Tony and Caroline Galzin

00:00Sharpier's Bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They have operated in Nashville since 1986. Yes, next year will be 40 years. They providing high quality fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals and universities. The bread is also free from any preservatives and artificial flavors. The right off of White Bridge Road, Erin Mosso and her team have been doing this for a long time. And you know what I love about them is that they're local and they care. They care about your business. That's like the number one thing you're gonna hear me talk about is, do they care about your business? And I 100% believe that they do. If you would like to be working with a bakery that cares about your business, give them a call. 615-356-0872. That's 615-356-0872. Now you can always visit them at sharpieres.com.

01:01That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com. And they have pictures of all of the bread that they can have for you and contact information. Go check them out, Sharpieres Bakery. Welcome 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. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by the good people at Gordon Food Service. Amazing partners they are over at Gordon. And we are excited today. We've got a really fun show for you today. We are talking with Caroline and Tony Galzin. They are the magnanimous owners over at Nicky's Coal Fired.

02:06Caroline used to be a co-host on this here very show. And Tony is a great friend and he is in our Fantasy Football League. He is the biggest Bears fan in the city. And we hadn't seen each other in so long. And so we decided, hey, look, let's do an episode. They had Gavin Newsom at their rest. They have a private event space and they hosted an event. They didn't host, they had an event. Gavin Newsom's team called them and said, we wanna host something here. And they said, yes, we'll do it there. But they posted a picture with them and it was really cool. And I wanted to learn more about that. So we are going to dig into all of those things today. We talk about, I mean, we talk about everything today. Now I will let you know if you are here because you heard the episode with Nick, Gedri, and Pelican, and Pig. Thank you, we're happy to have you. We just celebrated, I missed it. We celebrated six years of this podcast.

03:09Yes, March 14th, let's see if I have a, there it is, this is my new, some people are excited. Six years, I think we've done over 360 something episodes. We have talked to so many amazing people and that episode with Nick was, he's been on the show several times, him and his lovely wife, Audra. And when he called me and said they were closing, I was just like, dude, I really want you to say this in your own words and you guys loved it. I mean, a lot of people heard a lot of feedback on that show that really enjoyed hearing what a restaurant owner had to say in his own words as the announcement was coming out. So it is officially closed, they closed on Sunday night. It is Monday today, so now this episode's probably, I recorded this episode maybe a few days before that. This was supposed to come out last week, but the Nick thing trumped that, so there it is. Yeah, so you're gonna enjoy this one. Super excited to be here, six years.

04:11I wish I had like a ton of stats. Over 360 episodes, over 100,000 downloads. We've got some of the most amazing sponsors who have kept this thing going. Really, really special. I was in Atlanta this past weekend. Giving Kitchen's Team Heidi event was on Sunday yesterday. What an amazing event. They had the Yacht Rock review there, this band. I love those cover bands, like the 80s and 90s. These guys did Yacht Rock music only and then the full outfits and everything, and it was amazing. There was over 100 restaurants there, raised a ton of money, ate some really good food, and if you were unaware, we have a community engagement council here in Tennessee. Vince, Lanny, and I co-chair that, so we are going to be throwing an event. It is on April the 28th. It is going to be at the Putting Zone. It is the first, the inaugural Giving Kitchen putting classic.

05:13Putting Zone is over off Sidco Drive in Berry Hill, and it is the coolest putting experience, if you like to golf, right? It's not like a putt-putt type thing. It's like a professional PGA style putting course, and so we're going to do a double tournament on the 28th, and it's going to be so fun. This is going to be a vendor restaurant event, so the vendors are going to buy all the teams, and then they're going to invite a restaurant to come play with them, so if you want to play in that tournament, and you have a vendor that you work with, say, hey, contact Brandon. You need to get involved there, because there are limited spaces. We have 36 teams, and we would love to have as many of you show up. This is, it's available to anybody. If you're not playing, there's going to be vendors there. There's going to be all kinds of cool stuff. We're going to have a program from, I think, four to five where you can come. We'll have all kinds of fun stuff. We're going to have a neat raffle. There's lots of giveaways. It's going to be an amazing evening.

06:14The inaugural Giving Kitchen putting classic at the putting zone on Sidco Drive. All of this is done to let you know that the Giving Kitchen is here to help restaurant workers. If you're an owner of a restaurant, or you're the GM, or if you're responsible for people that work in the restaurant business, I want you to know about the Giving Kitchen, because if somebody gets hurt and they cannot work, the Giving Kitchen steps in and helps them cover their bills while they cannot work. It is an amazing opportunity, and the story around how it began is amazing. Go back to one of those 360 episodes. I have had Jen Heidinger Kendrick. She's the founder of Giving Kitchen, and she's been on the show a couple times, and telling her story and what it is, I couldn't be more honored to help chair the Community Engagement Council for Tennessee, and just be a part of this amazing organization. Another event that we're gonna be having a little earlier in April is on April the 14th.

07:15We are doing our NARA Connect Spring Social. So this is an event for people who work in restaurants. Restaurant leadership, really, to be specific. If you own a restaurant, if you're an executive chef, if you're a general manager, and you wanna connect with other people who are in similar roles without having a bunch of salespeople all around you, this is the spot. Kind of my idea was let's have an event where restaurant owners and leadership can show up and just hang out and talk without having people constantly going, hey, you're that guy, hey, I wanna sell you something. Now, we will have vendors there. This is gonna be presented by Cisco, but they have tables. They're gonna be at their table, so if you wanna go talk to a vendor, you're gonna be able to go talk to a vendor. We're gonna have Wild THC. We're gonna have a brewery there. We're gonna have Justin Cook from EOS, so if you're looking for the entrepreneurial operating system, a way to help run your restaurant a little better. None of these things, you just meet people. This is just a connect thing.

08:17This isn't like a big sales thing. This is where people go, and I will tell you, the last NARA Connect that we did over at Peren in our winter social, we had about 40 restaurant owners show up, and it was so fun seeing people meet each other and say, oh my God, I didn't know you owned that place. That's so awesome, and I was that way, too. Just excited to see people and meet people, and I'm excited to do it again. This one's gonna be at Shotgun Willie's. Bill's gonna be there. We're gonna have a photo op on the mechanical bowl that he has. It's very vanilla, but we would love to have you at that event. Here's how you go. It is free for you. Free food, free drinks, free connections. That is one of our missions at NARA, the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. We wanna bring you guys together in a fun atmosphere where everybody can connect, share phone numbers, hug each other's necks, do the whole thing. You go to naranashville.com, N-A-R-A, Nashville.com, and if you go on your phone, there's gonna be like the little, I call them the pancakes.

09:25There's gonna be like those three little pancakes at the top of the screen. Click that, and you're gonna see a button. You're gonna see a screen that says NARA Connect. All you have to do is click the NARA Connect button and scroll down. It talks about the event, what time it is, and there's gonna be a little button that says Register Here. You're gonna go to Eventbrite. You're gonna say, hey, I wanna go. You're gonna type in your name. You're gonna put your email address in there. It's gonna send me an email and say, Johnny Rocket has registered for the event, and I'm gonna go, awesome. Now I know to give you a name tag, and I'm excited you're there, and I can know how much food to prepare, right? Because that's the main thing. I just wanna know how much we need to be ready for. Now a lot of people show up that don't register, and that's fine, too, but I would love to know if you're gonna be there. And this is for restaurant owners only. If you are a vendor, and you would love to be at one of these things, and you wanna stay at a table, and you wanna be over there, this one is full, but there are more. We're gonna have our independent restaurant show that's gonna happen in August, and we would love to have vendors come to that. There's a vetting process that we have to make sure that you are an awesome vendor.

10:26We have a bunch of them already, but we would love to learn more. If you would like to be a part of that, you can email me, brandonatnaranashville.com. And if you're a restaurant out there, and you wanna learn more about NARA, you can do the same thing. You can go to NARA Nashville, you can hit a contact button, or you can just email me, brandonatnaranashville.com, and I would love to come meet you. We are saving restaurants tons and tons of money. And we're having a lot of fun while doing it. Making connections, doing the whole thing. So that is all of Mike. We're at like almost 10 minutes now. This is gonna be a 10 minute intro, and then we are gonna get into this. It's just a fun conversation I had with Caroline and Tony. And yeah, please go support local restaurants. That's what we need you to do. As Pelican and Pig closed, we're just seeing more and more saturation from all kinds of restaurants that are from out of town and chains and all these different locations. We need you to support local.

11:27If you don't know who's local, again, I'm gonna send you back to the NARA Nashville website. Hit our restaurant member list, and every restaurant on there is a local restaurant that would love for you to go support them. Also, look on the door of your favorite restaurant, and if you see a Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance sticker, that, feel good dining there. If you see the Nashville Area Restaurant, the NARA sticker at the front door, know you are supporting a local restaurant, and we want you to continue doing that. So that's it. That's all I got. We're gonna jump in now with Caroline and Tony Galzin. You are listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. All right, super excited today to welcome in Caroline and Tony Galzin. Welcome back to the show. Oh, I have a new- I'm back. I have a, oh. Oh, no. How about that? No. I don't like that. All right, there we go. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Thank you.

12:27It's not the same applause, but I have a new dog, so it sounds a little different. Hi. Oh, that was exciting. Yeah. The six people that are in the crowd loved it. Yeah. Love it. It's not like the thunderous applause I used to have. I'm gonna have to get that one back. How the hell are you guys? Good, good. I feel good. How are you? I am wonderful. I feel like I pulled you back in the seat. Like riding a bike. Like, because- It's just like riding a bike. It's just like old times, Brandon. I know. And I haven't seen you in a while. It's been way too long. First time in the new studio here. Yeah. That's true. That's true. But the new studio looks very similar to the old studio in terms of your setup and everything, so. It doubles as the NARA headquarters, so it's very cluttered right now, because I just, I'm in here all the time working. I just, I just set shit everywhere. That's great. And congrats on NARA. We're, we were just talking about that a little bit. That's fun. That's exciting. It is. It's been, it's been a lot. It's been really, it's been really, really great. I remember you telling me about this dream probably like three years ago when we were doing a podcast together.

13:30So I'm so happy for you. And so happy for all the restaurants that you're working with, that you're really helping out a lot, so. Thank you so much. And we spun a fantasy football league out of it too. So that's exciting. Hell yeah, we did. We're gonna have a second fantasy football league this year. Oh, tell me about it. Well, it's, so with NARA, we have so many more restaurants now. Oh, we need two. So we have our OG Nashville Restaurant Radio League. And everybody who's in that league is grandfathered in. But now we're gonna do a NARA league. And the Nashville Restaurant Radio League is gonna be like the 1A. And then we're gonna have the NARA league as week 1B. So if you wanna be in the NARA league, you can come join. We'd love to have you. If you're a NARA member, you can come in and you can join. And so what's gonna happen is. Getting relegation. So if you lose in the Nashville Restaurant Radio League, you go down to the NARA league. And if you win in the NARA league, you go up to the Nashville Restaurant Radio League.

14:31So the restaurant. It's two people. The Radio League is like the show. This is the show. And then you get sent down to the minors if you're not. If you're in the last place game, you're getting relegated. Because you get two people go down, two people go up. So it's the last place game gets relegated. And then the championship game. If you make it to the championship game, you're getting in, you're moving up. Now my favorite part of fantasy football is the team names. So do you keep the same team names season to season? Or do you come up with a new name each year? I do a different name every year. And last year you were? What was it? Oh, totally flooseless. I never understood that. What was that? We fired Ebert Floos. Totally. Oh, don't say now that. As a Bears fan, brought in Ben Johnson. So we're totally flooseless. No more floos. You gotta be happy about being totally flooseless. And what was your team name? The best. I had the same team name for the second year because I had Jalen Hurts again. And my team name was, It Hurts So Good. Oh, that's a good one.

15:33You guys wanna workshop any names for the upcoming season while we're here? Well, I've messed up because now I know about Chad GPT. Oh, that's cheating though. You can't do that. I totally cheat. I'm like a madman. You can use Chad GPT for emails, but not for fantasy team names. I will tell you what I did. Is I went into Chad GPT and I downloaded the entire league format of all of our points scoring. And I downloaded that. I put that into Chad GPT and I said, what is my draft strategy based around the point structure for this league? What do I need to be drafting round by round? And it went through and figured out the most high value players that you need for the point strategy of our league. And it gave me a draft strategy. And who to draft. And then once I downloaded, once I had a whole team, I took my team and I put it in Chad GPT and I said, give me a great fantasy football name based around, I didn't, I used, I had the same team from last year because I used the same name. But my other league, I just downloaded my whole team and I said, give me a cool name based on who's on my league. And it gave me a neat, catchy name.

16:34I don't condone that. I don't mind the use of Chad GPT for this strategy. So it's funny because this, whatever, I can't remember what I was doing. I couldn't live draft this year. So I auto drafted and it was like the best team I've had. So I just took myself out of the equation and just let it pick. Basically it just takes whoever's the best position on the board, regardless of how many positions you had. So then I had like eight receivers and one running back, but it ended up being the best because I had like the top five receivers in the league. Yeah, it was, every time I've auto drafted, it's done really well. Yeah, you just take out the healing. We're just taking over the whole show on fantasy football and it's not even football season. Well, it's, we're approaching the draft. We're in free agent signing now. Legal tampering is allowed. So there's still, there's football stuff going on. There was just a combine, I know that. The combine finished, draft is coming up.

17:34I didn't even know. I have no idea the combine even happened. Last week. I clock out of sports that aren't actively happening during the off season. I am not, I don't follow in the off season whatsoever. Like two weeks before the draft, I like clock back in and I just go, okay, what happened? That's not the culture of my household. No, but. Right after the Super Bowl, kind of in between the Super Bowl and the combine, there's nothing. There's some mock drafts, but. There's Mardi Gras. There's Mardi Gras, we stopped for Mardi Gras, yeah. So how was Mardi Gras? Good. Amazing. You guys go every year? We do try to go most years around Mardi Gras time. It kind of started originally as my best friend Zoe's birthday is in February. So we would go to New Orleans with her and her wife for Zoe's birthday almost every year. And many times it just, you know, happened to be over Mardi Gras season. So we would catch parades and kind of, you know, do some Mardi Gras adjacent stuff.

18:36And then a couple of years ago, we went for Zoe's birthday. It was the week before Fat Tuesday. And so we decided to go over to Mobile, where I'm from originally, and you may or may not know, has the original Mardi Gras in the United States. And the celebration, there's not as big as New Orleans, but it's certainly comparable. So we went to Mobile for Lundy Gras on Fat Tuesday. And so we did that again this year and it was great. We, Zoe and her wife couldn't come this year, but we went with Tony's brothers and their partners who had never been to New Orleans before. No, Nick came in from London. Nick, who the restaurant's named after. And then my other brother, Mike, lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, so he came in. And then my third brother, Chris, has two children under four. So he's not going to Mardi Gras. He could not make it. He's out. But it was awesome. The New Orleans part was great. We had a couple of days in Orange Beach in between. They're in Mobile. That's a good, like, sort of relax, recoup, give your liver a chance to breathe for a couple of days until you go back to, yeah, then Lundy and Mardi Gras in Mobile.

19:44But really, really good meals in... Everywhere, honestly. Yeah, New Orleans. And some good, since the Michelin list came out, there was a place in Mobile, which is called the Noble South. And it was, like, Bib Gourmand, or just maybe Michelin recommended, I think. And we checked it out. It was really good. Yeah, it was awesome. Mobile has, like, some surprisingly good, not surprisingly good, but just, like, more good restaurants than you'd think for a small town. And for a small town, it's got a great food scene. And we always see someone, too, in New Orleans. This year, we saw the Whirlies at the table next to us at Peche. Meaning we randomly run into someone we know every time we go to Mardi Gras. And yeah, we sat next to Carl. And Sarah. Yeah. From Biscuit Love? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What is your, what's your go-to drink? Like, when you're at Mardi Gras, like, is it, like, Hurricanes? Or, like, do you drink, like, the beer? Like, what is your... When I'm in New Orleans, I almost exclusively drink Rum Old-Fashions.

20:46That's my go-to drink. Rum Old-Fashioned? If you have not tried a Rum Old-Fashioned, well, not you, but... I know, I don't think even when I did drink, I didn't have one of those. It's not a, it's not a super common drink, but it is awesome. A great aged rum, like an Appleton Estate, or my favorite is Ron Del Barcito, which is a Puerto Rican rum, and just make it the same way you make it in Old-Fashioned. It's delicious. Yeah, my favorite drink for, like, that... I mean, I love a Hurricane, but I don't love the... What's the one place that's... Pat O'Brien's. Pat O'Brien's. I don't love the Pat O'Brien's one. You're not a pro, those guys. They're good, they're just, like, real sweet. I like the ones that are more, like, heavy on the passion fruit, a little more sour. I used to love a good Hurricane. There was, like, the one hitter quitter. You get, like, the big-ass 32-ounce Hurricane, and you're just like, they've got, like, 12 ounces of liquor in it, and you're just like, it's all I need. One of these was a nice projectile to get you started. Then you could just start drinking beer for a while, and the problem is you have to pee all the time, and you drink a bunch of beer when you're out there.

21:53We got an Airbnb that was just about one block off of St. Charles Street, so. Yeah, it was great. So we had a little, like... So you know what you're doing. There was one night that we, like, stayed, you know, because normally we're out, we're like, all right, let's go bounce around, and then, you know, we'll see this parade here while we're here or whatever, but we had one night where we were just like, let's make a little home base and then watch the parades. Was it the last night we were there? Yes. Maybe. It was awesome to be able to just, like, walk back, have a bathroom, have food, have snacks, get drinks, do whatever. It was Muses Night, so anybody who goes to Mardi Gras, you know Muses Night on Thursday before Fat Tuesday, and it's just, it's like the best parade. It's so much fun. Yeah, it was very fun. Now, what about the beads? I've never been to Mardi Gras. I never have, it's really crazy, but like, did you... You should know. It is seriously such an experience. Do you guys collect beads? Do you, like, try and catch them if you wear, like, a million beads? I'm not saying what you do for the beads, I'm just saying, like, they're just throwing them out there, in New Orleans it's harder to get beads because there's, the crowds are bigger.

22:56Well, there's also a little bit of a thing this year where the floats were throwing a lot less this year, and I think it had something to do with tariffs, not to hop into politics right away, we'll get to that. But yeah, a lot of people were complaining that the floats were stingier this year, and I feel like I noticed that too, just because, you know, all that stuff comes from China, but we usually... Well, Trump is gonna bring back bead manufacturing. Just give it time, just give it time. We'll be keeping our eyes out for that. Yeah, yeah, but the next, don't... I have a laughter effect, I'm trying to find it here. The next few Mardi Gras. Well, there's certain... Are we gonna make Mardi Gras great again? There's, yes, make Mardi Gras great. There's certain throws that are, like, collectible, right? Yeah, we always go for like... Those are the ones that you want. Like, every year, like, different societies come out with, like, their pendant beads, and, you know, there's, like, the cheap beads that everybody gets. That's like a whole thing. You want to get, like, or me, me at least, or, see, cups are, like, the big throw for us. We love cups, and I want my pendant beads, because it's, like, keepsake from that Mardi Gras. It's called a throw.

23:57It's a throw. These are, I want a throw, I want the cups for the cool throw. See, there's, like, a whole lingo, I didn't know what this stuff is. The blooms. I don't know. Those are the coins. Yeah, I like a doubloon, because, again, it's, like, a collectible, it usually has, like, the year on it with the society, and you can, you know, it's, like, a little, a little tchotchke that you can collect, so. It goes perfect, because we have, you know, a tiki room set up at our place, and it's, like, overloaded with stuff, so. There's a Mardi Gras section. There's a good add-in there for, yeah, we have a place for it. The stuff my wife just throws away when I get home. I'm like, look, I got all this stuff, she's like, yeah, it's going in the trash. We do come home with bags and bags of just crap, and those go to our four-year-old niece. Nice. Yeah, much to the chagrin of her parents. Thanks again. And then they just dump 50 pounds of plastic garbage on their floor. I'm like, here you go. And she goes, ape shit. So you brought up politics. Sounds like you're bringing it up now. I'm just, I'm just riding the wave.

24:59Well, I wanted to bring this up, because you guys have an amazing restaurant over in the nations, Nicky's Coal Fired. If you don't know where that is, if you get off 51st Avenue right there off of 40, and you just take 51st Avenue, basically, till it ends, you can run into their restaurant, right? At Centennial. Centennial and 51st. That's where Nicky's Coal Fired is. And I was, you know, we've known each other for a long time. I know political affiliations and whatnot, but you have a restaurant, and there's a whole dynamic around this, and I want to get into this, because I saw a post that you guys put on social media, and it was one of the cooler posts, I think I've ever seen you post, but it was you and Tony and Gavin Newsom. And I was like, what is this? And so you had Gavin Newsom come, and I guess they rented out the restaurant to do a fundraiser of some kind. How did that come about? Like, let's get into it, because that's really cool to me. Thank you. It was very exciting. Very exciting.

26:00It was so exciting. So the building, how this came to be is our council person, Rollin Horton, who's awesome. He does such a great job for the nations, in my opinion. He hosted a fundraiser at Nicky's, maybe six months ago or so, and the Tennessee Democrats office is in the building right next door to the restaurant. And, you know, Rollin is friendly with a lot of people in their office, and lots of people from TN Dems came over to Rollin's fundraiser. They really like our space. Like I said, their neighbors, they're right next door. They come to Nicky's all the time after work, happy hours at dinner, that sort of thing. So just really quickly, this event came together. Gavin Newsom was gonna be doing a stop. He wrote a book, and he's doing a book tour and was doing an appearance at Oz Arts. And I guess kind of at the last minute decided they were gonna do a fundraiser for a few people who are in state house elections that are coming up.

27:09So it was a fundraiser to meet and greet with Gavin Newsom. So they called and said, we love your space. Can we host it at Nicky's? We'll pay X, Y, and Z, which I feel like is a really important piece of this story is not just, hey, we're, you know. We're donating the space for this. It was a paid function. It was a paid function. Not to say that I wouldn't donate space. You know, I've had different candidates. Our friend Marsha Masulia, when she ran for- Council at Large. Yeah, Council at Large a few years ago. We very gladly said, hey, Marsha, please come host an event at Nicky's. We're not gonna charge you. We just wanna support you. So we love to- That is, when you do something like that, that is an endorsement of the candidate. Absolutely. When you're saying, come use our space for free. We'd love to have you here. That in itself isn't like a donation, but that is an endorsement of that candidate. In my opinion. Yes, absolutely. When somebody comes into your establishment and pays you to use your establishment, one of our old core values was we love our community.

28:16And it doesn't matter who in the community, if it's, you know, whatever the person was that wanted to rent the space, like we're a restaurant. Absolutely. We will open the door. I mean, you're paying, we're not just falling out the door like Scrooge McDuck over here on Piles of Gold. We need the support. And so I'll take anybody. Now I happen to like Gavin Newsom and I think that'd be really cool, but that's not what this was. Yeah, I mean, listen, I would be disingenuous if I didn't say that I thought it was really cool. I also like Gavin Newsom. I thought that it was an amazing opportunity for us to host somebody so incredibly high profile. We were talking about football earlier. Politics is kind of like my football. Like when we had the Texas primary the other night, I described it as my pre-season game. I just, I've always loved electoral politics and I find it so interesting. And I, you know, even though I consider myself to be a lifelong Democrat, I follow electoral politics on both sides of the ticket just because I find it so interesting.

29:21So to me, politicians, I get really excited. You know, I was excited even to meet some of our just, you know, local Tennessee politicians at this event, as well as Governor Newsom. And to educate yourself on what these policies are and this is how check it's done in the world. Politicians make it happen and people that just go, oh, I like that guy, I'm gonna vote for him versus what do you stand for? I think it's important that you follow politics. It was cool we got to chat with him too for a sec, you know, and he was just telling us about, he's like, oh, a lot about the book. It's obviously like an autobiography. And he said a lot of the book, he worked in restaurants a lot, like as a kid. And he's just like, you know, we kind of talked about that. I feel like everyone should work in a restaurant at some point, either be a server or anything. He's like, I totally agree. And he's like, it just teaches you all these. Teaches you how to treat people. Yeah, and he just kind of went into all this stuff and just like, oh, it's very, very cool. Yeah, he's incredibly kind, very affable. You know, listen, us hosting Gavin Newsom doesn't mean that I'm endorsing him for president or that I, you know, worship at the altar of Gavin Newsom, you know, I just, I thought it was really cool to host an event and do most of his values align with my values?

30:38Absolutely. Do all of his values align with my values? Absolutely not. You know, we- You're never gonna get a hundred percent. Right, right. You know, and you're never gonna get a hundred percent, but that's the ticket. That's who you have to vote for is the one who's most likely to represent your values the most. It's not every single value that candidate stands for. It's like, but it's way more values than the other side in this, whoever the person might be. That's how you make a decision on how you vote for it. Absolutely. And you know, really, I guess what we're getting at here, the story is that we hosted this event. I was so, so proud, just really from my heart, the emotional side of it, business stuff aside, I was so proud that a business as small as ours that has a team that works as hard as ours does because our team was also absolutely over the moon about hosting this event. It's so cool. And when I made this Instagram post, it's a picture of Tony and I with Governor Newsom and then, you know, Governor Newsom doing a little, saying a few words at the restaurant in front of a big crowd.

31:43I was so just truly proud to post this. Look at this. Our little business has future presidential candidate potentially here. Yeah. And I think that as business owners, we're so hard on ourselves all the time. I assume everyone's like me and it's so hard on themselves all the time. So, so many days I end the day with, gosh, we could have done this better. I wish I did a better job at that. I wish that this was different. So to end that day by saying, I am just so, so proud of a cool thing that we did. What did the general public think about that proud thing that you did? So when you make a post online and the way that I responded to it was in that vein, I texted both of you individually and I was like, holy shit, this is the coolest thing. Like you guys, that is so cool. Thank you. Which I think is what you were feeling too, right? And it came out of left field for everyone because we had to keep it under wraps too. So I think just all of a sudden- I'm a little upset I wasn't invited, but I'm not gonna get into that.

32:47We weren't allowed to tell anyone that this event was happening until after it happened. As a matter of fact, the only team members that worked this event were members of our management team. We weren't allowed to tell our staff. We really had to keep it under wraps. I mean, our kitchen crew found out the day of when they showed up. They knew there was an event. There's a lot of security around that. Oh yeah, we had multiple security visits. You know, we had sheriffs with dogs sweeping the entire building, which honestly, that's kind of cool too. Did they find any weed anywhere? I don't think that's what they were looking for. No, I'm just kidding. Like, hey, so what did the general public think about this? So listen, I'm no fool. I knew that we would get some rude comments. I knew that we would not only get positive comments, but I am incredibly naive that I was not prepared for the backlash that we got. And I don't think people will have an awareness of the backlash we got, unless you've had a personal conversation with Tony and I about it, because we really tried to hide a lot of the comments on social media, not because we are afraid of the discourse or because we are trying to keep any sort of secret.

34:10I just, listen, we're a business. I don't need that kind of negativity on our social media page. And quite frankly, a lot of the comments that were made were not only ugly, but we got violent comments that I had to report. Not violence against the restaurant, but violent comments against Governor Newsom that we had to report to Instagram, several of which Instagram informed me were not against their community guidelines. Big surprise. Wow. We got spammed with a few one-star reviews on Google. TikTok, I had to turn off the comments on the TikTok post I made per the suggestion of TikTok. The TikTok bot reached out to me and said, we're turning on anti-bullying measures and recommend for you to turn this on. And you know, just- But then there's people arguing with each other in the comments too. Yeah, I mean, that's something that just takes a bite. It's like, that's not about food, that's not about community.

35:11Now we're, this has taken a left turn that has nothing to do with the original post. And it's not, it should, I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise that, you know, given things that the restaurant has supported and stuff in the past that it's, I don't know, I just- Yeah, if it's a surprise to you which side of the aisle Tony and I are on, then you're brand new. Because that, you know, we have never been shy about just take a look at our page, take a look at the organizations we support. Listen to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Yeah, we did a lot of interviews with politicians. We did. And you know, it's like during the elections, we wanted to talk about what were the issues and talk to the actual politicians. And I got a lot of feedback from that, like it's a restaurant show, don't talk about politics. And it's like- Restaurants are political though. It affects everybody. But I think- If we're intertwined, we could talk about ECME later. Well, yeah, I mean, that's definitely something we can get into.

36:12But I mean, I look at the thing to me is I think when people go online and they post stuff like this, they don't care. Like you guys are human beings who own a business, who are trying to do the right thing and run a business. And then people just come on and they just shit all over you, each other. And it's like, what is this? It's like, what is the world coming to? I say it all the time. And I truly, I mean it with all sincerity. Who has the time? I don't understand who has the time to stop their day and start arguing with strangers about a post of a restaurant you've never been to. A lot of these were like, never heard of it, but won't go now. Okay, do you even need to say that? Who's got the time to even put that out there? I don't understand. And so, you know, and then you get a lot of comments that are, uh-oh.

37:12Sorry, that was me. Okay. No, I don't know what just happened. Hey. Oh, there you go, you're back. And you get a lot of comments too that are like, well, if I show up with my MAGA hat, are you gonna treat me good? And we're like, sure, of course, just like everyone. Or they're like, well, would you host an ICE event? And I'm like, probably not. I'm like, what does that mean? I just didn't even respond to that one Listen, again, if you want to know if we're gonna host an ICE event, then you are brand new and you just got here. Yeah. But no, we have people wear MAGA hats, Trump shirt, whatever you want, you know, we're a family restaurant, unless you have a, if you have a T-shirt that says Trump that bitch, I'm probably not gonna allow that in the restaurant just because we're a nice family place and we don't need profanity. You know, it has nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with profanity. But, you know, we have a seat at the table for everyone. And I have friends who are, and family members, and people that I care about so deeply who we fundamentally disagree on so many political issues.

38:21You know, one of my very best friends is a conservative. I don't know who she voted for, but I bet dollars to doughnuts she voted for Trump. We engage in really respectful conversation and discourse and she's still one of my best friends and I love her like a sister. I think that we've entered into such a dangerous time of our society where we can't talk to each other. If we disagree with somebody or something, then we just write that off 100%. And if you want to change someone's heart and mind, then you have to be willing to listen to where they're coming from and accept that where they're coming from is different than where you're coming from. And it's okay to disagree, it's okay. It doesn't mean that we hate each other or we can't share a pizza or I wish bad things upon your life, you know? And the bottom line is too, we're also not using it as a political statement. It's a business, we got paid money to host.

39:24The governor of California, the governor of California, who would say no to that? If it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a Republican, I'd be like, hell yeah. But if it was Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, which I, you know, I'm originally from. What if it was Lee? Absolutely, sure, I'd host Billy. We've been at events with- At our old restaurant, Governor Haslam dined with us a couple of times, you know? I went and talked to him at the table, he said, hi, I'm Bill. I go, I know. This is nice and good. And I'm just like, I'm like, this is the governor. The governor of the state is in my restaurant. I was super happy with that, you know, like. I lean with you on where I stand. And if you listen to the show and you don't, I don't talk about, I don't try not to be polarizing on the show one way or the other, because I have a lot of guests and I don't get into a lot of these conversations. Because I think people are right, like there's, it's everywhere that you go. Like, let's have a little bit of a reprieve when we're talking about restaurant things. I don't want to make it all politics. Totally. But you know, that we love our community thing.

40:24Like, Marsha Blackburn would eat at Maribor a lot. And when she'd come in, it was, I don't agree with her politically, but when she'd come in, I would say, good evening, Senator Blackburn, welcome. Like, would you like your normal table? Like, and I would, we would serve her like she was anybody else. I wasn't like anything other. She's a paying guest coming into the building. We've had Lamar Alexander dine with us on many occasions at Nicky's and we welcome him and he is as kind as can be to us and to our staff. And it's, can't we all just get along? Oh. You know, I think that somebody who I appreciated, you know, this was on a bit of a different topic, but around the same time that we hosted Governor Newsom at the restaurant, Kerry Bringle put out a video that went kind of viral. Good change. Well, it is. Good transition, I like it. It is also a transition, but it's very relevant to this where he was talking about the tax increase that Tom Morales and the ACME is facing. Running a restaurant is tough.

41:25Staff turnover, rising costs, and the endless tasks that bog you down and take you away from what you love. Let Adams Keegan lighten that load. They're a privately held Tennessee based restaurant and hospitality focused outsourced HR, payroll and benefits firm. The team at Adams Keegan removes the administrative burdens of HR administration, payroll benefits management, garnishments, unemployment claims, compliance, 401k and so much more. From their proprietary HRIS platform to seamless payroll and competitive benefits that keep your team smiling, they've got you covered. Adams Keegan lets you focus on what you do best, creating unforgettable dining experiences while they handle the rest. Essentially, think of Adams Keegan as your back office HR department right here in Music City. One of the many things I love about Adams Keegan is that unlike big publicly traded companies out there, they have an incredibly high standard of customer service. And that's what we all need is really good customer service in these areas. They don't give you a 1-800 number and make you fill out an IT ticket submission.

42:27They surround every client with a team of experts, all based right here in Tennessee. You can call them today at 615-627-0821 or visit adamskeegan.com. That's A-D-A-M-S-K-E-E-G-A-N.com for your free HR consultation and see how they can create a customized solution to help your restaurant thrive. If your leadership team is not on the same page and you are constantly having these long meetings and you're not getting traction, this is your opportunity. Today, I'm talking about the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Yes, it is based around the book by Gino Wickman and Traction. We use it at our restaurants. They use it at Frothy Monkey. They use it at Edley's Barbecue. They use it at Carrington Row, Germantown Cafe, Park Cafe. Lots of restaurants are using it because it helps. And let me tell you today, Justin Cook is a great facilitator. Justin helps business owners and their leadership teams implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a set of simple, practical tools, disciplines to help you get better at three things, vision, traction, and to be healthy.

43:38Vision is getting you and your leadership team 100% on the same page with who you are, where you're going and how you're going to get there. Traction is helping your leaders become more disciplined and accountable to execute on the right things that will make your vision become reality. Because a lot of times you're doing a lot of stuff, but not the right stuff. Healthy is helping your leaders become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team. Because unfortunately, leaders don't function well as a team. If you start with the leaders, the rest of the organization will follow. And you'll get to a point to where your entire team is crystal clear on vision. Everywhere you look, people are executing the things that make your vision come true. And it's a great, healthy, fun place to work. If that resonates with you, you can email Justin right now at justin.cook at eosworldwide.com, or you can call him 615-336-7133 to see if EOS is a right fit for you. He will come down and do an initial kind of introduction and ask you a bunch of questions.

44:39It is totally free. Definitely call Justin today. Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me, it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I am just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry, which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee, and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price. And so you may say, well, every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees. There's no clean green service fees. There's no replacement cost. There's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts.

45:40They do formats. They'll make custom formats for you. They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies. And guys, I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state of the art. I'm gonna post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is, to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company you can trust who wants to earn your business every single week. Go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of CNBLenny. Hear it from his, straight from his mouth, exactly what they do. Or you give them a call at 931722-7616. Or you can DM me, at Brandon Styll on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance. So I've been visiting a lot of restaurants recently and one of the comments I hear a lot is, well, we just post online. We do marketing ourselves.

46:40And guys, you need to speak with a professional and that is where Myles Hospitality Marketing comes in. She works exclusively with independent restaurants and small hospitality groups, helping you build a smarter, more strategic marketing plan without hiring a full-time team. The best part, owner Christine Myles brings over 25 years of restaurant marketing experience to the table. She's worked with everyone from beloved neighborhood spots to national chains and she knows what works in real world restaurants. So whether you need help branding, digital marketing, social media, or just figuring out what actually is worth your time, Myles Hospitality Marketing gets it from quick wins to long-term growth. They offer everything from graphic design to full fractional CMO services. Check them out at MylesHM.com. That's M-Y-L-L-S-H-M.com. Mention Nashville Restaurant Radio and receive a free hour consultation, Myles Hospitality Marketing. Because your marketing should work as hard as you do. And at the top of the video, he said, Tom and I disagree on almost everything, but we are friends and we are not on the same side of the aisle politically, but he is my friend and he needs our support right now.

47:50And that's really how I look at this. You know, there is not one major topic in the political discourse right now that can't be very closely tied to restaurants. You know, ICE raids, tariffs. I mean, even the war right now, we're projecting increasing gas prices by about 25 cents in the next 30 days. Well, guess how supplies get to restaurants in trucks that use gas. And who's gonna pay for that? Because it's not gonna be the companies who have to pay more for gas. Nashville has, you know, no public transit to speak of. All our employees, trouble. Anyway, we don't have to get into all of these hot topics. Well, no, I wanna get into that. I think that's a good transition. Restaurants are political, so. But when you talk about this income tax or the property tax increase, I mean, it was huge. And I think people look at it and they go, well, Tom Morales, you make all this money. And I don't think people realize how much money that increase is.

48:54And you go from paying $125,000 in taxes to paying that much in taxes to $600,000 in taxes. That is a lot of money. And that's not something when you start a business, you put a budget together and you figure it out. And I think he has a triple net lease, which means. Everyone does. Everyone has a triple net lease, which means all of the increases in property taxes, comms, everything gets put back to you. You have to pay it as a business owner. And when you sign up for something and this is what it is, and then it just jumps like that. I mean, that's a ridiculous increase. There's no way to adjust for that. I mean, there's just, to have that happen in like one year, you know, and just be like, hey, this is January, the next one is due in August, and it's gonna be a half a million more. That's, there's just no way to adjust that. And I totally understand him reaching out. And you've proposed this too, actually.

49:55$10,000 a week. Caroline has brought that up to some, to. I think I've probably brought it up on this show back when I was co-hosting with you. That there needs to be a cap. There has to be some sort of cap. But I think that my, what I've proposed, and listen, I don't know the ins and outs of how all of this works, but I've heard a few other people talk about this as well. And I've actually done the due diligence of reaching out to any council member and local politician who will take my call over the last couple of years to say, there needs to be some sort of threshold set. Businesses make X dollars in revenue per year or in one bracket. Businesses that make a different, just the same way that we have kind of the threshold for mandating employee healthcare, right? If your business is over a certain size, then you are required to pay for healthcare for your employees. Small businesses like ours, similar to Tom, not quite as bad as his, but we are in our 10th year of business now at Nicky's. And thank you so much.

50:56When we signed our lease 10 years ago, our CAM, which includes our- CAM, that's where it was in common area maintenance, but CAM is- Well, it's common area maintenance, but it includes, it's not just the building super, it's taxes. When we first moved into our space, our payment was around 1,400 a month. And now as of January 1st, it is now over $6,000 a month. Wow. And we are a very small business. I have 25 employees. We're $6,000 a month. It is, and we're renegotiating our lease this year. So think about what leases, rent rates are gonna be. Plus this CAM bill, it's unsustainable for businesses. Yeah, I don't mean to turn these, it's interesting because I think I've had to be reached out and go, is this something NARA does? Can you help us with this? And it's like the TNH, the Tennessee Hospitality Association, they go to Capitol Hill and they're the ones who are like actually lobbying for this, the Greater Nashville Hospitality Association.

52:03That's what they're lobbying for. I am on the, let me help you make more money so you can pay whatever they figure out. You know what I mean? Like I don't, I'm not a lobbyist. I don't know how all of this stuff works. I don't know. But I do know that they've gone downtown and that the price of everything has skyrocketed. And you look at LocalBits, you look at Roberts, Layla's, Acme, some of the individually, independently owned honky tonks. They're not the TC group where they have 50 restaurants and they have just so much money that they can afford this. It's independent people who are trying to make a living downtown. These properties that they've assessed downtown have just skyrocketed in value and that's what they've, and they don't own that spot. It's like they're getting the, they're leasing this. They don't, it's like they own the dirt and then they're making it back up because their property value went through the roof. The person who owns the building did that, but they have to pay the taxes on it. I mean, it's just, it's a really tough situation.

53:05Yeah, it's just everything everywhere you go, not just in Nashville, but every city you go to is starting to look the same. Now everything is becoming so homogenous and it's already starting here and all of the little neighborhoods that are cool that made Nashville the reason that the developers are now trying to homogenize the city are going to get swept up in this. And really the issue I have is who is fighting for us? Who is advocating for us besides each other? And it feels like no one, you know? But I consider you part of us, Brandon. You're one of us. I don't see any politicians talking about us and going to bat for us. Nobody is saying, hey, the reason Nashville is in such a great growth position is because of these businesses. There's no developer who has, sorry, I'm coming in a little too hot here, but it feels like all of the big developers are just saying, it all goes to the highest bidder.

54:13Instead of saying, I want to do something that's a little more thoughtful and be an advocate for small businesses and I'm already making millions upon millions upon millions of dollars a year, maybe I can spare a couple million to make money, but not McDonald's money. You know, why don't we- It's the Scourge McDuck thing. It's like, you know, it's just, I've got this, I'm sliding down piles of gold while people over here are going, we're not going to make it. I'm like, tough, somebody will. Right. Which I think is the whole argument that that's what the mayor said, is that, well, somebody will come in and pay it. It did feel like he said that. You know, I brought it up to a couple of people when we hosted this TN Dems event and just a couple of people were saying, oh, well, we feel like the mayor got railroaded and the news really misrepresented what he said. If you listen to the full interview, and I said, I listened to the full interview and it felt like he was throwing us to the wolves. And maybe that was not his intention. I'd like to think that was not his intention, but that's what it felt like.

55:14It felt like he had an opportunity to speak up for us and stand up for us and say, I am going to fight for the small businesses. And he did not say that. Yeah, I took that he just kind of answered it very like cut and dry. He was like, well, there was a new assessment on the property's value. And the law is, property taxes increase with the assessment. So yeah, he's like, that's right. But then that's where you have the opportunity to be like, but we understand how that's very hard for businesses. And I think there could be a conversation there as opposed to just- Let's work on a solution that makes sense for keeping Nashville what made Nashville special. Yeah, that's the law. So, you know, businesses close. That's basically what he said, which was like- Were you in the interview with him? Yes. And I thought that he was very much a, I'm born and raised here. I care about local businesses, the feel of what local feels like.

56:15And it's almost like when you get in office, you kind of realize the full scope of this thing and big business and taxes. And like, it's a train that is rolling. And it's like, I don't want to get hit by that train. And I don't think he realized how big that train was. And now he's like, my hands are tied. Like, this is what we have to do. And I think that a lot of it is this TIF money that they're giving to these large corporations who are coming here. So what's, when Kerry was on the show five years ago, because this happened in the middle of the pandemic, they raised it from like, it was like to 36% or whatever, it was ridiculous. And he explained that there's a bunch of large, we've attracted the Amazons and these other huge companies. So what we do is we defer their taxes in order to bring all the jobs, because hey, they're bringing a bunch of high paying jobs and those jobs will pay taxes, but not to us. But it's this whole complicated web that I don't quite understand. And I haven't looked at that. I'm not privy to the spreadsheet that outlines it, but they're giving these large companies tax deferments that they don't have to pay the taxes that they can build and do all these things.

57:21But then we don't have enough money because we don't have the taxes. And now they're taxing small businesses and property taxes in order to make up for that. And it's like, I don't know if Amazon being here is worth losing 20 local businesses of people who have grown up here or even have moved here to really start a life and build community. They're just saying, oh well, it's all about the almighty dollar. And it's like some part of it has to be quality of life and the people in the community that you care about. And it seems like some of that just goes away when you talk about the machine, the big, this big locomotive that is Nashville. Whether that's the intention or not, that's absolutely what it feels like. And then we see state politicians who are just doing ridiculous stuff. Yesterday, somebody proposed that we build a Charlie Kirk Plaza in every state university to the tune of millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, which regardless of how you feel about Charlie Kirk and the idea of this Plaza, what are we fucking doing here?

58:25How is this helping people's lives become more affordable? How is this helping small businesses? Who is this helping? It's a much deeper question because it doesn't matter about the people, it matters about getting elected. And these people want to get elected, and if they can- For sound bites, it's to create just like- Of course. But if we can create a Charlie Kirk Plaza and kids go to school can be affected by that, and maybe want to learn more about that and learn about his preachings, they're going to become young Republicans because- No, they just want to have a political commercial where it says, I voted for the Charlie Kirk Plaza. So people who support that are going to go vote for them. It's about getting elected. And the thing that you talked about earlier was what I was referencing, where you said you really do your homework and you follow all this stuff. The people that don't see that and that's the way that they vote.

59:26And they go, oh, well that guy voted for Charlie Kirk and Charlie Kirk was great, so I'm going to vote for him. And it's like, but do you know that he's trying to take your voting rights away? Right. Do you understand why? And it's like, it's an ignorance thing and you need to educate yourself. I just, I would, listen, we do have elections coming up sooner than later. Midterms, very important midterm. I would really genuinely love to challenge any local politician. I'd love for the mayor to come back on this podcast. I texted him the other day to see if he would come back on and talk about this. I said, I'm going to have Carrie bring along. I'm going to have Tom or Alison. They're both committed to coming on to do this. And I said, I would love to have you on so we could hear all three. I would love to hear your stance for what you want to say about local and small restaurants. He didn't respond. Listen, I just, I would love for one person locally who has some authority, some power to stand up and say, what is happening is not right.

01:00:27The train has gone off the track. This is getting out of control. We need more voices for our businesses because Nashville today is very different from Nashville 10 years ago. And you have to think, is this trajectory of the next 10 years what I want or what I don't want? That's how you, and you know who does a really good job of that when localized, Bo Mitchell. Oh. He's a, I don't know what his actual title is. If he's in the state Senate or what, but he's a West Nashville representative and he has been standing up and fighting. Well, come on, Bo, come on the podcast. I want to hear, I just, I feel like we need, it's like our souls need to hear that somebody's got our back and wants to advocate, be an advocate for us. All right, I'll get Bo Mitchell on the point. He worked out at the gym, the why that I work out at every morning. I see him all the time. You know what else, who also would be good is, shoot, I just met him at the Gavin Newsome event.

01:01:28I can't think of his name off the top of my head, but there's a Democratic primary coming up for the district Tony and I live in. It's Andy Ogles district. Mike Cortese. Mike Cortese. And then I can't remember the other guy's name. He's the mayor of Springfield. Would love to hear from those guys. Yeah. You know, that's going to be a, listen, the Dems really think they have a shot at flipping that district. So let's hear from these guys. Maybe they can rally some small businesses and you know. I would like to offer. I'd love for NARA to endorse a candidate. Well, that's going to be tough to do, but I think that, you know, it's weird when you say NARA to endorse a candidate because there's definitely things we believe, we represent so many restaurants. But you could. I mean, if there was a candidate coming out really strong saying I'm going to do X, Y, Z for restaurants and you know, why not? Yeah, I don't know. It's weird because like we have so many people that represent, like you said, that are so different. We have such a diverse group of people in the Alliance that it's like, I don't want to misrepresent somebody who's like, I don't like that candidate.

01:02:32And you're like, we have to be somewhat apolitical. I don't want to be. Sure. But at some point you have to just kind of, we can talk about what we want to on the show. And I would like to extend the offer to any of these candidates that want to come on the show, both sides of the aisle. It's not just the Democrats. If you're a Republican and you're running, Andy Ogles, if you'd like to come on, I'd love to have you on the show. Great. I'd love to have Andy Ogles on the show. I mean, listen, here's the thing. I've never voted for a Democrat in my entire, or sorry. I've only voted for Democrats in my life. I've never voted for Republican. If a moderate Republican came out and said, I'm going to do X, Y, Z to protect small businesses in Nashville, I vote for that person. I am open to having my mind changed. If you believe them. If I believe them. I mean, that's the thing is the thing that a lot of people will say a lot of things in order to get elected. Will you do, can I do this? If I get these people on, will you come co-host the show with me? Sure, absolutely. All right, so we now have a potential Caroline return.

01:03:34I don't know if that's going to make them want to come on more. I mean, you get your sleeves rolled up like Steve Kornecki already. Oh, yeah, they'd say, listen, I don't know if that's going to make people want to come on this show more. They're like, I don't want that crazy lady. If somebody's listening that misses Caroline on the show and like, I want to hear what Caroline has to say, let's have Caroline interview these people. It would make the interview a lot better because you know way more about it than I do. I do my research. You do your research. I've called Steve Cavendish for a briefing before a few interviews back in the day. Yes, yes. That was so much fun back in the day. Let's pivot off politics for a second. Yeah, let's talk about something fun. Well, it's not going to be fun. Oh, no. Well, we could talk about that. Yeah. I was going to talk about the state of the industry right now, just like, oh, this isn't fun. We just had this big ice storm and I had a couple posts that I put out there where I said, this is the time you need to go local and you need to vote with your wallet. Like, because local restaurants right now are under attack.

01:04:36And we have so many chains opening. I went to this opening for Prime and Proper the other day. And Prime and Proper is in the base of the Grand Hyatt. It's like a super high end steakhouse, right? The highest end. Like it was beyond anything that I could even imagine. The room they have of steak that's hanging, I'll bet they have a, you know, but they have a hundred thousand dollars worth of steak just hanging in this room at dry aging. Every light in there is custom. The lighting is set so that like your mood, like it's done so that your mood remains elevated so you don't feel tired, but you also don't feel bright. Like it's like every single detail in place. I'm like, no local restaurant could do this. Is it what used to be the continental? Yeah. It's in that space. And it was unbelievable. This place was out of control. But I'm like, no, how do you, as a local restaurant, how do you compete with this? And these type places are popping up all over and people go, we have to go there. I also took a snippet of a show where I said, the Tennessean asked me, what restaurants are you excited about opening?

01:05:43And I go, I don't care about new restaurants opening. I care about places that have served their community for a long time and have shown up. You know, that, I mean, Julio Hernandez, Mays de la Vida working with World Central Kitchen and feeding people that didn't have electricity. Like those are the places I care about. The people that step up, the people that just close their doors and hey, we got, and people that sit in office that'll do our insurance for us, like for the new restaurants that are opening. Everybody gets the love of the new restaurant. Like go to Nicky's. They've been in their community, supporting their community for 10 years, caring about the people that dine there and providing a place for people to join together and have fellowship. Like go support Nicky's. Who cares about the new place? I think there's like a happy medium because like we have to have a relationship with a lot of Instagram accounts and we're friendly with a lot of people and obviously we'll do like a media preview before St. Nicky's and we need that.

01:06:46It helps promote the business. So people that have a lot of followers and they have to go to new restaurants. So it's like, it's cool that the, I guess it shows that the industry is healthy-ish because there's so many places opening, you know, and if they're part of restaurant groups or whatever, you know, that's a whole nother topic, I think, because you know, like you said, all these places can just afford like the giant footprint, no expense spared, you know, and that's fine. I like, the steakhouse is actually like my favorite type of restaurant. So I'm like, cool, I'll go check out a new steakhouse. But yeah, you have to find that balance of like, sometimes I get annoyed with stuff. Can I bring up specifically the pizza passport? Oh, what is this pizza passport? Okay, I found out what it is actually. We're not in this, there's a Nashville pizza passport, which you got, I got it too, it was like a targeted Instagram ad and it's like, you could buy this passport and it's a little, it's the size of a passport and it has like 20 pizza restaurants in it and there's like a notes page and you can be like, one out of five, it's got like crust, sauce, cheese, whatever, and then in the back.

01:07:59And we're not in that, and neither is St. Vito. I'm like, how is, how are these? Well, it's kind of funny, cause this is like, I almost texted Michael, this is like the second thing in a week that was like a Nashville pizza thing and we weren't listed and St. Vito was listed and Michael's like, hello. Like, hi, like Esquire restaurant of the year, or like, you know, like all this stuff. And it's just like, obviously he does more than pizza, but it's just like, how are you not going to? And then for us, we've had some national press, we were on diners, drive-ins and dives, Dave Portnoy came, we got a good score on the one bite. I just, you know. Okay, I know what the pizza passport is though, I did some investigating, it's AI. It's AI. Yeah, they have different passports for different cuisines for like every city in America and it's an AI produced and printed book. So it's not a person. And I don't think they're going to the restaurants and like. No, not at all, they're just like crowd sourcing algorithm printing a book, it's a robot company.

01:09:03Cause we have a few pizza places in NARA, 312 Pizza and NYPi, St. Vito's, you guys, like there's pizza places that are in, and I think NYPi is in there, I think 312 is in there too, but like they had no idea. They never came to them and said, would you like to be a part of this? They just saw this and were like, oh, we're included. Like, I don't know what this is. It's a robot's favorite pizzeria, Nashville. Oh, wait, wait. I think I have a robot voice. That would be delicious. Nice. Okay, I have a new toy here. We make our favorite pizza and it is. Okay, I know that we all have a little bit of time crunches today, so I do want to make sure that we talk about something really fun before we run out of time, which is. They. Hey guys, today we are talking about Robin's insurance and restaurants carry a very unique set of risks.

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01:15:18Give them a call today. You can also visit them at theretailteam.com. Are we talking about that? Yes, yes. Okay, but we're not gonna use any brand names. It's just, people hate us. People hate us on places that give reviews. People hate us reviews. People hate us reviews. So you did this a long time ago. Tell us the story here. So the first year Nicky's was open. When we lived in Chicago, we had participated in, there was so many fun industry nights where like, you know, it was like a set night. Every Thursday or the last Thursday of the month or whatever, they would have like different guest bartenders, different guest chefs, whatever. And everybody that you knew from restaurants would come out and go to these bars. And it was so much fun. Okay, so we did this night and we got a bunch of chefs together at Nicky's after service and we had them read bad reviews that people had written about their restaurants.

01:16:19And it was so much fun. We had such a great turnout. It was hilarious. We had Sarah Gavigan came and read one. Keri Bringle read an epic one that I'm going to be honest, it's an oldie but a goodie. I might just ask him to read it again. It's so funny. Pat Martin read one. Andy Little read a really unhinged one about Josephine that was hilarious. You know, it's like something about like, because they had rabbit on the menu and a lady had a pet rabbit and she was so upset. It was hilarious, but it was so much fun and it got everybody together. And so I called you a couple of weeks ago, Brandon, and said, I want to do a fun event. Let's do this again. And we can get a bunch of chefs and restaurant people and we can even make it kind of an open mic thing where if anybody has a bad review that was written about them that they want to read, let's have some drinks and- It's a little cathartic too. Yeah, yeah. To read it in a room full of restaurant people too. It's really fun. Everybody gets it. I have a TikTok page where you guys have read a one-star review for me.

01:17:22I got the idea from that event when we talked about it and I was like, this would be a really good TikTok page of people reading one-star. Kerry Bringle read that one-star review. Oh, it's so good. So if you go to Nashville Restaurant Radio or Brandon Styll, whatever it is, on TikTok, you can watch some of these reviews if you want to get an idea for what this might look like. So we're going to do this. We're going to do it. And so our friends, Miho Cordido out of East Nashville make the best, best, best, most delicious food. So they're going to come do food for the night. So we're going to have some snacks and stuff to munch on. We're still working out a few details, but we're hopefully going to have some fun stuff going on at the bar. We'll have specials for industry people and just it'll be, and everybody's welcome. And it is going to be on, what date did we say? I've got to look at my calendar. Hold on. Here we go. It is going to be on May 12th.

01:18:30May the 12th. It's a Tuesday. It's a Tuesday night. So we're going to get started around 8.30. So it's not going to be too late if you've got kids or something to do in the morning. Starting at 8.30 at night. We're starting at 8.30 at night, which listen, when I was going to industry nights in my twenties, we started at like 11.30 at night, but now I'm like, oh God, 8.30. That is so late to me. That's like bed-to-bed time. I mean, like 8.30, my kids go to bed at nine. So we're in bed at nine every night. But listen, we're trying to get some some of the young folks out too, because I feel like young people don't go out the way that we used to go out. And maybe some of that's healthy, but I feel like a lot of it's not healthy, like socially. So like get out, have some fun, meet some people. Touch grass. Commiserate, make some bad decisions that you learn from, you know? Yeah. That's the kind of night we're trying to do. Do you listen to Scott Galloway? You know Scott Galloway? I don't. Oh, he's great. He's got a big thing where he's like, young people need to go out to bars and make bad decisions.

01:19:31He's like, that's part of what's wrong with our society. I don't disagree. I've heard that. That's who said that. Yeah, that's his big thing. I should be like the king of, because I did that a lot. I learned a lot from that too. Oh, totally, totally. But I think about, you know, that's how I met some of my best friends. That's how Tony and I met was going out after work and making a, it wasn't a bad decision, but it was a late night decision. So we have a NARA Connect event. Part of the theory of NARA is getting restaurateurs together. We all, and a lot of this stemmed, you know, it's really funny from your first episode. When you guys were on in 2020, you guys said we got home and we realized we're not happy. We're not happy with our lives right now. You're in a grind and every day you're doing this stuff. And then when the pandemic kind of forced you to go away from it, stay home for a little bit, you guys stopped and thought about it and went, we're not happy with this, what we're doing right now. And it was a really powerful moment.

01:20:33I got so much feedback from that episode, from other restaurateurs who are listening and said, dude, I'm so glad other people feel this way. Because we got home and we started to spend a little time together. And we were like, we feel the exact same way. We're not happy with this. And I think that drove a lot of change. And it also realized that restaurant people in leadership or whoever don't hang out a lot. And I think it's because there's always so many vendors there that are vultures that are just, you go somewhere and it's like, hey, I'm with Phillips Crab Meat and I wanna sell you this. And you're like, go away. And so this night, I think is what the NARA Connects are for is bringing people together in a safe environment where you can just have fun. And our last one was really cool. We did it at Perrin Bakery. And I remember seeing 312 Pizza and NY Pie and Pizza Perfect. And all of these people were just hanging out going, I love your pizza. Oh my God, you're the person that owns this. You're the person that does that.

01:21:33And it's like everybody's just meeting each other for like the first time. And we need more of this. We're doing that quarterly. Our next one's gonna be on April the 14th at Shotgun Willys. Love those guys. So we'll be talking about this event at that event. But this will be on May 12th, just a month later. Mine's from four to seven. So I'm in old persons. Let's just come in and hang out. Listen, I wish we could do it from four to seven. We gotta do dinner service from four to seven. You're totally, but this, I'm like equally like 8.30 is late. But at the same point, I'm like, how fun is it gonna be to do something that's kind of later in the 8.30 in the grand scheme of things isn't really that late for people to get off work and come. The intention is not just for business owners, but we really want this to be for industry workers. We want workers to be able to get off work, come hang out, have some drinks and- Commiserate. Commiserate. Yeah, we want, this is not just like a Nara restaurant owner's thing.

01:22:35No, no, no, no. All industry, all industry event. Industry hang, like a little industry party. Yeah, a little industry party. Now will there be like a cover charge to come? No, no, just everybody just come on in. Everybody just come on in. Now we will have snacks by- Miho Gordito. Miho Gordito. And then you'll have your bar open. Have you ever had them on the show? No, I haven't. Oh, you should, they have a great story. Let's do it. They're great people. See, this is, I miss having you on the show because you brought so many new people and- You're a good co-host. Thank you. It's fun. It's fun to do. It is a lot of fun. I miss having, I get this rhythm of like doing this all the time and then I bring somebody like you in and I'm like, damn, I miss, because you have so many questions that I don't ask and I ask the same questions every time. And I'm like, I miss your perspective on these things. Aw, thanks, Brandon. This is my subtle me saying, you gotta come back and do a few episodes. I'll come back and do a couple episodes. We're also busy.

01:23:39Yeah, well, you've got a lot of things going on. We do, we do. So you have a really cool event space. I don't know if everybody knows about this. Oh, thanks. Right behind Nicky's. It's in the same, but you share a kitchen. Yeah, so we share a kitchen. Tell me about your event space. It's called the Maxwell Room. It's great for hosting governors. It's great for hosting governors. Of any state? Of any state, any of them. The largest state in the- Of any state. Yeah, we opened in 2024. And it is, like you said, connected to the restaurant through the kitchen. So you get kind of all of the benefits of having an event in the restaurant. But it has its own private entrance. It has its own private bathrooms. There's zero traffic from restaurant service. And it can accommodate up to 70 seated, up to 90 for a cocktail party style event. And we host dinners as small as 10 in that space. And pricing starts at around $1,500 and goes up to 5,000. Food and beverage minimum, all inclusive, no charge for the space.

01:24:40You know, somebody having an event. We actually also- How would I book that event? Was there like a website or somewhere I can go to? As a matter of fact, if you go to nickysnashville.com, send us a message. It comes directly to my inbox. I also have a direct line that you can call to talk to me about planning your event. Are there somebody now? This is literally somebody now. No, it's not. I know who this is. I need to talk to them soon. But yeah, we host community events too. So if you need an event space and you don't have a budget, but you have a cool community event that you wanna host, reach out to us. If we have the date open, nothing's booked, we'd rather have you in the space doing something cool than the space set empty. So holler at us. I love that. Well guys, this has just been the best. I could hang out with you guys all day. We don't hang out enough. So fun. So much fun. It was a good, good catch up. Yeah. And I'm excited about May 12th. This is gonna be so fun. So excited. So if you're out there and you are working in a restaurant or you're an owner of a restaurant or you're a bartender or anybody, owners are the ones who are reading the one-star reviews.

01:25:44If you're somebody who's named in a one-star review is a great way to come up. It's a, we'll have some that are gonna be preplanned. But if you're a server or a bartender or really any position in a restaurant and you have a review that you'd like to read that you know is written about you, please, by all means, we'd love to hear from you. Come locked and loaded. Like I said, we're gonna have a few that are staged, not staged, but like preplanned. We'll have people that are going to be reading that they know they're gonna be reading. And then we'll have like an open mic. So if you have a one-star, you wanna get up and read. And I think sometimes it's the response, your response, cause I mean, you guys read one from somebody who came in that had the baked waiter and the whole, they came in like a long time ago and then in the middle of the pandemic, like months later wanted to write this review and it's supposed to be some funny review, but like, and I think your response to it was great. Like, hey, if you wanna come in several months ago, then wait till the global pandemic when we're dying to leave us a one-star review cause you think you're funny.

01:26:45You have plenty of free time. Come talk to me, like just talk to me. And so it's a fun night and I'm excited to be a part of it in any way that we can. Thanks, Brandon. Thank you. All right guys, we'll have a wonderful afternoon, beautiful day today. So nice. Yes, see you guys. Bye. There it is, Tony and Caroline Galsin, thank you for joining us here on the show. We love you guys, May the 12th. They hate us on whatever platform you like, a big industry party. Definitely make plans for that starting at 8.30, going till whenever, I don't know, but it's gonna be a lot of fun. And thank you for listening. If you are a new listener, go check out some of our older episodes. Go back when Caroline was our co-host. We had the mayor on the show. We had Gloria Johnson on the show. We had lots of different candidates for different things. We've had Will Gadara, who wrote Unreasonable Hospitality.

01:27:46We've had several James Beard award winners, all your favorites here in town. We've got some great episodes on the way and looking forward to sharing those with you. Thank you for joining us. We hope that you are being safe out there. Love you guys, bye.