Will Guidara

00:00Are you a hospitality worker looking to purchase a new home? Don't settle for just any realtor. Use someone who understands your industry. Our real estate partner, John Ho, has a history in hospitality and is now able to help our industry through the home buying process. Along with his partner at Foundation Mortgage, they have the products and intimate knowledge of the hospitality industry to assist you in identifying properties to purchase and get you qualified for financing. Too often in our industry, we've been fed lies about the path to home ownership. The truth is, you don't need great credit scores. You don't need tens of thousands of dollars for a down payment and you certainly don't need two years of employment at one job. Don't take chances with the one of the most significant purchases of your life. Trust people who understand the needs of hospitality workers. A team who is non-judgmental and is flexible enough to accommodate any hospitality schedule. And for you managers and executives listening out there, reach out to them to inquire for free information you can pass along to your staff. Contact them today to start your home buying journey with the right team.

01:03John Ho at 615-483-0315 or you can follow him on Instagram at housepetality. Amanda Gardner with Foundation Mortgage is 865-230-1031. Find her on Instagram at mortgageamanda. Do you provide your team with health insurance? If you work for a restaurant right now that doesn't offer health insurance, do you need health insurance? Because Dan Maher over at Southern Health Insurance wants to change that. If you're a local restaurant and you just, you really want to offer health insurance, there are so many benefits. Improved employee retention, you have happier team members, which means longer tenures and less training time. Smoother shifts make everyone's lives easier, meaning happier employees are more likely to stick around. When employees take care of their health, they're less likely to take sick days. This means reduction in lost productivity and revenue for your business. If you were sick days, wouldn't that be great? You have improved morale, a healthy workplace with opportunities for growth is a happy workplace.

02:04Encouraging your team's wellbeing will result in higher morale and better work performance. Guys, all of these things, Dan offers health insurance. He offers visual insurance and dental, as well as life insurance. And guys, if you're out there and the marketplace is just too tough to navigate, Dan can answer any question that you may have. Any business, if you're a small business, it doesn't have to be a restaurant, you need to call Southern Health Insurance, 832-816-8602. If you prefer to email, you can email dan at southernhealthins.com. 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.

03:05My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. We will be joined shortly with Caroline Galzin, our amazing co-host, as we interview Will Gaudera. Will is the former owner of Eleven Madison Park and bestselling author of the book, Unreasonable Hospitality. And this was the Brandon's book club book for last month. This month we are reading Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. We'd love for you to join us for that. But in this episode, this book changed my life. This is one of those books that really made me think deep inside about how I do a lot of things. And you know, the biggest thing about this book is just hospitality. You don't have to be in the hospitality industry to provide hospitality and kindness and care and just understanding is so powerful.

04:08And I loved in this interview because he is, he's so thoughtful. You can kind of hear we ask a question then he takes a second, he thinks about it and then he answers and he's just, he's everything you'd think from reading the book who he is. Like he does all the things you think he would do. And it's just, I don't know, it's out of control. I had so much fun doing this interview and I can't wait to share it. I do wanna tell you guys, we've got next week, we are talking with Alex Ballou who just won Hell's Kitchen. He is a local Murfreesboro guy and he was on our show in April of 2020. If you have not heard that episode, go back and listen to the episode in April of 2020. This is right at the beginning of the pandemic and it's an intriguing interview. You hear on the show, he says he lost his restaurant due to the pandemic and a lot of the conversation that you're gonna hear in our first interview was around that and this next interview, he's gonna go into what it's like since he's been on the show, why he went on the show, how long ago the show was filmed.

05:13We have so many questions around just the details around a reality television show like that and fun conversation, a lot of fun. I cannot wait to bring that episode to you guys out there. We recorded this interview on my birthday last week and this was one of the best birthday presents I could have ever gotten. Thank you everybody who reached out, said some kind words. It was truly a humbling day for me. So much fun, so much love and it just means the world. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast, I would love for you to go wherever you listen to podcasts, hit that follow, the subscribe button and go follow us on Instagram at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio. I am at Brandon underscore NRR and then you can follow Caroline also at Galsin Gal and that's a way to keep it today. This episode's coming out on Sunday. We released new episodes on Monday but a lot of times I'll put them out the day before just cause that's when I get them done and you get notifications when these episodes come out.

06:18You can be the first one to hear what's going on out there and man, we've got some amazing episodes coming up. Levi Reigns who is the CDC over at Karne Mare and the Dutch is coming on also. We have another roundup coming up soon. Just lots of cool stuff you should be in the know. So follow us where you can follow us and thank you for listening. We are so excited to bring this episode with Will Gadara to you right now. We are super excited today to welcome in Will Gadara. Will is the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, bestselling author of Unreasonable Hospitality as well as the former owner of Eleven Madison Park. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, Will. Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here. I just, I want to go on record with saying that I think I'm going to be the first one to hear what's going on and I'm super excited to be here. I just, I want to go on record with saying that I think Nashville is without question, this is not pandering.

07:18This is a genuine comment. One of my favorite restaurant cities in the country. One of my favorite cities in the country, full stop. Oh, that's awesome to hear. What, do you have some favorites in Nashville? I mean, so I think that Audrey is the best restaurant in America right now. I think that they are doing, and I haven't been upstairs yet. I only had the meal downstairs. Did you go upstairs though to see it? I got the whole tour. Okay. This was early days. And by the way, I was there during, it wasn't even like open yet. This was during friends and family and it was already just crushing it. Like I've always been a fan of Sean's cooking and I believe that the cheeseburger at Husk back in the day was one of my favorite cheeseburgers on the planet, but there's something that feels so fully integrated about that restaurant that, yeah, I still think about that meal often.

08:21I feel like he's very intentional with a lot of the things and upstairs with all of the little, the library and the studio and then the kind of like the break room that has like the shag carpet and the things that are for the staff. If you need a moment, go upstairs. There's noise canceling headphones. Take five minutes and just calm down kind of a thing. I think a lot of that is so incredibly thoughtful and we need more of it. You know, there's this book called Second Mountain by David Brooks, which if you don't have time to read an entire book, there's an op-ed that he wrote in the New York Times called The Moral Perils of Meritocracy, which is basically a summary of the book. And that term Second Mountain is all about how you can accomplish extraordinary things on your first mountain and then life, you know, happens. And for whatever reason, whether you decided to climb down off it or whether you got knocked off it or whatever the case may be, it's most often when you climb your second mountain that you find like the most profound fulfillment.

09:36And I feel like that place is Sean's second mountain. And it was cool to be able to step inside a world that he created and just exist there for a while because it's a pretty cool world. Is Unreasonable Hospitality your second mountain? No, I think Unreasonable Hospitality is like the, we're just gonna be jumping from one metaphor to another. It's okay. Unreasonable Hospitality is the bridge between verses for me. Very nice. I like that. Do you, what is your, do you know what your next mountain is? My next question is, I introduced you as author and former owner. What are you doing today? It's fun or funny rather. I sold my company at the end of 19, very beginning of 20th before COVID.

10:39What timing? Yeah, and it was not due to some prescient knowledge of the world's trending vacation. But the moment I sold it, and I've learned through spending time with a lot of fascinating people over the course of the last three years that this is not uncommon. I had like this existential identity crisis. Where, and I think this is common when you have spent so much time doing something and you're reasonably celebrated for the work that you've done doing that thing. Where people start to confuse who they are with what they do. And so the moment I sold it, I almost like frantically said, wait, what did I just do? Okay, I need to, I need restaurants. I was a restaurateur without a restaurant and started frantically putting together an amazing team and raising a bunch of money. And when COVID started, I was a week away from signing three restaurant leases and a corporate office lease in New York City.

11:40And I had a couple, like all three restaurants would have been awesome. And then COVID started and I came up to our house in the country, like many people for what I thought was going to be a few weeks. And then a few weeks turned into a few months and you know the drill. Ultimately making the choice to kind of let those plans just go. I think that during COVID a lot of people in spite of whatever financial loss or loss of life that people suffered in there as individuals or within their community, most people can point to one thing about that experience that they're grateful for. Something they learned about themselves or the people around them. It was perhaps most eloquently put by a friend of mine, you know, in the beginning of COVID when you'd have those Zooms with friends and family just because you were desperate to feel connected to someone, anyone. And it was never a good day.

12:40It's like what we were supposed to do at that time. I started a podcast. Oh, that's true. And here we are. I had a lot of Zooms. Well, I was on a Zoom and on that Zoom were my friends from Canlis Restaurant in Seattle, which is currently run by the two younger brothers, Mark and Brian. And the older brother who's a pastor in Washington was on the Zoom and he was sharing this prayer that an older woman said in his church, I pray that the things we're being forced to do today are things that we choose to do tomorrow. Like how can we hold on to the lessons of this time and bring them forward into our life once some amount of normalcy is restored? I said that because I think there's a lot of those things that if people approach life with enough intention, they can bring lessons out of that shared experience with them. For me, the gift that COVID gave me was that it gave me the grace and the space to not just run back and do the things that I always had done, but to choose what I wanted to do next.

13:45And so the book was kind of the half step. Okay, let me process my life before this and let me also seize on this space as an opportunity to put language to all the things that I understand intuitively such that I can not only share the lessons I've learned with as many people as possible, but also help me articulate them more effectively as I go forward. So this is a very long answer to what could have been a short answer. I'm hanging on every word. One of the things I've always said to my teams is that to be successful at anything, you need to take the time to articulate why the work matters. What is the impact you are having on other people? Because in the hard days, it's impossible to find gas in the tank if you don't believe that your work can make a difference. And I love hospitality because I believe in my restaurants, alongside my team, I have the ability to help people celebrate some of the most important moments of their life or to give them the grace if only for a few hours to forget about their most difficult ones, to inspire people to be better versions of themselves through our attention to detail or we can just make the world a nicer place by being really nice to everyone that walks through our doors.

15:10I've always believed that we can create these little magical worlds in a world in desperate need of more magic. In my last life, I got to do that for people over the course of a few hours. And I'm pretty sure that my second mountain will revolve around that same idea, but where I can create a world where I can invite people in for a few days. That's what I'm dreaming about now. Hmm. Wow. That's fascinating and interesting. And I'll leave it kind of amorphous there at this point. I love that. No, I think that's me. I can't wait to see what that turns into being. I bet that's gonna be something amazing. I did not with intention try to spend the first 12 minutes of this podcast throwing you completely off your rhythm, but now here we are. We're just hanging. No, this is beautiful.

16:11What are the things when that prayer happened where that we, you know, when she said, I want you to remember these moments and carry it through, and I'm paraphrasing, what are the things that you learned through the pandemic? Like you yourself, you said you went into your country house. What are the things that you're taking with you going forward to kind of manifest that prayer? Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. You know, if you talk to anyone that's ever worked for me, one of the things they'll say I do a lot in pre-meal meetings is use like dating or parenting or marriage or friendship metaphors to help explain how we should be approaching and pursuing relationships at work. I've for a long time tried to use lessons from life to help me be better at work.

17:14And I actually think that during this last season, it's worked in reverse. One of the things I talk about all the time, if you want to create a culture of hospitality is you need to create the conditions where everyone on the team is able to be present with the people they're serving. And I understand that's like way overused these days, but when I say be present, what I mean is they care so much about the people you're with, you stop caring about all the things you need to do. I think so often we all have such long to-do lists. By the way, that applies to an executive or a server that we aren't able to slow down for long enough to actually listen to the people around us, the things they're saying and all the things they're not saying. I think during COVID, I finally allowed myself to be more present in life. I'm one of these people that if I don't have a clean inbox, I have an inability to be present, right?

18:22I need to know that that part of my life has tended to in order to just be with my family or my friends. And COVID made me much, much, much better at that where I'm fine ignoring one part of my life to be better at pursuing the other part of my life. And so I think that's a big part of it, right? Well, I think you said in the book, put your oxygen mask on first before helping others. I mean, that's one of the things I took out of there. And I think that's gonna happen right now in the hospitality industry is I think that we all took this little break, right? Which for a lot of business owners wasn't a break because they're trying to figure out what the hell they're gonna do. And then you have all this time to be at home and ideate and think of all these amazing ideas. Then you have to go put them into action. And then there's a staffing, you know, we lost lab bill. There's this big exodus of people that are leaving this industry for other industries.

19:23And now I think we're seeing some of those people come back now. But everybody's just been hustling so hard. And I think that we're gonna have a point here real soon where people look in the mirror and go, what the hell? Like I have just, I don't even know what happened. And I think that put your oxygen, I've used that reference of the past few days, like five times where somebody is so concerned about something else that's affecting them. And I said, stop, take care of yourself first. Figure out exactly what's going on with you so that you can be the best version of you to help somebody else. Because you helping somebody else while you're incredibly stressed isn't really helping them. And it certainly isn't helping you. And I thought that was a really good part of the book that I kind of took very to heart because I feel like I'm in that same situation. And I was gonna ask you, like, I'd love for you to kind of talk about that more in context of what you had, but I think that you just now referenced it. Yeah, I think indirectly, no, for sure.

20:26I think they go together very, very well. I think when I, honestly, for me filling my oxygen mask, actually, or putting on my oxygen mask or filling my gas tank or refilling my pitcher, I have a lot of metaphors to describe the same thing because it's that important to me. And for me, that actually is time alone. My oxygen mask gets put on when I binge watch bad TV and order Chinese food. My wife's oxygen mask gets put on when she goes for a run or a hike and she's on one now. But inevitably, I guess also my oxygen mask gets put on when I am genuinely and sincerely in community with others, and so, yeah, I think that it is that. Being able to slow down in life enough to be present with the people that I love, and that's the reality, right? During COVID, we spent time in person with the people that we really loved more than anyone because outside of going to work, we weren't going out to cocktail parties with a bunch of strangers.

21:37We were only, there was a trust that needed to exist in order to justify time spent with others. Yeah, I think that you kind of touched on something around that too, which is the pandemic kind of shined a light on us having options and choices that maybe we didn't realize that we had because everything is just so go, go, go, and we get so caught up in that rat race, particularly in the restaurant industry, something that Breana and I have talked about a lot, and we talked about during the pandemic was, I was so caught up in the day-to-day of feeling so mired in the day-to-day operations of the restaurant that even when I had those moments of trying to press pause and enjoy myself, I wasn't enjoying myself. And the pandemic really allowed me to set boundaries, I think with myself around, like you said, the email inbox, or I have to give myself that time to recharge, and I found myself so many times over the last several years making that boundary with myself again, because it's so easy to get back into those habits that you were before.

22:46Do you find that your life now kind of not being in the day-to-day of restaurants, does that feel strange or are you used to it now of just, oh, my life is much more relaxed than it used to be? I don't have to work service tonight. Nobody's calling out that I have to cover for when I had dinner plans somewhere else. I mean, yes, the strangeness feeling has subsided, right? I find myself actually very, very busy again, just in different ways. But for a while it was definitely strange. I think anytime anything materially foundational in our lives changes, there's a learning curve to actually understand that new normal. But you love the edge of chaos. You love that, you love the chaos of it. Do you find that other places now? Well, I think you can create chaos in any situation if you try hard enough.

23:50I mean, when I put out the book, my life was profound chaos for about three months. It's just in a different way. And I think that the thing that I believe I have in common with the other people who do what we do for a living is that there's just this desire to push whatever you're doing. You want to try to just get a little bit better at it every single day. And I think that, okay, the restaurant business is chaotic, but you don't, it doesn't need to be chaotic. You could just run a simple little thing and keep it simple. But I believe that it's high achievers that add the chaos because there's never a moment where people are fully content with what they have. We always want to push and get better and improve and challenge ourselves and those around us. And that's why I think in the absence of chaos, does it mean that you've figured it out or does it mean that you're no longer pushing hard enough?

24:53I don't think things should always be chaotic. In fact, I like to plan the cadence of my years such that I push, push, push. And I'm like, okay, if you're in fifth gear constantly, you're going to burn out a car, right? You need to understand how to go up and down. But so yes, even though I'm not running a restaurant right now, the other things I'm doing have managed to produce plenty of chaos on their own. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've kind of over the last couple of years transitioned out of working service all the time to a much more work from home type of role doing marketing and events and all of that sort of thing. But thinking, oh, as soon as I don't have to work service every night, my life is going to get so much calmer and so much more relaxed. And I find that I'm somehow busier than I've ever been. So we do find ways to I think invite that into our lives. I love it. When you were speaking the high performers and constantly creating the chaos and wanting more, I'm never just okay.

25:55Once we hit something, I'm like, well, let's, and I love, I've said when I read the book, it was like somebody was in my head and they were writing out all of these thoughts. And I love the fact the way the book read because I'm like, this is, we have a restaurant here in town and it's in a 7,500 square foot mansion. It was built in 1942. It's beautiful. And it was a farm, it was a farm, but it was a horse farm. But the actual, you pull up in these huge pillars and it's just this huge house. And you walk in and each room is custom. And it's, when you described 11 Madison Park, I was like, that's Maribor. That's our restaurant. I mean, and it's amazing. And every ounce of potential to create an incredibly memorable experience in this building exists. It's not just a little restaurant in a strip mall that we think is really special. Like it's an entire experience. And we do a bunch of private events and parties and weddings and all of these things. And we have all this information on our guests before going in.

26:57And my brain is going, well, if we don't have, we need a Dreamweaver like tomorrow. I mean, we need, this is, we have all of the recipe, the ingredients to make something really amazing. And this is our roadmap, this, what they did. And it wasn't just, hey, look, let's get from being a two-star to a three-star. Once we're a three-star, let's go to four-star and then let's shoot for the best restaurant in the world. And it's never just, oh, look, we did it. We're done. You're constantly pushing. And I feel like that's something that I kind of struggle with sometimes because I want to make sure everybody that's on my team is with me on that. Because I don't want this to be some big goal that I want to accomplish that nobody else does. And I liked how you led your team there. And it was the- Go ahead. I want to say two things real quick. Hey, you'll never accomplish it if no one else does. 100%. Unless everyone on the team is fired up and excited to go along for the ride, then it's just a kind of a fool's errand where one person ends up holding the bag.

27:58But I think given the right team of people, if that is what they want to accomplish, that is actually the way to make the work fulfilling. It's kind of one of my whole things that I think is so powerful about unreasonable hospitality. And bear with me, and I'll land the plane on this. But okay, everyone's struggling with staffing right now. They're struggling because, yeah, a lot of people left the industry because they realized that they weren't fulfilled by it. And the way that most people are reacting right now is to give people a bit more time off or pay people a bit more money. Both of which are important things, right? A bit more work-life balance and the ability to earn a living wage. Those are very important. But those two things alone are insufficient because what we need to do in order to get the best and brightest people back into our world is to make the work more fulfilling.

29:10The whole idea of a Dreamweaver, it's a beautiful way to make the guest happier for sure. It's also a beautiful way to increase your bottom line. And I really believe that it does require an investment, but I believe the return on that investment is although difficult to measure so vast, it's incalculable. But I believe the most important impact is the one it has on the team. Because when you create a culture of unreasonable hospitality, when you give your team not only the permission, but the resources to come up with their own ideas and make those ideas a part of the experience they're serving to their guests, you result in an environment where they are no longer just serving plates of food that someone else had created. They are imbuing the experience with their own creativity. There's this guy, the retired naval officer, who I quote in the book, who says that in most companies, the people at the top have all the authority and none of the information.

30:12The people on the frontline have all the information and none of the authority. Unreasonable hospitality helps bridge that gap. And in doing so gives people agency. And I think it's such an important thing to give because I've never met a single person who is not more fulfilled and energized by the work than once they have the ability to actually speak into the work they're doing. But I also think it's remarkably powerful because you're also giving the gift of being able to give gifts to your team. I don't think there are any, there are few things, I don't think there are many things more energizing than seeing the look on someone's face when they receive a gift you're responsible for giving them. Right, it's selfless, but it's selfish too, right? When, I'm not sure if we were recording yet, when we were talking about the blanket. But as good as it, so for everyone at home, Brandon sent me like the most thoughtful gift because I just had a baby and he recognizes that when you have a baby, it's actually your other kids that feel the weight of the change in their world.

31:25And he sent me just a perfect gift that represents the kind of togetherness I want as a family. And it felt good for me to receive, but I'm sure it felt as good if not even better for you to see the look on my face when I received it. I think we all need to remember that better pay and more work-life balance is only two thirds of the solution. The real solution comes when you make the work more fulfilling. And if you can empower your team to bring their own creativity to the experience and to do it in a way where they feel the beautifully satisfying feeling of being able to give other people gifts or gestures of kindness, I think that is when the plan actually starts to fully come together. I think that's so interesting. And it's a point that I haven't really considered because there is so much in hospitality over the last couple of years, obviously there's been quite a cultural reckoning around how workers are treated, how workers are paid, work-life balance for our employees and kind of trying to rid some of the toxicity that we all have experienced at times in the restaurant industry.

32:46And like you said, a lot of young people are kind of jaded and don't wanna get into hospitality because of the horror stories that they've heard. How do we as a community talk about that more, about that other third, that other piece that makes people want to come work in restaurant, that makes people want to stay working for you? How can we get that as much of the conversation about as the bad stuff? I think we're doing it right now. Are we doing it? This is the conversation. We're trying. Well, and I think too, all three of us are kind of from a similar era. We're all around the same age where we came up in a different restaurant culture than the ones that people are entering today. So we're kind of, I think, experiencing both sides of it and having to get our minds around that next. And we're the leaders that are gonna lead into this next generation. And we can, I think it's important because we know what it was like and we know what we would like to see and I think it's an amazing responsibility for us to do that.

33:55Yeah. I think it's important. I mean, I've always believed that if you're passionate about something, you gotta talk about it as much as you can, not in a righteous way, but just in an impassioned way. Because I think that what gets talked about is what gets thought about. And I mean, I wrote a book about it and that's like the central thesis of the book is kind of what I was just saying, right? There's a lot of other lessons that I learned, but if I were to like point at what I believe is the most important takeaway of it, it's that. And I think it just happens to be especially relevant to what's happening right now. I love that you referenced Rory Sutherland in the book. Alchemy is our, I have Brandon's book club and Brandon's book club, The Book of the Month is Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. And it almost seems like a little bit of alchemy here because raising pay and giving more vacation time is a logic, right? You do what everybody, if you do the logical thing, you get exactly where your competition is.

34:59The alchemy there is people will stay engaged and care more when they have buy-in, when they understand that when they matter. You know, nobody wants to go to work and just punch in. I mean, some people do, but just punch in, punch out to be a cog in a machine. But if you can contribute and you don't necessarily have those massive leadership skills, whatever, but if you can come in and you can feel like you're contributing to one guest having an amazing experience or contributing to the whole because of a unique talent that you have, I think it's important to figure that out and to encourage that. We have a core value in our restaurant that's do the right thing. It's not do the right thing in the standard, steal, don't steal. The core value means we empower you to do the right thing. Even if it's the wrong thing in the moment, we want you to feel empowered. If in your mind you feel like you're doing whatever you can to make this guest a repeat guest and to make their experience great, we empower you to do it.

36:00And if it's the wrong thing, we'll talk about it afterwards, but it's okay. But we, the 95-5 rule that you had, we tell our staff, you can step out of our system at any moment you want in order to take care of the guest. It doesn't, it's not, you're not gonna get in trouble. If your heart is in it and you felt like that's what we needed to do, then it works. Then 100% go, do it. But 95% of the time we want you to stay in the system because this is how we do it. I can't just have a bunch of rogue people running around doing things. There has to be systems in place, but I really want that to be something that people feel empowered to do. And it's a little bit of that stepping outside and not doing what everybody else does. And I think that you hit on that to a degree. You've touched on, you've made it a little bit more emotional than it just being a straight, this is rule A, rule B, rule C, you gave people the autonomy to do that. And we're gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. What Chefs Want story is incredibly unique. The owner, Ron Trenier, met with a bunch of chefs in Louisville back in the early 2000s and asked them one simple question, what do you want?

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38:08And I tell you, I couldn't be more proud of this partnership. Guys, they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in Nashville for the last 36 years. Yes, they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's back door and man, is it good. You wanna know what kind of bread they make? Go check them out at charpieresbakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com. So they have over 200 types of bread. And if you're wondering, well, hey, look, it's a special recipe that I like to use that we bake it in our house and it's just, it's a kind of a pain, but we like to do it. They can take your recipe and make that bread for you without any of the hassle, the mess, the labor. They'll just deliver it right to your door every single day. It is freshly baked. They love to give you a tour of their facility. Give Erin Mosso a call. Her number is 615-319-6453. You should do it now. We are supported by Robins Insurance, offering protection you can trust.

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40:14Protection, you can trust. That's Robins. Not doing what everybody else does. And I think that you hit on that to a degree. You've touched on, you've made it a little bit more emotional than it just being a straight, this is rule A, rule B, rule C. You gave people the autonomy to do that. Because there's some gray. I mean, I think you need to embrace the gray. Hospitality is not black and white, right? There's like a lot more to it. I mean, I talk about service being black and white and hospitality being color. And that's more difficult to govern with rules, right? Like you need rules, right? You need, obviously you need rules. But I think great leadership is having the ability to let people fail and then helping them understand what they did wrong such that the next time they can do it better as opposed to like creating rules that are so stringent that they never find the boundaries. I saw Alain Ducasse speak at MAD years ago. And he said that, and this is only so relevant.

41:19Siri just came onto my computer, something that I just said, invited Siri into the conversation. He said that if they don't close any of their restaurants, it means they didn't push far enough that they played it too safe. I think like genuine hospitality, you need to take some leaps. And every once in a while, you're gonna fall flat on your face. And our role as leaders is to pick people up when they fall and try to give them the guidance such that they're less likely to fall again, but to not ever stop them from falling. Almost encourage falling. Yeah. I have a brand new manager I just hired last week. She's a young woman and she doesn't have a lot of, she has the attitude of a champion. She gets it. And she said, I said, are you a little nervous? She goes, I'm a little nervous. And I go, good. I said, nervousness is good. I said, but ask dumb questions. Ask the stupidest questions. If you don't know what PNL stands for, ask the question.

42:22If you don't know what this is. And I go, and I'm expecting you to make some mistakes. I'm expecting you to get outside your comfort level and make mistakes. I get that. Do not feel ashamed. We'll have conversations about it. It's okay. But that's how I can teach you everything I can possibly do. And you're going to have this overload of things. But until you go actually mess up because you're trying to do something great, then I can't teach you that stuff. And so do not fear that I'm going to have any kind of, I mean, don't leave the restaurant with a case of Jack Daniels and put it in the back of your car. But you know, do the right thing. There's a big difference between messing up while you're trying to do something great and then just simply messing up. Yeah, I'm like, don't make those mistakes. Well, I didn't know I was supposed to take home bottles of wine at night. But I think- You're trying to throw a great party though. You know? Mm-hmm. But no, I think that that's a hundred percent spot on. Building teams, you know, I think one of the things that really inspired me was how you built these teams and how hiring, you know, that's one of the things I've, as you introduce, this is what our goal is going to be.

43:35This is where we want to go. And you said, we want to be the best restaurant in the world. Or when you move from, you want to be a four star New York Times restaurant. How do you get everybody on board? What do you, how do you hire for that? Now I know Love Madison Park, you probably have people coming in there who are absolute pros. But do you have any kind of secret sauce when it comes down to how do you find and hire the people that have that passion? I mean, in the beginning, to be clear, we weren't, right? Hiring was very hard for us in the beginning. I mean, I, I've always believed, not always, in fact, that this took me a long time to get to. I now believe that the best way to approach hiring is just to find people that you trust, that have integrity, that want to work hard, and who you want to spend time with, and hire those people. Understand that you can teach them all the other stuff.

44:38But like, I love our business. I've been doing it since I was a little kid, right? I believe that there's an endless amount to learn and that hospitality is a craft that can be pursued. It's also not rocket science, right? We're not saving, like, we're not in an operating room or launching rockets, right? You can learn this stuff if you have an appetite to learn. And then, before they join the team, set very clear expectations for them on what you stand for, what you want to accomplish, what the work will be like. I would generally try to convince people not to take the job, because I wanted them to take it with eyes wide open. And there's nothing worse for a culture than hiring someone and two weeks later they leave, because they're not happy, right? That just has a terrible impact on the people that are still there. I've never cared about experience, with a few exceptions and a few certain positions.

45:46I just like to hire great people who seem to be jazzed about what we're trying to accomplish. But to get people fired up about the mission, that's not one and done. That's not done when you hire them and check. That's a living, breathing thing that a leader needs to do every single day they walk through the doors. I think every day, pre-meal is the most profound opportunity. If any restaurant is doing pre-meal, if any restaurant's not doing pre-meal, okay, figure it out. And if any restaurant is doing pre-meal and all they're talking about is wine by the glass change or a new dish or the fact that health insurance enrollment ends next Thursday, what a wasted opportunity. That is the time every single day that you keep people inspired to want to pursue the mission. Where you create beautiful conversations around inspiration and things you want to accomplish and why you want to accomplish them and why the work matters and why you're doing all this stuff.

46:52That's almost like the second most important part of leadership. Leaders for a very long time, all that was required, this is like Braveheart days, right? It was like you needed to be the person with the confidence and conviction to say, this is where we're going and people would follow you. Then over time, that changed. People weren't motivated to just follow someone. They wanted to understand why they were going there. Now I believe with the current workforce, people aren't even satisfied with understanding why they're going there. They want to actually have a hand in deciding how they're going to get there. But you can't skip the why. That's how you get people motivated. A, if you're passionate about something, don't be embarrassed by your passion. Scream it from the rooftops. Passion inspires passion. And then talk about why you're passionate. Talk about why you're excited to accomplish something. And then as you see people on the team infected with your passion, invite them to talk about why they're passionate.

47:52Let their passion inspire passion. But it is a daily task. Culture is a living, breathing thing. And the moment someone thinks, all right, I figured out our culture, is the moment it's about to fall apart. Wow. I just had a moment the other day. We were just talking about this morning where we had all of our entire leadership team. We had a party the other night. It was kind of a party where we brought the, we have a, we're working on a new spot. And we had every single person there. And there was a moment where I was sitting in the room and I looked back at the last four years of sitting down and individually inspiring and talking to each one of these people and seeing them all in a room, interacting, engaging, talking and laughing. I often say that nothing I work on happens tomorrow. And you're probably in the same boat.

48:53You have these ideas or you're taking an idea and then you have to implement it and then you have to get the right things going. And then finally, six months down the road, you can kind of see it. I love washing my car and mowing my yard because I get an immediate result that I get like this dopamine hit that I'm like, look at the stripes in my yard. That took me an hour. Like it's done. And I get to see it because nothing I start, I don't see it forever. But there was this moment the other night where I was sitting in the room and I was watching all these people and like four years of my life kind of went back and was flashing through individual conversations with every single one of those people. They understood the passion or they wanted it. And to see it all in that moment was like that moment right after you wash your car and you go, damn, my car looks good right now. Like it was that moment for me and it was really special. It was a, I didn't really say it, but I was like, that was a really special moment for me to see that. And I was very hopeful for a future. And it was really nice. Those are the, by the way, the moments that you just described are the kinds of moments that I missed the most about having restaurants and the ones I'm most looking forward to having again.

50:01Caroline, what are your, if you were to leave the restaurant business tomorrow, what would be the thing that you would miss the most? Me? I mean, I feel like I'm one of those people that I think it's like a Mark Cuban quote where he says, you know, I'd rather make $50,000 working for myself than 500,000 working for somebody else. And I love just being able to kind of create my own destiny. I'm someone who's only ever worked in restaurants. I've almost with very one or two small exceptions when I worked at PacSun in high school for six months, I've never done anything other than work in restaurants. So it is hard for me to imagine doing anything else, but I really think that that would be the thing I would miss the most is being able to create that experience, being able to create my own destiny, really, around what I do in hospitality.

51:02I think that I did leave indirectly. I went and worked for vendors. I ran a produce company for 11 years, and then I was a district sales manager at US Foods for several years. So I was still in the restaurants, but I didn't work at nighttime, I didn't work on the weekends. And I met a guy named Steven, I've known Steven for many years, and he always said, I knew you were a closet restaurant guy, you wanted to be back in the business. I got married and my wife said, I don't want you to work in those hours. So I got out of it to work different hours. But the thing that I missed was the chaos. I missed the ability on a Friday night when there's a lobby full of people and everybody's running that, okay, I need this over here, I need this over here, let's do it. And just that there's an endorphin rush that you get from that. And then I also miss, you know, there's a moment we have in our restaurant at Maryville where somebody's in there doing a rehearsal dinner. Okay, there's a rehearsal dinner, and the mother of the bride is, the mother of the groom is saying, giving the bride a token that says, this is from our family, this is something blue, I want you to have it, this is for your first children.

52:14And these moments that people trust us with for the rest of their lives, they're gonna remember that moment. And being there, being led into that and sharing in some of those moments, to me, I mean, call it sappy, whatever it is, but those moments are, these are lifelong memories these people are creating and we get to be a part of that and we can make it amazing and memorable, or I can just make it, here's your prime rib go. You know, like, I think it's just those opportunities to create when you don't have to. Thomas Cox, who for a long time was the General Manager of Clerages in London, which is one of my, I think one of the greatest hotels on the planet, he spoke at the welcome conference and I don't remember exactly the articulation, but he said, our goal at Clerages is to end up in people's autobiographies.

53:15That a moment they had within our walls was so significant in the context of their lives that at the end of those lives, they look back and commit them to paper that we're a part of their story. And I thought that was so cool. I don't know if that's kind of what you just said. Yeah, no, I'd not take it to that level, but that would be a really great thing to have happen, but yeah, I mean. If you have that kind of memory. That's the thing, but we can do that though. We can, those guests, you know, I've had guests, there was a guy came in not long ago, but he had a, we have a Santa Fe chicken dish we did, and they come by the table and he had taken one bite out of it. And I said, sir, is everything okay with your, with the dish? And he goes, that was fine. And I said, okay, and his daughter was with him and she goes, he just finished a round of chemo and he's just not, he thought he wanted that, but he's just not really there.

54:16And I looked at him and I said, well, what do you feel like? If this wasn't it, like, what do you feel like? And he goes, I don't know. I go, look, I got a full kitchen. I got all kinds of ingredients. If you want a bowl of vanilla ice cream, if you want this, whatever you want, I can make that. And he looked at me and his eyes went, he goes, I'll have a bowl of vanilla ice cream. And I said, you got it. And I went back and I made him a vanilla ice cream and I brought it back to the table and I came back to check on him, you know, five minutes later, how was it? And he was crying. The guy was literally crying. He goes, nobody has ever treated me that way. They just look and go, oh, you didn't like my food and they leave. And his daughter was like, that was the most special thing. That's the kind of stuff I think I'd miss. That ability, that's the magic I think you talked about, that we all have an ability and a responsibility to create magic. And you can go do that. And those are the moments I think that you wanna capitalize on every single time that you see them because that's what brings me back.

55:19It's that golf shot that lands four feet from the hole after you've been slicing them into the woods all day long that goes, how are we gonna do this again tomorrow? That was fantastic. No matter what the day is, that little moment right there, no matter what happens that day, that moment, it makes me hungry to come back tomorrow. Yeah, I love that. I believe it. I love that. I feel like, you know, kind of we were talking earlier about the change and the shift in restaurant culture. And a conversation I have a lot with a friend of mine who's a chef is, you know, some of the experiences that we had as young people coming up in the industry that are now looked upon as bad things or negative experiences, you know, free stages or, you know, maybe somebody yelled at you or maybe the pressure that was constantly on you is not sustainable and not healthy. And we kind of debate, you know, was that such a bad experience? You know, certainly it's not the way that things are done now and on paper, it's not the way things should be done. But I do feel like kind of talking about some of that, that magic of working in hospitality, to me feels a little bit lost in the culture today just because, I don't know, maybe that's not really a question.

56:30Maybe it's more of- I think that kind of speaks to the- If you know what I'm getting at. I think that somewhat speaks to the five love languages or the five tough love languages. Yeah. Because I thought that was a really keen insight when it comes down to dealing with today's workplace culture and there's not a one size fits all to this. And I'm not saying that it should be the way that it was. I had a manager physically shove me in the middle of a dining room one time. That shouldn't happen anymore. But I don't know, I feel that the pendulum has maybe swung so far in another direction that it seems like we're still trying to work out how to find that balance, maybe. I think it's one of the great tragedies of how culture has evolved. That people think that what right looks like now is spending all of your time focusing on praise.

57:31That that is the best way to support your people. And I actually could not disagree more strongly with that. I think praise is so important. But if praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. If you are not willing to take yourself outside of your comfort zone and criticize the people that work for you in addition to praising them, then you're never gonna be having the hard conversations that help them get better. Now that said, to Brandon's point about the tough love languages, in the same way that we've gotten more innovative and creative and more intentional about all the different things we do in our businesses, we also need to get more intentional and creative and innovative in how we pursue critical feedback, which is yes, obviously shouting at someone and pushing them like, that's not right. It was never right, but now we know it's not right. But that doesn't mean that just because that's not right, we should stop criticizing people because it means we're also no longer investing in them.

58:35We just need to recognize that in the same way that the most gracious hospitality is one size fits one, so is criticism. You need to be spending enough time getting to know your people to understand what will land, what will they be able to hear? What do they need from you in order to hear? But if you're not investing in your team through celebrating the way they do something well, but also through holding them accountable when they fall short, I don't think you're actually playing your entire role as a boss. You're not helping them to improve, and that needs to be a part of the promise. The promise needs to be, come here. We have a great place. There's awesome people. You'll be fulfilled. We're gonna give you empowerment. It's all gonna be awesome. You're gonna make a living wage. You're gonna be able to pay your bills. And by the way, when you one day leave this place, you will be better for having spent the time here. And in the absence of creating a culture where feedback is normalized, both positive and constructive, I don't think any leader has the capacity to make and fulfill that last promise.

59:42Yeah, my husband is a chef, and he'll say to our cooks sometimes, he'll say, hey, listen, you're not gonna work here forever, and I need to make sure that the next place that you work, when you say that the last place you worked was here, that you brought some good skills and good habits into that next place. Yeah. It's a true story. I think that one of my proudest things is this new restaurant. We've hired a leadership team for it, and I didn't hire one person outside of the company. Every single person, and I have a leadership development team that we meet once a month. They just read, we do a book every month. They just read this new book, Unreasonable Hospitality, which my entire leadership team has now read. And we're not all on the same page yet. I think we're pretty damn close, but we're not 100% there in execution every day. There's a constant reminder that, hey, that was an opportunity we missed.

01:00:44Thank you for having everyone read that. That's very honoring. I appreciate it. Well, like I said, it's been rolling around in mine, and Stephen's mind, Stephen's are the owner of our restaurants. It's been rolling around in our minds, this is it, and this is almost like the playbook. There's so many good moments. I'm gonna go back to the book for a second. I'm gonna change my train of thought, because I thought there was a turning point with you guys and what you were doing. And by the way, when you got your four star, when I'm driving in my car listening, and when you guys got the four star and the guy in the restaurant is like, four stars! I had like tears coming out of my eyes, okay? I'm like that sappy, I'm terrible. I'm like, hell yeah, man, they did it! And I'm in my car and I literally have like, my eyes are welling up because I'm just like, I know, I felt it. I felt what that would be like in my restaurant. I read that entire book, envisioning it at this restaurant. And it was an amazing moment. But in, I think it was 2007, Rising Star, James Beard, Daniel lost, and you guys were there, you're sure he's gonna win, David Chang wins, and he loses.

01:01:59The way that you guys responded to that, I thought was a major moment to build your team. And I thought that dealing with the moments where you fail and how you lead through those moments are some of the most important parts in a leader's journey. When building a team and understanding what the goal is, would you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. After he lost, I was there, I think, it's easy to be a good partner to someone in the good times, it's more difficult to be a good partner to someone in the bad times. And so I was, you can either mourn the loss of something or you can celebrate all of the reasons why you were even in a place to lose in the first place. And I think during those moments where, okay, it was Daniel that was nominated for the award, but it was our entire team, right?

01:03:03There's no individual, right? Sometimes it's someone's name on a plaque, but that's an entire team of people that works hard for any of these things. And everyone lost. And I think in those difficult moments, that's when you actually need to bring people together, that's when you need to hold them close, not dissimilar to when like your kid is crying. It's not like, all right, well, I'm in a bad mood, I'm going home. No, you hold your kid. In the book, I talk about one of our regulars who I will forever remember this quote. We're talking about bottles of wine. And he goes, I don't drink my bottles of wine on my best days. My best bottles of wine on my best days, I drink my best bottles of wine on my worst days. My best days are already great. I don't need a great bottle of wine. It's the worst day that I need a good bottle of wine. I would encourage you the book, The Culture Code, which I read recently. It kind of goes through a bunch of different companies.

01:04:07And my favorite part is where he talks about Popovich and the culture at the San Antonio Spurs. And it tells a similar story about this kind of thing. And you guys should read it. It'll be very inspiring, but it talks about like, in moments of loss, that's the time to bring your team together, to like give them the space and the grace to fully feel the weight of their disappointment, but to do it together. Because adversity is a terrible thing to waste. And the way that a team can fully come together and bond, the way that a group of people can cease being a collection of individuals and come together as a team, there's just as much profound opportunity to do that, if not more profound opportunity to do that in the hard moments as there are in the good ones. We're gonna take this opportunity to take one more quick break before we conclude with Will Godera. Hey, this is Jason Ellis with Nashville Super Source.

01:05:08We're so proud to be a sponsor for Nashville Restaurant Radio. We would love the opportunity to discuss your chemical and dish machine program with you. If you have any needs or any questions about your current program, opening a new restaurant, or just need a double set of eyes on that, we'd love the opportunity to help you with that. My number is 770-337-1143. We don't do any contracts, no minimums, weekly service to make sure that all your equipment is functioning properly. Make sure you have everything that you need. Again, my name is Jason Ellis, 770-337-1143. When you hear that sound, it's probably too late. You need a guy. I wanna be your guy. I'm Kevin with Corson Fire and Security, and I'm a Restaurant Territory Account Manager. Do you know who's doing your inspections at your restaurant? Please reach out to me at 615-974-2932, and I'll be glad to come out and take a quick look and look at all your fire safety inspection needs.

01:06:10If you're building your restaurant, we can help with that too. As far as kitchen suppression, fire extinguishers, emergency lights, we do it all, one stop, one shop. Call Kevin at 615-974-2932. Let me be your guy, Nashville. So there's another thing, and we're getting, we don't have a ton of time left, and I wanna be respectful of your time. Speaking of time, perspective. There's a moment in the book where you said, your father says, perspective has an expiration date. Can you elaborate on some of that? Because I think that's a really interesting, it's an interesting take, and I don't wanna butcher it by trying to give a setup for it, but I really thought that was really interesting. Well, no, I think it's especially applicable when you say that every one of the people going over to open this new restaurant have all been grown from within. My dad would always have me journal a ton growing up, especially as I started going through my career when I was a busboy, he wanted me to journal a lot when I was a host, he wanted me to journal a lot as a server, as a cook, as a manager, as an assistant general manager, as a controller, as a purchaser, as a general manager, all because he would always say, and by the way, this applies, every time I promoted someone from a server to a manager, their superpower in the beginning was they had profound empathy for the people that reported to them, right?

01:07:52Anyone who's ever run a restaurant where you promote servers to managers should be able to relate to this, like they're learning the ropes of being a manager, but their superpower in that moment is they understand the world of being a server is better than any of the other managers do. But the reality is, is a year later, you have less empathy for them, like you start to lose that perspective because the more time you spend in this new role, the less you can relate to the other role. He would have me journal, not just what I was doing, but how I was feeling and as much as possible, such that I could tap back into those perspectives as I grew in my career. He really wanted me to own my own company one day. He wanted that for me and he had faith that I would get there and wanted me to be in a place that when I did, I could have as much empathy for everyone on the team, regardless of position, because I've done all of their roles. I just needed to tap back into how I felt when I did. But it's part of the human condition.

01:08:57Like you cannot hold on to that perspective forever. It will go away and so you need to figure out how to tap back into it. My way was journaling. What I do is I do wine, I do different contests around the restaurant, like a two month contest. And at the end of the contest, the winner gets a Saturday night off. And then they get, well, it's not that they can do a choice. They can double up or they can have the night off. You're gonna have a Saturday night off and then I come in and I wait tables in their section and give them all the money. And then I give them the option if they wanna make a salary that night, they can come in and be the manager. So if they wanna come in and lead the restaurant, they wanna see from our perspective leading the restaurant what that's like, because it might give them a different perspective and they can make double the money and they can manage me waiting on their tables. But it puts me back into that I'm in the middle lineup. I gotta go get hands and full hands in and full hands out and all these things.

01:09:58And I have to learn every part of the menu again and I'm like, oh, this is really tough. Why do we have to do all? Oh, and it puts me back into that role. And it's fun for everybody to see, hey, I'm waiting tables with you. This is gonna be fun. Like earlier when you were talking about what will you miss the most? I've been in this administrative role for such a long time. And it's been a long time since I've waited tables. But it's funny when I was waiting tables, all I could think about was getting to where I am now or this type of role. And now that I'm in this, I would give anything to go back and wait tables for a night. It just, in particular, I think about the restaurant I worked at in my 20s that was, your book got me thinking so much about this time in my life. Cause it was that just over the top hospitality, more of a fine dining restaurant. And I just, I missed it so much. If I could go wait tables there tonight, I would do anything. That would be amazing. I think we should do that. I think we should. Can I come work at Miracle? Let's do a big event for like the Giving Kitchen.

01:11:00And then let's have a bunch of chefs and restaurant owners be the servers. Oh, great. And then like you can come and have Caroline wait on you. And then we'll donate all the tips to the Giving Kitchen. And then all the, we'll just do like a big event to be a lot of fun. Then all these people can scratch that itch. Cause I bet you're not the only one, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. I mean, we would have a ton of hands go up to go, Oh, I'll do that. I want to do that. Will, I have one question for you before we let you go. Earlier you mentioned, and also in your book, you mentioned that, you know, when you like to have me time and decompress, you like to order Chinese takeout and watch trash TV. I need to know what kind of trash TV we're getting into. Oh, now we're getting into the real conversation. I like this. And let me also tell you, same. So no judgment here. We're all here. I'll go first. I love The Bachelor. Well, you also said you're really getting into the bottom of the barrel. And I consider myself a bottom of the barrel scraper when it comes to my television choices.

01:12:02So I've got to know. So, okay. It's not for me to disclose their names, but there was definitely, I haven't watched The Bachelor in a long time, but there was a few years there where like me and five other people in the restaurant industry that you definitely know would all be watching the season at the same time. And there would be incredible text threads with real money down on who would win. Wow. That's what I'm talking about. I'll tell you what I'm watching right now. It's so bad. It's called Outer Banks. I watch two types of TV. I watch good TV with my wife and terrible TV alone. Outer Banks is currently in my bad TV show. And by the way, if anyone from Outer Banks is listening to this, I'm sorry. It's not terrible. It's good. It's like this is, I hope the people from Outer Banks are listening. We have a lot of crossover between Outer Banks fans and our podcasts, so. It's funny. There's a lot of hospitality leadership that watches that show too.

01:13:08Are you a Vanderpump Rules person by chance? Are you into the Vanderpump drama that's happening all weekend? The Bachelor was the only reality TV franchise I ever really watched. Not bad TV, like reality TV, more like I like a short sitcom or TV show that's just not great. But I'll tell you why. I like TV that has enough going on that it quiets my mind, but not so much going on that it fully engages it either. I think there is intention behind it. It turns off the voices, but it doesn't take over. It turns off the voices and doesn't add any new ones. There you go. I love it. I find myself like when I get sick, I don't allow myself to put my own oxygen mask on too often, but my oxygen mask comes on when I tear tendons in my ankle or you get COVID.

01:14:13I've had COVID once throughout this entire thing, but when I did, I had to quarantine for five days in my bonus room, which is where the good TV is. And I was like, you mean I got five days with the good TV and nobody, kids can't even come in the room right now? They're not even allowed. They're not even allowed to come in here? Open the door and throw some food in every once in a while. I haven't seen, I never saw Mean Girls. So I'm like, nobody's gonna watch me watch that. I'm watching Mean Girls. I'm gonna watch, I started watching all these shows and I'm like, this is beautiful. And I didn't feel any guilt for it. Because I feel guilt if I just lay back and don't do anything. I'm just constantly going, going, going. Yeah, well, I got kids and my wife's busy. You can't say to the person that works for you that they need to put on their own oxygen mask if you are not also doing the same. It's a true story and I'm working on it. I'm giving you the language to actually allow yourself to do it as a part of your job, which hopefully removes some of the guilt from it.

01:15:16I do other things. I like to hike and I do other things. Where I come in the studio. I get to do this podcast. Honestly, doing this podcast for me is that. Being able to talk to other people is a great way for me to ideate and listen and learn other people's stories. I love reading and those. I do find time to do that. That stuff really is oxygen mask stuff. But if I'm totally clocking out, I have to be sick. I gotta have the flu. If I have the flu and I feel like hell, I can watch trash TV and feel totally good about it. Every time I see you for the rest of my life, I'm just gonna be thinking about Mean Girls. I love it. Guys, I've so enjoyed the time together. This has been a gift. Thank you so much. It's nice to spend the time and I hope to see you in person down there at some point soon. I have one last thing and it is not a question. It is the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. They're our title sponsor.

01:16:16They're amazing. If you were to leave us, you get to take us out. Whatever you wanna say, as long as you wanna say it, a final thought that you wanna leave our listeners with and then we'll bid you a wonderful day. I was with a group of people yesterday and they asked, how do I find inspiration? Are there moments where I'm just feeling uninspired because I'm not out in the world as much as I used to be? I shared how when I was a kid, my dad would always say, keep your eyes peeled. That was his way of saying, if you're paying attention, there are things everywhere that can inspire you. And I shared the story of this place called Lambert's House of Throed Rolls. Do you guys know Lambert's? It's right next to my hometown in Alabama.

01:17:19There's, yeah, I know it well. Look at you. I do not. Okay, so Lambert's is this big southern restaurant in Alabama and they serve chicken. I'm sorry, why do you know Lambert's, I have to ask? I don't mean to interrupt you. One of my happy places is a cross-country road trip and I love roadfood.com, where you go on roadfood.com, wherever you are, and press the find my location and it tells you about cool places that are around you. I think anyone that does a road trip and doesn't use roadfood.com is missing an opportunity. And it brought me to Lambert's. So you go to Lambert's, they serve chicken fried steak, fried chicken, cornbread, chicken and dumplings, whatever. But then halfway through the meal, at the front of the room, this guy pushes out this big cart of freshly baked rolls and then everyone in the dining room starts putting up their hands and in John Elway fashion, he just starts throwing rolls across the dining room to people all over the restaurant. And you just lift up your hand, you catch this piece of bread that's being thrown across the room for you and it is because of that that the restaurant is on the map.

01:18:24I mean, it's literally now a part of the name, Lambert's House of Throwed Rolls. Throwed Rolls, meaning literally- They're gonna chuck them at you. Throw them at you. And I always think about how that came to pass. Maybe it was a family restaurant, the kid was coming up and sat down at family dinner and said, hey dad, I have this great idea. I was thinking maybe we could, we're just putting the bread down on people's plates, like idiots, why don't we throw it across the room? Wouldn't that be cool? And the dad got mad at him, but then the mom was like, hold on, we can't invite them into the organization if we don't allow them to have a voice. And then they tried it and it took off and I'm inspired by that place because what that element of the restaurant shows me is they have a culture where they let ideas breathe, where there's no bad idea from the onset. Even an idea that seems terrible has allowed the space to breathe for long enough to see whether there's a reason for it to live. And I think it breaks my heart sometimes when I think about how many unbelievable innovations never saw the light of day because they were killed too quickly in a boardroom somewhere.

01:19:35All to say, keep your eyes peeled because if you are paying attention, it's pretty cool how inspired you can be by something as simple as someone throwing a piece of bread across a room. Enough said. Will Gadara, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you, Will. Thanks, guys. Once again, thank you so much to Will Gadara for joining us on Nashville Restaurant Radio. That was a fun conversation. You know, it's not lost on me that I get to do this. There's moments where you do editing like this and I just listened to the whole episode back and I just feel like sometimes I'm just blessed to be able to have these conversations and share them with you. So thank you for listening. Thank you for making this a possibility. I wanna say a big thank you to our sponsors. Guys, these sponsors are amazing.

01:20:37They allow us to continue to do this weekend and week out. I don't think we missed a week last year that we didn't have a new episode come out. My goal is this year to have 52 new episodes. It would probably be more like 65, but new episodes every week to share stories to build this amazing community that is the hospitality community. And you listening, if you hear one of our sponsors that you are curious about, give them a call. Listen, there's no commitment you have to have to call somebody and say, hey, can you help me? Or can you come in and audit what's currently happening and let them know you heard about them on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you guys for listening. It's been a pleasure and I cannot wait to put out our next couple episodes and many more to come. So I hope that you guys are being safe out there. I love you guys, bye.