Nathan Gifford

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I will be your host today. Happy Easter! Easter Sunday is today. Kind of releasing this episode as an Easter present to everybody because I had so much fun talking with Nathan Gifford of Gifford's Bacon that I just wanted to get this out there so you guys could enjoy it. But I think it's supposed to rain all day so maybe you can hang out and just kind of enjoy the episode. I'm coming to you guys today with a heavy heart. I interviewed Nathan and we had a great interview and I got off the phone with him and I checked my phone and I saw that one of my best friends growing up had passed away. And I don't, I feel like unfortunately I've become good with death. I think that people die and over the years I've been to a bunch of funerals and I've hugged a bunch of people. I've cried. I've definitely learned to grieve. But this one's a little different, you know, when somebody who is your best friend for so many years goes suddenly, apparently of a heart attack. It's a real, it's a real tough blow. It's 42 years old. So he was just the nicest, most amazing guy in the world and this is a tough time because we can't, all of our friends can't get together to celebrate him right now.

02:02We'll have to do something afterwards. But he was just amazing and in this episode today we talk about gratitude and we talk about taking time during this quarantine and what you're gonna do and I'm so gracious for the friendship that my friend Adam Lamberth and I had and I'm gracious that I have nothing but warm memories about him. So today's episode I want to dedicate to Adam. I want this episode to be in his honor and I hope that you enjoy it because we had so much fun making it and I have another surprise. We have a guest intro today that'll take us right into our interview. My six-year-old son William. William, take it away. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Hello, your host is my dad and I would like for all of you to see his recordings and how well he's done a really good job. My name is William Still, son of Brandon Styll and I just wanted to say his stories are really good about his things and I just wanted to tell you all they're out there. If you look on some website you can quite find it. So bye, whoever you guys are. And here is Nathan Gifford. And Nathan is the founder of Gifford's Bacon. Nathan, how you doing today man? I'm doing well man. Thanks Brandon for having me. It's a pleasure to have you and just knowing you a little bit some of your story I think is I'm so eager to get this out there for my listeners to hear. So you, you're right now you're at your shop, right? I am at the shop in East Nashville. Bacon headquarters. So tell me

04:09Bacon headquarters. Describe what's happening around you right now. Well, I'll be honest with you. There's not a lot going on. I guess the best way to say it is we're taking a pause. We're hitting the pause button and just kind of evaluating like a lot of folks are what the next moves are to make. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. So excited to talk to you because one of the reasons that I started this podcast was to bring perspective to people and we talked earlier that I've been talking to marketing people. I've been talking to restaurant owners. I've been talking to chefs. Just trying to gain perspective. I want everybody out there to kind of know what everybody out there is doing, how they're feeling, but your perspective is a little different because you're a business owner, part of a group and you're the person that supplies these restaurants. I think everybody's talking about chefs and they're talking about the people that work in restaurants, line cooks, what are they going to do, but you're kind of in a different situation. You're in a similar situation, but you're not getting talked about as much. Well, I'll start by saying this. My heart goes out to everybody that's affected by, in Nashville we kind of had a double whammy. We had a tornado that went through the town and seemingly targeted a lot of the areas that our restaurant friends are in and then directly after that was affected by a global pandemic. So Nashville I feel got in a lot of ways got it really bad because of the two issues. That's pretty unique to have a tornado. I went to bed on Monday night,

06:14the night before the tornado and the next morning I woke up to what we saw around Nashville like everybody else did. I knew we were having some bad weather, but I got up in the morning and I turned on the news and I saw what was going on. So I immediately jumped in my truck, went down to the shop. The shop seemed to be okay, so I immediately went down to where my friends had restaurants down on Main Street and that's when I saw everything. It was straight out of a movie. There was debris everywhere. There's water shooting up 50 feet in the air from buildings that had no roofs on them. It was very heartbreaking. So I interviewed Brian Lee Weaver the other day of Butcher and B and he said that he kind of checked his restaurant out and did the similar thing and then you were like right there offering to put his food in your cooler. Well I mean so now then you go into the mode of once I figured out my building was was okay, which was miraculous. Then you go into the mode of okay where are my friends? Where is everybody? How can I help? What can we do? So we have you know pretty big, being a manufacturing facility, we have walk-ins and freezers. So I thought well these guys are immediately going to need help. Once I figured out they were safe then we thought okay what are we going to do with all this food? So we started you know finding all of our anybody I could. It wasn't just even people that you know deal with us directly. It was anybody. Anybody who had a restaurant we are starting to offer okay what could we do to help? What how much space do we have and how many restaurants can we put in our walk-in? Which turned out to be quite a few unfortunately and you know that was getting dealt with how it was getting dealt with and then we started hearing the

08:17murmurings of wow there's people are getting sick. There's a there's a flu like thing happening and then that's that just happened so rapidly you know. It was I mean it was happening everywhere else. I think that we all knew about SARS and you know H1N1 all these things that were going on but it never really really materialized here in America. So I mean we kind of heard about it then all of a sudden they started saying the World Health Organization are saying it's not a matter of if but when. So we're reeling from a tornado and then I've said it a hundred times on this podcast March 13th when they closed Major League Baseball Spring Training. They closed the NHL. They closed the NBA season and then they they canceled like Bonnaroo. They canceled March Madness. They started everything closed that Thursday and then that Friday I think it became like everybody went here we go. Yeah so you know it's something that I you know I've seen a lot of stuff in my life but this is new this is new for me anyway. It's hard to make heads or tails out of it. How's it been affecting you? Jump back to the tornado that affected us but you know a tornado as bad as it was you can see that you know you could see what you need to do there.

09:43You know what I mean? You clean everything up and you get back going. Well with this something you can't see you you don't know what the next move is and so how it's been affecting us is I mean so our business model not unlike farmers or any other added value producers is generally speaking we produce things in my shop that we turn around and sell to distributors who distribute to restaurants. Well if the restaurants are closed distributors don't have anything to sell so they're not buying anything from us so and that's that's a very oversimplified explanation but generally speaking that's how it goes so if there's no restaurants there's no there's no reason to produce things for restaurants. So do you sell like at Whole Foods? Do you sell at Sprouts or like Kroger? So no we you know we'll have to jump backwards a little bit. I was a chef prior to being a bacon maker. Let's get into that. Let's talk about how when did you start becoming when were you a chef? Well I wouldn't call me a chef at the beginning. I started working in kitchens when I was 15 years old. And you're what 45 now? I'll be 45 this July yeah so a little bit ago I started cooking when I was 15 years old and I knew from the time I was seven years old that I wanted to be in the food world at some some capacity you know. So I knew what I wanted to do so while my friends were in school I left school. I didn't even go to high school.

11:34As soon as I turned 16 I bought an Econoline van for 200 bucks and drove to California and told my folks you know I want to be a chef and I'm going to California and so that's what I did and so from that moment on I didn't do anything else. I cooked in restaurants from 16 to up to six years ago you know when the baking company started moving or moving upwards a little bit. So what you started you started in your 15 you started cooking on the line and you were on the west coast? Well I started in Oklahoma originally is where I'm from. Okay. And so we were used to tornadoes that's kind of why you know I didn't really wake up that night I heard some sirens but frankly where I'm from unless the roof is coming off of your house you don't even get up unless it's to go outside and sit in a lawn chair and watch tornadoes go by which is what we used to do. If you're from Oklahoma it's not if but when and you have many tornadoes every year and I was actually I was I've been through the biggest one that's ever been recorded in Oklahoma and so I was smacked out of the middle of that one so you know the tornado thing was nothing new to me.

12:52I started cooking in Oklahoma and then went to California and then and then from there continued to travel all over the west coast and and through Colorado and wound up in Texas. So did you ever from being from Oklahoma I have to ask did you have did you ever go to the the Tiger Kings Zoo GW Zoo? No no I didn't but I will tell you that I have friends that knew him and knew and have been to that place I missed that one I missed that I missed that field trip man but I'm you know it's talk about something that's took off huh well I'm yeah I'm two weeks late I fell asleep during the finale last night my wife is like dude we got it yeah yeah that's super crazy right but I will tell you Oklahoma is such a weird wonderful place it's you know home of the flaming lips the band the flaming lips and also Garth Brooks I mean there's this weird there's this weird punk rock country thing happening there and I will tell you this and I will go on record saying this Oklahoma has some of the most under is the most I would say the most underrated food scene in all of America I'll say that right now for the record because Oklahoma has wonderful food a huge Asian community outside of LA and New York I would say is the it's it has some of the best Asian food in all of America what part of Oklahoma like Oklahoma City Oklahoma City Oklahoma City proper specifically around the class and Boulevard I'll send this I'm sure a lot of my friends from Oklahoma will hear this podcast so they know exactly what I'm talking about and I've been I haven't lived there in a long time so it's obviously grown since then but even when I was a kid I mean and then traveling back there I have been I haven't been

14:58back in a while but a few years ago I ate there and I remember going out to eat there a few years ago going somebody needs to write about this food if they don't already they may already but I'm sure somebody does Oklahoma some of the most underrated food in America very proud to be from there uh love the people some of my uh some of my favorite people in the world are from Oklahoma and so but I you know as people do sometimes they leave their hometown I was just one of those guys that just left and and just never came back you know except to visit so let me ask you this I mean because I want to get through your progressions to how you got where you are what um at age seven you said you knew that you wanted to cook was there like a seminal moment was there a something in your life that would because eight seven is pretty specific what did eight seven happen yeah I will tell you I'll tell you exactly I know the day that I fell in love with cooking uh the moment I can tell you the exact moment uh you know growing up in Oklahoma we didn't have a lot I just you know it was just me and my mom and my brother and living it you know you know some people do when they grow up we didn't have a lot but we we had each other but I mean you know so going to school I'll tell you this the school that I went to when I was that young if you get if you got there an hour early you can uh they serve breakfast if you didn't get there early they didn't have breakfast so you had to wait till lunch so I would get there early and they would uh they would have breakfast there and when I walked in the first day that they had breakfast I saw the I saw I smelt all the sausages and all the bacon and and all the breakfast food and it was so warm and it smelled good and I was like I have to be I want to come here every day just to do this and at that at that moment you could probably say at that moment I wanted I I found

17:00bacon because that's what I was smelling you know I was smelling bacon for the first for really the first time in such an intense environment because they had you know hundreds of pounds of it you know uh in this cafeteria so it was really overwhelming it was so overwhelming with warmth and and I thought this is a feeling I want to continue to have right in in my seven-year-old brain which is which is interesting because a lot of people don't think about school lunch rooms as a place that to kick off their culinary career as something that inspires them oh man you can't be I loved it I to this day like yeah like cafeteria foods are my favorite so it's you know it's the basic comfort food right it was it was basically my first experience with comfort food but and and and I think it it's like if you have that great food that great meal somewhere you always remember it and for you it sounds like you're growing up you've got your brother your mom and if you get to school early you get to eat and I think when you get there early and you're in that moment I think it also represents to you a level of comfort that you whether you're cognizant of it or not you getting to eat breakfast that day and before your day gets started at school also probably gave you security again eating breakfast starting the day there's a safety to it and all of a sudden that smell of bacon that smell of sausage that morning also probably maybe if we get a little psychology going on here represented some kind of a security to you sure yeah that's that's a scary hole to go down but with me but um you know and then if you fast forward to uh 15 and a half you know I was so young that my mom had to sign a waiver for me to work and it was at the sonic down the street from my house and the reason I wanted to work at the sonic down the street from my house is because my friends worked there and and we could

19:01walk there it was a you know a couple blocks away from my house and my buddies worked there and I got a job there and the first week that's where I really fell in love with that's when I figured out wait a second you mean to tell me I can eat burgers and chili dogs I can hang out with my buddies and you're gonna pay me why would anyone do anything else other than this right right here I and I said at that moment it all started to make sense to me at that moment when I got my first paycheck it all started to come together like oh you mean this is what it's like not to be a chef but to to make a few bucks to eat and to have fun and you're gonna put it all in the same building there's now this is what I'm going to do forever I think that was a very similar thing for me I got to hang out with buddies I met a bunch of people that thought the same way as me I took home cash that day like you mean I don't have to wait for a paycheck I can just come in tonight wait on tables I get to create experiences for people and eat and then go out drinking with everybody and I got cash like okay yeah so for me it was I suppose so I've been saying for a lot of years that you know I didn't grow up in this romantic food family that you know we had we spent summers on the south of France and we did this and that I'm from a poor town in Oklahoma you know that that there wasn't at that in my mind there wasn't anything spectacular about it but looking back on it it was very romantic it there there was a story there you know you just sometimes don't see it when you're when you're right in the middle of it but it goes back to what I was saying earlier that Oklahoma had as far as not just comfort food but a lot of Asian cuisine but the comfort food there some of the best of the country and in that

21:06region you've got Texas down the road with a lot of people from Oklahoma go to Texas and then come back you know I was just one of the ones that went and never came back that's all so I could ask you a hundred stories during your journey and we'll I want to do that someday I want to immediately right now say that we should do another episode maybe I should come down to your shop once this whole thing is done because we're gonna we're gonna do that but there's got to be a point in your career where like Malcolm Gladwell says there's a tipping point where you went from that romantic I get to hang out with my buddies and I get to make food and I get to do all these things to where it's now a career it changes it changes from something that is I want to I don't want to call it a hobby or a passion but it changes to a business and you have to hone your craft and you have to get really good when did that happen well I can tell you exactly when that happened too so as when I left Oklahoma I traveled and I went to California and I did this and that but basically the problem you know the challenge that I went through was you know when you're that young you know it's hard to put all those things together at least it was for me what was happening that I could look back now what was happening was two things one I was starting to develop the knowledge of cooking but also I was starting to put together what now I know as a pretty prolific partying career also but we can we'll I'll come back to that to answer your question you know eventually I wound up back in Oklahoma where I met my wife Nicole and we wanted to move from Oklahoma and this was just to put this in context this was

23:08pre-Katrina and I'll tell you why I used that as a reference is when we were in Oklahoma what my wife and I decided well we wanted to leave Oklahoma but we had a few places that we were thinking about moving and that we whittled it down to Seattle, New Orleans, pre-Katrina and San Antonio and I and we went with San Antonio because I had a friend that worked in it at a convention center there and he could get me a job right and it wasn't very far away as opposed to Seattle which was way on the other coast and you know we didn't have any money and we didn't have any family out there so I went we went with San Antonio because I had a friend who was a cook at the Henry Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center and when I got when we got there we had no money so but we were young and in love and it was cool and I got a job at the convention center and that's when I ran into a guy who was the chef there Jeffrey McGatigan who I believe still is the chef there and that's when I got to see a real chef in action you know what I mean yeah with somebody that inspires you somebody who inspired me he's the type of guy who if he wasn't a chef could be a CEO of a company or a senator he was very Thomas Keller-esque just driven you know what I mean he was very refined and I'm speaking in the past term because I just I don't work for him anymore but he's still a chef and he's still this way he now reminds me of someone like Thomas Keller who is very refined in not only his cooking but is very disciplined in his life you know and so he was a guy that I went whoa this is what a chef is he may not know this yet but I was I was very hooked on every word that he said and to this day still use some of his management I try to I'm by

25:15no means comparing us didn't tell me his name Jeffrey McGatigan Jeffrey McGatigan oh man he's he's a chef chef right like I mean he's just he's one of those guys that when you when you walk in when he walks in the room you just stand up you know you just take attention you're like oh oh he's here and when when you're on the line and he tells you to do something you say yes chef it does not enter your brain to do anything but yes chef no chef and and so you know that's if you want to talk about a moment that was the moment where I ran into a real chef and uh and that's who you know I wanted to be like you know hopefully he hears this and he can hopefully he can hear that that he's one of those people that led you that for sure yeah I'm sure he will you know I hope he does because it uh that experience meant a lot to me uh personally I was in a a lot a different place than I am now and also I was younger too you know so uh as I as I kind of came out of uh some experiences personally that I was in and and then as I grew older and got more experience as a cook I really I really value some of the things that he was trying to at least show me uh trying to get through this my stickhead what are one of the what tell me one or two of those things what do you think some of the values where he was trying to teach you well one was two you know and this this today is something that I I really practice on one one thing is to be extremely organized right in your station keep your station clean and organized but also the biggest thing I think that he was trying to teach me that I really uh try to practice now is to stay calm under pressure right yeah for a chef that's very important and and Jeffrey our chef uh I would

27:21call Jeffrey even to this day uh chef was very good at being calm under pressure so and that that I think that comes from a lot of different things but uh definitely if your your personal life is is under control then it helps in your business life but um he was very very calm under pressure so that was one one very composed you know um so that was something that when you see a person that that that is that organized and disciplined and composed it's something to be in awe of when you're around and you're learning I liken it again the best example I can compare him to is somebody like Thomas Keller or somebody somebody very composed you know who in in our local town who just jumps to my brain immediately is Julia Sullivan yeah she she's one of those people to me that just seems like everything is under control she's cool calm collected and just owns it she just she's so impressive to me yeah yeah so I don't I you know I've spoken with her a couple of times I don't really know her but I've I have spoken with her and I would have to agree with that she seems very composed and very nice and uh obviously puts out really good food and so yeah that I would say that's a fair comparison so you identify to yourself I gotta get it together I'm gonna do some things that's an understatement well so I mean I think we all have that moment in our life where we go from in especially in this business where it becomes kind of a fun thing to do into a profession and you get serious what's the first change you made well the first change there was a lot of changes that I had to make but the first change that I had to make was I had to decide this is going to sound a little dramatic but I

29:23think I had to decide am I going to pretend to be a chef or am I going to take the time to learn the trade and the craft and and be uh who I present myself to be and that goes with studying uh the craft studying techniques putting the work in are you going to be a chef are you going to pretend to be a chef and so I really started you know honing in reading as much as I could I would read every cookbook I could get my hands on I you know I would study technique I would I would listen you have to become a good listener and ultimately where that got me was to where I am now as a producer um it ultimately led to me being not a chef sure what brought you to Nashville uh well so after I left San Antonio we went to Austin, Texas and we got married and shortly thereafter I went to Alaska to work for a season on a tourist boat uh I was the chef of a tourist boat in Alaska and I came back from Alaska with they you know they pay you at the end of uh end of the season and so we got I got a pretty good chunk of change for at least for me it was uh and we you know we we had been in Austin for quite a few years and I have a grandmother that lives in Kentucky in Muhlenberg County and I needed to be closer to her and my family's in South Florida and so we were thinking you know I needed to be we need to be close to uh my family well we wanted to be didn't quite need to be but wanted to be um and so we started looking at cities and I thought what about Nashville because it's kind

31:28of in between all of our families and it's very similar to Austin in a lot of ways you know um so we just we were still young enough to just we just made that move um and so we moved here uh I would say probably 10 years ago yeah what's the first place you worked at when you moved here I worked in an Italian restaurant uh even what's funny is I don't remember the name of it um but then you know shortly after that I uh I started working at the pharmacy burger joint and I helped uh I helped make the sausages there okay um I was in charge of the meat program basically uh after uh my buddy Rachel started it she left to do bigger and crazier things and uh I without a ton of experience still in that world um started uh making sausages there and that's when I ran into my friend Kristen Barringston uh who's now my buddy um she uh she asked me to make bacon for her one day uh they didn't have a smoker at the shop there or at her restaurant and she was at which restaurant she was at the Holland house perfect so the Holland house used to be a really cool cocktail place with great food and it was directly next door to the pharmacy in a place that is now called Lira yep right so just to get that for people that are listeners that aren't aware of what the Holland house used to be before and Lira's amazing love what her aunt's doing yeah love it right um amazing and so you know what we've done is fast forward in about 20 years um but you know when I'm making sausages I'm 27 years into a career

33:30here yeah of cooking and and you know as some of us do we we think okay as I'm getting closer to my 40s uh blind cooking is in my opinion in my very humble opinion is a young person's game uh at least for me it was um and I was looking to do something in the food industry but maybe not be on the line so much anymore um and so when I got asked by Kristen to make bacon and I did and she said hey this is pretty good you should keep doing this and I got in touch with you know my local distributor uh Tom and uh bought some bellies and and the rest is history who's your local distributor Tom uh well Tom Tom Neville was one of the first people I one of the first people I bought bellies from okay I believe he's with inland seafood now he is he started music city seafood which is kind of a subsidiary now great guy and I believe he was with Hamptons at the time yeah Hampton Meats and he meets yeah he is going to come on the show very soon also by the way well good he's an awesome guy I like him a lot um so he was the first person I believe he was the first person that I bought bellies from you know I I just did enough to to service Kristen's uh needs for bacon um so one could you could say that that belly that I smoked that pork belly that I smoked for her ultimately changed my life um and then I shortly thereafter I went to work for a husk restaurant for Sean Brock sure and that was an eye-opening experience also um what was that like what was eye-opening about that well there was a lot eye-opening about that um that was my first foray I guess into extreme fine dining I guess you can say uh

35:32operating at a very very high level well when you say that let's break that down so when you say extreme fine dining operating at a very high level yeah extreme fine dining is probably not the right word well but you know but I mean so if you're a listener out there and you're not in the business yeah the difference between I mean pharmacy's great holland house is great you're making bacon but then you go to work for a place like what are some of the differences that people don't recognize from a place like the pharmacy when you step up to a husk what are some of those subtle differences you're dealing with well I would say there's not even subtle differences there it's an extreme difference it's like a slap in the face I liken it to the best way I can describe it is in a military-esque like uh setting as far as most people in the culinary industry are in a it's a very uh military like experience or at least it used to be I suppose um and then if you move up to a place that's in the top 10 or maybe the top restaurant in the country that's like joining the navy seals yeah you know uh it's literally like I'd not to you know I mean that's that's kind of a weird metaphor but uh but it's true it's it's like joining I would say it's like joining an Olympic team you know um it's the demands are high the expectations are high and um you're just at another level you know uh Sean is a phenomenal chef uh probably if not the the best chef of of in the last you know he's he's up there in the best chefs in the last hundred years I would say wow and I that's my opinion um you know and I think it could be easily uh uh easily uh proved you know uh by just his body of work all of a

37:33sudden you move to and there's a couple different schools of thought here and I just I don't want to harp on this but I want people that run restaurants and people that are chefs to know when you get to that level there's a standard of excellence that everybody there holds you accountable to it's a culture that is unlike it's it's not what you talk well you fell in love with that romantic I get to hang out my buddies and you know serve food and make money it's a it is a when you say military you come to work your everything is perfect and everything that you do the standard of perfection is there and it has to be from from the second that food is received in the back door to how it is prepared to how it is prepped to how it is sold to the service to the way the tables are set to when they greet the table every single thing is intentional right sure absolutely and you know I heard David Chang speak about this before he went to work and I'll have to I'll have to remember the chef that he was talking about and I don't know if I'm going to be able to but his dream was to work for a particular famous French chef and he said when he got there and I'm paraphrasing so I'm sorry if I butcher this but he it he when he got there he he was he knew that that wasn't the place for him because he just was not on that level yeah as much as he dreamed of working at a and I'm sorry I can't remember the chef's name and I'm going to butcher the story a little bit okay but as soon as he got there he thought whoa the dream has has become a reality and frankly this is not the place for me you know and I'm speaking specifically for myself right from my perspective when I got to husk I went because it was my dream

39:37to work for for him and and and and to be in that role and when I was there frankly it I knew pretty quickly that I was working above or what's this above my skill set yeah I was working yeah like every time somebody describes me my wife I kicked my coverage yeah yeah exactly so I I hung on a little bit longer because I'm stubborn and and I thought well if I just work harder it'll all work out right and and frankly it was one of the best things that could happen to me because I was starting the baking company at that time and I had a few accounts and things were starting to move on the bacon company front and you know it really drove me to pursue my career that I have now which is where I probably should have been all along is in manufacturing and production and smoking meats and things that I the job that I have now is really where I should be because you know is where we're at now kind of proves that but again you know you have these dreams and you want to pursue them and but you have to be you have to be clear on what your skill set is and you have to be honest with yourself and or you you hope to be honest with yourself and looking back on it I made a really good decision or maybe that decision was made for me to pursue my career in manufacturing that's really where I need to be especially at this stage of my life yeah so I'm very grateful for everything I have now and the relationships that I have with the chefs and Sean and yeah but it was it was something to see that that level

41:39of cooking was something that I look back fondly on well I guess part of me going through this line of questioning is intentional because we have people right now who are at home they're not working if they're not dropping off food to go for people we have people who are chefs line cooks all different people in this industry who are at home right now and I wanted I wanted to kind of chronicle your story of from the day you knew that you wanted to be a cook the day that you knew you wanted to be part of the food business to kind of the excitement of working in different places coming up identifying that you want to take this thing seriously some of the work that took for you to get there and just kind of your stories to how you get to be how you get to found a bacon company and really finding finding your zest for life here because there's a lot of people right now who are trying to figure that out they're sitting at home and they're trying to go what do I want to do I've got this unique opportunity in front of me and I want them to know that I keep the ratatouille anybody can cook anybody can do anything you do if you put your heart and mind to it and absolutely your story is one of those stories well and I'll say this now is it's it's a good time you know we had to pivot with my company so you know I started the company out of my garage six years ago but as we grew and then we went to a rental facility and now you know uh and I'll speak about this Andy my partner which couldn't have a better partner in the world Yancey my partner couldn't have a better partner in the world those guys and everybody who makes that happen along with uh you know Dennis and Shauna and if I forget somebody I'm sorry I apologize but uh um you know we all were on a trajectory 2020 was going to be the best year we've had as a company and and then like we talked about earlier I woke up to devastation

43:43and then it just kept getting crazier but now and you know the first week or two I had to figure out how I was going to handle this and pure Nathan Gifford is I don't think I handled it very well the first week what'd you do well you know I just I was a little grumpier than usual and a little a little confused a little frustrated at things that were happening because it you know it's just it wasn't a clear like with a tornado you could see the damage the tornado has right when you're dealing with a pandemic you don't necessarily see it as it's happening you know you're very it's very frustrating and um it's okay for you to be frustrated it's okay for you to be angry it's okay for you to be scared you know my level of frustration and and uh sometimes and my level of grumpiness can be a little bit much for some people sometimes but you know I think what I had to do was you know we generally sold wholesale to restaurants we didn't deal with the general public very much so we had as a business had to pivot very quickly into dealing with the general public and retail instead of wholesale and how we did that is repackage our bacon in smaller quantities we just had to we had to do a lot of things we had to pivot to the way we did business very quickly like when I say quickly I mean within 48 hours which is usually not done very well you know and so I was right there with everybody in the frustration of what are we going to do how can we get through this problem very quickly and but now you know as we pause I'm reflecting just like a lot of people are on what my business and what

45:45our business is going to look like when we come out of this as there are things that we can do better is there things that I personally can do better for myself and my family and for my business um it actually if you want to find some silver lining in all this it does give me I was going 100 miles an hour before this and now this gives me some time to to kind of sit with myself sit with the challenges we have and identify where I could come out of this as a better person not just in business but just personally you know and so I'm grateful for the I'm grateful for the time that I'm given to sit and reflect and frankly uh how you beat this is it sounds cheesy man but how you beat this is with a positive mental attitude right and that's how I'm beating this is where you sit and you go how can we come out of this how can we help how can I help my buddies around me help myself help my company help my family um how do we all become better how do I become better and before I just wasn't given myself time to think about that well the world has given me plenty of time to think about that right now and so that's what I'm trying to do is is trying to come out of this as a better person a better business person uh and uh you know a better friend a better better husband co-worker yeah better everything I have room to improve in all of those areas so what's the first thing so let's if you're if you're not prepared to say what's the first thing right slow down my not slow down uh physically but just slow down mentally and go what's important what's really important to me and uh what is that well you know what it is uh

47:50it's it's my wife for one and what you know I as chefs we tend to or at least I did I would tend to work away my problems yeah you know what I mean if I would use work definitely I would use work as an excuse not to to look at myself and look at how I I uh I do things and how I uh I uh how I treat people and how I you cope you got how I cope with things and so the first thing that happened that was good was I just slowed down I took a breath and I just slowed down and I sat for a while and I I thought about all these things and I think that's a good start I think that the best thing we can all do is collectively sit down and this sounds super cheesy and I get it but sit down and close your eyes and take a breath and go take it easy man do you do you meditate take it easy I do I do so and I I did I do more of it now than I used to but um meditation has got me through so much just taking a moment and sitting there and breathing yeah and just kind of going okay and you know I go I go back to something I told um I said in a previous interview um the serenity prayer to me is something that if you're scared there's such simplicity to it and since I've not been drinking I get to a point and I say uh God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and then wisdom no difference right but just understanding that the if you break down that first part grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change there's things out there that we can't change that we have no control over and staying worrying about the things you cannot change is unhealthy it's not going to get you where you

49:55need to be I've preached it right I've preached it the only thing that you have control over is your attitude yeah right your attitude and I would preach that for so long but just to be honest my attitude sometimes was not very good and so this has given me a chance to breathe find out what and who are important in my life and then to really look at my attitude and go where could I make some adjustments and without and you know I'm one of the one of the type of guys unless I'm forced to do something I generally don't do it I work on that sometimes but you know this really forced me to take a look at myself and as a person and look at this look at the people around me and say how could I be of service to the people around me instead of me all the time you know so I'm very grateful for that opportunity that being said I would love to go back tomorrow and go 100 miles hour again and hopefully when we come out of this we we all become I just want everyone to take a deep breath and and just come out of this healthier physically but mentally and spiritually and all those things but you just said something you just said through all of this your business has essentially come to a grinding halt you had some frustrations this there's no certainty ahead of us yet you just said I feel grateful and I mean if you're out there right now and you're listening to this feel how do you find gratefulness right now in your life it's such a that's a powerful thing you just said through all of that you're grateful that's pretty cool well grateful and you know grateful and forgiveness come I think are two

51:55words that are very connected and forgiving who forgiving what you know and I'll say this and I'm guilty of it too right I get wrapped up in politics I get wrapped up in news and and what can we all do better why are these people treating me this way or who's doing this or who's doing that at the end of the day you're you're by yourself a lot of times at least I am I sit by myself and I go man you can be grateful for a lot there's a lot of things I have to be grateful for right now I just didn't see them I guess to say that I didn't see the forest through the trees I suppose yeah is because I was so busy wrapped up in everything that I was doing that I thought was important that I didn't really have stop and recognize how all the good things were happening why were they happening and who were they who was making those things happen and it turns out it didn't have a lot to do with me it was the people around me and what what stopped what made me more grateful is that I actually stopped and I looked at the people around me and I'm like wow man I am I started this company with my wife out of my garage and now there's Andy and there's there's quite a few people and we've been embraced by Nashville and the chefs around town and I'm not gonna say I took it for granted I was just I was going so hard and so fast that I never really stopped to think about that and I'm just so grateful for Nashville for the chefs that support my company and support me and put up with me sometimes and I'll say that about my partners probably and I'm just so grateful for everyone around me and I know we're going to get through this and I know it's tough right now but I can tell you chefs are really good at least some chefs

54:02are really good under pressure we talked about that earlier right and I mean if there is a group of people who are going to make it out of this thing it's the hospitality community at chefs specifically I'll speak about chefs yeah I mean if there wasn't a if there were people designed a work designed better for crazy circumstances like this it's chefs so I have no doubt that people are going to come out of this stronger than ever so tell me your experience in Nashville so far I will tell you this man like I could not have started a company like the one I have I think in any other city because I started it in a time when Nashville hadn't got this boom yet but it kind of organically grew with the as we become the its city you know but I mean look at what Nashville and the chefs in particular have been through in the last few weeks I mean it's been insane listen and this is where I'll just go back to it real quick like I'm from Oklahoma so I've seen a lot of tornado damage but and I don't want to seem too too dramatic or sappy about it but when I'm walking around the next day after the sun came up and the tour I started to see the damage I'm walking around in East Nashville and I'm for the first time in my life I went I felt because I traveled for so long right I felt like wow my home has gotten damaged right like East Nashville is my home this is where I live this is where my shop is I know every chef around here they're all my friends and I really felt it for the first time I felt like I'm home and my home is damaged and what can I do to help and then a few did I little did I know a few days later we start to have stay at home orders because of another problem

56:09and so before it was I was how can I help and then I had to do some really uncomfortable work when we got to stay at home order is to how then I had to turn the mirror towards myself and go how you can help us to work on yourself yeah you know and so that's pretty deep for a podcast I guess but uh especially for me that's what because you know well that's the that's that's the fun of these things we can talk for an hour and uh we can I'm sorry to get you so deep let's let's pivot on that and I'm going to keep you here because I want to turn to something that if I was looking at you in the face I'm sure your eyes would get real big if I said let's talk bacon let's talk bacon because that that that's what you do this is Gifford's bacon we have Nathan Gifford on the on the hook right now let's talk bacon so I love bacon my kids I have two boys they love bacon I think that bacon is an American treasure it's a treasure all over the world so you create bacon I think that there's a lot of people out there who eat bacon that have no idea about bacon sure so yeah we can start with the basic let's let's go through if we're gonna do a bacon class right so if I'm a I love to eat bacon but all the bacon I've ever eaten is on a table that somebody else has fed me or in a hotel pan how let's go over the basics so I will tell you two things that I always tell people I can teach anyone how to make bacon in a day right it's it this process is in essence is pretty simple but running a bacon company has a lot of challenges and you know it first starts with a good pork belly right so a pork belly comes from a pig right so we take the pork belly and we buy pork bellies where I buy pork bellies is from a co-op

58:14of farms in the Midwest who all it's a it's a group of farmers who all have gotten together and decided on the standards of how they're going to raise a pig what they're going to feed it and what the prices are that they get for raising those pigs and so I deal with that with a co-op of family farms to get pork belly sent from places like Iowa and Illinois to my shop in East Nashville and we add value to those pork bellies and and that starts the bacon making process by obtaining pork bellies okay when we get the pork bellies in is there a type of pig that works best for bacon so I do I think so I use a heritage breed pig called a Berkshire pig and I believe Berkshire pigs are the perfect animal you can use every part of that pig it the fat to meat ratio is perfect for bacon it's not too fatty but it it's got just enough fat on it to to make good bacon so I use a Berkshire pig for bellies yeah and so we when the bellies come in we use salt brown sugar and some other seasonings to cure the the pork belly and we we we cure the pork belly for a week for and then we uh essentially uh takes the water content level down the water activity level down not quite to beef jerky but uh if you have celery being the most water content and beef jerky being the least is somewhere in the middle okay you know and then we we we it it sets in containers with salt brown sugar and other seasonings for seven days then we wash it off and then we hang them and let them sit for a day and it develops a pellicle that the smoke attaches to the smoke it gets a little sticky and the smoke attaches to the belly and then we

01:00:19smoke all day with hickory wood uh for 14 hours and then it sets for another day and just chills out and then we slice it and package it and we keep it that simple one because let's face it I get by on my looks and now for my smarts so I try to keep everything as as simple as humanly possible but you know what's cool about this is the recipe from my garage for the cure and the hickory wood and the bellies have not changed one bit from my garage to my facility we still use the same cure recipe we still use the same wood we still use the same bellies so it's exactly the same we just have a bigger smoker that's all and that's as simple as that but it takes time and once you start the process it you can't go backwards right so you have to go forwards so what that means for someone who's starting a baking company is if you don't have any employees then you can't take a day off and I don't think Nicole and I took a day off for gosh five years every day we worked every single day for five years and then Andy my partner came on board and I was able to finally take a day off and now um and now yeah now we have the baking company what's Andy's last name Andy Fields okay Andy Fields excellent yeah so uh yeah so he came on as a part-time employee been a full-time employee and then uh as a partner in uh the company yeah that's awesome pretty cool story there great guy runs the facility director of operations um you know I like to say he is all the things that I am not you know um it took someone like me to start a company very stubborn and uh with blinders on but as you get bigger you need some diplomacy and so and Andy brings that to the company and so does Yancy my third partner uh a very diplomatic

01:02:21very uh very personable uh patient guys and so that's what we needed uh because I was pretty hard charging and you know as it takes most people don't start baking companies out of their garage so it takes a special kind of hard-headedness to keep that going so okay so you make the bacon you smoke the bacon you brine it's not brine you you put cure you cure it um what's the difference between what you're doing in what Oscar Meyer is doing well uh that's an interesting question I don't work for Oscar Meyer so I can't tell you exactly what they do but I have a feeling I can probably speak maybe a little educated on the matter I guess speculate speculate yeah I'll definitely speculate because frankly I grew up on Oscar Meyer baloney man and uh you know I it's a good company so um I think what difference is they probably use some injections um that we don't use uh frankly we I do things the way our grandmas and grandpas and our great grandmas and grandpas used to do I do things a lot simpler one because I think it's better to do it that way but two I wouldn't know how to make bacon the way they do it those scenarios where they're making millions of pounds I mean we're a small company that does things the old fashion way again I just keep it so simple there's probably a lot of processes to preserve the products that we don't use there you go I find that it's it's just for me for me personally it's it's you get a better product the less you touch the product and the less stuff you do to it uh the better which is ironic because that's what I'm finding out through all this uh these are the changes that I've had to make I was complicating my life too much and I should

01:04:25have taken some lessons from making bacon into my life the simpler it is the better it is right and now we've come full circle yeah and then we come full circle so I was filling my life up with so many things and I could have just taken a cue from the bacon it's thought hey man just put the the few things that really matter around your life because the rest is just filler yeah right that isn't necessary at least for my life anyway so yeah see people thought they were just going to get a podcast today we talked about bacon and we talked about a look and now now they're getting like a full-on psych psychotherapy session that's funny because I am definitely not qualified to be a therapist neither am I I spend most of my day uh making really silly stories on instagram about my dogs and uh how my wife has to put up with me um and bless bless her because she's really the founder of Giffords Bacon uh Nicole is the one that is the glue man she's the one that made it happen uh and she she's my partner um so so let's do some plugs yeah man let's talk about what you're doing and then I'll avowed we've got to do a live show we got to do at least a show at your place and I think that we could talk for hours but at some point we have to wrap this up my kids are getting antsy they're like dad you need to come hang out you can probably hear them playing outside you can get his bacon at Sean Brock's new place Joyland you can eat it on the products you can eat it when butcher and bee reopens you can eat it there redheaded stranger yes you can get it at just about every restaurant in Nashville but right now if you want to try it go to Giffords bacon.com you can order it off the website uh throughout the country it's available nationwide

01:06:31on our website we're also selling butcher boxes in cooperation with creation gardens we've partnered up with creation gardens a wonderful local distributor to provide butcher boxes if you order off the website it's free delivery around Nashville and we will be shipping those nationwide soon but if you want to try the bacon get on Giffords bacon.com and we you can order it there we also have smoked baloney which we didn't spend any time talking about but smoked baloney is delicious and you should try it and I have so many questions about baloney the next one we do we could all we could talk about baloney for an hour but also you know if you want to follow my stories on instagram nathalie gifford on instagram and facebook and in the weeds is is a video blog that i'm starting where uh we'll do some fun cooking videos and things of that nature yeah man Giffords bacon east nashville original so in your um in your video blog on facebook in the weeds um you're going to be talking with chef friends of yours and just different people come on yeah for sure tell me a little about that so yeah in the weeds was so as Giffords bacon um gets gets larger you know we have a pr company uh at janet uh kurtz at kurtz hospitality runs our pr right now and i say i tell everybody well janet janet's basically in charge of a uh nine-year-old softball team with andy and i it's a full-time job um and so you know Giffords bacon she has a lot of patience with me in the beginning because i was used to posting things as i do as things come into my head they get posted on the internet well when you run a company sometimes the flow of that that interrupts the branding and the flow so so Giffords bacon is is now the branding is is pretty curated uh which

01:08:34is it should because it should be left at the hands of me but as far as from a creative stance in the weeds is a video blog basically from a chef to chefs it's it's an absurd culinary journey that ultimately leads to nowhere is what i say and it's just me hanging with my chef buddies having fun and having a good time and see where it goes but um you know it's a lot of cooking videos a lot of hanging out a lot of me saying silly dumb things people love silly dumb things oh yeah yeah so if you want to if you want to hear a lot of silly dumb things please check out my personal instagram and stories and in the weeds because it's chock full of silly silly goose time man all right you just have a silly goose time but silly silly dumb things let's let's let's see if we can say one right now um who's so you've you've been cooking for a long time who's the most famous person you've ever cooked for uh who's the most famous yeah uh wow name drop i've cooked for quentin tarantino i guess it's pretty famous guy that's pretty famous yeah wow charlie daniels uh i've cooked for uh oh well i don't know why this wasn't the first name that came up but i cooked for barack obama he's he's kind of famous he's kind of he's not quite quentin tarantino but i led with quentin and bookend it with with barack obama uh so that was pretty sweet so i mean you're talking about from a kid who used to sleep in a van in los angeles cooking at restaurants to cooking for barack obama and owning a baking company and being in the greatest city in america surrounded by some of the best chefs in the world i'm a pretty lucky guy i'm pretty grateful all right we're gonna leave it at that i don't think you can end on a better note

01:10:39than all of that through all of this tornado a pandemic i think we've covered a lot today cooking for barack obama and owning a baking company and pretty grateful pretty lucky guy i love it pretty grateful pretty lucky guy well man thanks for taking the time thank you nathan for taking the time with nashville restaurant radio appreciate you guys hanging out for this one again happy easter um if you're listening to this and it's not easter then i hope you had a happy easter uh we're just having a good time over here and um like i said this episode dedicated to my buddy adam so if you're sitting at home and uh i've mentioned it before call a friend call somebody i haven't talked to in a long time and cherish every single breath that you get to take make the most of your day make the most of your life love you guys bye