W. Craig Barber

00:00Hey everybody, today we're talking about my good friend, Ben Ellsworth and GigPro. After years of spending too much time and money on useless staffing software, Ben Ellsworth knew something had to change. So out of necessity, GigPro was born. GigPro is the on-demand marketplace for hospitality staffing. They're changing the way people work and hire. If you download the GigPro app today, you can get the help you need. GigPro has an exclusive promo offer for Nashville Restaurant Radio listeners. Sign up at go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z. And make sure that you use that code. I want them to know that you came from Nashville Restaurant Radio. That again is go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z. That code will get you your first gig for free, up to $200. Go check them out right now. You have heard me talk about SuperSource over the last two years.

01:00And in that time, Jason Ellis, I feel like he's taken over the city. It is hard for me to get a guest in here that doesn't use SuperSource. And I'm telling you, everybody loves him. When you mentioned Jason, they're like, oh my gosh, that guy's legitimate. Now ask yourself this question. Do you feel that way about the person that provides you with your dish machine and chemicals? Because he's the real deal. And guess what? He's not gonna make you sign a five-year contract. He's never gonna say, you signed a contract, it's on you. He goes week to week. You never sign a contract. So he earns your business every single week. I loved it when we had Cam and Nickian from the Red Perch and they said, he's like one of our employees when he's in the building. He's that good. You should call him today. If you don't feel that way about your dish machine and chemical person, 770-337-1143 is how you get ahold of Jason. Or go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab. There's a special link on there that will get you special discounts for new customers.

02:02Call him now. 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. I am going to be joined today with Jen Ichikawa as we sit down and have a conversation with Craig Barber. Who's Craig Barber you say? That's a great question. Craig is the CEO.

03:03His company is called Restaurant Growth Services, but they own O'Charlie's, right? So he's the CEO of O'Charlie's and another restaurant group called 99 Restaurants. There's more than 99 of them, by the way. And it was so fun talking to him, just sitting down. I'll tell you a little story. I'm gonna say at the beginning of the show, but just to reel you in here right now, I did a, I guess I was interviewing Manit Shahan at a FIDA conference, which is a Food Equipment Distributors Association. And the deal was I was supposed to get on stage with Manit and ask her questions so that the food distributors could learn what the mind of a restaurant owner was feeling right now for Manit. I was asking her the questions. But before we went up, there was a keynote speech from a guy named Craig Barber. And he was so sharp and just really felt like this guy was, I don't know, it's just a different perspective and a different view.

04:03I mean, we don't get to talk to a lot of people who represent 254 restaurants. So he was talking about his plan that they came up with through the pandemic and how they're growing. And he started with that company in 2017. So there's so much to dig into here. And I just love getting to peek inside the brain of somebody like that who just looks at things, it'd have to look at things differently. And it was interesting his perspective because it was really all about leadership. And he's dealing with leaders and how are we leading and how are we bringing people to the next level? And I just, I don't know, I love these kinds of conversations. And I hope that you do too. I hope that this is something that you listen to and you think, damn, I learned something today. And I know I sure did. It's fun doing the research on him. It's fun having Jen back in the studio, damn it. Gosh, it was nice having her here. That was a lot of fun. And you know, I like doing shows by myself, but I love doing shows with Jen.

05:05It is nice to have somebody next to you that you can throw some stuff off of. And certainly this was a, I had a ton of prepared questions for Craig Barber and she did a great job of jumping in there. Definitely. And I also want to tell you guys real quick, GigPro is our new, is a new sponsor, a new sponsor about a month in. Go check them out. If you haven't done that yet, go to go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z. Hire somebody. If you've used GigPro and you like them, I'd like to hear about it. So if you've done that and you like them, send me a message, direct message to me. My Instagram is Brandon underscore N-R-R. I'd love to hear how that worked out. Was it great? Was it not great? Like what was the deal? And if you do that, if you go to that website, you will get your first hire for free of the 200 bucks. So you get a free dishwasher for the night, free line cook, free whatever the position you might need is.

06:07So go check them out. I'm dying to know just some real life feedback or how they do. And of course, Jason Ellis, SuperSource, What Chefs Want, Charpie's Bakery. These are people who support me and I just can't say thank you to them enough. And if you have the ability to go out and support those people, they are doing really good things in this industry and they are prime preferred vendors. Those are people that I use. I vouch for them. If you use them because of me and you don't like them or something doesn't work out, call me, I'll make it right. These people are amazing. And I appreciate you guys supporting them because they support me. So let's jump in with Craig Barber. I think you guys are gonna love this one. ["Oh Charlie's"] Super excited today to welcome in Craig Barber, who is the CEO of Oh Charlie's.

07:08I gotta say 99 restaurants also. Okay, that's true. Not because there's 99 Oh Charlie's, it's a concept called 99 Restaurants and it's in New England? It's in New England. We have 103 restaurants, about 63 in Massachusetts and then spread around New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New York, Connecticut. But it's a great concept, a legacy concept, just like Oh Charlie's. Been around for over 50 years. How many Oh Charlie's are there now? 151. 151. That's a lot. If my math is correct, that's 254 restaurants? Good math, yes. Is that it? Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah, 254. Wow, I have two. And I'm like spent, I don't know how I do anything with the two that I have. 100, 250, wow. It's an interesting time. So I have so much I wanna talk to you about. Okay, good. Let's go back. I first, I don't know if I actually met you this day. Maybe I shook your hand. I said it was a good speech. But we were at a FIDA conference and FIDA is the Food Service Equipment Distributors Association.

08:12Bunch of people that sell the stuff, bunch of people that sell grills and fryers and the whole deal, right? Right. Great group. They were fantastic. We can't cook stuff without it. We can't. No, they are the backbone to getting your restaurant. You need to know these people if you wanna have a successful restaurant. I see why you're very into them. I was talking with Manit Shohan on stage. We did a whole little thing. But you were before us. And I was so fascinated because you were talking about COVID-19. Not the actual virus itself, but what you did as a company and what you guys learned out of COVID-19. And I thought that would be a fun place to start. Because. Works for me. That's where we were. And so one of the things you had this, you had a deck and you were speaking and you said what we've learned out of it. Move fast, fail fast. Yes. First of all, what did you do that day?

09:14Was it March 12th, March 13th? March 11th was the day that I walked in and said, we have a new situation and I don't know what it's gonna look like. But when the NBA canceled the rest of their season. March Madness. In my head, I thought, okay, this has gone from an unfortunate situation to potentially devastating. We call it the unimaginable. If someone had told us, and we talked about this a lot, if someone had said in January or even February of 2020, you're a full service restaurant. You do 90 plus percent of your business in your dining room and you can't have anybody in your restaurant anymore. Go figure it out. Yeah. It was unimaginable. No one has, it's never happened before and hopefully it never happens again. But for us, I walked in and said, we have to go to a new place and we need to do it right now. And so let's gather everybody together. What are we gonna do?

10:15How are we gonna figure this out? We have to figure it out. Failure is not an option. How do we figure it out? And so we began our process and to your point, we learned lots of good lessons. Specifically though, were you watching TV and did you see that they canceled the NBA season and go, wow, who's the first person that you, does your phone start ringing? And people calling you saying, hey, what are we gonna do, boss? No, we were calling them saying, we're gonna have all hands meeting. We're gonna get everybody on the phone. We're gonna talk about it. We've got, we're in 250 called Zoom. Yeah, 254 restaurants in 40 states. You gotta call people and say, get on the phone. We weren't really, we had capabilities to do the Zoom, but we really weren't quite as up to speed as we now are. We're really good at Zoom now. And if we just call and say, we're gonna figure this out and we don't know what it means. We really, again, unimaginable, unprecedented, never happened before. So there was no playbook. What are you gonna do? I've said this a hundred times on the show that Patrick Lencioni hasn't written a leadership fable about how to run a company during a pandemic.

11:21And I've said, this is where we found the true leaders in our industry are the people that just instinctively started moving and to use the most overused word of the thing, they pivoted very, very quickly. Either pivoted or unprecedented. Those are the two. Yes, those are the two. Well, you can add unimaginable. In the unimaginable, you had to pivot and deal with it. And I think that was, again, the benefit that I felt like we had, we had spent a lot of time, I joined the brands in October of 17, and we had some challenges. And so we were embracing those challenges, whether it was operational, menu, or leadership. And so fortunately, we had kind of sorted ourselves through the leadership issues. And I knew that, again, no matter what was coming at us, we had the team that could do it. And it was the team from supply chain to financial analysis and input to the HR side and the benefits side, but ultimately it came down to operations.

12:26You're in the restaurant business, somebody's gotta cook something, somebody's gotta serve something, and somebody's gotta oversee all that every day. And so we knew we had the team that could do. That could execute the fundamentals of what we need to do. And the fundamentals. But we didn't even know what the fundamentals were gonna be after no one was inside of our restaurant. Yeah. And so we just started working at it, and it was a long weekend, because that was a Thursday, I think, on the 11th of March in 2020. And we had a long weekend. And, you know. You remember the day. It was a Thursday. It was a Thursday. I had PTSD every Thursday I wake up from then on. And the hard thing too about being a corporate with that many restaurants is the United States didn't really have a united front throughout most of the pandemic. Different states had different requirements and different laws and different things like that. So how did you have to deal with that throughout that too? Because some were lenient, some were not, some were very, very not. We had a couple of mantras.

13:28We were gonna focus on our team, we were gonna focus on our customers, and we were gonna be absolutely sure we were compliant with whatever the rules were. And the rules weren't even simple as state by state. There were rules. County by county. County by county, or even city by city. Particularly in the Northeast, you know, this city in Massachusetts had a different rule than the city that was two miles away. And so we had to make sure that, so we put a group of people together, more of the quality assurance sort of talent, and said, y'all have got to track this. So find out everywhere we have a store, and all the rules, and let's make sure everybody knows what the rules are, and let's go after that to make sure that we don't upset the health department or the city leaders, whoever. So it was mad. It was mad public opinion. It was so hard. That was such a massive thing, was just that social media throughout this, was somebody sneezed in a Kroger, and it was live on video, going, this person is out and they sneeze. And it's like, whoa.

14:28I mean, so much, I hear you say, we went and we had to do all of these things. How much, like, what is your 10,000 foot view there? Because you're in a position as the CEO, are you actively sitting in a room writing down ideas, or are you just getting massive amounts of information given to you, and then you're kind of churning it, and who do you tell? Do you have like a number two? Who do you tell, this is what I wanna do, or do you have a team like? Yeah, I have a great team, and I'm blessed by that. I think that's the mark of the success that we've had. It's not because of me, it's me and the team. It's like the March Madness or pro football. Any sports, I think, is a good analogy. You can have great players, best quarterback in the league, and you still don't win. Yeah, but Aaron Rodgers is MVP, but Packers weren't in the Super Bowl. So it's a combination of things, and it's a chemistry thing, it's a talent thing, but ultimately it comes down to the execution, and can they execute, and do they believe in the cause, do they believe in it deeply enough to give that discretional energy and incremental effort to it?

15:40And again, we had built a culture around kind of belief and focus, but ultimately do it. And so when I talked about act fast, fail fast, the team had learned that we were gonna take some risk, that we weren't gonna be wild about it, we weren't just throwing stuff up against the wall and hoping something stuck. We were gonna make decisions. And so it was probably a combination, to your point, of listening, reading, networking, finding out what other people were thinking, and then with the team, what can we do? What do we have the capability of doing? Because if you have no customers in your restaurant, and then you have to deal with the hard reality of telling your staff, we're gonna have to furlough you. Oh yeah. And one of the decisions that we made was for those people that had health insurance, we said, we're gonna furlough you. We have no other option right now, and we apologize for the disruption, but right now we've got to figure this out. But we're gonna keep your health benefits in place, and you don't have to pay for it.

16:40Oh wow. We're gonna take care of that. So you don't have to worry about your healthcare, and we've set up a hotline and a whole room full of people that help them file for unemployment. So we were very focused on the best we could, which not adequate, I'm sure, and very difficult if you're on the other end of that conversation. But we said, we're gonna take care of you the best we can. So we're gonna take care of your healthcare. We're gonna help you get your unemployment, and as soon as we can bring you back to work, we will. We hope you come back. So we worked on that, but those were the sorts of things that this team really coalesced around, and it really gave energy. As we began to process through it, you found there was energy in the fight, the fight to survive, the fight to do the right things. And we found ourselves with some opportunities to just do good things in communities and take care of people that needed, they couldn't afford anything, so we figured out a way to do something about that. And you can't do that, you can't give away all your food, but you can give away some food.

17:41And so we had our food trailer, and we took it to different places. And right before the pandemic hit in March, we had the tornado that went through East Nashville, particularly there. We showed up with our food trailer and just started feeding people. And it was confusing because people come up and say, I'd like to get a hamburger, just take it. How much? And we were said, it's free. And we had some great suppliers. That's another part of the relationship. We had some great suppliers that said, we'll send you some cases of hamburgers and cases of buns and cases of whatever you need, because we see what you're doing. You're just feeding people. You're not setting up to try to monetize a disaster. You're just showing up. So we've done that from literally March 5th, even down to Mayfield, Kentucky last year. Have some great pictures and videos of our team. We couldn't get into some of the places. We have a food truck now that we had. We went from a trailer to a truck. We still have both, but the truck's easier to get places.

18:43We have pictures of our team on golf carts and ATVs driving out around the poles and the trees and stuff and showing up with boxes and saying, are y'all hungry? Do you need something to eat? So that energy that came around survival, but also came around, one of the things we talked about was see the good. In the midst of all this, find the good, see the good. Let's talk about the good. Let's celebrate that. Let's celebrate what we're doing. And it affected not just our customers and our communities, it affected our team members and it lifted them up and it gave them energy to come in and really do some really amazing things. Again, I'll tell you this. I'll keep going on one thing. We had a hurricane came through Lake Charles, Louisiana, and then it came again and we showed up and we're just feeding people. And I'll get emotional talking about this. One of our cooks after that was at Walmart, plug for them, and he was buying Christmas presents.

19:48And the gentleman behind him said, he had on his hat, he said, do you work at O'Charlie's? And he said, yes sir, I'm a cook there. He said, to the cashier, I've got that. Wow. Had a big screen TV and something else. And the guy behind him said, we were without power for weeks. The only hot meal we could get was at O'Charlie's. And y'all didn't charge us a thing. I will support your restaurant. I'll be there every week. Because our restaurant was closed too. I mean, the front of it was caved in and bricks everywhere. But it was those sorts of things though that really gave energy to the team that knew they were part of something bigger than just their little store or their section of tables or their cook station. And it was really fun to see how that kind of catapulted to a performance that was extraordinary last year. Those things are incredible. I mean, I can see you literally looking at you. It emotionally affects you.

20:50In 2017, when you took over the CEO position, do you think in 2016 that same thing would have happened? No. When you came in, what did you inject into this company? And I'm thinking core values and I'm thinking leadership. What was the first thing that you needed to change? Well, it was the culture. And you can talk a good game. You can talk about servant leadership and all sorts of really nice platitudes about that. At the core, it comes down to the people. And unfortunately, we needed to make changes. So of the nine people who reported to me when I got there, only eight are left. Only one is left, so eight are gone. Wow. They weren't bad people. I'm not saying they don't have good values. I'm saying that we need to make a change in leadership. And that was part of my experience has always been typically fixing things.

21:52My wife asked me many times, can you ever get a job where you don't have to fix it? And the answer is no. No, that's what I do. It's who I am. It's my core competency. Does she also have to remind you when she's telling you about her day that I just need you to listen and not solve it? Yes, I am a husband. I have those flaws as well. But she's amazing. She puts up with all sorts of crazy stuff. As you know, it happens in the restaurant business. Things are never what you would expect. I don't care if there's no pandemic. Things aren't what you expect. People don't show up. Customer does this, et cetera. There's always a surprise. And I think that's part of the reason why I love this restaurant business is you can't predict it. Never can. You show up and we wish that we're not. I know some chains are, but customers don't make reservations and tell us they're coming to a Charlie's. They just show up. They just show up or they don't show up. Or they show up to dine in or they show up to take out on curbside.

22:52So it's the ability to adapt and adjust. But it's been really exciting. But for me, leadership really was defined by my father. He was in the military 43 years. He didn't talk business. He talked Air Force. And at that point he was in the Navy for five and Air Force for 38. But he talked about leadership. And then I had the benefit of watching him in leadership because I go hang out at the base, crawl around the airplanes, which was cool. That's really cool. But I got to watch him be a leader. And so I knew that at any point, no matter what job I had, including this one, it's all about leadership. It's what you do in terms of people. It's great that you can say leadership things, but if you look around and there's nobody behind you, that's a problem. That's a problem for sure. And so we really worked hard on instilling a sense of servant leadership. But leadership, do it. Don't say it. And then continue to nurture, making good decisions, right decisions.

23:59One of the things when I got there was literally within the first two weeks, kind of defined a strategic framework. But part of that was that we were gonna be about people, profits, and personal fulfillment. So the people side was taking care of our guests and taking care of the people who take care of the guests or those who take care of the people who are taking care of the guests. So it's all about people. Have the right people doing the right things. You know, integrity and ethics and all those sorts of things. The profits, we're a for-profit business. We gotta make money. If we don't make money, then we're like a lot of other restaurants. We don't exist. But then fundamentally we came back to, for me, I want everybody who works any part of our company. We've got 14,000 employees across the two brands and the support center. I want them to achieve their personal fulfillment. I don't know what that is necessarily. So if you're a store manager, God bless you and thank you, but if that's not what is really driving who you are as a person, I feel like our job is to figure that out and help you.

25:05It may be that you shouldn't work there. You shouldn't be a general manager. You should be something else. So to celebrate the idea that, you know, restaurant business is usually people's first job. A lot of first timers come in and, you know, 16, maybe younger, but 16, and then they stay in the restaurant business. And some opt out and some stay in. Sure. We call those restaurant people. We are. They're okay telling their parents that we work in the restaurant, but that's what I do. They're not ashamed of it. I'm not looking for my real job while I do this. This is my real job. Yeah. And so for me, you know, part of, I think again, a subtlety, but a shift that we made was to think about, you know, who, one of my favorite stories is we have a gentleman now who's in charge of all our culinary at old Charlie's. When I got there, he was a regional vice president. I sat down and said, you know, I'm not sure this is working, but what I want to know is who are you?

26:08What do you want to do? What really makes you get up out of bed in the morning and almost want to run to work and avoid the car? Cause you're so excited. I say what sucks you out of the sheets. I like that. I'm going to steal that. So he said, you know, I'm a, like a classically trained chef. And I kind of tilted my head just like you just did. And I said, a what? What are you doing as a regional vice president over at that point, probably a hundred stores. Geez. Maybe a hundred, probably 70. That's not better. And he said, well, you know, you know, life transitions and things. And I said, you know, how about we do this? We're going to take a leave of absence of two weeks from your responsibilities as a regional vice president over all those stores. We have a test kitchen in the office. We're blessed to have a facility. I said, come in there and do your chef thing. You know what we have in the restaurant, you know the equipment, you know the capabilities of the team members.

27:13I don't need new skews and new fancy stuff. I need stuff that matters to a old Charlie's consumer to come more often or pay more. But you figure that out. You got two weeks. What'd he come up with? He came up with about 12 items that were, he actually had, he had about 20 and we'd have put them all on the menu if we could have. But at some point you got to keep the menu narrow enough that you can execute in the kitchen. And you guys have a lot of stuff on your menu. We have a lot. He came up with some really great ideas and he's continued to do that. So we have now three going on four virtual brands. So we have Coop and Run, we have Dockside Charlie's, we have Underground Chucks, which is a hamburger. And then we have just launched Mandrina's Italian Kitchen, which is pasta. And they're all virtual brands that come out of our kitchens. Ghost kitchens. Essentially they're ghost kitchens, but they're our kitchens. And so those- Virtual brands, I like that.

28:14Yeah, it was crazy. By the way, back to the thinking crazy stuff, you think crazy stuff and then people go, oh, we can do that. But again, you take a really talented person and you give them an opportunity to be who they are and you find out, you go, wow, this is really a good idea for that person and for the company. And so those are the sorts of things that again, as I entered in, I realized there were some tweaks and adjustments that needed to happen. Some were exits. Again, not bad people, not untalented people. Sure. Just not right for the right time, the right place. And then making some adjustments like that along the way gave us the capabilities to do the things that we didn't know we were gonna need to do. We didn't know we were gonna do virtual brands. But again, when you had the pandemic hit and you couldn't have people in your restaurants, you had to get sales. So make stuff up.

29:17Figure it out. We made up to do something for sales. Let's figure that out. Well, the consumers started going to delivery, DoorDash and GrowHub and UberEats and all that. So we created a website for a coupon run. We sell chicken tenders. We sell some of the best chicken tenders, I think in the world. So we created a kind of a, some people would call it a millennial version. Of chicken tenders with all kinds of crazy sauces and tater tots, which we didn't have, which I love because they travel a lot better than french fries. They do. And we just made it up and made up a website and put it on DoorDash. And we're doing the brands we have now are doing the equivalent of five restaurants sales volume. Wow. So we have 150 and it's like we added five restaurants, but no capital, no incremental managers, no incremental staff. So really nicely profitable. But the other part of that, the team's excited because it's like, this is fun.

30:18There's times it's not fun. And we've had some stores, for instance, on the chicken tenders where we had to add another fryer. Sure. Because we're doing so much business. But those are the sorts of things that kind of came out of, again, the transition early. And then when the pandemic hit, I think it really refined us. It forced us to focus and make some tough decisions, but it refined us. But you're coming in 2017, you make eight of the nine people who are reporting for you are relatively new. And you probably knew some of these people from the past that you brought in to these positions. I imagine, no, all brand new people. Well, all the eight, well. The eight that you brought in. You may have known, hey, I got an opportunity for you, you're great, you know. But for the most part, if you didn't have a long time working together, you get a couple years maybe, and then you're jumping into this thing to really see what those people are made of. How proud of your team are you today? Oh, couldn't be more proud or blessed. I could tell hearing you talk about what you guys did that in hearing more of your story about coming in and fixing something and all of the change, leading through change is one of the hardest things that you can ever do.

31:32And I've recently done it and it's a super big challenge. But when you get through it and everybody understands, and you've all done it together. Like we all had this trauma together. We all went through it together and we made it through. I don't think you get a stronger team than that. Well, it's like, yeah, exactly. You're kind of forged in fire. Yeah. And you realize, okay, we really are good at this and we can embrace these amazing challenges. And we talked about, we talk a lot with the operators and this morning our conversation was around, don't forget what we learned. Don't forget it. It's easy to forget it. It's been two years ago. We're all tired. We're back into this thing where don't forget it. Don't forget it. Don't forget we navigated the most unusual, unexpected, unimaginable circumstances of any full service restaurant ever. And yet we still have challenges.

32:33We had Omicron in January and COVID cases were higher than any other month. Thankfully, less people were severely affected and died. But as a nation, we had more in January. And then all of a sudden we get to February and we have inflation that starts going out of control. And then we get to March and we've got gas prices that are out of control. So again, we were really challenged with no customers in our restaurants, but we still have our challenges. Don't forget the lessons we learned. So what are the, let's talk about those lessons. Because we, I've got them written down right here. Go ahead, basically. Remind me what I said. You said, well, we'll go back to the move fast, fail fast. Good now is better than perfection later. And you had three words, recover, adapt, overcome. Yeah. That's it. That's it. That's it. You got it. I'm glad you took notes on it. Number two, you said, we don't get hurt by what we don't know.

33:35I love this because I love quotes. Like these are some of the best quotes. We don't get hurt by what we don't know. We get hurt by what we know and don't do. God, let that sink in for a second. Jen, what do you think about that statement? Well, to me, it's similar to if you know better, do better. And it's the most frustrating thing when you know somebody knows better and chooses the wrong way. And in leadership, that's a hard thing. Cause you're like, I can't want this more than you want this. And so when you said a hundred stories down to this person then had 70 and I'm like, that's not better. Because that's so, it's gotta be so hard to feel like your finger is on the pulse and be present with the team when you have so many. And so I think it's really an incredible thing to be able to share that with the team and say like, no, I'm really proud of this team. And here are these finite examples of like this cook and this guy that transitioned. That's a really hard thing to do.

34:36And I think the good news is, you know, with social media and things, you know, you can celebrate those a little easier than you could have in the past. You know, sending out memos from corporate or headquarters, which I hate. That's why we call it the support center. Yeah, headquarters. Yeah, but it is about the, you know, going back to the culture piece. Number one, having a healthy culture that's constructive and productive and uplifting and elevating to people and focused on their personal fulfillment. That's one piece. The other piece was to combat, again, a deeply ingrained culture that you didn't take risk. You didn't do things that weren't approved. You asked permission for everything. Yeah, I'm not an advocate of, you know, Google start throwing stuff out the window and ask for forgiveness, but allowing people to use their initiative, understand the guardrails. If it honors people and takes care of customers and it has integrity and it's ethical, then it's in the guardrails.

35:40Go do it and we'll see. And we laughed about it. I may have talked about it at the conference, but talked about it with our owners. You know, we had people that, you know, again, at the beginning of pandemic, they went and bought those blow up kind of doll things that you see mostly in front of used car lots. Okay, cool. They kind of flopped. That's not where I went. Yeah. That's good. Same place you were going, I was like, they're home alone, but I mean. Yeah, not that. But, you know, the point was, and we talked about it early on, we said, folks, you know, people are gonna drive by your restaurant and there's not gonna be any cars in the parking lot and they're gonna think you're closed. Put up balloons, put up tents, do anything. We had people that were out flipping boards, just standing out on the road as close as they could be safely and, you know, we're open, come eat, you know, balloons, honk. And so, but they didn't ask permission. So we just did it.

36:42I have a similar core value in our restaurants. It's called do the right thing. And do the right thing isn't necessarily a steal, don't steal, you know, there's right and there's wrong. Do the right thing as we empower you to do the right thing. You know our rules, you know our core values. If you need to make a decision about something that's going on, we trust you that you will, if you act in the interest of I'm doing the right thing, what I thought in my heart was the right thing in the moment, even if it's the wrong thing, we're gonna, we'll talk about it. You're not even in trouble. Right. We're gonna talk about it afterwards and we're gonna go, hey, that's an interesting decision you made. Tell me about it. I wanna know about it. And if it makes sense, I totally see where you did that. Next time, let's try and, let's just tweak it a little bit, but I love your initiative and I love that you're in the spirit of do the right thing, you're doing it, but it's not a, I just want people that when they make decisions to go, am I doing the right thing? If there's an angel and a devil, listen to the angel. Yeah. And then do it, you'll never get in trouble. I think that's perfect leadership, Brad. I do think that's, particularly in the restaurant business, cause it's so quick, it's real time, things are happening and the customer's saying, I don't like this, this didn't come out right, da, da, da, da, make a decision, do the right thing and take care of the customer and respect it.

37:52You can't just give a food away because this, yeah. But to your point, the coaching ability of that, the conversation, and again, that lifts people up and helps them become better at who they are and what they might wanna be later. So we get hurt by what we know and don't do. I look at that like it reviews, like I know I'm getting reviews that say something and I don't respond or give me an example as to what you mean by that as far as what we've learned from the pandemic. Well, I think, again, part of that is just respecting the leadership and respecting that no one's gonna be closer to a guest than the people in the restaurant. I'm not. I can try to be from time to time, but there's 254 restaurants. I can't be there all the time. No, 24 seven. Do you feel guilt when you don't go to a restaurant? If you're not in restaurants, because you can't be there all the time. I'm sure when you walk in, people freak out, right? Because it's, oh, he's here. And you don't wanna create, I mean, it's gotta be something, you don't wanna create that in the restaurants.

38:54No, I absolutely, in fact, I have to continue to remind folks, I'm not Inspector Gadget coming in to inspect. I'm not coming in to say, oh, wait a minute, you know, that's not right. I intentionally don't do that. I tend to, most of the time when I go to the restaurant, I'm not dressed like this. I'm dressed with a baseball cap and, you know, some, you know, fitness attire. At leisure is what the millennials call it. At leisure. I have a lot of those. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife says my at leisure needs to be more athletic and fitness focused, but that's because she loves me and I appreciate it. But you've gotta give that empowerment and then trust that they know, they know what's going on. They see something. And I want them to react to that as opposed to try to go through some chain of command. Well, if I'm a store manager, I have to ask my operations director, who has to ask the RVP, who has to ask.

39:55No. That's a lot. Just do right. And when you see it, deal with it right then, but you know things in the moment. And for us, the challenge, you know, at a higher level, at the 10,000 foot level, as you said, you know, we've got lots of data points. Oh, that's almost too much. You can get death by data. Death by data, death by analysis, analysis paralysis, all those sorts of things. At some point, we have to trust our instincts. You know, if you've been in this business for very long, and I've been in it for longer than I'm gonna talk about, you, there's just certain things that come to you and you say, yeah, that's right. We ought to do that. The virtual brands. You know, we, again, we just, you know, making stuff up. How do we get more sales? Well, we could leverage our existing stores and this was when we still didn't have the dining rooms completely open. You know, we had the, all the six foot. Yeah, well. No bar, but you can do half open. Well, or six foot spacing, which isn't half open because there's not enough room the way we're configured to be open.

40:58And so we came up with the virtual brands. And that was one of those things we knew it was the right thing to do. And so we just did it. We turned it on. We said, do it, go do it, figure it out now. Not six months from now. I don't need a, you know, a three month pilot test and it expands from one store to four stores. Just go, we'll figure it out. We'll react. Instead of, we've fact-checked it, just do it. We'll see it. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a little scary in your position to say something like that. No, not when you have a team that can execute. Oh, good answer. Good answer. You also said, winners aren't the ones who do the most things. Winners are the ones who do the most important things. It's a nod to prioritization. Yes. Now, when I got the company, we had had in a prior life, I was a Denny's franchisee and we would have an annual convention. And my role there as the chairman of the franchisee association was to put together the annual convention for the brand.

42:04And have a keynote speaker. And we had a keynote speaker, a gentleman that's from Nashville, Joe Galloway. And he wrote a book. I'll probably misquote the title, but basically do what matters most. Yeah, so I had a reading club for the senior team and said, read this book. Do what matters most. I don't need you to do a bunch of stuff. I need you to do what matters most. And right now I can sense we're not really clear on that or aligned about that. And so we need to figure out what matters most. And then we need to get about doing that. And that could be three things or five things, again, back to analysis paralysis. And if you put together a list of a hundred initiatives, everybody's just heads gonna explode and they're not gonna get anything done. So to your point about prioritization, what matters most? Where am I gonna get the most bang for the buck? It sounds cute. It sounds fun. It sounds interesting. But if it's not gonna deliver sales and cashflow, it's not a priority. Well, and I think that you outlined it earlier. You said people, profits, and personal fulfillment.

43:04I mean, if we're looking at where we wanna strategize and where we wanna spend our most important time, it's on people, it's on profits, and the personal fulfillment. I love the constantly trying to develop people, constantly coaching people, educating people, identifying what their aces and places, right? You want, when people are- You can tell you're a restaurant man. When people are, they say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. So if you can find the thing that people do within your company that they love to do, and the level of productivity you're gonna get out of them and their personal fulfillment, it's gonna be so much better. I love those two things. Well, and the other piece of that, talking for me personally, and then even then at every layer below, one of the challenges and admonitions I've received is, I should only do that which only I can do. So there's a lot I can do, but what are the things that only I can do as a CEO with my skills and talents and everything?

44:10What are those things? Because I could spend 24-7 working. Oh yeah. And some days I have, and my wife even has been patient about that. But there are seasons you need to, but like- Seasons, but ultimately I need to do only what I can do. The people who report to me should do only what they can do. They shouldn't, you know, the chief concept officer of Oak Charlie's should not try to be a regional vice president or an operations director or general manager. Yeah, be the chief concept and only do what he can do. And so he does. And so that's really, I think a hard part for some people because you typically grow up in this business, you come through the positions, you know how to do everything. So why don't I, if I could do it better, I'll just do it. No, but that's a common thing. Yeah, you know, it's about extending yourself and then extending yourself, but also developing people and giving people an opportunity. You know, again, most folks start out at an hourly level, work to a manager level, then maybe work to above the manager level.

45:14And so you don't get there if you don't get the chance to do it. So if the person above you is still to your point, well, I'm gonna go in, you know, show them how to run this. They don't learn. And we all learn by, you know, succeeding, but we also learn by teaching and failing. Yeah, that's the, you know, the bigger part. To your point, even back to the, you know, if you tell them to do the right thing and it's not the right thing, you don't chastise them for that, you coach them up for them. And that's really the key. Yeah, I love it. I love, I always say in my, or I do orientations for people. I say, I love it when you make mistakes, keep making mistakes. I had a kid come in and in his interview, listen to this, you're gonna love this. In his interview, I said, you've never weighted tables before. And he goes, nope. And I go, what do you think your biggest challenge? And he goes, you know what? I will tell you this right now. He goes, I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes. It's sure, I've never weighted tables before. He goes, but something about me is, I've never made the same mistake twice because I love to learn from my mistakes every single time.

46:17And I went, okay, you're hired. In an interview, if you heard somebody say that, I've only done that job, but I could be there. I'm very loyal. I'll do our things. I make mistakes, but I will learn from them and I will never make the same mistake twice. I promise you that. I go, let's go. Good energy, good perspective. We learn. That's how you learn. I'm still learning and excited about that. You said, simplicity and focus are force multipliers. And you said, culture drives results. Culture drives results. I can't read. How has this impacted, oh, Charlie, is what I wrote. But it sounds like fundamental, just execute on the Xs and Os, and I say this all the time. I'm trying to, we gotta get the bounce pass. We've gotta get that. I need the layup. I don't need you coming in and showing me your dunk from the free throw line. I need you to bounce pass every time and make sure the guy catches it.

47:22Let's perfect the things that we have to do every single day, and sometimes it's that simple, isn't it? Greg's gonna answer that question and so many more right after this word from our sponsors. Okay, so maybe you have a job. Maybe you don't necessarily need another full-time job, but you'd like to make a little bit of extra money. You need a better work-life balance, maybe? Change the way you work. GigPro can provide the opportunity for higher pay, a flexible schedule, and hopefully connect you with the right fit for a long-term employment. If you go sign up right now at go.gigpro.com forward slash pro, you can do that. Just think, you don't have to sign up and work somewhere for a long time. You can go accept gigs and see if you like it. I know, it's amazing. And once you sign up for every one of your friends you get to sign up, you will get $5. So go to go.gigpro.com forward slash pro right now.

48:25What Chefs Want has been serving the Nashville restaurant community for over 15 years. During that time, they've worked tirelessly to be, well, what chefs want? Seven-day deliveries, no fuel charges, 24-7 customer care, unparalleled availability, and they'll split almost everything they sell. If you're the kind of person that wants to see what's new when it comes in stock, you should follow them on the socials at whatchefswant and sign up to be a customer at whatchefswant.com. One of God's great gifts to this world was fresh baked bread. That's why Sharpier's Bakery delivers six days a week to your restaurant, as they've been doing for 36 years. Aaron Mosso's family has been running Sharpier's Bakery locally owned and operated right here in Nashville, Tennessee, like I said, for 36 years. Go check him out at sharpiers.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com, or Sharpier's Bakery on Instagram and Facebook.

49:31Give Aaron Mosso a call at 615-319-6453 to set up an appointment to talk about what fresh bread you'd like delivered to your restaurant today. Every time, and make sure the guy catches it, and then let's perfect the things that we have to do every single day, and sometimes it's that simple, isn't it? Yeah, we call it exaggerated, repetitive excellence. You have to do the same thing the right way every time, and you have to do it, hopefully, I think, again, the force multiplier or the edge you get is when you do it in an exaggerated way. Everybody goes to a restaurant and they make their order, and then the server brings it, and then the server checks them out. But if in those little fundamentals, there's an exaggeration of hospitality, there's an exaggeration on the food presentation and the taste and the quality, and the price value, all those sorts, so exaggerating repetitive excellence.

50:33And to your point, it's the bounce pass, it's the thing, I laugh about my youngest son played basketball, and I got to coaching one year, and the kids were sixth grade, they were really frustrated, because we literally worked on a pick and roll for the entire hour we could practice. And then we would come back, and we would work on a pick and roll. And I only had eight players, and every one of them knew how to run the pick and roll. So when we got, I said, y'all can go in your backyard and shoot. I'm not gonna work on, we're not working on shooting. We're gonna work on the, and sure enough, and then we worked on a two, three defense, which most folks didn't play. Those young men could run a pick and roll, and run a two, three defense, better than anybody in the league. And so we won every game, and it was easy. And they were like, oh, we really hated the pick and roll thing. But now we get it, because we get to score easy. All the time, yeah. And nobody knows what to do with it.

51:33Because, you know, and so fundamentals like that in the restaurant business, you know. Full hands in, full hands out. Hot food, hot, cold food, cold. Maybe we get this all day long, right? I mean, it's, by the way, none of those are new. No, it's, you know, don't put cold food on a hot plate. There's a hundred, you know, I'm a, first of all, I gotta address Jen over here. I'm fine, I'll figure, I'll Google it. No clue what we're talking about, by the way. She's a brilliant restaurant person, but she couldn't spell basketball. No, okay, wait, no. I have a bracket right now. Yes, who'd you pick? Oh, I don't know. See what I'm saying? No, okay. Is the guy clicking a bunch of buttons on the colors of the uniform? No, no, no, I wrote out the whole thing. I learned what the numbers meant next to the team name. It's chalk, she's like, I picked all favorites. I have Duke winning it all. Okay. Yeah. That's bold. I was told that. Yeah. Hey, if you win, if Duke wins, then you'll do really well. Great, I'll show you my bracket later.

52:34I even downloaded an ESPN app. Pick and roll is where a guy is dribbling the ball and his same teammate stands right next to him, right? And he blocks the, he blocks the defender. And then when he does that, the person then rolls towards the basket and the person passing the ball and it's an easy layup almost every single time because nobody sees it coming. Or if they don't, if they don't defend it, then the guy will, he's wide open because you get the pick. Or lady goes around the pick and they have wide open layup. Yeah. The two people converge on one. It's just fun, but I'm glad you picked Duke. I'm a big fan of Duke and their style of play and certainly coach Sosiewski. What a great career he's had and what great leaders he's created. I've always said, I love watching Gonzaga, right? Cause Gonzaga gets out there and they do, they just, they pass the ball four times before anybody shoots, they bounce past, it's layups, it's not about the me. It's about, it's not about the reverse dunk I just did. And look at me, it's like the entire team. Basketball is a team sport. Yes. And when you execute on a high level, the fundamentals really well, you can win.

53:36It's amazing. I mean, LeBron helps. If you have LeBron, that dude helps. I'm not gonna lie. That's... I agree with you there. But the team to have a generational superstar is a good thing, but a team effort. And that's essentially, you can use these all day long when it comes to a restaurant. It's the restaurant business. It is. You have a great manager, you have a great store. You have great ODs, you have great markets. It's leadership. And so, our challenge is always to find the leaders. And then secondly, to keep them. Everybody wants to steal your leaders. It's a true story. Yeah. Leaders are hard to come by. And you know, here's the thing. So are the workers. I mean, the workers that are coming in every single day, the labor shortages we're having right now. I mean, what is your take on just the lack of finding people? Do you think that we lost a lot of people to other things? Like, what is your... I'm sure you've seen some analysis on this. Yeah, I think it's kind of, you know, certainly again, it was difficult early on with the furloughs.

54:41You know, you didn't need servers because you had nobody inside your restaurant. And then hopefully, unemployment helps them bridge that gap and then get back in and then find different ways to manage through that. What we've seen lately, and I think it's probably a combination of inflation and gas prices and all those challenges. We're starting to see the applicant flow come back. So we're not 100% staffed as we would see what we would like to have in terms of, you know, by position, how many people do we have available? We're not there yet. We're probably, you know, 75% of the stores are there. So we still have a gap, but the applicant flow, and I will tell you, even this in the last couple of weeks has really picked up. And I think it's a combination of, you know, some of the employment benefits run out and then, you know, it's just cash. Folks need cash because gas is, you know, it cost you twice as much to fill up your tank now. It does. Where do you stand on, you know, how you treat employees?

55:41I mean, I think that a lot of restaurants, the culture of restaurants is, it's got a really bad name right now because people are working 90 hour weeks and they're, you know, they're holding their thumb, you need to be here, you need to be here. And if there is a staff shortage, but treating your staff the right way is so important. Like how, how do you see it? Well, we've done some things. For instance, we've limited our operating hours. You know, we've cut back, you know, just so that we don't have the knee. We've closed stores early. We've had stores that, you know, we've closed on Monday. Just, you know, we're seven day a week, 14 day parts. And we've closed stores on Mondays just because the team needs a break. Yeah. And particularly the leadership teams because they're the ones who typically bear the brunt. If you're short staffed on the crew level, then the managers step in. And so how do you deal with that? Well, you've got to manage that process. You know, we talk about it a lot.

56:42Again, that goes, go back to the people on personal fulfillment piece. You know, we're not going to be good at this if we burn out our people. And if people think we don't care. And so we've talked about, make sure you take your vacation. We understand that if you take vacation, then you got to cover the shift and then whatever. We'll figure all that out. Will you offer vacation for hourly employees? No. Okay. Like if I'm a server, what do you offer benefits? So full-time servers. Yeah, full-time servers, yeah, benefits are offered. Okay, good. I would think that's super important. I mean, you know, there's, I didn't look to see what exactly you guys do, but I mean, I know that the server's out there. I mean, I don't know. I find that like a lot of restaurants don't treat the servers as well as they should. Or bartenders or line cooks. I mean, I think that there's, I think there is a wage gap. Yeah, and we've worked really hard on our healthcare plan as an example of things that we've done. But number one, when we put people on furlough, we maintain their benefits. They didn't lose benefits. The other thing we've done is since before the pandemic, we have not raised the contribution a team member makes to their benefits.

57:47So we've just left it flat. So for three years, we've had no inflation in terms of what a team member contributes to their part of the healthcare. And we've not raised deductibles and co-pays and all of those other sorts of things, which is the side view of how you can offset costs. We've said, nope, benefits are gonna stay where they are. That's part of our commitment to that. That it's not free, but it's also, I think, certainly far more affordable now than it could have been. But again, that's our commitment to the team members. If you have health insurance and you're not paying more because you have it. How many employees do you have with all your 253 stores? About 14,000. 14,000. So inevitably throughout a pandemic, how many did you lose to COVID? I mean, just people dying. It's gotta be a tough thing as a CEO to understand, hey, we had another person at this, out of 1,400 people, you had to have some. I don't think, I don't know the exact number. I think we, you know, it's probably less than 10.

58:50Okay. But I could be wrong on that, but I'm just trying to remember back over two years. Yeah, yeah, no, don't let me put you on the spot. I just didn't know if that was like, I mean, that's a hard part. I mean, my company, we have failed to get sick, but it's not. I think we were fortunate. We had a young lady in our support center that passed away from COVID. And tough. But again, part of our, back to our healthcare program, we have employee assistance program. We have a person that can come in alongside the family. In fact, we did in that particular case and brought in a counselor to meet with the family and particularly with the husband and sit and talk with him about how to process through his grief. And had a great time a couple, probably months after all of that, he came in, sat down, had coffee and talked about his grieving process and how much it meant to have the company say, here's a person that knows how to help that.

59:51We're not it. Yeah. We'd like to be, we're not trained. We're not professionals at that. And so, just- That's one of those unique things I can't do. Yeah. That's understanding that. I think some people would jump in there and try and do that. And that's not me. I wish I could, but let me get you somebody who can. I think that's the best thing to do in that situation. So it was hard. I think it was hard on everybody in lots of different ways. The people who are isolated at home and working from home and couldn't come to the office. So they missed that comradery and the kind of things you get from being around other people. Well, that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast. I said, people have different ways that they show love and how they give love. There's so many people in this industry going to work and waiting tables isn't just a means of financial security. It's also a means of social security. I mean, they come to work, they see their regulars, they see the people they work with. That is their circle. And when you cut all that off, I mean, that's a lot of people at home in not good situations where they can't see people and they can't socialize and they can't have that normalcy.

01:01:03I wanted to bring that somehow. Yeah, and then you've got the people who, A, they're trying to work remotely and they have kids that can't go to school. Yeah. And so now they're trying to deal with homeschooling in essence and a job and if it's two parents in the house and sometimes a lot of times it's only the one parent in the house. Now, how do you balance all of that? How do you, to your point, how do you manage life and the challenges? And by being by yourself and feeling by yourself, you don't have anybody go, hey, Jen, how are you dealing with that? What's working in your house? Because I'm like not doing well. I can see that and understand that. I had a different, mine was different because, as my wife points out, I got to go to the office every day. There wasn't anybody around me, but I was there. Just because it was, it's my little safe place to work from and think from and do the video calls from.

01:02:04But I can still remember even her frustration because she's very social, to your point. So she's always out and about and doing things. Great personality, great energy. And all of a sudden she had no outlet for that. And it was even tough for her and we don't have kids at home. But there's just lots of challenges and I appreciate you thinking about that for this opportunity for people to kind of feel connected and feel like you're not alone in the challenge. Yeah, I mean that was the, as the recovery community, we kind of went into that whole thing as well. But I just was a, damn, what are these people who are still in active addiction and now are forced to be home alone and depression with addiction combined is like rocket fuel. And it's a, how do we as a industry and a community reach out to those people in this time? That was the thing to me that was like, they gotta hear other people and what they're doing if they can listen to hear their peers talk about how they're getting through it.

01:03:11I think leaders really understood. I think the leaders and the owners, I had a couple owners reach out to me. I had Nicky's coal fired. So Caroline and Tony Galzin. They came on the show and they said the pandemic was amazing because they got together and they drove to Charleston or something and they were like, we're not happy. We've now had to stop and look in the mirror and they're like, we're not happy. We're working all the time. We don't spend time together. They were in Charleston or wherever they went on their vacation. All we could think about was the restaurant. We couldn't even enjoy ourselves and we made some wholesale changes. We're not gonna live this way. And I think you can look at it a couple different ways. And hearing other restaurateurs who ran restaurants, she owns a restaurant in Brentwood with her husband. And when you're there all the time and you're both working all the time, what about us? When do we have our time? I think a lot of people heard that and they went, damn, it's not just me. It's not just me. There's a lot of us feel this way and we gotta fix it.

01:04:12Yeah, I think it allowed people to become really intentional with where they exerted their energy. And I still feel for working. I'm a working mom, obviously. And I feel like working moms really carried the brunt of the pandemic because they were expected to homeschool and to continue their position. And a lot of them were working. It's still hard. And I got yelled at in a childcare group the other day because I know, because I'm looking for a nanny. And anyway, apparently I need to be in a much different tax bracket to afford childcare. And I just think that that's gonna send women back home. That's gonna take them out of offices if people can't afford childcare at a reasonable rate. That makes sense. Anyway, that's a whole nother thing. I'm really upset about it. I'm really upset about it. Anyway. I mean the laugh. It's okay, it is really frustrating though. But anyway, people got to, we were talking about this in church the other day, let your yes be yes and your no be no. It allowed people to like see where their value, where they felt their value is coming from and what they were putting towards and things like that. And I think it did reposition people to change industries or change from local to corporate or corporate to local even.

01:05:19Like that was a change I saw a lot within the industry itself, which is a big change. My career has generally been locally owned. And I love that as I am locally owning a restaurant. So that tends to be where I lean. And so corporate, it's not a great fit for me, but it is a great fit for a lot of other people. And they like the security of it. And they like knowing there's 13,999 people behind them and that, right? There's so many systems and processes that it's easy to follow. Like it's, if I need, some people work much better on a team as some people need to be the one who's saying follow me, you know what I mean? Like I'm way on that follow me side. I don't need to be on a team, but some people that need to be on a team, they need structure. And they need- Yeah, you need like a partner. Yeah, you need like one or two people. But I am interested in, because again, my career is all pretty much locally owned as yours. Well, not yours. Yeah, I mean, pretty much, yeah. Yeah, but US Foods is huge.

01:06:19Oh yeah, yeah, that's it. That's different, but it's huge. I did work at Disney, but all that to say is there was no right answer through the pandemic. There were things that were more right maybe than others, but there was no guidebook. So nobody had the correct answer, right? So I think one of the things I really liked going through, I was in a leadership position at the time, was that the transparency kind of went away, like between owners and staff. We had to be more transparent about the moves we were making and why we were making them. And this does have intent behind it, even though you can't see it right now, this is the big picture. Did you also have to do that, or was that well received? Because 14,000 people, it's a lot to break transparency in that way. I think you're exactly right. It did take a lot, and it helped us, I think. And that's part of, again, what I strive so much for us to retain, was we learned how to communicate at every level. We created and leveraged social media where once a month or so, we would have a leader talk to the team.

01:07:25And so instead of sending out a memo, they got a link to a YouTube. And it would be me saying, hey, gotta start the new year and here's what we got and here's where we're going. And then Bob, who's chief concept officer, would do one. And then sometimes we'll do one together, which is fun, because he and I have known each other for a long time. And we would have the HR person and then the supply chain person. Just on video, two to three minutes, keep it short, but try to convey to your point about the transparency of what's going on. Why are we short of cheese wedges right now? Here's why, because you can't get the cheese to get to the plant to make the cheese wedges and they're having staffing challenges. And therefore, until they can ramp back up, we're gonna be out of cheese wedges. So here's our alternatives and here's why. And so just being more open about that, I think, again, that's part of that unique benefit and the tragedy of COVID, but the unique benefit was it forced us to be different as leaders.

01:08:28It forced us into, it wasn't that we weren't willing to do it, it just wasn't part of what you did kind of historically as a leader to really kind of share at the deepest levels, this is what's going on. I mean, I was thinking back to just all the different challenges we had. Again, just where's the cash gonna come from? And so we gotta figure that out and say, all of a sudden you take this down and take this down and you call your landlord and say, yeah, we're gonna be a little slower than we've been. And we hope you work with us. And if you don't, then we'll figure that out too. And so I think it forced to your point of transparency and of vulnerability to a point, which is really hard for leaders. Yeah, well, that's what those say. It's almost like you have to be vulnerable where you didn't before, but I think that's also something that bridges that big gap. I mean, you're able to be vulnerable. I mean, people are able to see really truly you and I think that builds connection.

01:09:30I like the idea of behind the curtain, like we're not on, because I serve at night now in addition to the restaurant. And it's like, God, there was one table, we were out of three different things they wanted. And I was like, the third time I had to go back and say no, I was like, y'all, I am so sorry. I want to be able to give you these things. And they were like, actually, we work in supply chain. We totally get it, because it was like we didn't, we couldn't get the glass in that they, anyway. And so it was very frustrating, but they were like the best table for that to happen to because they understood it. But I think restaurants are kind of anything that is customer service facing. There's always this idea of on stage, right? Like you're on stage with these people. And as a leader, you're on stage with your staff and kind of removing that curtain of like, okay, we all went through this. We all were part of this. It affected everyone differently. There's different levels to it, but it did kind of humanize a lot of things. And it did think it allowed more grace in all, you don't have to be as performative.

01:10:33It can be more, yeah, no, I just, we truly cannot get the glass that's made in one thing in Spain and they're not exporting. And so I can't get this in for you right now, I'm so sorry. And people are like, oh yeah, yeah, that totally, I get it. And I think that's beautiful because customers were not always like that. No, go ahead. No, I do think the consumers have been far more understanding. Five years ago, if you said, sorry, I'm out of this, I'm out of this, I'm out of this, I'm out of this. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? I mean, can y'all not, you know, like. Who's running this place? Yeah, like you should just take it off the menu. Right. We'll just reprint all the menus. That's a good idea. Exactly. Yeah. So I want to ask you a question. I asked a lot of people, that's very good points, Jen. Thanks. Sorry, I'm like. I appreciate you sharing. Yeah, I do. The pain and the experience, but also the learnings from it. It's been a lot, it's been, but it's been fun. I mean, fun is not the right word. It hasn't, it's been brain expanding. I like anything you can expand your brain with.

01:11:34Yeah, and now I forgot my point, what I was gonna say. You had a big question. He had a big question. I was, I had something fun I was gonna ask about. Was it in your notebook? No, it wasn't. I've never seen him have a notebook on hand with a pen, like ready to. I studied, but I had some quotes I wanted to have. I wanted to ask you about specifically. I appreciate you picking on me on that. Brandon loves like, like he loves little things that he can, he just loves that. So this has been great for him. I, you know, I love talking about, I love talking to people who are passionate, you know, who are passionate about anything. I just, I just, you know, somebody, there's nothing worse than seeing somebody in a restaurant who walks around and looks sullen. Is that the right word to use? But you just walk around and they walk slowly and they look like they're unhappy. Just like walking around like, I'm just here to do a job. Just get your damn water, like go home. Why are you here? Shouldn't you be eating at home? Like, that drives me crazy.

01:12:34I'm like, this is such a fun job. Like just being passionate, passionate anything that you do to me. I don't care what it is. If you're doing, if you're washing dishes or if you're doing whatever, like do it to the, like just do it, man. Well, if you're not doing it, if that's not what, then go do something else. Find it. I mean, find your thing. You know, I, again, I consider myself really blessed in lots of ways, obviously, you know, with wife and family and particularly a wife that puts up with me and what comes with the job. But, you know, I, people always talk about, you know, you've got these stores and people and challenges. And I always say, man, I'm having the time of my life. This is the best I've ever been in, and I've never not enjoyed what I've done. This is the best. And so I'm, you know, part of me as I'm worried about it, it's, you know, it's gonna have a tail on, it's gonna kind of edge out. But, you know, it's exciting.

01:13:36I love getting up and I love coming to work and I love, I get up early in the morning, you know, my wife says, turn off your iPad. Keeping me awake over there. Because it's still dark outside. But why are you replying to emails at 11.57 at night? You texted me at 3 a.m. the other day. I did? Yes. Good for him. Did I really? Yes. She said, hey, I just woke up and it happened. I was like, my phone? I had no idea. Okay. But you had a thought. I had a thought. You had a thought at 3 a.m. You wanted to share it with her. I do that sometimes. You never know when those thoughts are gonna happen. No, it's fine. My phone's on sleep mode, but you're in my favorites. So you come through. Oh, good. Oh, we'll take me out of that. No. I encourage you to know that you're in her favorites. Yes. Oh, we're, yeah. She's in my favorites too. But I do think that's, you know, I think that's the really key though is, you know, the energy comes from enjoyment and kind of that chariot to fire.

01:14:37I feel God's pleasure when I run. I think if you're in that point where you're doing what you're supposed to be doing and you're with the people you're supposed to be doing it with, it's just magical and so uplifting and so, you know, just again, the energy that comes from that. And so, you know, that's really been a fun part for me in this job is, you know, as challenging as it was when I got there and as challenging as it was through COVID, I'm having a blast. I can tell. This is unrelated to restaurants, but you've spoken about your wife a little bit and you were kind of glowing about her. How long have you all been married? We have been married the 19 years in April. We've been together 21. Wow. She is amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. You just said your children are not at home. You have adult children. I have adult children. I have a 42 year old daughter who just got married in January. Cool.

01:15:37On this one, she's not biologic in my daughter, but she asked for Father's Day if I would adopt her last year. So she made me cry. Now she's making me cry again. And then in January, when she got married, she asked if I would officiate the wedding. And so our 14 year old grandson walked her down the aisle and she married a wonderful man and who has a son. And it was a fabulous experience and to see them and see their love and having spent time with them, I'm excited for her and them as a family. Yeah, that's sweet. Yeah, but my wife is quite extraordinary and I'm very blessed that, again, she loves me and puts up with me because I always tell people, I'm not easy. Thank you. And by the way, I'm known for crying. In fact, at the wedding, as they got up the aisle, they got married at a little wine room in Temecula. Peltzer Winery, they did a great job for us.

01:16:39But as I got there, I said, look, I'm gonna cry to the audience. I'm gonna cry. I'm not ashamed of it because this is very emotional for me. And if y'all are okay with that, I'm sorry. I'm gonna cry. And I held it together pretty well and it was exciting. And then I have two sons that are 39 and 35. Wow, lovely. I cry a lot too now. It's okay. I cry at commercials. I'll see a commercial and I'll be sitting there. My wife knows. She'll look at me like, are you crying? Are you crying? I'm like, I'm fine, just stop, stop. And I'll do that. But since I've stopped drinking, I'm overcome with emotion sometimes. And it's gratitude or if it's just passion that just flows out and it's like, okay, that's me, I'm sorry. This is where I'm at. Yeah, I've always been a crier, but my husband is also sober. And same thing, once he got sober, it's like the floodgates are like, this is us. He's a passionate dude too, he's fantastic.

01:17:39That could be a good book. How you process your emotions, being sober. Brene Brown just wrote that book, Atlas of the Heart. Okay. It's a Brene Brown, are you familiar with her? No. Brandon's a fan boy for her. Yeah, I'm a big Brene Brown fan. And John Miller, have you read the question behind the question? No. Oh, we're gonna change O'Charlie's forever. Forever, we're gonna change it forever. Got a good reading list now. What are some books that you would recommend to our listeners if you're... Well, I like Doing What Matters Most. I think that was really instructive. There's another one about getting outside your comfort zone. I don't remember the exact title, but really challenging yourself to get in an uncomfortable position, doing something that doesn't necessarily seem what you think you're supposed to do, what you've been told, by and large, that you're supposed to be doing, or how you're supposed to be doing it.

01:18:41And so I think those are a couple that really have impacted me kind of in the journey of really understanding. Because you get kind of, again, I think a lot of us get pigeonholed or kind of told this is your path, this is how you should be. And for me, my dad was in the military, so that was a path I could have chosen. I didn't. I still respect and we honor, through a number of ways, those who serve our country and those who've lost their lives serving the country. But for me, then it was business. And I started off as an accountant and an auditor. Really? Yes. That's not my gig at all. By the way, it wasn't mine either. Oh, there you go. By the way, you're finding some of that do-what-you-love things. I did what I didn't love and it was not fun. Yeah, and so I think, again, the encouragement I would have for folks is really to find what you love. And if whatever you're doing isn't really something that you're passionate about and that you, like you said, you want to jump out of the sheets and go.

01:19:50Find somebody to talk to about that and find a friend and find a mentor. I had a great mentor. In the early eight, early nineties. And I would, you know, she was just an incredible gift in my life because she would sit and say, so, what are you thinking about right now? Talking to you? No, but she would press me and push me. But ultimately it was about finding what it was I needed to be doing. And it wasn't what I was doing at that moment. Which was great. Yeah. So, you know, I think, you know, again, COVID isolated us to a point. Social media sort of filled in some gaps, which was interesting. All the TikTok stuff and, you know, bizarre stuff that comes out. But I love TikTok. Me too. It is a, it's just a rabbit's hole. You just get sucked in. Do you have TikTok? I do have it.

01:20:51You don't post on it? No. I don't either. It's very voyeuristic for me. Yeah, I don't post. But I think that would be the encouragement. You know, books are great. And you learn some fun things. Yeah. And they impact you. But I think the other, the balance to that is to find people in your life who can be encouraging, but also ask some tough questions about, you know, why are you doing that? Are you really sure that's your path? And so that's been, again, a benefit and a blessing that I've had to have those kind of folks in my life. I love it. Well, Craig, we've kept you well farther than we typically would. You've been so gracious with your time and telling us all about what you're doing, how you did during COVID. I could talk to you for 10 more hours. I really could. We should do this again. I always say this, but we gotta do this again. I'd be glad to. I would love to have you back again. We'll go down a whole nother rabbit trail. I would love that. Absolutely.

01:21:51Well, I appreciate y'all asking and I appreciate your commitment to the industry and to folks in general to navigate life. Well, thank you very much. The last thing, the final thing, we have one more ask of you. The final, we ask all of our guests to take us out, right? So we're gonna sign off and say thank you. But Craig, whatever you wanna say, for as long as you wanna say it, whatever you got, the floor is yours. You're speaking to the Nashville restaurant community. Well, first of all, thanks for you being in the restaurant community. I think it's, again, it's an amazing business to be in. I'm blessed to be part of it. It's not always easy, but I think by and large, it's a lot of fun. And so I know that each one of you that are not part of Oak Charlie's are a competitor and God bless you and I hope your business does well. I was reading this morning that restaurants are gaining market share against grocery stores. We're not quite back to where we were, but we're gaining and we're gaining a lot in the last couple of months. So for all of us, let's keep doing that. I'm not mad at grocery stores.

01:22:52I just want people to eat out or eat with Oak Charlie's. But even the other restaurants, I think it's kind of an interesting competition, but ultimately we're all pulling for each other because we know how important this is and the impact we have in people's lives by doing what we do. So thanks for bringing that up. But ultimately, again, I would hope anybody that would listen would be encouraged that this is a fun business and we have an opportunity to impact lives in a positive way, both for our guests and our team members. And so as leaders, I hope we all embrace it. I certainly do and I look forward to taking y'all out. Craig Barber, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Wonderful rest of your day. Alrighty. Yes, sir. Craig Barber, how was that? You know, I think that I have a perception about Oak Charlie's and I have a perception about 99 Restaurants, not really before that, not really like really a perception about 99 Restaurants, but just that style of restaurant I had a perception of and after talking to him, I think my perception has changed.

01:24:01I think there's a lot on his shoulders. There's a lot of things that somebody who leads a company that size has to deal with. And I think we can all put people like that in a box and say, oh, well, they have to do this, they have to do that. Man, they're just like you and me, just like you and me, but he's got 254 restaurants and he's got an amazing leadership team. Like, I don't know, it's just fascinating to me talking to people like that. And the guy cried three times in the interview, three separate occasions. I got up in the middle of the interview and went and got him a Kleenex. The passion that that man has was unparalleled. I mean, that's how you get there. His passion for his people, his passion for others, his spirit of service. You just imagine being on that guy's team that you stay busy and you stay motivated. So I don't know, I enjoyed it. I would love to know what you think about it.

01:25:02So when I post this out there on the socials, let me know your thoughts, check it out, listen to it. And I'm always looking for recommendations. If you guys have recommendations or know anybody kind of like Greg Barber, I would love to talk to him. So send them over to Brandon at NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. And guys, it's Monday, so I hope that you go out there and just kick the shit out of this week. Just get out there and make it happen. You all know Monday's my favorite day. We have the entire rest of the week to get out there and make it happen. Make this week count. Make this Monday yours. Go out there and make it happen. And if you're listening on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, doesn't matter, whatever day it is, you're on the right side of the earth today. You're up, you're alive, go out there, make it happen. And whatever you do, please, please, please be safe because I love you guys, bye.