The NARA Episode

00:00Hello, restaurant people, y'all know, I don't just hype just anything. I've been watching this brand Pony Boy Slings for a while now, and I gotta say, I love their vibe on social media. More importantly, people seem to absolutely love this product. So I did what I do. I reached out, I heard their story, and now I'm pumped to say Pony Boy Slings is the newest sponsor of Nashville Restaurant Radio. We've got an episode coming with the owner soon, but for now, here's what you need to know and stay tuned for that one. This is a bourbon based canned cocktail, 7% alcohol by volume. That's kind of the sweet spot for a real drink. It's made with real bourbon, real juice, no preservative, zero artificial flavors or colors, full flavor. This is not for the basic. It is designed for those in between moments. Pre-shift hangs, post-service wind downs, brunch coolers, patio sips, golf carts.

01:03If you have a patio, anything for a happy hour, this is absolutely perfect. And all you have to do is just chill it, pop it, and giddy up. It's premium, it's legit, and it's made by bartenders for people who actually care about quality cocktails. Oh, and if you want to start carrying it, Pony Boy Slings is distributed by best brands. So reach out to your rep and ask for it by name. Pony Boy Slings, real bourbon, real juice, real good. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now, here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City.

02:09And welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. Very excited today to bring you this episode. By the way, we are powered by Gordon Food Service. These guys are amazing. And today is, there's no guests today. I have had COVID, and I was down for the count for like five days. I mean, it hit me, locked in the guest bedroom. And it was kind of nice, actually. It was really nice to be able to spend a few days doing nothing, binging TV and being left alone. I want to give a big shout out to my wife, who took care of everything while I was locked in our guest bedroom. And yeah, so I'm back, better than ever. However, I did not have an opportunity to reach out to somebody to get an interview set up to share with you guys today. But I have been teasing for a really long time that I'm going to do a full NARA episode.

03:14And it's a very vulnerable episode for me because I, you know, it's weird. It's weird up here because the goal of this podcast was really just to share information and share stories. Why did you start the podcast? And I go, what was the middle of the beginning of the pandemic? The first day of the pandemic, we started this thing and there wasn't really a medium where people could communicate what they were doing, what was going on in the city. So this kind of became that and it's moved and morphed into so many different things. And I think the next iteration of this podcast is NARA. I mean, the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. As we've continued to communicate and keep that mission of sharing stories, sharing best practices, what can we do to let people know that they're not alone, that there's other people out there, that this is a thing. So in continuing that mission of sharing all this information, as I've met with so many restaurateurs and as I've met with so many owners, I hear very similar things from so many of them.

04:19450 episodes and. I want to help, I want to do everything I possibly can to help. And I've got so many people who have helped me along the way. And so that's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about what NARA is, when it began, how you get involved, what it means for you and is this something that will help you? What does it cost? What are all the things? So the goal, I have this here, the mission of the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. Is to unite local restaurants to foster community, as to strengthen collective purchasing power and support local causes through collaboration. The Alliance aims to enhance the success of its members while making a positive impact on the broader Nashville community. All things, I think every one of you wanted coming in here as you started a restaurant, as you wanted to be part of your community. You had this goal of, man, I'm going to create this amazing food.

05:20I'm going to have places that people can come and celebrate different things. And it starts off that way. It starts off that way. You get real excited and then the business side of it hits. And the business side of it is difficult. And it's lonely because these are competitors you're working with. And every day something new opens down the street. That's the new fun thing that everybody wants to go try. And you're over here going, wait a minute, what about me? And as business ebbs and flows, and it goes up and down, you really have to manage your costs. You have to manage your labor. You have to manage, I mean, the top three things that you're looking at are food, liquor beer, wine, and labor. I mean, that makes up 60% of your cogs. And one of the things that I do as a director of operations is I manage all that stuff. I make sure that my vendors are doing the right things and I build those strong relationships with those vendors.

06:24Now, I happen to have a podcast where I have sponsors and I have people who come in and I get to learn about people's core values and I get to spend a lot of time with them and I get to know them and I trust them. And the biggest thing that I've seen out there with people is that we don't have trust anymore with our vendors. You're out there and you think you have somebody that you like, they make you sign a five-year contract. And after week one, you're like, hey, what happened to that? Or you find out a year and a half later that they've been charging you extra stuff on the side, it's a, there's just no trust out there. Because everybody's going to try and get as much as they can whenever they can when you're not looking. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to really take some of these vendors who I absolutely loved and I wanted to bring them together. And I wanted to say, hey, so if I can get 100 restaurants to band together, what can you do for me?

07:27Can you give me a better deal for those people? Can you help me out? And overwhelmingly the answer was yes. Overwhelmingly was, hey, if anybody can do it, you can do it. And so I said, let's go. And so right now I think we have 39 people and we're helping them out. We've got CNB Lennon, we've got Robin's Insurance right here behind me. Black Sheep Tequila, a lot of these sponsors you're hearing are people that I trust that I love, that I work with on a regular basis that have all said, yes, we will do this. We will bring back a level of trust and we'll be honest with it. And so that's essentially it. We just hosted NARA Connect a few weeks ago. And NARA Connect was about that first part, that community building. We want to unite the Nashville restaurant community, creating a network where members support each other and grow together. And we had 50 restaurants show up to NARA Connect. And the first thing that we did was I said, everybody stop. Everybody look to the person to your right and shake their hand. Look to the person to your left and shake their hand like you're in church when you're like nine years old.

08:31And there's really cool five minutes of people just connecting and talking. And these are such amazing restaurateurs who are there. And then we had this vendor show. We had all these vendors there. And it was great because you had 50 restaurants and 22 vendors. You had time to stop and talk to Jason from Black Sheep Tequila. You got to hear his story. It wasn't like there was just a line where you had to go through and taste it and get out of the way. And you get to spend time with him. You get to spend time with Charlie Nelson and his brother, Andy, talking about Belmead bourbon. It wasn't just this, give me a shot and I'll leave. You get to spend time with Leah from the Giving Kitchen. You get to spend time with all the broadliners. I mean, we had GFS there, of course. We had US Foods there. We had PFG there. We had What Chefs Want there. They were all there because they've said, we want to be a part of this thing. We want to do this. And CMB Lenin came so strong. CMB Lenin threw the after party, which was at the Black Rabbit.

09:31So we wanted to support another local restaurant downtown as we did this thing at the Music City Center. And it was just a blast to connect. There were more hugs that I saw that day. And that's what it's about. It's about bringing this local community together. And then how can we support each other to save us a bunch of money? How do we do it? And I want to give a couple examples. And I'm kind of all over the map because I have ADHD. And I hear little things. And I just go really quickly. But I want to tell you one of the things that I do as a service when you're a member of NARA, right? So our first member of NARA was Carrington Row. Carrington Row, Germantown Cafe, and Park Cafe. They were kind of my guinea pigs. In January, we set out and said, all right, hey, I'm going to do this. Let's try this out. And we did a RFP for their broadline business. And we collected all of their usage. I submitted it. We were able to work a really good deal, a really good deal for them. And they were able to pay off some stuff.

10:32We got them some cash and some trips and some fun things. But they committed to this broadliner. And the relationship is going great. And I love it. But they had a company come in last week. It was a linen company. And they are using CNB Linens, which is one of our providers. And this linen company said, hey, we'd like to talk about your linen business. And he goes, you're going to have to go talk to Brandon. And so he gave him my number. Then I got a phone call. And they said, hey, we were referred to you by Sean. We'd love to meet and tell you about our business. And I said, sure. I'd love to meet, because I do this all the time. I meet with vendors all the time. Whether I'm going to use them or not, I just want to learn what they're doing and how they're doing it. And so this company, I'm not going to say which company it was, because I'm not here to paint people in a bad light. But this is kind of an educational piece, right? So if you want to know the nuts and bolts of what we do for NARA, this is it. Everybody out there who most restaurants work with a linen company, you have to have bar towels, tablecloths, linens, whatever it might be.

11:37First aid kits, linen companies do a lot of stuff. So this linen company came and set up a meeting. We sat down in the back room at Mirror Bowl. And I said, so it's so nice to meet you guys. Tell me about your business. I said, well, we've been around for a long time, and we do all these things. And I said, what sets you apart from everybody else? Do you have transparent pricing? What do you do? And he goes, that's exactly what we do. We have transparent pricing. It's a one price. We do this, this, this. I said, OK, do you have a contract? He said, yes, you have to sign a three to five year contract. And I said, so why the three to five year? And he goes, well, we don't really make any money back until about a year and a half to two years. So if we sign a three year deal, we can do this. And if we sign a five year deal, then we can get really aggressive. And I said, OK, tell me about this transparent pricing. And he said, well, I said, so is it like $0.10 a linen? And that's it? He goes, well, not necessarily.

12:38And I go, well, OK, tell me about this transparent pricing. And he said, well, what we do is we work on a par system. So we work on a par system. Let's just say that you're doing 1,000 guests a month. And so we set your par at 1,000. So we charge only $0.05 a linen. And I said, $0.05, well, that's a hell of a deal. And he goes, well, when we work on a par system, what we have to do is we have to keep an entire inventory. So if you're using $1,000, sometimes it's $1,200. So what we do is we keep an inventory of 2,500 linens for you. And that's what we charge you $0.05 a linen for. And I go, what? He goes, yeah, so it's only $0.05. And I go, so it's $0.05 a linen, but you're charging me for 2,500 linens, and I'm only doing 1,000 guests a week? He goes, yeah, because we have to keep an inventory. If you have 1,000 a week, we have to keep an extra $1,500 in case you go over or whatever. So we just charge you $0.05 a linen for all of that. And I go, why don't you just charge me $0.10 a linen or $0.12 a linen and not do this hokey?

13:45That doesn't seem very transparent at all to me. And he goes, well, we used to do that. A lot of companies will come in and they'll say 10 to 12 cents a linen. But then a company will come in and go, hey, we got $0.05 linens, and then we'll lose the business. And so we went to the $0.05 model. And I go, this doesn't make sense at all to me. So you're saying that you complain that people would charge you $0.05 and you'd lose the business so that you went to that model versus just being transparent? He goes, well, it is transparent. And I go, how is that transparent? How is $0.05 a linen transparent when you're using 1,000 linens a week, but then you're charging them for 2,500? He goes, well, it's the par, it's how the pars work. But I go, so you're 12 and a half cents a linen. And he goes, I guess theoretically. And I said, so that's way more than $0.05 a linen. That's not transparent at all. I go, so what about an ARC? Do you charge a replacement cost? And he goes, yes. See, that's where we really take off is that we charge a $0.02 per linen ARC, which is the replacement cost.

14:54So every once in a while with a linen company, you will lose a linen. Sometimes people use linens to clean the grill or a server has one on their apron and they take it home with them. It's a lost linen. I don't know how they keep track of this stuff, but apparently they do. They don't charge for those lost linens or the damaged linens. They just charge you a flat rate of $0.02 a linen. And what that does is that buys the linens that we ruin. I go, okay, so now you're at 14 and a half cents a linen. I go, are there any other fees? He goes, well, we don't do any kind of environmental fees or anything like that, but we do charge a service fee. And I said, well, what is the service fee? And he goes, it's a percentage of the overall bill. I said, so I'm at like $0.15, $0.16 a linen now, and you came in and told me $0.05 a linen? And he goes, well, pretty much. You know, the linen business is crazy and we have to really make sure that we've covered all of our bases because we just don't, the margins just aren't there. I said, why don't you just charge 14 cents a linen without any of the fees?

15:59And he goes, well, nobody would buy that. And I go, so do you have a copy of your invoice here? And he goes, I don't have a copy of it. And I said, so on your invoice, is it listed out that I got a thousand linens at five cents a linen, and then underneath it, it shows the inventory of another 1,500 that you're being charged for, and then are those broken down on the invoice to where it shows me that I'm paying five cents linen for the thousands I have, and then it shows me the extra, and then you add those together? Or does it just show kind of this linen line at five cents and then another inventory line, and they all kind of blend together so I can't tell what the number is? And he goes, they just blend together. And I go, so you started off, told me that you guys are revolutionary and you were transparent with what you're doing. How is any of this? I have to have a degree in mathematics to learn how to read your invoice. And there's so many hidden charges and fees that I don't understand how people do this. It doesn't make sense to me.

16:59He goes, well, we tell people up front what we're doing. And I go, and people buy that? Why do they buy that? That doesn't make sense at all to me. And then I got to sign a three to five year contract. Do your prices increase? Well, we take a 10% increase annually. So on top of everything else, I'm in for five years and I'm gonna take a 10, so at the end of five years, I'm gonna be paying 50% more than what I'm paying right now. Guys, this happens everywhere. This happens everywhere. Linen companies will do this all over the place. They will charge you, they have to get creative to charge you a ton of fees. And he tells me, we work with all these Broadway people. We work with all these restaurants and it breaks my heart because I'm like, restaurateurs are just getting fooled right and left by these people and they're paying out. And I said, so you have 1,000 parts. So I'm paying for the 1,000, what if I need 1,200? He goes, well, you just order extra.

18:02And I go, do you charge me for that extra? And he goes, yes, at five cents a linen. Plus the inventory, we have to adjust the inventory. I go, so now you're purchasing more. So if I order like 500, does my inventory go up? Anyway, I said, so what happens if it's 4th of July week and I only use 600 linens or I only use 500 linens? Do you guys reduce the inventory? And he goes, no, we don't reduce the inventory. And I go, so I'm still paying for 1,000 or 2,500 at five cents a piece. I'm still paying for that, but I didn't use the full 1,000? And he goes, yep, that's how we do it. And I go, but you'll charge me if I go over. And he goes, yep. I go, how does this benefit the restaurateur? How does this benefit anybody in this industry? You guys are crooks. And the guy goes, I can see that we're not, we can go back and forth.

19:02We're not gonna see eye to eye on this. And I go, I will never see eye to eye on this because you're not here to help restaurants succeed. You're here to make profit for you. Damn the restaurant, I don't care. And I am not okay with that. So when I find a company like CNB and I say, okay, what does your contract look like? And they say, we don't do contracts. And I go, you don't do contracts? They go, nope. We do one week contracts. And I go, what? And they go, well, we sign, yeah, we ordered the first week. You sign a one week contract saying that you'll order from us, but then we have to earn that every single week. We feel like that's our duty is to earn your business every week. Same deal with Jason Ells over at SuperSource. No contracts, everybody else does seven year contracts. He doesn't do contracts because he wants to earn your business every single week. CNB, Lennon, same thing. So I said, so tell me about your, are you transparent with your pricing? And they go, absolutely. And I go, tell me how much it costs for a Lennon. They said, we're charging 12 cents a Lennon.

20:03And I said, okay, what's your ARC? And they go, we don't have one. I said, no ARC? Nope. I said, tell me what your service charge is. And they said, no service charge. Okay, what about the environmental charge? And they go, nope. Well, how much are your bar towels? Same price. How much are your, let us send you a price list. And what you see on this price list is exactly what you'll pay. Okay, so now tell me about your PAR system. So you have a PAR system that you use where at Mayor Bowl, I'm doing 2,000 guests a week. So you're probably gonna set my PAR at what, 4,000 or 2,200? They go, actually, we can do however you want, whatever works best for you. So if you wanna set up a PAR system, which we can update whenever you want, we can build to that PAR like most linen companies do. But if you wanna order linens like you order food, we just need a 24 hour in advance before we build the truck. You just tell us how many linens you need for the, I said, so if it's like 4th of July weekend, I know I'm gonna be closed today and nobody's coming out in Brentwood.

21:09It's gonna, I'm gonna do 500 guests that week. She goes, just order 500 linens. I said, can I order like 800 and keep 300 in the office? And they go, sure. Just order what you need. We don't wanna charge you twice for any linens. And I said, how do you make money? And the guy goes, well, we own the dirt. We own our facility. And so I went down there to the facilities. I said, I wanna walk through your, I wanna see it. Apparently they had a fire several years ago and there's a brand new state of the art facility. It's air conditioned. I've never, like, it looked like a hospital. It was so clean inside this facility. And I was like, this isn't right. Like, this doesn't make sense how you're doing this. And he said, we own the land. We're not paying rent to somebody. We own this land. And we feel like it's our duty to do the right thing. And I was just like, that's it. That's the thing. And they had two restaurants in Nashville they were working with. They were just starting in Nashville. And I said, I wanna get on board this train. So I changed my restaurants to CMB Linen.

22:11And our previous linen company threatened to sue us and they were angry. And when I confronted them because we were with Cytex previously and Cytex was purchased by Cintas then Cintas was purchased by this other company. I don't wanna slander anybody. This other company. So if you worked with Cytex and then, which I loved Cytex, they were nice people. I knew them and you had to manage them. But similar kind of situation as this past company. But if they purchased by this, this company came in and I said, you've been overcharging me since you took over. And they said, well, no, we haven't. And I said, yes, you have. They said, we just went based on what Cytex and Cintas were charging you. And I said, why don't you go based on my contract? Because my contract has it very clearly written out and you're charging me different things every other delivery. Oh, we're sorry about that. That must be a clerical error. Not to mention the other things that this company did.

23:14There were some really bad personnel decisions that they made. And so we switched over to CMB. And it's just been a nightmare dealing with this past company to try and get out of this contract. So what I do, let me tell you how Nara helps this. I'm having these meetings with people. I'm having these conversations with other vendors and I'm holding them accountable. And I'm saying, you're not helping restaurants in this scenario. You're catering to people who don't understand math. And that's a problem to me. Because we have people out there who are passionate about service and passionate about hospitality. And they're out there busting their ass and you're over here stealing their profits. And you think it's funny. Like, cause you're like, ah, let's see how creative we can be to steal their profits. So if you're out there right now and you have a linen company, chances are you're in a long contract. So what do we do with Nara? I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna sit down with you, one-on-one. And I'm gonna say, who do you use for your linen? You're gonna say, we use XYZ company. Hopefully it's CNB.

24:15I don't know. But if it's some other company, I'm gonna go, great. We have a CRM. And in this CRM, which is a customer retention model, I don't know what CRM stands for. It's called Sweet Dash. It's amazing. But in that, when I set you up for, as a member, we get all of your contracts and we load all of your contracts into this Sweet Dash thing. And my number one goal is that you know every vendor that you use and you love them all. I want you to know every vendor and that you love every single vendor and you know why you use them and you know what your deal is. Another thing is I'm not gonna make any decisions for you. That is not me whatsoever. I want everything to be a decision that you make. So what we do is we sit down with these people and I get your contract. So maybe let's say you use XYZ Linen Company. I get your contract and let's say December 22nd, your contract is up. Well today is the fifth of September. It's about 90 days out.

25:16Let's look and see if that's what you wanna do. If it's December 22nd, 2026, then what I do is I create a calendar invite 90 days out from that because the last thing you wanna do is not send that letter 30 days before you have to send the letter because they will auto renew your ass and then you're paying that 50% for another three to five years and you have a legal battle to get out of it. That is what they're counting on. So I wanna help manage that for you. I'm sure everybody that's listening to this has been in this type of scenario. So we take your contracts. There's an NDA that we sign. We can't share any of your information. It's all encrypted. It's all secure and then I create. So then what I'll do is that thing comes up and then I call you and I go hey, your lending contract is up in 90 days. Are you happy with XYZ Linen Company? Let's do an audit and then we look over it and I go this is what I can do and the prices I told you for CNB, if you're a member of the alliance are actually better than that. We save more money than that. I think that's just their standard pricing that you give to anybody off the street.

26:20If you're a NARA member, we have preferred pricing that you already have. But for this scenario, I will sit down with you and I'll go this is what current company's charging, this is what your other company, we really love our driver and we love this company, great. Then I will go to that company and renegotiate your deal for you and I will get you a better deal or have a match another deal. But really, get rid of that company and start going with CNB Linen because there's no contract. You can start with them, see what it looks like, try it out and go oh my God, these people are way better. But there's no risk. It's almost a no brainer. And so this is the kind of stuff when I talk about on the podcast. You gotta go with CNB Linen in depth and detail why you need to do that. This is what we're doing with NARA. Same thing with Dish, Machine and Chemicals. Dish, Machine and Chemicals, I'm gonna tell you a story. I've told this story before, but during the pandemic, we had to close Maribor for three months and we used a national brand for our Dish, Machine and Chemicals and I met Jason Ellis and as we were talking, I said, will you come in and do an audit for me and just kind of, I didn't know much about Dish, Machine and Chemicals.

27:24This was just a line on the P&L chemical line and it wasn't tanking us, it wasn't the end of the world. And so he came in and he goes, whoa, you're paying a lot. And I said, tell me about it, what are we doing? He goes, first of all, you're using five times the amount of degreaser that you need to use. I went, five times? That's out of control. And he goes, I also noticed that you guys were closed for four months and you still paid your invoice to these people. He goes, I feel like if the restaurant is closed that you shouldn't have to pay for all your chemicals. Because what these companies do, the Dish, Machine and Chemical companies, is they lock you into a seven year deal. We're gonna give you a Dish, Machine and then all the chemical, it's all inclusive. We're gonna put all of our chemicals, you never ever have to pay for chemicals. Now, what they do there is they say, we're gonna keep you full of chemicals and we'll just keep it going. But they give you maybe 3,500 racks a month. And it's not all inclusive because at 3,500 racks, then they start charging you a set fee.

28:26I don't know if it's 30 cents or 20 cents or whatever the thing you negotiate. But once you get past that number, then they start charging you. But if you do 2,000 racks in a month, you're still paying the full number. Same thing as Lennon's, it's just basically their par system is that it doesn't matter how many racks you do. As long as you do 35, if you did 3,500 on the nose every month, you're looking good. But how many months do you do exactly 35? You're still paying for 3,500 racks. Because that's the all inclusive price. And we were paying, it was like $2,900 a month at Mayor Bowl for this. And I called the guy and I go, hey, it looks like while we were closed, we still paid the full $2,900 a month. And he goes, yeah. I mean, we're not closed, you signed a contract. And I said, yeah, man, but it's a global pandemic. And we've been closed. Like we haven't done one single rack. And he goes, yeah, it's not my problem. And I said, excuse me? And he goes, let me ask you a question.

29:27I said, yes, sir. And he goes, did you guys get any PPP money? And I said, I don't understand how that's relevant. And he goes, did you get PPP money? And I go, yes. He goes, that's how you pay us. He goes, that's the money, that's how you pay us. That's what you do. Because the government's giving you money, you need to honor your contracts. And I said, are you, I don't, like what? How is that even a thing? You just don't care. And he goes, look, if I didn't charge everybody who was closed, we'd go out of business. And I go, I can't charge people for not dining at my restaurant. Dude, we're a local small restaurant that is hustling. We're trying to figure out anything we can to keep the doors open when we're allowed to reopen. And you're over here charging us $2,900 a month because there's a dish machine in there. And you're telling me that I have PPP money, you need to take care of that for him? Let me tell you, that's the last, I put in my notice that day to leave that company. And Jason Ellis came in and installed new dish machines.

30:28And now I pay for what I actually use. I don't have to pay for racks. I don't have a rack counter. I pay a small amount for a dish machine rental. And then I pay for the actual chemicals that I use. Go figure, and I'm saving 2% overall. I mean, like, it's adding points back to my P&L, how much money I'm not paying. And Jason, again, earns it every single month. That guy, I've been talking about him for almost five years, for more than five years. And everybody who comes in here now, who works with SuperSource goes, dude, that guy's the best. We love him. And this is what CNB is gonna do. And this is what Jason Ellis is gonna do. And this is what I wanna do for you. I wanna be the guy who holds these vendors accountable. I wanna get these large, massive vendors who have figured out ways to siphon money out of your restaurant. And I wanna replace them with good vendors who genuinely care about your business. And the more restaurants that we have doing this and the more restaurants that understand the power of this, the better we're gonna be.

31:34I'm tired of these chains coming to town and some guy in Chicago negotiating a deal for his 50 restaurants. And you have one restaurant that's not a tenth the size of that. And so you get screwed. Well, you don't do enough volume, so we have to charge you all these things. That's code word for, we're just gonna make more money off of you. I'm done with that. I'm done with that. And I wanna represent you, right? Because what I do as a director of operations is what I've said this a hundred times on the podcast. It's a luxury position. What I do is not a job that a lot of smaller local restaurants can afford. And ask yourself right now, could you go pay somebody to be a director of operations? Well, no, but I have done this for a long time. 30 years I've been doing this. And I've already created a lot of these relationships that I can pass along to you.

32:35I can be your fractional director of operations. And that's what this business is. This is a fractional director of operations business. And it is a micro GPO. So a group purchasing organization is what that is. And I will tell you the big thing that we do is your broad line vendor negotiations. Because the next big misconception is, well, I like to buy from four different people. I buy from four different people because it keeps me, keeps them all honest. And I always tell people, and this is where the show gets really interesting. Because I'm gonna say some things here that might land with you, it might not land with you. You might get pissed off. It's fine. One of our core values is no bullshit, right? As a entire company, it's no bullshit, just honesty. And the broad line thing is math, right? If you are buying from four different broadliners because you're trying to get the best deal, you're spending way too much of your precious time beating up people and fostering more distrust.

33:46Because you're telling all these vendors, I don't trust you, so I'm only gonna buy whatever you're selling me the cheapest so you can all fight for it every single week. Nobody makes money in that, especially you. Because you need a partner. And I always go back to the relational side of this thing and I go, you know, if I went home and told my wife, hey, I've got these three other women that are, you know, they all wanna be with me. And so I'm just gonna bid each night against each one of you. Well, Tina said she's gonna make me enchiladas and I love enchiladas, but Sarah's gonna make me steak and I love steak, and then Heidi's gonna take me to a movie and out to dinner. What are you doing? Oh, you're feeding the kids again? Yeah, I'm not doing that. This sounds ridiculous. Sometimes relationships are not easy. Sometimes they're amazing, but that's what relationships are. And these broadliners wanna have a relationship with you. And the example that I use all the time is, there's a fixed cost for making a delivery.

34:50When you deliver a truck to the back of a restaurant, there's a fixed cost to that. And right now we're gonna use the number $200 because that's about what it is. It might be a little more than that actually with inflation and diesel prices and all that stuff. Trucks cost money. These trucks are, you know, half million dollar trucks, if not more. Diesel costs money, the reefer unit costs money, the driver costs money to pay an entire warehouse crew to drive forklifts around a building to pull your order. The invoicing team, the person, the sales rep, all of this stuff costs money and it costs about $200 per delivery is what the average is, okay? That's the number. So if you're buying from four different companies and you're getting four deliveries a week, you're buying from four different companies and you're paying at least $800 in delivery fees. Unless some company is just willing to lose money because you have clout. Because they want to say that they sell you or they think that there's an opportunity to get more business out of it. The really smart thing to do is to put as many packages as you possibly can on a truck because this is the way it breaks down.

35:57If you're buying 100 cases of product a week, right, and you're putting 25 cases on each truck, let's say 20 cases on three trucks and, you know, 40 on another. That 20 cases, if it costs them $200 to make that delivery, they have to charge you $10 a case to break even. To break even. $10 over per case. Now, if you put those 100 cases on one truck, they could charge you $4 a case and make double their money, right? You put 100 cases on a truck that costs $200. If they charge you $2 a case above, now you're looking at an even delivery. They charge you $4, they double their money. If you buy 20 cases, they have to charge you $10 a case to break even. They would have to charge you $20 a case to double their money. So for you, being a savvy restaurant owner, maximizing the amount of cases that you put on one truck helps you a ton because it helps them a ton.

36:58And you know what, that's how partnerships work. When you understand how their business works, they understand how your business works, and you guys find a happy medium together that makes sense to where you can save money, they'll do the things you need them to do, they're in a partnership with you, they will help you, they will come in and tell you things that they see. When I negotiate these deals, I usually negotiate in a secret shopper. I want you to send somebody in every month to do a secret shopper for me, and they go, no problem, we'll do it. A lot of times I can ask for cash upfront, I can ask for rebates, and the main thing that we do is we work on a margin schedule. So when you're committing all this volume to somebody, now I can lock in your prices so that these heavy markets, well, it's raining in California, you'll never feel that. And you may feel it to some degree if there's a force majeure, but not like you would if you were street priced, but that's when they make their money on you. This is a really important part of this. So what I do is I come in, I sit down with you, I learn everything that you do, and then I send an email and I get ahold of the broad line vendors, and I ask them for your purchase report.

38:03And I say, I need to know everything that this company has purchased over the last 12 months. I then take that 12 months purchases and I add it up and I see what that looks like. And I see what you can do. And you know, I've done this a few dozen times. So I have good relationships with the vendors, they know I'm fair, and they would love to get all of the business or none of it because them losing $50 a delivery and sending a sales rep in to do all that stuff, they're still paying that overhead. But if they could say, no, we lost it or we got it, they got a chance to get it all, they're happy to do that. And they get it all or they don't get it all, now they'll move on to the next one and so will I. But I've already negotiated a deal for you and I can typically save people $20 to $40,000 a year in what they're purchasing. I can typically get 2% of what you purchase, sometimes 1% to 2% back in cash and then I can do volume incentives. This is the whole thing. And then you have a vendor who you're in a relationship with who's gonna take care of you. You've negotiated all of the upfront details. You have four different companies bidding on that.

39:03Nobody has any idea what each other's bidding. So they all come in with the best deal they can offer that's sustainable over a three year period. And I negotiate and I facilitate all of this for you. You don't have to do a thing. This is what NARA does. This is what I do as a director of operations. And this is what saves us and makes us a ton of money. This is where we are profitable is because I'm a lot, I can run a 30% food cost at a steakhouse because I can run a 21% liquor beer wine cost at a steakhouse. I can do this at the other restaurants. Labor's a different animal. That's a management thing. That's what you wanna pay people. We can consult over that. I have payroll companies I work with that are happy to work with you. And we've got a bunch of companies. We've got a bunch of companies that are in this boat and you don't have to use them. Sometimes you are using them. And if you are using that company already, guess what? You'll probably get a discount. Now what's the deal? What does this thing cost? What are you charging for this, Brandon?

40:06As a restaurant, I'm charging you nothing. There it is. I'm not even saying when I come in, feed me free food. I don't want you to feed me free food. I'm not here to take anything from you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to make sure that local restaurants can be the fabric of our community for a lot longer than they have been because we've now joined together and we're helping each other through volume and through leveraging our collective power as a whole. And that's what we're gonna start doing. And then we're gonna bring it together. We're gonna do two of these NARA Connect events every year where you just get to come together and see everybody meet all the vendors. The next one's gonna be at the end of February, beginning of March, and it's gonna be a massive event. I'm hoping to have 50 different vendors there. Full-on independent restaurant show. All the restaurant owners in the city locally owned and operate a restaurant. Getting together, seeing each other and hanging out. So again, I just said this is free to you as a restaurateur. The way that it works is if I'm able to save you money, if I'm able to make you money, the vendor pays me a percentage that comes back to me.

41:14That's it. It's a very small, it's like 1% comes back to me. But that's only if I make you money, right? I'm never gonna ask you to do something that isn't going to save you money or make you more money. And if I'm doing something that isn't saving or making you money, I'm not gonna get paid for it. Right, so that's, it's really a win-win. You cost nothing, you get me to come in and help negotiate all your vendor deals. I'm a bulldog. We're gonna get them, but I'm also very friendly. But my goal is I've learned. I take all the meetings. And if you have some guy come in and go, dude, just leave me alone. Actually, you can call Brandon. Give him my number. Let's go. I'll meet with him. I'll learn about him. I wanna learn more, because I wanna share that information with you. Excuse me. So there's a lot going on here. Another thing is I wanna have tickets to all the sporting events. I have soccer tickets. That is a NARA thing.

42:14If you are a member of NARA and you wanna go to a soccer game, let me know. I'll give you the tickets. Once we get this thing rocking and rolling, I wanna have Titans, I wanna have Preds. I wanna be able to send you guys who are members out there to do fun things. But our key is volume. Our key is we need as many restaurants as we possibly can to make this thing happen, because I don't make a lot of money on this. But I do with a whole bunch of people, and I can give back. I wanna give back. One of our core values is honoring and giving back. And the whole point of this is that I've been doing this for a long time, and I've had a lot of really great mentors. I've had a lot of really great people teach me a lot of things over the past 30 years. And I don't want that institutional knowledge to go away. I wanna share that institutional knowledge with you. I wanna change the way that we work with our vendors in Nashville. If you're a local restaurant, this is not open to chains. If you're local, if you're a small hotel or something along those lines, I'm happy to talk to you also. Anybody who's a local business, who has put their, all the chips in the table, this is what we're gonna do, I wanna help you.

43:19I wanna be able to help you. I've partnered with Vince Lanni. He is going to be my partner in this, helping me get out there and do it. And Vince hosts a podcast called Talking Chocolates. He also owns a company called Serve Up Strategies. And he's amazing. The guy is, for my identity, he's the detail in all this. We are yin and yang in that regard. I have a lot of relationships with the vendors. I can be a difficult negotiator at times for them and for you. But Vince will be the one to really put a lot of these numbers together and help me with the details so we don't miss a thing. And it's been working. And we've got three RFPs right now out there. We've got CMB Lennon going into a lot of places that are really rocking and rolling. We're getting people set up with Adams Keegan for payroll and HR. HR is such a crazy thing for local restaurants. But if you can have a company do all the HR for you, I mean, it's really, really amazing. If you're looking for THC brands, we're working with Calexo. Robins Insurance has been somebody, I've had three restaurants we've worked with so far who didn't use Robins Insurance.

44:23And one of them had a guy he knew who's local, who he liked, and we're keeping him there because that's awesome. And the other one was a national brand. We just went online and got it. And now they work with Matthew Clemens and it's, they love it. Everybody else that we have gone into has already been working with Matthew Clemens at Robins Insurance. So if you're a restaurant out there and you're looking for an insurance solution, call Matthew Clemens. The guy's amazing. And if you're a local restaurateur in town, most of the successful people in town are using Robins. Just to let you know, you gotta do that. This black sheep tequila you'll see behind me, if you're watching this, these guys have the best tequila in the world. Literally, they've won that award at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. There, in Yeho, it's been best in the world. Double gold, three times, four times. And we tasted everybody on it at the NARA Connect event and they absolutely loved it. Like, best tequila we've ever had. It tastes so well. Everybody at Chagos who's had it loves it.

45:23I sell it at Meribowl. We'd love for you to come try it. They came to one of our networking mixers last month and every, people were like, I don't know if I'd do a shot of tequila. And they went, that's amazing. That's the best tequila ever. And they're based in Nashville. Jason grew up in Nashville. He's got a buddy who purchased this estate with him. And they make their estate bottle, right? So they own their own agave fields and the estate. They bottle it right there. And it's based in Nashville. It's a local Nashville company. He's not a celebrity. This is just really good tequila. From everything I've heard, I have yet to try it because obviously I can't. There are so many amazing companies out there and I want to know from you who yours is. Do you have a vendor that you absolutely love that you would like to get involved with NARA? You want to see them be successful? You'd like to get them in front of as many restaurants? I'd like to meet them. I'd like to meet them. I'd like to learn about their business and I want to be able to tell their story to as many restaurants as possible if they're willing, if that's something they want to do, if they want to help out. And I know a lot of vendors do. I just can't get to all of them.

46:24Have them send me an email, brandonatnewlighthospitality.com and I want to get in there and talk to them. So that's how it works. That's NARA. I want to put you guys together. I want to introduce you to each other. I want to host these NARA Connect events, which is a true event where restaurant owners can get together, shake hands, give hugs, share stories, whatever it is. That after party was amazing at the Black Rabbit. Just people hanging out. Thank you again to CMB Lennon for hosting that. I mean, that was so above and beyond. We're going to do it again at the end of February. Are you going to be a member when we do this? It's free to sign up. All you got to do is send me an email. It's brandonatnewlighthospitality.com or you can go visit naranashville.com. That's N-A-R-A, nashville.com. It explains everything we do. The marketing side of this, we're getting the account set up and what I want to do is I want to help promote all of our members.

47:26So eventually once we build up some capital, I want to do a full page ad in the scene every month that highlights the best local restaurants in town and has all of our members listed on our Instagram page, at naranashville. I'm only following members. And then when you post something, I'm going to try and reshare it in our stories. So it's just going to be a collection of all of your stories reshared. We're going to like everything. We're going to tell, we're going to talk about it. I want to spotlight St. Vito's Fecascia. What Michael Hanna is doing over there in the Gulch. I mean, that location is kind of hidden back there, but if you haven't been to St. Vito's Fecascia, it's freaking amazing. Like that place is fantastic. Make a reservation, but go support him. You know, another one I want to shout out is Tio Fun. If you like a good, unique Mexican restaurant, and I love the one in Franklin, but Mikey Corona is doing amazing things at Tio Fun.

48:28What a fun Mexican restaurant. If you want to take your family somewhere that you want to just eat delicious food, Mikey and Brian also own The Mockingbird, and they're just crushing it. But they need your support too. And we want to highlight more and more restaurants. Let me see who else. Buttermilk Ranch, Cletus Burger. If you haven't been to the Cletus Burger in Bellevue, you are missing out. If you're anybody who's in our age bracket, and I'm 46, but Cletus is all about 90s nostalgia. I mean, Goonies, Gremlins, the decorative style of Shane Nasby is beyond. Like it is beyond. You need to go check out Cletus in Bellevue. If you like a hamburger, and make sure you use the restroom while you're there, because the bathroom is out of control. Take a selfie in there. Tag us in that selfie, at Nara Nashville. Use hashtag Nara. You know, Nara Nashville's a little redundant, but use Nara as a hashtag.

49:33I want to know what you're doing. I will tell you another thing that we are going to be doing probably in the month of October, is we're going to be collaborating with a couple of influencers, and we're going to bring back the Replate Challenge. So during the pandemic, we had the chef at the Hermitage Hotel on the podcast, and he said the biggest disappointment that he has, is that he creates art on plates. And when you have to sell food to go, you have to put it in a to-go box, and you can only make it look so good. And then it travels around the car and it gets home, and half of their joy is what they're able to do with this dish. And so we started the Replate Challenge, where you buy to-go food, you bring it home, and then you re-plate it on a plate, and make it look as beautiful as you possibly can. And then I want you to take a picture of that and share it, use the hashtag Replate Challenge, and tag the restaurant that you bought the food from, so they can see what you did with their creation. Let's give some of these chefs some inspiration back, especially if you like to do to-go food.

50:36To-go food's a great way to help restaurants succeed. It's them making food and putting it out the window, and it's gone, and hey, it's profitable. We want to do more of that. So we're going to be partnering, and I'm really excited to see it. We're going to have some big prizes. And it's going to be for NARA members. It's going to be at NARA member restaurants. You can go to NARA Nashville and see our restaurant members. Any of those restaurants, we want you to re-plate the food. We're adding more every day. I mean, you guys are really into this, so I'm really excited about it. Everybody who came to the NARA Connect event is like, hell yes, let's do that. And now, it's on. So we're going to be continuously promoting the restaurants that are members. And we're talking Greenery Co., Green Hills Grill, Germantown Cafe, Carrington Row International Market, Maribou, Pelican and Pig, Park Cafe, NoCo, John and Wilson and Junior have been amazing supporters of what we're doing. St. Vito for Cacheria, Slow Hand Bakehouse, Rose Pepper Cantina.

51:39Guys, go visit Rose Pepper. I mean, I know they just had that, somebody steal a bunch of tequila from them. But man, you want to talk about just good people who operate a restaurant. Andrea Shiraz will give the shirt off her back to anybody. I mean, this is the epitome of what a local, she was an attorney. Her father owned Rose Pepper for years. She came in to operate the restaurant and it's just head first dove into what she's doing. And it's not, she's an attorney. It's not even her, she's not a practicing attorney anymore, but like now she's a restaurateur. And she's so leaned into this community and she posts such amazing things online. Go eat there. I think we forget to go eat at some of the local staples. We just announced that we're closing Chagos and there's a lot of reasons for that, not because of what we're paying, it's a lot of other things going on there. Nothing weird or anything, just need to focus on the things we need to focus on. But we don't want restaurants to close. We keep forgetting about people who are out there hustling every day, making our community better to go to the new fancy place.

52:39Guys, if that new fancy place isn't local, go support a Rose Pepper, go to St. Vito, go to Park Cafe, go to Germantown Cafe, go to St. Vito Focaccia Ria, go to Urban Grub, go to Tio Fun, go to Buttermilk Ranch. These are local restaurants. Go to Cletus, go to Arnold's, go downtown, go find a local restaurant and support them. That's what we're all about with the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. So that's it. I'd love to hear your questions. I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can go to NARA Nashville, send me a DM. We're gonna do a contest this week. I've got four tickets to the Nashville SC game on September the 16th, that is the Lamar Hunt semifinal game. These seats are four rows off of the field and they are awesome place to go see a game. September 16th, we're giving away four tickets. Go follow NARA Nashville today and that is one of the prerequisites to winning the tickets.

53:42We're gonna have a hot take on Monday and on that hot take on Monday, that is gonna be where we're going to give the contest details. I'm also gonna be giving away a really cool giving kitchen bag. I'll show you what this looks like. All right, this is a wine bag. It is a giving kitchen wine bag. You open this thing up and inside of it, uh-huh, you're not gonna believe this, but it's a bottle of wine. This is a special edition giving kitchen wine. 2019 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast. It's a Napa Valley Chardonnay, 14.2% alcohol. You're gonna get a couple bottles of Calexo. I've got a couple little bottles of tequila in here. I've got a little knife and fork set. Got a lot of little things in here. So this will be another contest we're gonna do. So go follow Nara Nashville. We're gonna give away stuff.

54:43Giving kitchen is doing there. October, actually they're dining with gratitude. It's coming, it's happening like now and I want you guys to go sign up for dining. So go to givingkitchen.org and sign up for dining with gratitude. How you do it is just create a menu item that you want and if you create a menu item like a, this is the giving kitchen old fashioned. Normally you charge $12 for it, charge $13 for it and a dollar for every one that you sell goes to the giving kitchen. Let's all sign up and support the giving kitchen. They're doing amazing things. I'm gonna let you guys go but I wanna tell you what our core values for, you hear me talk a lot about core values on this thing. And number one, we're restaurant people. We know the demands of running a restaurant and we genuinely understand the challenges you face because we've been there too. We're all restaurant people, that's what we do. That's how I know you care and it is cool to care. Number two is it's cool to care. To us, the restaurant business isn't just a job. It is our life's work. We're deeply invested in helping you succeed because your success is also our passion.

55:48If we could look back five years into the future, we look into the future five years and in five years I can say we helped keep 10, 15 restaurants that would have closed. We helped keep them open and keep them happy. Then we have totally succeeded. And you know, I love what I do now and I'm gonna keep doing it for a while but I wanna work with people who care as much as I do. And restaurant owners typically care. That's their life and I understand that. And so it's cool to care. That's one of our core values, took that from Unreasonable Hospitality. Honoring and giving back, we're committed to sharing the wisdom we've received from those who came before us and we believe in giving back to our community in every way. Passing along valuable insights and resources. And of course, giving back to charities. We're gonna be working with Ben's Friends. We're working with Giving Kitchen. We're working with Core Gives as well as Big Table. Those are our four big ones that we're gonna be working with.

56:48We have a Fantasy Football League, a Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance, Nashville Restaurant Radio Fantasy Football League. This is year three. And CMB Lennon has stepped up and they have offered a $500 prize to the person that wins the league to donate to any one of those four charities. So we're giving back, we're having fun with it. This is the other one, everyone's best interest. We prioritize the well-being of our restaurant members, vendor partners and the Alliance as a whole. Ensuring that all decisions benefit everyone involved. Right? Win, win, win. If you win and NARA wins but the vendor loses, that's a loss. We wanna foster healthy relationships. The vendor has to be okay with it and they have to win. You have to win and we have to win. All three together creates this win, win, win. And the last one is no bullshit, just honesty. We're all about transparency, no sugarcoating. We promise to give it to you straight and expect the same in return. I'm a human being, I have feelings like everybody else.

57:51I'm not here to hurt your feelings but I'm also here to help you. And sometimes tough love is a real thing. So I'm not gonna come in and just candy coat everything and tell you how great you are. I'm gonna tell you where I see stuff. It's part of it and you need that. You need somebody to come in and do that with love. This isn't a, I'm here to shame you or make you feel bad. I genuinely wanna help. And so that's it. That's NARA and I want you to be involved. So go follow us at NARA Nashville. Go to naranashville.com. On the NARA Nashville webpage, on the main page, there is a connect button. You can click it. You scroll to the very bottom and it says, contact us. Put your name, your email and a message and that will come straight to me. And I will follow up with it and we'll come meet with you and we'll get you started. It doesn't take very long. It doesn't cost you anything. Spend an hour with me and go over all this stuff. It's pretty fun. A lot of people finish and they go, wow, that's a lot of opportunity. I didn't know that was there. I wish I had the time to focus on all of those things which I've spent the last eight years focusing on all of these things.

58:58So it doesn't take me as much time. So let's do it. Anyway, that's what we're doing today. We've got some amazing sponsors. I didn't talk about today. I do want to give a shout out to some of these folks because these are our vendor members. Working with Adams Keegan for payroll benefits and advisory, Black Sheep Tequila, CNB Linen. We work with Sharpier's Bakery. I've been doing this thing for over almost 30 years now. I think we started it was 34 years. Now they're at like 38, 39 years. They've been crushing it. What an amazing partner they've been. So many people use Sharpier's Bakery for all of their fresh baked breads. Absolutely love them. Erin Mosso and her team. We're working with Lee and Associates. That's a retail team. And if you're looking for a new restaurant, you just told me that they've got one on Capitol Hill, a great spot for a new location that's just primed and perfect. He said, let people know. I love to help them out with that. Call Miller Chandler.

59:59Call Lee and James. Call Megan, their new partner. So Lee and Associates, Chandler James retail team. We're working with Freshpoint. We're working with What Chefs Want. We're working with Gordon Food Service, of course. Gordon Food Service, I would tell everybody to go right now. They should win every RFP. They're amazing people. They do amazing things. But if you're stuck on somebody else, now we don't have to put an RFP out for everybody. If you are working with Cisco and you're not in a contract, I can negotiate a deal with Cisco that will be way more beneficial to you than you're currently getting. Sometimes we do that. We don't put it out to all four, because I like Cisco, but I wish I was getting better pricing. So I was thinking about bidding them against other people. Don't do that. Just bid them against themselves. We can get it done. We're working with Miles Hospitality Marketing. We're working with Grunberg Accounting. Amazing folks. Obviously, SuperSource, Robins Insurance. We do work with Cisco and US Foods, as well as PFG. As far as these processes.

01:01:01I mean, our preferred vendor is Gordon Food Service. We love them the most. But these other companies, if you love them, I totally understand that. I'm not saying you have to leave them by any means. I just know that GFS is particularly poised in this market to really go after and do the things that smaller local restaurants really want them to do. Through lots of conversations. They've been absolutely amazing. So we also work with Volunteer Welding. There's many, many more that we're working with in conversations with right now for insurance and benefits packages and different things. I hope to have 50 vendors that you can sign up for. The final thing is we also have signed up. We're a channel partner for a GPO called Buyers Edge. And so once you do an RFP with us and we establish your broad line routine, what your business is gonna be, which is again, your decision. We just put the numbers together and set them in front of you and say, which one would you like to do? Or none of them. Doesn't matter. Just look at them all. I just wanna give you, I want you to be making an intelligent decision on what you wanna do.

01:02:05This Buyers Edge platform lays on top of whatever we do. So we negotiate all this money for you and then we come in and we set you up Buyers Edge. It costs you nothing. It does nothing. What they do is they just look at your purchases. And if you purchase from vendors who they represent, they send you a rebate. You hear about these magical rebates out there. Well, now we've got that. We lay this right on top of what you're doing. You get a rebate for it. And then every quarter you can go in and just cash it out. So it's not something typically that works with restaurants with five to 10 locations. Since we're gonna be working with so many, they've said, hey, we wanna do this with you too. And I can set you up on that. Vince actually set you up on that. But when you do an RFP, this is also free money. So if you want Christmas shopping for your kids, bam, here's $2,500, $5,000 a year. Just comes right back into an account. You can save it till December. You wanna buy your wife a nice gift, your husband a nice gift, whatever it is. Free money with the Buyers Edge platform. And so we've got a lot of that stuff and we're only getting better.

01:03:06This is year one. We're trying to figure all this stuff out. We've launched it less than a month ago formally. This is the episode we're talking about. If you are a media company, if you're a writer out there and you wanna learn more, you'd like to feature me in your publication or on your television show, I'd love to talk about it. Ask me the questions. Tell me what you wanna know because I'm happy to talk to anybody about what we are doing. And I love to get the word out there. So if you have a restaurant friend that you know, if you have another restaurant that, I just got a message from one of our members yesterday and said, hey, I was talking to this guy. They totally, and he sent me their number and I'm gonna call him here in just a minute. That's how this thing works. We're bootstrap. We don't have investors. This isn't like some big gigantic company. This is bootstrapping from day one, just hustling, trying to get this thing done, kinda like we did with the podcast five and a half years ago. But we need your support and we wanna support you. Hopefully this thing will work out wonderfully. Thank you for listening today. Again, please direct all questions.

01:04:08I wanna answer anything you got. You can message me at Nara Nashville. You can send it to Brandon at New Light Hospitality. You can go to the Nara Nashville page. You can click on it. But I would love to talk to anybody as long as you're a local restaurant. Can't do any change. Sorry about that. All right, guys, we're gonna wrap on that. And hopefully this all made sense to you. Hopefully you're as pumped about it as I am. And hopefully you're sick and tired of paying too much money and not trusting anybody. Hopefully we can bring you back more time with your family. Work-life balance, more time spending it talking to the guests who are in your restaurant, learning about their families instead of being in the back looking through spreadsheets, trying to figure out where you're getting screwed. That's it. Thank you for listening. As always, I hope that you guys are being safe out there. And I love you guys. Bye.