Part Martin Part 2

00:00Hey guys, just want to start this show off today to tell you a little bit about my friend Erin Mosso. She's the owner over at Sharpier's Bakery and they have been delivering fresh baked bread for 36 years to locally owned and operated restaurants here in Nashville, to everybody here in Nashville. So if you would like to get fresh baked bread from a locally owned bakery, you need to give Erin a call. That's 615-319-6453. You can also follow them on the socials at Sharpier's Bakery. You guys know they have over 200 types of bread that they make. They deliver six days a week, so they have fresh bread daily to your back door. Guys, this is something you need to jump on. If you are lagging in the bread game, if you're still buying frozen bread from your broadliner, you need to give Erin a call. Support local, she's a woman owned business, she's amazing. 615-319-6453, that's Sharpier's Bakery. C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com.

01:03Have you tried GigPro yet? GigPro is amazing. So if you last second need staff, you gotta get people in, you go to GigPro and you can post a gig and somebody will come in and work that shift. You need a dishwasher last minute, line cook, really a food runner. You need somebody to help bus tables, whatever it might be, GigPro is your place. And if you're out there and you're looking for a gig, hey, you got a couple days off and you wanna go do some work. I had a chef on the show not long ago who said, I love working GigPro. I have my full-time job and every once in a while, I'll just pick up a gig and go see what somebody else is doing. I thought it was fascinating. She loved it. So this was one of my favorite things that I do. So check out GigPro. Go to go.gigpro.com and do the backslash, the forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z. And that's gonna get you your first hire. So if you're in hiring companies, get your first hire for $200 off. Wow, it's a free hire for a day.

02:03And if you are out there and you would like to tell your friends about GigPro, there's a $5 bonus for every single person who signs up. So hey, go get 20 of your friends, go make a quick hunter box. This is the way to do it. Go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z GigPro. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are back at you this Friday with the part two of the Pat Martin interview. We did a nice neat little 20, 25 minute interview with Pat Martin, which went out for Visit Music City. And Pat and I just kept talking.

03:04So we did like another 30 minutes and that is what you're gonna get today. So if you didn't listen to the first half, go back and listen to the other episode. It's a quick one. It's less than 30 minutes and then jump in right here and you will pick right back up. And Pat and I talked about some interesting topics about charging what you're worth at your restaurant and so much more about his book and The Life of Fire. It is available right now. You can go get it at Parnassus Books in Green Hills. You can get it at any local bookstore or Amazon or wherever you buy books, but always prefer for you to buy from the local bookstore. Big, big weekend this weekend. We got Vanderbilt graduation. I think Belmont's graduating this weekend. So congratulations to all of the graduates out there. What an exciting thing. It is also Mother's Day. So this in the restaurant world, this is a Super Bowl weekend, guys. We have got Mother's Day and graduation and it looks like the weather's gonna be beautiful on Sunday.

04:06So get ready, because patios are gonna be rocking, people are gonna be out, get a good night's sleep, get some rest, because this is it. This is what we practice for, y'all. I am so excited. I do wanna talk about my mom because it is Mother's Day. I know that my mom listens to this show, so hopefully she gets to hear this, but my mom is one of the most amazing people in the entire world. She's one of the most selfless, most just, she's one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever come across. And I feel like I get so much of who I am from her in our entire life. She just was, she was amazing. I'm one of those people who is incredibly fortunate to have somebody who loves me beyond all love. When I turned 40, I'll tell you a story about my mom. When I turned 40, my mom was an international flight attendant and she got a 40th birthday card and she had like, her plan was she was flying domestic and she wanted to get somebody from all 50 states to write on a postcard, happy birthday to me.

05:15I know. So she flew, she had all these flights, she would pick up flights to different states and when she landed in a different state, she'd go buy a postcard, ask somebody who was from there to write me a note. So she didn't get to all 50, but she got to like 30 something and then she went out of the country like 10 times, so I have a card that is stamped by passport agents all over the world and then I have like 40 postcards that have different people's names. That's my mom, that's the thoughtfulness that she puts behind everything. She was the best flight attendant I think I've ever seen. Just her genuine spirit of service taught me so much and that's why I am the way that I am today and she's amazing and I love her to death and I just wanted to say, mom, happy Mother's Day. You are, you're everything. You're just one of the most amazing people I've ever been in contact with and I'm honored to call you mom. To my wife, Jennifer, who also could write a book on love and care with our two boys, I can't tell you how special she is.

06:16I just, every single day she's up. First thing, she picks him up from school every day. She's out there jumping on the trampoline. She is an all-in boy mom and she's an amazing wife and mother and this is one of those weekends that we just, we don't get to spend together because it is, it's our really, really busy weekend. So every year on Mother's Day, my wife doesn't get to really have Mother's Day and I'm sure there's a lot of you out there who do the exact same thing. So I think next weekend we call it the Service Industry Mother's Day but we're gonna do something special next weekend. And for all of you out there who don't have moms anymore, we did this show with Delia Jo Ramsey back in the day and she had lost her mother and it brought a new perspective to me for people who this is a sad day and for all of you people out there who this is a sad day, I'm thinking about you, we love you and I don't know what more to say. Praying for you and I hope that everything works out and I just, I know it's a tough one.

07:20So for all of you out there, for all the moms that I don't get to mention who aren't in my life, my sister, my sister-in-law and all the moms out there, just thank you for all that you do. You are amazing, amazing, amazing. We'd be nothing without you. Yeah, there it is. That's my conversation about my mom and my wife and I hope you guys are having a wonderful day. I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Go take care of all the rest of your moms out there and enjoy this part two with Pat Martin. So we're back with Pat Martin. Thanks for joining us again. I wanna get a little bit deeper into what I call your masterclass because again, in our first interview, you mentioned, I said, what are you doing with your time when you go masterclass, I'm watching masterclasses and then I went and that day, I bought a subscription to masterclass and I love it.

08:24The more I read this book, I kind of thought, he's giving us a masterclass in West Tennessee whole hog barbecue and I love the romantic, I say it's a romantic feeling, just the style, everything about it, how you write about it, it's this childhood memory in people and can you tell us a little bit about kind of growing up in the West Tennessee whole hog barbecue, what it means to you and why you decided to do this? Well, I didn't find West Tennessee, I was born in Memphis, I didn't find West Tennessee whole hog barbecue until I got to college, frankly. I didn't even know it existed. I graduated high school, our family, both sides of my family, my mom and dad, sides are from Corinth, Mississippi. And I moved there when I was a junior and finished up high school there. You know, when you're born in Memphis or over there, I mean, Memphis barbecue is, it's really not a choice, it's part of your DNA. I don't ever remember thinking I didn't want slaw on a sandwich, it just came that way.

09:27And that is the way God meant for it, means for it to be. You know what I mean? You don't have, it's not a complete barbecue sandwich unless slaw's on it. But I, my whole family went to Mississippi State and I went up, I did not go to state, it was between state and a little church cry school up the road called Freed Hardeman, about 50 miles and I went to Freed on hopes I could maybe walk on the basketball team and play. I was, I loved basketball and I found some beers and blew an ACL out and that didn't work out. But the first week I was there, I mean, you know, you get into your dorm room and all that and get registered and get your classes and all the stuff, you know? Yeah. And it was like, okay, let's, where are the barbecue places? And that's kind of what everybody does. And the first, the very first one I actually ended up at was the one that had the biggest impact on my career and that was Thomas and Webb Barbecue and a very large, genteel, kind man named Harold Thomas befriended me and had no secrets and that's why I'm anti-secret today of any recipe or anything.

10:31I think we have a moral gift to give you if I'm doing something you like and you wanna know about it, I mean, down to the ingredient, you know, and who cares if you remake it? But he was very open with me on the skill and my sophomore year I ended up cooking, I hung around Thomas and Webb constantly. And there were six whole hog barbecue joints just in Chester County. Now there are no whole hog barbecue joints in Chester County. There's still some guys cooking shoulders on pit, so pit barbecue is still there, thank gosh. But whole hog, there's only three of us left in the state doing it and that's really sad and that's a whole nother radio show on the economics of barbecue and how broken it is and why they have faded off outside of the hipster communities in major metropolitan areas which have brought it back because they can charge a price that they can actually make a living on. But in rural communities or smaller cities, even like a Jackson, Tennessee or Huntsville, Alabama, like barbecue is our peasant food and we all as Americans, especially in the South, are I guess consciously wired to think that it should be cheap and because of that, we can never really charge.

11:47I do here in Nashville. Most of the barbecue joints, the reason the whole hog places aren't around anymore is because they can't charge more now than 450 a sandwich because the community revolts, like literally revolts. I'm never eating here again. I think folks have been eating there for 30 years and they're like, I'm done. And it's just a mindset that has to be, I hope it's broken in my lifetime where people like Daryl Raimi and Zach Parker over in West Tennessee can charge $7 for a sandwich at a minimum because that's how they're gonna really make real money and I'm not telling, everybody thinks we all get rich in the restaurant business and that's not to say that there aren't people who've made a lot of money in the restaurant business but it's got to be top three hardest lines of work. And just in general, then you come in and you couple it in with pit cooked barbecue and it's taken, depending on what it is, shoulder to a hog, 18 to 24 hours and I can only charge you 450 for a sandwich because you're gonna get pissed off if it's higher than that. That's not a viable model.

12:49Well, it's math. It's math. At that point, it's math and math doesn't lie and at some point, there's a negative. There's something about barbecue though, again, the peasant food aspect because those same people don't have a problem paying 11 bucks for a cheeseburger that took eight minutes to get in front of you but I mean, literally in those communities, you can go to Jackson, Tennessee and pay $11 for a cheeseburger and they go to, you know, Ramey's or B. Scott's and it's 450 for a sandwich and it's like, I mean, he has worked his, they have worked their tail off just to make that sandwich for you. And even here in Nashville, because of all the inflation stuff, I'm getting where I'm probably gonna need to take a- 8.5%. Yeah, it's obscene. Since Jimmy Carter hadn't been at it. So I'm gonna have to take a price hike and I will get it from folks, especially in like the non-Nashville core, like the outer markets I'll leave unnamed. Well, I'll get some emails like, you know, you've just gotten too big for your britches and it hurts you.

13:53It literally stings like when you get those. It's just, it's tough. I've literally, one of my restaurants, I do a new menu every day. Like I print the menus every single day because pricing is so, so crazy. And people don't realize that restaurants print, it's expensive to print menus. So restaurants, there's nowhere else like it that you go print like this melamine menu that costs you a thousand dollars to do, have many menus. And you gotta keep those for like a two month time, three months, four months, whatever. You're married to it. You're married to that price. And when steak goes up 8% or when your filet goes up, you know, $5 a pound, like you just have to eat it. And so I've stopped, I've printed menus every single day. And I, as the market's changed, you go to the grocery store, they don't charge the same price for milk for the month or two months. No, the second that the market changes, the price goes up. The price goes up. And I've started doing that. Nobody complains. Communicating that. At the grocery store. At the grocery store. At the restaurant, we're crooks. That's right. It's a crazy thing. Yeah.

14:54We're getting off the topic of life of fire. Yeah. And I, believe me, I can talk about this for hours and I would love to with you one day. We're gonna talk more life of fire in just a moment after these words. What Chefs Want has been serving the Nashville restaurant community for over 15 years. During that time, they've worked tirelessly to be, well, what chefs want? Seven day deliveries, no fuel charges, 24-7 customer care, unparalleled availability. And they'll split almost everything they sell. If you're the kind of person that wants to see what's new when it comes in stock, you should follow them on the socials at whatchefswant and sign up to be a customer at whatchefswant.com. So we are super excited today to welcome in a brand new sponsor. Welcome Robin's Insurance Agency to Nashville Restaurant Radio. So I'm gonna start off and tell you guys that we use Robin's Insurance Company at both of our restaurants, the Green Hills Grill and Maribor because they specialize in restaurants.

16:01It's so important. I'm telling you, if you buy insurance, in anywhere that you buy insurance, it's so important that you're buying the right type of insurance. And you know, I don't think people tell you that. They just sell insurance for what the cheapest is. But you know, sometimes you're paying the cheapest for insurance you don't need. So that is why Robin's Insurance specializes in restaurants. They identify exactly the type of insurance that you're gonna need to run your business so that you can sleep sound at night. And that's super duper important, y'all. So I would like for you, if you're curious about this, you wanna learn more, give Matthew Clements a call. His number is 863-409-9372, or you can shoot him an email at mclements, that's m-c-l-e-m-e-n-t-s, at robbinsins.com. We are talking about net checks today. And you know, last week we told you that net checks is your single source for all things people. We made a list, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, human resources, scheduling, payroll, taxes.

17:09The one thing that we wanna focus on today is your biggest pain point, hiring and retention. What do you use, Indeed, Facebook, Craigslist? Well, net checks, we'll post to all of those sites for you automatically. So there's no need for you to post on all these different sites and keep up with it. One source, like I said, net checks is your single source for all things people. They are always on the employee experience. But I love the fact that I thought Life of Fire, I'm like, what is this book? Because I have three bonfire pits at my house, three separate areas of bonfire pits. And I love, I am entranced by fires. I love building a fire. My kids, I have six and eight-year-old boys. Saturdays sometimes, the guys were having a fire today, and that means we are gonna forage wood to feed a fire the entire day through the woods. Kids are, dad, look, I got a tree.

18:09They have hatchets, and it's a thing that we do. And I had no idea, I heard Life of Fire, that there's so many different things you can cook at different stages of the fire. And you outline that, almost as it's a how-to guide at the beginning of the fire, early age or youth, and then you have old age, the golden years, and building a feeder fire that then you put into the pit, like, all these different aspects. It's just, it's absolutely fascinating. What's the most important part of a fire? Like, the most important, if I'm just a novice and wanna do this. From a cooking standpoint? Sure. Most people use an immature fire. They, let me say it a better way. My goal in this was to teach you to be patient and let the fire get through its teenage years, so to speak, you know? I love that. Little Bobby's gonna, you're gonna come home and you're gonna look and like, oh, I didn't know I'd had that much of my bourbon yet.

19:15And it's those immature coal, like, the fire, the coals are too immature for you to manage consistently, and it doesn't give off, actually, a hot enough heat while it's still combusting. And just because it's got gray color to some coals doesn't mean that it's ready. Just because the wood looks like it's pretty dang well burned down, no, doesn't mean it's ready. You really have to get down to true coals. And from a life cycle, if you just drew an arc, you know, and you started at nine o'clock and you're going over here to three o'clock, 1230, if you know what I'm saying, not high noon is kind of where those coals are ready for you to use. And, you know, you gotta basically kinda get in your 30s if you're looking at it back to the age format of getting to a point where some, those coals are mature enough, just like we are. You know, we're basically, I'm still a knucklehead, but where I definitely was a knucklehead, my 20s I don't even wanna discuss, but it was in my 30s. You know, and so that's kinda the analogy I use on the life of coals.

20:18And I thought it was so fascinating because people go, what do you mean? Well, a green wood still has so much moisture in it, and if you start cooking with the green wood, that moisture, it's almost a bitterness that can affect the food. But if you age it, you let some of that moisture out when you're cooking it, when you're burning the wood, you're burning out that moisture, you're burning out some of that bitterness. And I love that when you're in the, I guess it'd be in the 30s here. Adolescent, yeah. You're, they're more mellow. You're not actually, it's not as much smoke that comes out of those coals when you're feeding the pit. Pit barbecue, my book does not have a smoker in it, and it also doesn't have beef because that's not traditionally what we ate east of the Mississippi, even though beef is crossed here and pork is crossed over to Texas. But pit barbecue is a different sub-flavor profile in barbecue as meats that are cooked in an offset smoker. I cook on J&R rotisserie wood-fired smokers at my place.

21:23They, it's far more subtle, and it's really more of an ingredient that kind of helps elevate the pork, not, is not peer-to-peer, if that makes sense. Like a smoker is, you get the smoke right out of the gates, and you get the meat out of the gates, and they're combating a little bit on your palate. Pit barbecue is, it's all about whatever the protein, with, in our case, in the south, chicken or pork, and the smoke is no different to me than the salt and whatever you have if you're using a rub, the peppers. It's an ancillary ingredient that lifts it up. Another part of the book that made me laugh out loud was when you're talking about charcoal. And people say, well, I use charcoal I cook, and you said, if you're using an impregnated charcoal. Match light. Which is match light. You said, I don't care if you insist on using match light, go ahead and light the match light and put this book on top of it, because you're not my, you're not the person I'm looking for. You're not the student I'm looking for.

22:24And I literally laughed out loud while I'm reading that, and I'm like, oh, I've used match light in the past. I felt like there was a graduation for me when I got done with this book. I was like, I've learned so many things I didn't know that I was doing wrong. And now I feel like I'm gonna go into this with some backing. I know I have an expert who's told me what to do, and I'm thinking, writing this book, writing down friends that I want to be there. I'm like, oh, I want this guy there, I want that guy there, I want this guy there. This is gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a fun time. Yeah. Thank you for joining us today. Oh, thanks for having me. You've got a really, really busy schedule. The book also, if you're getting it, we can get it at visitmusiccity.com. If you're coming to Nashville, there's a lot of great local bookstores. I purchased mine at Parnassus Books. It's in Green Hills. They're the best. Their batch, it's the best. Yeah. She's awesome. Fantastic bookstore. It's on Amazon everywhere. You won't have a tough time getting it if you want it.

23:26It's if you want it, but it's, like I said, it's a procedural book. Pat, been a joy having you here. We gotta do this again, and best luck to you. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. All right. See you, bud. It is always a pleasure to have people like Pat Martin come into studio and sit down and talk. I am, I'm excited to bring a lot of new stuff to you guys. We're doing some episodes here coming up. We're gonna have a guy named Justin Cook, who is an EOS implementer. EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system that Geno Wickman founded in his book, Traction. This is gonna be game-changing for every single person that wants to figure out your culture. Let's figure out how to hire the right people and what are we doing? What's our three-year plan? What's our 10-year plan? What are our core values? You know, I talk about core values a lot. When Justin comes on, we're gonna answer. This is how to operate.

24:26This is gonna be a huge lesson in operations, and I'm so excited. So we've got Justin Cook coming up. He's gonna be a facilitator, and then we're gonna talk to Shane Nasby, who just announced Cletus Hamburgers, and formerly of Honey Fire Barbecue, and this coming Monday, the day after Mother's Day, we are going to release an episode with a gentleman named Zach Oates. He is the CEO and founder of Ovation, and this is one of my favorite interviews we've ever done. Honestly, I met this guy in Phoenix. He runs this really great company, and it's a tech company you probably haven't heard of. I've got another tech company that is gonna be a new sponsor. They're called Maintain IQ. I can't wait to tell you about them, too, but Zach Oates is gonna be my interview on Monday. We sat down last week, and we went over so many things. He is brilliant. If you listen to one show, if you've listened this long, but if you listen to one show in the next couple weeks, well, listen to them all, because they're all gonna be damn good, but this one with Zach on Monday is gonna be especially special.

25:35I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that you guys have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Again, thank you for all the support. Thank you for following us, subscribing to us. Let us know how you feel. I've got a pretty good lineup topic coming at you next week, talking about fear of sharks. Yeah, that's gonna be what it's about. Are you afraid of sharks? So stay tuned. Guys, be safe out there. Have a wonderful weekend. Love you guys. Bye.