Pelican and Pig

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 am your host and today is reopening day. If you live in one of the rural parts of town, today you are allowed to open your restaurant. We're at 50% capacity and all kinds of other interesting restrictions and just guidelines. So what are those things and what are your rights as an employee? We're going to talk about those today. We got a two-parter. We're going to be talking with Nick and Audra Guidry and they are the owners of Eater Nashville's number one restaurant of 2019, The Pelican and Pig. They also own Slow Hand Coffee and Bake Shop in East Nashville and they are a married couple and they are just awesome. So in order to get kind of all of it in, we did this in two parts. Today is going to be kind of talking about labor and people and tomorrow we're going to be talking about The Pelican and Pig and Slow Hand Coffee Shop, how they met, all the fun and excitement that is involved there. So without further ado, let's get right into it. Okay, so I'm joined now with Nick and Audra Guidry and they are the chef and owners of Pelican and Pig and Slow Hand Coffee and Bake Shop. Welcome guys.

01:34Hello. Thanks for having us. Well, I am excited to have you guys on. Today is a big day. Around the state, the governor has announced that in rural areas, we can reopen restaurants up to 50% capacity and it's causing a bunch of conversations to happen. That's true. That's an understatement. Yes. So I've seen that you've been relatively vocal on social media about this and as a business owner, I want to jump right in today and just get right to that. So Governor Bill Lee has said that restaurants can now open 50% across the state in rural areas. However, in urban areas, such as Metro Davidson County, Mayor Cooper has rolled out a plan to open in four phases. Metro Nashville will not open restaurants until phase one, which will only happen after 14 days of the reduction in infections. Is that right? So far am I on track?

02:36It seems so. Okay. So you're not opening restaurants today. And first of all, one thing I've learned throughout this is the whole pandemic teaches everybody one thing. It's that you need to vote because no matter what you say, you have a vote, you have a voice. And I think that everybody in the world now, everyone in this city knows who Bill Lee is and who Mayor Cooper is. That's absolutely true. All right. So my actual question is, as a business owner, where are you guys at? You're in East Nashville. You have two businesses. Are you open right now? Neither business is open right now. Pelican shut down shortly after all of this started. So the tornado hit, which took our business down pretty far. I mean, the majority of our client base is in East Nashville. We get a certain number of people coming in from out of town, but East Nashville is largely our biggest supporter. And when the tornado hit, our business took a pretty big hit, understandably. But then what? Two weeks after that, all of this starts rolling out.

04:02So we never really got going again after that tornado. But right as all of this was hitting, we kind of took a step back. And when they started putting the rules in place of you have to take your occupancy down, you have to take seats away, we kind of took a step back and evaluated, does this even make sense for us? Not just financially, but rather not just financially as a business, but also for our staff members who rely on that money for their income. And we just decided we weren't set up for to-go orders. We weren't set up for the type of service going forward that a lot of these other restaurants were able to do. So we closed up at that point and just kind of decided we were going to watch and wait, see what would happen. We were in heavy communication with our staff every week, just providing updates. At first it was, hey, guys, we're going to shut down. Let's give it a week and see what happens. Hopefully this thing passes by and doesn't really culminate into something big, but then it did. It just sort of steamrolled at that point. It didn't even seem like there was a gradual buildup. It just went from nothing to everything. So we kept in communication with them and just said, look, this is what's going on. Let's wait till, I guess that point it was in May. So let's wait till the beginning of April and we'll touch base again and see where we're at. And if we need to start putting a plan in place for to-go orders or something like that, we'll evaluate that.

05:46It just didn't seem to make sense to us. We have a lot of friends that own restaurants. I've kept in communication with them, had a lot of phone calls throughout all of this with them how they're doing and those that are doing to-go orders. What does it look like? For us, it just, one, pulling in staff for it. Financially, we weren't sure that the to-go orders were going to help. Even if we just broke even on labor, we weren't sure. And the investment we would have to do to get ready to do to-go orders was just not something we were ready to do. And I think we ultimately just decided it was for safety sake, for our staff, for everybody else, it just made sense to not be part of the problem, so to speak. I totally understand that. Let me ask you this. Because one of the things I want to do is I want people to understand perspective. And a lot of that perspective I'm seeing in conversations on all these group sites is the perspective of the employee. And restaurant owners don't typically chime in a whole lot because I think there's this perception that the owners are the greedy ones that want everybody to come back to work. And it's interesting. So having you here, what happens, because May 3rd, it's going to be essentially two months, right? I mean, the tornado happened on May 3rd or March 3rd. The whole thing kind of shut down St. Patrick's Day was kind of the last hurrah for any restaurants that were still open. So we're really looking at two months that you guys have kind of been down. What does that do to you? You said doing to-go would barely pay the payroll, but kind of the right thing to do was what you did in close and let your employees start taking unemployment. But do you get unemployment? I mean, you still have to pay mortgage. You still have to pay rent. You still have to pay. Also, how are you guys doing?

07:46I mean, yes to most of the above. We haven't even filed for unemployment. We're fairly financially smart and responsible. And we were prepared enough for this. I mean, if this lasted a year, that's a different story. But if we have to wait this out a little bit, we weren't sinking at this point. So both personally and on a business level, we've been as financially responsible as I think is necessary to survive both on a business and on a personal level. But yeah, I mean, it's weird, man. All the bills keep coming in. We're not any different than anybody else. They say we're in this together, and we really all are. We're all in the same boat. Obviously, others are in different financial structures, and we're certainly not rich by any means. We're in our restaurant every day. We work in our restaurant. We're workers. That's what we do. I've seen you guys in the building. Every time I've been there, you've been behind the line cooking. Yeah, yeah. When we opened the restaurant, one thing we said was we built this out ourselves. Outside of the big contract work of electricians and plumbers, we did all of the other work ourselves. And so our blood, sweat, and tears is literally in that entire building. We laid every tile in the building. We built every wall in the building. And one thing we said was we just don't understand. And this is a personal choice. We're not by any means chastising anybody else, but I don't understand opening a restaurant and not being involved in it. I could never be

09:51the restaurateur that just sits back and runs the back end and nothing else. I think we're both a little too hands-on with how we like to approach things. So yes, we are owners, but we're also workers. For us, it's been hard seeing a lot of this through this process. You kind of hit the nail on the head. I think owners are generally looked at as greedy, money-grubbing. Everything is about the bottom line and what they can put in their pockets at the end of the year. And they don't care about their staff, this and that. I see it every day on the industry Facebook pages and all that. And while I think that there is some merit to some owners may be like that, definitely not all of them are. And we're certainly in the, we are not like that category. We genuinely care about our staff and their wellbeing. And exactly like you said, it was at a certain point closing down made more sense so that they could start taking unemployment.

11:08Everybody that I've talked to so far, this is the recurring theme. If you're listening to this out there, this is why you support locally owned and operated restaurants. The locally owned, and this is the difference between a chain restaurant and you go, it's just food versus nourishment. And when I say nourishment, it's when you dine at a place like the Pelican and Pig, you're supporting their local vendors. You're supporting the local staff, the husband and wife team that put everything on the line to open up business. You're supporting them who in turn support their local community. You're putting money back into what we do. So locally owned and operated is the definition of what they're doing at Pelican and Pig. And these are the people you need to be going out and dining for. This exact reason is what it is. And I just, I can't say it enough and I can't, I think another thing we can take away from this whole thing is exactly that. The reason why you need to be eating at locally owned and operated restaurants.

12:12Audra, what's your feelings right now? What are you going through? I mean, we're definitely on the same wavelength here. It's been difficult. We've been doing anything and everything that we can do for our staff. To be honest, we're a little bit frustrated at the recent PPP loan situation. We've been following that pretty closely and Nick has been a large voice on social media against, you know, kind of the unfairness of the whole situation. We have 23 people looking at us and relying on us to make the call and to kind of protect them, you know, as it sounds cliche enough to say that we're all a family, but our staff really is. And we just want to be in a situation where we can give them everything that we can in this time. Were you guys able to secure a PPP loan?

13:14We were not. That is still pretty baffling to me. You know, the Friday that it was released, I had been in communication with our bank all that week. You know, we have a really great relationship with our bank. We have a really good. We are now with Pinnacle, but we were with them back when it was Avenue Bank. So we had a really great small business relationship with a small hometown bank. You know, they were absorbed by Pinnacle, but the people that we worked with are still at Avenue are still the people that that are our contacts are still the people that we talk to at Pinnacle. So we still have that really solid relationship with them. And, you know, I was on the phone with them multiple times that week emailing back and forth with our banker. And, you know, he kind of gave me a heads up of everything that was going to be required. I pulled all the reports had, you know, I had physical copies in case I had to go to the bank and drop it off because we didn't know what the process was going to look like. But that Thursday he sent out the official requirements that were going to be necessary to submit the application. And I stayed up till about midnight that Thursday getting everything together, getting ready to submit so that when I woke up on Friday morning, it's the first thing I would do when I got out of bed. And that's what I did. So we were application number, I think 123 out of, you know, the however many thousands that this process and we somehow did not get funded. I cannot wrap my head around that. And I know that there are hundreds of thousands of other businesses there in the exact same boat they submitted super early. They had very, very low application number and saw nothing come from it. So I don't understand the problem.

15:18It's other issue. Right, right. Exactly. I mean, unfortunately, when it leaves our hands, the information that comes in is very slim. And, you know, whether whether there's some bias and applications, I don't know, I can't speak to that, you know, there's a lot of stipulation about all those things online and, and certain kickbacks to banks and all that. But obviously, I don't have a way to confirm any of that. So it's all just like I said, it's all speculation at this point. But it just seems odd to have a number in the low hundreds and not get funded. And I think you were the first person that I saw you put a post on Facebook. And you said, Here it is, guys, tip of the iceberg is you're you were the way I found out that Ruth's Chris got $20 million. You said this is the first one, I'm willing to bet you there's a bunch of them behind it. And I don't you were not wrong. Yeah, I mean, I understand your frustration now. I totally get why that would piss me out piss me off, too. For sure.

16:26It does anyway. Yeah, I mean, when you see one big business obtaining 20 million out of a 349 billion fund meant for small business, there's no way that they're the only ones, you know, and, and that's kind of why I said that I knew that there was something bigger coming. And sure enough, you know, it just snowballed out of control. And I was pissed, you know, it was not just for us, but for us. And when I say I was pissed, I'm pissed because, like my wife said, our staff depends on us for income. And while they're able to get this unemployment right now, all of our staff members, to my knowledge, make far more than that with us. So this was, you know, I know that, again, seeing people comment on social media, and in these industry groups, I know that there are some people out there that this is a significant upgrade for them. But all of our staff members make a very good living with us. And they are relying on us to get back to that standard that they become accustomed to. So this was a way for us to be able to provide them, you know, we have staff members that have multiple kids, we have staff members that are trying to save for school that, you know, they're there. We have staff members that are younger, younger in age and haven't financially established themselves yet. And they need this money, we have staff members that we have one staff member that lost everything in the tornado, you know, and he has no job right now, you know, that the unemployment helps, but that's not, it's not the standard that they need. And this program was a way for us to be able to provide that to them. So it's disheartening to see that the greediness in these big businesses. And then

18:31we find out these publicly traded businesses have dipped their hands into it and have obtained hundreds of millions out of the money that was supposed to go to small businesses and help them survive. You know, I mean, on a business level, yes, we can pay our rent with that. And that would certainly help us right now. Keep all this afloat. But again, the most important thing is the employees, the staff and to see this taken away from them to literally be robbed out of their hands is just, I can't wrap my mind around it. I can't wrap my mind around being the person in one of these larger corporations, one of these larger businesses that made the call. Hey, we found a loophole. We know that this is intended for small business, but we found a loophole that if we apply each individual location as a small business, we fit into this and we're going to take that money. I can't wrap my head around that. And that conversation definitely happened in a lot of boardrooms or via zoom that said, and a financial guy said, Hey, I found a loophole. What do you want me to do? And somebody said, do it. Right. So the trigger on it, somebody said, let's get it.

19:45So, I mean, if you're thinking about where you're going to a lot your money that you have, and I think everybody is recognizing that they're there ever their dollar is precious, or you're going to spend that money. I think that's now they're now these big companies are recognizing that that was a gamble. It's a gamble. Let's go see if we can do that. And now they're all realizing that they lost. There's a lot of backpedaling happening right now to kind of right the wrong. I think they've got their work cut out for them. You know, we all kind of saw the underbelly of what they're willing to do to small businesses. And fortunately, a lot of Americans are going to ask them for answers. As they should. Yeah. And I mean, backpedaling is exactly it, you know, and again, I've had several conversations with restaurant friends, owner friends throughout this process and in the days following kind of as that information was trickling into us. And I was really digging deep because I was just so pissed, just pissed off about all of this and seeing this greed happening. I was just irritated. So I was diving in on the night that I started hearing about all this on the day that that we found out that the funding had run out and we didn't make the cut for whatever reason. And seeing friends across the country who own small businesses that were in the same boat, I just started digging in to find out why. And that's when we started uncovering a lot of this stuff. And, you know, between Potbelly, Shake Shack, Ruth's Chris, and then, like I said earlier, all the public companies that later came. But, you know, then to backpedal and to kind of hide that as as we had a conscience, we're returning the money. This wasn't about a conscience. If you hadn't received the bad press, you never would have returned it. It's that it's that that that personal argument of are you actually sorry or are you sorry that you got caught and you're just sorry you got caught?

21:49Every one of them, you know, Ruth's Chris didn't return the money until their Facebook page was flooded with thousands, thousands of just hateful posts about what they're doing. And, you know, I mean, Shake Shack, I will say, you know, them returning the money kind of laid the stone in the path for the rest of them. Ruth's Chris figured out, oh, we should probably return this money. Now, now these big corporations, these publicly traded companies are being given a timeline, a deadline to return this money. So, you know, if Shake Shack led that that charge, great. But I don't that doesn't take the burden off of them to me. All right. Well, let's let's shift gears a little bit. And I'm asking you guys to go ahead and I don't know where you guys keep it. But if you go ahead and pull out your crystal ball for me and let's look deep into the crystal ball and let's look into phase one. Let's say we've gone two weeks. We're good. Metro Nashville. Mayor Cooper says, hey, you guys can open. We've gone two weeks or whatever. Today starts the day where Williamson County as other counties can now open.

23:04We're going to learn a lot from them over the next two weeks. Yes. But let's just say you're allowed to open. What are the things what goes through your brain when that happens? Let's say Mayor Cooper says next Monday you can open. What are the immediate things in your brain you have to do? Well, I mean, first and foremost for us, we would not be opening it. Um, we are still going to just sit and and sit in a watch and wait pattern. Um, but to get open, I mean, there is that's a whole bag of a whole bag of worms. Um, you know, there's a significant financial investment because I mean, the two of us went in one day and had to literally empty our entire walk in out there. Our walk in completely empty right now. We have no food or prep in our walk in and it all spoiled. So there's a significant financial investment in buying goods to sell, to prepare. Then there's bringing labor in three, four or five days ahead of time to prep everything to be able to open. Um, and the investment there versus kind of what the scope of phase one is for us just doesn't make sense. Um, not saying that phase one, the, the, um, guidelines don't make sense, but financially for us, it doesn't make sense that the timing doesn't make sense to open at 50% capacity and essentially have to close our, our bar area down. You know, we can still serve alcohol, but we can't have bar seating according to what the guidelines say. We immediately think to our staff then, and you know, right now they're obtaining X amount of dollars from unemployment. Could they even match that coming in and operating at 50% we don't believe that they could, you know, I think that people, I think there's enough

25:10people too reserved right now to go out to restaurants just yet. I think the trust has to be built a little bit, not, not necessarily in the restaurants, but just in society. Um, I think there's going to be a rush of people that are, that are, uh, restless, restless. That's what I'm looking for that are restless. They're cooped up. They're ready to get out, but I think that'll last a week or two. And then the second wave comes in and that's the people that aren't ready to go out. And I don't, you know, I think there's going to be a gap in between all of that. So for us, phase one doesn't mean a whole lot. You know, it's, it's going to be a lot of data gathering and exactly what you said this week is going to be a telltale for us. You know, I know places in Franklin open this morning and news crews are rushing in to, to get the footage of people walking in the door, but we just plan to kind of wait it out and see what's going on. And, and, you know, we're looking for those numbers. We're looking for safety. We're looking for a financial return for our staff that makes sense to pull them off of unemployment and bring them back in. To add to that, uh, most people on social media, I mean, you need not be observant. If you look around East Nashville, listen to what people are saying. They're scared to come out right now. Yeah. The large majority of them. And I would also venture to say being out of work for two months, a lot of people can't afford to go out in phase one. It's going to take a minute to bounce back from this.

26:44It is. And employees are scared to go back to work. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even right before we jumped on this with you, you know, I was looking at posts from people that they're getting callbacks today and they're, they're not ready personally, not ready. They're, they're afraid of, of what this first wave is. And, and, you know, as an owner that weighs heavy on our shoulders, you know, that's yes, we're ready to get back. We're ready to stop hemorrhaging money, paying rent and utilities and, and the, the debts that we still owe from building out this restaurant just a little over a year ago. I mean, we have a lot of money going out every month and yes, we're ready to get back and start making that money. But that, you know, our employees' safety and mentalities weighs pretty heavily on us. And it's just, I don't think mentally and emotionally people are ready to take this on yet.

27:47And I, you know, and I, I, I have really bad like asthma, you know, my lungs are, I, I, I'm terrible. This time of year I start coughing. I, it's just tough for me and I'm scared. I mean, me personally, I did my first podcast I did, I said, I'm a healthy male. I'm not scared, but I kind of am. Like, I don't want to go to the hospital and have nobody be able to come visit me and be there alone. And hopefully they have the right treatment for me. I don't know, but that would scare me to go back to work right now and touch people's plates and be around the general public and, you know, going into dish land. And I don't know, it just seems to me like, I don't know, just too many unknowns. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't, I definitely don't think you're alone in that. That's, I think that that is a lot of people's thoughts. And it's certainly part of our thoughts too, is even outside of our staff on our, on the customer level, to backtrack a little bit, I think, I think a lot of good things are going to come out of this. And I think, you know, we already have very strict sanitation policies in place. And I think you're going to see that be even furthered as restaurants start opening. I think even the ones that practice the best sanitation possible, I think are going to put even further steps in place. And so, you know, on the, on the restaurant level, I'm, I'm less concerned about the establishment. I'm more concerned about the people, because this thing is, is so kind of sneaky, you know, you could have no symptoms for multiple weeks. Yeah, like 14 days. Right. And then sometimes ever you're asymptomatic. Exactly. So, so you go into a restaurant, not knowing that you're sick or just kind of feeling maybe I've

29:48got, I mean, my wife and I both have really bad allergies right now. And we go to the grocery store and I cough just an allergy cough and I get looks, you know, people turn their heads. And so you go and think maybe you just have allergies or something minor and you go out to a restaurant, you infect four or five people while you're sitting there. That's, you know, there's significant risk there. And on a business level, there are certain optics there that I think a lot of us are very cognizant of right now. And that is something that is definitely weighing into our considerations about when we open, you know, that's, that's part of our thought process, thought, thought, excuse me, thought process is, you know, if that person comes in, if we put gloves, mask, et cetera, on all staff members, we're sanitizing everything, we've got sanitizing stations at the door, we've got everything that we need in place to be successful to fight this thing off in our establishment, to make our establishment safe. What happens when that one person who's asymptomatic comes in and gets people sick? You know, the world we live in right now is so driven by optics. It's so driven by social media and, you know, the influence of of the visuals, you know, if that person gets sick and four or five people get sick from that, if that gets out to social media, can you recover from the optics of that?

31:20You know, that's, that's, does it come back on the establishment? Well, were they, were they doing enough to prevent this from happening? Well, sure they were, but if they didn't know this person was sick and, you know, so that's just, there's a lot more to think about now than, than a straight line. It's, it's definitely a roller coaster of what ifs at this point. So let me ask you, I'm going to ask you to do something you probably won't want to do, but I'm just going to ask you to speculate for me. If you're one of those restaurants that you're watching the news this morning and the people are walking in and let's just say you're one of the employees that worked for that restaurant. You're making $875 a week right now in unemployment, 275 from the state, $600 federally. And this restaurant is reopening because they're in Williamson County and they're saying, you need to come into work today and you're one of the people like myself who doesn't feel comfortable going back into work. And, you know, by all means, 875 is not a bad living. Maybe that's what they're making before. Maybe it's not what they're making before, but maybe they just don't feel comfortable going into work. But this employer says, Hey, we're hiring people back. You need to come into work. Isn't that just put people in a really bad position? It really does. And I think that's the question most people are asking right now.

32:39What do I do? Yeah. I've, I've in the last 24 hours, I've probably seen 20 different instances of that exact question being asked. You know, we're being called in tomorrow. I don't feel safe. I'm not ready. I have, you know, like you, I have asthma, et cetera, et cetera. What are my options? I can't lose unemployment, but I'm not ready to go back to work. And I mean, I think that's, that's a big question. That's, that's a big concern. That's, I think it's fair for people to ask, but I think as an employer, I mean, I don't know the ins and outs of the unemployment system. I don't know the, I haven't looked super far into the ins and outs about at least the government stimulus portion of the unemployment. But my understanding is there is a way, not around it, but there's a way to still receive that funding. If you're not ready to go back, I don't know. I don't know what that exact route is, but you know, the governor and the unemployment office seem to be posting leads to the fact that you don't have to go back if you're not ready.

33:56But as an employer, if, if, I mean, right now opening at 50%, you don't need your entire staff. So if you pull your staff, if you've got 20 people and 10 of them are ready to come back, you've got 50% staff right there. The other 10 can an employer not just say, well, we don't need the rest of that staff. So we're still cutting hours. You know, the, the, one of the ways they're able to, to obtain this unemployment money is the job is not there. The hours are not there. Well, if we don't need a hundred percent of our labor, the job and the hours are still not there. So as an employer, I would venture to just say, okay, if 10 of you are not ready to come back, let's regroup in a couple of weeks. Once we gather information on our end and let's check your comfort level at that point. But for now, you know, you're still welcome to come back when we're ready to have you back. But right now, keep taking that unemployment. I mean, that, that seems responsible to me. It does. That's the, I think that is the, if you're one of your core values is do the right thing. I think that's what you need to be doing. So let me give you another scenario. And I kind of want to play devil's advocate a little bit here, because there's some realities to this that I think people also need to hear. It's kind of the other side of this coin. And that is if Tom Colecio is right, and one third of restaurants end up closing because of this whole thing, right? Let's just say we have a hundred thousand, I don't know the exact number.

35:32Let's just say we have a hundred thousand restaurant workers in the city, hospitality workers in the city. And if 30% of those go away, 33, 33%, 33,000 people don't have jobs. When this thing comes back, there's a hundred thousand people for 70,000 jobs. Yes. So right now there's an added pressure on you. If you don't take that job back, if they call you and they say, we need you to come back, let's just say your restaurant that wants to bring you got a big PPP loan. Part of the stipulation of getting the paycheck protection loan is that you have to spend 80, 75% of it on payroll. You have to bring back your entire staff and then it will be forgiven. So a lot of these companies are now because of this loan saying, I need you to come back and I'll put you on payroll. I'll have you clean or do whatever. I'll still pay you 8.75 a week, but I need you to be on payroll, come in and do whatever. And so if you say, I don't want to do that. I don't feel comfortable coming in together. I don't want to clean your restaurant for, I could be at home making 8.75 a week. Now there becomes an interesting quandary because when we get into phase three or four, everybody's back a hundred percent. Here we go. Now those people have a fear that they're not going to get their jobs back. Is there a side of that that people could kind of say, maybe I just put on all the PPEs I possibly can make it through right now?

36:58Yeah. I mean, that's a, man, there's a loaded box there. There's so many facets to this conversation and this is something that I've been thinking about for the last week, really. There's been a certain level of kickback to, it's been, I don't want to say it's been hard being a business owner because that's not what I mean, but there's certainly new levels of thought and responsibility put on owners at this point. And I think I posed this question out on Facebook a few days ago of, you know, I'm seeing a lot of pushback on owners for taking their staff off of unemployment by using this PPP loan. You know, we seek out this PPP loan for the betterment of our staff and to be able to pay our rent, to be able to keep the business where they make their living open. But that in turn takes away their safety net of unemployment. And with this loan only being an eight week loan, which, you know, there's another loaded box there, the holes, the gaping holes in this program, you know, why are we, why are we being forced for one to use, you know, if someone gets $100,000 loan to pay staff and they have a small little stipend on the end of it to pay their bills, why are they being forced to pay that across eight weeks? That's ridiculous. I mean, could that not be a six month loan a year? Here's the money. If you use it in a 12 month period to pay your payroll, we'll forgive it. You know, if you use 75% of it, whatever that timeline is, eight weeks seems crazy. They're trying to supplement. So they're saying we'll give them 875 a week. But if you go ahead and put them back on your payroll, we're going to stop paying them

39:00that money. And we'll just have you pay them that money. And that way, or the other, right? That's exactly it. You know, this, this was a way to alleviate the unemployment system. This was a way to have us pay the unemployment. And that's fine. I don't mind that. You know, especially if I can control how much my staff gets paid. Because here's the other thing is, let's say you get this BPP loan and your, your payroll for a month is, again, let's say $100,000, just for argument's sake. I've got $100,000 on average per month that I pay out to my staff. I don't have to just pay them 875. I can pay them their living wage that they were making with us. But I also like, we don't have to require them to come in the building to receive that. I think that's also something that falls on, on these owners and managers that are in charge of this is, you know, that was one of our things. If we got this loan, I'm not going to require you to work physically for that money. But there is, there is an opportunity you in order to get reopened, you do have to clean your restaurant. You do have to, there's a bunch of setup involved that you do need your staff for, right? Right. That's, that's absolutely true. But do you need it two months out? You know, I mean, I think once we see the actual timeline of when we're ready to open and we communicate with staff, Hey, here's our thoughts. Where do y'all stand on this? How many of you are ready to come back? And I know from speaking with our staff, I would say 99% to a hundred percent of them are ready to get back to work. But, you know, you pull them in a couple of days before you open, let's 23 people in a building, go at it. You know, that I think that that's fair. I don't think you need to pull people in a month ahead of time to start

41:01cleaning the building. I mean, I think you can still use this assistance to pay your staff without pulling them in and make them uncomfortable going out into public, going into a building that hasn't been sanitized. You know, I mean, granted, if that building has been empty for the last two months, I mean, just based on the timeline of this virus, any virus that would be in that building would be dead. But if they're not comfortable coming in, it's, it's okay for you to say, look, I want you to come back. So we're going to invest in you. We're going to give you, we're going to pay you this money with the understanding that you do want to come back to work with us. And I mean, that kind of, that to me speaks volumes about an establishment and about the ownership and the leadership of an establishment. If you're willing to take a step back and say, this is not, you know, yes, we have things that we have to do and we will get there. But right now this is not about us. This is about all of us. Going back to what you said about restaurants closing, you know, we are going to see an, before we closed, we were at a, we were in an enormous labor deficit. There were so many more jobs than there were people to fill these jobs. Coming out of this, it's been flapped on its head. It's completely the opposite. Now there are going to be far more workers than there are jobs. Now on the businesses side, yes, part of this is true that at a certain point you do have to have that labor to start operating.

42:46That's a hundred percent true. But I think there's a human side that, that at least on a small business level can and should come in where you say, okay, well, phase one, we don't need a hundred percent labor. Phase two, we don't need a hundred percent labor. Phase three, we don't need a hundred percent labor. Really, it's not even until phase four and beyond that we need to bring everybody back. If, if someone's not comfortable coming back and you value that person, why wouldn't you bookmark that place for them? You know, yes, there are going to be a hundred thousand other people, 30, whatever the number is, that many people looking for jobs after this. But just because someone said, Hey, I know we're in phase three, but I'm still, I'm not comfortable. Can I just wait it out a little bit? Absolutely. You know, is, is there harm, as long as your labor's covered, if it's not, then that's a conversation you need to have with that person. Like, Hey, we have to have X number of people in X number of stations. If we don't have that, we can't operate.

43:53We cannot adequately operate this business on a successful level. Are you, you know, is there something we can work out? Do we need to have something even higher attempt to come in and fill that position, whatever the case may be. But if it's just a matter of this person is not ready to come back, should we not bookmark that place for them for when they are ready? I think that's the show. Just tossing people aside and saying, well, you're not ready to come back. So I've got 10,000 other people lined up that I can get in your spot. We shouldn't. I mean, this isn't a method of leverage. And, and I know that's going to happen. And that, that makes me angry, you know, and, and I hope to God that doesn't happen on a small business level, but yes, like I said, there is going to be that time when that conversation has to happen. Like guys, we have to go, you know, we've passed go. We need to collect that $200.

44:57We have to have everybody here to operate. If you're not ready, let's have a discussion and figure out what we need to do. But to just toss people to the wayside and to have people actually fearing that really kind of speaks volumes to this industry. I'm going to do it for part one of my interview with Nick and Audra Guidry. We are going to talk tomorrow. You're going to hear part two where we discuss all things about them, how they met, how their business works. We'll learn about the Pelican and pig. We learned about their background, their passions, all of the fun that goes into what they do on a daily basis will be tomorrow. So if you like this podcast, please click subscribe with whatever way you're listening to it. We certainly appreciate you listening to it and we hope you're all being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.