Shawn and Christy Hackinson

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. Happy Wednesday to you and yours. Today we're going to be talking with Christy and Sean Hackinson. They are the owners of the Alley on Main in Murfreesboro and good friends of mine. So excited to have them on the show. We're gonna be talking about kind of their history, how they met. We get to have a proposal story as well as kind of what they've been doing through the pandemic, what their community means to them. And we even play the newly reopened game. Now the newly reopened game is not going to be available on this audio version. You will have to go to YouTube and actually watch it. It is available at Nashville Restaurant Radio dot com as well as our YouTube channel. So just find the Sean and Christy episode and it's at the end. So real quick, want to talk to you guys about a new sponsor. Trust 20 is a company who is doing independent audits and they are gonna come to your restaurant and they've identified 20 tactics to make sure that you are keeping your staff and your guests incredibly safe during this crazy time. So they're doing it right now. By the end of the month it's gonna cost money but for right now it is free. They will come out, do a full audit of your restaurant, teach you the things you could be doing for social distancing, sanitation. There's four different categories. They'll give you signage for your doors. They're out there telling everybody what's going on.

01:57The general public as well. Go check them out at Trust20.co. That's Trust the number 20 dot co and listen up in the middle of our interview today. There will be another advertisement that will tell you a little bit more about it. I also want to talk to you today about Spring Mountain Farms chicken as always and you know taking care of the animals is a big part of what they do. The humane treatment and quality of life is paramount. So I'm gonna read the statement. We take a little, we take extra steps to ensure the health and welfare of our chickens. They are raised in comfortable houses with an unlimited supply of clean water and fresh feed along with plenty of fresh air and room to roam. Allowing them to live a normal life without the threat of predators, harm from the elements or diseases from other flocks of birds as they'll be subjected to if they were raised outdoors. All of our practices and procedures are certified by the American Humane Association as being the most humane possible. This is verified by regular independent audits of all farms and facilities by the AHA, the oldest and most trusted advocate of animal welfare in the country. Spring Mountain Farms was the first brand of chicken in the world to be American humane certified. I keep telling you guys these this is the best chicken in the world. They're doing the right things proactively. Go check them out. SpringMountainFarms.com. Find out where you can find their product and what restaurants are serving them right now. So thank you guys for listening.

03:28Please click the subscribe button and if you see us post something on Instagram, on Facebook, we'd love for you to like it. Love for you to follow us on Instagram and hit share. Let other people know. We'd love for you to help us get the word out about Nashville Restaurant Radio. So let's jump in right now with Christy and Sean from the Alley on Main. I'd like to welcome in Christy and Sean Hackinson, the owners of the Alley on Main. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio guys. Thank you so much. We're so happy to have you. Now you guys just now came in from Florida. How was Florida? Awesome. It wasn't long enough even though we extended it two extra days. Yeah, they're pretty, of course, they're on lockdown down there pretty much the way we are here. I think they've got a little bit more restrictions as far as COVID business for their bars and things like that. Everybody closed at eight o'clock. Yeah. Wow. And you couldn't drink alcohol anywhere without ordering food. You couldn't just like walk into a restaurant, order a margarita. You had to order food. Had to order food.

04:43We were there the week before 4th of July and it was like the wild, wild west. You wouldn't even think COVID-19 was a thing. It was incredible. All these restrictions I think are like in response to what happened when we were there. I got a COVID test when I get home just because I was like, where were we? What's going on here? Well, welcome back. I think the question I'm asking people when they come on the show is, how you doing? But the how you doing isn't just a greeting kind of like how you doing. We're in the middle of a surging pandemic, a civil rights movement. We're on the verge of going back to phase one, restaurants closing. You went through your restaurant being closed for a time. How are you guys doing? Like, you're doing okay? Yeah, we are knock on wood. The last couple weeks we have finally gotten to, we're still down over last year, but it's in the single digits. I don't know how the hell it happened, but about three weeks ago we were actually up over the previous year for the week. It's nice to be steady again and have, get to see all your guests and kind of get back into a rhythm, but you know, we're still down. I think a lot of that's our crew or our guests are pretty loyal, so they're out supporting all the locals as much as they can. You guys have done a fantastic job and ever since the day that you guys opened, you've just done a fantastic job with connecting with the community. Everything about what you've done has been about the community there in Murfreesboro. It's been a major focal point for you. Was that part of the plan coming in or is that something that just

06:45kind of happened? Just kind of developed. You know, people come in, they support you and you want to support them back, so if families are coming in constantly and their kids are on a ball team or part of an organization, we do our best to try to support those organizations since they're supporting our family. That's awesome. I think that's the way it should be. Now going back, I want to kind of tell a little bit of the story of you guys because Christy, I've known you, gosh since I think I was like 13, 12, 13, I've known you for a really long time. You were one of my sister's best friends growing up and you moved away to Texas, right? That's right. So we met, he and I met my last year of college and then when I graduated, we moved to Houston to be near some of his family and you know, try something new and so we ended up in Texas for 12 years. Wow, so where did you guys meet? You would meet at college? We met at Graham Central Station on the rooftop in Nashville. Nice! Yes, so we, I had a friend that used to work up there and he got us in for free and nobody likes free drinks more than poor college students so free entry and free drinks were the draw and I was sitting up on the roof with a couple of friends and watching the Black Pros play when there used to be river stages, watching the Black Pros play on Riverfront and then this guy spotted me and that was it. Came in and laid some game. Did you have a line? Did you have like a hey now? There was a story that day and it's too

08:50long to tell here but I had this encounter with a very large spider that it took me about, I don't know, two hours to finally catch and kill in my bedroom and so I had a pretty deep Pittsburgh accent back then. She says that I wouldn't have been as interesting without the accent and so it was the Pittsburgh accent and the spider story. Yeah. I'd be like, you afraid of spiders? Like let me tell you what I did today. I'm trying to think of the line you would use. So you met at the rooftop of Graham Central Station. What were you doing? Were you living in Nashville at the time? Sean? I was. Yeah, I was in Clarksville. Okay, so you guys were both here. So yeah, so friends of mine, at first I was driving so friends of mine went to, or they didn't want to, they wanted to go to Graham's. I didn't want to go so we went to this like Motown. Actually, I keep thinking about it. I actually think we're in Printers Alley and they were having an awful time not enjoying it.

09:59They wanted to go to the club and so we went and we, I don't know what floor we were on, but we're sitting at this large round table and I just saw the two girls. It was her and AJ. They were sitting outside so I went out and said I'll see you guys later. Well, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna get Amanda and Juan on the show here very soon. They also own a restaurant here in town, The Loading Dock, and I'm gonna ask him about that night, kind of just to get the rest of the story from Amanda's perspective, what you said to her after you guys left. So you moved to Texas. How did you, what's the proposal story? Oh, that one. So we were, we were in Houston. I had asked her dad probably six months prior. You know, did the ask permission thing. We had that talk. We actually went and shopped rings together, so we picked a ring together, but I just kept it in, kept it in a drawer just waiting for the right time. There were several occasions I found out afterwards that she thought that I was gonna propose and it turned out. And you're like, your anticipation, you're like, tonight's the night. You like tell your friends and then nope, nothing happened. And so it was, we were laying in bed after a late night out the night before and one of the, I mean we just woke up and I don't even know what at that point made me realize, was it New Year's Day? It was New Year's Day. And so I went up, I brushed my teeth and climbed back in bed and I said, hey, go brush your teeth. Like a knight in shining

12:04armor. And while she was brushing her teeth, I grabbed the ring and, and I said some awful line about wanting to take a jump or something like that. It wasn't good. I didn't have any idea what he was getting at. It wasn't great, as you can tell, because neither of us can remember it. But that was it. And she said yes, and the rest is history. So I love that story. Thank you for sharing that story because I've had several couples come on the podcast here. And I just think that's, you know, we get so busy in life and everybody that, you know, is close to you, like your friends may know back then and all those different things. But I think that for all of your guests and people that come and dine there, I think that's, that's kind of one of those cool little inside things that I think is really fun to share. So thank you for doing that. So you, have you always been a restaurant guy, Sean? Yes, since I was 14. It's your first gig on the books gig I've ever had. And even prior to that, I was like eight or nine, you know, serving pizza and fried dough with bingos and getting my nickel and dime tips from all the bingo ladies. And is that, it's something you've just grew up in? Did your family, was your family into that? I don't know your whole background. Nobody worked in a restaurant. Nobody worked. Well, my mom actually did work in a restaurant for a little while. My family's always cooked.

13:53My mom's side of the family's all from Calabria, Italy. And so they've always, you know, made their own pastas and such. But my mom worked, it was the cook in the, in a marina in the town next to us. And she, friends, her friends of one of my aunts owned it and wanted my mom to cook. And so she made gnocchi and pasta and meatballs and all that stuff for this, which were odd marina foods when I think about it now. But it is what it is. But gnocchi's not a marina food? Yeah. I got a food fight with one of the servers that we were joking around and we were throwing stuff at each other and having a great time. Well, one of the managers came in and wasn't happy about it. And so at that point, he told my mom I'm not allowed to come in to work with her anymore. And like all Italian mothers of sons, she hated the man and the whole company right at that point and hurled some expletives and said she's never coming back. And that was it. That was my mom's, that was my mom's restaurant career. Now, Christy, I don't remember you like working in restaurants. I mean, all growing up when I, when I found out that you moved to Texas and you're married and you have like multiple children and you guys had a restaurant or you're running restaurants, I was like, she's doing what? Like I look, because that's what I did. Like I loved restaurants. I just thought that was so cool. What, what did you, when you guys went to Texas, did you, did you guys own a restaurant there? Or how did you guys get into this business together?

15:50So we, when we, we went to Texas, I was working in TV production. And so I worked for a production company down there in post production. And then we, when we got married and he was promoted and we had our oldest, after he was born, we moved, we did a brief stint in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This was with Darden. Yeah, when he was with Darden. And so we moved to Hot Springs. And as you could imagine, the TV production field is not booming in Hot Springs, Arkansas. And I know. And so we decided we'd wanted to have kids, our older kids, well, we want to have all our kids really close together. And so we thought, well, you know, well, for a while, we'll try to have another baby, got pregnant immediately. And then I stayed at home with them until they got into, when they got into elementary school. And in that time, we just followed his job around, you know, as he would change restaurants, or be transferred different places. So we lived in Hot Springs, Plano, Texas, right outside Dallas. And then we moved over to Forney, Texas. And then we moved to Clovis, New Mexico. And then that was another, that was a short one. And then we moved to San Antonio.

17:29You guys hit some culinary hotbeds before that. And when in San Antonio, older boys, so we have a 14, almost 15 year old, a 13 year old, and they're 17 months apart. And then so when they got into school, I went back to work. And five months later, we found out we were having baby number three. So and he was Huck, who's six now, was kind of our kick in the pants, you know, we didn't want to have to put him in daycare. We didn't want to have to have three kids and and a single income. And so and it was also, you know, one of those things, you know, we'd always talked about having a restaurant and, you know, life isn't going to play out the way expected to. So if you want to want to do something, you got to just do it. So we sold our house and in Texas and literally put everything in the truck that would fit in the truck and left everything else on the curb and moved back to Murfreesboro and moved in with my mom and then started three babysitter and three lodging. So we lived moved in with her and that was June of 2014. And then by the beginning of November 2014, we had our doors open.

19:04So Wow, that is like the American dream story right there. That's exactly what I mean, that that that's the entrepreneurial spirit and every sense of the word. But you working with Darden, what were you a general manager? What restaurants? Yeah, started out started out as a server. And I dropped out of college at this point and wasn't doing anything. And a guy Paul said, Why don't you get into management? And I wasn't doing anything else. And so I did. And when I did, I found out I was passionate about something that was pretty good at it. And so what I got pretty quickly. What about it? Were you passionate about what in the end? What were you just like? What got you going? The team piece was always big, but it's the numbers side. I like, I like not solving problems, but putting systems in place to avoid a problem. So someone would come up. I do just that, whatever. And so that's why I moved around a lot of Houston. If somebody had an issue, then that asked me to go. I'd go and stay there for however long it took. And then I probably I think a year and a half about is, is what it took for me to get to a GM, which is pretty quick with Darden in. But I loved it. You know, I love the numbers side. I love the problem solving. Obviously, the guest piece that connection piece, but it's the taking a place and just fixing it, making it better was always what was big for me.

21:02There's a, you know, owning your own independently owned and operated restaurant takes takes a lot. I mean, there's a lot of fundamentals that you really have to execute on on a regular basis. What did what do you think you learned from your experience with Darden that really helped you the most into going into being an owner operator? Probably, you know, when you're looking at line items on a P&L, all the things that affect those certain items, and whether it's if you're looking at labor, yeah, and so whether you're looking at labor, and what are the different ways that you can have as a manager have a have a positive effect on labor and a big piece of that too is motivating your crew, pushing your crew to do a little bit more than they than they think they can do. But that's also a part of creating a culture. And so you're not going to be able to do that if you don't have a culture where people want to be there and want to work. But those leaders are the Yeah, but it's it's the it's the the I don't want to say the controllable piece, but look at a negative number on a P&L and saying, Okay, what are we going to do to impact this? And just start digging in and fixing it.

22:28And then yes, you get there and then you move to the next one. Do you like mowing your yard? Yes. You do? I do. I do the weed eating now. Huh? What about washing your car? Do you like to wash your car? I do. Okay. Yeah, there's a I have a I have a theory here because I'm I'm very similar to you that I love identifying where there's something I can come in and help putting a system in place, fixing it and then seeing that number on a on a trend go up or down or correct itself and go, I did this, this and this to make that happen. There's hiring, there's training, there's coaching, all of that's involved. But you like to see results is what I'm getting. And for me, mowing my yard is the most instant result type thing I can do when I mow my yard. It's it's it's the yard is tall and then I mow it and it looks fantastic and I go instant results. Holy cow. That's amazing. I love it. Same thing with washing your car.

23:29I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Holy cow. That's amazing. I love it. Same thing with washing my car. I wash my car. It's dirty. Then like ten minutes later, I'm like, it's so clean. Look what I just did. It didn't take me six months. That was it. It's these little victories that I just I love sometimes in life. I'm wondering if you're similar to me in that regard. Like, yes, you do. You like those little victories, too. I will tell you. And we've been gone for a week, ten days, and my grass is completely burnt. It has high patches. And I was I'm a little bit too crazy because I mean, we weren't home from vacation for seven minutes when I told boys is like, hey, we're cutting grass tonight. We need to get out there. And now I'm like, well, we'll at least water it. We'll cut it tomorrow. But it is not looking like it did when I left. No. And it's going to take some time. Well, you know, I'm at that point in the season now where I'm just mowing.

24:29I'm watering the backyard and I have some new grass that I'm watering still because I want it to live into where I get to overseed in the fall. But I'm in a I mean, I'm at the it's too damn hot and I can't water all of it. And I'm just going to let it die. And then in October, you know, in September, I'll aerate and reseed. And I'm just it's too hot right now. It's amazing. OK, boys, I say we the boys. So what did it take? We'll get back to the story here. Sorry. The side, the sidebar. You want to talk about grass cutting anymore? I can talk. I don't think any listening wants to hear us talk about it. So you decide you're going to do this. What did that take? Did that was that just something that you guys decided you were going to do? I mean, was that a to take what you can fit in a truck to go live with your mom, live with your in-laws and stay there babysitter till you find a place like how scary is that? Like, is that like a real test of a relationship?

25:33I don't I don't think so. We we were fortunate we had the free place to stay. We I was able to keep my job. So Huck was born in December and I went back to work just a couple of months later. But they allowed me to work remotely. So I even though we left in June, I didn't actually quit that job until October. So I worked. So we had that stability and I had all I had the health insurance. So that was good. But the thing that I you know that I tell people that I love so much about the restaurant is that it was something that we did together. And we went from him working 50 hours a week and us never seeing each other to us working side by side 90 hours a week. Because like you said, I'm not a native of the restaurant industry.

26:36My serving at Pizza Hut does not count. But I had to learn how to do all of it. I had to learn. I didn't know anything at all. And so I basically was at his side for for six months until I could I figured out how to run help run the restaurant. What was your biggest learning curve? What was the thing was the most shocking thing that you learned coming into this industry? I don't know about the most shocking thing, but the hardest thing for me was to talk to people. I used to and our regulars could could attest to this. I used to have to go and find a reason to approach a table. I couldn't just walk up to him and be like, how are you guys doing? How's your food? You know, you enjoy and everything. I would have to I would wait until they needed a refill and I would walk over and I'd like start refilling their glass and use that as my end. Or I'd start, you know, take away some extra dishes and use that as my end to talk to people.

27:38I was never able to just walk up to a table and ask them, you know, I just couldn't do. Yeah, I couldn't do it. It was impossible for me. And I and it took me a while to be able to do that. And then especially to have the hard conversations when you know that we have that we've messed something up or that they're not enjoying something. And then to try and fix it. How Sean, how proud are you of her just in what she's done? Like come into the restaurant and you guys as a team, like something that you are really good at, something that you're great at. And you've done this thing together and that she's coming into kind of your business and how well she's done adapting thing. How does that make you feel? I don't I tell people this all the time. I don't think we would have been as successful, especially out of the gate, if she didn't catch on as quick as she did.

28:38She and she's never done this before. This wasn't her thing. And I mean, you talk about running labor and I mean, yeah, you're kind of thrown. It's like throwing somebody in 10 feet of water with a brick strapped to their waist and they figure it out. And she did she, you know, running labor, managing schedules, payroll. She's are pretty much our corporate office. So she does all of payroll, accounting. And it was really, hey, I need you to do this. And she's like, OK, and just figured it out. It's impressive. It's very impressive. But I mean, you know, she's sharp. She's I didn't marry a dummy. But it's I mean, what we do, this business is hard and a lot and you know how hard it is. And people, it's why we're the number one failing industry in the country, because folks get into this that have never done it before, don't realize how difficult it is.

29:42And I will tell you that the hardest part was for her being away from the kids so much. We never saw them. We saw them on Sundays. We were gone 14, 16 hours a day and then would hang out with them on Sundays. And after Huck was 10, 12 months old, 10, 11 months old when he opened, he was calling her mom, mom, and not calling her mom because we were never there. And so that was hard to watch. And she's crying, you know, going out the door. And I mean, it's just you're working 100 hours a week. You're not seeing the kids. But and I kept telling her like just a couple more months. It'll come more months and we'll have our legs under us. But it's we made it about six months. It was impressive. So six months in, we were able to we finally had the team trained.

30:50And I finally figured out enough of what I was doing that we were able to instead of both being there every day, six days a week, we started alternating days. So and we still do that now. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. So now we're back to a lot less time together. But somebody's always home with kids and we most weeks when things are normal, we leave early on Mondays or Tuesdays. And we get to spend that time home together. So this is I mean, this is such a great story. I mean, there's so many people right now. We're going through this pandemic and there's a lot of sentiment. People want to support local and we want to do this. Like I keep wanting to highlight local businesses and why you want to support them. Right. Why you want to come eat at the alley versus going to Red Lobster.

31:51And I keep using Red Lobster as the name of the restaurant that you don't go eat at. And I'm sorry, Red Lobster. It's nothing against you. It's just a name that comes to my head. But when you hear stories like this that you guys meet, you you both you're going from town to town, learning the craft restaurants. And then you guys you kind of make this big decision. You go back to Nashville, you find the spot, you put roots down in Murfreesboro. This is going to be your town. You spend six months of 100 hour weeks putting this thing together. Your your youngest son is calling your mom mom. You go through all of this to create this community spot in this restaurant. You talk about mom and pop restaurants of like local people running a business in the community where you need to go spend your dollars to support people. And I don't think you can get a better story. That's exactly you guys are the exact people we want to be supporting right now. This is it's been a crazy, crazy time.

32:51I imagine the community has been helpful during this time. Yeah, they've been really great. They especially during the shutdown. We so we got a we got a food truck for catering. So we have a food. Well, it's a food trailer. And so it's essentially our mobile kitchen. And we ordered it and had it built to take because our catering business is really growing. We're doing how many weddings? Thirty six, I think this year. Thirty six weddings we have booked. So we would have this food trailer to take with us so that we can cook everything on site. And that finally arrived here at the end of February, January, January. OK. And then, you know, here comes March. And by mid-March, our dining rooms closed. And we're looking at each other like, how do we figure this out to keep, you know, keep all our crew employed?

33:54And so we said, all right, so we're a food truck, too. So we he was gone. He ran the food truck and I ran the restaurant and they were gone six days, six days a week, going to neighborhoods and cooking for people in neighborhoods. And I was in the restaurant. But the way people came in and supported us, we had people who came in every single day. And picked up lunch and then would come back at night and bring dinner home for their families and then invite us out and promote our food truck in their neighborhood. Wow. On one of, yeah, they came in and they made big donations to the crew to help keep them afloat. People were stroking five hundred dollar checks, thousand dollar checks, just saying they split it with the staff. One guy, one of our regulars donated out of his collection a bottle of Pappy, a 25 year rum.

35:03Weller. Yeah. Weller. So then other guests were like, here, I have this cool bottle I want to put in the in the raffle. And that raffle ended up bringing in nine thousand dollars. We sold tickets, twenty dollars a piece, and it brought in like ninety two hundred dollars. So the crew that were working split it all between those guys. And so what was really cool at the beginning, this this kind of tells you how what kind of crew we have. There were probably we had about 60 employees. So 30 of them stood up in a meeting and said, hey, look, I don't need shifts. I live with my mom or dad or this isn't my primary income. Let these other guys have the shifts. And so they stepped back. Well, those other 30, we got them together and said, look, Amazon's hiring. General Mills is hiring.

36:05We don't know what's going to happen. We haven't taken the food truck yet. So this was on maybe a Wednesday. This was before they actually shut the dining rooms. It was like four days before. Like March 10th. I think they closed it like on March 17th, 18th, maybe. We were a few days from taking the truck out and we're like, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know how this is going to go. If you want to go and get another job, we get it. We're not going to be upset. Just come back. That was our thing. When the dust settles, come back. And all 30 of them were like, nah, we want to see what happens. Which was, I mean, it's an oh shit moment because now you're like, I got to feed 30 people. And so we got to make something work. But it was awesome, man. I don't ever want to go through that again, but I'm going to have to go through it.

37:06I want to go through it with those 60 people and nobody else. Because they, I mean, they're the model of nobody complained, nobody griped. And they did everything we asked them to do. You know, we'd be in the restaurant and there'd be nobody coming in. And rather than sitting around and, you know, thinking, this sucks. We'd say, all right, well, let's, let's, let's refinish our bar stools. And we carried them outside and started sanding them. And everybody just pitched in and we made it work. And then thankfully it came out okay. Obviously you guys care about your staff. I mean, obviously the people that work for you, you have a massive amount of respect for in that. That's that's clear. You talked about culture in your previous. What is the things that darn you? So, you know, culture is very important. If you were to define the culture, because a lot of people, I think that might be listening to this that own restaurants may have had a different situation.

38:12What is it? Can you define your culture? Is it a set of core values that you have or what is the main thing you think that you do that's kind of differentiates yourself? Would we every interview that I have with people, whether they came from a mom and pop or corporate, I always tell them we are different. It's very different here. It's not there's accountability. And, you know, all the corporations that have their employee handbook and don't do these things, but all of them do it, regardless of what's in there, whether it's no smoking, whatever, coming in late. Nobody cares if you come in late. We we are not like that. If it says in the book, we don't do that. We don't do it. It's a very we tell them it's very team oriented. If you come in and you try to be the hero, you won't make it. We try to hire more personality and attitude.

39:15Three things we talk about very often are attitude, integrity and performance. And so I'll pass on talent to take a better personality or somebody with a better attitude. I can teach you how to sling on a grill or how to carry a tray or how to an upsell table. But if you're Danny or Debbie Downer out of the job, it's not going to work here. You know, we lost a great grill guy just because of a bad attitude and just you're not going to fit. You can't this job's hard enough. And I think a lot of folks just leave those people around because they either don't want to do the work or we all know it's hard to find employees. So they don't want to go through that. They'd rather just hang on to them. But you know how it is. Those guys become cancers. I found this the other day. I don't know if you could see it. It says nothing will keep a great employee fast. Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one.

40:17Right. Nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one. You're allowing people to not perform and letting them continue to work there. Everybody else that kills the kills morale. Oh, for sure. When when I would go restaurant to restaurant, the first thing that I would encounter and this was in most of them, nobody was in charge. The crew was kind of in charge. And so there's no leadership. There's no accountability. People are doing whatever they want. Good employees want structure. They want leadership. They don't want the knuckleheads to be around. They want the knuckleheads held accountable. And so once you start wean those people out, which unfortunately are typically the ones who've been there the longest because they're there, they don't want to change their behaviors. They've been doing it their way for so long. That's when that's when that culture changes. And we hear it all the time, especially from folks that come from corporate.

41:24They didn't realize a restaurant could be like this. I mean, it's you have every once in a while everybody has their their moments, but it's not there's no drama. There's none of that. None of that stuff that you would see on what's waiting. It's just it done. We we stop it at the door. And sometimes they get through, you know, every once in a while somebody will get through. But man, they just don't last long. It's not like the corporations. You got to write somebody up 15 times before you cut them loose. You're not working out. You're not working out. But you're both our crew is good. Who has those covers? You both, no matter who's there, you're both holding people accountable at that same level, right? Yeah. And we have a GM. Our GM takes part in that, too. Excellent. OK, I wasn't sure because every time I go to the restaurant, one of you are there. I've never been into the alley and not seen either one of you.

42:27It's not like, oh, no, they're not here. Like, which one of them is here? Like, they're always there. So I didn't know if you had a GM for a long time. She's been with us. We've had a we've had a manager. We've had full time managers for what? Three years, four years. But Jackie, who is our GM, she's been with us. I want to say the GM two years, something like that, if not three. And we had an assistant manager that we just lost. She's in the car business now, but we're waiting to see whether or not we want COVID to take its course before we bring on another assistant, which is kind of good because we're in there more now, which I think we needed to. We broke away for a little while. You get really comfy staying at home and only going to work two days a week. And so that, you know, COVID changed that.

43:29But I think it was needed, you know, even for us. It was good for us to kind of get back and be there every day again. So is there is there positives, things that you'll take into the future that you may have learned throughout this kind of this quarantine or having to close your restaurant? Is there anything that you've had to change that you are going to keep like really good practices that you've been able to figure out? You know, as far as people ask us that all the time, as far as like the sanitation piece, the only thing we're really doing different is you're wiping menus every use instead of just at the end of the night or mid shift. You know, it's a restaurant. You got to be clean. There's our sanitation was pretty high to begin with. One of our we had one guy come in, worked in the kitchen. The end of his second day, he asked one of the other guys, he said, do you guys clean like this all the time? Like, yeah, we do.

44:29He was gone four days later. Yeah, he did. That's that's exactly what you were just talking about. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Go ahead, Christy. I'm sorry. So, yeah. So the level of sanitation in the restaurant is really high to begin with. The fact that we're not doing a whole lot differently just speaks to what we were doing before. But I will say the coolest thing to come out of this and we kind of touched on it earlier. Everybody just had to. It wasn't that there wasn't any time to to, you know, figure it out in game plan. You just had to do more with less. And so our staff, our grill guys are really the ones that really blow me away because they are now through this because they had to do so much more where a year ago they would never have been able to handle in the dining room, the inside dining room and the courtyard together.

45:30And now, I mean, we have we would have one person. We have one person now doing that. And we have since added a second grill guy just because you don't want to kill them every weekend. Give them a little bit of a break. But they were doing it. They were they were knocking out checks. I mean, you're talking a hundred and forty people an hour. They're cranking out of that one five foot grill. And so when our previous record was, I think, eighty six. And so it's it made everyone better and to be able to do more. Now, like I said, we don't we're trying not to kill them. But I think even for these guys, they've they've impressed themselves with what they've been able to do while this has been going on. I said I had Jesse Goldstein on the show on Monday. And I told him, I said, do you think after this whole thing kind of is over, we're going to have like this breed of superhuman restaurateurs?

46:38But I mean, I mean, because we've all gone through some of the most amazing things, I said, if I would have told you in January that you're going to close for three months, pivot to a to go system and you're going to lose half your staff, you're going to re hire everybody back and then it's going to surge again. And then God knows what's going to happen in the future. But like the ones that make it through this, are they just going to like have no fear going forward? Like whatever you throw at me, I went I made it through 2020. Yeah, we do. We have had that conversation with a lot of people about the ones that make it through this. I think we'll be stronger than ever. And you know, their crews, too, though. Yeah. And now it's happening. It seems like there's now guys are starting to go back and look for work. So I don't think that I don't think hiring is going to be so hard for a lot of people. We are blessed and lucky that we don't have to deal with that a whole lot.

47:39So I know I feel like that's going to be easier for a lot of these guys to get staffed up here pretty soon. But like you said, who knows what's going to happen in the fall? Well, that's going to be my next question. I was going to ask you this kind of the last question I'm going to ask you before we jump into the newly reopened game. Bust out your crystal ball. If you guys want to take a second, get your crystal ball out. Tell me what's going to happen in the next couple of months. What's going to happen in the future? What do you guys see that's next for you? For us? Yeah, just for the industry, for you, whatever you foresee happening. Well, I hope that we continue the trend we're on. Maintain sales where we're at. Because we're trying to find a second location. Unfortunately, I think there's going to be a lot of availability. It's not the way you want it to happen.

48:39But I think there's going to be a lot of space open. There's going to be a lot of real estate available. And so, you know, like we just talked about, for those that survived it, I think there'll be opportunities for us to grow. So hopefully in the next couple of months, that's what we'll be doing. We're just looking. We're trying to find the right spot, right location, something that fits what we're doing and go from there. Now, you guys were going to add on to that. The courtyard right next to the restaurant. Did you guys ever finish that? No, it's doubled in price. We were putting a rooftop. Yeah, it got insanely expensive. Okay, that was like $1,000. So we shut it down. Gotcha. Okay. It would have been awesome, but it was one of those things that didn't pan out the way we'd hoped. And I'm glad because if it did, it would be stuck with a $25,000 a month payment through COVID.

49:41I mean, God works in mysterious ways. Things happen for a reason, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on. We are going to play the newly reopened game with you. But if you're listening to this right now on the podcast, this will not be on the podcast. This game is not going to be on the podcast. It's going to be available via the YouTube channel only. So if you are not watching this interview and you want to hear the newly reopened game, you need to go switch over and find the YouTube channel. Go check us out at www.nashvillerestaurantradio.com where you can watch the video or check us out on our YouTube channel at Nashville Restaurant Radio. And we're going to get started now. So thank you guys so much for coming on. And we'll say goodbye to all of the people listening on the Nashville Restaurant Radio podcast. Bye, everybody. All right.

50:41So like I said, you can head over to YouTube and you can watch the newly reopened game with Sean and Christy. It is at the end of the episode. It's about 15 minutes long. We had a lot of fun playing it. And I hope that you guys enjoyed that interview. I sure did enjoy catching up with them. We have got a jam packed next couple of weeks. We've got the roundup coming up each Friday with myself and Delia Jo. And then we're going to be talking with Kate Davis, who is the one and only Nashville food fan. She is she's going to be coming on the show and kind of telling us her story. And we'll be talking with Sarah Turbett. She is also a she's a bartender around town at the beer cellar, as well as doing her own private cocktails. And she is an Angels Envy Whiskey Guardian. And then the following week, we will be interviewing Jeremy Lister and Brad Schmidt from the Tennessean.

51:45So we got a musician coming on. We've got a columnist. We got a writer. We got a bartender and a food blogger. So we're breaking away from just chefs and restaurateurs coming up here. And hopefully you guys will enjoy hearing their stories. We appreciate you hanging out with us today. We hope that you are being safe. Love you guys. Bye. That's the end of this show.