Steven Smithing

00:00Reopening your restaurant comes with great responsibility. Are you doing everything you can to keep your staff and guests safe? With Trust20 certification, you and your guests can feel confident you're doing everything you can to keep everyone safe. Trust20 is home to the new standard of restaurant safety and consumer comfort. By becoming a Trust20 certified restaurant, diners will know the practices you follow to create a safe and healthy environment. Have confidence you're going above and beyond minimal requirements. Have comfort knowing your practices have been independently verified. To learn more, visit Trust20.co. That's Trust the number 20.co. Trust20 restaurants have access to a suite of resources that include expert led training in four key areas, individual consultants, communication material and signage. When you visit Trust20.co and tell them you heard about them on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Trust20, partnering with you to keep everyone safe. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host and today is a fun episode for me because I get to interview my good friend Steven Smithing. We get to have a conversation about all kinds of things. It was kind of a weird interview because, you know, Steven's a good personal friend of mine.

01:44We work together and I've never really got to interview somebody that like this, I'm this close to. So hopefully you enjoy it and you get to take something from here. We kind of share some of the secrets and stuff that we're working on and I hope that you like it. We are going to be doing a live episode of the Round Up tomorrow at 3.30 on our Facebook page. Matt Bolas is going to be our guest and that show will be out on Friday and then next week we have got Hal Holden Bache from Laughlin Table is going to be on the show as well as Jensen Cummings who is the host of the best-served podcast and then we're going to take a two-week break from live episodes. We're gonna do some best-of shows while we re-center and reset and get some new equipment in here and do some new cool things. So updating some stuff, make it sound better, make everything better. Check out Trust20. You heard their ad at the beginning of this episode. They are doing amazing things to help you prepare to make sure that your guests and your staff are completely safe. Check them out at Trust20.co and go visit SpringerMountainFarms.com. Spring Mountain Farms, join the flock. You know, you hear me talk about this. Go in there, enter your email address and you will get a weekly email with farm updates, podcast updates, as well as just general news about what they're doing. You'll get recipes. There's also a really cool thing on their website where you can locate where you can buy their chicken. So at restaurants and grocery stores there's also a coupon on there as Chris Chamberlain noted for us the other day that he used to do some work with Spring Mountain Farms Chicken. He's a big fan. So let's jump right in to our episode with Stephen Smithing. With much excitement, I would like to welcome in Stephen Smithing to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Stephen, how you doing?

03:49It's good to be here. I know we've talked about it a bunch of times and I certainly love listening to your your programs and you got the good job. You could have talked to all the fun people, you know. It takes a while to go down the fun meter to get to me. I'm a humble man. Humility is a big part of the restaurant business. I get it. Well, you know, it's interesting. Thank you. You're kind of right. I do have a fun job and this is kind of a dream of mine to sit and talk to restaurateurs. I feel like I could talk about restaurants, just like restaurant stuff for just hours and hours on end. I just love it and you're kind of the same way, aren't you? Yeah, well, it's what I love to do. You know, you find what you love to do in life. You're pretty lucky and I found it pretty early. I love to serve people and you know a lot of people didn't want to do that. I certainly was not raised by restaurateurs and you know I ran off. I was the dishwasher at Mortimer's on Perkins in Memphis when I was 16 years old. My sister's boyfriend went off to University of Virginia and he asked if I wanted his job, which was not dishwashing, but that's where I got to start. But it wasn't a big deal. I was a good dishwasher. I bet you were. 16 years old in Memphis, dishwasher. Tell us how you came up. I actually started working when I was 14. My brother and I worked at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. We sold cokes and popcorn and we just had the greatest time. All you had to do was go in there and walk up and down the stairs and hawk popcorn and peanuts and cokes. Now every time I go to a game with you at the Preds or watching the Titans game, all the adults have taken what used to be kid jobs. I did that job when I was 14 years old. I saw Cheap Trick. I saw Prince Twice. I saw Loverboy. I saw the Scorpions. I saw all these bands and I'm not a music guy. You know that.

05:49But what a great gig. You learn early to talk to people. It wasn't too big a deal and it's all types of people and they're not all nice to you and they give you a hard time. We had a good time. I could handle it. I feel like that's why I would like to drive Uber. I just like talking to people and I love gaining different perspectives from different people. I just have fun. I just have fun doing it. Well, that's the fun and easy part of the restaurant business. On a Friday night when you get to come and you come to work when it's busy and you just get to talk to people and as long as you have enough food and enough people and you've done everything right and you've planned and executed, I mean that adrenaline rush you get going into a Friday night knowing you're going to achieve that and talk to people you know and talk to people you don't know and it's just a great time. It's fun every day and it's different every day. So we call that turbo boost. We did call that. We do call that turbo booster. That's where that came from. Christopher and I, my brother Christopher who I work with, who's my chef at both restaurants, we say when you're going into Easter Sunday you got to know you got to have some turbo boost and some people just don't have it. They don't have that second gear, that third gear that you got to move into for sometimes four and five and six hours at a time.

07:01They're like oh this is terrible and I remember I was with this kid upstairs at Mirabole one time and he was a brand new guy and he was just moaning and groaning about how miserable he was and I thought oh he's not gonna last because I'm having a great time. I'm gonna walk 18 miles today up and down the stairs in my restaurant. We're fine. Which is I think that's where you and I find a lot of shared understanding and we sync really well is that we both have that turbo boost. Like when like holidays, working Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve at Mirabole is a crazy crazy experience. I mean I imagine that's what it's like working at like a Hattie B's all day on a summertime you know Saturday or something you know like every week. They're lucky because they just find people who love to do that and eventually you kind of cull through and we love to do it too and you know when you watch really young people do it and then you watch people who are older than me do it and you just buckle down if you mentally prepare to be busy and you know physically this is gonna be exhausting. I mean on Thanksgiving evening I don't go home and sit around very often. I usually go home have a glass of wine, eat whatever we have there to eat and then I go to bed.

08:12It's the easiest night to fall asleep for the year. You're open every, we just did a video for you and you talked about reading a one-star review but working on holidays is that just something that you've always done because you're in the service industry? Is it, why are you open on all the holidays? In our business well it's when we generate revenue. I mean at Mayor Bowl we generate 8% of our total gross sales in seven days. That's when people come out and you know you thought we're an event driven restaurant that people have you know weddings and rehearsal dinners and meetings and you know large functions but when I bought that restaurant we weren't doing any sales on holidays because nobody wanted to work then and oh we shouldn't have to work and I said well this is an opportunity for us to create an event. I mean lots of people want to come out. On Thanksgiving everybody comes in there like why did this many I never thought this many people would come out for Thanksgiving and I'm like well if you're in town with you know and your mom and dad live up the street you don't have any kids or you got two kids and you know you want to get together just a couple people and you don't want to have this giant endeavor we'll do all the work and it is a lot of work. I've always said like if you know people would say the same thing and I think it's if you didn't have to cook a turkey and brine it the night before and do all of the shopping and all of the cooking and all of the dishes and all of the whole thing if you could go out to eat have all of those things prepared for you have a good terms of family and then go back home for just dessert or wine or whatever no dishes no prep nothing like well now I can spend five or seven extra hours with my family watching football it's not a bad it's not a bad deal. I mean if and when I retire I may do it I don't I mean I'm probably not gonna do it forever but right now it's what I do and when you get everybody else when you're there it does make a difference sometimes to have the general manager the director of operations or you know the owner of the restaurant they're doing it

10:13with them because I'm like y'all can just you can complain but these people I tell people remember this is their holiday this is their Mother's Day be super nice and treat people graciously because they're coming here to us and we've had 1,200 people on Mother's Day this year we've had zero but the Mother's Day we fed 1,200 people and we did a good job with it we had a good product people were happy we were able to get the other people generally in and out at the correct times and it went well we went it rains on Mother's Day and you already planned on having people come on the patio because two days ago it said it wasn't gonna rain that makes it a little trickier but you know that that's what happens and not everybody gets up at the right time no they most certainly don't and I feel like we need to I want to come full disclosure with our listeners right now and I mean you know I think that you've been on the roundup a few times we've done some brief interviews but you and I have worked together we've I was the director of operations for both Green Hills Grill and Mayor Bowl recently and so you and I have done a lot of these evenings together we've worked a lot of these shifts together and I don't I don't want to have this interview and be like I want people to know like we know each other we've worked together for a while and I've we started our relationship gosh 15 years ago when you were opening the Caney Fork fish camp and Bistro 215 in Green Hills and so I like telling stories about how we went through these nights and we went through I because I want people to know like I'm it's tough me asking questions to you because it's like I know but when I hired you when I hired you to be the director of operations I did make it clear that I didn't hire you needing you to work on holidays that was not the purpose of why I was hiring you is to have an extra experienced hand on holidays typically on holidays if you have enough food and enough people labor your shift goes okay you know barring some unforeseen circumstances one Easter we had the ceiling fall in at Maryville during the shift that was it was the loudest noise

12:16ever heard in a restaurant but fortunately we had gotten all the people out because they noticed the big crack there we fixed all that but I didn't need you to work on those days but as part of our culture I think you kind of wanted to plus you like that drive that you know that build up an excitement as well I feel like that's why we do it I mean you know we we talked about we kind of identified core values we went through all this stuff we talked about that feeling you know the and I'll go back to back in the day and kind of my my theory in working in restaurants is somewhat old-school because I believe in the you know the fundamentals just like the ABCs of running a restaurant and that's you know getting the 60-second greet getting a drink back making sure that you explain everything the menus are good the restaurants clean the bathrooms clean that you're all running food full hands in full hands out just kind of doing the basics and I think so many people pass that but one of the things that's always kind of drawn me to you and I mentioned in the episode with Pat Martin that people who are super passionate and super talented I'm drawn to like there's a gravitas I'm just like I want to be around them and you've always been that guy you've always been a guy who as an owner you are bus and tables your hands on you're doing all of the things and I've always respected the hell out of that with you so I think that coming in working in a holiday next to you there's something special there was always something special about being there on New Year's Eve when the when your hair is on fire and it's crazy and it's you're with the owner and the executive chef and as the director of operations we're all bus and tables we're all greeting tables we're all doing all of the things and that was the culture that that it's always been that well that is the culture it's always been do whatever it takes and I work on

14:18Friday nights and Sunday mornings most of the time most people in life think I'm gonna do everything I can in my whole life never to have to work on a Friday night or Sunday morning to me it doesn't really bother me was never the never the end of the world I didn't mean honestly it's when the people come to my restaurant don't whatever you do for a living don't you need to be there when you need to be there and for a lot of people they're blessed they can you know log on log off and do their work at different times you know I think one of the things in the pandemic that people have realized I was reading the other day this guy said work for me was always about going to work and now it's about doing my work and there's such a huge difference because I don't have to spend all that time going to work and going home from work but I do have to schedule my time so that I can get it all done and restaurants is different we still have to go to work and we still have to be there to make it happen do I have to be there every day every moment I don't you know if you have other good people to do that then you're in you're blessed then it works out pretty well but you have to trust them to do it it takes a while to give up their trust some people can never do it so it comes to hiring good people one of the things that I you know this is an interesting interview for me because I'm so fat there's a lot of things we could talk about here but I want to go in the route of finding good people because I feel like there's a lot of things that you do that I want to help I want to share some of the things that you do to our listening audience to hopefully help them I were in a time of COVID-19 where a lot of people are trying to identify new things to do we're all the buzz word right now is what pivot right so we're all pivoting to different things I've talked about your delivery system at Greenhouse Grille of Maribol a hundred times how you've been doing it in-house you came on the roundup and you've talked about that we're not gonna get into that too much because you can go to our YouTube page and watch the video where you talk about that but hiring the right people is something that every single person out there struggles with how do you do the interview process what do you do how do you hire people you use

16:20something called culture index will you talk about culture index and how you got started with it and let's introduce everybody to the secret behind some of your hiring well first of all I have to go back before culture index and to make it realize that I'm not a great HR person I'm not the perfect hireer you know there's no I don't have this genius sense or anything like that in fact I trust people far too much and I want what's best of them I do think I start out with the realization that I'm never gonna hire the perfect person I mean sometimes we talk about and I've retained people for a long time and I people have worked with me 27 years but part of that is because they're not perfect and nor am I and I call it the home of misfit toys everybody has an issue in their life there's something so I can look at it on paper and we use culture index which is a traits basically it's a personality traits profile which tells people what you're most inclined to want to do and then it also has a section of saying in your current job what do you think you're expected to do and sometimes you can look at those two and they're vastly different it's perfect when they're the same because you're doing what you should be doing obviously when I hired you and we looked at a culture index we could we could see it that this is a person who is a strong leader you know likes people does things quickly and yet has a high attention to detail and not every server needs to be that what we really need in servers are people who want to come to work understand that there's routine involved some people don't want any routine whatsoever in their lives they want to be different day well restaurants are different every day but you come to work at the same time do the same opening side work same closing side work you're punching in the menus generally the same things like that and then but what you really can get out of it is whether a person wants to be the person holding people accountable which is what managers do that's why they call managers we manage people or whether they really want to be a person who never wants to have that job some people never want to have that job so they it looks different on paper

18:25and it's pretty darn accurate and the cool thing there is is that there's no right or wrong in this whole thing it's not like one is good and one is bad but hiring somebody who doesn't want to be a leader to be in a leadership position doesn't do them any favors you know so I mean where somebody might feel like oh I think I want to be a manager there's more money in that or I want to do this but that's not their personality sometimes you can set people up to fail and they can come in an interview and they can say can say one thing but they're not like that their aptitude is to do something different so a lot of people like being on a team they prefer to be on a team and some people want to be the person who's leading that team I happen to be that kind of person yeah not everybody's like that and I think it's good to identify that on the front end people and jobs they want to be in one of the other things it does pretty well is it identifies people who are high of a high aptitude and the desire to look at data and then the people who don't want to do it at all some people never ever want to look at a spreadsheet they never want to it's like the last thing they would ever want to do and yet other people are like well give me the data and I'll look at that and I can make decisions based upon it and then I can take that and lead other people down the road to success or whatever else but I can't take somebody who has no aptitude no desire to look at data and put them in a responsible position like a general manager where part of their job is to look at data I mean they have to look at the food cost if they look at the purchases they have to look at the liquor sale percentages and there's a whole lot of different information there that they need to look at and if you don't like to do that then that's the wrong job for you that's just one of the things general managers sometimes get misplaced upon they you know I go home and look at spreadsheets you know not all the time and I don't do that at work but you know I'm not a big novel reader I'm a fact reader and some there's nothing wrong with that I love to read but I like to read about things that you know are known and real versus you know just about my sister loves to sit and

20:25sit around and read novels all day long my mother did too you know it's a blessing to them she would prefer to do that all afternoon I don't mind getting in there I'm trying to figure out what to do next or how to fix something yeah I think that that's that's that and that's I'm very similar in that regard like that's that's entertaining to me it's almost like you know like a crossword puzzle right some people do that like I like to read because it's like math you know we both like math this number equals that number and that equals that number it never lies it's not as a math professor which was helpful to pretty much all of her children who did all get that gene and it's been a blessing for us you know we can go in and do Excel and we can I'm not I'm not certainly gonna write huge spreadsheets and everything else because I also don't have to I can and I get data from you know the service as a software companies or software as a service companies that we can that you know they crunch all the data but I can know how to look at it and see what I need to see but without the data I don't know how people make decisions it's amazing well a lot of people make decisions based upon assumptions and I think that's that's probably the number one thing that people do is they make decisions without data right I mean so I can't tell you many times I've walked in somewhere and talked to somebody and said what's the number one item that you what's your highest grossing margin item on your menu and they'll say I don't know I go what's your what's your food cost percentage and they'll go it's around 30 how do you know that they'll go because you know it's that's what we think it is and you go how do you price your menu and they go we just looked at the other restaurants around the way and we priced them based upon what they charge and you go you didn't use like your actual cost and margins to identify exactly what you should charge and they go well no you know how do you run a business you know one of things I know Brandon having done this most of my life is that most people really don't want to think about restaurants as a

22:27business when you start talking restaurant business to guests that you can see they get like bleary-eyed and they're like oh I don't want to hear about any of that I just want to come in and have a good time and think it's you know all magic you know that it just happens you know I mean I certainly the man I bought that I think I mentioned this for the man I bought Green Hills Grill from is an incredibly bright man with very successful businesses but he hadn't run large restaurants before and he said I thought I could hire a chef and a general manager and sit at the bar with my wife and friends which is kind of the dream everybody has that's fabulous and I don't really sit at the bar with my wife and friends very often at work although I certainly do come in with different people on a regular basis but you can't just hire two people and expect it to be done and I think that's tough to do in our business it's too is too many misfit toys and too many variables that you know things that can go wrong I mean if it rains outside you have to go to the back and get the rug and put it by the front door so nobody falls down you have so many of those little things so many of those little things that these when something happens in a building you innately know like one of the things that always that I've just always been fascinated by is that even at Maribol you're like well there's a party we have a party in this room so that door is blocked off you go oh well then just take table 13 and move table 13 over to table 18 is then you can take this table you put a two top here you move it around and then there's flow you're like how did you think of that kind of stuff like where do you I don't know just that wouldn't range you have to do this I have a lot of experience in the restaurant because I like to work in restaurants I mean this is what I like to do to me that was fun making some of those decisions so many people look at this business I could run through and I can do this job this job this job and I can learn them all in two months and then I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna be the you know district sales manager and I don't you know I that well-run companies can identify the people who do those jobs best through things like culture index to know how to do it but just because you think that's what you want to do it doesn't always happen and don't shortcut the learning

24:30process I mean you have to do things I had done jobs in the restaurant for you know extended periods of time so I knew how to do them so when it came time to as a general manager at Green Hills Grill talking to my other managers and developing them I could actually work with them on what how to do it correctly I mean while training manuals have instruction manuals and all that actually sitting down with the bar manager and trying to figure out where his costs where the variables are in his cost is something you actually have to sit down and do and if you only spent two months doing it maybe you got it maybe you didn't chances are you because you didn't have patients learning that process you're not gonna have patients teaching the process either you mentioned your mom and you said earlier on in the interview that you are a you didn't grew up in the hospitality business your parents that's not what they did however you have how many siblings do you have I have four brothers and one sister you have five I was altar boy for seven years which is longer than anybody really wants to be an altar boy but I did a good job my brother and I had a secret handshake when we did together it was kind of fun do you still know the secret handshake oh yeah we could pull it off right now easy which brother my brother West between Christopher and I West worked with me at Green Hills Grill like the nice thing about West was he looks a lot like me so when West was working with me at Green Hills Grill I was the single hardest working manager in all of Nashville and then when he was away people people said well I never see you anymore I thought I was doing it my other half well that was my favorite thing when I was there because you were both kind of taller guys I'd walk up to the table and they would go that you look different and like I grew hair and I always think I was you it's hilarious but you have so your family that your brother works he's the executive chef of both your restaurants talk about that what's that like Christopher does well you know again because we use culture and he has complementary skills to mine I mean he's doing different things than I am yeah

26:31he's really even a more astute researcher of things than I am and when you put him on something he goes and he learns it he's blends flavors he's a self-taught chef he worked in restaurants for a long time he can blend flavors really really well he more than anything again because Christopher spent a fair amount of time operationally in restaurants he knows what it's like to actually have to cook something you know so often you get somebody who does that job for a short period of time because they're classically trained chef which my youngest brother Peter is a classically trained chef went to code in the state of America amazing flavor profiles but unless you actually know how long it takes to cook it it's hard to put too many of those things together if you wait your menu where everything is coming off a saute which we like to saute and use convection ovens and things like that but you can give that guy too much work and the other guys stand over there doing nothing he can slide down and help him but you got to balance it out and Christopher's because he's done every position in the restaurant except for Barton he's pretty astute at that but he's done plenty of bartening at home he's good at that too how long have you guys worked together oh I don't even know probably 16 18 years 20 years longer I don't know when he graduated college and that's when he came to work with us we you know he was taking his last summer off after college and the brother cook quit two weeks into the summer so me and Wes ganged up on him and made him move to Nashville and start working under under Andy Rucker who's our current kitchen manager at Green Hills Grill which is crazy so I mean you have a Green Hills Grill Andy Rucker you started Green Hills Grill open in 1990 tell us the story of the Green Hills Grill I was getting to all your brother's work in the restaurant business but let's let's let's get into the actual story of the Green Hills Grill and let's get to the bottom of how this came about to where you were reopening it and let's just get does that think that's one of the biggest misconceptions oh I used to go when it was over there but it was different and this and that like I just you started there what position were you when you started at the Green Hills Grill I was a server Patty Nash was manager and she hired me at Green Hills Grill in December of 1992 my first day was

28:34December 4th 1992 and I started there as a server and a week after I started there Phil Hickey and Mike Huffler the two owners of the restaurant moved to Atlanta because they had agreed to sell it to I believe Ray Schoenbaum you know as they were as part of a different larger group at that point but regardless they would come back and do these meetings and they just had set up a culture of brilliance there and the people cared about what they did Mike in a lot of ways like Christopher had that I mean he's a incredibly these are two incredibly successful men Phil Hickey and Mike Huffler I believe that Phil's been nominated for restaurant operator of the year award and he's currently the chairman of the board of members Ale House and Jim and Nick's barbecue and so you're lucky enough to work in this system under what were really brilliant people and brilliant restaurateurs and they obviously their desire was to go and do you know multi units and different things and they've both been very successful I didn't really want to move around and do all that so I just kept learning at Green Hills Grill realized I love to serve people and through attrition and everybody else just wanting to leave I guess I got to be the boss you know I got skipped over a couple times and that happens not to everybody in life but it but it did to me but in the end I you know I stuck it out there I cared about it loved it my wife had a great job you know she had a professional job which was certainly was contributing to our success and it was hard for me to move for restaurants when her job was actually as good or better than mine and so Green Hills Grill closed why did why did the original Green Hills Grill where if the Orvis store is now why did that restaurant close and move to over by like the the movie theater from what I understand they missed a lease extension deadline and so the last five years of the lease was not renewed so they had to move I and knowing that at the point I knew that I probably needed to move and by that point I had worked at the

30:39restaurant for 11 and a half years and let's face it like I said I probably was there too long which benefited me in the end but you're supposed to go and move on and I really wanted to create restaurants at the time so that's that's what I was given the opportunity to do but what happened there really is I had a phone call one day and there was a gentleman who owned agent are you interested in coming over here and helping us at Princeton's Grill and I said well I mentioned changing Princeton's Grill around if that's what he allowed me to do so one thing led to another we talked and I ended up leaving it was it was time to leave you know Jason Crockwell the executive chef who was an incredibly successful caterer here in town with flavor catering was the was the was the chef there at the grill and he left very soon I think within a month of one another we left I think we both knew that moving to a different location and we're in a different location now but it takes some you know you got to want to do it right and I don't know as though they ever did as well as they could have so they would that location about the movie theater didn't last very long and do you have speculation why that didn't work I didn't work there so no and at that point I was kind of persona non grata although when you work for somebody for eleven and a half years and you leave typically that you know there's most people would say thank you or we appreciate you contributing to our success but that really wasn't it there were hard feelings like I shouldn't have left I had one guest tell me that they would never eat any of my restaurants because I'm the one who ruined Greenville and that's hard to hear as an operator somebody who's you know not I didn't own the restaurant I don't sign the checks I'm certainly not getting paid the revenue for the success of the restaurant it was kind of tough to listen to some of that but that's the reality of life I've you know I've got a pretty thick skin you know being one of six kids you know you can't you get a lot of criticism because your mother blames you for things your brothers and sisters did so I didn't know that I didn't know that when you left that people would say something like that this is well before the internet so you had like people audibly say that to you I went to a direct competitor and I went

32:42and actually he did pay me some more money but what he really gave me the opportunity to do was create I mean I'm really a pretty creative person myself I picked the paint at my house my wife does not you know we've renovated our house here I love the way it is and Connie long helped me with that she also helped me beginning a bistro 215 which we renovated Princeton's into bistro 215 she's helped me on all of my restaurant projects you know throughout the throughout the years we have a great we have a great relationship you know I'm able to come up with ideas and you know I trust her to tell me that I'm either that that won't work or mostly I can't afford it you know when you can't afford remember one time where the red trade show and I said well who usually buys that and the lady goes oh we just put that in Oprah's house and I thought oh there you go it was right I can't afford that so but we love Connie she's awesome we scramble around and make it happen and bistro 215 didn't end up being a really successful restaurant I think was a little bit ahead of its time here in Nashville I mean we put a poached egg on a salad now that's certainly not an unusual thing but at that point my word you know you'd have thought you know I remember when we changed from smoking to non-smoking and we wanted to guess that were you from California this is a tobacco grown state and it's never gonna change I'm not from California but I also understood the liability aspect of smoking in the restaurant and why it was going to go away and it did go away very shortly there afterward so one guy told me though he was probably pretty smart he goes never be the first one to change things because they're the ones who go out of business and I thought now I look back on that I'm like that's probably pretty smart so you spent you spent some time opening some restaurants for Danny York I did right you did be sure to in five and then you had the cany fork fish camp which was such a I did that one with you I think that's beast or two and five I worked I was with your creation gardens there and then you were selling me a high margin produce high margin produce I did get to

34:45go to hockey games on occasion I guess it was a benefit very quality produce seven days a week we were doing a good thing we're going to hockey that was point years sorry guys to throw that out there but that was so much fun opening cany fork fish camp just because the all of the stuff and then the catfish and just the whole concept is really a cool thing I literally went in my mom and dad's boathouse they have a summer home in northern Wisconsin that's 105 years old and I literally went down in the boathouse and I took the oars out of the corner and I nailed them up in in the place I mean for me to create a you know kind of fishing themed cabin themed restaurant was tons of fun because I grew up in this year in the summer times in this area of northern Wisconsin that everybody went to you know in the 40s and the 50s and you know before we could jutter around the world that's just where people went I mean Eisenhower went up there fishing Elizabeth Taylor went up there and hung out on the lakes it was kind of a glam place to go back you know back in the 60s but then it's still is an extraordinarily nice place to go but it was fun to take some of those old things and put them in the restaurant I mean I was in there the other day and there's still a picture of me and my brother on the wall and my grandfather and my mom and dad's you know fireplace up there it's kind of fun to walk around see all that well it's just that's the question I was gonna ask is they have you been back because now it's something it's the same sort of concept there's a different name and see the live catfish and you know it's live it's it's more of a game type restaurant is that it's right over there it's a little different than it was and you know here's the thing really for that area Christopher and I are used to selling very high quality super fresh food and I'm not so certain that in that area that's exactly what was necessary and I've learned a lot about restaurant business and business in general since then and it probably wasn't as successful as it should have been because the product was more expensive to make than it should be than you could price

36:46it at and it was also we spent money renovating the restaurant itself and not the kitchen and we did do some renovation in the kitchen but the kitchen was not large enough to service the square footage of the restaurant so can you fork fish camp you left there and you bought mayor bowl right how did that go down well I went to work for the gentleman you know Danny also owned mayor bowl and one day he put me in charge of Mary Bowie said oh by the way here you're responsible for that too and it was losing lots of money all the time in fact his controllers really scared the heck out of me you know I don't know I was talking to her about it one day and she goes that's the only restaurant I've ever worked with with Danny that can never make any money there's no way that restaurant can ever make any money so then when he was firing me a couple months later and I came up with the idea of buying one of us well how about you sell me one of your restaurants and and he goes which one and I said well mayor bowl and I remember him looking at the spreadsheet and he had to be thinking how this guy if he's dumb enough to actually buy this I'll have be happy to load it off on him but we went in there and we did what we know how to do best which is control expenses and make the experience better and do the right thing and make the food good and it slowly grew and I was looking at the sales because I was trying to go backward in time to see when we were actually doing the sales that we're doing right now which was 2009 which was also a recession and we just grew it from then by doing the right thing and then by entertaining people I mean when when you want to be busy on a holiday and people want to go out because they don't want to cook you just have to build the mousetrap yeah you know now not having any holidays obviously impacts the sales there but no that was fun it was a great experience and then you know kind of back to your hiring people part when I hired Matt you know one of my managers or former managers there as a manager and he was actually able to plug in and do some of the day-to-day operations things that I did I had all of a sudden I had the time to think more openly and freely and I remember I walked in Lee

38:46Crum's house he's the artist and all of his all of his artwork is on the wall at Green Hills Grill it's kind of the southwestern and some old stuff but I remember walking into his house thinking well if I ever did Green Hills Grill again this stuff would work pretty well and that kind of got me creatively thinking about well we could you know do this and this and then you know I then I just started looking at different spaces and driving around Green Hills and sitting in people's parking lots and figuring out which ones had the most parking why did you want to do the Green Hills Grill again you leave the Green Hills Grill was there just like something inside of you like this love for that restaurant was it just such an important part of your time like why bring back the Green Hills Grill versus starting a new concept that is similar like what is the bringing back that is there something special with that particular concept? Well I think it goes back to the in the days I started there you know I feel like he created a restaurant that it was really for the community and he and Mike did a great job you know Mike Huffler being his partner of creating a restaurant that did the right thing and when the community embraces something I don't want to say I miss the community because we have a great community in Maryland Farms but I didn't see a lot of crossover and Maryville is a little bit different while we do have everyday guests and people come all the time and people it was an entertaining restaurant special people you know engage people in business and they have meetings and events and when you're in an event it's not you walk in the middle of event and say hey everybody how's it going they can't turn on look at you like why are you in here so on that kind of community you know warmth aspect it wasn't as rewarding on a moment by moment basis as Green Hills then lots of people said I wish you were in Green Hills and I'll be honest before all these restaurants were built in Green Hills I mean it was kind of a restaurant wasteland there wasn't anything there we would drive through Green Hills my wife and I and she'd be like there's nowhere here I want to eat just keep driving now there are a lot of restaurants in Green Hills I mean they've built many many more restaurants more most of which are corporate owned restaurants but it you

40:50know it is it is what it is but I think the people in Green Hills wanted that community gathering spot and it took them a couple years to remember that that's what we were and that you know we're not a fancy restaurant I do tell people on a regular basis I swear I did not send the menu to the James Beard Foundation because I'm not trying to win a prize I'm just trying to feed people and when I walk watch people walk by the front window and I said I've fed that person 200 times you know there's something about that that's a mutual respect you know I certainly respect them tremendously and hopefully they're coming back again and again because they respect what we do and what we offer them in exchange. The Green Hills Grill is a very special place to me the day that I got it like I'm in there working and I kind of being welcomed into that the history and the community and just kind of Green Hills Grill what it is and I put it on a pedestal when you kind of you broke it down one day and you were going around the restaurant we were talking to people and you go this this is this is what it is this is this is my community these are people that come and eat here all the time and we don't want this to be a pretentious place where anybody can come here anytime and eat we want this to be the community restaurant for Green Hills and like everything made sense to me it was kind of a cool day because I was like okay because I was it kind of I think in that same realm of like Maribol beautiful nice restaurant you know it's very elegant. You're kind of a food snob and our food at Green Hills Grill is really good but not in the same way I mean there's a difference between what an a la minute you know 50 seat restaurant does and what a 200 seat restaurant does or at Maribol at 258 seat restaurant does I mean there's they're completely they're not completely different animals but they're different and I miss that I'd like to learn more of that to be quite honest you know I mean I I'd like to get into that a little bit of that minutia and be able to do some really you know spectacular things but when you're you know when you have 15 to-go orders going

42:53and you got 24 tables in the restaurant it's a little you know you got to manage what you can cook and how long you can spend on each minute of each piece of every item pretty well and make it taste really good and make it be fresh and make it be homemade because we make our food there well well you're a guy that likes to bust as he liked to bust tables but like you're certain that afraid to get your hands dirty and get in there and make it happen what I don't like to see Brandon's I don't like to see unbust tables if somebody from a restaurant and people don't just move over there to take the things off I mean it does it looks unkempt it looks dirty it looks clean unclean why would you want somebody in your restaurant to be looking at a table that's not clean I walked into a restaurant one time and they said oh we can only seat you in the smoking section and this is back in the smoking days and I moved the ferns apart in the smoking section to look in the rest of the restaurant and I counted 21 unbust tables and all I can think of is oh my god that's terrible why am I here and then ironically they went and they sent people out to bust the tables and when those dishes fell over it was the second loudest noise I'd ever heard in a restaurant because the guy stacked the bus tubs all the way up like seven high and then fell over when he started pushing them through the dining room and it was louder when the ceiling fell at Mirable but that was the second loudest noise I've ever heard I thought oh just it makes my skin crawl that's why I bust tables because I can't stand to watch them be unbust you know my favorite shift was my favorite shift ever I may have told you this but my favorite shift was Valentine's Day and it's Valentine's Day at Green Hills Grill we had a pretty good number of reservations and you were over at Mirable and we were texting back and forth like what are you guys doing in sales what are you doing in sales but I was so prepared and I got the entire team together and I had this huge rousing lineup and I'm like guys this is what we're doing tonight we're and I had everybody there we had a Red Bulls we were like jazz we were pumped we had all

44:56we had the full staff everybody was there we're all ready to go and I made it our goal that night that full hands in full hands out but we will have the table bust and reset before the people get to their car that was the goal right before people that got up and left their tables bust and reset in the entire night the entire team did that we never went on a wait longer than five minutes and on Valentine's Day in a busy business I think last year Valentine's Day no wait longer than five minutes everybody walked in like you guys aren't that busy no we are busy but we're just operating at like 5,000 rpms and everybody's on board you got to care and you got to get your people to care otherwise it doesn't work people who don't care are the worst thing ever it's the funnest shift in the world that is fun when you do it like that and it's going perfectly I mean again that's and it's rewarding when you leave and you look at the sales you're like oh great on a snow day the difference is on a snow day it feels like that except then you look at the sales because you only had yourself and two other servers and it's like half of what you normally do for lunch and you're like oh my god if I ever did my life it felt like Mother's Day so so we're talking about community and Green Hills Grill we affectionately call you the mayor the mayor of Green Hills Grill it's actually you know Clay Butler's job but well thank you yeah I'm the vice mayor I like the vice mayor we all love Clay Butler he's the best you're you're I was gonna ask you what's your favorite thing about running a restaurant but I think I know the answer to that and it's it's the people that dine there right it's the guests yeah well it's pleasing when they like it when people like it and they distrust you and they come back I mean is it a business relationship it is but really it's more of a personal relationship I mean you go places again and again that you like to go to or that you're taking care of that nobody goes yeah I mean we

46:58all you know in the restaurant business know you know the story of the you know the the consumer that never comes back you know I'd prefer those rather than never come back and write about it on Yelp you know you either tell me about it when you're there and I'd love to hear about it and fix it because I can fix anything in 20 minutes and think about how long it takes to cook food almost anything I can fix right away if you let us know what the problem is you about it but yeah no that's that's the key it's a it's a it's a give-and-take and it's rewarding when people come back again and again I mean when I left the old Green Hills Grill there were seven people that ate there twice a day every day how many employees do you have at the Green Hills Grill that worked at the old Green Hills Grill right now I think only maybe five I think five or six six well if you count in our bowl because there's several over there too seven eight maybe it keeps going up eight here and there you know they come and go here and there and then they come back and that's the thing about my culture too if you did a great job you're always welcome back it's not like you left and I'll send now I hate you if you left and you went and tried something I want everybody to try what they want to do in life and not everybody's as lucky as me in doing what they want to do in life you want to go try something else go try it and then if it doesn't work out you feel comfortable here please do come back I'll say yeah bring them back in almost all very rarely do I say no I don't I mean I can't remember and you worked with me long enough who didn't we want back and I don't think too many people now I mean you're a very forgiving person but also I mean I just uh you I think you you like to see other people happy and successful you have it you have the the quintessential spirit of service it exudes throughout you well I'm lucky well and and that's why I think that this pandemic was so hard for you not to mention the financial aspect of it just not being you had to close Miracle you stayed open throughout the entire thing at Green Hills Grill it's not over no no I think this is the

48:58problem by the way we all thought it would be over but it's not and it's not gonna be over in five months either for restaurants yeah I wish it was but it's not so we have to continue to just try to make it through to the end you know so how are how are the restaurants doing right now well people come to them every day which is great you know I mean at Green Hills Grill we've been incredibly well supported by the by the community there and at Maribol I mean the number of people came the first day we were back open I mean it really warmed my heart and you see all these people who used to see all the time and you know that they they're there to support you because they're trying to help and that makes a big difference one of the things that's hurt us most at Maribol is the obviously a lack of business events I mean most most corporate businesses have closed their offices or closed any events through the end of the year at least some farther than that and that's a lot of what we depended on it I mean we have seven different dining rooms and we're able to do events and meetings of different sizes so that's kind of tricky in Green Hill we're 50% capacity and it pains me that you know my 80 year old guests you know who love to sit at the bar every time can't actually sit at the bar because you're not allowed to sit at bars in Nashville but I understand why that is in different areas you know whether or not that that's good for business in the end and we'll put people out of business we'll hopefully not see that but it could be but but people have been able to come back in there in a 50% capacity we're still able to feed some people and we've done 35% of our business and to go on a regular basis which makes a huge difference I mean executing that piece and doing that well really made the day there and helped better both restaurants we were at about 65% for both restaurants is that bad I don't you know unfortunately we as restaurateurs everybody talks to you Brandon so you should tell me you should ask everybody that question but I don't know because we don't get together for coffee every Friday morning unfortunately well that's one of the reasons why I really want to do this show is that I or this these interviews

50:59is because I I feel like this could be this could bridge a gap this could be something that people can hear how you're doing and I want to because I think you're an exceptional operator and I think that some of the things that you do are it's not rocket science but you utilize technology what's some of the best what's some of the best tech that you have out there what are you using that really is helping you well other than culture index which just helps you put the right people in the right seat if this person's either you can tell when somebody's not a server then they're just lost their job and they're trying to go do this that doesn't really fit for us and you can usually tell that within two weeks of somebody starting we use then put it's an online checklist I mean literally you everybody wants checklists and standard operating procedures this is just an online standard operating procedure and when the bartender looks at it and clicks off yes I did that you know it turned off the water you know wash the bar mats because if you don't have a list some people don't need a list I don't really need a list much but a lot of people do and they just don't do it they walk out the door like oh I think I'm done so that helps keep people accountable I mean it's kind of amazing you know we use online scheduling software because that's the way people nowadays want to be communicated to they want to see it on their phone they want to build trade shifts on their phone and really it works great it you know ironically because I'm not on that every day I don't see it every day but I can see it in the business how important it is and how well it works you know we moved to toast which is a newer POS system and I have to say everybody's anxious about toast oh is it gonna because they do the credit card processing and are they gonna hold everybody up into the future probably so but maybe not nobody wanted but they're tech and operating I'm the way it works it I mean I don't want to say it's brilliant but you should be on this if you're around a restaurant you're not on it I mean the ordering at the table thing I remember six or seven years

52:59ago when I'm like why can't we just why can't you just put the POS on everybody's telephone and they could by the way but they wanted to charge an individual licensing agreement for every phone at twelve hundred dollars which doesn't make any sense well now when they hand you the hardware and you can actually order from the table at Green Hills Grill and you can take payment at the table you know and you can you know process gift cards at the table you can do everything it it's touchless it's like it is in Europe when the bank said the moment you take away the credit card and take it somewhere else I'm responsible for it if it's not if it's fraud well people just said it was fraud you could have a $500 bill and if I swipe the card you could say oh that I didn't do that and the restaurateur has to pay for that when the bank lobby got that through ironically the there's no hardware available and what do the hardware guys okay what are we doing he goes well don't buy any of the stuff they have right now because none of it's any good they came up and obviously they're well-funded company and pretty darn fast and they made it happen I mean the online ordering we get due to all of our to-go online ordering which I think now well over 25% of all of our all of our to-go is somebody we never talked to which makes it really easy the menus I don't think you just pick out what you want pay for it and hit send we'll take it to you because that time on the telephone takes a lot of time people deciding what they want I mean you know you can't hire enough people to be on the phone if you're really busy no I I completely understand what about reservation systems so you guys move to Rezzi over at Green Hills Grill and I'm asking this not because I know the answer and I'm just wanting you to say it because I'm that's new to me who to Rezzi over Green Hills Grill and Open Table still at Maripol but why move away from Open Table and I don't think a lot of people understand how Open Table works and I'd love to you know I think it's good to educate the people that are potential guests or people that dine or other restaurateurs is exactly how some of this stuff works. Open Table number one 15 years ago the online reservation system didn't work so there was no line

55:00item on our P&O as a business person I you know people called on the phone and we put it in and we made it happen when Open Table which was really a brilliant brilliant you know invention you know basically being able to go online and make a reservation what there is there a marketing company what Open Table is doing for me is marketing seats in my restaurant two guests for a fee for every person that every every person that you book like if branding goes online and says okay I'm gonna bring four people to Green Hills Grill at 630 tonight because I want Stephen to know that now I come every Wednesday then I pay four dollars for that well at Maripol where I might have somebody in town from Kansas City or am I obviously out on holidays there it works pretty well but I'll get back to that then you pay a dollar a person if you have a group of 12 people coming to Maripol I pay $12 for that at Maripol my check average is double typically not right now because we're during COVID but typically it's double what it is at Green Hills Grill Green Hills Grill it's a little bit over $20 so a dollar per person at Green Hills is 5% of the money that I take from the guest well we just realized that 5% of the money in COVID was way too much money and let's face it at Green Hills Grill I mean if I fed somebody 200 times why am I paying them a dollar why would they why would they want me to pay a dollar so they can let me know they're coming for them it's really convenient and I wanted that well you know Resi does the same thing they can go on the Resi app and they can say I want to be here and it's got some other tricks of the thing on there and make it happen and with holidays I mean at Maripol on Mother's Day we could probably book 5,000 people if we had 5,000 seats but we don't have 5,000 seats it's nice that it organizes it and does it all for us but I was like well why don't you have the guests pay the dollar because they probably would pay the dollar to get the reservation but they won't do that they still make me pay it and I mean we paid open table over $80,000 last year between my two restaurants I mean $80,000 is a lot of money that's more than a lot of restaurants in a whole year even if they're good

57:02and doing a good job I mean there's a fantastic number and when I tell that to guests they have no idea they're like you did what and I'm like yeah we paid $80,000 to open table you know and here's the deal though it's a quarter if you go on my website but as one of the guests at Maripol said well I went on your website like you said and I and I do my reservations there now so only cost you a quarter but they didn't give me my points I'm like well I don't I don't I mean points we pay for all the credit card points anyway you know every point every airplane flight you go on I'm paying for they just charge me three three and a half percent for it so nowadays you can get cash back so I pay you cash back they don't at my restaurant too Wow which is you know I want people to come I'm all for marketing you got to get them to come in somehow I really want people to come because we have a fun place we do a really good job we have really nice people not because I'm giving you two percent back on your purchase just raise the price and give everybody back two percent but because we're a hyper competitive business it's an industry it doesn't work like that so what what can you tell the guests I mean if you're telling the guests what's the best way to do it if you go to the Maripol website to make a reservation it costs you a quarter if you go to Google dollar yeah that right yeah and you know I shouldn't complain I'm blessed to have them but I don't think people realize that and tech is pretty smart because when they make like people's lives easier and pass on the cost to somebody else that we just pay for it so but you wonder why more small businesses are going out a bit I mean that's part of it it doesn't you know $80,000 that I didn't have to pay 12 years ago that I do have to pay now I got a we raise the prices and everybody pays well so I think this is part of the education I mean this is why we talked about I'm not saying that you're complaining about it but I'm saying is that restaurants are going out of business and people out there are saying oh well I'm gonna go support restaurants so I'll go to open table make a reservation and go eat there or I'll call uber eats and I'll get food

59:04delivered there and you go well the restaurant is to pay over eat what's that uber eats at the restaurant 30% that's what I mean that's what they quoted you 30% so I mean if you're if you want to help the restaurant go pick it up don't order like I don't want to say don't order uber eats because a lot of people like no no no order uber eats that's fine we need the sales well what I mean that's full to us is we do it ourselves and and again delivery taking the food from the back door of a restaurant to somebody's house is not worth 30% but here's what uber eats is they're not a home delivery company they're a marketing company they're marketing my restaurant to their people and that's what they say I mean they call me all the time oh everybody wants greenhouse grill they asked why we're not on your why you're not on our site yeah we'd love to have you on here and I'm like well then why don't you pay me because you're gonna mark up my prices and pass it on anyway but now then they I'm like well can you do it for you know 12% 14% now we can't do that well how I mean but you say I'm in demand so and I think that the CEO of one of these companies said we're going to take your guests and charge you to get them back I mean he's on the record of basically saying that exact thing we'll think about it I mean all of my food in our business typically costs you know 30 to 35 percent the people cost you know 27 to 35 percent how can delivering it from my back door to your house sometimes across the street or to the office upstairs how can that really cost me 30% how do they price that and ironically they're not making any money on but their valuations keep going up you know I wish Brandon I really wish you and I would have come up with that idea that had been a really smart idea me too you know but no it's it's it's just and I don't know how other people are doing it they're marking up their menus and they're charging delivery fees they just add on all the fees so I mean we do charge a delivery fee because that's what everybody charges but the delivery fee goes into paying for the cars the gas and the insurance and almost covers

01:01:07it but 30% covers a lot more than that so again I think this is just something that I want if you're not like a restaurant person you're not a restaurant owner just to kind of understand how some of this stuff works the technology is really cool and it can be very helpful but as far as things you can do to help restaurants going to their website and making the reservation or picking up the food if you can is is good helps the restaurant put more money in their pocket and if your restaurant you've negotiated down uber eats to the 10% then more power to you I don't want not trying to corporations can do that perhaps but again I don't think people lay those side of the guy across the street from me that's a large corporation that's publicly traded and then myself I mean when restoration hardware put a restaurant and this is a publicly traded company that had evaluation of four billion dollars when that restaurant opened across the street it's not the same business as me they're selling $20,000 couches and they just have food there so that you come in and you can drink a glass of wine I guess I don't even understand the concept it's probably not the best concept they ever came up with at this moment by the way but I can't be competitive with that I don't have I can't pay $20,000 for a couch for you to sit on and go out of business it's a nice couch yeah well it's pretty nice couch and restoration hardware has some really nice nice furniture you know I'm not gonna their stuff is nice but it's funny when the food is just there as an accoutrement to selling the furniture it's hard to compare and compete and when we've come to a point where all restaurants are is like a window dressing and anybody can do it and these large companies can just afford to lose money on restaurants to bring in people like us are really in a dangerous spot it's tough it's gonna be tough for us to do that and compete with those types of places yes and that is why I continue to say eat local

01:03:07continue to eat at locally owned and operated restaurants I'll say it again I say it every show this is the exact reason why what do you think the future holds what do you what are the future holds for your companies where do you think you're gonna be greenhouse grill a mirror bowl well I think when you get to be but you get to be my age you realize that you know a year or a year and a half or two years isn't an end time amount of time I mean we were 21 years old two years a long time and I certainly understand that you know when you're when you have a two-year-old child that time from two to four seems like a long time but when you're in a business person you just have to project you have to use math the spreadsheets you know that my mother taught us or that you know we learned because of her and you have to figure out how long you can go and what you can spend and where you have to pair your expenses and save it and what you can do with the real estate I don't own it either of my real estate and both landlords have been somewhat agreeable you know to some rent some rent reductions but not a tremendous amount what looked certainly at the beginning but now as we stretch into 14 15 months and I know we're only five or six months in but I think we're gonna restaurants gonna feel the effect of this for a long time the first quarter is gonna be really difficult for most all restaurants I mean individual large leverage companies and we've already seen that you know a lot of these large chains you know file bankruptcy it's gonna be tough you're gonna see chain restaurants that are underperforming just close those locations because they can in Green Hills there aren't a lot of those I don't think but I think you'll see that happen I think on the event side we all have to strategize and I know those of us in the industry it's a really competitive industry so we don't want to give away all our secrets but we're gonna have to strategize how we're gonna do events and we don't know what that's gonna be I mean if we shut down the offices and nobody comes into the office well how long do you have how often do you have to get everybody together to keep your culture vibrant and can you keep your culture vibrant

01:05:09from a company standpoint if you don't people get your people together I'm not in those businesses so it's difficult for me to say but I think that's a question mark and a challenge for all of us and if you can come have a meeting at Green Hills Grown have a luncheon if you can have some type of themed event I mean these are things that you know we're thinking into the future of what we have to do to entertain people I think it's gonna be a little bit more entertaining to go along with it yeah I think I told you that my favorite statement was from one of my guests the other day who said if they think we're gonna do these trade shows digitally or you know we're gonna do these trade shows by zoom all the time they got something coming because I'm not this ain't no boondoggle I got to get somewhere and have a good time with my work friends and I thought that that made me smile and made my heart feel good because that's what we need I mean downtown is the perfect example of I got to get together with my work friends because on the weekends you're getting all the people from out of town and they're still getting some of that but during the week that is a corporate event driven you know convention center driven business that is very vibrant and very important to certainly the tax base in our economy so we can get it rolling a little bit faster it would be helpful for those folks I know and it's good here saying I can come back to us too you feel like you're gonna make it yeah well I have some money saved you know I'm not I you know I certainly don't live too far beyond my means and my children were parents of the depression so I've tried to save some money and all of my cars are paid for it you know most of my staff drives fancier cars than I do including you Brandon but you know that that's part yeah I mean I'm just gonna try to you know my wife said to me she goes I sure wish you'd go go out and buy something go shopping because I want to go get some clothes I gotta go get something new and I'm like now it's not gonna happen I said I got belts and pants in fact I looked in my closet you and you look and you have a pandemic like this you're like I really do have a lot of things I can wear and I know all the corporate people are like they're you're gonna donate it all because they're not gonna wear it ever again or so they don't think I got a lot

01:07:12I got a lot of clothes that I got get dust on them a lot of slacks a lot of dress shirts right now that I'm happy I'm not wearing I mean I do walk for a living so I'm getting to the point where I probably need to buy some shoes because I wear out shoes you know my wife always says you know that I have twice as many shoes as she does and I told her I'd walk more than twice as many miles so so that goes and when you're in 225 pounds you wear out some shoes well I wish you nothing but the best of luck Stephen and I know that we will continue to talk on a regular basis we are I'm gonna wrap our conversation we're at the hour mark I have a feeling that'll be doing this podcast I'm gonna do I'm gonna try and do this podcast for years and years to come and I have a feeling that you'll be a regular on the show so we can we can jump back on I'd love to have you co-host the roundup with us for a whole day and just kind of chat and talk but thanks for telling your story and kind of thanks for talking about the things that you do to make what you do unique I know there's a a million things that we can talk about going forward and I wanted to hold some of those things back but the last thing that I like to the guest to do is I give them an open floor say whatever you want as long as you want talking to the people of Nashville whoever's listening maybe it's your guests maybe it's your kids I don't know what would you like to say the floor is yours well I want to thank my guests but the real value to my restaurants are the people that work there I mean to have people that have been there for 20 years and 27 years and I mean I have some people that have been there a year and a half who are as fabulous every bit as the people that have been there 27 years you know I mean Ron Smith at Green Hills Grill works every shift every day I've never met anybody in my life the only day he took off last year was Christmas Day and I don't know I you don't know and who knows anybody who does that or can do that but it's what he does and what he cares about and he loves that restaurant he loves the community you know I mean Doris who's not currently working you know is a host that has been at the grill for 27 years she's taught almost

01:09:16everybody in that building what to do I haven't done that I'm not I'm not a great host teacher I'm not a great server trainer I'm really not even a great manager trainer you know like I said Andy's been there 27 years Josh at Mayor Bowl he's been the he's been the chef for 13 years there the kitchen manager he does he's amazing you know I walked behind the line today and said hey here's what we're good well here's what I'm thinking because I got it so that's fun it's really the people that work there they're the important part I love to be there with them that's fun on a good day you know that's the easiest part of the day so you know my hats off to them and to the people who come and see us all the time thank you well thank you Stephen for your years of dedication to your community I know there is a ton of things that you do beyond walking around and seeing families and welcome them into your building there's a ton of things that you do for the community that you don't broadcast that I'm not going to broadcast that I kind of am but I'm you're you've done amazing things for for Nashville in the restaurant community and I say thank you thank you for me you've made amazing one of my best friends in amazing changes in my life and I just want to say thank you for that and thank you for joining us today this was a lot of fun it's awesome thank you Brandon I appreciate everything everybody does another big thank you to Stephen smithing for coming on the show today if you want to check us out on tick-tock where you will find a video of Stephen reading a one-star review of somebody on Christmas Eve and it is hilarious thanks to all of the chefs and restaurateurs who have read one-star reviews for me for our tick-tock page also find us on our social media pages on Instagram and Facebook and like and follow for all up-to-date news of everything that we're doing appreciate you guys list and hope that you are being safe out there love you guys bye