Will Newman

00:00Complete Health Partners is here to help you offer urgent care to your employees for only $50 per month. No copay at any of their three Nashville locations. We know healthcare is expensive. Complete Health Partners gives you a chance to offer your employees a no copay way to see a doctor. They also offer telehealth services for everyone on your team. So if you're a manager of a restaurant or you own a restaurant, go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab and click the link for Complete Health Partners to learn more. If you work in a restaurant or any other company that doesn't offer healthcare, tell your manager to check them out. Complete Health Partners, expert care, close to home. 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.

01:21My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We will not be joined today with the amazing Jen Ichikawa as having twins and jobs and everything just, it got a little much when this interview was being done. So I did this one solo, but we are talking today to Will Newman. Will Newman is the owner at Edley's Barbecue as well as Pancho and Lefty's. This is his second time on the show. His first time was about a year ago, right? As they were closing their Lexington location. And on the opposite side of that, on this episode today, he gives some breaking news where he actually announces a brand new location that he has not told anybody about yet. So if you are out there in middle Tennessee and you're hoping that an Edley's is opening close to you, listen up, because they have three new locations coming out, but one of them is never been announced before until today. Happy Monday for you. This is a fun episode.

02:21We talk about all kinds of stuff. We catch up, we talk about the TikTok video he made for us that got 35,000 views. And you can go check it out at our TikTok page right now. We have a bunch of chefs reading one-star reviews. If you're a chef out there or if you're a restaurant owner and you've got some wacky one-star reviews that you'd like to read and put out there on our TikTok, let me know, send me a DM. I would love to come out and film it and we'll put it out there and it'd be a lot of fun. We do this because people that write just silly, stupid reviews need to be called out and this is our business, this is our life and it's just one of those things that hopefully people get the fun in all of it and maybe they think twice before they leave a really, really stupid review. So coming up this week, we're gonna be talking as well with a gentleman named William Jemison and he is a director over at Culture Index. What is Culture Index, you say? Culture Index is a personality test. Kenneth talks about your employees, potential employees, take this, it's a survey and there's no right or wrong answers, it doesn't tell you good or bad things but it tells you the right people that you need to hire and based upon your culture, I'm a big fan of Jim Collins and the book Good to Great and one of the things he says is you have to have the right people on the bus, right?

03:41If you have the wrong people on the bus or the wrong people on the canoe and you're rowing in the wrong direction, you don't get there but if you're able to hire the right people every single time that fit your culture, that are ready to help you win, it's hard to lose and William Jemison's gonna come on the show and he's gonna break down everything that he does and it is so fascinating. I'm really excited to share this with you guys. I've been working with him now for three and a half years and it's amazing, it's amazing. Every time I interview somebody and I read their culture next to them, they go, wow, that's kind of amazing and I'm gonna let you know that much about me, a little scary too. So we are excited about all of the things that are up and coming here at Nash Restaurant Radio. We have got a big weekend this weekend, Fermentation Festival, Eastside Bon Mies doing a pop-up, lots of things coming this coming Halloween weekend. We are gonna be doing a Wednesday Rewind this week. We did not do one last week, taking a little bit of time for myself.

04:43It's a busy time and so it takes a lot of time to put those things out. So I decided not to. Next week we will have one. It's gonna be the episode with Josh Hobbiger which is probably the second most listened to podcast. Chances are you've already heard it but it's a good one to listen to again. Josh over at Bastion to celebrate their co-win of best restaurant in the Nashville scene, best of Nashville with the Cabard Seat. I have a feeling that Benjamin Goldberg might be the episode that we do the week after. So we're gonna get your fill of strategic hospitality. But right now we're gonna jump in with Will Newman. I feel like the last time we did an interview there was like some noise in the background that did the same thing. You may have been sitting in the same spot. I don't know. It's 12 South. All right, super excited today to welcome back to Nashville Restaurant Radio, Will Newman, owner of Edley's Barbecue. What's going on, Will? Just progress.

05:44You're in progress here in 12 South. It always involves a jackhammer. Is it progress? If there's no jackhammer, it's not even progress. It can't be. Can't be. No. So he's referencing the sound you may hear in between us talking. There's a jackhammer going on in the background. So sorry about that. My apologies. Maybe they'll take a lunch break. Who knows? How you been, man? It's been a year since we have talked. Can you believe it has been a year? No, I really can't. That's shocking. Well, so you were, and we interviewed it. You said the day tomorrow we're closing Lexington. Yep. So it's been about a year, right, since you've closed Lexington? Yes. And how's it going? Yeah, I mean, really good. You know that? It was a painful check to write. Essentially, it's almost 12 months rent to get out of a lease like that.

06:48I earned my MBA with that check. I now have an MBA in hard knocks. And thankfully, we were able to absorb it. As painful as it was, we immediately got better as a company once we got, once we had to make that decision to move on. But yeah. So what are the things you immediately, what are some of the top things that other people can learn from you, from what you learned from closing a location in the middle of a pandemic? It wasn't because of that necessarily, but. Yeah, so well, I mean, one of the things, just how critical, again, I mean, it's kind of basics of blocking and tackling, but just how critical the just location is. We loved Lexington, the city. I just chose the wrong location for us to be within that city. We were part of a kind of a larger development, outdoor lifestyle center.

07:53And so when you do that, you're relying much more on the center to draw on the critical mass of people that you need to be successful. And if that's not happening, you're just kind of at a disadvantage. When we did things offsite, for example, we were in Rupp Arena, and when we did events offsite, we would have record sales. I mean, like compared to Nashville, any event in Nashville. I mean, we had great support, great, but it was just getting into a larger center where there's traffic. And there was a little bit issues with some parking there that people in Lexington weren't, they didn't love to walk as much as probably people are used to in Nashville. So I just learned a ton. And hopefully we'll not repeat that lesson. Hopefully that's a one-time deal. Yeah, when you're this small, you can't absorb two of those. Well, when you go from 12 South, when it wasn't what 12 South is today, to Sylvan Park in East Nashville, those are kind of home run locations.

09:00Right. You didn't go for some of the, hey, this will make it work. We're doing so well, these other three. Then you go, oh, location helps a lot. Yeah, for some reason in my head, when I signed that lease, I signed that lease in 2015, and then that restaurant didn't open up for another almost 20 months. But I signed that lease. I remember the reason I signed that lease, and this is how simplistic of a simpleton I am. I signed that lease because Shake Shack did. And I was right across from Shake Shack. And I thought, well, and I saw the signature of their CEO, and that's how they got me to do the deal. And I was like, well, if I'm gonna be literally 30 feet from their door to my door, I mean, Shake Shack was the hottest thing in the country at the time. I was like, this- They're bringing a ton of people to my area. They know what they're doing. And unfortunately for us, we were across from the lowest performing Shake Shack in the country. I was like, the logic is there.

10:03I'm with you. And the center's beautiful. Everything about it on paper looks good. If you drove through there, it looks good. You go, oh, wow, this looks amazing. And I'm not a developer, and I don't wanna pretend to be one. And whatever reason, the magic wasn't there for that center. And so, but yeah, I signed the lease because Shake Shack signed the lease. True story. I bet you're not alone in that type of thing. A ton of people have made decisions that way. Have you opened anything? Where are you at now? Today, 2021, have you opened anything new since I've talked to you last? No, we haven't opened anything new. We have committed to, so we're moving our East Nashville location on Main Street to Five Points. Oh, wow, that'd be great. We're at 10th and Woodland. And so that'll open September, hopefully September next year. Okay.

11:05We'll be right up on the street, right next to, I believe it's Boston Common. Yeah. Right there. That's one of the weird things that came out of the tornado for us is that we learned that once I got my insurance money from the tornado, I was gonna reinvest in that restaurant. And I re-imagined kind of what it could be because that was our second location. And I'm still kind of bootstrapping it and probably took a lot of shortcuts on design and how. And so the second go around, I was gonna really spend some money and make this restaurant what I felt like it had the potential to be. And when I presented that to the landlords, I finished that with a qualifier that, but I will need a significant lease extension. And from those conversations, I quickly learned that we were not in their long-term plans at that location.

12:08Oh, okay. They were not committed to give us the lease extension we needed. So the tornado tore down the abandoned family dollar building at Tencent Woodland. And so that kind of worked out in our favor. So we're heading down the block. Yeah, it's so interesting how things, I think everything kind of happens for a reason. I don't know. Isn't it weird how just sometimes things work out that way? Well, I mean, another door closed and another door opened. I mean, I certainly wasn't waiting around hoping it would open. I was knocking on that. I was letting everybody who owned property in East Nashville know that we were a free agent. And so we got some interesting looks. But to be in the center of the heart of Five Points in East Nashville is just, theoretically, we can be there for 25 years. Wow. Which is, when you don't own your property, your lease is your livelihood. And so to be in the heart of East Nashville, somewhere we've already been for eight years.

13:10By the time we move over there, we'll have been in East Nashville for nine and a half years. So we could be there, theoretically, for 34, almost 35 years. It's pretty special because we just love the neighborhood and community over there. Would you say that that neighborhood over there isn't as hippy-dippy as it is over in 12 South, is it? In 12 South, right. Yeah, it's not quite as hippy-dippy. I'm gonna segue a little bit. And I wanna touch more on that new spot and what you're gonna do there. Since we last talked, one of the things I did was, I came by your East Nashville location while you were there and you were doing something called Pizza with Will and Pizza. What is that that you do? So I do Pizza with Will. That's what it is, though. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen somebody do, by the way. Yeah, so I schedule time and it's put out well in advance for any of our team members at that location to come and just hang out. And there's no agenda. I just, we provide, you know, we provide usually, it's East Nashville, it's always Five Points Pizza.

14:15So they get great pizza. And the only thing is if they want pizza, they have to sit down with me just for a minute. And we don't have to talk about work. We can talk about anything we want, but politics. We can talk about sports. We can talk about their hobbies. We can talk about, they can ask me questions about whatever. And so it's just been a great way for me to, you know, stay in touch as we've grown to make sure that, you know, we have an ability to have a connection, like a real connection with our team members. And, you know, I'm always talking to our management staff or management team and usually everything is really good. But, you know, I've had two different pizza with Wills where I learned some really interesting and disheartening things about, you know, potential management decisions that were happening at that particular location that eventually led to significant, you know, changes. And so that's not necessarily why I do it, but those things kind of come out of it on occasion. But generally they're really fun.

15:15They're really a great way for me to get to meet and have a deeper connection with our teams and for them to hopefully get a better sense of who I am. I think that's so innovative. It's just, cause there's, I feel this a lot that there's just a, there's a disconnect sometimes between owners and it's not just even a disconnect between the owners and the staff. It's almost like a fear. Like they're untouchable. I don't want to talk to them. They don't care who I am. And it's like, I'll go to my manager, but that's the owner and I'm nervous. And the fact that you sit down at each one of your locations and do this pizza with Will and say, just come talk to me. Tell me about your children. Tell me about your favorite sports team. Tell me if you have ideas for the restaurant. I want to know, tell me, tell me, if you're somebody who wants to be a manager or you want to be developed, I want to be part of a program, what a great time to sit down and say, hey, look, I would like to pursue a career here in more depth, like whatever. Have you had anybody, I was gonna say, what are the most impactful things that have come out of that? Are there any big changes or anything that you've done with at least based upon those?

16:18You know, I'm trying to think most recently, I'm just, most recently was, I just got really good feedback about how we were doing training and we were doing a poor job being intentional of how we scheduled our training. So we have dedicated trainers at certain positions and locations and we were just being a little bit complacent, maybe just lazy, really, and how we were scheduling our new team members and how they were getting trained. And it was just very eye-opening to me that we've spent all this time and energy creating training materials and training books and we've got everything, it's all, you know, and we have training classes. And then when it gets to the critical part of actually scheduling the trainer with the new person, that was a critical ingredient to that that was not happening. So that was probably something most recently in the last two or three months that's made a really good impact that now we have a better plan on how we schedule our new hires, our new team members with dedicated trainers.

17:20Got it. So that's, I don't know, I still think that's innovative. I'm gonna steal that to a degree over here. I'm gonna totally use that because I think that that's a big misconception is that people like you or even myself to a degree, people don't want to, they're like, I don't wanna bother you. It's like, please, like you're the ones right there. I want to know, my favorite moment is when somebody says, hey, can I talk to you about something? You're like, of course, what do you got? Like, and just hearing honest feedback to me is one of the greatest things and I don't get enough of it. I think you're soliciting that fantastic. And I think what's, and so everyone has, you know, all our team members have my email and I never get emails from them, ever. And on occasion, you know, people will stop me, but they also know I'm usually there with purpose and I'm probably walking around thinking too much in my head. So, but what allows during the, I guess this pizza as well, you know, this is an intentional schedule block of time that they can talk to me about anything.

18:23And sometimes, you know, people are like, hey, I just want to have, I need to have like, so sometimes I'll have like six people, you know, sitting around, we're all talking, just having fun. And sometimes somebody's like, hey, I really need one, just one-on-one because I've got something I really need to talk about that I don't want others to talk, you know, to here. And so, and everybody's really respectful about it and it's been really great. I've certainly enjoyed it. Well, I just, I wanted to share that with my listeners. If you're a leader out there and you're doing, that's one of your challenges is really connecting with your team. And I think it's a challenge everywhere, really genuine connection with your team. I want you to tell me anything, ask me anything about myself. That's good. The reason I came that day over to the restaurant, just to say hi, was that I wanted to do a one-star review. During the pandemic, I've had people read one-star reviews. You read a two-star review, me and the guy who does your social media. What was his name? I forget his name. Mark. Yep. He's a fantastic guy. I lie, he just- He is awesome. We sat for about 30 minutes and tried our damnedest to find a bad review.

19:25It's hard. It was hard to find a review that was not good for Edley's, but we found one that was so funny. And I thought you nailed it when you read it that I wanna play it for everybody right now. You can go to our TikTok page. It's Nashville Restaurant Radio. You can go to our TikTok page and you can find it, but I'm gonna pull this up, see if I can't make this thing happen. All right, here we go. See if this works. Come on. Hey there. Will Newman, owner of Edley's Barbecue and I'm here to read a two-star review. Disappointing. First thing you should know is that the restaurant is in a hippie-dippy area of Nashville. Hippie-dippy. If you're planning a lunch while traveling through the area, stay away. There's a lot of congestion and nowhere to park. Lots of pedestrians jaywalking. The jaywalking. Damn jaywalkers.

20:26No one at my party was impressed with their meal. The turkey and brisket was dry and nothing special. Neither my kids or the adults would eat the macaroni. It's when you know the communists have won. Pricing was average, portions were what you would expect. Thank you, Andrew. Isn't Andrew the male version of Karen? That's great. That video got 35,000 views, 1,600 likes and over 100 comments. That's hilarious. Half the comments were people who were just like, oh my God, I have to come to your place. This is amazing. Next time I'm there, I'm coming. Did you get any feedback? Did anybody come in and be like, hey, I saw you on TikTok? Please tell me that they did. Yes, yes they did. All the time. I get stopped in the grocery store all the time. I saw you. Some of the 70 year old ladies stopped me the other day.

21:28I think I saw you on TikTok. Yeah, that happens all the time. I say that because that was so fun and thank you for doing that. I know that you kind of put yourself out there and I just, I thank you for doing that. I wanted the people to hear that. If you haven't heard that before and you go to our TikTok page, if you're out there and you're listening and you want to do one of those, send me a DM. I would love to come and film one and we'll give your place some love. So you are about to celebrate your 10 year anniversary. We are. Have you celebrated it or you're about to? We're about to. We're having a November 6th in front of Adleys. We're having the street closed for a block of 12 South will be closed and we're having music from 10 to five. We'll have a big tent for a kids area, kids zone. We'll have vendors, alcohol in the streets, food in the streets, won't be just Adleys.

22:28And so, yeah, it's just, we're very proud to be here for 10 years, to be part of our community. And the older I've gotten, the more important I've learned it is to, when you're, is to take a moment and pause and celebrate and not be just focused on what's next, what's next, what's next, let's just, let's take a moment and be proud of what we have accomplished the last 10 years and then also just have the opportunity to thank our fans, our neighbors, and all the people that have made it possible. And so, yeah, we're gonna have a big old party. That sounds, do you have any information on who's playing the bands or anybody? Let's see, I'm trying to remember off the top of my head. I don't have it in front of me. I wanna say, it's either Winchester 49 and then maybe Channing Wilson. We just went over this two days ago. I just don't have it in front of me. No worries, no worries. A lot of really cool, a lot of really, I mean, really, really cool, good music.

23:32And then we've got, I think we've got like four, four different acts from Belmont. So Belmont, University of Belmont's obviously nearby, 12 South, and so it was important to me that we had showcased some of the Belmont talent. And so we'll have some of their talent there and that's gonna be a lot of fun. Just looking forward to just getting to celebrate with our teams and our community for being here for 10 years. You know, the more I think about it, just hearing you say that, that's been a recurring theme right now with a lot of people who are in leadership or just people that are in this industry is I think that through kind of the second half of the pandemic up until now, we've all been just going so hard, so crazy and nonstop. I think that the number, like when I'm asking people right now, like what's the thing that's helping you the most is people saying, realizing that I have to take time for myself, that you have to take that brief moment and celebrate. Like you just said, like, hey, we made it this far. This is something, we can take our foot off the gas pedal for a day and let's celebrate.

24:36Like, how important is that right now? Well, I mean, it's just, it refreshes your soul. You know, taking a pause, just taking a moment and just, and having fun. You know, like in our industry, we get to do so many great things. We get to make an impact in people's eyes by providing, you know, our mission is to make, it's gonna be so simple, is to make people happy. And, you know, to be in business for 10 years in a restaurant is, you know, can feel like an eternity because it's not always easy, but it's important to take a moment, intentionally, you know, recharge and celebrate. You know, especially after the last, you know, 2020, you know, we have lots to be happy about, honestly. I mean, that we're still standing and in a position we're in. So it's just important to have that moment to, again, recharge the batteries in the present and be so thankful for how we got here.

25:40We're gonna break away for just a moment to hear a couple of words from our sponsors. But first I wanted to say just a quick note about our sponsors, that first of all, these are just, they're my friends. These are people that I believe in, that I trust, that I am so honored and proud to talk about. And I'm more excited, I talk to these folks every week, just to hear about their success and how they're doing. And it's so much fun for me. Also, I try and make it very, very affordable. Really, I'm trying to cover the overhead to produce this podcast. There's annual fees and StreamYard and all these different things that cost money. When I go out to eat, I don't ask anybody to, nobody buys me anything. I wanna pay for everything I do. I really just wanna support the local restaurant industry here in Nashville. So what you can do to help support is if you run a restaurant, call Jason Ellis over at SuperSource and have him come by and just look at what you've got going on. 100% of the time, somebody's gone by there, somebody that said, hey man, is this guy legit?

26:42And Jason Ellis from SuperSource comes by, they go, oh my God, I love that guy. He's so, it's just so different what they do. They don't ask you to sign contracts. He has to earn his business every single week, and he does, he is on fire. Ross Chandler over at Cytex, these guys bailed us out from one of the worst contracts I've ever seen somebody sign. And they're just with a different company. They've been so amazing to work with, and just, they're awesome. Sharpier's breads, like Sharpier's bakery, Erin Mosso, they're delivering six days a week, fresh bread to our restaurant. Not only is the quality fantastic, but I love working with her. Their drivers are so friendly. Complete Health Partners. I've got, most of my COVID tests have been from Complete Health Partners because every time I have a sniffle, I go get tested, but they're so professional. And their idea to help restaurants reduce healthcare costs and offering urgent care and telehealth to everybody in the city for a super low price. So if you can't afford major medical, you can at least offer urgent care services to your staff.

27:46Like, these are people that I believe in. What chefs want, we use them too. I mean, seven day deliveries, split almost everything. They'll bring you one each avocado if you need it on a Sunday. I mean, these people are in business to serve you, and I will never take a dollar from a restaurant. That's not what I'm here to do. Enough people, I'm in a restaurant, I get that phone call all the time. I don't wanna take a dollar from a restaurant. But these folks recognize that I wanna promote locally owned and operated restaurants, and they are the ones who support us. So please go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab and scroll through there and see if there's anybody that might be able to help you. Call them, email them, let them know that you heard about them on the radio show on this podcast. And I'm telling you, if you don't like them, call me. I will stand behind every single person that I recommend on this show. And I just appreciate you guys listening. So we're gonna jump back in with Will Newman.

28:48Your wife's name is Catherine, all right? Yes. How is she doing these days? Does she still work in the business with you guys? Yes, she sure does, yeah. She was here all day yesterday. Yeah, so she's focused in on marketing, real strategic marketing for us. And so, yeah, we get to live together and work together. Every marriage is a dream. I think the last time I talked to you, you had just got a puppy for your boys, and we have boys that are basically the same age. How's that going? So I got a puppy, and I'm like, why did he not warn me that a puppy will eat everything? And it is a whole, I'm dying over here from this puppy. I mean, I love her to death, don't get me wrong, but you could've warned me, man. Yeah, so we have Dolly Parton Newman. Our dog's name is Dolly. Nice, yeah, Dolly's a black lab. And in fact, I got a text from Catherine today saying, we just put pumpkins out, I think, two days ago.

29:56And she chewed up one of our pumpkins today. So there you go. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Dolly Parton Newman. She does not chew stuff, it's so weird. If it's outside, it's in her, she'll chew things up, she'll chew up things, but inside she doesn't, so. It's really weird. Outside, it's her fair game. Inside, she knows it's off limits. How do you teach that? That's dumb luck. Dumb luck. I'm supposed to ask you about Nashville-style barbecue. Yes. Talk to me about Nashville-style barbecue. Right, so it's always, as Nashville has gotten, the barbecue scene has gotten so much better over the last 10 years with, obviously with Martin's, starting in Nolensville and coming into Nashville, and then Peg Leg, I feel like he opened in 2012, and we have others as well in the Nashville community. You know, we have, I mean, we have a really amazing barbecue restaurant scene here in the city, and then, just to the west of us, right?

31:01We have Memphis-style barbecue, a little further west, we have Texas barbecue. To the east of us, we have Carolina-style, we have Kansas City, we have all these different styles. We have Alabama White Sauce to the south of us, and so Nashville has just such a unique brand as a city, and from a culinary standpoint, right? Nationally, we're known for Nashville hot chicken, and so the idea was to kind of merge the essence of Nashville hot chicken with pork, and so we began asking that question a couple years ago, what that could possibly look like, and so we've kind of created a way to really, really bring the heat to barbecue, to snow pork. Now, when you say we, are you talking about your team at Edley's getting together? Do you like meet with, you know, Kerry and Pat, and you guys have like a secret room to go to? Is it like the barbecue Illuminati? No, I haven't done, I should have done that, but no, our team at Edley's, we got together, and you know, it was really fun too, to kind of think about this and do this, and Brett Tuck, who now is the owner at Brown's Diner, but Brett was with us forever, and Brett, you know, we just, I mean, we just kept, we're trying all kinds of different ways to do it, and then he very, just, and he's very, very innovative.

32:27He kind of came up with this idea to take a habanero pepper mash, and so we marinate the pork in a habanero pepper mash for 24 hours, then we rub it with our hot chicken rub, so when we do our hot chicken, we don't have oil, we actually have like a rub that we toss the hot chicken in after it comes out of the fryer, it's really, really good, so we rub it, hot chicken rub, then we smoke it for 12 hours, the pork, so it's a 36 hour process, and then all that acid and all that vinegar just penetrates deep inside the pork, and then we chop our pork at Edley's, and so the flavor of this process with the smoke and all, just that pepper mash is phenomenal, it is so freaking cool, it is the most unique heat you've ever experienced in your life, and so we don't want, I mean, this is something that'll maybe take forever to catch on, but the idea is not that it's an Edley's thing, but it's a Nashville thing that, maybe when 10 years from now, when people come to Nashville, they're like, they've gotta go to somewhere in Nashville to try Nashville-style barbecue.

33:40So that's, I mean, that's kind of the dream of it, you know, yeah, it'd be, like, it'd be cool to be known if it becomes a thing that we're like the home of it, the original, but we don't wanna be the only one doing it. So it's just another way for our city to kind of have something to hang its hat on, that it's got like its own barbecue category. So that's how that happens. It's gotta start somewhere. Yeah, I mean, so like Nashville hot, you got Prince's, then you go, okay, so now Edley's, Nashville hot, Nashville-style barbecue. Yeah. And that you can get that at any of your locations right now? Yes. I mean, that sounds fantastic, and I have to go try it like immediately. All the time, it's really good. It's super, and it's just, the way it sneaks up on you is just different. What's really cool about it is that it doesn't overtake your tongue or your lips, so you can, you're continually eating it so that what the heat is like kind of coming up from within. So it's like, you know, your head is sweating, you know, but you're not, you're not like, you know, feel like you don't have to like drink milk or anything like that because your taste buds are fully capable of functioning.

34:45It has flavor, it has flavor. It has tons of flavor. That's a good thing. It's really cool. So speaking of flavor, I believe you just now, or just recently, the past week or two, you were a judge at the Jack Daniels barbecue competition. Yes, the Jack. The Jack. The Jack is back. So what was that like? How many different, talk to me about judging a barbecue competition. Did you learn anything that you like brought back? Not really. Because you just eat a ton of barbecue. It's, you know, barbecue competitions are so different than what anybody in a restaurant would do, but it's super fun to be a part of it. The, so the Jack, for those that don't know, it's in Lynchburg. Jack Daniels sponsors it. And it's the kind of the Super Bowl of barbecue competition that's an invitational. So, you know, you and I couldn't like get a team together and just go compete in the Jack.

35:45We would have to win somewhere and then you kind of get entered into a lottery. I think there's only three barbecue competitions that are automatic qualifiers. That's Memphis and May. I think it's the Royal in Kansas City. I'm trying to remember the big one in Houston. That might be the World. But, and then they invite like kind of past winners. So it's kind of like the masters of golf really. Like it's- Yeah, that's pretty impressive. It's pretty cool. And in that community of competitors is super tight knit. They get, especially the ones that are always there, probably the guys that get invited back year after year. You know, probably most people who are in the barbecue scene from just watching reality TV shows, like, I mean, they're all there. Like all those guys and women are there. I mean, they all know each other. It's super, super neat just to, you know, to kind of be around and see just the deep appreciation that they have for each other. And, you know, they're all competing super hard against others, but they're also rooting for each other's successes too.

36:45It's just such a very neat community. But the Jack was really cool. 72 teams, I think this year. No international teams. They typically have about 30 international teams, but they didn't have any international teams because of COVID. But it was a lot of fun. A lot of eating. I don't agree with what they do to their brisket in competition. It's very weird. What do they do? They just add a lot of stuff to it. I mean, as you know, a good brisket is all about really the quality of the meat and then, you know, adding smoke and maybe just your rub on the outside. And they're doing a lot of injections and beef, what is it, beef consomme. And like, it's really weird. I didn't get it. It was, anyway. It's not something you would ever do in a restaurant. You just like the functionality of just brisket that you make old school. They're going a little too in depth. It's a little too complicated. I see that.

37:45A little too complicated. Were there people that, how many judges were there? There were 72 judges. Oh, wow. So we would be sitting at a table of, so my table would have six judges and we would get, you know, we would judge six teams and it was anonymous. So it would be plate 124 and I'm judging, you know, plate 124 for ribs. I have no idea who plate 124 is. So, you know, you can't help your buddy out by- Cool, 72 judges, that's hard to do too. And the other, just the other really weird thing that I thought was funny. So you judge on a scale of, you know, kind of like 10 being best, one being worse, but you can't give a 10 and you can't give a one. So it's two to nine, which I thought was kind of funny. Wonder why they do that. I don't know. I guess nobody can get, you know, maybe there's never been anything that's ever a 10.

38:49And so one, two, two, the way they train is two. So it's graded by the Kansas City Barbecue Society and- Where was it? What's that? Was it in Lynchburg? Well, no, the competition took place in Lynchburg, but they go by the KCBS, Kansas City, yeah, KCBS judging rules. And so a two is unedible, like it's inedible. You cannot, if you give someone a two, you literally cannot swallow the piece of meat. Oh. And at the jack, no one should be getting a two. Yeah, did you give anybody a two? No, no, no, no, it was all very good. Was there anything that you had that was just like, like changed your mind? You're like, wow, now this, this is where it's at. I mean, imagine all of it's that way, right? The ribs, the ribs were all really, really, they had a, they were just, they had a great tenderness and texture to them. So they weren't too tender where they fell off the bone. They had just that perfect amount.

39:49So it just took a little bit of tension and then it came cleanly off of them. The ribs were all very, very good. They all, the weird thing about competition is that no, everybody's kind of playing very vanilla with flavor because they don't want to, they want to stay kind of middle of the road. So they're really concerned about appearance and tenderness. Those get equal ratings with taste, which is really weird to me. So tenderness, tenderness, appearance, presentation, I guess, and taste are all three equally weighed. So that puts people on the flavor side that puts people very vanilla because you don't want to go bold because you might turn somebody off. Yeah. Does that make sense? 100%, yeah. The sauces and the rubs are all just a little bit, just very down the road, down the middle. I mean, they're tight, tight decisions, but I get why. Because if they had taste weighted higher, I think you would have a lot more innovation at barbecue competitions, but since it's not, everybody's kind of doing almost the same thing because it's equally weighted to appearance and tenderness.

41:00Wow. Do you? It's probably more than you bargained for. No, that's exactly what I bargained for because I've never really done that. I've never been. Kelly Sutton, who's my co-host on the Roundup, she's a certified barbecue judge expert and she knows all that stuff. I don't. Do you do eat barbecue? Let's just say it's a Tuesday and you're not at work. Your wife's Catherine says, hey, let's go out to eat. Are you like, oh, let's go to Pat Martin's. Let's go with that. Do you even, can you even eat it at this point? Oh, when we go out of town, when we're going somewhere else, I'm always eating barbecue. Really? I like, yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I ate our Smashburger today, but yesterday I had the Tuck special yesterday for lunch. That's still, it's gotta be your number one seller, is it? It's maybe not our number one seller, but it's definitely what we're known for because it's such a unique sandwich. I can have like two normal bites of it and then I have to kind of like tear it apart, eat it with a fork and knife, but it's so good.

42:07But to your question, in Nashville, I don't eat at a lot of other barbecue restaurants, but we do on occasion. But when we travel, yeah, I love going to, I mean, if I'm going to St. Houston and I'm going and I'm trying at least one barbecue restaurant for sure. Nice. I imagine at this point you're just like, I'm good, I'm good. We're gonna go anything but barbecue, but no, you're going to check it out. You're learning. I feel that way about the Diablo Jones is my sandwich over at Honeyfire. I live like five minutes from Honeyfire and I could eat that every night. It's just so easy to do. But the Diablo, I can eat like three bites and then I have to like use a fork because it's just overflowing and it's amazing. How is everything over at Poncho on lefties? Really good. We're strong? Yeah, really good. We just did a big new menu rollout over there. And that was a lot of fun, a lot of hard work, but it's going really, really good. Really kind of refined our fajitas over there.

43:11And so we're having great. I think that was about three weeks ago and just the response has been great. That's amazing. You're doing okay staffing wise. I think the big, you know, every time I talk to anybody, like, dude, I can't get me to work for me. Are you guys there or how's that going? You know, I'd say we're kind of limping into the home stretch. We've got about, at all our locations, the day after Thanksgiving is kind of enters our official slow season. And so, you know, we've got a month over before we get there. So we're probably 85% staffed. And, you know, we're able to, you know, with overtime, we're able to, you know, be, I mean, we're fully staffed because of overtime. But if you look at overtime, you know, it's higher than it normally would be right now. But we don't really want to, we don't need to bring a whole lot of people on right now because in about four weeks we'll be 100% staffed because our sales take a dip.

44:12But it's been incredibly challenging. And, you know, we're, you know, we've got a few more restaurants opening up next year. And it's something we meet about weekly today for restaurants that are going to open up in June, August, and September next year. Sivian, you said you have restaurants that are opening next year in June, August, September? Yeah, we've got, we're going to open up in Donaldson, kind of down the road from Partyfell, Berry Farms, south of, just south of Franklin. Yeah, right there at Goose Creek Bypass? Yeah, Goose, yeah, Goose, right on, we'll be right on Goose Creek Parkway next to Chick-fil-A. Oh, wow. Good location. And then we're doing one on Nolensville Pike, near, right across from Lennox Village. Oh, wow, okay. Right across from Burger, that's actually breaking news. Oh, look at that, you've announced that yet? I haven't announced that one yet. Breaking news, Nolensville is getting, are you like, that's not far from Martin's.

45:16That's Martin's territory, isn't it? Well, it's like, it's a good six miles from Martin's. Okay. So, I mean, it's a 15 minute drive, 10, 12, 10, 12 minute drive, so, it's in his neck of the woods. Yeah, it's not too far, but that area is just blowing up, man. I mean, it's- Yeah, it is, so that- It's insane. That road's gonna be turned into a four lane, not all the way to Nolensville, but, you know, from Old Hickory, so, from Nashville, you know, once you pass Old Hickory, it turns into a two lane, probably like a mile after that. So, they're gonna extend that, I think, six miles. Wow. Which will be good for everybody. But yes, it's exploding over there. So, Nolensville, and that's gonna be in Edleys, not a Ponchos, right? Yeah, Edleys will be Donaldson, Barry Farms, Nolensville Pike. I've got something I'm working on for Poncho Lefties, just not buttoned up enough to talk about it.

46:19It's okay, you're giving me one exclusive, I like that. Yeah, I'd be getting a little ahead of myself if I said anything else, but, yeah, we're very blessed and fortunate to have a lot going on next year, but it's also, I mean, we're very, very anxious and very concerned about the labor environment heading into next year. We're doing a really good job, and I'm proud of our teams for retention. We talk about retention and what we can do to retain, and we're doing a really good job retention, probably the best we've ever done in the last 12 months. I mean, the last 12 months is the best we've ever done as a company, and so we're not, our turnover's really low, so we're not having to train a lot of people. We're not having to hire a lot of people, but when we do need to hire people, it is a challenge. Everybody's thrown their guess into the hat as to why this is the situation. Do you have any inside knowledge as to why, where the workers have gone and why people don't wanna work right now?

47:21Is it even that? I'm not saying that people don't wanna work. They may have found different careers. Amazon's a fun punching bag, right? I mean, I feel like Amazon's opening up so many warehouses and they can afford to pay a lot of money and have a lot of benefits, and a lot of people who are kind of maybe starting out their career that maybe not have skills, maybe they're going to Amazon. I mean, they're hiring thousands. I mean, they're supposed to hire 100,000 people this year. So that's like a small theory, but generally, though, I'm in the category of most people. I have no idea where everybody is. I mean, anecdotally, I feel like younger people aren't working like they used to, like when we were growing up, you know, like when we were walking barefoot uphill both ways and a snowstorm and walking to work from school. But I don't feel like as many college students work, certainly like high school students.

48:24We used to always have like one or two high school students and those are all but gone. So I think probably the labor participation from younger age people is less than it used to be. And I think that is making an impact, but those are just theories. I have really no idea where the hell everybody is. Yeah, because it's not just, there's the, hey, restaurant workers for all of history have been, it's been tough working conditions. You're working with people that don't respect you, long hours, not enough money, working for people that don't treat you with respect, no benefits, there's all these different things. And you think during the pandemic, people have gone to other careers. Hey, look, I wanna try my hand at real estate. If I just had six months to really focus on it, like, hey, here's six months, focus on it, go do something different. A lot of people left the industry, but it's not, it's not just restaurants.

49:26It's people that drive trucks, people that work at grocery stores, it's all over the country. It's just people can't find, the unemployment rate and the rate that people can hire, it's just crazy. And I don't know what it is. I don't know why, I don't know where, I wish I did. I wish I had some economist come tell me exactly what's going on so that I could have inside knowledge to go hire some people, but it's definitely. Well, I mean, a different way to look at it is it is a great time for hourly team members right now, I mean, they have lots of leverage and wages are going up and it's a great thing that we're paying more than we've ever paid and we feel like we're at the top of the market and we just, I just left a meeting before this talking about as we go into the, we start our hiring season really for our restaurants kind of begins in January for spring. And so we're totally revising our benefits.

50:27We're allowing people to get on our healthcare plan way sooner after 90 days. We're changing how people can earn vacation days, our pay skills gonna go up. So these are all good things, right? They're all fantastic things. But in a sense that it's good for the employees out there that they're in a position of leverage and it's incumbent upon business owners to be attractive places to work. So it's a challenge for us, but we just gotta figure it out. No, I think there's, I think people like you and me, I lump myself into that group of people that understand that you gotta take care of, it's a family. The people that work there and that retention number is bigger than anything. I don't hire people to fire people. Like I want people to work out and I wanna support you and I wanna know about your family and I want you to have a great quality of life that you get. I want you to retire from this industry. You know, I want, get the gold watch from retiring from, I worked in a kitchen for 35 years and this is my pension.

51:30I don't know, I want this to be a career. I don't want, I hate it when people say, I'm just doing this till I get a real job or this isn't my real job. I'm like, well, this is real money. I mean, like I want people to feel like this is their real job. That this is the thing that they want to make a career. Right, and I think it's, so one of the things that we're doing and I think I love what you're saying is, you know, restaurants to think about how do we support, how do we support our team members, not just training them to be a great team member, but how do we support them to be the best version of themselves and to reach their potential? And so, you know, we're doing things with, we're doing things with Smart Dollar, which is a program through Dave Ramsey's network where all of our team members can, so we pay for it, it's free to them, but they can participate and learn like financial, financial planning, financial literacy, you know, say they have a goal to buy a car or own a house one day, you know, we have a dedicated person, you know, within the Ramsey network that helps them put a plan together and learn, you know, so they have all kinds of interactive tools online and then we have access to some of their professionals to help them reach their dreams, right, outside of just paying the bills.

52:46That, I didn't even know that was a thing. That's awesome. Yeah, it's really cool. I highly recommend, you know, it's, you know, it is an expense to us, but I think of it more of an investment than an expense. Yeah. Again, you know, it's all these little things that we can do to help create, you know, to help build our team member to be the best version of themselves, so, you know, so they're not having to worry about maybe paying the bills, because they've got a plan, they've got a budget now. They can focus on serving our guests because they're not worried about, you know, the stack of bills, you know, when they get home. And so, those type things, I think, restaurants, we have to figure out how to focus and invest in the whole individual, not just, you know, the team member skill that they need at the restaurant. That was beautiful. That was exactly kind of what I was mining for. Is that something, that seems like that's something that you would pick up from Pizza with Will, like sitting down, hearing people talk about, you know, I've got these financial problems and you're going, how do I find a solution to really help all these people that keep coming and telling me about these issues they have and you're like, hey, don't spend money you don't have.

53:58But what a great solution to that. Yeah, so yes, I did learn some nuggets just from, I've been doing Pizza with Will now for probably three years, so just the accumulation of those conversations kind of led me to believe that the vast majority of people, you know, the vast majority of people just generally don't have strong foundation on financial literacy and how to budget and how to like understand if you are making more money than you have, like, you know, how to think about and plan for that and really start dreaming dreams and let us, you know, let's partner together and help you get to those dreams. And so it's been really great. And, you know, our participation is about where we thought it would be. I think it's about 10% and our hope is, as people start having success with it, they start talking about it more and more and other people get curious and join in and where it really becomes kind of part of our culture. And we started a 401k a year and a half ago and everybody was skeptical and wait a minute, what's going on?

55:01And then all of a sudden they went, oh, okay. And it's nice to have conversations with people where they start feeling a little bit more confident about their future because they're kind of, they can see that grow. They've seen this grow and this 401k and it's like, hey, look, I have, I actually have money in a bank somewhere. I've never had that before. And there's just this little sense of confidence in financial security that starts creeping in and they go, hey, and you can see their lives change. And it's the greatest moment I think that you can have as an employer, somebody to just talk to, see people gain a different level of confidence and they will pep in their step and they, I don't know, it's just, it's fantastic. And I bet you see that too. It's been fun. And again, like I said, we're hoping to grow and we're committed to become really part of our culture. It's really, it's still probably six to eight months in on that one thing, but I generally believe that if we nurture it right and educate our teams that this is an opportunity, that this is something that will really get traction that will become part of kind of who we are as a company.

56:12I love it. We talked about traction last time. You mentioned the word traction. Our whole leadership team at both Greenhouse Grille and Maribol, we're all going, we're going through, we're implementing everything right now as an entire team. I can't wait to tell you about it once we're kind of done. I'll go over my VTO with you. It's really hard to get everything on two pages like that. It's a process, it feels like it should be simple, but it's a 12 to 18 month process probably. But once you have it, once you have it, it's part of your, it's part of the rhythms and everybody can see your VTO and see everything. So it's the business plan. Everybody knows. So everybody knows where we're going next year. Everybody knows what our vision is for three years out. Everybody knows what we're working on rocks. We talk about it all the time. Well, we're going to have everybody on the same page here very, very soon. Let's let everybody know again, your 10 year anniversary coming up on 12 South is going to be a gigantic event. Live music, drink it in the streets.

57:13No jaywalking, please. What day is that gonna be? It's November 6th, it'll be 10 to five. And it's 12 South, it's a lot of fun. And you know, free live music, lots of kids activities. Mr. Steve will be there. If kids, if people have, what's his name? Mr. Bond, the science guy. Nice. He's awesome. If you have little kids like Ari. I'm bringing him, I'm gonna come dude. I'm bringing him. I think he's gonna be there at 11 in fact. I have some reason to remember that. But yeah, it's gonna be fun. We're just excited. We just wanna say thanks to our neighbors and our guests and just take a moment to celebrate and enjoy the day. All right. So that is gonna be November the 6th from 10 to five. And then you are moving your East Nashville location to five points. You have a new location coming to Donaldson. You said Donaldson, right? Yep. On Lebanon Pike. Donaldson, on Lebanon Pike. You have a new location coming to Charlotte.

58:18Did you say Charlotte? Nolensville Pike. Nolensville Pike. Right across from Lennox Village. Right across from Lennox Village. And then Barry Farms on Goose Creek Parkway. That's what it is. Which one is the breaking news? Nolensville? Yes. Nolensville Pike, Lennox Village. That is breaking news. All right. Well, thank you again for coming on the podcast. I love catching up with you. If you're listening to this and you wanna work for a company that truly cares about the people that it really is. There's a cliche that it's like joining a family. But I know people that work with you and your culture there is absolutely amazing. Go check them out. Check them out. You can find them on Instagram. They're all over the place. Edleys.com. I think there's a button you can hit. We're hiring. Go check them out. If you're looking for a job post-New Year, right? Because right now you're pretty well set.

59:18Yeah, but we... They're always looking for talented people. Yeah, we never say no to super... I'll say this. Actually, we always find a place for super talented people. Always. There you go. We just figure it out. So if you wanna be part of this culture, if you wanna work with a guy like Will and have pizza sporadically and talk about your family, this is for you. Will Newman, thank you so much for joining us today on Nashville Restaurant Radio. My pleasure. Enjoyed it. All right. Will Newman, thank you so much for joining us on the show and thank you, the listener, for listening to the entire thing. Hopefully you enjoyed it. I hope that you are being safe in all that you do. Hope that you are vaccinated, you're getting vaccinated. Get your booster, it's out. And wear a mask. Love you guys. Bye.