Pat Martin-Owner

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01:09Welcome 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 am your host and we have got another amazing show for you this week. We are gonna stick with the barbecue theme and we're gonna be speaking with the one and only Pat Martin of Martin's Barbecue as well as Hugh Babies and we we talk a good bit about a lot of stuff. You know mainly about how he started his company, kind of about how he operates his company and then kind of how he's managing throughout COVID-19. I think he has the most restaurants of anybody that we've interviewed so far with. I think he has 14 restaurants. So it's really just kind of one of those things I was fascinated to talk to him about and he really opens up and I feel like he was vulnerable and it was just a wonderful, wonderful conversation with a great man and I'm glad you're here to hear it. We've got a big rest of the week tomorrow. We've got Stephen Smithing. He is the owner of Green Hills Grill and Mare Bowl as a bonus episode and then Thursday we are going live at 330 with the Roundup and our special guest host this week is gonna be Chris Chamberlain, food and drink writer for the Nashville scene. He'll be joining Delia, Joe Ramsey and myself. So that show will be live on Facebook at 330 tomorrow. You will not want to miss it. We've got a couple of special guests coming on the show, maybe even a special announcement, some breaking news. So we'd love to hear, I'd love to have you on that. So if you want to leave some comments, if you want to ask Chris Chamberlain any questions, ask us any questions, jump on the live feed on Thursday at 330. We want to talk a little bit right now about Springer Mountain Farms chicken. You know they're the best out there and they

03:12would love for you to join the flock. If you'd head over to SpringerMountainFarms.com you can enter your email address and you can join the flock. Which you enter your email, you will get emails, recipes, farm updates, they have podcast updates, all kinds of cool stuff that you will get right to your inbox. Please go out right now if you can, go to thenashvillesseen.com, vote for Nashville Restaurant Radio for best podcast. It's under the media and politics section. Best podcast Nashville Restaurant Radio and it's all the announcements. Let's jump right into this episode with Pat Martin. Alright so welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. We are here with Pat Martin. I could not be more excited to talk to you, get a little deeper and kind of learn all about you and your concept. So thank you for being here. Thanks man, I appreciate it. One of the questions we're asking people right now is just, how you doing? I mean nothing like that. Hey what's up, what's up? Like how are you doing? How are, where's your mental health right now? You know it's, we're kind of, I don't want to say numb to it, but you know you're used to it now. So I say I'm doing alright, but I'm doing alright. You know I mean we're just coping, just getting through it. I got us back on both of my brands to where we're not losing money. We're not really making any money. Nobody's making money right now, but not losing money is the new victory. So that's what we got. So I'm happy in that sense.

04:48That's good. I went to dinner with my wife, it was her birthday this past weekend and we were on the way there and I was wearing this, we have our masks and everything we're going, but it felt almost normal. There's a while where you go to the store and you had to make sure you have your stuff and your sanitizer and it was this whole, do I have all my stuff? And then we were driving to dinner with the bastion the other night. We were driving to dinner and I was like, this, this almost feels normal. Like I'm, we have, we know what to do when we get there, put our masks on, we're gonna do the whole thing. Like do you think that's where we're headed? Permanently? I think there'll be definitely some permanence of some things, but I would like to hope that we're not headed towards, this is the definitely normal. I don't think so. I think it's gonna be interesting when we go back to like a grocery store and you're not wearing a mask and that's gonna feel weird. Like when you're not wearing a mask. It's definitely gonna feel weird. It's gonna feel weird to go to a restaurant. Yeah. And sit in close proximity with somebody at a table and nobody's wearing a mask and nobody's truly concerned. That'll be, that'll definitely be weird. Or a concert.

05:59What's the number one thing right now that you're missing? Like if there's one thing. Sports. What sport in particular? Sports. Listen, I would watch the Myanmar volleyball team play right now. It was in a heated tournament, but yeah. No, I mean it's been good that baseball once come back, but that's weird. You know, but you just, you realize or I had realized those little things like just games. Like it's not that I was like, I'm not some, I mean I'm a sports fan, but I'm not a junkie. I don't just go home just to watch games and watch games. But you know, sports center and just keeping up with who's in positioning themselves for playoffs. I don't care of the sport. Those are big things, you know. And then eating at restaurants. Short lived hockey season we had. Are you a very competitive person? Kind of. Yeah. Well that's interesting. You know, sports being a big part of when you're in Tony Galson, he was like the number one thing that has to do with sports. I gotta get sports back. I certainly miss it too, but there's a side of it that is interesting because I watch, I record every single Predators game and I watch sports like crazy. But I, on the other hand, have kind of found other things during this time to fill my time other than sports like podcasts or books or whatever it is. Is there anything that you've... Masterclass. So if you've been watching the Masterclasses, do you have a subscription to it? I've never had anybody who actually did it. Yeah.

07:30Just do it. Just do it? Yeah, just do it. Who's... I jump around, man. I mean obviously I started watching all the culinary shows first. And shockingly Gordon Ramsay is captivating. Really? Yes. He is not like... It's... I don't know him. I don't even know if he and I have ever met. But, you know, the TV Gordon Ramsay and the teacher Gordon Ramsay, he is a wildly talented chef. Unbelievably talented. Can you imagine that there's a side of the TV, anybody that has to be, that's what gets the news is when you yell and scream at people. Like... It does. To get to that point, you have to be incredibly talented and know what the hell you're talking about. Yeah, that's right. So imagine he's pretty damn sharp. Yeah, you should watch him. But then watch all the other ones too, the non-culinary stuff. Like it's all... I mean, you know. Did you watch the FBI negotiator one yet? I just started that. That dude, I watched that. He's like, when you interview people, if you nod and go, yes, while they're talking, they'll talk more. Yeah. I just started. That's a good example of what I'm saying. Just start watching the other ones. And then definitely Netflix stocks, you know, like abstract. I love abstract. I can't watch it. I hope that never goes off. I have to have seasons for the rest of my life. You know, I haven't watched that. It's incredible. I have to get into it. And the ones that you don't think are going to be incredible, like this lady who did cast or costume design specifically for African-American movies, specific to Spike Lee.

09:22Yeah. You know, I was like, I want my own costumes. And it just started playing while I was distracted doing something else. And I ended up like, the show is amazing. She's amazing. Do you? I love stuff like that. I love watching how it's made, like the behind the scenes. Yeah. Wow. And do you, are you attracted to talent? Yeah. Do people, it doesn't matter what somebody does. If somebody's passionate about something and they do it really well, do you immediately respect them? I do. I at least respect the talent. Yeah. I'm like that too. I just, I find people that are incredibly passionate about something and do it really well. I just, I'm gravitated towards that. Yeah. But I'm equally, on the other side, if somebody just doesn't put towards any effort, I immediately, I'm like, yeah. 100%. And that's a flaw of mine. I just, I just kind of go. I don't know that it is a flaw. Like it's just, you know, it's life, man. If you don't want to have any passion. Cause there are people that haven't found their passion. There's a difference in I haven't found my passion. And I just don't really care about having passion. I don't have patience for this group. So you gotta be passionate. Just get out of my way. So this is a good transition into barbecue and not barbecue, but you start Martin's Barbecue in Nolensville. You have one employee, Bo, and you're going to grow, but you start hiring people. Come on, let's try these green beans. Taking our phones and a stock with it.

11:03No, you're good. Hold on, Josh. I can't tell you if you're any good. Josh. Can't tell him what I think about it if he walks out of here. Good. Well, what I was saying was there's a, there's a side of that I want to know about you because you're one of, I've interviewed a lot of local independent restaurant tours. You've successfully grown into multiple locations in over two different concepts. So one of the things you've had to do really well is identify talent and identify the type of people that you want to hire. So you had success at Martin's in Nolensville, but then you've grown. How have you done that? Well, a couple of things. I didn't get into this to grow. I just opened up Martin's cause I had a passion for barbecue. I learned how to cook barbecue from Harold Thomas when I went to college in West Tennessee 30 years ago.

12:10And I got into it because I love to cook. But I do enjoy what I do now. And it just kind of, I'm very opportunistic and it just kind of evolved. And I knew that I felt confident about my food and I felt confident about my brand and what I was, my generation of the South at the time that I was trying to reflect, you know, which is everything from the music to sports stuff on the wall. You know, there's teachers of magic and Larry out there, like, you know, so, but I knew I didn't know anything about running a restaurant. And so I met this guy, Mike Bodner, who ended up being my mentor and I partnered with Mike and he eventually went on and formed fresh hospitality here in town. And so, you know, some entities have jumped on board with them. But Mike was very instrumental in teaching me the daily disciplines of running a business and approaching it from a mindset of an executive and taking discipline on how we run each shift, like cleaning your facility, cleaning your equipment, cleaning your station, a lot of checklists, just nothing. There's none of it is rocket science. It's just about getting everything, your daily, you do the same thing every day. You got to do it better today than you did yesterday. That's what it all boils down to. And so labor models and how to philosophically approach your cost of goods, the section, you know, your supply, your food and your labor, labor in my opinion, being the most impact you can have on your business, your PNL. Anyway, there was that. And then I just evolved. I read, I do have ADD bad. I mean, everybody throws that word out like they do migraines. Like, Oh, I have a bad headache.

13:56It's made for us in this business. It's like, dude, if you had a migraine, you wouldn't be here. So you'd be in a hospital. So shut up or be at home, you know? So I can't read. Well, I can read, but after a paragraph. So it's hard for me. And I tried to read a lot of books just on how different coaches led leadership. And I evolved. I was very heavy fisted on my first restaurant because it could not fail. I mean, it was just no, you know, and, you know, you start learning through a type of maturity that you don't get from age or whatever your birthday was last year, just through experiences. And you learn those soft skills and how to evolve and become a better leader. And so I could not have scaled the way I did had I not come to terms with my own leadership inefficiencies and consciously try to park those aside and grow out of some of those and gain new efficiencies to leadership. So you started at Martin's in October of six. Game busters.

15:01First days, there's a line of people out the door started doing a great job. Was there a moment when you, when you and Mike did Mike was Mike with you from the very beginning? Oh no, I didn't partner. I opened in Oh six, Mike and I part in 2010. Oh wow. So there's a, you're way down the line. So what was there? You, you do everything yourself. There's a side of you, who you are, that you've trained people in each location. I read this about you, that you want to personally be involved with creating your culture and identifying your work. I want to show you how this is done. I don't take a personal touch, but you can't do that once you get to 50 locations. Well, I'm not headed to 50. I know that much and at least for Martin's. The, the answer to that is, is you're wrong. You can, I don't know about 50, but I know at 10, I have a very close friend of mine who came on board and is my CEO, John hair. And John is, I called him the other day, human Ritalin for me, because I'm real good at this first spot of birthing a brand, getting the culture, right. Telling you as a guest, what the, what the brand is, what I'm trying to portray. And it's, wouldn't just be barbecue. I can, I'm, I know I'm pretty good at this stuff for whatever I want to serve. And, and I'm good at the 36,000 foot view. It's the stuff in the middle. And John is a very great yin and yang for me that we can collaborate on plans and put a plan together and directive. And I can hold him accountable, but he just makes it all connect. So when did you bring having somebody like him, I brought him on almost coming up on three years, I believe having somebody like John enables me to get back in here with the guys and work with them. Like literally man on how to win the flip cornbread. Okay. Like there's a, there, it's just not something you can just put in some training, man. No. But, and then I don't even get into the barbecue part of it. That's a whole nother apprenticeship skill. That is definitely what

17:02is, I have to teach them when I stopped teaching that this hits the ditch. I guess what I was asking is, is there a time that you felt like you were moving farther away from that where you weren't able to be as hands on? And that's when you kind of said, I need more people and you bring the right people. And we'll maybe yesterday said, I wasn't, I got to a point where I needed a number two. I had to get a number two that I trusted. And once I did, I was able to get back to the thing that made me original, what originally started at least. And so for you, was there a point where you just started, you had too much stuff and you said, I got to have a number two? Yeah. It was, it was around, so Mike and I partnered in 10. This guy I went to college with named Chris Kaiser. He was at Bosco's and he, I ended up moving Kaiser to come. He's from Weston C. So he knows the culture of Weston C. Ho-Haw BBQ. And that was very important to me. I didn't really, you know, I really hired Kaiser for that reason. And I needed a manager. Yeah. And what he did was he enabled me to leave Nolensville and go open up Mount Juliet. He stayed, he came on, worked for about a year or so. Then I went up, Mount Juliet was the second store in the market we opened.

18:18And Kaiser kept the home fires burning while I was up here trying to figure this thing out. And then we opened up Belmont, same thing. He kept the fort down because Nolensville's the brand. And he was my, he's my original number two. He still is. And, you know, I don't look at him as number twos, but you know, my right-hand guy besides John, because Kaiser runs Hue Babies now and does an unbelievable job. Hue Babies is incredible by the way. I don't know if we're ready to get into Hue Babies yet, but I'm down. I've been wanting to tell you this story. Go ahead and whatever you want to talk about. We've had this pandemic. We went to California because I have grandparents, my grandfather turned 90 yesterday and we went to California to visit. And before we could start a school, three day trip. And of course the first thing we do, first place we ate as a family was Hue Babies during the pandemic. We drove through the drive through on the Charlotte. We went across the street to the park and sat in the parking lot with the kids and we all had Hue Babies together. And it was a moment. It was a family one they'll never forget. So Hue Babies was a part of it. Derek's a really good friend of mine too over there. And we get to California. We rented a Jeep. It was awesome. We drive. First thing we got to do was go to In-N-Out because damn it, it's In-N-Out. We're in California. We got to go do it, right? I'm a track grew up. I'm in. So we pull in line is longer than Chick-fil-A.

19:50They've got the whole thing. They're so on point with everything they do. Do you go through the line? We get the food. We did the same sort of experience. We pull into the parking lot sit down like, like In-N-Out. Here we go. And I take a bite in like two seconds. I remember my wife goes, this doesn't taste like it always did. I said, what do you mean? And the kids, the kids have their hairs in back seat and they go, we hate it. And they said, this is blasphemy. Like, what are you? This is In-N-Out five and six year old, five and seven year old boys is what I have. And they go, this is the exact word. They said, they go, we like you babies. We like you babies. And I went, but this is In-N-Out and they go, we don't care. We like, and my wife goes, I'm with them, dude. Like you, maybe it's a lot better than this. And I went, I hate to agree with you, but it is, it is better. And I still like In-N-Out. I'm an In-N-Out fan, man. In-N-Out is what it is. It's great. I love In-N-Out, but I think that we've completely been converted as far as quality and what we like to.

20:56Hugh Babies is better. Yeah, thanks man. I appreciate it. How long has that been a dream? And when did Hugh Babies like come about for you? Or like, we're going to be, um, cliff notes is, is I would ride around Mike and I every now and again, would go around looking for real estate and, uh, I don't know if Mike's ever seen a piece of real estate he didn't love. And they, they weren't, a lot of them weren't Martins. Like, no, no. And cause I'm a gut feel guy. And, but a lot of them were good sites, uh, but they didn't fit for Martins. And so I'm looking at like some other spots in town that are on the fast food spectrum of barbecue, so to speak. And I say fast food. I mean, I still identify fast food as its actual mechanical definition, meaning there's no service in the front house. Fast food now has become a, a moniker for crappy food, as we all know. Yeah. And I had this, I don't know if I've still got it. I had this romantic dream on the side note here of saving that word from itself, basically. And like, no, fast food is, doesn't mean it's bad.

22:06It just means it's food that's prepared in a way that you can not wait 30 minutes. That's right. And so, uh, QSR is now the sexy word to use for it. But at any rate, um, you know, some of these brands were doing pretty big numbers and they weren't serving very good food, you know, and, um, and I just saw it as an opportunity to go in on, you know, I'm not a big chef driven burger fan, the big eight ounce burgers and all this stuff on it. Like, I don't like anything. I believe in balance, uh, in everything. And that it starts with size, you know, and if I have to wrestle something from a sandwich, any sandwich, I don't care if it's a pastrami sandwich and cats in New York, or I don't care where it is, then I'm not going to enjoy it as much. I want something that I can manage. So I, you know, everybody talks about the smash burgers as if California invented them. They did not. They were all over America. And, you know, I wanted this brand to speak to, I was born in Memphis and I wanted to speak to the mid-south over there. And, um, our, our family, our family's all from Corinth, Mississippi is about 65 miles out of Memphis. So, you know, I birthed the brand and, uh, it's, it was, it's a, it's a real passion, you know, just to execute that food.

23:24That's where most people get it wrong is you're not going to find, uh, we call it a space, pizza space or the hamburger space or the barbecue space or deli space or whatever. They're all crowded. There's no, I'm going to go open this up because there's not a lot of people making this. And that's the, the difference is that most people just don't want to execute literally on an hourly basis to a really high level. They settle. And when I start settling, that truly is like, that's not a romantic statement. Like that's when I know I got to hit the door because when I'm just like, yeah, they could serve that report out of the care. Uh, then I said, yeah, nobody reinvented the wheel on hamburgers or barbecue. Like I don't have some special way. I just cook, I cook hogs the exact same way. Harold Thomas taught me, except I flip them at six hours now. I'm not 12. It's the only difference I do. It's not, I don't know anything that anybody else doesn't know. Well, it's just how you care for it once it comes out. It's interesting that you say, you know, it's not the big, when you start getting into this crazy thing and it's almost, it's quality, right? So it's, I think about like the drinks. And so if you had this gigantic burger, this, this nine burger tall, it's kitschy and it's like, that's not a good hamburger. Nobody likes to eat that. It's hard. It's messy. It's not a good burger. Uh, it's almost like that drink if somebody says, make it really, really strong, like, well, margarita with like 90% tequila doesn't taste good. And if you make something that just tastes like craft cocktails that tastes really good, that's made really well, it doesn't have to be over the top either way. If you just make a consistent burger that tastes really good.

25:08And every time I've been to Hue Babies, one of the things that is amazing, because there's, there's a handful of places in town that does not matter which one I go to, it's been to multiple Hue Babies. Every time you walk in the door, it's clean. I mean, clean, not clean, like, oh, this place is clean. Like they're intentional with how well they keep it. And it's amazing. And you notice it, that people look professional. Like there's a, there's a, they walk in and they're there. Everything is intentionally done. Does that make sense? Oh yeah. And it's, oh, that makes sense. Cause that's what, yeah. But it's, it's palpable. Like it's noticeable that there's intention behind everything that you're doing. Nothing is done by accident. It's not like one guy came in and he was really good and you go somewhere and the cashier is really personable. And like, oh, that person's really good. Like everybody's nailing it. And I think J. Alexander's does a really good job with this. Just consistent, high level service. You know what you're going to get when you walk in every single time. Post pandemic, first time I went to Hue Babies, they had the thing, they handed out that there's completely touchless.

26:13They did such a great job. And I was like, Kaiser really handled that. I didn't even, the COVID stuff, especially with that brand, Hue Babies kind of led Martins in that, in a sense. And I'll give Kaiser's credit for that. Like he recognized immediately that we needed to go touchless. And it's like, oh yeah, why didn't I think about that? You're right. And we do. And then, you know, John and I would talk about how to get that over here at Martins and it was, you know, sharing best practices, but yeah, thank you. We do make a conscious effort to, you know, man, you got to just keep a clean facility, smile and be nice to your guests and make your food as best as you can make it. Those three things build volumes. I don't care if you're a chef driven restaurant. I don't care if you're a fast food hamburger place, like I'm trying to get off the ground. That drives volumes. People in the restaurant business screw up because they chase the volume. They don't understand what got the volume there in the first place. Okay. So they make decisions. What I call is they make decisions based on a P and L, not on pride. And when they make decisions on the P and L, that's a defensive nature inherently. So what you're doing is you're like, okay, well to get more volumes, I need to save money here. Don't get me wrong. It's important to keep cost controls and try to find places you can save money, but you don't approach your business, your end product from the standpoint of how to save money. That's not a good strategy. Right. So you've got to find a, you've got to make the best, in this case, you babies, the best cheeseburger I can make at a fair price. And I've got to hammer that cheeseburger every time because there's a lot of cheeseburgers. You can go anywhere to get cheeseburger. You know what I'm saying? So those three things, man, I am just super psychotic about those three things. And it'll never be clean enough for me. The burger will never be good enough for me. I don't pitch at them. I do on the cleaning this stuff. I do on the cleaning, the little things I get mad, the big things I don't ever, you can't, cannot get me mad over something

28:15big. Have a fire in a pit room. Oh sure. You wreck a catering van or whatever, but you know, man. Dirty bathrooms. If you're going to overlap the fricking pickles after I've told you they cannot overlap and they only get three pickles on a cheeseburger because it's important that the guest has the same bite every time until they've exhausted the burger. I don't want the goddamn things to overlap. Don't overlap them. That's the stuff that gets me pissed. We're speaking, you're speaking my love language right now because I'm a fan of like, if I clearly communicate to you what my expectations are and you don't do them, that's disrespect because I'm clearly community. I'm not wishing at home that I want the three pickles to be this way. I'm clearly telling you I want these pickles this way. There's no secret there. What are your, what are your core values when you're, you hire somebody, somebody comes on, what type of training do they get? We get extensive training, but if we just be honest with ourselves, I mean it's the fricking restaurant business and this is a good conversation piece to go back to what I said earlier about my leadership style that I've, I grew up in a sense of learning I've got to win the war. I've got to quit worrying about winning every single battle and so I just move on from people. If you don't want to take on my standards, you don't want to meet my standards and honestly man we do, we move on from folks quite a bit, but it's the restaurant business and the restaurant business man is beautiful because it's a lot of people who are in a period in their life with you know maybe they're young and their parents make them get a job or they're in a period of their life they just haven't really figured out what it is they want to do, whether they have a degree or not and then there are some folks that just love the restaurant business and stay in the restaurant business. You know in all three of those there's just some people that just

30:15lack the ambition to they're just there to get a check. They don't care about the stupid pickles pack you know and they don't tell me that but it shows up in their actions and you know I make it a point. I work with them and a lot of times they do they really do want to do right even though they're trained to not overlap those pickles they're trying to get it out fast they get in a rush so they I tell them it's okay to slow down it's okay if it's five more seconds to get it to them just do these right but you know some people like yeah yeah yeah he's gone now there you go and those guys end up sin they they don't last they don't last no so you've got how many restaurants do you have now we've got 10 martins we're going to open up Hendersonville at some point not this year and then we've got a few babies here how many Q babies do you have there's three here we license one to West Virginia unit Sodexo and they react on it this year so I don't know if they'll keep re-upping on that or not but they see how good a job they do 14 restaurants yeah 14 restaurants you have three children a wife in the middle of a pandemic how do you find balance in life you mentioned earlier you find balance in everything how do you juggle all that I'm not right now I don't have any balance right now so some days are better than others and all that and I'm not doing a woe is me at all it's just that you just I get up every day and it's like you don't you don't yeah you don't know what fires are going to come up today that you're already you already have this list of fires you're trying to figure out which one to prioritize and then throughout the day another one two

32:17three four five will pop up some of them are big some of them are small and then adapting to whatever phase we're in now adapting to how Williamson County thinks about our phases and you know we ought not to have to wear a mask and then up here it's it's not coming here if everybody's not wearing a mask and it's like you're damn if you do damn if you don't and I'm before the mask by the way do people in Williamson County get upset if you guys are wearing a mask yeah we've had it's not just Williamson there's a handful of days but Williamson County's a redder of course voting county and so yeah there's it's not as bad over the past month but for a while long time man it was like we'll come back when you don't make us wear a mask and then the other side of that is is the real left-leaning progressives will come in and see a line cook he's not wearing a mask and the fact is is that we had to start swapping guys out because they can't breathe they literally the hot but it's the grease that's evaporating all fills their mask up and they literally start overheating there's nothing going to live on that surface anyway if it's over nothing's been proven to live over 140 degrees yeah so uh but you know you just try to find balance man and try to get out front of it and explain to people like listen don't fault me because i'm trying to keep you safe and by the way i'm trying to keep my employees safe first i mean that's gotta be your new one i don't feel bad about that either yeah so yeah it is well i just you know i it's unenviable i mean there's there's two sides i think that people have this perception that there's this guy whose name is on the restaurant pat martin and he's got he's got all these restaurants he's got all this money there's this whole perception and you go well no he's a real guy that wakes up every single day who's a dad who's a husband who has all of these employees he's looking out for and is

34:20just like everybody else trying to figure out every single day what's going on i mean i don't know if that perspective is shared as much as i'd like it to be i mean it's not you know it does there's something like money's relative man i mean if i told you the amount of debt my name is attached to right now and my income has gone down 90% personally yeah and because i'm we're not making distributions you know and i and i pay myself a fair salary but it's not i'm not the highest paid guy in this in this brand i can tell you that let me start there so it's money's relative you know and and i don't have contrary to for some belief out there that fresh hospitality is over here they've never been a bank to me they've never given me a dime and i've never asked for one and they're not a bank now mike and i sat down partner he said i'll i'll never be your bank and i appreciated that because that's i'm a tough love that's what i want my dad you know so this is all like this is uh keeping your powder dry and cash is king getting through this thing right now and it's freaking hard man it is hard i don't care how many restaurants i've got like that doesn't mean shit no i've from all of the different chefs and people i've interviewed there's a lot of times we talk off microphone and there's just a this is hard dude like i'm genuinely scared like this if we didn't get ppp money we'd be in a lot of trouble we wouldn't be here you know and i don't that's a whole nother podcast you should do is how people i've saved mine i'm going to take it as alone like i said keep the powder dry yeah um because when it came out if you just use it to bring your employees back and you know dang well first they bought them didn't want to come back because they were getting 600 bucks but if they did come back you're just paying them to pay them but you know right about the time ppp came out is when we all as a society started figuring out this thing's not going away in a couple months no and so what happens when that ppp money runs out i'm just gonna have to furlough that employee again and then they're screwed again

36:24i mean really it was just a trade-off i mean the government can pay more you can pay up are you gonna keep them and they can stay on unemployment the government will pay them or you can bring it back and then you can pay yeah yeah so the idea of let the government pay them and i'll keep this money at a one percent loan you know well it wasn't that we brought them all back we've got pretty much everybody back but you couldn't just do it just because you had this money sitting here you still have to be fiscally responsible because if you didn't if you weren't fiscally responsible there won't be a brand there for them to come back eventually anyway i think that is the thing i think that a lot of people forget but that's a big burden for you it's a huge burden i mean just in a daily basis everything that you're doing the idea that you on your shoulders have to employ how many employees do you have uh with martin's it's around 500 and change and uh upper 500s and q babies is uh about 120 i'm guessing somewhere in so i mean you're talking 600 700 people yeah that you uniquely employ that you need to keep this place open and you're responsible for that's it's a heavy burden it is i don't think a lot of people really truly understand if you're not in a restaurant business if you're not a restaurateur you don't understand i mean you know there was there was uh there's a either a restaurateur even if you're a chef but if you're not if you don't actually have skin in the game there's no way for you to understand that i've interviewed interviewed a lot people talk about the entrepreneurial spirit and the actually going to the bank and signing like the guts it takes to go and sign that paperwork like until you've gone put your house as collateral on something that's what i did you don't get to talk that's right like that's kind of my take on it and hearing people talk about like this is i could lose my house you go this is real for them this isn't a how come they're not going to hire me or i don't want to be like no no this is everything to them they sign on the dotted line they're all in man when i was at frida artisan i dreamed this brand up in my

38:28dorm room and just thought i would do it when i was in my 50s after i'd made money trading bonds it didn't work out that way but i mean my idea was so stupid that bank work south didn't even i got my line to bank work south because my grandmother was the old bank of mississippi my grandmother was a teller there and my papa did all of his farm lives out of it bought all of his seed every year and all that you know and uh i started martin's put my house up 60 they gave me a 65 000 dollar line of credit and i that's how i started the entire brand was off that 65 000 dollar line of credit so to go back to the burden part those are experiences that you just can't even really verbalize to somebody for them to ever be able to empathize and understand because it's it's more than just financial it's your dream yeah and it's your brand and yeah my name's on the door and that's important but it's really not like what's really important to me is it's my dream it was my thing it's my it's part of my dna now and for that to be on rough waters enough there especially for two or three weeks when we were down 60 in sales and you're like this could be it like this whole thing could go away and what am i gonna do then you know i mean that's a real ass feeling but that's scary i mean that that's i think it gets much scarier than that especially after the type of success and it's out of your control it's not anything you did so that you did it was invigorating a little bit in a weird way because it was total survival mode and i jumped into restaurants full on apron on redid labor plans and um supplies fill up a lot of space so i was trying to figure out all kinds of stuff but that felt like the old days a little bit for me for about a two month period there where it was i was getting up i didn't have some event i was doing i didn't have meetings i was going to do i was going in the

40:30restaurant and we side by side with my crew working shifts and like grinding it out and keeping this thing afloat but the scariest piss but but it energized me well because change my change my outlook on what i want to do with my life too tell me about that well i mean like i told i'm not trying to grow just to grow you know like i don't have some number out there but you know i'm 48 years old what am i growing what am i what am i really trying to get 10 more 20 more restaurants for what and so that's where my my mind has shifted more to the values of being at home more and being more time my kids and uh you know when is enough enough and those kind of things like those are all real i think a lot of people have had this realization that nashville's been this go-to city for everything and they're just hustling their asses off i mean this city's been on fire for a decade for a decade and if you're in this in the hospitality industry your ass has been busy and i think that it's arguably the biggest bubble in the country too yeah and when when the pandemic it just didn't pop like it popped in every other market in my opinion in nashville it popped really big because it was already inflated and there's a lot of restaurateurs that aren't that are done for good oh yeah sorry to interrupt you but no i was just gonna say i think that when they closed all the restaurants a lot of people had their first break break so to speak restaurants are closed you can do it they had to go home and they looked at their wife and went hey our kids are already nine and ten years old like what the hell happened here and a lot of people had to look in the mirror and go hey i'm gonna spend time with my kids for they jump on the trampoline with them and they go throw the football and they go damn i could do more of this there's been a lot of people looking in the mirror kind of changing kind of the way they did it i love when you said that when you get back from the restaurant i figure out you as somebody who's creative and you're creating right so you're not just

42:31doing a job it's not like you clock in every morning and clock out and the people that are owners at this level you're creating on a regular basis you're finding the next thing you're trying to be a visionary but sometimes you just get in there and you do the work it's pretty satisfying because you kind of get to turn some of that that part of your brain off and get back into it it's like mowing the yard for me i love mowing the yard because i get immediate results you know i mow the yard and i go oh which is great because everything i do i'm like three four weeks out five weeks out takes a year to do but mowing the yard of washing my car takes an hour and i get to immediately see a result and i love that it's like kind of when you get back in the building and you're doing the work and you kind of go i did that today is it almost yeah a little bit it was but i was too i was in such life jacket mode like oh shit because so i didn't how can i say it i was enjoying the focus it was keeping all the worries out of my head for it's like watching netflix like we were talking about earlier like i use netflix a master class to shut my mind off on everything else yeah and when i got back in on the line i was really just grinding down like it what like i was 10 plus years ago that had that same effect for me you know so it was immediate results but it just but it also created a firewall for me tonight you know covid was there it's overhanging me but i wasn't focusing on covid i was focused on do i can i move this freaking flat over here to make this get out the door 20 seconds faster like i was thinking about all that stuff yeah do you sleep at night yeah i do i do with the help from benadryl every night again no i understand do what do you think about when you lay in bed do you can you go right i know i don't lay in bed and think about i can't do that i will never go to sleep i have to watch a show and fall asleep watching the show okay that's me too i can't i can't just my wife's like just come to

44:33bed i'm like then i'll just lay there my brain's like oh did i do this did i do that i gotta do this oh and i had these ideas in my brain and i go i gotta i gotta turn something on to take my brain out of that transform it into that and then it goes to sleep i'm just so tired but then i'll do that you same thing yeah it's crazy well i'm not alone this is amazing so we're thanks for sharing all that you know that was a lot what's your favorite part what is your favorite part about owning a restaurant being in this business well um they're probably cliche but they're true i love the people that help me make this thing happen so i love my crew love them and i do really still like not still i'll never stop loving trying to get somebody to smile or something that we made like that's the essence of being in this whole business it's not i mean listen man if you get in the restaurant business because you're thinking about trying to make some living this romantic notion that restaurateurs these rich guys and you know whatever it's celebrity chefs if you get you're getting into it for the wrong reason you get into it to try to make other people happy and we've all heard that and like i said it is cliche but god dang it's true is the truest of the truth for what we do so that's that's still the most gratifying thing something like you know like man howly you know i had a went by your place i've got a whole hog sandwich and got slaw on it pat i know you want me to have slaw on it yes and it's freaking great west Tennessee style well it's not the story i told you about king davis is that you've got to love hearing that like just that's something that we did i had my first interview i ever did second carry was my first interview in march i had an interview on his birthday march 17th i went straight over to marco i interviewed margo mccormack and she was almost in tears this was

46:34march 17th they're closing like the next day or the 19th i think they closed all the restaurants and she was just so sad she was sad because this is how this is her loved one this is what she does i create these dishes and i put it out there for people and i see them enjoy it and that fills my heart that's how i find love is i create these dishes and i give it to people like what am i going to do that i can't cook food for people and it was just it was heartbreaking because it's like that's the s is what you're just talking about it's like this we we do this that's what you do this man and whenever you give you know if you're like trying to express love to somebody you're inherently making yourself vulnerable and so everything we all do as restaurateurs is very vulnerable because we're trying to make this thing and trying to give make you happy with it and in doing that like it's very exposing it is and it's it opens up your insecurities and all those things and for it to go away especially i have felt for her a bunch and i have not reached out to her i actually keep up with her a lot through tandy a lot or jace mcconnell but mostly through tandy but um you know she got punched with that tornado and then voila 14 days later we're in this mess and yeah she's the matriarch of the city she she has she's incredible i need to get back and talk to her again now and we're five months later to kind of see how everything's been going for her because um just one of the most authentic people that i've ever talked to sure is all right um well thank you so much what do you want to talk about anything you want to say i've been kind of leaving this thing going through all of this i don't want to miss anything no uh i can i'm just taking your lead man we're dancing here so you just tell me where to twirl i am sorry we didn't get to talk about barbecue i didn't get to say you know

48:42the same with spending shame and shame yesterday on the show because the number one question i get is you know how come what kind of wood do you use he's like we use hickory so we use us we can get a lot of that's not super expensive and he's going to all the different questions he said one of the questions like when he did he did a what's the deal that we do a segment on the show that's a kind of what's the deal with but we spin delia joe ramsay's name into it and he goes what's the delia with people coming into a barbecue restaurant and telling me that they don't like other people's barbecue he goes people come in they go we used to go to martin's but now i come here he's like don't stop going to martin's still go to martin's we're all friends we want you to go experience everybody else's stuff but enjoy mine but then go also enjoy theirs we're all different like it's okay to go the deal with barbecue is very i mean people are passionate about their favorite pizza their favorite whatever but there is something about barbecue man shane's right we're all friends and we all really want everybody to to do well like genuinely want everybody to do well karen i've been buddies for 20 plus years we sit the end zone in green hills and talk about one day we would open up these barbecue joints we both had the same thing we wanted to do we both took different paths uh that we laugh about now but shane's right and i don't know a lot of people feel the need to i love your place so i'm gonna freaking just take a dump on everybody else over here like this no don't do that it's okay so stupid and there listen there are there are other cities where that's a real thing where the where they don't have the camaraderie that we have here in this city most of them have good camaraderie but they're you know i know some places where they're just like oh you don't eat anymore yeah the place does suck man thanks for eating with me you know and that's a shame it's really sad well it's one thing that most people who i've interviewed who are from other cities come to nashville and i go you know it's it's

50:45you know it's it's crazy because your hospitality to me like everybody's friends uh josh hobbiger was on the show a few weeks ago and he said when he opened the catbird seat he was afraid when he's from chicago and new york and uh he's been all over but when he opened the catbird seat it was so unique it was so small and so different there's really nowhere i think there's still innovative across the country for what he did uh he was afraid that when restaurant people will come in they'll be like oh look at you la di da guy over here doing this he said everybody started coming in and they were like dude this is amazing like giving him high fives and hugs and talking to him he's like what's going on here's nobody there's no competition like no they all loved it he goes and then i knew i was in the right city he was like this is where i want to be trevor moran kind of a similar story but it's like i love nashville this is what i want to do here yeah it was uh i'd say the past year or two there's been a little bit of a couple dings on that there's been some things that you know quietly in town like some chefs have a lot of them just guys who have come in from out and they're they haven't carried themselves very well but man back in the day it was a real romantic period like i opened in 06 and tandy opened in 07 and shawn had left and gone to charleston tower took over yeah jason mcconnell just opened his spot up and hal holden bass was over at eastland like it was this like golden era like of this we were just all young and trying to make our food and those guys were insane chefs and i was just in awe of all of them because i'm over just some guy some moron cooking barbecue and it but we we instantaneously went without even knowing it truly maintain we talk about this a lot you know a couple times a year we just instantaneously just skipped right over the industry friend part and just became friends and then our families became friends our wives started becoming buddies and it was uh it was great and i that mushroomed and grew as other

52:50people came in i remember clear as a bell when josh and eric came in and open cat bird and that was still but maybe this covet thing will get some of those there's probably a handful of folks in town that really don't care whatever that everybody else does well but most 95 percent everybody truly just wants everybody to succeed and yeah while they're palette well i think if you're in this industry we all you know jeff pennington of pennington distillery does something goes on that he goes you know what it's not that he was it hurts us when people don't do well because somebody opens a restaurant that's not good because if somebody makes a whiskey they make a tennessee whiskey jack daniels will do everything they can to help me because they don't want me to make a bad tennessee whiskey they want good they want good people make people drinking the tennessee whiskey and if you make a bad tennessee whiskey and you turn somebody off of tennessee whiskey you turn them off a jack too so somebody comes to town they have bad food here national's food scene sucks like no we all need to do a great job we all want to support each other because all these people coming in are what are support offices right so 2005 i started with creation gardens and uh i feel like that was back in the day but we had nothing and it was all those who i first called i was working with sean brock in capital oh back in those days yeah but i would you know but i would just go crazy and it was so much fun you were talking about 2007 when you kind of right if you opened all those chefs i was in the middle of working with all those chefs at that time and it was a really fun time around how when they opened the eastland cafe and it was just it was a it was kind of a golden era it was a golden era man fun time two and a half years until 2008 2009 golden era we would i mean it was back when jim myers was writing tennessee and he still had the blacked out face and would rip you if you you know rip you in a professional way you know not not with some vendetta but you know i spoke to margo randy raven was uh an amazing mentor for all of us like just in business

54:59like i had a parking lot issue this lady i won't get into the details of it out of nolens but i only had nine parking spaces in my original spot and people would overflow in this lady's lot and she really wanted me there but she had to tell me she didn't want me there because she didn't want the liability so we had to get insurance i couldn't afford insurance with this lady's freaking five acre lot over here and uh only which an acre was parkable but uh randy that was the first time that i actually talked to randy and like he didn't just like give me some advice i literally went down to sunset grill i was like is randy here on a friday night i don't know who else to reach i don't know who could help me and um i'm gonna say i was around 0809 and he was very paternal like immediately like just i will help you whatever and then followed up and kept following up and in those same relationships with all the other names that were mentioned right he the old the old guard restaurant through here back then and was very kind to all us young whippersnappers coming up at the time well they're the ones who are the thing they created this this culture of we all support each other that's that is absolutely true i do a segment on my friday show called the local legend and i highlight a restaurant that's been around for 10 plus years every single week we had randy on two weeks ago we talked to randy just about what is it that makes your staying power and i i thought all the new restaurants go to love so we want to support the people who created what this is and it's been it's been really good we've enjoyed it yeah but thanks for joining us today oh thanks i like to end every show i give the guests a open mic to say whatever they want to the city of nashville we've got we listen to in 14 countries now so not not in mass amounts but have 14 countries have listened to the show very easy stop politicizing this freaking virus all right just let's all get on board let's slowly methodically get through this

57:07and turn off fox and cnn and just let's just let's just get through this together it's been a pleasure having you yeah all right i want to say a big thank you to pat martin for coming on nashville restaurant radio today hope you the listener enjoyed that episode if you did please hit subscribe on however you are listening to it if you wouldn't mind also if you enjoyed it please hit the five star button please leave a review if you if you enjoyed the show if you did not enjoy the show send me a message let me know why i'd love to know send it to me at any of our our socials at instagram and nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio or on our facebook page at nashville restaurant radio if you didn't know we now have a tiktok page and on the tiktok page we are putting out our chefs and restaurant owners reading one star reviews so they're coming out there first before we put them out we will have a new all barbecue edition coming out this weekend thank you for listening hope you're being safe out there love you guys bye