Randy Rayburn

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. And hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I will be your host today. And we've got a very special show for you, all set up. So without further ado, I'm just going to jump right in. We have the pleasure today of having the one, the only, Randy Rayburn. Randy, you've been called one of Nashville's culinary forefathers, and you've been in this industry for 45 years. How are you doing today? Well, I'm pretty thankful to be alive and to be a survivor not only of the restaurant hospitality industry, but also so many friends of mine have been impacted by the tornado and now the double, triple whammy of the new pandemic. And finally, our federal and state leaders are beginning to understand the dramatic and serious nature of the situation and its impact on all of us going forward. So I want to get into all of that and I want to talk to you about everything you just described. But for our listeners, if you're out there and you've been living under a rock and you don't know who Randy Rayburn is, tell my listeners who you are.

01:35Well, I'm a Tennessean born and raised in Milan, Tennessee. I'm a 27-acre farm with five acres of strawberries. I first washed dishes in the fourth grade at Park Avenue Elementary and worked in Milan Supermarket through high school and sat groceries and then later on did every job in the restaurant and didn't really get into the restaurant business until I was 25 while going to night law school thinking I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. It unfortunately came to my senses, and as I tell people, I couldn't pass up a bar to take the exam, so I went to work with a roommate of mine in the hospitality industry, and fortunately one of my co-workers, who was a boss, all the staff but I and my roommate were off the cruise lines out of Fort Everglades, Florida, and he taught me how to back weight and to do garrison table side cooking and more, and I taught him how to play the wire spoker and how to get laid at the goal rush. Sounds like a good trade. Since then I've opened up 13 restaurants and working on number 14 and just finally opened my own restaurant with my own money, and November of 1990 I had sold my home and opened up Sunset Grill, which was restaurant number 12, and I worked in and managed more and done a lot of startups and a lot of turnarounds for people, letting people pay for my postgraduate education in the hospitality industry. I was a beverage manager at Ockerland Hotel in the early 80s, attended the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York after that for a while. Did not complete the program by any degree, but I learned a great deal of professionalism, and then in 97 bought Midtown Cafe, and then opened up Cabana in 2005 with my partner, managing partner Craig Clifton, now deceased chef Brian Yule, and then closed Sunset Grill on New Year's Eve of 2014, which was the victim of really the Great Recession 2.0 of 089

03:38and the flood of 10, and I'm now in the process of opening up the Elston Place Soda Shop for my client, Tony Girantana, as well as just recently closed Midtown Cafe and Cabana restaurants last Tuesday and Wednesday because I felt it was unsafe for my employees to continue to be working, not knowing if people were coming in were infected or not, and the good news is all of them have already applied and received unemployment benefits checks to their accounts starting this past Friday. So that's got to be... It hurt to do it Brandon, it really it hurt my soul and I cried many times over it, but I felt it was the best thing to do for my people. Some people have gone on to do focus on the do-go and delivery business and for me that was only losing money, not quite as fast as staying open. Wow, so that was a lot, that's a lot of information you just threw out and I want to, like I said, I want to get back into your last two weeks of your life and what that's been like, but again to go back in your time, you said 13 restaurants, you opened Sunset Grill in 1990, did you say? Yeah, November 1990. I sold my home and put all the chips on the table because my CPA accountant Gary W. Smith said the worst thing that could happen was that I was paying rent and looking for a job if things didn't work out.

05:15And it worked out really well. I will tell you that I have a special place in my heart for the Sunset Grill as somebody who lived in Hillsboro Village and somebody who had my rehearsal dinner at the Sunset Grill. I will always remember that wonderful restaurant, the many, many, many dinners I've had there and that little bar. It was just such an absolutely amazing restaurant for those of you who are new to Nashville that are listening to this, you didn't get to visit the Sunset Grill, you absolutely missed out. Well, I also got to serve your father and other family and just, Nashville's a big small town and knock on wood, we were, we had a great run but unfortunately life and circumstances make this a perilous business where we manufacture perishable food with a highly labor-intensive sales and marketing team. Very, very much so. So you were at the open Sunset Grill and your next restaurant that you did was you said you bought Midtown Cafe? Right, I was looking to do another restaurant to diversify and John Petruccelli, the owner, called me looking for something and I told him, I said, John, I told you I was always interested because I enjoyed going there occasionally on Sunday nights when I was not working on Sunday nights and liked it so much the price was reasonable, it gave me terms over five years to pay and bought an existing restaurant that opened up in 1987 and will reopen as soon as humanly possible because I've got people like my general manager, Doug Stevenson, who's been there 24 years plus, Mike Wyatt, who's been there two months less than that, Dale King, a senior server there who has joined me in 1989 at Moonbeams of all places and that worked with me at Sunset Grill and we used to call Midtown Sunset Village, we're old Sunset employees but you retire smaller and a slower pace.

07:10You know, we've got a number of people, two bartenders with 17 plus years, my chef's been with me 15 years, sous chef 14 years has started with me as a dishwasher. We've got a core team of very solid people and real professionals because that's what we're about, you know. I like to work with people who were dedicated to our profession and this is what we do and we try to do the best that we can and I was very proud of what we were doing and we were up actually 24 percent last year, year to date at Midtown and 33 percent through the end of February and then dropped precipitously two weeks ago. Of course, so you've kept employees that long and I think anybody who's worked in this industry understands that the turnover rate is very high. In order to keep people that long, you've got to be doing something right as an operator. What's kind of your philosophy behind how you own and operate a restaurant? In starting a restaurant, I really believe in top down initially in terms of the lines of authority and responsibility, but you have to soon thereafter after you get through the opening phase, you have to turn it into a top-up restaurant where it's the employee's restaurant and they have to do what they have to do to make it their place of notice so they don't have to move and start over again. I've been successful because I take care of great employees and they tell me who the slackers are and people who shouldn't stay in the kitchen or in the, you know, in the wait station and who they want to work with and not. I call it the blackball system in that sense of I let my key employees, the ruling clique, run my restaurants. I let them do their jobs. I give them the tools to do it, the commensurate authority responsibility to carry it out, try to pay good people well and take good care of them. Lord knows I'm not perfect, but I've been successful

09:10and a lot of my proteges have gone into different aspects of the industry, both as owners, as chefs and in the wine and spirits and beer beverage industry and I've probably got 22 dozen people into that industry alone over the last 30 years. All right, at least. I mean, I still see people. So, I mean, I've worked with you on numerous occasions. However, I've never worked with you. So, I've worked in the produce world with a couple different companies and I've sold produce to both Midtown Cafe, Midtown Sunset and Cabana and I've worked with all of your chefs but I've never worked with you. I've seen you in the restaurant a lot but I've always, you've always let your leaders lead. You've always let the people make the decisions what's best for the restaurants and it's amazing because your chefs always took ownership. They always felt empowered to make the right decisions. Well, that's what I try to do. I try to delegate and give people the responsibility as well as the authority to do their jobs instead of holding their hands and if people make a mistake, okay, learn from it. It's not rocket scientist stuff that we're doing here but learn from it and move forward. The people who are good, you know, they grow. You gotta let people grow and, you know, years ago my friend, Emeril Lagasse, I asked him, he used to go to town to do TV commercials out of Greenland Productions at our plant. He said, why do you keep opening all these restaurants? He said, if I don't give them a chance to grow, somebody else will and I've, you know, I've worked with some of the best chefs in town. Deborah Paquette was my chef at Third Coast back in 1985 and 86 and 87. Yeah, she's okay. There's none better. There's none better. No. Not in this town and I'm fortunate that I consider myself a friend of the Tandy Wilsons and the Pat Martens and others, the Hal Holdenbox and others who are Margo McCormick

11:12and her partner Heather. You know, those of us who have been in this business a long time, we're not adversaries. We're friends and allies because we all realize that we really control our destiny of what goes on inside our four walls. 100%. So you had Sunset Grill, Midtown Cafe came next and then Cabana and Cabana is still operating out of the same spot in Belcourt off of right there in Hillsborough Village. So when you brought on Craig and Chef Brian, I kind of want to talk about them for a minute because they're really special people to you in what they do. How was your relationship throughout the years and I had a very special relationship with Chef Brian Newell as I did with a lot of chefs but he was one that was very hard, very relentless, knew what he wanted but once I feel like I earned his respect, he opened up and I really got to see a lot of the genius that was him. How did those relationships shape what you did at Cabana? I want to make a statement about that Brian would say and you can tell me if you've heard it or how many times you heard it. Sure to the fucking world. But he would say that, oh yeah, yeah you know what and he would it would be a quick comment. Oh sure, yeah. First of all, Craig Cliff started with me in 1987 at F Scott's when it was on Bandy with Drive in Reed Hills. He was 19 years old and was getting his degree in aerospace aviation at NTSU and worked there with me and then when I left after I thought I owned a part of that and ultimately won the lawsuit with my business partners but had to move on and then he rejoined me at Sunset Grill a few years later early on I guess about 1993 or four and has been with me ever since and I gave him an opportunity. He and Chef Brian and Brian joined us at Sunset Grill in 1999 as a sous chef and quickly became, I promoted him to executive chef because

13:12he was the finest chef I've ever worked with and Brian was from McQueen's New York. He'd come down here during high school and came up through the ranks at Opera Land Hotel working under Chef Ziggy Eisenberger and I'd worked with Ziggy but I was management of the front of the house although I'd started in Opera Land as an on-call banquet waiter and then posted for management and wound up running you know what today would be a 30 million dollar a year outlet called Rett's Restaurant with an all-southern and all-american wine list. Craig was just a very bright technical person. He's got a lot of tech skills and he decided he didn't want to be a bus pilot, a bus driver in the sky as he called it and loved the restaurant industry and I didn't want him to move from working with me and Brian was the best I've ever worked with so I gave them a sweat equity opportunity to earn 20% each of their shares. Brian unfortunately you know mentored a number of chefs in this town and not unfortunately but he unfortunately passed a few years ago at age 52 of cancer that came about quite suddenly and it really had hurt me and Craig and all of us to the core those who knew him because he was a irascible lovely sort but he was the hardest working hands-on no kind of clipboard chef he got his hands dirty prepping plating up doing everything that's possible as opposed to some of these administrative bullshit artists that call themselves chefs. Well there you go that's that's what I was looking for because I know that those relationships that you have are lasting long relationships and I want since I've worked with Craig so long and he's become such a good friend to me and I see him every year at Soup Sunday and he's at so many different events I know he gives so much time that I just wanted to I wanted to give him a little love because he's such a such just an amazing guy and I'm I'm I love him to death. Brandon we all need to give a little love to Craig right now because he and his wife Allison are at home and have tested positive with coronavirus and it hurts my heart

15:20to say it but I feel the need to be just straight up front with you and everybody that he tested he's they're not severe symptoms thank god he got he went to two weeks ago to get tested and it took five or six days for a response to come back positive on him and they had a false negative on his wife Allison who works at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and they're home right now and he's doing better and she's very weak and they both have symptoms but not severity of symptoms that should be appearing by now at this stage in the virus his life cycle and so we all have a lot to be thankful for but well I'll definitely say say a prayer for them sometimes I just want to cry this week hmm so I don't know how you transition off of that and I think that maybe we can I want to ask just a couple more questions I want to jump into what's been going on if you could go back to your 25 year old self when you open when you got into this like really the hardcore restaurant business what advice would you tell yourself I would tell myself to continue to do what I did which was to let other people teach me and what I call the graduate school of life I've gone to a little bit of graduate school for degree in public administration and hated that world working in that world in government at the state and metro levels and then went to night law school at the what's now the national school of law going to school at night working during the day and it just wasn't for me the entertainment industry was a little really it wasn't everything that it appeared to be it was just if not more political in the world of politics on Capitol Hill here in Washington not work for Senator Lloyd Benson of Texas in Washington DC on his campaign and on two other presidential campaigns as fundraising or

17:29you know different kinds of roles as a political operative and press secretary in campaigns and that world was adversarial and I didn't want to do it I found myself living with a roommate Jack Walley who'd come back from the culinary institute in New Haven before it moved to Hyde Park and fell in love with the industry and I believe I'm blessed to this day because I still love what I do Brandon not everybody can say that about their work life and I love what I do and I love most of the people that work with me and you know and the ones that I don't love I you know they leave me alone I leave them alone and we all get along and try to respect each other as long as there's respect and and caring about each other things work out but the advice that I would give to myself then was do what you do do what you would love and and learn wherever you could learn when it's no longer fun leave I used to tell tell the owners that I would stay until I got to know them and then I'd be leaving that's interesting that's good stuff so there is at Nashville State Community College there's the Randy Rayburn School for Culinary Arts how did that come about in 1998 Opperman shut down their culinary apprenticeship program which I called the indentured servant program that opened up when I was in management the Gaylord in the early 1980s it was there paying minimum wage and people worked for four years and came out with their certified cook working cook papers and at that time there was nowhere else in middle Tennessee to go for a culinary education in the industry we thought was growing pretty fast at that time with explosion of restaurants and hotels even at that point in 1998 I turned to the president of national state community college and set up a luncheon with him and was advised that that it was a great idea and it was definitely needed and they'd love to do it but there was a freeze on and nothing nothing to change that I said well I bet I can unfollow it and fortunately my friend

19:34Charles Smith though I don't since undergraduate days at the University of Tennessee Knoxville was chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents and I went to Charlie and explained to him the situation that there was a whole industry that employed one out of 10 people in middle Tennessee or in this in this MSA market and that we had no means of education for people who wanted a degree in the culinary industry aspect of that hospitality industry and he agreed with me and opened the doors and said to the frozen the freeze was taken off of that and we arranged for different people to design the kitchens and vendors and the suppliers and people donated money and equipment the school opened the doors in 1999 and we had a you know graduating class brought in a great top flight instructor who I put on my own payroll with Sunset Rail part-time whether he showed up or not to supplement his income and thus we started the the national you know the culinary school and it was named after me in I guess 2013 after we had opened up the Antioch campus in 2011 and then had moved the original single kitchen on White Bridge Road main campus out to lower Alabama excuse me Antioch whatever we're supposed to southeastern campus now that's the correct terminology and it's you know we wound up a few years ago bringing in chef Paul Brennan from outside Oklahoma State for Penn State guy he's pretty good and we've added a number of degrees and programs we've got over 200 had over 250 students they're all being taught online as of last week with classes started back up and we've got some great instructors Mary Lou Tate we've got chef Robert Siegel who you know worked for Paul Prudhomme at the Commander's Palace and Trish Madison and others and you know it's a real thriving program and we added two years ago the uh two-year degree program in hospitality management and supervision so it's kind of

21:43the the open door with affordable tuition or even free tuition for those who qualify and including for adults under the Tennessee ReConnect program to be able to get a degree and we've got students of all ages from high school to people in their 50s and even 60s who come there and we're putting out some good graduates now and we really have some people helping overlook the program like chef Max Knoffel of the music executive chef of the music city center oh yeah and others and you know I recruited Max I sit on that board of the music city center and I was on the the old national convention center board for 10 years and a chair at the mayor's task force for the start of the music city center with Marty Dickens back in 2004 and five so you know for me it was about giving back to the community and raising funds for that and taking a little bit more of a leadership role in recent years trying to help it grow because you know we've got a fire hose problem and only garden hose solutions if you're listening to this and you hear Randy talk about what he did in order to get the culinary and the culinary program put together at Nashville State I think you can hear that story and it's like wow that's cool man but in order to do that all of the work that it takes by somebody to have the passion for an industry to say I'm gonna spearhead this and I'm gonna get it going and I'm gonna make it happen the amount of phone calls and time and energy that you did while running and operating owning multiple restaurants and helping people out the love that you have for an industry in order to to facilitate that and be on the board for all of these different things I don't think people recognize how much time it takes and how much love it takes to do that and I want to say thank you you're very kind Brandon but I always tell my my friends and staff I get tired of busing

23:49tables and really a phone call here and a phone call there and a meeting here and a meeting there it doesn't take that much time and anybody that's worked with me will tell you just how fool-headed I am about getting my way once I decide to do something and willing it to happen because that's just that's who I am because at this point in my life my godfather taught me years ago who adopted me when I came to Nashville at 21 and he told me do something lead follower get the hell out of my way and he was a sergeant major in the marines and I never served in the military thank god but but I learned from him be passionate about what you believe in whatever you believe in go for it and make it happen and don't let anybody stand in your way don't run over anybody but don't let them push you around either no I I love that and it's just it's you hear right now we're in this time where people are at home and they're sitting around and they're watching tv and they're kind of hanging out and they're displaced a lot we have a lot of people who aren't working right now and I contend that this is a this is a really big opportunity for you to to really hunker down and get stuff done plan figure out what you're going to do I said this is a good opportunity for anybody in this industry to reinvent themselves do some studying learn about wine learn about food learn about all these things and come back better than you've ever been I start off a podcast last week and I said people are going to be going into this quarantine like a butterfly goes into a cocoon or chrysalis and what comes out of this thing people are either going to be white they're going to have the the quarantine 15 and they're going to have a beard and they're going to be like I guess I gotta get out and do it or you I think we're going to see people come out of this thing that are completely like buff they're going to lose 20 pounds they've been working out every day they've been studying they've been reading books and we're like who are you and people are going to come out of this and I think it's a choice and what you just described

25:52was when I'm bullheaded when I want to do something nothing can get in my way and I want people out there to recognize that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it this is a tremendous opportunity for people to both turn inward and turn outward to to seek out what they want to do with their lives going forward because this is kind of a reset button for everyone about what's really important in their lives and those people in their lives and those friends and family and others that that matter to them but it's also about growing and how do we grow and there's many online programs whether on the culinary side or the hospitality side there's online programs from the Culinary Institute or Johnson and Wales or wine training programs or other spirits and beverage programs that are out there there are all kinds of service programs and there's programs that you can do online from Cornell for those people who have that kind of interest I mean there's just all kinds the master series that a lot of you may have seen on Facebook programs some very talented people teaching teaching video courses out there and and it's about doing what you love and love what you're doing and whom you're doing it with and if you don't love what you're doing and whom you're doing it with it's time to change just let that change begin now within you 100 so that's good you know I think this is a good segue to get into the current state and thank you for taking me down that memory lane I just really want our listeners to know your passion and what you've done for this industry in Nashville because it's unparalleled in my opinion and I'm like I said I'm honored to be speaking with you today so let's it's just me Brandon I know but come on Randy you can you gotta know it I don't take myself seriously why should you or anybody else well I I have a healthy respect for you so tornado happens early March

28:01Monday night there's a tornado what how did you find out were you up that night did you know the tornado came what was that Tuesday morning like for you I'd had my sound on my phone turned off at bedside I woke up because of the noise and maybe the weather alerts on my phone but I heard the sound and wrote and been really rolled over and went back to bed I live at East Nashville about a mile from where it occurred and my ex and our two young boys 12 and six were about a half mile from that you know and it hit friends of mine businesses on Main Street as well as going through five points and friends whose homes are totally destroyed and restaurants that my boys love I love taking to like soda shop or burger up and you know five points meat pizza thank god Margo was spared and others and you know Loughlin was you know out of power for 10 days and you know more other people were destroyed I mean it best brands lost their warehouse you know that that night and they bought a new warehouse on Friday and were up and running at 90 plus percent by the following Wednesday so Nashvilleians don't know the meaning of no but I woke up and to a flurry of texts that I hadn't paid any attention to because I was sleeping until I woke up at 5 30 and realized that the world had changed for a lot of people and saw the drones flying on television just like oh my god because I saw homes of friends that were decimated and literally destroyed and people friends like Kim Totsky and Lars and just you know it just opened up turnip truck there on on Charlotte the last couple days it's just uh devastating because those of us who've gone through the 98 tornadoes you know it happened

30:05again you know and if the whole thing goes in there wasn't a trailer park anywhere near about because it uh it really kind of swathed not only here but Mount Juliet and god bless the poor people in Putnam County Cookville area that that were you know even more impacted and more deaths there it really put a hurt on a lot of people and then we have this follow-up sucker punch that we saw coming and unfortunately our federal and state leaders have done all too little and too late to uh to prepare properly and to prevent the anticipated now hundreds of thousands of deaths great great leadership yeah so so that's that's the the current state right so March 13th they closed all the major leagues NHL closed Major League Baseball NBA all that stuff closed and during that time what did you do so you still have Midtown Cafe is open and Cabana was open at the time on March 13th and all these things closed and then all of a sudden it becomes a it becomes real what's the first thing that you do as a restaurant owner well Brandon I had been evaluating it for some time because three weeks before the 17th I had canceled our spring break trip to Orlando because I'm the kind of guy that reads voraciously uh every source that I can get when I've got some downtime I read digitally the Times and the Post daily as well as scan I scanned them all including the Tennessean and other sources of information and I felt that there was a storm coming to our country and that it was not being taken seriously and I prepared myself and my businesses for that I actually had I bought cases of food I'm not a prepper but I actually

32:12went ahead and bought a number of things for myself my family I didn't want to scare everybody by talking about my real concerns but I was preparing for more challenging troubling times and I unfortunately um made the right decision but being the father of two young boys I had to be prepared to look after them as far as my work family and businesses I was talking to people about that and our business was you know the week the week prior to the first two weeks of the first week of March was phenomenal I mean record-breaking numbers up up over 35 percent and then the week before we wound up closing on the 17th at midtown on the 18th of cabana we were doing fine in the middle of the week until those announcements and by the weekend businesses had dropped businesses had dropped at both restaurants approaching 50 percent and on after the mayor's board of health order on Sunday I knew that things were going to get difficult very very quickly we opened for business on Monday I had prepared a whole lengthy email and statement of what we were doing with enhanced COVID-19 serve safe procedures that were kind of borrowed from everywhere I could find online around the country in order to keep our staff and keep our customers safe but I realized that Monday that as the bottom fell out of customers dining with us that I couldn't put my staff myself my sons everybody else's families at risk and I knew that we didn't have sufficient funding and resources because after closing sunset I wrote really struggled financially paid all my bills and debts then had a divorce and didn't have after my lawyers got through with it all I didn't have much left in the way of savings

34:13but we fortunately had no long-term debt at midtown cafe north about and I realized that having gone through the closing of sunset that cash is king in business triage where you make the hard decisions that do what you feel you have to do to do the best for the most people and I wound up closing midday after lunch on Tuesday after we cut staff on Tuesday at midtown and sent people home and then cabana did 98 dollars that night I didn't know that Craig had tested positive but we spoke that next morning and it had done 98 dollars in sales I said we're closing we have to do what we can do to be able to come back when the marketplace changes and people feel safe to come out and die with us again and that for me for what we sold to people to go food and delivery food where I mean we we've done seven individual a total of seven orders of to go or delivery food on monday at midtown cafe and that wasn't going to keep anybody employed and only lose more money so in order to cut my losses I made the hard decision had people gave people information that that afternoon on how to sign up for unemployment amanda one of the managers and event planners at cabana did the same for all the employees at cabana and a lot of them started receiving money friday online and hopefully we'll get their federal government checks from the cares act that were passed on friday for 600 a week for all those who are eligible for tennessee unemployment benefits which is fairly limited it benefits at 275 a month but tennessee.gov jobs for tennessee is the place to go and you can register online and I recommend everybody do it now because this is going to be a lot longer than anybody wants it to be and a lot and it to quote dr Fauci it's only it's only going to get worse before it gets better even president trump realizes that now and the governor I read just before coming online with you has issued a stay

36:17at home instructions finally because tennessee has been ranked 49th in preparedness by fox business news as of my reading saturday so thousands of people are going to die here in tennessee no no one knows how many and everybody thinks this is a flu get over yourself quit fooling yourself if you know I'm so mad at these people who you know don't care about people's lives of whatever age group oh and by the way Brandon the largest number of people in tennessee with the coronavirus are age 21 to 30 I think there's like 40 percent of people who are taking it very very seriously there's 40 percent of the people that are like this is a hoax and then 20 percent of people are like I'll be okay I fall into the 40 percent of people that are like taking this thing very seriously and not leaving my house I feel like people don't you can't see this thing you don't know what surface it's on the only way to stop spreading it is to stay at home and not go out and spread it and it's I see people on Facebook posting pictures of like hugging friends and hey it's 80 degrees outside we went canoeing and I'm like stop doing that just put it on hold for another couple weeks stop it Brandon Darwinism will be at work survival at fittest huh Malthus predictions are coming full fold and the greatest impact on on climate warming is happening right now as economic activity slows down across the planet slowly slowly you know one what one area at a time is one of my best friends called he said it's a slow moving biological asteroid hitting our planet it's a it's an interesting way to put it for sure and it's humbling when you think about all those people in other countries and refugee camps and

38:21others there's what 40 50 million refugees around the world that have no look at india with 1.3 billion people you know locked down even with right rates of two percent what's two percent of 1.3 billion people so that's a big number yeah what's two percent 300 330 million people in this country 660 000 this is no joke no this is serious life-altering reality and we can all see it every day and i think that so you think it's going to get worse before it gets better what do you think i agree with dr falchi i'm glad that she that he and uh dr burks were able to convince the president his advisors of the seriousness of it all and i wish we'd take it a lot more serious a lot sooner and had the ppe equipment that our you know first line of you know first line of defenders it's you know the medical industry and profession are are the people fighting on the first lines and willing to to put their own health at risk you know to save people and god bless them for doing it because i can't imagine the battlefield conditions that are going on in some of the major cities now in seattle and then in chicago and detroit and i mean they're all reading about it elsewhere and i've been reading uh emails from friends have sent from doctors in new york and other places we're really talking about the realities of the decision making that you have to make about who lives and who dies and do not resuscitate yeah that's that's that's just a scary scary thought to think and i've talked about flattening the curve and on this show that we've got us we've got to just slow it down i feel like everybody's going to get it at some point but not everybody at one time the way that this thing spreads our hospitals are just going to be completely overtaken and um we've got to pay attention this is real we americans are not going to do what germany did

40:24or south south korea did or hong kong or singapore i became really aware of it because my physical therapist that i work with is from hong kong and her mother is 80 is still there and we would talk about it or text each other or send each other articles about what was going on there going back to you know early february and that's what heightened my awareness of it and following it and i think that america is going to pay a very heavy price for this unpreparedness and i i'm thankful for some of the leadership that we have had i'm thankful that congress was finally able to act in a bipartisan manner during this time of crisis but this is going to make the great recession and or the the depression of the 30s look like child's play so what do you think this is going to play on the nashville restaurant scene our mom and pops can be able to survive this let me talk a little bit more macro than just nashville i think there are 11 million independent restaurants in the united states that employ 11 million employees i fully see um without proper help from the federal government in terms of governmental guaranteed loans and other factors i fully see 30 to 50 of those businesses closing within a year i think the same numbers can apply here it depends upon the leadership of our elected leaders both at the federal and state level and to the degree that they realize that helping with this safety net to ensure our economic recovery is as quickly as possible there are lessons to be learned from eight nine and ten and the economic stimulus that worked and didn't work i've read some of that work by mark sandy and others last night but i think that you know overall we americans have not taken this

42:25seriously whether it's the information that's out there from johns hopkins or others about what to do and what not to do the the full the full impact of the transition of our industry to online to go and delivery is going to be accelerated for those people and companies who do survive the uh the the changeover only those businesses that really understand cutting overhead and survivability and whether or not there's assistance with mortgages on moving some of those payments to the back end whether it's mortgages or rent or other factors or people have empty buildings that no one will be available to rent them and loans that nobody's going to be able to pay it's like a friend of mine said he talked to his limousine vehicle company that he leases his vehicles from and they said we don't want your vehicles we'll work with you we'll put we'll put your we'll put your monthly payments on the back end and extend it and it's going to take that type of attitude of businesses or the bankruptcy courts are going to be filled anyway and god help all those people who are you know self-employed individuals and people in the gig economy musicians or people in the hospitality industry who are you know work gig to gig or work in different you know server pools for banquet waiters and catering companies and otherwise this is going to totally uh change it and a lot of people are not going to be able to economically survive this brain that i'm i hope i'm wrong i pray i'm wrong me too i don't think i am so there's a lot of a lot of a lot of praying a lot of hoping a lot of um waiting and seeing i think the toughest part here is we kind of have to wait every day and hope that i i've said this before and i heard this on colbert one time he said there's never before that actions that you do on a daily basis

44:29affect other people so decisions that i'm making about where i go what i touch and how i socially distance myself affects everybody else and you have that responsibility right now to recognize that and i hope that if you're listening out there you do recognize that and um you stay safe so for the first time here in america we're all in this together and your actions impact other people and the if you contracted the virus you won't know it and you won't realize it for possibly two weeks meanwhile it's geometric progression one person infects 10 people 10 people infect 100 people 100 people infect a thousand people and on and on and on for 14 days one person affects 59 000 people without social distancing it's real it is absolutely real so i'm going to pivot a little bit into um back into back into i'm gonna i'm going to lighten the mood a little bit i want to talk about music that would be good brandon well kind of i mean we're kind of we're gonna get back into this a little bit i'm sure the music city hospitality consultants that's your new company yeah we started in january a year ago with my partners bob badel who's 35 years with coca-cola consolidated retired as the senior vice president of a multi-billion dollar company uh and bob and paul chef paul brennan who's actually a phd as well who is head of the certified master chef who is head of the culinary school of national state we we had some substantial clients last year i'm allowed to say that some of our clients included mgm park hotel that's going to be opening up in the national yards project hopefully in a couple

46:29of years as well as tony gerontana who we're currently working with and i currently have a exclusive employment relationship with him which i'm thankful for and blessed because i have no other source of income with my restaurants closed and we're working on opening up the 80 euro legacy iconic ellison place soda shop brand uh sometime construction there's hopefully sometime this summer in july construction's currently uh underway and paul and i were on an online auction last week it brought some nine thousand dollars worth uh paid nine thousand dollars for about fifty thousand dollars worth of used equipment and small wares from the former elston place soda shop and cool springs franklin that closed down uh last summer oh wow so talk me through this so when you say where you have an exclusive with tony gerontana it sounds like you're going to auctions you're buying things and you're doing menu development are you doing schematics for inside are you putting are you doing like the whole kitchen layout the restaurant layout what all are you actively doing for the elston place soda shop well after working with tony on a previous project we started on this project in the fall because he had an option purchase the assets and i've been tony retained my services uh really back in december on this project and we uh took him to uh inman design nancy inman worked with before on both sunset midtown and cabana restaurants is to be the the only hospitality designer based in nashville who has had national international experience of almost exclusively in the hospitality industry there are other commercial designers who've worked in that as well as they've been designed for the cad cam aspect of it of of the design of the equipment package and everything associated with that tony retained my services to be the full-time project developer so i didn't devote any of my

48:35other time away from midtown to uh any other clients that my our consulting company might have paul and bob have availability and they're working with some other clients on that basis but i'm excited because frankly at this point affordable comfort food is probably going to be the right kind of market to be opening in this restaurant in this environment when people do when we do get to the other side and people are willing to come out and or order affordable food that's going to be freshly made scratch cooking in the home as i call it a la carte arnold's by the way arnold used to work for arnold's father used to work for the soda shop and uh there was you know home cooking was what was fresh out of the season a lot of the farms here in middle tennessee going back when the soda shop opened up in 1939 and it was really split off from the really before then but split off from chandler pharmacy and they put a wall up because the customers were hurting the uh getting in the way of the operation of the pharmacy so that's how the soda shop opened up then on elston place back then by the chandler family take a look at the signage there of the uh chandler family the building there that's there as part of it and i'm excited about it we we spent about five months negotiating with the landlord and were unable to achieve a lease that was reasonable we wound up moving next door to the 1907 telegraph building because of the because if you can't make a profit you don't open up yeah so that's a good question i want to i want to i have this question i wanted to ask you and i thought of this like last week because i had this dream one day i get to interview randy rayburn what uh talk me out of opening a restaurant if i want to open a restaurant

50:40talk me out of it let me tell you what i tell people you know up for years people would come to me or my best friend jerry baxter and jerry opened up brass scales and sperries and julians and other great restaurants in national history and jerry's uh i guess opened up about 20 restaurants including 20 uh 13 uh argos for mitch boyd and shoney's corporation and um people would come to us and we'd go tell you what you do if you will give us a 25 000 dollar check up front and sign our contract and follow our contract to the to the letter of every specific provision in the contract we will guarantee you uh in funds that funds of you know credit credit credit worthy funds that we will save you a million dollars over 10 years if you follow our contract exactly and they go what's the catch we say the contract reads don't do it give me the money you know i've had so many people who've never worked in the industry you have no idea what they're doing oh i understand a chart of accounts i can open up a restaurant it's not that easy by god we manufacture a perishable product with highly labor intensive skill sets and creativity and none of it tastes exactly like your mother's or grandmother's food wherever they're from and and then you've got to market and and sell it in a highly labor intensive workforce that has been known to have some behavioral issues that we won't go into hint hint you know i used to be i was an alcoholic there's no question about it now i've i've had that wine since but i don't drink i've never drank like i did before which was after work way too much to take the edge off and uh i was pretty stupid you know in my 20s and thank god i survived all that but you know

52:44the reality is is that uh it's a tough business and the failure rate is not as high as they say it is but it's really probably 20 or 30 percent in the first year and you got to realize that three out of five small businesses in america failed the first five years anyway and i would note for anybody if a business is not growing after three years sell it or close it it's not going to it's not going to make it i think that's the thing i think anthony bourdain put it really well when he said people tend to throw really nice wealthy people throw good dinner parties and their friends come over and they say you should open a restaurant and they go you know after they hear that eight ten times and they find a spot that's for sale and they open a restaurant and then after all their friends start coming and they comp everybody then they go oh we got to actually sell food and then the dishwasher quits and the you know sewage backs up in the back and they go oh what's going on here this isn't this isn't as fun as i thought and six months later everything's different than that fun i throw good dinner parties and it doesn't work out one of my instructors tom schmitter taught american bounty at the culinary institute high park the non-langly version as we called it the other cia that the super wealthy by sporting teams for their ego gratification and amusement the merely wealthy by restaurants down that's for for a long time a lot of people would invest in high-end restaurants gathers social prestige or be investors of that and that's that's been going on up until uh last week or two weeks ago uh and i'll just say that there's it's highly speculative industry i think only the not opening up nightclubs which my friend chris cobb would discourage anybody from doing that who owns the exit in uh but i think that you know it's a tough business why because as i tell clients when they ask me why is it so difficult i said if you don't know every job

54:50in your business there's a term for you and they go what's that and then i hit them with hostage if they leave or you don't know how to teach somebody how to do it right you're a fucking hostage yeah that's a that's a it's a true story so i know it we've been in the trenches oh yeah oh no i i i do it today and that's one of the things i i like you know i love energized by service i know you are too i think that there's something about people that are had to have a true genuine spirit of service and it energizes you to do that you kind of want to be hostage i you get energized by being there by being in the weeds and if you get pulled out of it you start missing it it's almost like you get these cravings for it and i think those are the people that when they those people that run restaurants when you see you you mentioned bussing tables you're one of the people who i figure is is old school right in the form of i've walked in the sunset grill a hundred times probably more than that and most of those times you are standing there at the front door greeting people shaking hands welcoming them into your establishment bussing tables running food doing all of the things that owner operators do and i have a friend who owns a restaurant she goes every time you walk into a restaurant you see the owner sitting at the bar drinking start start looking because they're they're going to sell pretty soon they're going to close yeah that they're not going to make it they're not going to make it most of us are adrenaline junkies who love the business and that's why we do it i want to hit i want to press the little bar and get some more adrenaline and go faster i have that addictive genetic behavior apparently that i got from my uncle and my aunt uh unfortunately and i've been overcome that issues on alcohol but i love the fast pace of the industry whether it's in the front of the house or the back of the house and i haven't cooked for professionally in 30 years

56:50but i loved expediting because occasionally i just want to be away from the people and just expedite the line and make it home and when you're doing 600 covers or 900 covers on a night at sunset grill it's like as one chef told me david mckelvey who ran all of the emeralds restaurants for several years and has his own place johnny's in the orbit said it's like driving the indy 500 twice you better not fucking wipe out okay because you'll crash and then you got to start up and do it again one ticket at a time to get back up to 200 plus miles an hour yeah it's a mother's day brunch you know yeah that's what it is scary new year's eve oh my god yeah so my next oh my god did you know i think that you just answered my next question which was going to be talk me into buying or starting my own restaurant and it's that it's that endorphin rush it's that moment it's being in the weeds and i think that uh you can define it as organized chaos just that that excitement and then when you're done with it looking at the guy next to you going we just own that shit man did we just like there's a camaraderie there that's unlike anything else i mean to me that i've done it's going into you know kind of work battle but at the same time it's it's also about a brotherhood and sisterhood of teammates and those people know who's who's who's doing who's helping each other they know who the slackers are they know who the worker bees are they know who the real leaders are because i mean i've tried to lead by example as much and as often as possible i've slowed down through the years but i've been working the door at mid town for years recently until this january but because of my role with tony i hired a former sunset employee christy rickard to come work with us uh who's been working at park cafe for a number of years and the reality is it's about that surrounding yourself with good people a good

58:50leader front or back of the house or anywhere in the restaurant industry surrounds themselves with people as talented or hopefully more talented than themselves so that they have a great a coach surrounds themselves with great players and then you train them as best as you can and cross-train them to be able to do the job but the customers don't they only see if things are right or they're not perfect and the difficulty is in building up the consistency and getting to uh you know uh zero zero defects or getting to 99.99 percent of everything that hits the table is is done right hot food hot cold food cold and the way it's supposed to be done you know so that the customers react seamlessly i was so proud of midtown and we got a 4.8 rating on open table most of the time in the past year we certainly weren't perfect and some reason brandon some of the bachelorette parties didn't like us because we were we were basically old school and not trying to be but that's what cabana was trying to be cabana was aimed for the 20 and 30 year olds and and the bachelorette parties you know that was one of the top places in town for that yeah maybe that's why i didn't go there that much because i felt too old to walk in on a weekend just to go see craig so what's the let's talk about old nashville versus new nashville what do you think of what's happened to our city i think it's a function of of music we've got one of the most creative communities in the country and we don't have you know an ocean we don't have mountains we've got songs we've got music of all kinds and the creative people that have come here and people who grew coming here because of a nashville brand and it started out you know with the fishtubely singers going to england and saving the school but you've really had the growth of the gospel of christian and and all the music industries it's not just a country town anymore

01:00:51i mean people know about nashville because of the grand o'opry and and hee haw hee haw internationally is what put nashville on the map and then you had the nashville network tn in uh you know that was a 24 7 365 media promotion of nashville we're a sunbelt town people want to come visit the sunbelt because it's relatively warm we're a warm inviting pleasant place and people started coming here and more restaurants grew because more people were coming here and i was just looking at some numbers that i've shared with some folks today uh earlier by email which is that you know as of the end of january there were 100 and almost 28 000 hospitality workers in the nashville msa statistical area wow that's a lot of direct employees not indirect employees direct employees twice more than twice the number of manufacturing employees in that same region not just davidson county but you know rutherford wilson williamson you know the others you know robertson the other maury county the other surrounding counties with us not even counting clarksville which is only 40 minutes up the road from us which would add another you know 150 000 people you know plus the airbag plus the 101st base you know well i have kept you here for an hour but i do have um i've got some rapid fire questions that i want i'm going to ask you definitive book on service or leadership service uh probably any of the books by um from chicago who committed suicide charlie trotter i was going to say charlie trotter lesson in service it's a great book yeah poor guy yeah i knew charlie yeah i had friends who worked for him we met on a number of occasions moving along leadership what's your number one

01:02:57book on leadership to share with people out there i don't have a number one book on leadership i read all that stuff you know back in the 80s and 90s and kept reading that stuff i think for some people really the whole one minute manager series is something that really is something to embrace as a framework for understanding how to be a positive servant leader that's a that's a great one who moved my cheese ken blanchard uh blanchard just wonderful he's amazing all right um favorite restaurant in nashville you don't own um would go between three places okay uh city house uh my friend tandy wilson and his lovely bride and and children a little blt uh and uh margo cafe margo and bar with she and heather who have marché also yep but i love love margo had my uh wedding brunch there uh and also uh probably a lochlin table you know i've got a lot of other restaurants that i like like kenrietta redds others i think are fabulous you know new on the scene but you know i love that etc you know i like etc and dev as much as any of them uh just we're great friends and her husband ernie and i we all go back ernie and i have the same birthday different vintage that uh you know we want to talk about what vintage that is have you ever gone fishing with ernie have you ever gone fishing with ernie yeah ernie taught me how to go fly fishing i was a group with muddy water fishing i never have gone fishing with fish that you could actually see that you're you're casting for that's that's a that's a side goal of my podcast one day to become friends with ernie enough to where he take wants to take me fishing uh go down to the liquor wine shop in the gulf that he runs for uh for ed and uh you know you know chat him up you know

01:05:01ernie loves that shit and he's a he's a good dude so who's your who's the who's the best chef in nashville right now yeah all right i knew you're gonna say that what's your favorite movie of all time movie yep mash mash okay the original mash yeah what's your favorite band uh the beetles and sergeant pepper was my favorite album ever to this day that's a undeniable it's a fantastic album i i i shared that with richard cortney earlier a couple days ago when he had posted a little bit about that on facebook so anyway what's your favorite food to cook at home uh favorite food to cook at home is probably you know grilling uh charred cow flesh uh charred cow flesh that's my favorite too what's your what's a hobby people don't know that you like to do a hobby that people don't know i like to do well i'm i'm just a i'm an avid reader but i with my two young boys uh my time has taken up with them uh taking dean out riding by uh recently in the last few days uh where nobody is certainly don't want to do it on the streets of nashville but you know they are my life they are my focus since duke was born 12 years ago and they're the greatest blessing i have so they are my hobby and they are my life and you know so being a dad that's that that's my life outside of work that's awesome that's i can completely conquer i have four and six year old boys and they are my every being i just and they they bring so much sunshine and joy to my soul i don't even know what to tell you i totally get that my last question for you and this is going to be the final one nashville culinary mount rushmore i'm putting you in there who are the other three people on

01:07:09that mountain with you well chris chamberlain did an article on that back for the 30 year anniversary article and it was margo and deb and myself and we all all three of us nominated jody fazon to be there with us there you go now that's that's in recent years there are certainly others before us there are people now in this century and honey margo when she worked to fazon for jody before she went to new york and i helped among others try to convince her to go up there to grow and evolve that she certainly did and she opened up her you know margo i guess what 2005 2004 or five and tandy worked for her i met him out in trevina in sonoma and nappa valley years ago and just uh you know his his aunt and i were gt undergraduate together i was father a food broker picked tandy and um she opened she opened margo in 2001 yeah uh 2001 great all right i think my memory is not exactly there she was she was very gracious and spent some time with me um the week before last when this first thing happened and um she just has the the most the kindest soul was one of the most sweetest most gentle people that i've had a moment to talk to just honest and as genuine as they come it just broke my heart to sit and talk to her about having to close a restaurant and the people that work for it how much she cares and it just she's just such an amazing person she and heather are truly an amazing couple and i empathize exactly with everything you're saying there because it just hurts so much i was talking to one person on my team earlier today and it just it hurts sending them information about where they can maybe get a five hundred dollar you know from a from a hospitality foundation from the nra just you know knowing that this stuff brandon is going to go on at least through may

01:09:18at the earliest even the models that trump was talking about yesterday don't end in april they end in may and that's optimistic it is optimistic june 1st i think my wife's telling me that he's hoping that this thing we can we can flatten it and we can start getting out and stop and that's a that's a long time to me so randy is there anything you want to say to the restaurant community right now any like final words come back all of those who put their mind and heart and soul to it into whatever profession you're in but particularly in the hospitality business there will be room for those who want to work and will do what it takes to survive it will not be easy i will reopen i will open midtown cafe and cabana and elston soda shop when i don't know but i know if i can do it you can do it if you will it to be so i love it well thank you so much for spending as much time as you did with me today it's an honor to have you here and i wish you nothing but safety and health and hopefully this thing gets over faster than we all anticipate we can get back to living our lives as we did before and say hello to your father for me i will and i'll say hello to my brother-in-law for you too you know ryan you know a lot a lot of the same people so it's good thanks again for spending the time randy god bless and stay safe brandy thanks randy so there it is my interview with randy rayburn on nashville restaurant radio thanks for tuning today and we've got lots more episodes coming up this week i hope you guys all stay safe out there and um love you guys bye