is a different version of it. It was like this one is brass and this one is metal of some other different metal. And it was just crazy. But like how intentional that was. And I didn't even see him do it. Like it just happened. That's the magic you may be saying. They're going, I took way too long to get that out here. Like, no, but I don't see it that way. I appreciate that. And Baxter and team, what they've created the caper seed is just pure magic right now. It's been so fun to see just somebody who I think of as one of those incredibly kind and wonderful human beings who I consider a dear friend who we're hoping to do more with in the future. We absolutely love Brian Baxter and everything that he is.

23:36He he does a beautiful dance up in that restaurant. And I'm glad I'm glad I hope you enjoyed it. I think that's what you're saying. But I absolutely love it. And I love his style of of stacking, you know, putting all of the flavors together, not smearing them all over the place. You have to like they're beautiful, but it's one bite and you get, yeah, that's just all this stuff going on. It was just it was brilliant. I got to break it down with him last week. That's all we had a whole epic episode. We talked about it. It was so much fun. Sometimes proximity. You forget about somebody coming in and experience something for the first time. And I remember we struggled at the Patterson House for for a short period of time where people would come in and if it was their first kind of classic cocktail with gin, they got super sick on gin when they were in high school and they never wanted to drink it again. And we would try to do super aggressive cocktails instead of easing them into it because we were so used to running through the motions of, OK, I know you're going to love this drink, but to get from zero to one, what do we have to do? And so kind of reminding like this is this person's first time, like, ease them into it, earn their trust, and then they'll be able to really enjoy it.

24:36And so we've gotten back to that. And I'll never forget, I read an article about the former CEO. We may have created Southwest Airlines. I can't remember if it was just the CEO or the creator, but twice a month he'd one time work as a steward and actually go and service everybody. And once a month he'd fly as a passenger and be able to see both sides of it. And we try to be very intentional and go in and have a presence in our restaurants. I think what we do is a full contact sport and a race without a finish line. And so you have to be in there. But we're so fortunate we're surrounded by the most insane operations team that, again, least valuable person in the company at this point. But just get to go in and see what they're doing and try to have that guest perspective. And what can we do to improve the guest experience? You got to step away from it. I want to I want to dig into what you do in a day. When you say I'm the least valuable person, I'm going to I want to I want to I want to walk through a day just to kind of show people like there's not the least value. There's there's so many other things that get done in a day versus the actual operations and that there's a lot of value behind that.

25:41But I want to stay on the catbird seat because when I was talking to Josh Hobbiger, yeah, and I said he just celebrated his wedding anniversary. Yes, he did. And I actually officiated his wedding in Palm Springs. I think it was six years ago now. And where are they? They're out of town somewhere. They're like they're in Mexico, Mexico. And funny enough, Brian and Laine are with them. Nice. I'm so jealous. Yeah. It was my invite to Mexico. You just got back from London, didn't you? I did. I was in London for a week. So I should not be in Mexico right now. That's true. It's it's it's you do fun things. Josh had this idea. Yeah. And he said when I was making cocktails, I was a chef and I was making cocktails at the Patterson House as the journal manager and I could make these drinks and I set them in front of people and then I watched them and they would take the garnish off or they would move this or they'd take a picture or they would take a sip. He was every single time I made a drink, I could make the next one customizable to the way that they had their first. I could change it to be a certain way and get better.

26:44It's like I could be intuitive when how I'm making drinks. And I've never done it before because in a kitchen you make a dish, you spin it in the window and then it's gone. You don't see it again. But. I had this idea, he said, I had this idea that if you did that with food, if you could make food and set up a plate right in front of somebody, you could curate this perfect meal. He was and I told a couple of people and everybody said, well, it's a cool idea, but you'll never make money. There's no way you can make money doing that. That's a that's a terrible idea. Right. But I told Max, so he said, you got to tell me. So I told Max and he goes, all right, let's do it because there was no really it was just like, I believe in you. Let's go. Let's do it. Well, where does that come? Like his gut was so right on that. And Benjamin was 100 percent it was it was a collaborative effort on all of it. But, you know, when you when you find the right jockey, even if it's not the right horse, you want to bet on that jockey. And Josh is somebody who from day one we fell in love with. And that's the reason that he's he's the third partner in our company now. It's myself, Benjamin and Josh. Josh is a full partner in everything we do.

27:45And we're so damn lucky to work with him. But he had this idea of trying to take what we were doing with cocktails and have it translate to food and have that instant feedback of, hey, if this dish sucks, we're going to know about it quickly. Yeah. And I think the catbird scene when we first launched, we had no idea what we're doing. I could argue we still don't. But it's it's been an incredible ride over the past 13 years and the different chef iterations and the kind of food incubation that's come out of it and the partnerships that have been formed and things like that. It's been this incredible journey and it has been profitable. It has been, I think, meaningful to our company for sure. And I think has has been great for the city. And ultimately, it's created great partnerships for us out of that restaurant. So, again, thank goodness for Josh. Yes, one of my favorite people that makes food in the city, he's just the kindest guy. And you go back and listen to me. I talked to him in 2020 and I have not been able to get him back on the show, but I've tried. Well, you know, if we need to fly to Mexico and do an in-person interview, let's make this happen. We'll fire up Southwest tomorrow.

28:46We're on our way. We got some points available. So let's talk about your day. And we got I mean, look, you've got Garth Brooks. You guys have sold Pinewood Social. You've got like so many places in the airport now. I love to talk about soccer. You're in the championships of our fantasy team. We can go a lot of different directions here. Let's start with the fantasy football championship. OK, let's go there. Before we get into that, we're going to take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors. Campo Bravo Tequila is a one hundred percent agave tequila with a bold, smooth flavor perfect for sipping neat as a shot or in cocktails. Campo Bravo is also certified additive free, which means there are no artificial flavors or sweeteners in Campo Bravo like there are in many other brands. Campo Bravo gives you all the bold, smooth flavor you want in a tequila and nothing you don't. You know, Campo Bravo is true farm to bottle tequila, meaning only fifth generation agave farmers meticulously control the entire production process from the farm to the bottle to give you the highest quality handcrafted tequila.

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32:02Click the contact button or look in our show notes, but contact Erin Mosso. She'd love to show you what they're doing. But if you go online, you can see pictures of all the round buns, the dinner rolls, sliders, deli products, baguettes, hoagies, subs, all of their other breads and desserts. It is all there for you right now at Sharpier.com. They are a custom bakery right here in Nashville, Tennessee. Let's start with the Fantasy Football Championship. OK, let's go there. Because I it's a fantasy football is a pretty emotional rollercoaster for me. And this this season has been that did not expect to be in the finals. Felt really confident after the first week up 30 points. And then my entire team is plagued by injury or resting players for the future. So it's going to be tight. I'm I'm I'm sweating a little bit. Let's see what I'm going to look at the matchup. I'm like, this this is not the right match. I'm like, this league is complete. No, this league is not complete. Team Goldberg versus Team Howe Holden Bache.

33:05And who I was texting this morning, trying to trying to get in his head a little bit. It didn't work. He's he's too mentally tough. Well, I you're ahead right now. This the championship is a two week championship. It is. So this is a lot of fun because you get the two week semi and the two week championship. So if you have a bad week, you can make up for it. You're up one fifty three point six four to one fourteen eighty eight. Yeah, but I got a lot of injury. You got a 30 you got a 40 point lead. I do. But that's where I get nervous. It's it's I don't want to get comfortable. So you got Keenan Allen, who McCaffrey's out. Yep. So that's a he's been my rock. He's been my rock all season. This is why I'm sweating a little bit. This is why I drafted Elijah Mitchell was because I thought he would be out in week two. Yeah. And it took till now. Is he like is it is he out for a while? Well, I mean, this is the last week. But I mean, like, you know, playoffs. Oh, I don't know. I haven't seen his injury report. I don't know anything about it. As soon as I was out this week, I've moved on. It's it's with a mild calf strain.

34:06Won't play Sunday versus the Rams. Yeah, they'll play. They've clenched the number one seed. So they're they're just sitting them out. Yeah. But it'll be fun. You know, how and I are going to hopefully get a good little side back going here. We played earlier this season. I was fortunate to win that game. So I get dinner with him at his restaurant, which I'm excited about. Nice. And yeah, we got to figure out what the what the best side that's going to be for the finals. If you have any ideas, let me know. I always like doing embarrassing things in public. Fantastic. Like when we do, because we have a work one that we always do, like you have to do 20 push ups in the middle of lineup. If you lose, like the chef off, come out and do 20 push ups, no line up. I'll do 20 push ups. And it's fun. I have one where I bet a woman was one of my managers. She was a professional ballerina. Wow. And so I was like, well, then you need to if you if you lose, then you have to do a dance. I love it. In lineup, yeah, where you follow Paula Abdul straight up and you have to like have the video behind you and you got to like choreograph. You got to do that song. I think that challenge should go to hell. There it is.

35:07There it is. One of us has to do an interpretive dance, he said. If you lose, then you have to do hit me baby one more time. Fantastic. By Britney Spears. And I I was winning up until Monday night and she had like Mason Crosby. He had like five field goals. Was like the greatest kicking performance. I was up by like 25 points. I'm like, you got a kicker. It's Britney, bitch. It's over. And it was Britney, bitch for me. I it was a thing. Is there a video of this? I do have the video. We need to share it as part of this episode. I read I had a red jumpsuit on like a red onesie and I had a wig. I studied this and in the middle of lineup, we told them that we're going to have a so we're going to have a a HR representative come and talk to you guys about some new HR policy. So we had everybody in the kitchen, everybody come into the main living room of the restaurant and we had the computer up and we hit play and it was the video. And then I walked in and people like, what the fuck is this? This is the greatest thing I've heard all week.

36:07And then I did I did the dance. I'm going to need to copy this. And I think you need to share this. I will show you. I will show you the video. And maybe we'll do another maybe we'll do another video to or something fun. Well, it'll be it'll be a good final. And then you mentioned airport. We we opened some stuff up to the airport, which has been kind of a five year overnight success, if you will. We've started working on this a long time ago. And really the the hope, dream and aspiration was if we can be the first and last part of people's experience, that's why I want to be at the airport. And what Doug Krulin and the team out there have done in terms of the airport expansion and what it means for the city and the traveling and the tourism that it brings in, it's just been awesome. And so the fact that right when you clear security, the first thing you see is our spaces. I nerd out on it every time I go to go to the airport and not travel anywhere is a pretty cool experience. If you want to come, I can escort you through, show you the spaces. We can share meal. The food's legit. The drinks are legit. The space is beautiful. It took us a couple of months to really understand all the dynamics that go in to get in the airport going.

37:10But it's a blast. And what are some of those dynamics? Oh, yeah, I'll tell you this. When we first open, I always try to be there at the opening of a restaurant in the closing just for however long it takes. And I did not realize the airport opens at three in the morning. And so the first it does open it. I didn't know that it closed the first couple of weeks. I would be there for opening. And I remember we spent years developing this thing and countless hours doing the interior design and developing the food menu and picking out all these these things that we thought were going to be so impactful. I said, God, this is just going to be the best dining experience you've ever had in airport. Three thirty in the morning, we open up our first customer. I was like, what's he going to order? Like our incredible biscuits and gravy or, you know, our our classic breakfast. Like just so excited to see what this guy's going to order. Double shot of Jameson with the beer back. I was just thinking, oh, man, this is a lawless place here at the airport. Here we go. We've learned a lot in that regard. And also just the things that we never dealt with before in terms of staff approvals through background checks or making sure that, you know, how do you prep with a knife past security and just these different elements which were challenges to us that we've learned so much.

38:18It's been a blast. And I think I think the end product that we're kind of getting to and we're there for hopefully 10 or 15 years is a really great offering in the Titans press box, which is fantastic. And then we've got Kitty Hawk, which is our grab and go that has incredible coffee and sandwiches and salads and a full bar and just a bunch of fun to go stuff. These original concepts that you guys came up with the press box and and Kitty Hawk were and then the Music City shop that we have there as well is our retail component that we're partners with the CBC on. So we've got some great offerings there. And then the first kind of franchise deal, if you will, with Voodoo Donut, which is an incredible donut shop that I had no idea the amount of donuts we would sell out of that place. But it's just been so cool. It's such a strong brand. People love it. And, you know, I've eaten way more donuts than I want to admit at this point. I I love that because the food options at the airport have never haven't been. Recently, they've got better. You know, there's like an urban juicer and some things if you want to eat. But like or I love like chocolate croissants, you can go to anywhere to get donuts is a special.

39:22It's kind of a cool thing to get at the airport. Those are easy. You can just get a six pack of donuts and go get on a plane and eat donuts. It's it's been it's been great. And my little sleeper move is I was in London a couple of weeks ago with with my wife and baby. Anytime you fly overnight with a with a barely like not even one year old. What do you do to win over the flight attendants? Well, you bring a dozen box. A dozen donuts from Voodoo. It was like we rolled out the red carpet. The kid could do no wrong. And luckily, he was fine. But that's my little sleeper move. But no, it's been great. It's I think the offerings there. I think what was at the airport before was fantastic. But we're really excited what we're doing now. So London. Yeah. Over Christmas. We're over there for Christmas. And then your wife is is your wife British? She is. She's from Chiswick and she is she is British. And so it's great going over there. And we had her whole family there. Her whole family. Yeah, they're they're all very, very proper English British. It's, you know, just wonderful. I feel like I'm in, you know, a romcom from, you know, Notting Hill or or the holiday.

40:22But it's do you feel comfortable? I mean, like when you go over there with their family hanging out for Christmas this far away from your family, is it a comfortable kind of chill vibe or? Well, it kind of worked out perfectly. I love Thanksgiving. She's British. No issue. Our family to be here for Thanksgiving. And she loves Christmas and I'm Jewish. So it's a it's a double whammy. It just works. This is a positive thing. It just works. And, you know, I met her through her brother, who we worked together in New York when I was 21 and he was one of my best friends in New York. And so we met there and he had a picture of this beautiful girl on his desk. And I was like, oh, man, your girlfriend smoking hot. And he's like, that's my 16 year old sister. You creep. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. And we ended up going out that night and having a couple of beers. And I said, one day, I'm going to marry that girl in the photo. And he punched me square in the crotch as hard as he could. And, you know, lots more details from that. But ended up, you know, getting married. Here we are. And now you have you have a daughter, a son, a son, a son.

41:22OK, I'm sorry. Yeah, Jasper. He's I knew that he's great. And I don't I don't know if other other folks feel this way, but I felt like a bad dad for the first seven months because I was just like, I put a gun to my head, kill me, keep the kid alive, like love this little thing forever and ever. But that connection didn't really come from me. I was like, oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever until about seven, eight months. And now that we've been in it for, you know, almost a year, the past four months, like I am so obsessed and they're still in England. They read it a little cottage for two weeks away from me. And it sucks. Like, I absolutely miss this dude. It's hard. But man, it's tough. It is tough. The first there's a lot of bonding with mom. I've and you can try and it's not because you're not there. I mean, obviously you work, but like my kids are my boys. I have two boys and they're eight and ten. Yeah. And I'm in this perfect. This is the time we're like, Dad, can you go play basketball with me? We go play soccer. We were there. There's actual wisdom now that I feel like I can I can bestow upon them.

42:27Oh, there's a bully at school. Let me talk to you about this. Let's let's get into some of that. There's like real life stuff that they're like, oh, dad's not an idiot. Yeah. Kind of a thing now. And it's a lot of fun for me. Well, watching my wife become a mom, I just so inspired by her and seeing how she's kind of just stepped into motherhood in this beautiful way. And man, we we have it so easy as guys. You know, I've always respected and admired women, but never more so than watching my wife become a mother. And it's it's been awesome. It's pretty special. Yeah, it's hard getting like the cute videos of them walking around right now. And, you know, just the me here and, you know, missing them. And I have tried to be better about it, although I failed miserably of there's just so many days where I leave before he wakes up and comes home after he goes to bed. And so trying to be more intentional about getting home and being more present for that. So let me get back to my previous. We can talk about this all day. Yeah. What do you what do you do in a day? Like, what is your job? That's a great question. I always wonder if we want to run the restaurants.

43:28I'll typically wake up between 430 and five. Try to get the day started. Go to the gym morning. Yeah, we built a little gym in the house and I'll try to I think I think physical and mental health is so important, especially for what we do. So I try to take care of myself in that regard. I'll spend the first couple of hours kind of plotting out, adjusting calendars for the day, for the week, whatever we need to do. I make to do lists every day, respond to email and then really try to bounce around and be present in the different spaces. My brother is the best operator I've ever met. And so he is so good at operations and is focusing a lot on that. And, you know, we we obviously had a really tough time during the pandemic, but we were the lucky ones that came out and are still able to do what we love every day, which is not the case for everybody. So we're hyper aware and sensitive to that. But now that we are kind of pushing the gas down a bit, I spent a lot of my day focused on growth, whether that's growth within our individual restaurants or future projects. So you more the visionary? No, no, no, we do everything together. He's a better operator, I can tell you that. And I think I'm pretty good at putting things together and producing certain things.

44:32But in terms of the visionary piece, now, Benjamin's always been the visionary. OK, was in our company. I'm the integrator is in the US process. If you're with Gina Wickman traction holding, he's our visionary. I am the integrator. But in this business, I get to be I'm one of those really super weird people that's also a visionary and an integrator. Right. And so I get to flex that doing this stuff, my visionary side of stuff. And then that in the restaurants, I'm an integrator. As far as you, Benjamin and Josh is concerned, do you each have roles? Like, is there like an actual accountability chart for each one of you that is different? We're looking at we're actually going to going to chat about that here in 2024 as we kind of gear up at something we're really excited about. We all work really well together. But I think that Josh can speak a language that Benjamin and I will never be able to speak. I mean, he is culinary. Yeah, he'll forget more about food than I'll ever know. And so he speaks that language. And so as we're looking at future things or integrating certain things to be able to say, hey, Josh, what do you think about, you know, the salad we're doing at the airport?

45:37Which I wouldn't necessarily think Josh would be interested in a salad at the airport, but he genuinely is. And so how can we make that the best product possible? He helps us with all those things. He helps us with all decisions. He's a partner in everything we do. He has his touch on every single thing that we're doing. Benjamin and I will never make a decision without the other one signing off on it. And now that Josh is part of that, the three of us have to decide on a project that we're excited about. And so we always have that alignment. But definitely, I think that day to day roles, Benjamin ensures the operations and the actual way that we maintain him and have that profitability. He focuses on that. And I'm able to focus on that with him, but really the growth and what we're doing in the future. So it sounds like there's a healthy level of trust between you guys. Completely. You guys fight real well. We don't fight that much. Really? No, we disagree. And there's definitely a, OK, well, I disagree with you on this, but, you know, somebody needs to own it. So you own that if that's your passion. And we'll be there to support each other. But now there's not screaming.

46:39I mean, we're a pretty happy company. I mean, if we didn't love what we did, I don't think we'd do it. Well, I'm not saying like screaming. I'm talking about healthy conflict, as in I trust that. You're making decisions based around. Profitable decisions, but also around the guest, guest centric decisions that this is going to make the guest experience better. That's going to want to make them a repeat guest. And I don't agree with that. I think we should do go a different way. Tell me about that, like where you can argue and be passionate in a meetings. I don't like meetings there. Everybody agrees on everything. Sure. And meeting everybody agrees. That's a good idea. Yeah, man. Like and then they go home and tell their wife, I got such a fucking idiot. Now, I wish they did like say that to me. Let me know. Well, I mean, Benjamin may go home and tell his wife, I'm a fucking idiot. I don't know. But I hope not. Now, it's it's more of a, you know, I think we all have different skill sets. And I think that if Benjamin or Josh or anyone in our company that that's in a leadership role is around, I know something's going to be right, or at least attempted to be right.

47:41And I know that we're going to take care of folks. And I know that right now I'm sitting here doing this with you and Benjamin's working on a project. The decisions he's making for that project, I trust are going to be what's best for the company. A thousand percent. But, you know, today we disagreed on six things, you know, that I can think of right now. And I'm not going to bring them up because I don't I don't want to, you know, throw fuel on the fire, but just disagreements on what things should be. But ultimately, when you have two partners and two leads, you have to give. And I think that if Benjamin kind of take a page out of, you know, Will Gader and Daniel Hume, if Benjamin ever turned like this is important to me, it's I drop it. It's it's something that we can have disagreements. We can push each other. And I think ultimately we've really learned over the past 17 years how to counterbalance that, where we can passionately disagree about things and ultimately come out with a better product. But now there's there's definitely a good give and take. You mentioned Will Gader. Yeah, reasonable host. Have you met him? I haven't. He's a he's somebody that I would really like to spend time with. I read his book because Danny Meyers just been such an inspiration for me.

48:42And I read setting the table, you know, at least every year or so. So I was excited to read his book and actually did the book on tape so that it was read to me, which I'm sure is the way he read it. But yeah, it was really good. It was fantastic. And I think that his push on those things and he started to do it a little bit, but his hospitality in industries that typically maybe wouldn't think about it. And that's what I'm most excited for. Will is that, you know, his working with real estate companies, with investment banks, you know, I'd love to see him work with professional sports teams, things like that. I think what he does and the way he sees the world could be extended into so many different things. And I think he knows it. And I think that what he's doing is going to change the world. I agree. I love the concept that you can be luxurious. I can buy you a bunch of caviar and expensive champagne. But giving somebody dirty New York water dogs or, you know, giving them 10, 100 grand bars. Right. Being thoughtful and curious about people and genuinely caring about them and then showing that in a way, I think is I think it's. It's. Light bulb moment for a lot of people, because I think a lot of people like, well, just give them this.

49:57It's like it's not about just you can give away whatever you want, but it's tailor making it specifically to that person. If you can get that information and you can see that if you have that vision and you can you can do it if you think about it. And he had some amazing ideas in that book. Yeah, I mean, I've said this publicly before and I really believe it. You know, the my angel quote, people may not remember what you said or what you did, but always how you made them feel. And I think that that is a huge thing that I think about personally every day for our company is how you make people feel. And I agree, like, it's great to put caviar on something or shave white truffles. But if you can make something personal and memorable, people that that's what I truly believe people care about. And, you know, I love what we do from a food and drink perspective. But I also looked at food and drink and hospitality as a vehicle for conversation and creating memories. And what we get to do on a daily basis is so special because we get to be part of people's lives. And are they going to remember the extra, you know, white truffle or beautiful glass of Burgundy I poured? Probably not. But if we do something to personalize it and have that touch and they remember that great evening they had at Locust, that's something people hopefully keep with them and puts a smile on their face.

51:04The other night, Baxter came to me and he goes, hey, I know you don't drink, but I've got a dish that has alcohol. We're cooking it out. But I didn't know if you didn't drink, if you had alcohol in your food or how that works, I wouldn't be respectful. And I was just like, no, I'll eat that. I'll eat anything you cook. I don't care what it is. As long as it's not like a shot of something. They cook whatever you want to. But I thought that was so I didn't put on the reservation. I don't drink. I didn't do any of that stuff. I didn't say any of that. But I just kind of said he just came to me and said that. And it was like, wow, I felt honored. That little moment, just him asking me that question showed that he cared about this thing that's very personal to me. Yeah, I had one of those huge. I had one of those moments recently where the hospitalities was spode to me, this boat to me, because my wife and I were in England and I'm obsessed with trains, which I've never talked about, but I'm obsessed with trains. And she booked this train ride for my birthday last year.

52:05We absolutely love where you get on a train and it was actually the Queen's old carriage they've redone. It's a Belmont train. It's incredible. And it goes all the way around England. It's a six hour train ride, five course meal. We actually weren't huge champagne drinkers, but that's all they had. And so we ended up starting to drink this this rosé champagne that we're now obsessed with. And it's just the best day. New baby running late. And a train is going to leave when a train is going to go, like you can't be 15 minutes late. No, you got to do it. You can't sometimes do a dinner reservation. And she called and somebody magically answered. And it happened to be the GM of the train. And they said, don't worry, we'll hold the train for you for an extra five minutes. And we were on like minute four and we are sweating. We're dressed up for this thing. And the cab door opens and there's this guy waiting. And Alice and I start sprinting towards the train and he goes, Alice. And she looks and she goes, you've made it. Take a deep breath. And it was just this moment where he made the effort to go and make sure that and we paid like it wasn't they're going to get there. And they do these train rides all the time. It would not have mattered if we had missed it.

53:05Yeah. But he said, just relax. And then he personally walked us in, made sure we met the guy. And it was just this thing. But he took the time to just be waiting. I'll never forget that for the rest of not let you have that anxiety of walking. I'm so sorry. We're like, it's OK. You're good. You're good. Deep breath. Just come in. Happy Christmas. Come on in. And it was just I was like, oh, shit, this guy gets it. And I slid into his DMS on LinkedIn like a creep, but he hasn't responded to me yet. So fingers crossed. But it was it was a really special moment where like that little extra effort changed our entire trip. That's amazing. I love hearing stories like that. Yeah, I love being part of it because it could have gone the other way. And then would have had a very unhappy wife, which you don't want to have on the Christmas season or any season. That's true. That's true. Or any season. Thank you. That's right. My wife is a huge Christmas. Like she loves Christmas, decorates the mantle, does the whole thing. Like we take everything down. There's like seasonal depression. Like, yeah, it's not Christmas anymore.

54:06When I drive home, all the lights are not. Do you do the Christmas lights at your house? We do. Do you do them yourself or do you have a company that comes and does them? I feel like that's kind of a personal question, which means I'm giving away the fact we bring someone in the exterior lights we have some help with. There's a pain in the ass. It's not great, but they store the lights. They do everything. It's it's great. Yeah. And so we don't have to think about it. We do the tree, we do all the lights and my favorite thing. I didn't grow up with Christmas, obviously, and I don't. Yeah, I'm Jewish, but I love what Christmas means to people. I like having a Christmas tree in the house. My favorite part of it is pulling out the ornaments and living back to those memories, because almost every one of our ornaments has a story. Yeah. And we have 20 years together now. We have all of our little family ornaments. My mom gave me all of our ornaments. And that's something she does with the boys every year. They all get them out. And now the boys have their own trees in their rooms and they've been stealing ornaments to go up into their own rooms. She's passed this whole Christmas spirit down.

55:09Well, I saw this thing. And if anybody listening has insight on how to get this, please let me know. But like I said earlier, I'm obsessed with trains and this guy built a Christmas tree made of trains. So it's essentially a Christmas tree that has trains running all through it. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen. So when you go to Cheekwood, you just hang out in that one. Yeah, I just post up, just put a chair out. I'm just there the whole time. That's my favorite part of Cheekwood. It's fantastic. The train set. I keep joking with my wife that one day I want to have a room that's just full of trains. She makes fun of me thinking I'm dead serious. Are you like at Phillips Toy Mart all the time? I'm not, but I should be. And, you know, like that, that would be OK. So are you more I like to see locomotives in person and smell the the oil and the whole thing and like see that? Because I love like when a train drives by, I always roll the window down. Yeah, because I love the power and the sound of a train. I love trains, too, but not like that. I just I just like trains.

56:09I don't have much a train like figurines at all. I want the model train. Do you have the model trains at home? I have zero. I have one train that goes around the tree base. That's all my wife will allow. But one day train room when you're like a whole train room. These are goals from like 80. You could do like a basement, like if you had a basement and made like a whole train basement where that, you know, you could build it. These are dreams one day. Yeah, we're just setting goals right now. That's right. Goals of 2025 New Year's resolutions here. Now we're just we're still in January. We've got this. Oh, yes. Do you have a favorite train, like a style of train? I mean, the passenger train freight train, the train we went on in England, the LVMH actually owns, which is a company my wife used to work for. The train that they have, the Belmont train that they've completely redone and Wes Anderson actually did one of the trains. It's just it's so special, all the attention to detail. And I think that suspension of disbelief of going back to the 1920s, there's just something fun about it.

57:09That's it. That's probably my favorite train. OK. Yeah. All right. We can get off trains now. I didn't mean to derail the conversation. You can tell my dad now. All right. There we go. I got it. I got that. I was very nice. I could even get a little good. I like I want to derail the conversation. We've hit a new low on this show. I apologize. Yeah. And we're going to take one last break to hear a final word from our sponsors founded by Bruce Robbins in 1976. Robbins Insurance has become Nashville's top independent insurance agency due to a focus on one distinct premise. Exceptional service by truly listening to each client's needs, negotiating the most competitive rates and finding solutions that are both custom made and affordably priced. They aim to eliminate the headache of making sense of insurance. Their simple and understandable service focused approach delivers comprehensive coverage you can rely on and trust.

58:15And guys, accidents happen. This we all know this part of the point of working in a restaurant or living this restaurant world is that every day is different. You can never predict a day. And if you can't predict a day, you need to have a company who you can rely on to provide you with insurance. That's what Matthew Clements and the entire team over at Robbins can do. Check the show notes and give them a call or check them out at Robbins. That's R O B I N S I N S dot com. That's Robbins INS dot com. What chefs want? Do you know what chefs want? I do. They want service, not sales. Revolutionizing distribution. That is what chefs want. Their service that helps chefs succeed every single day. So at what chefs want, which is a company, if you're listening to this and you don't know, formerly known as Creation Gardens, they are an amazing company.

59:18They're delivering to you six day delivery service in most markets, seven days in Nashville. There's no minimum order size. They've broken cases on all of their lines. 24 seven customer support, pricing, ordering and catalog access. How do they do it? They do not have sales reps. That's interesting, isn't it? They have non commissioned customer advocates only when you need them. They're not coming in trying to push you to buy the next thing because that's not how they're incentivized. They're incentivized by serving you and making sure that you have every single thing that you need. State of the art technology for every department. Multi-billion dollar buying power. They focus on tight knit urban areas. They're transforming old industry standards and redefining how you access food for your kitchen. You can learn so much more if you go visit them at whatchefswant.com. We were talking about what your day looks like.

01:00:20Yeah, so you start the day off, you do a workout, you change your planning around, you have a schedule, and then you said you go to the individual restaurants, your brother's operator. Then we went off into a different tangent. Yeah, sorry about that. When you go into the restaurant. How many do you have and which one's your favorite? Oh God, I can't, come on, come on. How many do you have now? I can't even keep track. They're all like children, they're all my favorite. But it's not true. There's one that you hate and there's one that you like more than the other. And why is it Locust? The answer to both is what you're saying? No, they're all so special. And I absolutely love Trevor and what he's created just for the record. You know, I think that when new projects open, they take more attention, obviously. And so anytime we open up something new, like right now, I'm working a lot of nights at Friends just to make sure that I'm there at night. The team there is doing such a good job. But I have the benefit of going in and not having a responsibility to run a shift, which for a decade of my career, I didn't have that luxury.

01:01:20Now I get to go in and just take notes and point things out. And I try not to ever go and coach staff directly, but I'll meet with the GM or the director of ops and say, hey, here's what I noticed. If there's a way that we can try to work on these changes and then empower them to go be successful. But I will at this point will not go up to an individual employee and say anything because I don't want to send two messages. I think it's important that there's one voice that's speaking for it. But I do have the benefit of going in with the guest's eyes and saying, hey, here's everything I noticed. And so bouncing around and doing that. And what are some things? What is the first thing that you look for? You walk in the door. What are you looking for? The lighting, the music, the vibe. I mean, just right away, how do I feel when I enter the space? Is it warm? What's the greet? How do I feel as somebody smiling? What's what's the perception of what's happening? And then you can kind of feel that a hundred percent pretty quickly. And you can feel that in restaurants you have nothing to do with. I mean, it's, you know, I was somewhere right before this for a meeting. And you could just tell, like, I was the only person that wanted to be there. And that sucks. And, you know, after leaving one of our restaurants this morning, that was just fun and warm and wonderful.

01:02:21That's a great feeling. And so I think that that's the first thing I look for is what's the vibe? You know, if you ever see the lights being adjusted, I always joke that it's my brother. You know, he's there because he's constantly tinkering. I do that, too. I am. It's hard not to do. Well, it's funny you say that because it's it's I don't manage the staff because I have GMs and managers who do that. And when I come in and do that, then it's a well, he told me to do something different. And I'm like, well, I need you to do this. And it's like, well, who am I listening to? What's going on here? And they don't feel to fear me when I'm in the building. It's not a thing. But every time I walk in, I guess too bright in here. What is this? And I walk over and I adjust the lights. And then New Year's Eve, I was in there and I walked through every room. I walked through every room. This is at Mayor Bowl. I walked through every room and I was like. I was in the upstairs in the family, but it was quiet. There was 10 tables of people eating in there, and it was quiet. Right. These people were just like in this room, and it was like this big band music, like Sinatra radio or something, but it was like big band music playing. And I was. I just I walked to the corner and I went, what is going on?

01:03:25It feels and I stopped and I looked at this feels like a restaurant where somebody would leave and go, my grandmother would love that place. And I go, that's what it feels like right now. And I like I tried to figure out and I walked downstairs and we got to change. We were changing the music. We're changing the whole thing. We're moving this. This turned the volume up on music in the foreground. And we did. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, this is much better. And people started talking more. And it was like a whole vibe. And it was I just felt it. I was like, I don't this does not feel like New Year's Eve. This feels like a place my grandmother would love. Yeah. And I think that one of the things that we get to do in our industry is it's a living, breathing organism that every single day you're making tweaks. And that is infinitely frustrating and infinitely rewarding that we get to improve and make changes every single day. And I think similar to you, we're not a company that's like, well, this is always always done. It's we're just going to keep doing it. It's every day, you know, one of our our director of ops, this guy, Gil, he's been with us for a decade.

01:04:25He's got this great phrase of the first thing he asked himself, here it is. What am I doing to make this restaurant better today? And so I think that taking that from him, we try to do that as well. And so we have a lot of things I think we've done well, but every day we think what can we do to improve? I from Will Gadara. I got this phrase and this isn't his phrase, but it's a phrase that maybe his dad told him. Yeah, I don't know. What's obvious to me is obvious to me. Right. And so when I walk in the building and I see a bunch of things, why is there the leaves out by the front? How come the ashtrays aren't this? And I walk in that light bulbs out the lights here that it's obvious to me. How come it's not obvious to everybody else? So I do. I've learned that like over communicating every single expectation seven times is like what you have to do. And then there's the random time you'll walk in and everything is perfect. Do you ever have that moment to where you walk in and you go, everybody's moving with intention. All of the little details are knocked out.

01:05:25The music's good. The vibe is good. Hell, yeah. And you just go talk to guests. You just kind of enjoy it. You have that ever? More often than not, we're really lucky that that's the case. I think that that it's always, you know, what could you do to improve? But the teams we put together and then the restaurants that our partners own, that we get to be a part of, like Locust is Trevor's restaurant that we get to be a part of. I walk in that place, the staff screaming as you welcome you. The music is loud in the best way possible. Like who gives a shit about the lighting? Like it's just so perfect and what it is. And, you know, I consider Trevor one of my dearest friends at this point. Again, he's similar to Josh, more like family than anything else. And just to see what he's created. Yeah, I walk in that restaurant. It feels great. I walk into Bastion and, you know, it's the main bar. I was there on New Year's Eve and what they created in the main bar. And, you know, the middle bar is so perfect and the restaurant is always fantastic. You know, I was at Henrietta Redd and just watching the Commander's Palace New Year's Eve piece they did. And then I was blown away that the pastry chef had created a replica of Commander's Palace and actually the broken windows in it were made from gelatin.

01:06:28And it was just absolutely wild to see what they were doing. I had no idea that was happening. Commander's Palace, the famous place in New Orleans. Yeah, kind of if you were hearing what this is, this is this. This is a famous place in New Orleans. Sorry, I just assume everyone knows. I assume they do, but I want to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's just so fun to see that. And then stopping by the catbird seat and seeing Baxter and the team wearing tuxedo t-shirts, which is the perfect way to sum up Catbird of like, well, it's the chef's tasting, but what's the vibe? Well, yeah, technically it's really, really freaking good. But at the same time, like it's playful, it's fun. And to see Baxter in his white tuxedo t-shirt and the rest of the staff and their black tuxedo t-shirts made my day. And then to go downstairs to the Patterson House, just booming and vibing. And just it was amazing. And then go down to Friends in Low Places and seeing an absolutely packed honky tonk on lower Broadway. How'd you even get down there? I drove. It wasn't too bad. Really? Yeah. I mean, I was down there early enough where I got there by nine o'clock. It was it was fine. But just so cool to see. And just the staff there is some of the kindest human beings I've worked with.

01:07:30That was really part of our intention of hiring was just hire really kind people. And it was safe. And the temperature was right. And the vibe was right. The music was incredible. And the DJ was great. It was just it was a perfect New Year's Eve. I love it. Do you have any resolutions for New Year's for 2024? Yeah. So my my wife asked me what I wanted for for Christmas this year. And we're not really gift people at this point. We're way more kind of experience driven. But I saw this really cool old photograph of Anthony Bourdain with it, with a quote underneath it, which I think a lot of people have shared on social media. But one of the things in it is eat slowly. And as much as I love food and drink, I eat most of my meals over a trash can. And and quickly and quickly. And so I think to kind of take a page out of his book of just eat a little bit slower, enjoy, really taste the food, taste life, taste everything we're doing. And, you know, it's as cheesy as it is to say, like my son is never going to be this age again. And so really try to be intentional of loving the time with my wife, which I do on a daily basis, but not missing those moments that I don't have to with with the kiddo.

01:08:37And then just doing really cool shit with good people, which we're teeing up. We got a lot of growth coming up. I'm excited to see what you guys come up with. Thank you. I promise Jordan, our director of communication, I would not talk about, but I'm so fucking excited to talk about it when I can. And something Jordan doesn't mind, by the way, Jordan is amazing. And I got to give Jordan a shout out because I. You have your whole team, everybody that I ever work with, you guys, is I don't know how you find these people, but they are unbelievable. But Jordan is one of the best. I would agree. In the city, she's poor. Jordan has spent so much time with me over the past 48 hours. So feel her heart. Yeah. Bless her heart is right. Can't talk about anything, but for the future, but very excited for what's to come. Episode two. More restaurants. Yeah. More more more things, more things, more things taken over the entire Geodes Park. You guys are going to do the entire thing. You're going to have restaurants in the locker room while the players are changing. I got to tell you, you know, watching what that team has done and John Ingram and his leadership and, you know, and just the team and the vibe is awesome.

01:09:43I mean, I never appreciated soccer the way that I do now. And being able to go to the games and work the games and see the excitement and see the crowd, it's unbelievable what they've created. It's I got I went this year for the first time. Season tickets. I'm videoing you right now. So I got this on the Internet. I got season tickets this year and I went to multiple games. I'm hooked. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm hooked with soccer. I mean, it's a lot of fun. I got to meet Ian, the head of soccer, a couple of years ago. And I had never he was at Liverpool before as the head of Liverpool. And they've got the song You'll Never Walk Alone, which I had never heard and didn't know the meaning of Liverpool. Watch some of these old videos of people singing in the stadium. It's one in the morning, sitting in the pool house, you know, bourbon in hand, tearing up with this guy watching, you know, this Anfield anthem that that's happening for Liverpool. And that was before soccer was going. So it's years ago. And then watching that now translate in where, you know, Mr. Brightside starts playing and you just fired up and you're the guitar riff at the beginning of the game and what they've created.

01:10:47It's just awesome. I mean, to think about the professional sports we have in Nashville, grown up in Nashville, having zero professional sports to now having these teams and what the Nashville sounds are doing and what we're doing at the band box. It's just unbelievably fun. Nashville stars. Yeah, yeah. I mean, from everything I hear, two thousand twenty five, two thousand twenty eight, maybe first season. It's awesome. You think this is going to happen? Are you part of this? I have nothing to do with it. But I imagine since how many different boards and things do you sit on for the city? I'm on the tourism board for the third term, which I absolutely love. That's that's one of my favorite boards that I get to be a part of. Sit on the board of Ozarts for Tim Ozgarner has been a great friend forever and a big fan of him when he had CIO Cigar back in the day. And now seeing what they're doing with Oz is fantastic. And then join the entrepreneurship center board. And so really enjoying being a part of that and kind of seeing how important that organization is to the city. And yeah, just kind of fired up for all of the man.

01:11:53I think it's so cool. I think for what, you know, I'm a big Nashville homer. Yeah, me too. After 35 years, I love it. I want to build community with all of the stuff I'm doing. And you're one of those people who's actually. Spending your time and energy to make Nashville better and not just take, take, take. Oh, thank you. I think so many people are here to take what Nashville has to offer. And not only do you get to benefit from the fruits of that, but you're actually giving back and spending a ton of your personal time to help make the city better. And I love that. Well, thanks, man, I appreciate that. And your organization does that. We've got an incredible team. I mean, I we have somebody visiting right now, working kind of with us on something in the future I'm not allowed to talk about. And she was just like, man, your team is just so kind and wonderful. I saw. What are you doing with Dua Lipa? Is that that new concept of Dua Lipa that you guys are doing? I saw you guys were hanging out the other day in London.

01:12:53Yeah, she is. She is my best friend. It's great. Now, we're the Dua Lipa bar downtown. Are you guys going to do turn merchants into a Dua Lipa place? Because that could be pretty cool information. I information telling you, no, it's it's been great. It starts some rumors in Nashville. Nashville has been so good to us and kind of a full circle moment. My my now wife, who is sorry. My now wife, who is my girlfriend, when she was 19, she came to visit. We ended up dating and we dated for two years and broke up for 10 and then got back together. But when she visited the first time when she was 19 and I don't know how ever long ago that was. But she was at the airport and somebody was like, oh, hey, if you're heading into town, I can give you a ride. And it was a genuine moment of just somebody trying to extend hospitality. And she was like, who is this guy that's going to murder me? I was like, no, that's kind of Nashville. We're kind of kind. And then after being gone for 10 years, she came back. She was like, it hasn't that hasn't changed. And it's been so cool where this woman who grew up in London and lived in New York has now absolutely fallen in love with Nashville and entered into the spirit of the party and just kind of embraces that kindness that existed all those years ago.

01:14:02That's a huge part of our city success. And if you're new to town and you don't subscribe to that, you need to. Yeah. Don't mess it up. It is fun watching people come in from some other markets and thinking they have to be a certain way and then realizing that Nashville really doesn't respond great to that. And be competitive, be the best of what you do and, you know, be aggressive, but be kind about it and don't be a dick. And that's it's not hard to be kind. It's really not hard. There's a pretty tight network of people in town that know each other, that if you come in and don't play by the rules, so to speak, I mean, it probably won't work out as well for you as you'd like. I imagine I don't. There's been a handful of folks who came in who I was lucky to meet with. And it's like, oh, man, this is not going to work out for them. And sure enough, two years later, they're they're back where they came from. I just I think that Nashville is such a kind, open, warm city that when people don't embrace that, they kind of get, you know, they don't fit in as well.

01:15:04So tell me about these upcoming projects that you can't talk about. Yeah, we want to know. Jordan Jordan's list is going, I swear, Brandon, if you get him to say one thing about this new Dua Lipa bar over. All right. Max, I've kept you here an hour. This is the tastiest hour of talk in Nashville. What else do you want to talk about? Anything you want to say, anything? I mean, now, man, it's because I didn't have a plan. I just wanted to hang out. I'm happy to hang with you. And it's it's been way too long. How are you doing? How's your spots going? How'd the opening go? The Chagos has been fantastic. Yeah, it's. Everything about it is what we had planned for. We did not plan for no parking. Right. We did not plan for, you know, when we opened, it took a lot longer to open than we wanted. But everything is executing the way that we wanted it to. We just got to get the folks in. Once people come in and need it, they go, oh, wow, this is a lot different than what I what it used to be or what I thought it might be.

01:16:05This is great. I want to come back. And then we're having a lot of multiple people that are come back because we're a community restaurant. We don't depend on tourism really at all in any of our restaurants. There's it's a we're community based. We want to see you a couple of times a week, probably more like Pinewood was probably you probably had more people came in every day for their coffee and you saw them every day. And it was a really irregular thing. We we look for that. And the students are have been amazing. The relationship with Belmont University. It's fantastic. Is insane. And the Belmont students are such good, good students. I mean, and I sat on a board with Dr. Bob Fisher when he was the head of Belmont and just think the world of that guy and seeing what that organization has done. It's incredible. Well, the support that that school has given us and just the relationship, how much they have supported us is it like makes me emotional. That's awesome. How just how great they've been to just they're excited we're there and then how much they're supporting us. You know, we're supporting the basketball team and the volleyball, although they're sporting their sport.

01:17:08It's been really fun. It's really fun. It's a whole new area for us. You know, I think Brentwood and Cool Springs and Brentwood and Green Hills and now the Belmont area, it's just it's been a lot of fun. I'm learning. I'm learning a lot every day. Yeah, me both. Going from two to three restaurants, that third restaurant is like the way to. And it's weird because you can't. I like to have control. Yeah. And I want to be I want to know everything in all places. And I can do that with two. Yeah. The third one, you have to diminish a little bit out of what you know on the other two. And that's I'm getting you. I'm learning that. And that's a lot of trust in the people that operate it. You said a quote from Anthony Bourdain, Eat Slower, my wife. I don't know who said this quote, but she said the only people that I remember that you worked on Christmas Eve are your children. Yeah. And to me, they're eight and ten. I'm at that point, you know, where I focus all this time on the restaurants and I'm, you know, put your own oxygen mask on first.

01:18:11Another Will Gadara thing is a put your oxygen. If you can't take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of those people? And I need to have that. I need to have I need to be there for the kids. And I don't want to be that. Well, Dad, we never saw you. Right. And that's just a tough thing. And with three restaurants, I could be somewhere anytime all the time. I got a place to be. Oh, yeah. And sometimes two plus one equals five. You know, yeah, I get it. What are you what are you reading right now? I'm reading a book called Good Inside. Oh, yeah. If I back Dr. Becky, yeah. So that and then some relationship books. Cool. One of them called I didn't sign up for this. I think I need to read that book. I like it. All right. I I love the psychology of this stuff, because I mean, like to going from two to three restaurants and being a leader, I think good inside talks about a lot of children and emotions. And the really I'm really into. Behavior and what behavior signifies like it's not the behavior, it's something behind that's causing the behavior.

01:19:18And what is that? Yeah, you know, it's not the fact that the kid lashed out. It's he needed connection in versus sending somebody to the room because you're upset. Like if you hey, wait a minute, what's causing that? Let's connect and we find that connection. And so all of that stuff, I'm really into. But we have our annual planning next week. So five dysfunctions of a team. I listened to half of it this morning on the elliptical. Nice. And this would be like the sixth time that I've read that book. But that's one of the big themes for annual planning is five dysfunctions of a team. I love it. You're familiar with this book. Yeah, Patrick, Patrick Lanzoni. I haven't read it, but I'm going to I'm going to put it on my list. You haven't read five dysfunctions of a team. No, I need to. I will. I'm on it. I promise. It's amazing. So I'm at any given point, I've got three or four that I'm going on. And those those are the three right now that I'm on. It's awesome. And did you like the process we've looked into it? I mean, I absolutely am a huge fan.

01:20:23It just it's you guys do this very well. It makes you be very intentional and it brings accountability to everybody in the building and everybody and all the executive team. And then you can you layer these level 10 meetings all the way down. And you don't miss anything and you have action points. I feel like so many people have these meetings and then you leave the meeting and like, why do we have that meeting? That could have been an email. Right. And there's no action items. And we really intentional about this is the agenda today. And throughout the agenda, we don't politic. We don't. There's no sidebars. Part of the process is the IDS process. I don't know if you're familiar with that term, but it's identify, discuss and solve. So at the end of every meeting, we allot 30 minutes to IDS. So if we have any problems throughout the meeting versus side barring, oh, that guy does, I'll drop it down. I'll drop that down. And at the end of the meeting. All right. So these are the issues we account we brought up. Let's identify what the issue is. Let's discuss it. Let's solve it. Let's create an action item around that.

01:21:24And let's move forward. Did you have to travel to the US or did you hear locally? And we have a facilitator. OK. Will you send me that info? Yeah. I think that we've talked about it years past, but just haven't pulled the trigger. I'm in this YPO restaurant forum and I'm by far the smallest restaurateur in it. And they a lot of them have used it and love it. It's it works really well. It's it's it's very easy to understand. There's not too much business jargon. And for everybody in the company to go, oh, identifying core values. What is your niche? What are your three uniques? Like there's and you can tailor make it for all individual restaurants. It's fantastic. It's helped our company just in setting goals for one, three and ten years. Yeah. And then letting everybody in the company know what those one, three, ten year goals are so that they can kind of go, oh, I see what we're where we're working towards. And it's a lot of fun. And it helps. You know, I think it's just good for communication. It's awesome. It's awesome. Yeah. I could hang out with you all day, but I unfortunately have to hop on a call here in a minute. But this has been a treat.

01:22:24Thanks for being here. The final thought. You get our final thought. The Gordon Food Service. Final thought. Just anything in the world. Whatever you want to say, man, you get to take us out. Man, that's great. I got myself in a really good mood on the way over here listening to the air soundtrack, which is kind of random, but big country, just a banger. If you want to be put in a good mood. And I just read a good book. I which I'll share, which if folks haven't read, they should read. But I'm in this program at the Aspen Institute called the Henry Crown Fellowship. And one of my fellows is this guy named Bill Browder. And Bill Browder has one of the most incredible stories I've heard in a long time. And his book is called Red Notice. And if you get a chance, read it. It's it's fantastic. Just so well done and a huge inspiration. So I'd say go buy that book. And I don't know, be kind. I feel like that's kind of been the theme, what we talked about today. Just be kind and do something random for somebody who can't do anything for you. I love it. Well, happy New Year.

01:23:26Happy New Year. When do you stop saying happy New Year, by the way? I feel like I'm guilty of still saying Valentine's Day. I that be kind, build positivity. I think that's just a greeting. I'm so hey, what's up? How are you doing? Hey, happy New Year. It's just it's just while I can do it, I'm going to do it. I feel like there's this producer named Pooh Bear who he always says happy birthday, even though it's not your birthday. I think maybe you could be just happy New Year year round. It's a new day. You have a new catchphrase. Happy New Year. I've got a happy Valentine's Day. And then you 86 it. I love it. And you just go into happy spring. I love it. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And always good to see you. I mean, talk to you later. Thank you so much to Max Goldberg for joining us here on Nashville Restaurant Radio. I also want to give a big thank you to Gordon Food Service. These guys are amazing. They're generous and they actually care. And I love that in a company. In this episode, we put some new commercials out there.

01:24:26We recorded some new stuff. And I know we've got a lot of the same sponsors. And these are amazing people who support what we do here. And I say this because I know it gets redundant. But I want you guys to know that the people who support this show allow us to do this. They allow us to have a studio. They allow us to have good equipment to record this stuff and get our time. They allow us to tell your story. And that's something that is super just incredibly special to me. So when I talk about these sponsors, it's because these are people that I know. These are people who have leaned in and said, man, we believe in what you're doing. We want to support locally owned and operated restaurants. How can we get involved? And this is this is who they are. And this was Gordon Food Service from like day one was like, dude, we love what you're doing. We really, really want to help support local and operated restaurants. How can we help? And another thing that I know you might know, you might not know. My goal here is to not take one dollar from restaurants.

01:25:31I will. There's not one person has paid to be on this show. Nobody pays if you have something really cool happening at your restaurant. You cannot pay me to talk about it. Just tell me, send me a message. Let me know. We want to share what you have going on out there. We want to get the word out. And I want to do that freely because this show is about the locally owned and operated restaurants here in Nashville. It's about a community. It's about building community. And our sponsors allow us to do that. So that being said, if you are out there and you have a company that isn't represented by what we're doing and you are a company that does it the right way and you want me to learn more about your company, you can message me, find me on Instagram, send me a message there at Brandon underscore in RR. And from there, I can learn more about your company. But I would love to talk about partnering with you. So we're taking we have room for a couple more sponsors.

01:26:33So if you hear some throughout this episode and you're in a space that isn't represented here, then I would love to talk to you. This this is a fun opportunity to to help support locally owned and operated restaurants. For the most part, we mix it up and we have some different people in here. But hopefully it's all to educate you, the independent restaurateur. So thank you for listening to this show. And thank you to Max Goldberg for joining us on the show today. We're going back next week with Christina, and she is the owner of the legendary Milkshake Shack. And that's going to be a really fun episode. I cannot wait to share it with you. She is straight up entrepreneur. And I love her story. And it will inspire you as it did me. And hopefully all this Iceland, it's going to rain all week long. Hopefully you guys can stay safe in all of this. Love you guys. Bye.