Will Newman-Owner

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01:04Nashville Restaurant Radio episode 82 with Will Newman. You know what I really started discovering is that I have an entrepreneurial spirit. That's probably first and foremost kind of you know who makes up who I am. You know I'm not a restaurant tour. I don't consider myself a business person. I'm certainly not a chef. I can trick people into thinking I'm good enough but if I'm around a chef they quickly know I'm not anywhere close to a chef. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Happy Monday to you and yours. I don't know if you know this but Monday is my favorite day of the week. I enjoy the weekends. They're great. Spending time with the family but I always feel like Monday is the day that I can get out there and I've got the rest of the week. There's no time clock. I got the rest of the week to do every single thing I possibly can. Maybe that's an optimistic point of view. Maybe it's not but it's true. Today is Monday and you have the rest of the week to go out there and kill it no matter what that may be. Whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a restaurant worker, a line cook, whatever it is, seize the day. Get out there and make today the best day you possibly can. Today we have a fun episode. Will Newman, the owner of Edley's Barbecue as well as Pancho and Lefty's joins Nashville Restaurant Radio and he tells this business story. I mean he talks about what has been able to make him successful and you know we've talked to a

03:07lot of independent restaurateurs on the show. A lot of chefs, a lot of people in the industry but he's one of the people who's done it. I mean he's successfully replicated a location and built more and more and more and we talked about what it is that allowed him to do that today and why he had to close his Lexington location just this past weekend and what that means. So it's a great show and I hope you guys enjoy it. Like I enjoyed talking to him. Some of the audio is a little fuzzy. I'm trying a new thing called StreamYard and StreamYard is a it's a new platform where I can record it and it's really cool but sometimes the audio is not the best. I'm still working on this. It's episode 82. I'm gonna get better at the audio. Eventually it's gonna be perfect but I'm asking questions. I'm trying. So with that being said I would ask you, we've got a couple call to actions today. One is I would like for you to go to the Nashville Scene webpage. If you wouldn't mind, if you do love the show, I don't want anybody to go out there and vote just because they're like my family, but I want you to go out there and vote. If you are my family, if you're the people that love this show and you love listening to it on a daily basis, please go to NashvilleScene.com and find the best of Nashville tab. Under media and politics you will find best podcast. If you feel like this is the best podcast in town, please go vote for me. It would mean so much to me. That would be the ultimate sign of love. I would just be so excited for that and if you are, if you're listening to this, whatever platform you're listening to, I would love it if you leave a five-star review. Go in there and leave a five-star review. If it's less than five stars, if you feel like I need to do something, please hit me up. Send me a message. Let me know what I can do better. I would love your feedback. That being said, I would like to talk to you today about Springer Mountain Farms chicken. They're the best. You know we talk about them every day and I've read this before, but

05:11I'm gonna do it again. They take extra steps to ensure the health and welfare of their chickens. They're raised in comfortable houses with the unlimited supply of clean water and fresh feed, along with plenty of fresh air and room to roam, allowing them to live a normal life without the threat of predators, harm from the elements, or diseases from other flocks of birds as they be subject subjected to if they were raised outdoors. All of our practices and procedures are certified by the American Humane Association as being the most humane possible. This is verified by regular independent audits of all farms and facilities by the AHA, the oldest and most trusted advocate of animal welfare in the country. Spring Mountain Farms is the first brand of chicken in the world to be American Humane certified. Also, one time real quick, want to tell you about Faux and Beaux. If you are a restaurant and you want to learn more about Faux and Beaux, you hear me talk about it. You hear me say you need to check out Faux and Beaux. F-O-H and B-O-H dot com. It is the new way to hire and they're taking off guys. They have had so many people. I think it's by like 400% the amount of people that have joined their site and are getting hired right now. I still see people on the hospitality page posting, hey I need a bartender. You can literally go onto Faux and Beaux and click a button and see 50 bartenders that match the criteria for what you need. It's incredible. Right now if you like a demo of how Faux and Beaux works, send me an email. I have set up a special email for me. It'll go straight to me. It is Brandon at F-O-H and B-O-H dot com. Send me a message and I will get a special private demo set up for you so you can ask any of the questions you want to ask. Go over the entire thing with you. We are ready to go to let you know what Faux and Beaux is all about. We got a huge week this week. Will Newman today. We have Pat Martin of Martin's Barbecue at Hue Babies on Wednesday. Stephen Smithing, the owner of Green

07:14Hills Grill in Maribol on Thursday. And then the roundup this week is going to be insane. It is myself, Delia Jo Ramsey and Chris Chamberlain from the Nashville Scene will be joining us as our co-host as we talk about everything that's happening in the Nashville Scene. So the editor of Eater Nashville, the food and write food and beverage writer for the Nashville Scene and myself talking about all things Nashville restaurant business. This is a must listen to episode. Really enjoying the guest host on the roundup. This show will be live. It's gonna be live Thursday at 330 and you can chime in. Listen, ask questions. If you want to ask questions to the people that are talking about food in this town, this is your opportunity. So thanks for all that you do. I know you're ready to get into this show. We're eight minutes in so here we go. Will Newman at least barbecue. And here we go. Like to welcome Will Newman into Nashville restaurant radio. Welcome Will. Glad to have you here. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Yeah, man. So one of the things we do, we start the episode off. For those of you who don't know who Will Newman is, Will, you are the owner of Edley's BBQ as well as Poncho in Lefty's. And we're kind of in the middle of this whole COVID-19 thing. How you doing? You know, there's been different phases of that, how you're doing. So I'm doing, I'm doing better today. Better today. Why are you doing better today? Well, we, my family took just a little bit of it. We took a week vacation, went down to the Panhandle and it was a great opportunity just to decompress, reset, you know, get out of sprint mode and get into marathon mode and, you know, get us through the next summer. That's a really interesting, I want to get back to getting out of sprint mode into marathon mode because that's a, that's a leadership thing. How was Florida? We went to Florida, we took

09:15the family to Florida in the week before 4th of July. And it was right when everything had kind of reopened and all the news were saying it's the hot bed for COVID-19. And it was the numbers were skyrocketing and we were scared to death. Nobody was wearing masks while we were there. It was like this scary thing. How was it while you were there? You know, so they were wearing masks. You know, the grocery stores, you know, we went to lunch somewhere one, you know, one day, but we got there at 11, so nobody was in there. We, we cooked every night. We were there with a couple of families. And so, you know, when you're on the beach, you don't have any idea what's going on on the beach because everybody's spread out anyway. So yeah, outside of going to Publix, you know, you forget about it, to be perfectly honest. And that's a nice thing to do, right? It's a very healthy thing to do right now. Yeah, it totally is. And you have, you have two boys. Two boys, George and Bo, just turned seven while we were at the beach and Bo will be five in October.

10:17Nice. So it's funny because I know this because we have, I have two boys that are five and seven. So our boys were born back to back. Yours was born on August 13th, mine was born on August 12th, same year in the same hospital. So we were probably popping champagne that week. We just didn't know. We're probably two rooms apart. We were about six weeks early and so I was walking around with my eyes just completely wide open and my head spinning. And just to, I don't want to go too far on the rails. I know you have other things we want to talk about, but just to give you an idea. So my wife, Catherine is also works in the business and she, at that time when we had George, she did our payroll. And so we had a payroll company that we use, but Catherine did everything and got it set up and sent it in and did all these checks and balances. Well, that day, that afternoon we were going to visit for her 34 week pregnancy checkup. On the way, her water broke. Well, that afternoon she was going to, that afternoon she was going to teach me how to do payroll.

11:23So fast forward, she ended up having an emergency C-section. Catherine is on morphine with a laptop in her lap after she's given birth and having to do payroll. That's the life of owning, you know, I think we just had edlies and we also had the filling station then too. So we just had two stores at that time, but it was pretty, it was a pretty wild time. That is, so it's hilarious because you were so early and we were a scheduled induction because we were two weeks late. William, my oldest William, we have William and Matthew. William was supposed to be born on July 29th. We were like the opposite. So you said that you were going from a sprint to a marathon. You're ready to start doing that. And I, there's so many directions I want to go, but I want to start with that particular comment. What has the sprint been like and what is this transition to a marathon? What do you foresee coming?

12:31So, you know, I think the first, you know, I can remember where, I can remember the Sunday when I got the news that Mayor Cooper was shutting down. The first part of the shutdown was sometime in mid-March. It was on St. Patrick's Day that they really announced it. Right. I think I got word. Yeah, I think it was a Sunday when I got word. Anyway, my head start, you know, just from then, from that day, I got it mid afternoon. That next week was just crazy. And, you know, for just to give some context, we have a restaurant in East Nashville that was damaged by the tornado. And so we were just coming out of that. So we were just catching our breath from the tornado, the tornado damage. And, you know, we're, you know, this is just not, we just had maybe a couple of days to really understand what was happening in New York and Seattle at the time. And so, you know, we were just in total survival mode. Like I was, I completely, I think I was able to really comprehend really quickly the gravity of what was coming. And so we were, we just sprinted when I say pivoted, pivoted doesn't even do the right, you know, do justice to how well my team adapted to what was coming. And so for about, you know, there was probably six to eight weeks where, you know, the leadership team and put myself at work in seven days a week. And so that was a sprint mode. And, you know, we, we did some really, really amazing things to be able to pivot the way we did to 100% to go and did surprisingly well. And we're kind of set up to do that with our kind of our food and had some unintentional benefits the way our restaurants are set up with garage doors and things like that.

14:22But so you, but you have, you go from the tornado and being, you know, the whole thing in East Nashville, not, you know, having the damage you had, and then COVID-19 and having to pivot, how many restaurants do you have now total with your different concepts? So we have, well, we have five, this is a long story. We have five at least all, all owned by us. And we have two Pancho and Lefties, one downtown and one over in Sylvan Park. You know, another story, but we're going to close, officially close a restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky, tomorrow. Oh, okay. That will be two days ago when this comes out. Yeah. So the termination agreement will be official tomorrow. Why is that? Just not do it, just not able to sustain? You know, I picked a bad location. The Lexington market's a great market. And I signed a lease in October 2015. It opened in April of 2017. And a lot changed in that period of time. It was, we're kind of tied to a, um, a more shopping center type development. And that 18 months, Amazon just flipped, you know, really it wasn't, you know, it's kind of an old saying gradually that suddenly, you know, suddenly Amazon was just destroying shopping centers. And we opened up right as that was really taken hold. And the market, the city was great. Our guests were great. You know, I just, I missed on a location and location is a big part of, you know, success. And it's a very painful experience and a very painful monetary exit, but very grateful. It's not fatal.

16:17Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a, that's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to say that you, that you made that decision. What was the COVID at all play in that decision? Yeah. So it was a marginal store pre COVID. And, you know, we started budgeting, we started, you know, we're guessing when we made the decision, because I kind of made a decision pretty quick to do it. Um, and say, you know, if you're going to be, if you're budgeting 2021 at 80% of sales and you put that in, run the model of what you're doing in Lexington, which was, you know, hoping to break even anyway, it doesn't make sense. We, you know, we had to look seven more years in our lease. It's just, you know, it was a tough, tough, hard business decision to make, but it, you know, it's an expensive decision to make on a one year deal to get out of it. Cause you don't get to just throw in the keys. Um, you know, they get a check, but it was the right decision. It was very sad. I can imagine, especially for the people that work there at just the time and energy you put in there, it was like, yeah, we worked our asses off. It made us better by doing something out of, out of, out of market. We got better because of it. I don't regret doing it at all because we're a much better team. We're a much better operation. Our, our service, our food is better in Nashville because we did Lexington.

17:40Let's, let's bring this story back to the beginning. Um, because I'm, I'm curious, starting at least your first location was a 12 south, right? Yes. What did you do prior? When, what made you decide to open that location? Give our listeners just kind of a brief history of what got you into this, uh, business? Sure. Um, so I graduated Tennessee around 2001 with a history degree, which qualifies me for to be a teacher or to go to law school. And at the time when I was doing that, I thought I wasn't going to go to law school. I'm originally from McMinnville, Tennessee, uh, a little small town between here and Chattanooga. Now a reference is near Bonnaroo. Um, my dad's a small town attorney. Um, in fact, my brother is an attorney, Ben Newman with my dad down in McMinnville. And to just say how small town and my brother Ben is the mayor of McMinnville right now. But so I thought we were going to law school. And I think, um, you know, what I really started discovering is that I have an entrepreneurial spirit. Um, that's probably first and foremost kind of, you know, who makes up who I am, you know, not a restaurant tour. I don't consider myself a business person. I'm certainly not a chef. Um, I can trick people into thinking I'm good enough, but if I'm around a chef, they quickly know I'm not anywhere close to a chef. But I opened up a homemade ice cream franchise right out of college down in Peachtree City, Georgia. Opened up another one in Cool Springs. It was a great foundation for me to just kind of learn how to lead, how to how to manage, how to hire, how to fire, how to do cogs. It was just a great buttoned up learning experience. It was a fantastic experience for me and, um, you know, had some relative success, kind of sold those businesses. And then I learned a ton the next three years trying to open up. I was actually going to open up a Baja Burrito franchise. So a lot of

19:44people know Troy here in Berry Hill, and this is probably 2003. And this, and I was supposed to do, we were going to open one up on Belcourt and something happened last night with Elise. And then he found out he couldn't do Baja Burrito franchise because of the, there was a trademark deal with somebody in Orlando, Florida. And so that's why they changed it to Blue Coast Burrito. And so Troy and his father-in-law, I think it was, did Blue Coast Burrito and his father-in-law kind of took it over and Troy kind of came back and re-bought Baja Burrito. But anyway, learned a ton from that experience. Ended up meeting my wife here in Nashville. Didn't have a lot going on. So I chased her down to Birmingham, Alabama. I never could figure out Birmingham. So I did go to law school at University of Alabama. And while I was at University of Alabama, I was my second year there. I was older than everybody by about four or five years. I worked my tail off that first year to be exactly 50 percentile in my class. And so I was like, well, maybe I don't need to be a lawyer. And I really, really didn't want to be a lawyer. I went to law school just to, cause I had nothing else going on for me. And then so working on the business plan for barbecue during my second year and helped a group open up a Moe's Original Barbecue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama about 2009, right as I was graduating law school there. And the plan was then was for us to do a Moe's Original Barbecue in Nashville. And, you know, sometimes unanswered prayers are the best things that ever happen. They had a different vision on where they wanted locations in Nashville. Specifically, they wanted to be in Cool Springs. And I would not touch Cool Springs. And so they walked away, which

21:53was devastating at the time for Katherine and I, because we had moved to Nashville. She had taken a job in Nashville. We were living here and they had every right. They didn't do anything wrong. It was just a pure business decision by them. But it turned out to be the greatest thing that happened to us because we, Katherine and I were able to create what we really wanted. And so we were able to create at least from at this point, you know, you're kind of backed up against the corner. And, you know, we're here, we're young, no kids. And so, you know, we wanted to be in 12 South before 12 South was really 12 South. And they didn't want us to be in 12 South. That was kind of how the deal fell apart. And thankfully for us, we stuck to our guns and landed on a fantastic location and never, never, and don't anyone for a second think we knew what 12 South was going to be like what it is today. But we thought it had promise, just not, you know, what it is today. There's no, no one saw that coming. But that's how we got to Edleys.

23:05What's the name of Edleys? So I'm, my name, I'm William Edley Newman. And where, and my grandfather was George Edley Newman Jr. But in the community, he was Edley Newman. And he died when I was just nine months old. And I would go around the community of Warren County, McMinnville, and a lot of really the more rural farming communities where we would kind of be. And people of his generation would stop me and go, you must be Edley Newman's grandson. Yes, I am. And they could, you look just like them. And then they would tell me stories about what he did for them. Because at that time, I'm sorry, not at that time, but during the 50s, he was the general manager of the Caney Fork Co-op, electrical co-op. And so he was literally bringing electricity to people's homes for the first time. You know, today we take around electricity.

24:05That's a normal thing. But, you know, I've met people who certain farms, certain farming communities in Warren County didn't get electricity until the 60s. And so me and my grandfather, Edley Newman, just made a big impact in people's lives because, you know, getting electricity for the first time, you know, is a huge momentous occasion for that family, for that farming household. And so he was a big part of that community. He was also a very big part of getting his time back to the local youth sports community. He was inducted the Warren County Sports Hall of Fame because of everything he did. There's a baseball field named after him. And so everyone went, I just heard about my grandfather, heard about how much he gave back to the community. And so, you know, when we named Edley's, we named Edley's in tribute to him and what community and neighborhood, you know, how he lived that out, not just talked about it, but it was something that he lived out and made impact in people's lives. And so we try to do the same. You know, our locations in Nashville are in neighborhoods and we try to treat them and we don't try to treat them. We treat them as if we're in small town America and say yes to everything. So how does that work? I mean, if you you have the one location in 12 South and how do you know it's time to move to another community?

25:29How do you choose a community? And do you have a list of core values that you guys kind of live by that helps be your true north? So I'll get back to the values in a minute, but the time that we were growing, I didn't have them. So the second thing we did was right next to Edley's, we started the filling station, which is a little small, teeny tiny little, I always call it like a kind of a, it's almost feels like just like a little library, like almost like a bookstore, but has beer instead. And we brought Growlers to Nashville, I think we were the first people to do it. And it was another great little experience because it was super easy to run, but you know, it kind of expanded your ability to manage and think because it was a different than Edley's. And so I really got at that point in time, that was 2012, I had really gotten into the beer scene. And then about the same time, I think before we opened, I happened to notice over in East Nashville that they were going to open up where our location is, it was supposed to be two breweries. And they were going to create this kind of like this brewery Mecca over there on Main Street. One of those, another kind of fruition, which was Fat Bottom Brewery.

26:49Yeah. So that attracted us, but where we work is now on Woodland Street, that was supposed to be another brewery. And that deal fell through, but it was enough to go, oh, this is a really cool project. We should be a part of it. And so other than that, that's why we made that decision, because I like, I got into the beer business, you know, kind of, I say the beer business with the filling station, but I was in the beer scene, sort of. Sure. At the time we opened up Edley's, if I remember correctly, in Nashville, there was Yazoo, Blackstone, Jackalope had just opened. And that might be it. Calf Killer had just come to market out of Sparta. I mean, there just wasn't a whole lot of breweries. And so we were about to, you know, increase our breweries in Nashville, about 50%. And we were going to be a part of it. And that was kind of the vision. And, you know, one of those opened up, like I said, Fat Bottom did. They're now in the nations, but then they moved. Yeah. And so we opened up over in East Nashville. And, you know, the second store was way harder than the first, because we thought we had some systems and processes. And we didn't, you know, it was all, it was all institutional knowledge, you know, in the head. And so you train somebody. Yeah, you train somebody, but you're not really giving them the resources and tools they need to do it properly three months after you open. You know, the first three months were probably fine over in East Nashville, six months through probably nine months. It was a total disaster. And, you know, we were able to kind of, you know, piece it together. But it was really, really hard and very, it was a very humbling, very humbling opening. Opening a second one was very, very humbling, learned a lot. And, and we just had our first child during that time, too. And that, that, that takes away. That's a, it's a big moment. I mean, so was there a

28:54seminal moment where you realized like, okay, we need systems and processes in place, because you can only do so much yourself. Correct. Right. You can only be one place at one time. Right. Yeah, I can. Right. I'm always right at this point, you know, you know, Catherine are only as good as the people, you know, around us. And, and, and they're only as good as us helping them make sure they have all the tools necessary to do a great job. And so I think, so I do remember, actually, I remember it was that it was, I think it was, it was either something called the zoo, it was either just brew at the zoo or sunset safari, which was like a fundraiser the zoo did, but I was there and it was 2013. And I remember getting text messages from people about just East Nashville was just off the rails as far as like ticket times and food quality and, you know, and these were from really good people, really good friends, and they were trying to do us a favor by telling us that. And it all kind of came to a fruition then that we were, you know, we needed to go back to square one and get in there and really button up our systems and processes.

30:08Like I said, it was, it was incredibly humbling. I'm very grateful that it wasn't fatal. We were able to, you know, work our way out of it. And, you know, we're obviously still in East Nashville and have a great, you know, we love East Nashville. And I feel like, you know, we're loved there as well. But, you know, that second one was, we thought we were going in being humble, but we probably were, it was probably more just pure ignorance than arrogance. I got you. That makes sense. It was the next location that you opened the Poncho and Lefties? No. So the third location was over in Sullivan Park. So that came before that. Yeah. So we had three, well, we had three Edleys. So the Edley-Sylvan Park opened in 2016. So it opened up three years after East Nashville. It took us a couple, you know, it took a couple of years after East Nashville to get our shit together, honestly, to have confidence to do another one. And we started hiring some really good, you know, we upgraded our teams, you know, I started to really appreciate, you know, you know, really you kind of get what you pay for. It seems so cliche, but good gosh, it's so true.

31:24And so we started attracting better talent. How did you do that? Unintentional then, but I hired, so I can, I remember, I'm real good friends with Austin Ray, M.L. Rose, and Thought L. Roz and lots of other things. And he was, he was, we were having drinks and he basically just hired, he hired a number two. So, you know, he called him a COO, but, you know, he hired an operations guy, like our legit real deal operations guy. Knowing what operations guy, what that really means for small independents. Like it's, it frees you up to really do what you should be doing. And so he was telling me about, I was like, oh my God, it's like, I need an operations guy. How'd you find this guy? And he kind of told me, there's like a headhunting service and I found, and we ended up eventually hiring, you know, a director of operations. And so once we hired a director of operations, as Catherine, or really Catherine said, we finally hired a grownup. And Henry, and Henry did a great job. He really got us ready and buttoned up, dialed up to open up Sylvan Park. And by that point in time, you know, he persuaded me about, you know, the next GM over, you know, how we, how we need to pay people and what, what type of, you know, quality leadership you get for, you know, more pay. And that was kind of the first one. And, you know, it proved to be true. And, you know, I've, you know, believe in it wholeheartedly that, you know, you get what you pay for and very confident that we are on the very top echelon of, you know, independents that pay their teams on, you know, very, very well.

33:18I'm very, I'm very proud of it. So I want to get back to this because in a non-self-serving way, but I, you know, when I was hired on, when I sort of working with Stephen smithing back in the day, that was exactly why he hired me. He said, look, I, I'm the owner of the restaurant and I'm bussing tables and I'm busy. I'm doing all these things and I don't have like a number. I don't have somebody to push stuff off of. I don't have somebody to kind of sit down and talk with and collaborate with. It's me. And then it's the managers and I, I don't want to yell at them. I don't, I just, it's tough. There's this disconnect. And so there's probably a lot of restaurateurs like yourself who are running restaurants. And I think that there's a lot of things that come up that you're physically just doing. Like you said, your wife was doing the actual payroll. You're physically doing a lot of stuff. And when you hire that second, like a number two guy, they're able to non-emotion, cause you're, you're emotionally attached to all of this stuff. You're emotionally vested, right? You had, this is your money. This, these are people, this is your baby. Somebody like that. And who's really looking at logic and systems and they, they're maybe not so emotionally involved. They can go, oh, well you're spending way too much time here.

34:35You're doing this. We need a system in process for this, this, this. And you go, oh, how nice is it to have somebody that's kind of a peer with you that you can just throw stuff off of and is going to be honest with you. They don't want you there. They're not trying to kiss your ass. They're trying to go, I don't, they can disagree with you and you respect. Does that make sense? It does. And I think, and I think probably a lot of people listening, I think there's a, a knee jerk reaction to shy away from this type of hire because it, you know, there's probably like a, this uneasiness that feels corporate when you talk about systems and processes. But what I've learned is that that discipline that that type of person brings is a, is a freedom for your organization to really realize its true potential. And that discipline that the, you know, this individual can bring to the organization frees up, you know, that the person who started the restaurant to really become the visionary or say that's really maybe, maybe that maybe it's the, you know, the chef that started it can really get back into the nuts and bolts of what they love to do, which is cooking and creating. And you have some on your team that is disciplined that allows, you know, that creates this work or expectations understood standards are understood and you're able to really blossom as an organization because everybody understands the expectations. Standards are the standards. And then, you know, whoever founded the company, you know, becomes a visionary.

36:15There's a great book called Traction. You may be familiar with it. Gino Wickman. I highly recommend it to any, any entrepreneur out there that's looking to scale because, you know, I'm able to be the visionary. And then our number two, Chris Beckler, who's just a badass, you know, he's the integrator. And so he's able to integrate. He's able to, you know, really, you know, understand what, you know, Catherine and I want for, you know, our teams, for our guests, for our vibe. And, you know, I'm able to focus on the culture. I'm able to focus on the vision and he's able to get in there and really just button do just be the, yeah, he's the doer. Absolutely. That's funny because I didn't know your story as far as that's concerned. And part of what I was getting at when I was talking about your story, you had mentioned when COVID started, you guys had to pivot to, to go, which you did and you, you did a really good job at that. And you, you know, we were, I worked with, but some restaurants during this time. And if you have a good culture and you've got a good team and you have good systems and processes and people understand kind of your standard, you have that baseline set. When something like this happens, when you do need to pivot, it makes it so much easier because you already have all of these things in place and you can go, Hey, we're ramping up this aspect of this, do this. And everybody knows your sense of urgency. It's all that stuff is in place and it allows you to do that.

37:47And am I, am I off base with that? You're asking me about culture earlier, you know, how there was like a true North star and kind of what we use on making decisions to grow. I didn't have it initially, you know, today we do, we call it our Southern soul and which makes up our core values. And we use our Southern soul to make all decisions, hiring, promoting, vendor relationships. And it really came, the big dividends of our Southern soul paid off during the early days of the pandemic. I can imagine. And, you know, I've, I'm another big fan of just having those core values in the book traction. Gina Wickman goes to the VTO model, right? The vision traction organizer. One of them is identifying what your core values are going to be. Oh, I usually have mine posted behind me. So everyone in our company knows our VTO. We share it. We have quarterly rocks. Each store, each store has a VTO. You know, like I said, I can't, I can't, I can't recommend the book and the process. It's a, it takes two years to really integrate it into your culture. But we've been on it now for over two years and we meet every quarter and we revisit our rocks, you know, take from issues list. You know, we share experiences of our Southern soul.

39:14Everybody has it on their business card. It's on the backside of our business cards. We truly, we truly live it and we have aspirational values that we'd like to add to that one day, but we're just not living it every day. So once we do, we'll, we'll hopefully add, you know, one or two more things one day. Well, it's funny because, you know, we ate it, when we were, we do a show on Fridays, we're actually going to start recording it here. Just a minute with the, the roundup. And I have Delia Joe Ramsey from Eater Nashville. She's, she's my cohost on the show. And we met at, at least at 12 South, the first time I actually met her in person with my wife. And we walked into Edley's and the guy goes, do you guys mind? And he, he checked our temperature, asked us a series of questions and then sat us in a place like, but it was like a whole process. And I immediately in my brain, I went, I love places that are so well ran, like that are, that they communicate on a, on a, on a, they let you know what's going on. And you could just tell that things are, that things come from the top down and it works really well. And I just kind of go, they've got it together and you can't grow at the rate in which you guys are growing and do it efficiently unless it's so well ran. So it's interesting. My, how you are doing it. And then to hear you say, that's what we did. It's like, I mean, it's on fire. Yeah. I mean, traction is, like I said, it's, you know, it's not sexy, but it helps if you've never, so I don't come from a corporate background. I don't come from, you know, a structured environment. So, you know, traction has been a great tool for us to put in places, you know, just ways to make sure we're aligned as a, you know, when I say aligned, I mean, everybody knows what our, our revenue goals are. Everybody knows what our profit is. Everybody knows what our, our thing, everybody in the company knows what we're trying to accomplish. Not even just from a revenue side, but like, you know, we want

41:17to get better at delivery. You know, delivery right now is our main focus. We're doing self-delivery. We just launched that. And so that's our number one rock. And everybody, everybody in our entire company knows that because of VTO and allows us to share it that way. And GMs can go, hey, this is what we're doing. And this is what we'll think. And then it's right, you know, your whole business plan is on two pages. That's a, it, you know, what it does is it empowers everybody to make decisions as if they're you, since they know what your expectations are. I mean, the real key is to get your employees making decisions as if they were the owner. And when they understand those goals and those numbers, they could really make decisions based upon what's best for the company because they know what you're going to try and do. And the chances that hurts you versus how much it exponentially helps you is not even a question of where you should do that or not. Yeah. And it was, so just full disclosure, it took me a little while to get comfortable just putting everything out there. But it felt, you felt a little naked, you know, just kind of putting everything out there. I don't know why, but I did. But now, you know, everybody loves it.

42:34Everybody knows, you know, they look at the three year plan. I'm like, oh, cool. That is awesome. I'm so excited. That's great. And if you want to, if you're working for you and you want to be part of a growing company and you see what your plans are, you could go, I want to be a part of that. I see what my company is going to strive for. I want to be a part of that. I mean, gosh, what's their five, 10, 12 year plan? I could, you know, you're in this ground level when they have five, six, seven restaurants. When you have 75, where that person can be, what a great opportunity to show them what your goals are. So I want to talk a little bit about, because a lot of people right now are COVID-19 delivery. You're doing your own delivery. And I think that, you know, Stephen Smithing does that too. His own delivery throughout the entire, he's been doing it for years, but like, he's got a system together and it's been amazing throughout the pandemic. You're pivoting to that. How are you doing it? And the main reason why? So I'll answer your last question first. The main reason why we were Postmates, we were exclusive with Postmates pre pandemic. And we had a pretty healthy business. So I'm grateful because we were exclusive, we had a pretty good negotiated deal with them.

43:47And they've been a great partner. You don't, you kind of go into it holding your nose, but you can see that's where, you know, you're, you have to listen to your guests, right? Your guests are telling us what we want to do. And so you do it. And then now post COVID, we brought in Uber Eats. And, you know, when we were shut down from dining, you know, our delivery just shot through the roof. Between our, between our six open restaurants, well, five actually, because downtown Pontius is still closed. Five, we were going to pay $300,000 in fees to Postmates and Uber Eats this year. And that is a lot to incentivize you to figure out self delivery. So even if we take, you know, half of that in house, that's a big, huge savings. You know, everybody listening here, you know, understands what the third party deliveries take and fees off the check. But most of your guests don't, right? It's convenience. I get it. You know, we use Postmates at our house on occasion. But so that incentivized us to start understanding how to tackle delivery. And so it was, you know, a couple months of planning and we're still in the early stages rolling it out. So we're rolling it out right now in Sylvan Park. Next week, we're really out in East Nashville. And then we'll do like, we've got a big marketing push to kind of push it out. But we've got each, each restaurant has a delivery SUV, it's wrapped, you know, creating the infrastructure through Toast. We use Toast as our POS. So you can go online and order now and it pops up delivery and you actually have to change it.

45:35Yeah. When you call now, if we're doing it right, you know, we ask if this is for delivery or to go. Every to go bag now, there's a staple that at least delivers. You know, we did our first, our second full week in 12 South, I think we did two grand last week in self-delivery, which is great. But Postmates and Uber East did probably a total of 8,000. So it's, I mean, that's a third part of delivery. You know, I would just encourage everyone listening to really look, look hard and figure out how to do self-delivery. Because if you think about those dollars lost that you have to give away to, to them and you understand that you can, you can keep that yourself. That's a big incentive to figure it out. And the other piece of that, right, is you can hopefully get the food out quicker. You control the food the whole way. I forget.

46:40You could build regulars. That's something they've seen at Green Hills is that, you know, they call and they go, Hey, can, can Johnny deliver the food? Johnny, it's fun. Mrs. Johnson, I'll be right there. Do you mean to come out of the back door again? Like, it's like the same, the same people order the same food all the time. And they get to know, it's almost like your favorite server. You get your favorite delivery guy. That's cool. Control of the food the entire time. You can put your own POS in the material. If you want to put, Hey, next time you order, you get this. You can, you know, whatever you want to do. It seems to be, I just want you to, I think that there's this big, scary idea out there that if we go on our own, insurance is going to kill us and I got to buy a car and I got to do this and that. And I go, yeah, we're leasing. I mean, we're leasing the car. So we're, you know, we're, we are leasing the car. People aren't using our own. It's so we kind of did, we didn't go to the Domino's route where they do the, everybody uses their own car because it gets kind of hairy. So, you know, we, we made a decision like we're going to own the car. You know, it's going to be team members hire specifically for that. They earn all the tips. That's a pretty sweet gig for our team members. Honestly, they can make some really good money. It's like your own personal Uber eats, but you don't, you know, you just work for one place and you know what you're doing. Great. So you have these plans put together and the last thing we have like, you know, five minutes left and I don't want to end it on this note, but the last thing that we've, you know, really seen, I think Carrie Bringle came out and wrote the big letter about the tax increase and then Will Newman's talking about it as well. And it's, you know, things fizzle out. Where are we at with that? Like how, is it still a sore subject?

48:22Yeah, of course it's a sore subject. You know, to be in the middle, you know, through no fault of our own and, and to support the idea behind flattening the curve, you know, restaurants were shut down to in-house dining. And yes, I get the fact that this hurt revenue to, you know, Metro government's budget, but, you know, I, you know, at least in February of this year, we had 350 employees. March 20, it was a Friday, March 26, something like that. We went from 350 employees to 35 employees. You know, we've fought our way back to 200, but to think that a city government can go through this whole thing and not have to furlough one person, and in order to do that, raise property taxes on small business owners by 34%, it's still to me just the most perplexing and just, I'm so befuddled that there wasn't a balanced approach. I'm not arguing that there should be no increase in property taxes. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying to do something so severe, because, you know, Kerry, you know, he owns his building, which is fantastic. And, you know, it's a great asset for him. I do not. But just as every small business owner on your listing knows, you know, you have a triple net lease, you're paying that increase. In fact, I had a conversation with my landlord 12 South about it this week. It's coming in October and he's like, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be about four grand more. How do you want to handle it?

50:02I guess I'm paying it. At the end of the month, I guess. I don't know. He's really, we got a great relationship. He's like, hey, I'll, you know, I can front it and you can pay it off over in three months. I'm like, you know, he's flexible. Not everybody's flexible like that. Well, still, I mean, I talked to Khalil Arnold and he was pretty vocal and he said, you know, I just wish that, I wish that they would have thought about something a little more creative, some other way than just, it's almost like, okay, we have nothing. Oh, we'll just raise taxes. It's fine. We'll just do that. Like there's no other, where else can we cut? Can we furlough people? Can we be creative about it? Can we ask Amazon? Can we do, like, what else can we do? No, we'll just stick it to the small business and homeowners. Yeah, and that, as you said, you kept using the word creative. I think, you know, Nashville's in one of the most creative communities in all of the United States. And for us to go just this, just direct route without thinking about all kinds of different ways to help solve this over, let's think about over a three year period of time, that would have been, you know, that would have been very nice to think about. But, you know, it, you know, you just take it as, you know, figure it out and you just live with it and move on. That certainly is frustrating. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I feel like we scratched the surface of things we could potentially talk about. We had a little bit of a limited amount of time, but we should definitely do this again and get more into the actual operations of what you're doing. I want to talk about some of your food, some of the, where you're going to be going and just kind of whatever else you want to talk about. Sure. Yeah. Poncho Lefty's too. We're real proud of it. We're real proud of Poncho Lefty's. It's, you know, over in Sullivan Park. It's just doing, it's been doing phenomenal. It's been open for almost a year. I've eaten there twice. They've had a great

52:03experience both times. Great. Awesome. It's really, it's really cool. And I loved the local taco there before. What a great location and everything. Having back across the street from each other. Do you ever think when you open a spot on 12 South, you have two concepts across the street each other in Sylvan Park. I mean, your locations are just killer, man. So never in my wildest dreams, never. But it's, it's, it's been a great ride. I used to love that place that the Poncho Lefty's downtown used to be a place. I think it was called Buffalo Bills. Was it Buffalo Bills? And then it was pub five and we were there after pub five. The Buffalo Bills. Okay. So you bought it after pub five. I was thinking that guy, the Buffalo guy was insane. The guy that owned the place. He owned the building too, I believe. I used to love going there before Pred's games. He would just be like, yeah, drink whatever you want. And like your tab, like $9. Like just tip the bartender. And I'm like, let's go to a game. Cool. We'll go there before the games. But no, that location is great and such a cool, cool spot. I can't wait for it to get reopened. And thanks again for coming on the show and best of luck to you and everything. If I can ever be of service to you, please let me know. I like to end every podcast with the guest, I mean, opening the floor, whatever you want to say to the city of Nashville, people that work in restaurants, anybody who's listening, as long as you want, whatever you want to say, floor is yours. Oh, wow. You know, as frustrating as it has been with the city on the property tax crease, I still think Nashville is still just an amazing, amazing community. And I look at this as an opportunity for my team and for our city that I'm not blowing smoke up people's asses on this, but I think in fall of 2021, we're going to be

54:08so much stronger as a community and a city that, you know, it's just going to be insane what will happen once we get out of this. And I'd firmly believe that. And, you know, I feel like we're going to be stronger. You know, I just, I just implore, you know, all the, all the restaurateurs and chefs out there to just make it through, get to spring, do whatever you can, claw, scrape, because, you know, you know, the roaring twenties came out of the 1918, you know, Spanish flu. And, you know, we're heading into the twenties, it's going to happen all over again. I love that, that the roaring twenties started with the Spanish flu and here we are. Let's do it again. Let's do it. All right, man. Thank you so much. And we will, we'll be in touch. Thank you. So I know what you're thinking. You, we didn't talk enough about barbecue. What type of wood does he use? All that good stuff. We will do another episode with Will Newman. I just enjoyed that so, so much. I love this vulnerability, just how he talked about everything that he, he's doing, some of his successes, some of his failures. I just, I just love that about him.

55:23Hopefully you enjoyed that interview too. And you will listen this week. We talked to Pat Martin on Wednesday, Stephen Smithing, who I've worked with for a couple of years. So he's, we got a lot to talk about. And again, check us out on the roundup live this Thursday at three 30 on Facebook. It'll come out Friday and we hope that you guys are being safe. Love you guys. Bye.