Special ICE Storm update

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are doing a special edition episode today. We have had this huge ice storm that has hit so many people here in Nashville and I think that there's a lot of, before the storm hit, we kind of came on and I said, hey, look, go to local businesses and buy your food. Don't just go to Costco. Don't just go to the store. Buy your food from them because they're going to, again, have a lot of inventory that's going to go bad. And then the storm hit and I said, hey, local businesses took a big hit.

01:03When you're scrolling, if you're sitting at home and you're scrolling, make sure that you like their posts, comment on their posts, do these things. And I think we're seeing it now. We're seeing the aftermath of what this looks like. We still have tons of people who live in this city who don't have power. We still have restaurants that don't have power. And what we're seeing is the community come together and it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And I, as the founder of NARA, the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance, what I want to do is I want to help promote local restaurants because of these times. This is exactly it. What we're seeing out there, you're looking at social media, you're seeing restaurants that are saying, hey, we're sorry, we're closed, hey, we're sorry, we're open, please come support us. And then you see people who are opening up their buildings that do have power for warming areas. We're seeing people offering free charges. And then we're seeing so many people offer up free food, right?

02:07You got Cletus, who you can spend $3 and you can buy, you can help support. So people are saying, what can I do to support? Cletus is saying, Cletus Burgers, you can spend $3 and you can buy a junior meal. It's a hamburger, I think fries. Redleys Barbecue has stepped up and they're feeding so many of them. If you don't have power, they're feeding you a free sandwich. Avvo's giving away 150 free meals. Five Points Pizza did something really cool. They had all this inventory and all this dough, so they made 500 bread rolls and they gave it to the Nashville Rescue Mission. New York Pie donating pizzas to residents who still don't have power. Brown's Diner's doing parking lot parties where they're giving away free food, asking if you want to give a donation to help somebody else. Then you have people who are feeding linemen, grilled cheesery, pancake pantry, stepping up. So many people. And you notice a trend here, folks. These are local restaurants. These are people who've put their stake in the community and they're giving back.

03:09This is why I say these things on a regular basis. This is why I have put my money where my mouth is, and I said, I'm going to support local. And that's what Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance does. But I want to help you understand what this means for a local business. If you're out there and you go, oh, that's terrible, if you're a local business, you start seeing, they start forecasting that there's going to be this ice and there's going to be this snow. Originally it was like 12 to 15 inches and then it started dwindling down and then it said ice. And so people stopped going out, they started preparing. And you're looking at a Friday night in January, January is usually the slowest month of the year. It's cold. People don't typically go out. We don't have all the tourists in town. Nobody's really hanging out downtown. It's just not what it is. So it's a slow month anyway. But you talk about a Friday, a Saturday, Sunday, going into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, what that looks like. People stop dining out early because they're now preparing. I need to get home. I have to cover my faucets.

04:09I have to do the outdoor spickets. I've got to get ready for ice. And so you're losing business on a Friday night. And then you have the actual snow come on Saturday and there's no business. You have to close the restaurant. Now this is typically a day where you're pretty busy and now you have no sales. And then Sunday comes and maybe you lose power. Maybe you don't, but you still have zero business. You're not open. And this is valuable, massive sales and the ripple effect is huge, right? So they have this inventory they've purchased. They had to purchase all this product that they now they have to throw away because it's not good anymore. You have no guests. Your staff doesn't make money. I mean, this doesn't just affect restaurant owners. If you're a server, if you're a bartender, if you're a bar back, if you're a line cook, you don't get hours. You don't get to make any money. And so then you get into the beginning of the week and you're like, what do we do?

05:10Now if you have loss of business insurance as an owner, you need to be taking pictures of everything. It is a tedious hours and hours of documentation. And what we are seeing right now is people forgoing that. And instead of just throwing away their product and trying to figure out how they're going to save their business, they're leaning towards the community and they're offering to give that food away to people who need help. I mean, think about that. What other businesses do that? What other business is that volatile? And this is the hospitality of people. And I'm not seeing a lot of, I say restaurants in general, I'm not seeing a lot of chain restaurants doing this. I'm seeing local restaurants step up and I'm seeing the community step up around them. And I absolutely love it. But what I don't want to see happen is this be something that happens for a week.

06:12This is something that the community needs on a regular basis. We need to be focusing on supporting the people who are supporting your communities. These are the people who when faced with a business and their everything that they've got going on, they've chosen to serve their community. That's why local restaurants are so freaking vital. They're so freaking important to the fabric of what we do around here because they're the ones who are stepping up. And I just love it. I love all these people. I love the heart of hospitality. I love the heart of bringing community together and that is what these people are doing. So going forward, this next coming week, the next several weeks, and then I don't want to get off topic, but then there's this ice out, right? I think everybody supports the idea that we don't need to be attacking people on the streets, arresting them, pulling families apart.

07:14I mean, this ice, I'm devastated by this. I think so many arrest and then they're asking us to to stop everything. Close your business for a day. I've seen a lot of people say, look, we stand in solidarity with this, but we can't close our business right now. I think that this could be something you could see restaurant closures from. No kidding. This is the thing that can kill a restaurant that is struggling already. And you get into mid late January. That's when restaurants struggle the most. And so this is vital. This is my call to everybody out there over the next few weeks, over the next six months. Make it a habit. Spend money at local restaurants. And I know there's a question out there. God, there's so many restaurants. How do I know what's local? Google it. One of the things that we do at NARA Nashville is we work with local restaurants. We help them save money on the back end. And then I want to help you identify who the good ones are.

08:16So you can go to NaraNashville.com, N-A-R-A-Nashville.com. We have restaurant members who would love your support. Go look at that list. These are certified locally owned and operated restaurants. There's so many more than on our list. These are just people. We've only been doing this thing for a few months. These are people that we align with, that we've been working with, that we help, that need help, that are out there hustling every day for their community. And really good people that we love working with. Our Instagram page, we're trying to share as much as we possibly can. If you want to know who to go support, go to Nara Nashville, our Instagram page at Nara Nashville and look at our stories. We're sharing all the stories of everybody who's out there helping other people or that need help, or that are open when they're closed, what they're doing. We share all of that information. So if you need to know what restaurants are local because you can't tell, it's not like they're just listed everywhere. Hey, this is a local restaurant.

09:16This is a chain. Sometimes it's difficult. That is a good resource for you to look at. And we would love to be the resource for you. If you need help, if you have questions of whether or not somebody's local, you can DM us, go to Nara Nashville on Instagram and DM us, say, Hey, which of these restaurants are local? Where should I go support? Let us be a, let us be somebody who you can lean on that will steer you in the right direction so that you can make sure that you're going to the places that matter the most. Chewy's isn't local. I'm just going to tell you, there's a lot of chains out there. There's a lot of people that can't tell. We just talked about NYPi the other day on the podcast and how we thought that, man, it's done so well. It feels like a chain. That's a local restaurant. Honeyfire in Bellevue is a local restaurant. Cletus Burger is a local restaurant. You know, we look at Dream Burger over there in East Nashville, narrowly escaping trees falling on their building. Go support Dream Burger.

10:16Go support Bad Luck Burger Club. Go support Red Headed Stranger. I mean, I look at Butcher and B and that's another local restaurant that's been out of power for forever. Like they need it. Go visit Butcher and B when they reopen. Um, I just wanted to tell you, I just wanted to come on today, a quick 10, 12 minute episode to say, um, this means more than you even know the word. We're in Def Con 5 right here. This is, this is emergency status. Restaurants need you. The workers in the restaurant need you. Uh, this is helping our economy in any way that we possibly can. And it is vital. Um, I'm happy to talk to anybody about this. Please message me at Nashville Restaurant Radio or at NARA Nashville. I'm happy to discuss, happy to go into further detail of where you can help. But this is really important. And I just wanted to come on and just share this real quick.

11:18Uh, thank you guys. I see so many amazing people out there helping where they can offering homes, offering warmth, offering charging stations, offering a warm meal. Those things meet the world. And that is why local restaurants are absolutely amazing. That's why I love them because this is, I've lived here a really long time and I've seen this year in year out before the pandemic. We had these big tornado, we had a big tornado come through the pandemic and hands on Nashville was like, we can't take any more volunteers. Restaurants were serving so many people. They show up time and time again, support them with your wallet. Go find local restaurants and dine out. It's the most important thing you can do to support so many facets of your individual community. So guys, uh, we're going to end it at that. And I just want to say thank you, um, to everybody out there. And again, I hope that you guys are staying safe and, uh, I love you guys.

12:22Bye.