Miller Phillips

00:00We are supported by Robbins Insurance, a local insurance agency providing customized insurance policies, sound guidance, and attentive service. Robbins Insurance is the go-to agency for hospitality professionals in Nashville. Listen, Robbins knows how hard industry professionals work every single day. They also know how devastating accidents can be. Be it a grease fire that damages the kitchen, a severe storm that cuts off power, or a customer slip and fall incident. Both the extensive experience and the savvy to create a policy that protects your business from accidents like those, you can rest easy knowing that the work you've put in will not be for nothing. Visit Robbins' website at robbinsins.com to request a consultation or call Matthew Clements directly. His number is 863-409-9372. Protection you can trust. That's Robbins. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll.

01:12Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. Typically, I would say Caroline will be joining us in a few minutes, but this is a solo episode today. I took a trip to Florida with the family over the weekend because I really, one of my main reasons for going was I needed a break. But also, I really wanted to sit down and talk with Miller Phillips, who is the owner of Bo Shamps. And if you have been to Destin, you've probably eaten at Bo Shamps or you know about Bo Shamps. And every time I go there, I just wonder like, how do they do this? Is this real? Like what's going on? Because they have these boats right outside and they're bringing in fresh seafood. And I just, I needed the full story.

02:13So I reached out and Miller was so gracious to come on the show. And I really, every time we go to Destin, I don't know all about, you know, 30A and all the great places. You hear me in interviews talk about where do you like to go? And so I wanted to get like the details. And today we did that. And I got a lot of connections. And I think we're going to do another episode leading into summer next year where you guys can learn the back story on all your favorite places in Destin. And maybe we can introduce you to a few that you didn't know about. This episode today, I thought was just amazing. We had so much fun in our conversations to learn the history of the building that they're in, his family history, the history of the chef, Andy Bell, and how they operate this restaurant is really fascinating. And just a big shout out to Miller for taking the time in the busy season to spend an hour with me. This was just so much fun. So I'm really excited to bring this episode to you.

03:15Big election this past week. Congratulations to Freddie O'Connell and Alice Rowley, who are going to be going to a runoff. And for all of the people in the the city council election, we're doing a runoff there, too. And I don't think Marsha made it to the thing, but I want to give a shout out to Marsha Masula for being a friend of the show and a friend of ours personally. She is just an amazing person. And I'm so proud of her. And she just really, really did such a great job. And almost there, almost there, like 400 votes away. And we missed out in Nashville. You missed out on having a hell of a person on city council. Hopefully everybody else that's there will do a great job. But man, I was rooting for her so hard. Big episode next week. We have the gentleman who are responsible for NoCo, the super duper popular Japanese wood fired restaurant, which is housed where the old Pomodoro East was in East Nashville.

04:26We have John Murray, who's the founder, and Wilson Brannock, who is kind of a co-founder with them and the managing partner, both in studio, telling us all about NoCo. So if you don't know what that is, people all the time, where should we go eat? Like this is one you don't want to miss. This is the newest, hottest place in town. And I always say go eat at the places that have been here forever. But you should go check this one out. These guys are really cool and they're doing really amazing things for their staff. Just love hearing this stuff. So, OK, let's jump in. I'm super excited to bring you this episode with Miller Phillips. Super excited today to welcome in Miller Phillips and Miller is the owner of Bo Shamps in Destin, Florida. What's going on, Miller? I don't know, man. It's good to see you. Really cool to do this. Never done anything like this before. First podcast. Yes, sir. You know, that's my favorite thing is the first podcast because they really don't know what to expect and how it goes.

05:26And then all of a sudden like, oh, that was really cool, man. Yeah, just kind of roll into it. So I'll give some backstory. I love coming to Destin with the family. The beaches here are amazing. And one of the one of the stops that we have to make when we come here is Bo Shamps. It is it is a every year, sometimes a couple of times a year if we come. But selfishly, every time I'm here, I have so many. When you got to eat, can you just eat dinner or do you look around at operations the whole time like I do? I think I was my wife crazy, absolutely crazy. Like she's what are you looking at? What are you doing? I'm like, I'm just seeing what they've got going on. I'm seeing what they're doing right. And what I feel like maybe they could be doing better. Of course, I'm not going to say anything to anybody. Of course, I do enjoy it. And it gives me again, like I said, we built this restaurant on ideas that we had from traveling and going all over the place with mom and dad who were in the restaurant business forever. I pick things apart, you know, and a lot of the stuff I'll take home with me and say, we need to try that at Bo Shamps or we need to try that or that'd be a great idea down the road to try that or this poor waitress is drowning or, you know, geez, these floors need some work, you know, that this slam and kitchen door, they need to address that that kind of stuff.

06:39Five light bulbs out in here. That kind of stuff. And like I say, my wife's always just like, can you just please just enjoy dinner and just not worry about this? I'm like, I'm not worried. I'm just paying attention to what I do. That's right. So I do that when I come here. And one of the things that I've just you're busy as hell. Fresh seafood, everything's from the Gulf, and it's amazing. And I just go, how do they do this much volume and how do they execute so well? And the chef is amazing. And these dishes are great. And every time I'm here, I'm like, I want to I want to know so selfishly on this trip. I went, hey, man, reached out ahead of time. Yeah, can we talk? So they don't have to sit there and dinner. I can now explain to her when we come eat here. The reason why they're doing all this stuff is this. Yeah, it was such a big learning curve, man, because it that like I said earlier, the volume that we've created now is obviously fantastic. But we just that was on us. And we opened in 13. That was on us and 15. You know, we got super busy in the you know, Destin with its I guess the restaurant game in Destin. It's just there's it's it is what it is.

07:47And it's what it has been for a long time. And we came in and we're basically doing what everybody else was doing, just trying to do it our way and a little bit different with the Gulf seafood, make sure that, you know, we had chef doing what he was doing. And again, with his passion and what he does, we didn't really know exactly how crazy it was going to get right. And like I showed you with that one walk in cooler that we had initially, like, I'm like, what were we thinking? You know, what, what, what, how did we think that was going to work? That wasn't ever going to work. But we just have constantly grown and grown and just that cooler that I showed you earlier, in the parking lot, we just did that two years ago, you know, and it's just been this crazy evolution and like, learning, like I tell myself all the time what not to do and what didn't work and what we can do to try to figure out what will work and we still are every day trying to figure out what works best because with that, with chef's cuisine and what he wants to offer to everybody, he hates selling shrimp baskets, he hates selling hamburgers, we got to have them, you know, for people that are not into some of this stuff that, you know, these super cool seafood dishes that chef does. And it drives them crazy. But we got to have it and with the volume and with the kids and we want that environment, we want people to be able to bring their kids and to bring folks that may not necessarily be into that kind of stuff and still enjoy themselves, right. So it's just like, insane how much we've evolved with when you say I want to see how they do it. I don't know if we know how we do it. You know what I mean?

09:17I just know you just do it. We've gotten better at doing what we've been what we do over the past 10 years and make it where it's better for the customer better for my staff, man, I just feel like I kill my staff or in the past, it was really tough. You know, keeping up with, with the demand and the volume here. Because we were running across the street all the time in the warehouse because we didn't have a big enough kitchen because we were cutting fish in the in the kitchen instead of in lucky dog seafood like it was torture, right? You learned a lot of lessons from where you came from. Let's talk, let's talk about where you came from. So you grew up here in Destin, your family owned this property. Yep. And they had a restaurant your whole life. So tell us about the original restaurant. Yep. So I was born in 83. Mom and Dad opened the flamingo cafe, I think in either late 84 or 85. And that was a fine dining white tablecloth restaurant. That was very successful in Destin. It was, I think the flamingo was here. Marina Cafe, which is still next door, was here. And land yap on the harbor at the other end of the harbor was about it. And then harbor docks too. But as far as what white table, excuse me, fine dining restaurants.

10:32Flamingo, Marina, land yap, those were kind of the three that there were. And so yeah, I grew up in the restaurant, you know, my sister and I, I don't know how many times we slept in dad's office under a white tablecloth, you know, we'd be up here with mom and dad, they'd have events and stuff where they couldn't either get a babysitter or it stayed later than they wanted to. And we'd have to stick around. I mean, slept behind the bar slept in the office, you know, and learned the restaurant life grew up in restaurant literally did. And like I said, the chef that we have now the first chef that I ever at 810 years old looked up and realized was like and had a memory of Oh, that's a chef was him. You know, and so that's crazy. So Andy Bell is your chef. Yes, sir. And he's been here since you were eight years old. Yes, sir. He worked for mom and dad. I'm not sure exactly how many years he was at the flamingo I want to say. I want to say it was seven and I want to say it's 11. I don't know which one it was, but it was a while long time he ended up closing the restaurant with dad in 2001 when dad retired. I think I'm not really sure exactly what his reasoning was. But I think it was me going to college and me maybe coming to the restaurant and taking advantage of things a little bit. But he I think he was, you know, trying to be able to spend more time with Ashley, my sister and I and mom and he just had had enough, you know, after 20 20 something years in the restaurant business drag you out, he was just done. And he knew he could lease the restaurant the building out to folks and, and go that way. So that's what he did. He he used the restaurant to two or three different restaurants. I think chops was here for a little while. And was here had the longest tenure here from when dad closed to when we came back, but it was chops. Another couple of one or two other tries fish house and people that that came in and we're in and out. And I was in Birmingham, I had another broken egg in Birmingham, I started, I was one of the earliest franchisees in that. When I got out of school to Alabama, I came home, one of my very best friends that I grew up with his father started the another broken egg with his brother. And they were just kind of starting to consider like franchising stuff. And so I jumped in with them, I started learning from them working here for a little while. I met my now wife. At that time, she was a nurse at Children's Hospital in Birmingham, I had kind of thought about maybe trying to open a restaurant in Birmingham or a broken egg in Birmingham. Because I was in Tuscaloosa and was over in Birmingham a lot. And so there's just really not a whole lot of places like this up here, this would work. And thought, you know, Mountain Brook, boy, they would really, it would, it would kill it there. So that's what I did. I got out of school, came home for a little while worked with them, moved to Birmingham. I don't know what year that was probably seven or eight, and was up there for four or five years. And dad called me on the phone one

13:26day, and he said, Hey, you know, and I knew that the restaurant that was here before had closed. And he said, Hey, I've got some guys that are wanting to lease the building. And it was a pretty big restaurant chain. I think it was ACME, I'm not sure that was wanting to get the building. And he said, you know, if they get it, they're gonna, they're gonna be here, you know, he said, so we had always, always talked about possibly coming back and doing something here. My sister was with me in Birmingham. She helps me out a lot with everything and is super, super talented, and can't thank her enough for what she's done for me. But we decided to come home. And dad said, you know, if you want to come home, man, now's the time if you want to do it, or I'm going to have to, you know, lease this building out to these other guys, and I'm pretty sure they're going to be, you know, here for a while here for a while. So actor stuff. It's not a bad problem to have. Yeah, it's not to have a somebody to come in and lease the building. Right. But I think secretly, you know, or maybe not secretly, but I know mom and dad wanted that, you know, and and I did too, I always wanted to do something. And I, I enjoyed the broken egg and the corporate, you know, kind of lifestyle, because it taught me a lot, you know what I mean? And just like I learned here every day, what not to do, I learned some stuff through them, what not to do, I learned more what to do. Basic operations in the restaurant or fundamental stuff. I wasn't learning in school. I was in the HES hospitality school at Alabama and learned plenty there. But you know what it is, until you get in the kitchen till you get behind that expo line.

14:56You got to go to the school of hard knocks. That's right. So we moved home in 2000, late 2010 and 11. I kept the restaurant in Birmingham at a really great manager, Justin Hadley up there that held on for three years. And I was back and forth, back and forth, trying to drive to Birmingham run this place. And this place was enough without having to drive home. And I eventually sold it in 2015 or 16 in Birmingham, and just focus solely on here. So that's kind of where we got from where we started and to where we are now, as far as you know, the build out where the building is. All right, so I'll jump ahead a little bit there, just now that we have some of the backstory of what you're doing. Flamingo restaurant. And you'll see if you look at the Instagram post for this ad, you'll see pictures of what the original Flamingo was like. And then you'll see pictures with the dining room right now at Beauchamp's looks like you can get perspective. And then you'll see a picture of the whole outside and what they've done. And when you decided to do this, you had this family restaurant, it was a massive build out what you did. Where were where did you get the ideas for this? Did you hire somebody? Did you guys all sit around a table over a bottle of bourbon and go, we should put a tiki bar over here and we should have this huge back deck. And what did you guys fight about? And what did you ultimately end up at?

16:16Right. So exactly what you were talking about earlier, about, you know, having different ideas and how things come up with us being a restaurant family, everywhere we went, mom and dad, we're doing the same thing you and I do now, they pick everything apart, they're looking at things, we're writing things down trying to say we're taking pictures, that would be cool one day or, or just don't make sure we don't ever do that. And we would just joke about it and talk about it all the time, just because we were in it, you know, and we understood it. So the commonality to Yeah, and then so the three tier deck system that we have out here is from Firefly restaurant in, in the Bahamas near Marsh Harbor, they've got a three tier set three tier deck system that kind of looks over this beautiful, you know, green bay in the Bahamas. And we were like, this is the way you do a deck, this is this is a deck, this is a restaurant, this is built for restaurant because every level has a view, there's nobody in front of you, you don't have to peek over your getting the full view. And there's people right under you. And there's people right under them. And with that was exactly how we came up with that idea was being at that restaurant and taking that away from them, you know, saying that's a let's try that. And so I had an incredible designer, I guess, structural engineer, Ryan Cleveland, from I think he went to Auburn, bless his heart, but he was a really good dude. And, you know, we sat down and kind of explain this vision of this out this outside area. And, you know, like I said, we I think we put 460 something pylons in the ground to build all this outdoor deck space. You know, the food and the cuisine and stuff is I really kind of feel like it's almost like the flamingo cafe. And I'll show you a menu in a little while. It's just kind of a spin off of that. Like, I feel like we just pulled the white tablecloths off. We took the bow ties off the bartenders, and we bartenders and servers. And I said, I just kind of want to go when I would come home from from Birmingham and from Tuscaloosa and

18:24that's nice. I just want to go somewhere where it's really good food, but I don't have to casual. Yeah, I don't have to like I just you're on the beach. This is what I wear every day. I'm in t shirts and short every day. When I when when you greeted me, you weren't wearing shoes. Yeah. I think I'm overdressed for this. Well, again, that's what I wanted to feel. That's what I wanted everybody to be a part of here was, but we're going to give you whatever you want. We're going to give you the freshest seafood. We're going to be as transparent as possible. We're going to show everybody through lucky dog seafood, what we're doing. And you're going to be able to get a 22 ounce ribeye or giant piece of snapper or whatever it is. And we that snapper destined dish that's on there now. Was on the menu when chef was here at the flamingo. That group of pecan was on the menu and had both of those. Those have been in my family for 30 years. That corn and crab bisque been on the menu for 30 years. Tons of things that we kind of just moved over and just basically tried to make it more comfortable and more casual for people to feel like, you know, we don't have to put a collar shirt on. We don't have to dress the kids and whatever we can just come off the beach, spray the sand off our feet, put some flip flops on and go have good dinner, you know, instead of just some frozen, you know what, so that works down here. There's lots of those restaurants that work and not knocking them. They make plenty of money and do a good job, but it's just not enough.

19:53It's not. I'm not eating there, you know, and you're probably not eating there again after you go, right? So no, we're usually not going to go. We went. We went to a place called the back porch. We went to Panama City yesterday to meet some friends and go on a boat and do the whole thing. And we went to Pier Park and my wife said, let's go to the back porch. And I go, I'm not. That's a chain. I'm not going. There's just no, it's actually not. There's only two. One of them's in Destin. One of them's here. And I went, OK, she is right about that. I said, well, we'll go. I have this thing. I don't like to eat a change, which is one of the reasons why I want to come in here, because I don't. We have so many people in Nashville that travel to Destin, right? You know, almost like this pilgrimage every single year. And they go to the same places and they go, oh, we love this place. We love that place. And you guys, I wanted people to know that you are local and kind of your story behind it. So if you're coming to Destin, this is this is a place that you can go and feel good about going and be casual and have amazing chef driven food. With one of the most beautiful views I've seen out there and you have this really cool sand, it's almost like a double the size, like a sand volleyball area and then you've got corn hole boards and you've got all kinds of stuff out there.

21:09For people that wait. Yeah, it's nice. It's nice. And then they can see all the boats and see people coming in from fishing. And a lot of times it's good. I call it kind of call it the show. What we do, you know, it's a show to everybody else. It's what we do every day. You know, you see me today with no shoes on. Well, I'm coming off the boat because we were fishing for two days yesterday trying to catch some fish for the restaurant. People see that and they get fired up because, you know, some of my servers or people be like, who's that? So that's the owner of the restaurant. What's that fish doing? He's taking it up to Lucky Dog Seafood. That's gonna be on the menu tomorrow night, right? And so people see that and they're like, okay, this must be legit. Well, it's because it is, you know, that's what we're doing. That's what we do every day. And that's, you know, being local and being from around here. It doesn't seem like anything to us. But I do understand that other people, just like when I travel and go see people doing things like if I'm on the East Coast and see some guys bringing crabs in or something, I'm like, dude, we're about to eat that. I want that. I want that. You know what I mean? And so that will have people come up to us all the time off the beach and off the dock. It's like, what are you all doing? What is that? What is that? That's the elephant tuna. Oh my gosh, is that going to be on the menu tonight? Well, not tonight.

22:10Cause we got to get it up there and get it cut. But tomorrow you come back, we'll have it. And I'll see those people the next day. I'll be running food or something. They'll be like, Hey, weren't you the guy that was on the boat yesterday? And you know, looking at me, nobody wants to believe that I own this restaurant. And I kind of like it that way from time to time. But it kind of works for me being able to do what I need to do and work around getting people what they need. And then they realize they'll ask the server, be like, I saw that guy on the boat yesterday and he was just running food. What, who is that? And they're like, Oh, that's the owner of the restaurant. And they're like, Oh, that's awesome. You know? And so they kind of correlate and understand that local aspect. And they, it makes them feel like they're getting, you know, the real deal. Well, it's because they are, you know, because we're not going to do it anywhere. And chef is not going to allow anything any differently. So I got to meet chef and I can totally ask myself, what's the secret to your longevity here? And he said, passion. Yep. That's what it is. I think that's what you have to have in your chef. But he also has been doing it long enough that he knows, I could tell because you gave me a tour before we started this interview. We walked around the entire building. I'm in walk-ins all the time. Yep. And I, my walk-ins look pretty good. I'm pretty excited about my walk-ins, but your walk-ins were meticulous and they were beautiful and they were labeled and everything was scratched. There wasn't one bag. I didn't see one bag of frozen corn. I didn't see anything. And everything was fresh, fresh produce, fresh fish, fresh meats. Everything came in and it was stored impeccably. Kudos. You could tell that doesn't happen unless you have a chef who knows what he's doing. Man, he is so meticulous and so driven. And that passion word, I wish there was another word to like, blow that word up more because he is so amazing with his passion and what he does and how important it is to him to make absolutely sure that there's no possibility of that dish to go out any differently if he started it from jump street all the way to the, you know, going to the table. If he was the only person who touched the plate for the entire, you know, list of ingredients and he can't do that. And his passion, I would say,

24:20and I'm sure he'll hear this, but I would say that's our biggest hurdle with him is I have to kind of like, I have to kind of tamper his passion a little bit. Like chef, you just have to understand, man, we can't do all of that. Like we still punch french fries for this restaurant, fresh fries every day. And it's the highest labor and labor intensive and pain in the butt thing that we do. And I'm just like, chef, you know, people just, you know, it's bad. It's so great that you love that people do like that. I'm like, let's just get some, you know, frozen. No, he's not having it, you know, and just, and that's just a small example of how you know, meticulous he is. And it's, it's difficult because it makes it hard on staff. You know what I mean? To be that rigid and to be that meticulous about things. It makes it harder to work in there. And we've had an enormous amount of turnover from people who just don't understand that he is not going to tolerate anything other than absolute perfection with his dishes. And that's what, again, like I said, his passion is a huge, huge part of the success of this restaurant, because obviously, I don't care how nice the atmosphere is, I don't care how clean the beach is, or how great the three tier deck that we learned from the Bahamas looks and how beautiful the weather is, or, or how fresh the fish is. If, if the food's not it, you're not coming back, right? And so it, his evolution with the volume of this place and how he somehow managed to figure it out, all I do is hear from him and kind of try to hear, okay, we need another walking cooler, or, okay, we need to build Lucky Dog. Tell me what you need.

25:58You just tell me what you need to do. Yeah, let's go. And then, and then we go. And then we try to build and keep up, you know. He seems like the kind of guy that would never say these two phrases, or you would, I would never say these two phrases to him. Number one is, that's not my job. And number two, just sell it. You know, when you're really busy and he's like, this isn't, just sell it. Like, not ever. Those words, never. And I, those are my least two favorite phrases in a restaurant. I literally have to push him out of the building every night. Like, I almost have to set like a curfew for him. Like, Jeff, you can't be here after four or five o'clock, man. You've been here because he gets here at three o'clock in the morning every day, five days a week. He'd work seven if I'd let him. We're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. What Chefs Want story is incredibly unique. The owner, Ron Trenier, met with a bunch of chefs in Louisville back in the early 2000s and asked them one simple question. What do you want? And the chefs, they responded emphatically. We want deliveries on Sunday.

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30:23Dude, he works himself literally into just nothing where he can barely stand and it's it's so impressive like most people have to push people into in a line probably 98% of my staff. I'm trying to push them into this. You know give them this passion try to get them to come to work earlier on time and it's like him I have to like pull him back you know just to like keep him going i'm like chef you know he'll call me you know hey man i gotta leave the restaurant a little early today i've got a doctor's appointment like man you're good you know but he's just so just do it he's just so incredibly professional and passionate about what he does that it's just it's like i say it's almost like a hurdle for me like to try to you know reign him back a little bit but you don't want to do that you know but you also don't want him to work himself into the ground but he's it he's not you can't he do he's a freaking machine i have a i have a server at my restaurant the green hills grill and uh this guy named ron and we give ron a shout out ron works 14 shifts a week ron deserves a shout out ron opens the restaurant every day and he's there until nine o'clock every night and literally he works 14 shifts a week and when we close on thanksgiving he works at our sister restaurant that day is the one day a year he works our other restaurant ron's crap i mean that it's just that you have to like he won't take it that you he you have to write a schedule i never have to make tea like he does that's awesome and he's an amazing dude and that's a good comparison you know to chef like i'm telling you this restaurant sleeps during the season it probably sleeps for about 45 minutes um we are busy usually um we cut the weight off at about usually seven seven thirty we'll get into what we'll call names what you know over a hundred different names on the wait list which equates to you know six or seven hundred people on the wait list and we'll just shut the door down and what we call shutting the door down when people come up to the host down we'll say sorry we we're full we can't we will be cooking until midnight if we don't stop taking names now

32:24and obviously people get upset about that but we just can't i'll kill my kitchen you know race car in the red you keep your you're running 8 000 rpms all day you're going to explode and and so we close it down in the kitchen usually we tried it we try to get my front of the house to say listen we're trying to print the last ticket no later than 10 10 30 you know if we can so that we can break down because they have to break that kitchen down and it has to be perfect it has to look like those walk-in coolers when chef walks in at four o'clock in the morning it better look like it did when he walked in the day before and so they usually get out of here around 12 31 o'clock in the morning and then the prep crew comes in right behind them i think scott and his guys usually get here between 145 to 230 in the morning and they're here until eight or nine in the morning when production team shows up and so you know chef's here for all of those changeovers and he wants to be here for when anytime there's a changeover in staff he wants to be there so that they can see him and know that boss man's here right and then after he gets that four o'clock go that four o'clock crew in gets them rolling sees it where you know we're already on a wait he kind of gets to make sure that the temperature is rolling and and shout out to my guy chris davis my sous chef who does that with him and is equally impressive with his drive and passion i'll introduce you to him in a bit but they just kind of set the tone you know and then once that is i have to like go grab chef by his you know uniform i'm like you know chef coat and be like you got to go chef like time to leave time to leave i'm here chris is here we're here we're gonna make sure that your signature is on that plate right next to mine right next to chris's and right next to the expo who we just made sure they know that it goes out with their signature as well so do you is that just like something that like is just in him or i mean you don't think that's like a lack of trust in other people do you mean you kind of go like that and you're like i would say that there's probably a little bit of that in that you know he's he's been we've been through so many people who don't understand him and don't understand how crazy passionate he is he's not a yeller um he won't he never he doesn't really raise his voice or you know like he's not

34:28like gordon ramsey mad you know what i mean he's not disappointed he doesn't really like that that much yeah and you just feel bad you know because like he's out working everybody in the room you know and 60 something years old and he's just out working everybody always here you know never shows you know wear tear tired or nothing so everybody full chef coat pressed all day clean every day he looked out on that smoker out on that smoker like 100 degrees i'm just like man i feel like he's is he gonna take that off ever i've never like when i see him outside the restaurant he's a surfer and so i'll see him and he's in board shorts and a t-shirt and i like can barely recognize him you know because since i was a child that's what he looked like he's in the same uniform that he was in when i saw him when i was eight years old like it's just he's very rigid very very um serious about what he does and um you know again that that that lack of trust thing i think may have a little bit to do with it because he knows that nobody's going to be as serious about it or as passionate about it as he is um even i think he probably considers that even i am not that as passionate or serious about it as he is which is not true i am but it's just i don't know what he knows you know he's just he gets hit by a bus tomorrow what happens this place i don't know chris davis my sous chef he's taught chris so much um and chris is so great at handling uh staff like a lot of the stuff that i have to get chef to calm down about you know about people not doing the right thing or the grill guys overcooking this or this you know other persons doing that i try to pull him back on i don't want you coaching or training these guys i want you to let me and chris do that you let us know what the problems are and how you want it fixed and we'll attack it so that's kind of my guy chris goes after that and he's learned so so much i mean um and he's an incredible chef as well um he lived in birmingham for a while he's got this really cool cuisine that he does um that that chef has

36:31you know kind of evolved with him and taught him a lot of the stuff that he knows and i'll tell you the i think chris came on maybe we were a year old maybe a year and a half old here and i saw him come through the door and he had a chef coat on and i was in the expo line and i kind of peeked down and looked and saw him and i was like look at this guy he looks like he might have it together and he was floating around from fry to saute to grill back around a pantry over to hot apps all these other things and i was like man this guy might be it you know and i kind of fell in love with him immediately because i was watching how fast he was working and chef was so busy doing what he was doing he couldn't even notice chris he was just trying to keep everything else going and i would say it probably took two or three years for chef to really be able to pull his head out of the weeds to even really notice chris you know to be able to give him the credit that he deserved and we kind of rolled into chef understanding that that was a guy that he could actually lean on and trust and so that was such a huge thing to find chris and to have him hit by a bus today i don't know man it would be it would be tough because he's just such a huge part of this restaurant you know and such a huge part of my life like i you know i grew up with this guy you know when he peeked his head in the door when we were building the restaurant and started the build out obviously it was you know everybody around town was talking about it you know phillips are reopening a restaurant we didn't even have a name yet we didn't know what we didn't know what our cuisine was going to be i didn't know who my chef was going to be i'm in there i've got pictures posted in the wall of like i don't remember what that almondine dish is at galatoise in new orleans but i took a picture of it and i was taking pictures of food and i had it all up in the office and there's a picture of a snapper destined from dad's restaurant flamengo and he poked his head around the corner in the in the office and he was like hey man and i was like again i only ever really saw him in a chef outfit he was in his board shorts and i was like andy he was like yeah what are you doing i was like i'm opening a restaurant he was like oh

38:31man i got out of the restaurant business after i started working for your stop working for your dad i hadn't been back in the kitchen since then he had been doing some uh he was working for city produce he was doing some uh i think he was making some desserts and cakes and stuff for some people had another little couple of side businesses or whatever and he was like you're looking for a chef and i was like yeah he was like i'm your guy i was like yes yes you are i went home and immediately calling dad i was like dad andy just called me he was like andy bell said yeah he was like what do you want i said he wants to work and he was like okay that sounds good and it just we rolled right into it with him so you know again like and i don't really know uh birmingham broken egg i don't want to say i didn't have any chefs but look we were cooking eggs and bacon and making omelets and french toast and pancakes you know we were i had some really talented guys that were doing well but it wasn't like they could just do whatever they wanted the only real chef person i've ever really known is him you know him and chris sometimes the stars align isn't it crazy is your dad still with us yeah absolutely how close are you i mean how often how nice is it i guess to have somebody like that that you can call so and can give you concise feedback that you trust yeah mom and dad were such a big part of that and my sister um all three of them were such a big and still a big part of my sister has two restaurants in dustin as well um and back porch now it's a ever crisp um she has a ever crisp a salad kind of almost like it's not fast food salad but it's like a fast casual yeah yes fast casual salad place where you come in and get obviously salads in different bowls and stuff that's done really really well and they have another fine dining restaurant called bitterroot um i need to send you there while you're here this week if you can yeah uh really good food her husband was in the restaurant business as well or is was and is in the restaurant business as well but my going back to mom and dad man it's so cool having them to bounce stuff off of it and i will tell you that like in the beginning i wanted as much as they would give me and sometimes they would give me more than i wanted

40:34you know what i mean like dad and i butt head butted heads about this beach down here and he said i just really don't think that's a good idea you know you don't have any revenue production down there and i'm like well the rest of this is plenty of you know revenue producing areas and there needs to be a place for people to hang out that's just an example that he thought it was a bad idea and then after two years of being open he openly admits that's the best idea you had like you know and he says that a lot about a lot of things he but that's the best thing you ever did that's the best thing you ever did and he's being sweet but um it's really cool to bounce things off of him i will say that in the beginning with them kind of giving me more than i wanted sometimes we would butt heads to the points where it would get not ever ugly but it would just be like you know somebody's feelings would get hurt and i'd put my foot down or he put his foot down about what he thought needed to happen and they would always allow my decision to be the decision just because you know it's my restaurant and i was the one that was taking the hit on it and and they were very cool but there was times where i said i remember telling mom and dad i said listen i'm cool with what y'all are saying and i understand i'm going to take it into consideration and we'll think about it some more but we've got to chill like i'm not going to allow this restaurant or what we've been doing for this long it's been so much fun and so cool together to ruin our relationship because i would rather be broke and miserable working at you know just working the expo window at another restaurant and have a relationship and have a relationship with y'all than i am wanting to be successful and have this cool restaurant and show everybody what we're going to do and us be at odds so that conversation kind of like changed a lot with me and them they're still very very involved and when they see stuff they'll let me know if you know if dad's crazy about pre-busing you know so like all of my people in the restaurant like hallelujah the the the pre-bus the his name's alan and everybody calls him big al or mr p and

42:38the big al pre-bus rule is paramount here like you've got dirty plates on the table you get them off the table and that was something that like when i was when we were opening the restaurant dad i don't have time to deal with this pre-bus issue that you're so upset about but i didn't realize how important that is and it's super important now full hands in full hands out right and so he would just say you know these guys are walking around they're not even picking up dirty plates i've had this dirty plate in front of me for 10 minutes i've been done eating for 10 minutes i don't want this plate in front of me and i just you know that was stuff that i didn't really think about of course i'd never had that real real problem in birmingham or at other places or i never really thought about it other than when we would go to dinner and he would complain that somebody wasn't getting his plate out of his face you know when we were younger but that kind of stuff you know they pick up on things and have been in the business longer than i have and so cool so cool to be in that with them i love that be that cool about it so all right i want to shift gears a little bit i want to pretend i want to role play with you for a minute okay i'm going to apply for a job here yeah you said it can be challenging a kitchen in front of the house whatever and we're talking and you're interviewing me and i say i don't know tell me what's what makes this place unique what are some challenges i'm going to deal with as a server here you as if you're going to be a server yeah let me a server like what is it i guess the what do i what do i have to look forward to uh well there's going to be plenty to look forward to what you're going to have to what you're going to have to understand is is that if you don't know chef's menu you're not going to serve here very long i have so many people applying for server position i have a stack of server positions for this restaurant this high everything else not so much but server position and i and i'm not trying to scare you away here as a server but it's going to take a lot of work lots of menu testing lots of things you're going to have to do to convince chef that you're i don't mean to say worthy of selling his food but you're going to need to be knowledgeable about it because he is not going to tolerate you going and saying

44:43mispronouncing his mock shoe or not understanding what's in the snapper destined or how long it's been on the menu these kind of things we need servers to understand that this story and what we're doing here and all this transparency and honesty that we are willing to give our guests you've got to be a part of that and if you're not a part of that then you're not selling what we're selling everybody in destin's selling fish out of the gulf everybody in destin's um doing similar things that we're doing but it's not as a lot of people tell me this it's just not as genuine and not they don't believe it like they believe it here well we're not trying to get you to believe anything we're just trying to show you what we're doing and if you don't know what we're doing then you're not going to be able to work here and so one thing you can definitely look forward to is working on the expo line for about a month uh you can also look forward to running food for a while you can also look forward to hosting for a while and doing a lot of other different jobs that are going to get you familiar with the restaurant and familiar with what we do and who we are and how we operate before you get to go up to a table and ask them how they are this evening look man i'm just trying to make some cash i don't know why you have to be like that i mean i'm just trying to you're welcome to go anywhere else you know that's the way that goes and it's very difficult because a server position and bartender position we can be sort of picky about it because we have so many people that want those positions here um because they do very well uh with our volume and um with the with the food that we serve and so that one's easy the really tough one uh if you'd have tried to role play kitchen stuff or something else it would have been a little bit different where i would have just said man i just need you to come try out you know you just got to come try out for the team you know and you're welcome anybody's welcome to come give it a shot you know if you think you could keep up with chef or you think you can keep up with this kind of uh standards that he sets um i will be impressed if you last longer than you know a month or a week really you know i mean again him not yelling him not being upset or

46:44or or too loud from time to time doesn't mean that you're going to be able to to handle the you know the standards that he sets but um yeah if you're just looking for some cash man there's plenty of places in destin for that so i love thank you for that by the way yeah absolutely that was fun i i that's right up my alley i i think anywhere i serve there's got to be a story you've got to i've noticed when i go out to eat around here if it's not here i feel like a tourist right i feel when i go out to eat in nashville i feel like a local because i know usually the person people that work there they know me or it's just kind of a thing here when i go somewhere i kind of get treated like i'm a herd of cattle right and in this part of the season where it's just a million people from all over that don't necessarily they're not going to be here next week how do you keep your servers because when i come here they do tell that story and maybe it's from what you just now said how do you how do you keep them positive because i said there's a weight that you have here you don't do resi or open table you just have to show up put your name on a list and that's probably intentional because you have the area outside look we want you to hang out and spend time here i said when you've got the the couple that's been waiting for two hours and the wife's mad at the dad because he drank too much by the at the pool that day and the kids are tired and they're yelling and they're yelling at a hostess like it's it's difficult it's not the same people every single week it's almost like a different class of people and i say classic i say class like a classroom like a whole right like a right new busload of people that come in every week and how do you keep people so that exact example that you had about the mom upset about the dad that drank too much or the dad upset because the kids are acting crazy and they just want to eat and get sat and just get out of here that's going to happen probably 10 or 15 times tonight i will have like my managers i've tried to like train them to understand that i don't know how to tell you all that

48:48that you're going to get beat up today tonight you're going to get beat up 10 or 12 different times not for something you may make a mistake the kitchen may make a mistake the server may make a mistake and it may be a legitimate thing that we messed up on that you need to go handle and apologize for but you're going to apologize for a lot of things that are out of your control you know i'm sorry that there's a two and a half hour wait for two people i don't know what to tell you except for that there are literally 700 people that got here before you and put their name on the list before you if you like try to find a seat at the bar or something else or maybe you can try to come back a little earlier tomorrow maybe that'll help it's a constant process of trying to a please the guests and make them understand that we are trying to be as fair as we can be and as cool as we can be about getting everybody down as fast as we can and be trying not to kill the restaurant you know that that list that we have an app i think it's wisely i think is the the the waiting app that we have when we get to during the season when we get around 7 p.m 7 30 when we get over about 100 names on the list which would mean 100 different tables or groups of people excuse me 100 groups of people that are waiting on the list which is usually you know somewhere between six and seven hundred people we have to shut the door down we have to slow down and tell them we you know listen we we can't accept any more names tonight because we'll be cooking until tomorrow we'll kill the kitchen and we just can't we can't keep up you know so um that's very tough and people have a very hard time understanding that and going with that you know what i mean they just don't what do you mean you can't take our names well we just can't you know we we there's nothing we would rather do than be able to feed everybody in destin tonight but we're not capable of doing that and certainly not at the level that chef's gonna require logic has to play in somewhere so people right if you're coming to destin you're coming here no get here early is that the tip the tip it is the tip and it is the tip of that

50:50you know what happens is we go on a wait at like 3 30 now in the afternoons you know during the busy busy season i think i was talking to my manager yesterday on up or two days ago and i walked up and um i said how are things and she's always got this ipad that's got this app on it that shows how many people she has on her list and i'm always looking at it to see what she has and i think it was like 4 30 or 5 in the afternoon and she only had like 30 or 40 names on her list i was like oh that looks pretty good you know like we're actually looking forward to it slowing down a little bit because that doesn't look too bad she was like yeah we only went on a wait like an hour ago and i was like oh that's good opposed to going on a wait at you know 11 30 in the morning during the season season when it's june july um like right now yeah right now you know and you know when we would get here to work and at 11 o'clock in the morning there's a line out in the parking lot it's just like oh man it's going to be a good one you know it's just every day and it's so hard to explain it's so hard to keep up with and it's um it's just one i would say one of the most difficult parts of of running the restaurant is running that weight and keeping the floor flowing where it doesn't get into waves where the tickets in the print in the kitchen come in in waves it's so hard you got to have somebody really good that understands the restaurant and all of the different areas because there's the 20s the 30s the 40s the 50s the 200s the 300s the 100s the boardwalk all of the different areas that they have to have i mean these girls they've got these ipads and they're looking at all the cameras i think we have like 25 cameras or something and they're trying to see where tables open because they can't run around because they won't be able to see all of it you know and they're on the microphones and they're talking back to the hostesses at the stand and they're trying to coordinate where everybody's going we're trying to make it as fast as we can while not swamping the kitchen while not do they have like the earpieces and doing the whole thing oh yeah oh yeah oh we're super secret service we think we're real cool man it's it's it's cool um we didn't have that the first two years we were open and i was just like we were drowning i'm like we've got to be able to communicate because i'll be downstairs at the tiki bar handling situation somebody's looking

52:51for me trying to find me about a situation we've got at the door they can't get me you know radio miller like we got like code red at the door you need to get up here now you know somebody's either you know really upset or so there's a you know medical emergency or something so we had to go to that but that's one of the things that we learned you know coming through this and understanding that this big girl is going to take a lot of a lot of changes and a lot of things and like lucky dog seafood that was you know that's how that works you just learn you just now that's the transition about 15 minutes left and i would love to talk about lucky dog seafood because you have the restaurant here and then you are serving food serving fish that you've caught you have a boat right outside on the dock and that you guys actually take out and you go fishing so does chefs tell you hey i need some snapper or does he say go catch some wahoo or i need marlin or how does that work typically i go to chef and let him know what we're doing i'll go say hey we're going we're going to the rigs we're going to try to catch some tuna and that'll just plant a seed you know and so he'll start thinking about what dish he's going to do so he does features i would say four i would say out of the five days that he's here a week he'll do features four days of the week he'll try to come up with something special that's not on the menu that he'll have maybe 15 or 20 or 30 of them that he'll sell that night and i'll kind of plant a seed and say hey you know we're going to an efficient tomorrow hopefully we'll be back tomorrow night and maybe by friday you can you know do a tuna feature and so he'll start thinking and start coming up with some crazy dish kobe efficient in april and march and april i'm crazy kobe fisherman kobe efficient has gotten really crappy in destin recently we don't know what's going on with that but we would go kobe efficient come back and he would come up with these incredible features and dishes and so what happened was is i would go fishing i have friends that i grew up with in destin that are all i mean a large majority of my friends i went to high school with either charter boat captains charter boat deck cans commercial fishermen that would always

54:56call me and be like hey man we're going tomorrow night we're going to go sword fishing if y'all need any you know swordfish you know like let me know and secretly i would buy stuff from them you know and it was kind of under the rug you know i'm not really supposed to do that because with the state and everybody you're supposed to have a certified place that they can inspect where you're accepting fish or seafood you've got to have a wholesale pre wholesale purchase license a wholesale retail license all these different things that you hoops you have to jump through in order to have this space that you can accept and buy purchase fish from fishermen who have a saltwater products license with a different clarification on the saltwater license all these rules that we had to do and everybody's got to get their money right exactly and part of them making sure that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing and i said okay so let's build a let's build it you know so we built this building on the front of the restaurant put those two big giant viewing windows in front of the cutting space where people could see us peeling shrimp cutting fish checking oysters cutting calamari you know everything that we do to grade inspect and prep this seafood that's going to the kitchen for production that day or that night and that's been something that's really huge because people can see again with that transparency what we're doing and how we do it and it makes it where i can go catch fish and sell it to the restaurant give it to the restaurant and then i can buy fish from my friends now when they call me and they say hey man the tunas are going crazy at the rigs we're going out there do you want us to bring you some back absolutely and then i always pay top dollar for anything that they're getting um hey they bring it directly to the dock i don't have to go get it i don't have to have i don't have a middleman i'm not trying to buy it from somebody else i don't know how long it's been on ice i don't know who kept it i know that you know bobby caught this fish caught this fish and i know he takes care of his fish and he puts them directly and slush ice immediately and he comes home and it's clean and it's legit

56:58you know and so um and i can now take that put it in your facility lucky dog you can inspect it you can grade it you can do all of these things and then you so you purchase it you lucky dog purchases the seafood from the people that are fishing the reputable sources that are fishing from and then you guys grade it do all that and then lucky dog then sells it to bow shamps yep they prep it so they they'll prep it and you saw all the bat the little those little baggies where we prep and make sure that everybody's getting what they need and separating it all and then we sell basically prepped seafood back to bow shamps um ready to go ready to go in the fryer ready to you know in nine pans going into the kitchen so that when they need a need a new nine-pan snapper they walk right out to that prepped seafood cooler and they grab what they need they set it in their workstation and then they're right back on it so and what a for those of you are wondering like what this facility is right in front of bow shams you can walk by you can see into it but what a clean room i think we've all walked into fish markets and like god what is the smell in here standing in the room where they're cutting the fish i mean it smelled clean like and everything looked sterile and perfect like i'm kind of weird about fish yeah like i live in nashville so every fish we get isn't what you're getting here and you know what i'm talking about right absolutely it's on a truck even if it's on a truck just to get to you if i shipped it overnight it's not the same a hundred percent and so here it's like wow that's why i don't i don't eat a lot of seafood in nashville but i do eat every i don't eat anything but seafood here right we're gonna pick up right where we left off right after these words hey guys we are supported by sharpier's bakery and we've been supported by sharpier's bakery for the last year and i tell you i couldn't be more proud of this partnership guys they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in nashville for the last 36 years yes they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's

59:00back door and man is it good you want to know what kind of bread they make go check them out at sharpier's bakery dot com that's c-h-a-r-p-i-e-r-s bakery dot com so they have over 200 types of bread and if you're wondering well hey look it's a special recipe that i like to use that you know we bake it in our house and it's just it's a kind of a pain but we we like to do it they can take your recipe and make that bread for you without any of the hassle the mess the labor they'll just deliver it right to your door every single day it is freshly baked they'd love to give you a tour of their facility give erin mosso a call her number is 615-319-6453 you should do it now now hey everybody want to talk to you today about cytex they are the best when it comes to getting fresh linens tablecloths uniforms first aid kits they do so many amazing things cytex needs to be your choice for linens and if you're an independently owned and operated restaurant they want to work with you you need to call my buddy ross chandler his number is 270-823-2468 and let me tell you they will find you the right color the service is unbelievable and man the quality is there too so i highly recommend if you're out there you're opening a new restaurant or you currently are using a linen company the next time you're upset or the next time you look at that contract and it's time to renew look into a new company and look into cytex when you hear that sound it's probably too late you need a guy i want to be your guy i'm kevin with course and fire and security and i'm a restaurant territory account manager do you know who's doing your inspections at your restaurant please reach out to me at 615-974-2932 and i'll be glad to come out and take a quick look and look at all your fire safety inspection needs if you're building your

01:01:01restaurant we can help with that too as far as kitchen suppression fire extinguishers emergency lights we do it all one stop one shop call kevin at 615-974-2932 let me be your guy nashville i don't i don't eat a lot of seafood in nashville but i do eat every i don't eat anything but seafood here right well here's something funny yeah i don't eat fish you don't eat fish i don't i've never never liked it i can do fried kobia i don't want it i'll eat it if somebody's having one but i don't i don't eat fish i love oysters i love any other seafood anything else fish i can't i can't do it i don't like oysters so you know you know what's funny about when you say it smells like that like the reason that i think that i don't eat fish is because i grew up fishing and that smell and working around like you know fish gut tubs and stuff just that smell fish smell just no absolutely not and so that one of my on me being holding standards like chef does that lucky dog seafood i see you guys have got to make sure that this room is cleaned clean you saw those big giant drains in the floors oh it's beautiful like you've got to we've got to get this right so like the the development of that room and how we laid all of that out with those drains and all of that stuff was so that that wouldn't happen because i've been to plenty of places and buy fish from places that are legit that do it it's not there's nothing wrong with the fish that you're buying but it just smells like fish it just kind of stinks you know what i mean and i just i wasn't going to have that we had to figure out how we were going to do that so i talked to a lot of i know all these guys des and i sextants all these guys and i would go in and um and they would they were so cool they would let me look around and they'd be like here's what i would do differently here you know with this drain or with this this sink over here maybe try this so that was really nice to have to be able to set our stuff up so that it worked the way that it did and a lot of that again chef chris davis casey kent who uh one of my front of house managers who helps with lucky dog seafood

01:03:05they're a very big part of keeping all that stuff as clean as it is and as legit as it is so you mentioned dust and ice and these other fish markets around here that kind of helped you and how is the community of so cool local restaurant tours around here do you guys have like an alliance or is there any you guys just all kind of know each other because you grew up here and that's how it is all the local people yeah dewey destin's um parker destin his his son's my age he runs um dewey destin um charles morgan and eddie morgan who own harvard ox i grew i literally went to school with those kids you know i don't think me eddie or parker ever really knew or thought that we were going to end up back in the restaurant business and back home like we are now but that's what we do and yeah i know all of those guys um the jarvis boys and the ruins and the guys who run a lot of the restaurants uh jack akutas bro tulas all these restaurants we we know each other and have worked together and been together and around each other forever and yeah that community aspect is super cool because destin is it seems like this really big place because there's always so many people here but there's not a lot of locals man you know there's it's it's it's grown a lot but um the old school locals we we all know each other and we know what what what we're doing and we're always backing each other up and trying to help each other the best we can um but with the seafood um i buy i buy fish from harvard ox seafood company i buy fish from lanyard seafood company when they get in a binder if i have more fish than i need i'll sell it to somebody else you know and we kind of help each other if somebody's out of shrimp or if somebody's out of something yeah yeah i got enough come get it you know or whatever that helps a lot so um so if i live in nashville and i do i'm coming to i'm coming down here give me five places i come here and there's a three hour wait and at six o'clock and i don't want to wait that long and or i've eaten here five nights in a row i gotta go somewhere else where are you sending me i'm gonna send you to bitter root first to my my sister

01:05:08okay my brother my brother-in-law and sister's restaurant first their new restaurant there are i think they're two or three years old now um they've blown up and done really well i'm gonna send you there first kind of put me on a hot seat here uh i'm gonna tell you to go to harbor docks um dewey destin's on the bay or the harbor they've got two two restaurants they've got one on the harbor that's a little bit past us and then they've got one that's really cool that's on the bay um that overlooks crab island um and it's kind of like a it's like little old shack that that's been there i can't remember how long it's as long as i can remember it's been there um really beautiful setting you know fried fried shrimp baskets just really legit food there um i'm gonna tell you to go next door to marina cafe they're good too um louisiana laniap's one of my favorites um i love that's a beautiful place louisa we have our chef at greenhouse grill comes to destin every year and that is his that is his spot he loves i'll give a shout out to josh whirly uh he loves man you got to go check out louisiana laniap man it's good i grew up with those guys too kevin ortigo and the guys that he that originally owned that restaurant my dad was best friends with i remember going to i learned about like creole cajun cooking those guys were from baton rouge i think's where kevin's from um and we'd go there for crawfish boils and all of that like that was a side of restaurant that i didn't know anything about or cuisine i didn't know anything about the laniap was was one of those so yeah that laniap's one of my favorite places god i don't ever go anymore i need to go it's like all these places i'm telling you go i don't ever go because same reason people locals don't come here during the summer just forget it it's not happening yeah it's just you know we're not waiting two three hours for food we're gonna we'll just wait until you know november and get it then uh secret the the secret that i think it's gotten out more than than anything is the october november destined time and there's probably some locals that'll hear this it'll probably cuss me about this but it's the best

01:07:11time to be here man because there's you know there's not as many people down here way less people down here the temperature is so nice these october sunsets when the sun moves to the west some it's just wild you know we got football on and you know you don't have to wait for a table and it's like oh it's just such a great time to be here but the thing is is like we're all we call it at both shants we call it tail wagging tongue hanging out we're happy to have all these people here we're tired and we're ready for the season to be over you know what i mean and you know again my staff probably won't be happy about this either me telling people you need to come down here in october november when it's not so crazy and not so hot and just beautiful um during that time of the year the tides are different and the water is always just perfect purple blue green um great time to be here but uh we look so forward to that off season so that we can breathe man like the locals and all of us a lot of most most guys and girls from dustin if we're not fishing we're hunting you know and so october rolls around deer season cranks up in uh florida and alabama and we just disappear best we can and then also these people get a break i mean my servers my bartenders my kitchen guys a lot of people will they'll leave you know and they'll be gone for a month or so because let me tell you something they've got a pocket full of money they've been working their butts off all summer so that they can do that and it's great um we usually get that i think it used to be that that in um i guess by maybe the end of this month it would shut down and it would go to like just dead but now we roll into i would say in right up until halloween we're pretty busy down here now and then we get a november december january break and then february man people start spring breaking now like the middle of february so it starts picking back up and then we're just back to full blast you have to psychologically

01:09:13prepare for the season yeah oh absolutely we're opening a new restaurant in three weeks in my company and this is my final little like right because monday you know i'm coming i'm exactly three weeks out on monday and it is go time punch list knocking everything out it's like this is my last time to like just kind of go i'm gonna float in the ocean do do you do that you need a hug man already i'm like driving home tomorrow is going to be anxiety knowing what it's going to look like but exciting too right oh man oh god this is what we live for yeah i mean i'll tell you september 1st you need to go get in the gulf and float a little bit today i do need to do that for sure miller phillips uh we never talked about the name bo shamps yeah it's everywhere if you look up what the name bo shamps is you have three dogs yeah and it's the combination of those three dogs names yes a little about that story and then we'll do your final thought cool um man that was uh sitting in miller's ale house with my parents and my sister one night we were drawing on napkins and trying to come up with stuff and different ideas for food and how we were gonna what our vision was for all this and i said hey you know we gotta come up with a name you know i don't know what we're gonna call this place you know i don't know what we're gonna do i can't come up with anything we're trying to think you know flamingo can we tie flamingo into it somehow like we want it to be in family and try to understand we're like what can we do i don't know and i've always had these always had labs ever since um my father and mother had a black lab one uh so far as long as i can remember and i've always had them and um at that time i had um i had bobo otis and shug at that time otis was 16 i don't know what the other two dogs what their ages were but my sister just was just kind of doodling on a napkin and my initials amp and bobo bo uh shug sh and o for otis is in there too and she just kind of like wrote out this

01:11:17word and was like and like turned it around and i would like read it and i was like bosh what is that and she was like bo champs like is that sound right is it bo champs is that i was like yeah what do you what is that she was like that's what you should call a restaurant i was just like yeah that sounds great you know and then i kind of looked at it again i was like what do you got what is she was like bobo otis shug and your initials and i was like well that sounds that sounds original meaning behind yeah original enough and i don't there's probably not another one of those because we did come up with a lot of things and it was like there was a lucky i think lucky dog was kind of something one of the ways we were kind of going well there's like 15 of those not maybe not restaurants i think there was like some you know dog grooming places or whatever flamingo this or flamingo that there was some in south florida it was like do you come up with anything but bo champs immediately ashley's on her phone looking trying to find out if there's ever been anything on the internet that's b-o-s-h-a-m-p-s and there wasn't so we just took it and ran with it and it and everybody loves it because everybody's everybody's got a dog may not be a lab you know but everybody's been had a dog been around dogs love dogs so and we put a dog on a sweatshirt or a cup or a bottle or something still a ton of soul you know so that worked great that we were able to do that and yeah it's got some it's got some story behind it and i still uh let's see uh bobo's still alive otis and sugar gone but i've still got bobo um he's 15 now he's uh he does a lot of sleeping but uh he's he's doing shit and then i have another i have another lab tracker but he's he didn't he didn't make the cut for the name so my boys my three three boys named him so um yeah that's the that's the story on the name there good stuff man well yeah miller this has been so fun yeah for me and thank you for hosting us here at bo champs yes sir this is pretty awesome and uh the final thing we do in our show is gordon food service is our amazing title sponsor and they sponsor the gordon food service final thought this is kind of where we go completely off script i did not warn you about

01:13:20this i never do yeah whatever you want to say anything you want to say i don't care whatever it is uh you're going to take us out and your final thought you're just speaking to whoever's listening as long as you want whatever you want to say the mic is yours right on uh well yeah on the spot for sure i don't know uh don't know where to go with that but i don't know i think one thing that that if i could you know your listeners to understand about about me and about us and about bo champs is that that transparency thing is as real as it gets and we do everything that we can to try to let everybody know that what we're doing is just trying to show everybody what we do down here and how we live and how we make a living and how you know the job market and things are down here this is how we make a living during this season um you know my servers my bartenders my cooks my busters my dishwashers you know this is what we do and this is we're going as hard as we can for everybody at this time of year and we go as hard as we can on the other times of the year but we just don't see as many people and i would just say that a lot of the parts are the reasons for the success of this restaurant is that we are able to show that and we try to do so much to be as transparent and honest as we can about what we do um and it's very difficult to to prove that you know what i mean without walking you through the restaurant today and showing you these things i can't do that with every guest you know i with upset guests i do it a lot i'll say come walk with me let me show you why this took 17 minutes to prepare for you tonight let me show you something and i'll walk them through the kitchen and walk them through see do you see what's going on like we're doing our very best you know and people have a hard time understanding that and and understanding what we're doing and that we're not like other restaurants we're not dumping it out of a bag we're punching those french fries we're cutting that fish we're doing everything we can

01:15:22to get you what you want now we're in this cool casual um you know atmosphere but we're not trying to give casual service or give you casual food we're trying to give you the best service and the best food and the freshest seafood and everything we can we're going above and beyond probably past where we should go uh in the environment that you're in so when you come down here and you see what we're doing and you feel comfortable and you are in this relaxed atmosphere understand that we're not that way we're just trying to provide that to you so that you feel that way and that you get that experience man this hospitality in this country and everywhere it makes me sick when i go places you know what is going on what happened to hospitality you know where did it go and i try so hard to bring that back a little bit you know what i mean and to try to get people to understand that that's still alive and you know my dad with the way that he is about pre-busting and you know old school hospitality um it's very important to us and we want people to to live that again because there's people who haven't even experienced it because it's been dead for so long so you know come see us understand we're trying to be as honest and transparent as we can be and we would love to have you down here and show you what we do and i'd love to walk every single person through like i did with you today but we got to get food out so um that's the way to the way it is but uh come see us in october november and i might be able to walk you through so miller phillips thank you so much for joining us today on nashville restaurant radio yes sir thank you big thanks again to miller phillips for bringing us into bow shamps and telling all of those stories next time you're in destin definitely go check them out and now you know a little bit of the magic behind what they do like i said we're going to try and bring you some more episodes when you go on vacation as places you need to go eat i know destin 30a area is somewhere that a lot of people go and um just wanted to bring that to

01:17:28you so thank you for listening and um let somebody know about this if you hear this podcast and you love it if you want to share that on social media we would love that we'd love for you to tell a friend and let's build this thing up and uh thank you again for listening hope you guys are being safe out there love you guys bye