Tomasz Wosiak-Executive Chef

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Happy Labor Day to everybody. So it's coming out right in the middle of Labor Day. I hope that you are taking a day to relax. Hopefully you are able to take a day to relax. Today we're going to be talking with Chef Tomasz Worszak and he is the Executive Chef for the TC Restaurant Group. TC Restaurant Group is, I think it stands for Tequila Cowboy. I didn't ask him that but I think that's what it is because he is the Executive Chef of Jason Aldean's Downtown, Luke Bryan Downtown, the FGL House, Miranda Lambert's Casa Roja as well as Luigi's Pizza.

01:13He's got all kinds of restaurants and that's in Ohio too. He's got different places. The guy is just an amazing, amazing chef and you know, operator really, when you're talking about, first of all, I was just so baffled at the numbers and like what kind of business they do downtown and how they operate. Every time I'm downtown I just see these massive lines outside of Jason Aldean's and I'm like how is everything working inside? So I ask all those questions today. We get to the bottom of everything that is going on at these big downtown honky tonks. So this is going to be a lot of fun. One of my favorite interviews I think I've ever done, me and Chef Tamash got to go to Spring Mountain Farms Chicken last month and we did a tour and we just had so much fun. So cannot wait to get you into this episode but I'm going to have to because I got to tell you that we are in the finals. We are in the finals. We have two restaurants that are battling for the greatest Mexican restaurant in the city of Nashville and they are Memo's Mexican Restaurant in Mount Juliet and La Hacienda, the Titan La Hacienda.

02:26Wow. This is going to be an amazing week. You have until Sunday night to go ahead and vote and do everything. You go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com right there on the homepage. You just scroll down and you can see a thing that says vote for your favorite. Just click the vote now button and you can go vote for either Memo's or La Hacienda and then next Thursday night we are going to throw a party at whichever restaurant wins. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to have mariachi bands. We're going to be recording live from that restaurant on that day, September the 15th. So please go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com right now and place your vote. I'm also asking you to go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com and click on the sponsors tab. Here's what I need you to do. I need you to set up a demo with either Maintain IQ, which is an amazing checklist app for your restaurant and I'm telling you it is the greatest app. Once you just learn what it is, schedule a demo and sit down and talk to Will Jackson about what it is and he will explain to you and you'll be like, holy cow, I had no idea I needed this so bad.

03:34It is the most amazing technology. If you do that, I want to buy a $100 gift card from your restaurant. The first five restaurants that sign up for a demo with Will or you can do a demo with GoTab. So you can go to our website and you can click the sponsors tab, go down to GoTab and there's a special link that is made especially for us and there you can sign up for a demo. When you do a demo, I'm going to buy a $100 gift card. The first five restaurants and here's the deal, I'm going to buy five gift cards for those five restaurants that set up demos and then at the end of the month, for anybody out there, all you have to do is contact one of my sponsors and set up a demo, set up a time for them to come out and meet with you and tell you about what they do and you're going to be entered into the prize at the end of the month. I'm going to give you those five $100 gift cards. That's going to be your prize. All you have to do is go to our website, click the sponsors tab and talk to one of our sponsors and if you've already gone to the website and you've clicked a sponsor and you're buying from one of those sponsors, send me a DM and say, hey man, I'm already buying from SuperSource.

04:40I'm already buying from Sharpies because of your podcast, then I'm going to go ahead and enter you into the contest as well. We're going to do this for both months. Next month, I'm going to have two more sponsors that are going to be featured and look, I want to support you guys and I want to give you guys something fun for doing this and I also want you guys to go and patronize the sponsors. So lots of things going on out there. We have a new sponsor. It's Poached. Poached jobs for the hospitality industry. If you go to our website right now, again, click the Poach tab, you get free jobs for a month. The whole month of September, Poached is offering all of that. You can post any job you want and it costs you absolutely nothing. Okay guys, forget what other website you're using right now. You need to go to poached.com or go to NashvilleStormRadio.com. Click our link because then they know that you found them through us. That is very important that they know you found them through us and there you get free job postings for an entire month. So go do it today.

05:41It is that important. If you're looking for hospitality professionals, this is your place. All right, Chef Tamash, he is with the TC Restaurant Group and I am so excited to share this interview with you. I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day and we will see you back this Friday. We'll have more episodes and then I will also see you next Monday. We're going to be talking to Andrew Cook, who's the owner of the Fox Bar and Cocktail Club and man, that was a fun interview and I cannot wait to share it with you next week. But for now, we're going to jump in with Chef Tamash. All right, super excited today to welcome in Chef Tamash Vorschach. How's it going? I'm doing wonderful, man. You are the executive chef for the TC Restaurant Group. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you so much.

06:42It is early morning, man, and I love you being here. We got to meet each other. I've followed you from afar because I follow you on Instagram and I follow the TC Group and I see you and Miranda Lambert with cakes and you're showing stuff and Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line. You are the chef for all of those locations in downtown on Broadway and Third Avenue. Correct? Do you have any? Am I missing any? You didn't miss any Star Restaurants. We have a couple more restaurants besides the Star Restaurants. We also have Tequila Cowboy, Luigi Pizza, Luigi Pizza in New York style, and Sundiner, which we did for Sundiner Records, we did Diner, and we have a big catering facility as well. Wow. And you guys are just, I mean, we got to spend some time together. We got to go, we went to Gainesville, Georgia a few weeks ago.

07:44How fun was that? You and I and a couple of other people, we went down to Springer Mountain Farms Chicken and we got to spend like 36 hours together touring a chicken plant. How, that was just a crazy experience. That was incredible, you know, and eating fried chicken meantime, you know, how crazy was that? Yeah, we're in the chicken plant walking around seeing all the behind the scenes and you can use your imagination. We got to see it all and then we go into a room to discuss it and they're serving fried chicken. We're like, really? Yeah, that was something else, but it's definitely eye-opening, the food coming to, you know, to our kitchens, you know, so that's very educational. It's super important. Is that the first time you've been to a chicken plant? Have you gone to a bunch of other, have you been to like a meat packing facility or anything like that? Oh, yeah, I've done beef before, of course, pork couple times and chicken, that was first time. That was very interesting, you know, much different than the larger animals.

08:47How important is that, do you think, as a chef to understand exactly where your food comes from? You know, that's my passion, you know, and I like to coach and teach the new chefs, you know, the new generation chefs, I'm, you know, a little older, Poland is also a couple years behind technology wise, at least when I was growing up in the 80s, 90s, before the communist country and I used to, my mom was a butcher. So I used to butcher meat before I go to school, help her out, just put meat on the hings and, you know, like an old school, so it was normal for you. So it was normal. And now with the new technologies and the food, the way we raise, you know, I like to teach the younger chefs because they're producing so much waste and they think food coming in a box and they're going to cut perfect circle for beautiful dish and they don't treat the animal with respect that they deserve. You know, the people spend a lot of time, effort to raise, to feed the animal, make sure, you know, just give a respect to this, the whole process and eliminate the waste.

09:53Do you hunt? I moved to Nashville, I'm going to, I haven't done it. Well, so I'm not a, like I've always said, killing animals for sport wasn't really my thing. Absolutely not. But, you know, I just read a book where the guy went hunting for caribou, one of our books is called The Comfort Crisis with Michael Easter and they're out hunting caribou and when you're out in the nature and you're actually like hunting for food to eat, like the hunter gatherer societies and you're following a herd and you find the big bull that you're trying to take down because you want to take down the older one because the younger ones are still living life. But like, apparently it's a spiritual experience to like take down an animal and using every part of it. It's like a, almost like in the movie Avatar, you know, where they just, an animal dies and they bless it and thank it before they eat it. Is that all tie into this? I think so. Is that part of what it is, being a chef and is there a lack of respect from new chefs coming up for like the actual food itself?

10:53I think that the lack of, you know, I think there are a lot of respect to art and they're very talented chefs and they look at the food different way, more as an art. But I'm trying to coach them and teach them there's more to it. You know, I grew up reading comic books called Torgal. So it's all about the Vikings and it's the same way. You don't hunt, you don't get the animal, you don't eat that day. So if you get the animal, you respect it and eat every ounce of it, you know, and just use it other ways, you know. But when I get to pull up my smartphone and go on my Cisco app or Gordon food service app and I get to order a case of steaks and they come in, you just slice them up and sell them. Yeah. You lose a lot of that. Is that what you're saying? I'm just saying, you know, there's more to it. If you buy just a steak, you know, that's it's not a very great example because steak, you just have one each, you cook it and you give it. But if you purchase the whole animal or, you know, you you buy 50 pounds of beef and you just try cut nice steaks, what are you going to do with the rest of it?

11:55You know, at the same time away, how you store the meat, you know, over ordering, you know, under cooking, overcooking, all this fun stuff or freeze burn because you overorder it. So it's just a lot of a lot of waste, you know, there. So how long have you been in America? You said you're from Poland originally. That's right. How long have you been here in the States? I moved here in 2000, November, those actually November 4th, George Bush was just become a president in 2000. You're 2000. Yep. 22 years in this country. We'll be celebrating this November upcoming. Wow. That's awesome, man. Yeah. And you have a family here? I have a family, I have a wife and I have two boys that got born here. My wife came with me, so we both Polish. Nice. We're very grateful. We love it here. I love it, man. So how did you land at the TC group? Tell me kind of like a little bit of your backstory. So I came here in 2000 with big dreams, you know, 40 bucks in the pocket, gave my wife, She was prior exchange student in America, so she knew the family in Ohio.

13:05That's what they help us to stay over here on the beginning. We have a place to crash, if you say. And the TC group is based in Ohio? Yes, it is. Yep. But I think after five years of my journey and up and downs, you know, in Columbus, Ohio, New Bloomington, that's when I met one of the founders of TC restaurant group. And that's what I heard about him. So what position did you start with the company? This company actually, prior to this company, I worked for larger companies. So I started as a dishwasher, you know, like everybody else, I guess, you know, with this. So you started at TC restaurant group as a dishwasher? Yes. That's awesome. With everything, yeah. But no, that's the classic, you know, I started as a dishwasher and worked my way up, I mean, that's awesome, man. Yeah, I just couldn't speak English. So that was hard to prove. I have master diploma and I opened a dozen restaurants in Europe, between Italy, Germany and a couple of places in Poland.

14:11So you have to work your way up and just, you know. How difficult is that? How difficult is that to open a bunch of restaurants and to be a chef and then to come to America and because of a language barrier, you've got to wash dishes? You know what, also in the beginning, like ego check, I would say, you know. But my wife is a great teammate and she motivates me every day and, you know, everything happened for a reason. I just get up on the challenge and motivate me to learn English. My wife is English teacher as a second language in Europe. She speak five languages, but she, every time I came home and I check on some words, I said, but babe, what's the pain in the ass means? You know, the people call me in the restaurant pain in the ass, what that means? So she was my personal translator and motivator to learn more words, you know. What does pain in the ass mean? So I think that's the first, yeah, that's how they may name you in the beginning because I was asking a lot of questions and of course, smiling a lot.

15:17Everybody asks a lot of questions. All you have to do is just smile and yes, no problem. Yes, no problem. I'll do it. Thank you. People like that, though, and that that's a thing, I guess. I wish I have more people like this now, you know. Well, that attitude just that there's a hustle, there's an inherent hustle to that. Absolutely. It's a perspective that you had coming in where you could have probably ran the whole kitchen. Yeah. But you're like, yes, I'll do it like I was the best dishwasher. I can tell you that much. No complaints to get it done. Wow. And now you have all of these restaurants. I'm so fascinated by how your restaurants operate. Like I have a million questions around like, how the fuck do you do it? Because I went downtown last week for the Titans game. There was a Titans game on like Saturday night. And I took my kids to the Titans game. We walked across the bridge and we came back across the bridge. And I said, let's just go walk down Broadway.

16:19The kids are seven and nine years old. They don't ever go downtown. They don't know. They live in the suburbs. They have no idea. Like they see everything we drive like around downtown. They go, look, there's Batman City. You know, we kind of like joke around, but like they don't get to go downtown. And we walk down Broadway and their eyes were just like, how was the experience? Oh, my God. There's just so many, especially after a Titans game. And there's just Saturday night downtown Nashville. And you look at these places, you look at Jason Aldean's, you walk by Jason Aldean's, which used to be a tequila cowboy, used to be the NASCAR cafe. Used to be all kinds of things. But now it's Jason Aldean's. And there's just hundreds, hundreds of people standing outside. I can't tell if there's a line. I can't tell if it's just people congregating, but there's just so many people. And like, are you inside just running like crazy? I don't I have no idea how you even operate something like that.

17:20So what can you tell me what kind of sales you do? Not really. OK, we're busy. Let's go this way. Yeah, very busy. And the same with Jason Aldean. And I want to just clear this up. Our company purchased the building in the past. That was just out of concept. You just mentioned our we have a talented team and we're building ourselves. So so our company build their restaurants. I help with designing the kitchens. And there's a lot of, you know, talented people who are doing a lot of things. And we actually raised the building by two floors. So that's why we could bring the Jason Aldean. So we gave him the rooftop, which didn't exist before. And we raised the building for another floor. So I remember when you did that, I was like, what are they doing? Because the NASCAR Cafe and I think it was Tequila Cowboy, but there was also Cadillac Ranch. That's right. You'd walk in and there was like an open. There was like a like a yeah, there was a balcony around. You can like look down into it. And now that's gone. That's gone.

18:21Let's go up several floors. Just so we that yes, we closed it so we can actually build a dining room for Jason Aldean. Then we add the mezzanine, which we're missing. And there is another rooftop. So what is his involvement in the actual restaurant? Where we open, it was highly evolved. Right now, Jason coming in and just enjoying his time when he comes. He likes to eat and sometimes come on stage. He record a couple of video clips or have some guests on the stage. But on a on a beginning of the restaurants, all the artists we work with, they're highly involved in the core of the restaurants. They tell their stories. I'm trying to tell their stories through the food because I'm trying working with him. And Jason Aldean family was very grateful for it. They share the recipes. What he used to eat as a growing up and what he likes to eat before concert. After concert, we try to implement it all in. So you sit down with the family. You sit down with Jason Aldean and his family and you go.

19:23What influences do you have? Do you want on the menu? And he kind of goes, well, man, I like to grow up and I had steaks growing up and I want to have a rib eye. And you're like, OK, great. I can do it. Is that a terrible accident? I just screwed that whole thing up. How does that process work? Actually, his time is very valuable. So I wish I had as much time. Usually we do the research with the interviews he does and anything on TV and so on. We communicate through email and conversation. So when they come on a tasting, I already have something prepared based on that. And like his grandma's recipes, he just the shirt actually have handwriting, his recipes. And I just I duplicate them and just of course, those recipes are for free for people. I try feed, you know, 100 people every hour. So we have to replicate it. We want to make sure we are able to execute every seven minutes, every dish. So try to tweak it and changes and design kitchen based on that. After we decide what the dishes are. But Miranda Lambert so much.

20:23Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No. But with Miranda Lambert was super awesome experience. And this just recently happened, right? We just opened a year ago. She's so involved. Like I did free food rollouts and she came on all of them with Brandon, her husband. And Miranda knows what she likes and she tell you if she likes it or she doesn't. There's no between. OK. And we have phenomenal dishes is a Tex-Mex and they were too fancy. They were not up to Miranda standards. So she just dropped in the kitchen with me and just start cooking said, give me some bacon fat. Put this this. Where's my ground beef? Where is this? That's how easy it was. We just cook together. We're great time. We ate. We love it. And I designed the kitchen around it and and people really can have experience. She was in that kitchen and she really was, you know, part of it. Do you feel more of a connection with do you feel like it's more of an authentic connection you have with the kitchen and the food when the artist comes in and does that?

21:27I mean, yes, absolutely. And you know what? We just talk about my dish washing career. I think the same that maybe that taught me in my life that I have to put my ego on a side because, you know, I know we can do a lot of things different, maybe different kind of steak, maybe more fancy, whatever case it is. The name of the building is of the artist. And we just try to do representing them. So this is not my representation. I try to represent the best I possible can the artist and their likes and dislikes. Have you had any issues? Always. F.G.L. House. The two guys, I mean, do their families get involved and go, I don't like that the wife come in and be like, I don't like this. And they're like, but but the guy had liked it. And but they didn't. Do you have you had any issues? Actually, that's a good example because F.G.L. was the hardest for me to work with. But I found a way around it. Why why was it the hardest to work with? First of all, the schedule is very busy, the limited time you can spend with the artists and just to know him and just to do what you need to be done.

22:35But I was fortunate to meet their personal chef and I spent with time with him. When I'm on the bus, see what they eat before concert, after the concert, the personal chef work with them years. So he knows everything about him and what they like. So we spent a lot of time together. So the he helped me tremendously. And that was first restaurant I opened with the artist. So I just learned a lot myself. So by having this this gentleman input was really, really helpful. And and and then when it came to the tasting, I feel more confident and better what they will like because I get that. So it was hard in the beginning, but the tasting was easier. So the actual artists do have a lot of influence and kind of decor and the food and what you're serving, because look, I'll be honest with you, country music stars have no freaking clue what it's like running a restaurant, right? I mean, as far as like what type of food do you mean?

23:39There's a reason why you choose what you choose because you can scale it. I can make a whole bunch of this at one time, and they may not care about that. So is there a translation there? Yeah, I think it's a great challenge for myself because I like to do what they like. And I'm designing kitchen after we decide what the menu is going to be like. So all our kitchens are designed differently because we have different menus. So we let them as a company, we let them choose anything they like. And we just work from the back because for the tasting command, I'm going to bring in different type of plateware, different silverware, different napkins. They have all the choices. Besides, they're highly involved in the like a decor inside the restaurants, what they like. They bring a lot of the clothing or other things from the concert, just so people have the more, the more, you know, the touch when they're walking in, they feel that's their restaurant. But it's funny because the first time, because I sold produce to FGL House when it first opened.

24:42No way. I was with Freshpoint. I believe you bought produce from us. Yeah, we still do. Okay, good. Yeah, so we was a Freshpoint. So I got to be in the kitchen and I got to walk around. I don't know if I even met you. Maybe I did, but I was the sales manager. I had a rep that was managing it. Long story short. But I remember walking through that building and I'm like, good God, there's a lot of pictures of these guys in here. Like every single table had this giant picture of the guys from Florida, Georgia. And there was hundreds of just pictures of them ever. And I was just like, whoa, like this is like a shrine, the FGL. But I will say that Little Red Corvette, is that the downstairs one? That's right. That's the basement. I think that's the coolest place in Nashville. I think that is a cool ass little club. I believe so. You know, and when we open, we just try to do a lot of things with this place. We have the piano bar and we just try to do a lot of things. And some things don't work, you know.

25:42So you have to adjust and tweak and fix, you know. Has there been any food that you've made for a star that they were like, I don't like it. This isn't good. Absolutely. Plenty of it. But we have to give him some bad ones so they like the other ones, right? So you might have played a little bit, but just joking. Are you? Because I imagine you're like, they're not going to like this. Let's make one that's really bad so that he definitely likes this one. Yeah. How many employees do you have? So the company, TC Restaurant Group, we have 850 employees in downtown Nashville. 850? That's right. And believe it or not, we're short staff. How many more employees do you need? Perfect World, 150 more employees would be great. Now, what do you need? What positions do you need? Because I have people all the time. Let me, I'll tell you why I hate you. And I'm totally kidding.

26:42But I have a restaurant in Brentwood, right? And it's, we do a tip pool, everybody works together. It's an amazing community. We've got a really great culture. We care about everybody, you know, put our arms around everybody. It's a big family. But every once in a while, somebody goes, man, this is, I need to make more money. I'm going to go downtown and make a thousand dollars a night, right? That's the mentality is I can go downtown and I can make a thousand dollars a night. This is bullshit. I'm, you know, whatever. And you're like, feel free. Exactly. Go ahead. It's not for everybody. It is not for everybody. In my opinion, yes. That's a different type of, if you're family and you like, it's just fast pace and it's just black and white. You have to make decisions, but there's no time to, you know. Hey, how are you doing? What are you going to have tonight? Can we talk about your menu? And I mean, you're your bartenders are absolute pros. There's no shaking a drink for three minutes.

27:46Do you have a time standard for how many drinks you have to make a minute or an hour or anything like that? Like, how does that work? Yes, that's all of mathematic equations. So to get the better bars, you have to be able to, first of all, remember X amount orders, but you have to be able to ring X amount dollars to the register, which coming out to mathematical equation, about 20 seconds, you have to be able to do the drinks, you know, of course that low times and you have super busy times and depends on the performance and how fast can you move and your personality. And so you can rate that. You have a rating system, how you can rate how much somebody rings up per hour. Is it per minute? It's per shift. When you're coming to a shift, eight hour shift, you know, you can see how much, you know, every employee, how much they're ringing in and whatever tips does their business. And you can see how much every bar should be able to ring in X amount dollars.

28:47And some people who are not capable of doing more bars when they're a little slower, and there are superstar bars, you know. So let's just say I'm a superstar. I come in and I'm, I'm, I could work 12 hours straight. I can make, you know, 10 drinks a minute or whatever it is. And I'm fast as hell and I'm ringing the most. Where do you put me? What bar do I get to go to? The rooftops, definitely rooftops are the busiest. That's, that's the spot. If you're on the rooftop, you've got the best damn bartender in the spot, right? The fastest. The fastest. The fastest. Okay. This. So depends what it means, you know, the best, because we're rating the restaurant bartenders have different talents. They're using different glassware. They're doing more. They're shaking. They're more, more mixology. It's more mixology. It's more, more, more. There's a lot of great recipes. We have great beverage director who, who came out with great drinks. And that's those drinks coming out with the meals, complement the meals we have.

29:49And they have more time to spend because we have 150 people just dining 160. When you go on a rooftop, you have seven, 800 people, you know, we have drinking, there's no much food and a lot of them standing. So they don't have the time to relax and enjoy the meal and the drink. They usually drink enjoying the concert and enjoying the, you know, the view and everything else. But you have to be a little far paced and the same people are, you know, give me Jack and co, give me beer, give me this, this, that they're not us, you know, it's different. I want a dirty martini. Exactly. Slightly dry, but I want blue cheese olives. Can you bruise the shit out of it? You're like, no, I need a Jack and co. Can I need it now? And they're just, I mean, they're just hustling, but they have to. That's right. Wow. So how many bartenders do you have on a given? Like I'd say Jason Albin's like on a, on like a Friday night. How many bartenders do you have working in one night? I would say 45 to 50. This, this is so, so we understand, you know, we have one building on Broadway and there's almost 90, 90, 90,000 square foot.

30:56We have 16 bars. We have four stages, you know, we have six kitchens. We feed and, you know, we, there's three and a half thousand people at once enjoying experience at that building. So it's a little bit different machine. You know, we have 160 bands in a rotation. Just so we have all seven stages downtown. Just always. Okay. Let's talk about that. 160 bands in rotation. That's right. I've always wondered how this works. So you've got seven stages, just at Jason Aldean's. We're not talking Luke Bryan, FGL. Actually, we're sorry. That's in the building. We have Jason Luke's. That's the combined seven. Okay. So Jason Luke, that's seven stages, but then you also have FGL, which has. What? Yeah, two more stages. And then Miranda has a stage. Yeah. Right. So you have 160 bands. Who does the scheduling? Is he open at 10 30 in the morning? Right. Yeah. And, you know, there's a band playing at 10 30 in the morning.

31:58Starts at 10 10. So the beauty about downtown is that everybody, all the restaurants, not just our group, everybody have the, like a band schedule. So it's like a setup schedule for the whole town. Like, so you guys all share the bands. Some bands, they're not just working for us. They have contract with us. They're playing X amount of time. Sometimes they're playing in other venues as well. That's up to them. So the bands playing from 10 to two, two to six, six to 10. So this is just how this goes in the town. And some people choosing after 10 o'clock have a band to two in the morning, or some, some people go in DJs or whatever else. But as the four shifts for the whole town. So the bands can play one place, check out, go to another place. So nobody compete. Everybody have their own schedule. And do they bring their own drum kits? Just stay there. And I mean, because there's so much equipment when you have different bands. They all just kind of share. So the, the, we own a lot of equipment. They can use the larger bands, but they bring their own guitars.

33:01They bring some speakers. We have acoustic guys that bring their own gear and stuff. But we provide, we have the bigger things, you know, like drum, drum kits, stuff like that. Okay. Because I've always wondered how that worked. I wondered if you guys like, because you've got the same thing. You've got these different floors and you've got different stages on different floors. And it's like, do you just keep like five singers, five drummers, five guitar players and five bassists, and then you can, hey, you're on the, you're on the rooftop for the next two hours and you're playing with Sarah, Bobby and Lucy. And then down, like, almost like if you had a schedule, like, oh, I'm singing on floor three today and I'm singing on floor one today or I'm playing guitar on floor two. So this is not the 800 employees. They don't, they are not our employees. They're just outside. You know, we, we hire them to do their jobs and they, you know, you pay them, we pay them for playing. That's why, that's why people ask why is so expensive for the beer downtown? You know, this and that. I said, guys, it's 160 bands and everybody comes for four hours place.

34:03The artist makes like some money. We paying from our pocket. We don't charge guests, take a time to come in inside and pay for the bands. If you go to concert, you pay money for it. Right. So, uh, no, the, the, the, the extra dollar for the canned beer, we're trying to get. This is just so we can pay artists. Real estate downtown isn't cheap either. I mean, you've got a lot of overhead. Absolutely. Yeah. I believe, you know, what was like, uh, before COVID, the, the, our rent was like 200,000 a month, you know, like, yeah, who pay, you know, like that's it's not cheap. So, uh, you know, you have to, you have to make. Did you guys renegotiate that during COVID? I wish. Wow. That's a lot of money, man. Monthly, I'm in the wrong business. Real estate business where we need to be. 10 years ago. We are too late. Yeah. No kidding. Wow. Okay. So 160 bands, you pay them pretty well because they all play for tips too, right?

35:05Yeah, they have tips. Uh, and, uh, usually they're, let's put this way. There are some bands would make a little bit more than others, but there's, I would say 80% is just the same flat fee per hour per artist in the whole downtown. So anywhere you go, they pay the same. So it's like a union wage. Yeah. So, so everybody, yeah, the union word, I don't like to use it for this, but this, like, everybody's fine with, you know, artists are fine with getting X amount money and every restaurant pay the same. But like everybody knows Friday, Saturday, uh, Friday and Saturday, usually when you're coming to an Azure, if you have one or two nights, listen, the best band, everybody put the best band between six and 10 PM on Friday and Saturday. They cause the most, the bigger bands bring the energy, but everybody doing it. So that's why we can see Friday, Saturday, people take advantage of it. They're coming in. Do you compete for that? Do you guys compete for who you get to play where? Do bands choose where they play or do they just, is it like a lottery system?

36:05Uh, no, uh, we have, uh, our manager, all strict. He does is just have the contracts and do the schedule for the bands. And he found the talents, believe it or not. There's, you know, we have, usually people play what people want to, you know, what people want to hear. But sometimes we allowed, you know, in the slower times, the artists play their own music. Um, it happens a couple of times. Some, uh, one of the girl acoustic play their own songs and some recording studio was there and just give a contract for, you know, some big money, just hire her on a spot. So, so it's interesting. The whole music, I'm still learning. That's something new for me. And it's fascinating how this works, the city. So you mentioned that there's no cover charge. This is one of the things when people ask me who are from out of town, like, what is the appeal to downtown for bachelorettes? Why do people go downtown? And kind of my response is that where else can you go into like 50 bars and six blocks and have no cover charge to go see five different bands at every placement?

37:12You can go see 50 bands, 60 bands any given night and it's free essentially. They can come in our building and you have seven concepts and listen, five different bands get lost twice and eat four different cuisines. Yeah. And you just pay for your consumption. You know, you don't, you are not additionally charged for coming in, you know. Is there an agreement that you guys all have down there? Is there an agreement that you have with everybody else that says we're not going to charge a cover charge? Because you could. I mean, you charge $5 a person to walk in. How much money could you make? I mean, does that come up in like meetings? Do you talk about that? We spoke about it years ago when we, you know, when Broadway get busier and so on. And we decide as our company. I'm not sure what other restaurant or we'll be doing it, but our company goal is we're never going to charge cover. That's the experience. That's why we had to raise pricing once this year for the beer of a dollar. But that's it, you know, but pricing usually downtown everywhere the same. But no, we do not want, we don't believe in cover charge.

38:14You know, there's long-term, this like investment, you know, it's just, we don't believe in it. You know, it will be fun for a couple months. We just don't want to kill the business long term. Sure. Well, and I think every single other place doesn't charge. I wonder if like one person starts charging if everybody else just jumps in after that. But I think that kills the vibe because it is free. I can walk into all these different bars and just check it out. If I'm a bachelorette, I can walk in like, buy me drinks. And then I can go to the next place and buy me drinks and go to the next place. And like, it's just a really, that's a very unique. I was down when I was down there with my kids. I was thinking, when I was 16 years old, I used to get in my, I had a Jeep CJ5. Kind of like my Jeep now, but it is an old Jeep. But I would drive it down Broadway and then we would make a left on Second Avenue. And we would go cruising. You cruise up to Union, you'd come back down to Fifth or whatever. You come back down, you just do these circles and you would go cruising. And Broadway wasn't really even a thing.

39:15But now, I mean, it's world class. I mean, what's happening down there? I look around, I go, I don't know. It's Vegas or Nashville at this point, right? Is there another city? I mean, Miami, like, where else is there that people come to party like that? Yeah, I like, I like, I like all the scenes and people cruising right now in the, you know, in different vehicle, you know, they have the hot tub over there. Yeah, now it's called transpertainment. That's right. But I do not like comparing Nashville to Vegas. You know, I think Nashville is Nashville. You know, that's all it is. You know, and we might compete with Vegas. We opened restaurants in the past in Vegas, you know, in this beautiful city. And they do own deal. But I like to keep Nashville, Nashville as much possible and to contribute as much as possible as a chef to, you know, everybody call us bars, bars, bars. And I try to put the, you know, I just try to put our restaurants on another level. People coming to the bar, expecting bar. And I want to just put them away with the food quality and everything else.

40:18So, but I love Nashville. I just moved here a month ago. So I don't like compare the city to anybody else. We're going to take a quick break to hear a few words from our sponsors. Like Justice Industries and Just.Glass. So this is a nonprofit organization that we are super excited to partner with. Let me tell you about Justice Industries. They are a nonprofit organization that creates social enterprise businesses. They seek to employ those who find it difficult to obtain and retain work because of barriers such as criminal history, addiction recovery, mental illness, domestic abuse, and generational poverty. Their largest industry, Just.Glass, offers curbside pickup of your glass for recycling. Now this can happen at your front door. If you are out there and you have a trash service, you want them to pick it up at your house. That works. But what we're looking for here is restaurants. We go through so many bottles, so many beer bottles, so many liquor bottles. There's just glass bottles all the time.

41:19They want to come and recycle those. This is a great opportunity for you to not only do something great for Mother Earth, but also to help employ people that, again, have it difficult to obtain work, you know, for these other barriers. So what you need to do is you need to go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. Click the Justice Industries, the Sponsors tab, and find Justice Industries. Click that link. You can sign up to have this glass picked up at your home immediately from the website. And when you do that, you're going to be entered in to potentially win the five $100 gift cards. So go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab, and go to Justice Industries right now. Another industry that's very similar to this is called the compost company. So every day, we have food waste. People don't finish their food. You take it to the back in dish land, and you scrape it right into a trash can. What they do is they take a green compostable trash bag, and you're going to put your food waste in there, and the compost company will come pick this up once or twice a week, and they will take it to their farm, and they create fresh organic compost.

42:29They then take this compost, and they're going to sell it to people like Whole Foods, local landscapers, and local farmers. So literally, the food that you would be throwing in the trash can is now being turned into soil so that local farmers can grow the food that you can resell. It is really closing the circle. So if you're a decision maker in a restaurant, and you want to start doing the right thing and stop eliminating greenhouse gases, you need to go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. Again, click the Sponsors tab, and go to the compost company, and they really, really want to take care of you. If you want to learn more about the compost company, go back about a month and a half, and I interviewed Jeffrey and Clay Ezell, who are the owners of the compost company, and you can learn all about it. And we are really, really, really honored to partner with them. And now back to the interview with Chef Tamash. You know what? Amen, brother. I love that. I love that. And I'm with you, but I couldn't help being down there from my little humble beginnings of cruising down Second Avenue at the Music City Mix Factory.

43:32Used to be on the other side and have a nice day cafe. And then we had a place called Graham Central Station. Those are all old school clubs downtown that when I was like 18, I used to go to. That was like, you know, this is cool. We can go to Graham Central Station. There are people all over right now listening to this going, dude, Graham Central Station, that place was the best, man. Oh, I got kicked out of there for this. That's like the OG Nashville people will totally remember that. Speaking of people acting like idiots and getting kicked out of places, how much security do you guys have to have? And how often do people come in and just act like idiots? And you got to do you have fights all the time? Like, how do you manage all of that? You know, that's a good question. You know, there's I wish city have more police officers. And for bringing, you know, 300,000 people every weekend, whatever the number is coming in, most of them visit downtown. It's not enough police officers, so you really need extra security because you want to just, you know, secure the business.

44:35But at the same time, make sure people enjoy the experience in your facilities. In the fights, you know, I like to say we have, you know, not many, hopefully none, because if you have good security team, they should react before something happens. You know, that's why you're there. You're not reacting to this. You just see it. If something somebody have one too many shots or step on somebody food. So before anything happens, you react to it. So right now, I believe we have 85 security guys. We could get more, but we just try. You know, this is we have like a number per how many people is in the floor. So just make sure they, you know, they're safe and they can enjoy themselves. You know, but that's a big numbers, you know, and I'm just I, you know, for my little world that I live in, we do pretty good business, you know, in our two restaurants. We stay really busy and I'm doing 6000 people a week. That's awesome. But you're doing at any given night that many here, you're crushing that.

45:40Per shift. Yeah, per shift. And I'm like, holy shit. I'm just the numbers absolutely fascinate me. One of the biggest issues we've talked about labor, one of the biggest issues right now in the industry is supply chain. You know, just I order stuff all the time and I'm outed on whatever or you can't get Crown Royal because Canada is not producing it or getting Tito's or whatever it might be. How has that been? Like, so if I imagine on your scale, like I have wines, right? So if I want to buy Whispering Angel Rosé and they'll call me and go, hey, look, we're getting in 50 cases. How many do you want? Give me 10 and I'll store 10. Do you guys get that heads up and do you just buy everything? How does that work? You know, I guess that's only good thing about making bigger sales. Usually they coming to you first and they ask those questions and I feel sorry for the small restaurants, but that's how this works. We didn't choose because the same on the food world when we have shortages, chickens and, you know, we need 50 cases a week of chicken wings, you know, and the US food says I have 100 cases and I have 30 customers, you know, per whatever.

46:55I said, I need 50 said, no, I can give you just 10. I said, if you don't give me 50, I go to Cisco, you know, and you have the pool, you know, and they're like, you can have 50. Exactly. They figure out, you know, so that's a advantage of doing bigger sales and be on a bigger scale. Is that who you guys purchase from? You guys purchase your food from US Foods? US Foods. We have contract with US Foods, the great partners that help us in the beginnings because they were not as beautiful as they are. You know, the Broadway is getting busier and there wasn't as busy seven years ago and US Food to help us with purchase equipment and they're good partners for us and we're helping each other tremendously. So can we give a shout out to James Todd? Is that your guy? Yeah, James Todd. Thank you, brother. James Todd. Man, I miss that guy. When I was at US Foods, James Todd, he's just a badass, just one of those dudes that puts up with nothing and gets it done. And I love that about him.

47:55And he still does, believe it or not. He really does. 100%. He's the most consistent dude and he comes in and just, if you want to talk about pro in this world, he's a pro. Yeah, and that's the difference between salesman and the people who actually, he was a general manager and he was great successful general manager and he choose to spend more time with his family and the kids, which I absolutely, you know, support, you know. So he went to US Food to not slow down, but work X amount hours so he can spend time with family and enjoy kid sports. But he gets it because he was on our side. So he knows what you really need. And some salesmen, they just punch numbers in the computer. They have no clue what they're selling. You know, last week, sorry about your company, the produce company work for, but that's my old company. That's not my, I order eight gallons of orange juice for some diner, you know, fresh squeeze. And I get eight bags of beats, raw beats, you know, stickers on it. Oranges, you know, I was not oranges, no oranges, not oranges.

48:57And, and it happens, you know, but, you know, people like James, they recover and some, some companies don't have those people. So we blessed heaven, you know. What do you think the best trade is? So if I'm a salesperson and I'm listening to this right now, what do I, what's, what are the things that mean the most to somebody like you? Right now in this industry and you struggle the same way is just, we cannot get product. And then sometimes you have to think outside the box, you know, you have to reach out to other people, go get it, just go get her, you know. He know how important it is stuff. So we don't have time to take away from my kitchen and go to restaurant Depot, pick up something because we ran out with, you know, this extra hand extension hand to your restaurant is like almost, yeah, additional manager almost, you know, like so all hands on. I think you just nailed it. You just said somebody who partners with you, somebody who is an extension of your, and this is something that I talk about a lot because I do vendor negotiations and I can announce some of this stuff works.

49:59Um, when you have a vendor, like for you, you can't purchase from four different people, but I'm going to buy it because it's cheaper here and it's cheaper there. And I'm going to, they call it spreadsheeting. You got to have one company that can get you everything. And then you got to lean on them as an extension of your leadership team. James Todd works with you. Like he's a guy who's on your team as a partner, not this guy that you call to beat up because you need a better price on something. He's a guy that you trust and you want to work with every single day. Right. So that's the difference. That's the biggest, that's, that's, yeah, that's loyalty both ways. And if he choose to sell something for a dollar or two more, it's going to buy them later on down the road. You know, we're just going to do the price comparison with other people, you know, quarterly or whatever, but they understand, you know, it's just, for me, just to shopping and change for 50 cents, five different companies. And next we have to receive the product, put away in this. I spend more on our labor and logistic than it's worth.

51:01Oh yeah. So I better have partner I trust and they just get, get it stopped for us and it's much easier. Well, I think that's just, it's a unique perspective because I think so many people don't recognize on that scale. So many people don't trust their broadliner or their vendors. They think they're, they're trying to screw me every day so that they can give you the better deal. They're trying to screw me and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Find one, find one really good partner and negotiate a deal over three years and sit down and say, you're going to be my guy. Let's do this thing together. You get it. You know, that's, that's my belief. You know, from one partner we trust and they deliver to us. And really they just store the product and deliver. They don't producing it. No, that's why I'm spending my time more with manufacturers, people who producing the product. So that's the people I negotiate that we talk, we have hard specs and everything else. So that's what I'm more time spent with and having, you know, James thought or us foods, we negotiate, you know, protein is X amount percentage for delivery and frozen items and produce. So it's set up percentage, how much they're going to get for bringing to us.

52:15So it's win-win situation. Yeah. And in the same, I'm getting the product, what I really need. I don't worry about him to shopping for cheaper. I already talked to manufacturers and we agree how much we're going to pay and go from there. So you negotiating with the manufacturers ahead of time and you're saying, Hey, why don't you sell it to us foods for this much? Cause I want to buy it at this much. Yes. You're making, you're able to go one step farther. I know how much I'm going to pay. Doesn't matter what us foods know how much they can charge me for delivering fee. I already negotiate with, you know, spring mountain farms. Exactly. And in, in every market is different with chicken. You can negotiate just three months in advance with the pricing because you know, the, you have to feed the chickens and prices changes. But at least I know for three months is going to be this and next three months will be there. So I'm usually think six months in advance, what's going to happen with the market and how the price is going to be. And you can control this way ahead. So if I know in six months, my French fries go out again for X amount dollars. I might tweak the menus before they comes and I can control the cost better.

53:19What do you do all day? I mean, what do you, are you ever like on a grill? Are you ever cooking now? I mean, it sounds like there's so much management of everything. Like what time do you, do you show up to the actual rest? Do you go there or do you have an office? I have office in the kitchen. An office in the kitchen that that's where you work out of in the kitchen. In a kitchen. I love my office because I want to be available for all chefs if they have questions. Also, I like to, it's just habits, you know, just going to the kitchen, do the line check, see how the people doing, make sure they train well. Do a lot of tastings, new products. Think about future, you know, right now we're doing the full menus. So I have a lot of new products coming in. So I go on a grill and I cook the new products and see and tasting. Brandon Mirana's husband came yesterday. So I have the full specials, which I think they come out incredible. So we just cook together. The one in the cook makes, we ate because Miranda's going to Vegas. Do you have residency there? Yes. So I want to make sure we okay with fall and winter.

54:21They're happy with the new special. We like to roll. I just want to go approval from them and go from there. So it's always something to do. We're doing a lot of catering. We might do six to $7 million catering a year or two. So I'm working on a 2020 free already menus and the new program design, the new like decors for the buffets and stuff like that. So this is always things to do. Never enough time. So 2023 menus. I guess we're getting close to 2023. Are you talking like spring 2023 menus? Are you what and how do you develop? What's going to how do you know what you're going to need in 2023? Back when what is a little bit different. People booking the party six months in advance. Okay, I got you. So, you know, so it's a lot of not just guessing game, but it's what's available, what you can do. 2022 was the hardest. We tried to do this menus and I couldn't get plateware.

55:23You know, I'm doing party for 8,000 people. I'm calling James thought I call manufacturers. I need, you know, 15,000 plates, bamboo, four by four, nothing available. This year, we are going like free troll. Like whatever I can get, I get the best possible product. Zero control of the price. You know, you pay three, four times more for any disposables. And you can pass those along on a banquet, right? Not really, because we we promised them pricing, the pricing, everything is included per person already. And they booked year in advance, six months in advance. So we, okay, so you can't, we have to either. Yeah, we cannot just pass to it. So we have to eat a lot of calls this year just because, you know, things we cannot control. So do you have a commissary somewhere? Like, because imagine you have some recipes that if there's a salsa, if there's a sauce that you'd want to make in a bulk batch that you could share with all of your different locations, you're real close to each other. You're all within what, 50 yards of each other. I mean, do you have a kitchen that does stuff like that?

56:25Is that, can the health department allow that? I'm researching for it. We do not have it. Let's put it this way. So every restaurant has four prep cooks and they prep every day the same thing, you know. And trust me, those ladies in Mirandas, you know, the kitchen is the size of your desk. And we're doing 10 gallons of salsa verde and salsa. They chop about 150 pounds of pico de gallo every day. And it's just two tables for prepping. And I wish I had the commissary, but we didn't get the real estate is so expensive downtown. My kitchen got shrinked, you know, so we can fit more people in a restaurant. Always, right? Absolutely. So tiny, tiny walk-in coolers so that we can fit three more tables in there. Yeah, and we can have delivery twice a day then, you know, but that's the downtown rules. And that's what I'm dealing with. That's why I'm five in the morning every day. Time is, you know, you have to make sure the product come on time. So we have time enough to prep. So then, you know, so it's constant seven days a week, you know, prepping, working and just delivery and can't imagine how much trash we produce.

57:30I was just about to say, how do you deal with trash? Because commissary, that would be the biggest thing for me, not just for consistency and for what product bring in downtown, but I would eliminate trash, you know. Do you have your big trash can at home? You have the big blueness put out by the street. Yeah. So take a guess, how many of those will fill it up a day? You can't have dumpsters, can you? No, we cannot have dumpster downtown. And also, you know, city changed the law, so we cannot have pickup trash during the day as well. So we have to haul to the trash all day, and we're doing trash between three in the morning and six a.m. So we have three hours to haul the trash can from the basement to the street level so we can pick them up, clean them up, bring them back to the basement so people and guests don't see that. But that's somebody's full-time job, isn't it? Yeah, we hire, we have people doing full-time. They're working. Working on trash. Just the trash. They come to work at two in the morning and they're going to do trash to six in the morning and clean up afterwards and come back next day. How much I'm sure you don't know the answer to this, but I just imagine how many bottles, like how much glass you have that just gets.

58:39We try the best with recycling and everything else. Do you do that? Do you recycle? Yes, and the bottles because we change our beer containers. We're using only can bottles are only liquor. So you don't use any beer bottles at all? It's all canned? Yeah, just because a lot of people breakage, think it fall off from the roof. So we do draft beer and we can beers in our restaurants. Well, that's smart. And this probably reduces the weight of your trash by Exactly. Thousands and thousands of pounds. That's right. We did all those changes. Just the people dropping in and breaking glass, glass being on the floor. So still, we'll have on a restaurant level, the bottles doing the restaurant hours. And after 10 PM is just cans. Rooftop is just the same. Just can and plastic for safety and everything else. Wow, I'm blown away here, man. But imagine carry 160 trash cans and the average 200 pounds, just bring it from the basement to the street level, doing this every day.

59:45I'm really grateful for those guys doing this job. Yeah. Where do you spend the most of your time? Do you spend most of it at Aldean's or are you over at FGL? My office is in Jason Aldean. It's central located, so it's like building between both. But I try do my rounds every hour, just walk between those kitchens and everybody knows when to find me. But yeah, in Jason is my office, the kitchen. That's so cool, man. So I'm like, so fascinated. Thank you so much for coming in here to do this. I'm like, I just I feel like I could just keep asking you questions all day. And I need to go down and like experience. You have to come downtown, just work for a shift, you know? Yeah, I would love to, man. I would just love to see the machine in action. Now, are you down like Friday night at eight o'clock? Are you at home with your wife and kids or are you? Depends, you know, now the team getting bigger and stronger. In the past, I was working seven days a week and I done it the busiest hours.

01:00:49So right now, just most of the Fridays, I'm trying leave between eight and nine. But sometimes we have catering special events, things like this, I can control and I try be there. But they have my goals after moving here. So I have to travel to Ohio back and forth every single week. So nice. Yeah, your wife appreciates that. Absolutely. And so I can be home for half Saturdays and Sundays. So that's my schedule. So I can see my, you know, younger son's soccer games. So what do you do? What do you do for fun? Like in Nashville now? I mean, you've been traveling here just kind of solo for so long. And now you live here. What do you do for fun when you're not working? I love hiking. You know, I'm planning to learn hunting. You know, I moved to Lebanon, there's a lot of guys who hunts there. So I would love to try this this year. OK. But play sports. I love paddleboard on the lake. It just tries to stay active. Being outside, doing step outside.

01:01:51Absolutely. And hiking is my go-to. And cooking. I love cooking. So I just moved to a new neighborhood. I decided to do Oktoberfest. I know I'm Polish, but I'm doing Oktoberfest for all my neighborhood just to meet my old neighbors. So I roast the whole hog. We have 20 different brats from scratch. We're going to have, I bought the kegerator for some great beer. So we're going to have fun. Just to introduce myself to the community. I want to be an honorary member of your neighborhood for that. That sounds amazing. Yeah. That's the kind of neighbor you want to have. Absolutely. There you go. There's the way to become everybody's favorite neighbor. Be a chef and throw the throw the party. Yeah, I just I don't know how to cook for one or two people. So that's the problem. I really don't. I have pizza oven in Ohio. Remember, on Sundays we do pizza from scratch in this wood fire pizza oven. You heat it up 900 degrees. I do some dough, but my wife knows I cannot make one, two pizzas. Usually, hey, babe, I have 40 pizzas. What do you want to do? Take the Facebook and this is what I did.

01:02:51I'm going to show you this right here. You can take that phone. You can see the video. That's awesome. That looks like I'm cooking. That is that is in my backyard. That's amazing. And I did my fantasy football draft for my restaurant Maribor. Rick came over on Sunday to do that. And I cooked eight pork butts. I see a dozen racks of ribs and two corned beef briskets. That looks amazing. All of it. I have a huge pit smoker in the back. It's a whole hog smoker. But that's amazing that all that cherry cherry wood is what we cook. Cherry wood. OK, cherry wood smoked pretty. So I like to cook for a lot of people. Yes, I cook like 200 people. I had 10 people over. Is this too much food? I don't know what's going on. Yeah, we talked about the food wasting before. That's why if I overcook it, at least I invite everybody I can. I send everybody home with a whole pork butt. Everybody goes home with all. You get to eat pork sandwiches for the rest of the week. So hopefully next time, you know, you can invite me. You know, I want to do a whole hog.

01:03:52Let's do it. So if you know how to do that, I don't know how to do it. We have people who knows how to do it. We've done a couple of times. We get in there and do a whole hog. We have a party. Yeah, I'm waiting for some party who wants to order. I want to do the half cow. Like heaven down the cow yet, but I want to have half a cow. The slowly smoked and done correctly. So that's my one of the parties in December. I'm going to surprise them. Just if they don't buy it, I just do it for I'm just to half cow. That's a lot of food, man. Yeah, but if we are doing party for two to three thousand people, you know, that's really not, you know, this perspective. And you look at it, you know, to three thousand people. That's a pretty big party. Yeah, the biggest party I've done was eight thousand people. That was the biggest challenge we had. The three thousand parties we're doing once a month. So you can get used to it. So I follow you on social media and I think I asked you about this, but I always see you. You have like an ice bath. Oh, that's is this in your backyard?

01:04:53It will be. I'm building the house in Ohio. I have in my backyard and this and I spend a lot of money on ice. OK, at least good thing in Ohio is four months a year. I don't have to buy an ice. Because it's just frozen in there. Yes, and you just ask to break the ice to get to the water, which is was good benefit. What is going on with that? You just and I'm watching there's snow all over the ground and you're just like getting in this bathing suit on no shirt. Now, they're just like, I'm just getting in an ice bath and there's snow over and I'm like, this guy is insane. What are you doing? So you see, that's my form of meditation. You know, my calm, my Zen. OK, and two years ago, I have privilege to meet Wim Hof. I went to Poland to train with him. Wim Hof, they call him also Iceman. So I spent with him a whole week in the Polish mountains. So he train us exposure to cold. And the last day of the trip, we climbed the highest Polish mountain just in the shorts and boots in January, negative 11 Celsius, six hour climb with snowing and everything else.

01:06:01And it's just mind over body type deal. And I really enjoy it. You do the breath work, which really tremendous helping you and the ice bath does the good thing about ice bath. What I love is, you know, my mind is crazy. I'm thinking about the menus and what's happened tomorrow. What I going to eat today, what's going to happen Sunday, whatever. If you get an ice bath, you're freaking cold, OK? And all you think your brain telling you what the hell stupid you're doing right now. But you try to control this and there's nothing exists. The future doesn't exist. Your breakfast that you just hear and now. And all you think you can focus is your breath and now. And if you, you know, inquire, like if you control this, it's just the most powerful you can do for yourself. You just like you in the control and you just now, you just bring you down to like forgetting about everything else.

01:07:03So besides this is beneficial for you if you athlete, you know, just swallowing and everything else. For me, it's more mental thing than anything else. Stop my brain, slow down, be grateful for the moment, grateful for the life you have and the opportunities and just be in a moment. That's the best thing can happen to you. God, I love that. I love that so much that I reference the book, The Comfort Crisis, which is our month of August. It's it's September now, but like the month of August are everything called Brandon's Book Club. And we're reading Michael Easter's The Comfort Crisis. And what he says is we live in a 72 degree world. Everything that we do, we find comfort. The second we feel uncomfortable, we grab a phone and we look at something like we can't just sit and be uncomfortable. We have to be in air condition. I want to be in air condition. It's too hot. It's too cold. It's too this is too that. He says, get out and do things like that. Go sit in an ice bath and freeze your ass off for a minute.

01:08:07Let your brain really just clock out and all the things you just now said. Because the second you get out of that and you get back into the real world, you can find gratitude so fast. Absolutely. You can find gratitude in the little things. Because I just experienced this such an extreme outside my comfort zone that it kind of expands your comfort zone. Everybody has this untapped potential that we don't even know about. But we don't want to see what that potential is because we live in our 72 degree. I have to be comfortable, have to be comfortable, have to be comfortable. You step outside of that and it's amazing what you can accomplish. I imagine some of that falls into why you're doing that. Absolutely. And besides this breath work, that's really a form of meditation. I'm doing breath work now for four years and people say, what do you do breathing? Really? So much more than this. I can get high on air more than the best wheat you can buy. Seriously, after an hour, you're going to flow above this carpet just by doing your breath work.

01:09:13By breathing with the oxygen in your body and just meditation. And you really, really just like tap out. You're just like part of the universe. You're part of everything else around you. This is the phenomenal experience. I've finished meditations and I've kind of when you reopen your eyes, I kind of look around like, where the hell did I just now go? You get so in tune with your own thoughts and your own breath and you can feel it go. The color changes, the smell is different, the food tastes different. It's incredible. Now, is there an app or how did you learn to do that? I'm using the Wim Hof app right now, but really I have a breath coach over here in Nashville. Julie Erickson, she's an incredible human being. Julie Erickson? Yes. She's a breath coach? Breath coach, I believe. Teaches you, you're not doing transcendental meditation, are you? TM? No, but she has different type of breath work. She's more intimate breath work, so it's longer.

01:10:16But I found very comfortable Wim Hof breath work. So this is with the holding and breathing and so on. So it's more action and eyes buff on the end and all this stuff. So it's more my pace. But sometimes if you need more intimate breathing, there's a lot of styles. I didn't realize this until I started doing it because it depends. If you stress out, it's different breath work. If you're getting anxiety before you go on a stage, this seals. The nurses in the hospital work a lot of hours. There's a specific way you can breathe and calm your body very quick and go back to the core. Your fast paced restaurants, people cutting the fingers and things happen. Somebody burn. Pipe burst and stuff like this. It's insanity all the time. So you have to find the core and just be in the control. You have to control yourself to control anything else. Breath work is definitely the way to do it.

01:11:17Well, since I'm in recovery from alcoholism, so many people live that there's all these external stresses and things that happen to you. So many people drink because that's how they control that. But you see, that's the funny part, isn't it? Because alcohol is actually doesn't helping you is actually the opposite. Yeah. And so when you do this, but that's the first thing that I learned when I started. After I stopped drinking was meditation and breath work and stopping for a minute and finding time to finding time for mindfulness, I guess would be the word. But also I found myself so angry when I quit drinking because I had all these emotions that I had no freaking clue how to deal with. I didn't know how to deal with them. I just drank all the time. I lost the ability to understand my emotions, how to deal with my emotions. So when I started doing breath work, I went, oh, OK, this is I was able to accept the emotion that I was having and work through it versus numbing it out and just not worrying about it.

01:12:26The emotion still there. Yeah. In no way is on you. It just buried in those. It gets worse. It gets worse and it gets heavy. But when you're able to process things out and go, OK, I remember getting so mad at my wife and kids for no just I was just stressed. It's like, I don't know what to do. And I go upstairs and I do a 10 minute meditation. I come back downstairs. I'm like, hey, guys, what's going on? Yeah. How's everybody doing? Like who how much easier than just drink and just get more upset or and hung over and all this stuff. But I mean, it's just amazing how so I'm glad I asked you that question. Yeah, that's my way to deal with the stress, too. You know, besides breath work, I have Lego. You know, that's two of my secrets. Everybody asks, why are you saying Lego Lego? Believe it or not, I'm Lego fanatic. You know, hard to explain. But, you know, that's the only thing I guess I can just I can sit down on a table, pull a bunch of Legos and build for two hours. And my brain, just like with ice bath, is just going to those freaking small pieces and just build one thing at a time.

01:13:29And only thought focuses here is just to build something. Plus is opposite what we do with cooking, right? You're cooking somebody is gone. And this way, at least I build something and actually stator. Okay, look at it. Focus in it. So not always advice, but the Lego is my second secret weapon to stay the same. You know what mine is? No, I like to wash my car. Really? Yeah, actually, I can I want to ask you a car. Pretty clean. You do this to help. It is, but it's it's I've said this 100 times in the podcast. People and people know exactly what I'm about to say that in mowing my yard. Okay, mowing my yard and washing my car. Because, like, you know, you're working on dishes for 2023 right now. You don't get a lot of immediate results. Things you're working on take months to develop. And you have these ideas. Then you have to conceptualize the idea. Then you have to start sourcing things. Then you don't get I don't get to see things get done. You don't see results.

01:14:30I don't see. I mean, we do get results. But like the results I get was something I started seven months ago. I get everything takes time when you finally get to see the result. You're kind of already on to the next four things. So my car is dirty and I go outside and I it's that detailed kind of thing. I'll wash it and then I'll get every little thing. And I'll do the wheels and tires and inside and everything. When I'm done an hour and a half later. I can look at it and go. I just did that. I took somebody's dirty and there's an immediate result. I get to focus in. I'll listen to a podcast while I focus in and I'll get something done. And I can stop and say, OK, I see them and I get that little win. It's a win. I get to go or when you mow the yard, like to walk across the street and I'll stand there and look at my yard and be like, I did the lines in the yard look perfect. And I'm and I did that. I did that that I can go on with my day. And the things I'm working on for months and months. I love that. Yeah, that's great. Kind of like a Lego. I'm going to sit there and do it. And when you're done, you go, I just did that.

01:15:31I just built this Batmobile or whatever the Lego thing is. I just built Harry Potter's Gryffindor. This is really cool. That's super cool. What am I missing? What do you anything you want to tell people at the end of the show? I always ask people to get the Gordon Food Service final thought. So you get to say whatever you want to say at the end of the show to talk to whoever you want to. But anything I'm missing before we can do this again in a couple months, I would love this. This is so much fun. It is fun. I'm really grateful for being here. And I have the opportunity to meeting people like you and live in this community. And I really, really love United States. I'm seven years now a citizen over here. So I'm just really grateful. And my goal is to give it back. I got to the point that I'm living behind my dreams. I never imagined in my life I would be able to do things I do. So I have different goals. I like to one of these days maybe can help me and we can raise some money.

01:16:34I really like to have food track because the food we talk about wasting downtown, I could feed probably a couple hundred homeless people daily. And I'm talking about between everybody. So I like to just get back to the community in the future and be involved in a lot of things to help it out. But I'm very grateful in going to Poland in October. So believe it or not, for my wife birthday, you won't believe what I did. But I rent a tank. I gonna ride a tank in Poland and you can actually- You can rent a tank? Yeah, you rent a tank. Do you get to drive it? Absolutely. Hell yeah. And you can $100, I believe you can shot once, like 400 bucks. So I'm saving some money just to shoot freaking tank. So that would be my vacation in Poland. So we have to meet and I'll tell you about it. But I'm looking forward to it. So I'm looking for just- Now this is your wife's birthday? That's why I told her, I probably won't take her for the tank ride, but yeah. For your birthday, honey, I'm gonna rent a tank that I get to shoot.

01:17:36Yes. You're gonna love it. You'll love it. Go to beauty salon, I take care of the tank. Full spa day, I'm gonna go drive a tank. Yeah. Why not? That's bad ass. I didn't know that was even a thing. Me either. I just called my friends in Poland and said, guys, I just rent a tank. They didn't know and they live there. Said, we going to woods, we gonna ride a tank. Well, there's, you can start hunting. You said you want to start hunting, you get in the tank and you could just make that happen. Like, I'm gonna take out that herd over there. Yeah. You have food for months. Yeah, absolutely. Great idea. Two birds with one stone. Chef Dimash, this has been so much fun. And like I said, I don't know if that was just now it, but we are sponsored by Gordon food service. We've done a lot of time talking about US foods day and James Todd. Yeah, sorry Gordon. We do some business with you though. Gordon food service is amazing. Those guys, I mentioned the whole partnering with people and when I was at US foods, I came to my restaurant and Gordon food service was our current provider.

01:18:40When I got to my restaurants from US foods and I think everybody thought, well, he's just gonna move to US foods. And I kind of did too. But as I got there, Gordon foods first came in and they said, let us teach you about who we are and what we do. And I was like, okay, great. You know, like it's another sales pitch, like whatever. And I went to their facility in Shepherdsville. Have you ever been up there before? No, no. I've never been up there before. Holy cow. Everything is automated. It's all done by like, it's not robots, but I mean, it's robots. So there's like Amazon, there's zero human error. You don't, if you order orange juice, you're getting orange juice. You're not getting beets. Like my fill rate in every single thing that they would ship, never, never had a miss ship. That's awesome. Five years, never had a miss ship, never had any issues whatsoever. And their service, they're a private company. So they believe in all the stuff that we were just talking about. James Todd's an absolute pro. US foods is a great company and they do a fantastic job.

01:19:40But I was so impressed with Gordon just because they did what they said they were gonna do. That's awesome. Yeah, they're good people. And they fortunately sponsor this podcast. That's okay. We're opening new restaurants. We're looking for more partners, you know? Yeah. Well, there you go. So GFS is a great way to go, but they sponsor our final thought, which is whatever you want to say, as long as you want to say it, you're talking to the Nashville restaurant community. And after we're done with the final thought, I want to get all of your contact information. If you're hiring who, if somebody's listening this and they want to come work for the TC restaurant group, who do they need to contact? Who do they need to follow? Where can we get a hold of those people? So let's get all that stuff right after your final thought. Okay. All right. Final thought is yours. Go. I love putting people on the spot. Yeah, thanks. Final thought, you know, what I like to just talk about this, I know you have a lot of chefs coming into the podcast and I always believed that we all always should work together and help each other and just be one big community.

01:20:48And I will be always fighting for it. I have a lot of chefs who are friends of mine downtown or Gulch and I always want to mentor or help or just share ideas or tell them about the new products. If I find I don't believe as a competition downtown, I like to just Nashville look a little more globally, like Nashville compete with, you said Vegas, but compete with other cities. I like to just be part of something more and bring Nashville food scene to be more bigger than anywhere else. So the goal would be just people coming to Nashville and be known for great food, not just, hey, there's a Broadway, there's great bars and just music, you know, just bring them more to the table and just do this as a team, as a together, just don't work and fight against each other. So that would be amazing. So I'm working with the TC restaurant group, right? And the easiest way you can go to tcrestgroup.com and that's over there.

01:21:54Anything you need to know about us, about our concepts and what we do. And there's also a place to you can apply. We have people on spot in HR downtown located. They look at this every day. They reach out to people and set up the interviews. And we always hire great people. I believe only enough, we have enough application for bartenders. There's probably some from your restaurant, but there is a line bartenders because they know the money they can make. They just do not know what hours and expectation everything else. What are the hours? I mean, I always tell them, I go, hey, good luck going downtown and parking. Yeah, that's the beauty. You nail it. Is there always parking? There's events every week. Seems like some type of concert or something going on. So you can't even get to it downtown. And we're closing three in the morning. Some bartenders do checkouts at 5 a.m. before they go home and stuff like this. So what time do they get there at night? They're free shifts.

01:22:55So the last shift, I believe to come between six and seven, the closing shift. So you have in the building. That's when the badasses are there, right? Those are the badasses. They get there at six or seven and they work until five o'clock in the morning. Absolutely. So everything comes with the price. If you love to do this, you love the crowds and everything else. Absolutely. Come over doing it. I'm in the kitchen. I'm going home 10 p.m. You know, I like that. I like my sleep. I get up at five, but I want to leave 10. You know? Sure. I mean, are you there every night till 10? Sometimes I try to leave a little bit earlier. Sometimes Friday, Saturday nights. You're always there Friday, Saturday nights. Friday. Yes. Saturdays. I'm trying not to be if I don't have to, but yes. Yeah. Sometimes you stay there to two in the morning. You know, you got to do what you need to do. But I try to come between five and six because that's when you have, you know, you set up the game plan, you know, for the whole day.

01:23:57So you put this, put the energy in, welcome, make sure that all product comes. You have to make sure your prep cooks guys come set it up. Everything because later on is just you can you have you can be proactive earlier. Later on things happens and you can just react and just just reacting all day is just exhausting. I like today already thinking about Saturday schedule and Sunday. And I know it's the same with prep. I like to just prep not just for today lunch because if two people won't show up, I would have to close restaurant. I already start thinking about prep tomorrow and after tomorrow. What to purchase on Monday. All my new managers, I say it's Friday night. It's four thirty. What is going to happen at seven thirty when we're absolutely packed and your hair is on fire, you're running around. What's the thing you can fix right now that you don't want to fix at seven thirty? Toilet paper in the bathroom. If it's it never fails at seven o'clock when you're just slam.

01:24:57Somebody walks over, taps on the shoulder and goes, there's no paper towels in the bathroom. You're like, fuck, yeah. How come we didn't do that at four o'clock? Like, how, how, how did we wait and miss that? And we got to now I got to go down in the basement. I got to get it and I got to go up there, get the key to the thing. And like nobody had time for that at seven o'clock. Exactly. So, you know, the same for me. You know, we serving, you know, twenty case of chicken wings. If you don't precook him and somebody tell me I need chicken wings and six p.m. I say, are you freaking kidding me? Really? Yeah. You know, we doing those on Wednesday, you know, like it never gets old. You're doing this for downtown now, seven, eight years downtown. You're training people every day. The same shit happens every week. I said, really? This is just like talking to the toddler. You know, it's just. That's incredible. Wow. Okay. I would love to come spend a night with you a Friday night. Just come in and just shadow you. Coming over. See what you do, because that would be so fascinating to me.

01:25:59The next bigger, larger catering going to bring you in. Okay, seriously. How much things involved and. Yeah. It's fun. Let's do it. It is fun. Yeah, absolutely. Chef Tamash, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for coming in early and spending an hour. I've learned a ton today. I'm so just I'm so excited that you're in our town, that you're here. I think that one of the things about Nashville is that we welcome people in so well at such a friendly city. Absolutely. Yes, you embody like everything that I feel like so many local chefs are like, you're there and I love how you're given back. And I love just everything about what you're doing, man. It's a it's a blessing to be able to know you. And I wish you nothing but the best of success. Can't wait to do this again. Thank you so much. All right, man. Have a great day. You too. All right. Wow. What an amazing interview. I had so much fun. Thank you, Chef Tamash for joining me. Early in the morning to do that interview.

01:27:02Thank you for joining me for the full hour and a half on this interview. I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your week. Hope your Labor Day was wonderful. Jump back in Brandon's book club. We're going to have our meeting later this week and hopefully you have read the book and you want to join us. We're going to have a live in studio and live Facebook conversation about the comfort crisis with Michael Easter. Hopefully later this week, I'll post on social media when we are going to do this. And I'm just excited that Robin's Insurance Company partnered with us on this one. And Matthew Clements is going to be joining us on the show. This is going to be a lot, a lot of fun. Thank you again for listening. And I hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.