041624 - Chef Troy Heller

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
A couple of weeks ago, myson and I. He comes in out
of town. He always wants togo to one restaurant after church on Sunday.
It's been our Sunday brunch tradition sincehe was a second or third grade.
He's now a freshman in college.And then I texted him just a
couple of weeks ago and said,hey, the restaurant didn't open today.
At texted him the name. Theyhad an announcement on their social media that

(00:20):
effective immediately they were done, lockedthe doors and no more. And had
several people message me saying, Laky, there's a lot of local restaurants that
this is hitting, and I wantedto reach out to my friend, Chef
Troy Heller. You may know fromHeller's Kitchen, Catchatry and a lot of
the restaurant ventures he's had around northernColorado. But Chef Troy is on the

(00:43):
hotline to talk about the plight ofthe local restaurant tours and the independence out
there. Chef Troy, Welcome tothe show, sir. How are you?
I'm great, Jimmy, how areyou? I am doing very well.
Thanks for hopping on the program.First of all, you had catch
two locations for Catchatory. One wasin Fort Collins and you opened another one

(01:03):
in Windsor. We can talk aboutthe COVID impact. And the one in
Fort Collins turned into a Mexican ventureof yours, and that one closed down,
and then recently you had to shutdown the Windsor venture. Catchatory some
of the best food of amazing.My son would often request to go there.
In fact, a couple of yearsago his birthday. I want one
thing, I want catch a Tory. What happened to you? What happened

(01:23):
to Catch a Tory? You don'thave a Heller's kitchen going on right now.
Yeah, well, thanks for thosekind words about the restaurant. Yeah,
we you know, for starting intwenty seventeen, we opened the first
catch Tory and our goal was toserve hadmade fresh Italian food and you know,

(01:45):
really make an impact and just tohave a great product. And since
then, since twenty seventeen, theworld of the restaurant world has changed dramatically
cost wise, and so we've youknow, we opened a larger facility in
Windsor in the hopes of having alittle bit larger space and be able to

(02:07):
offer our food to more people.But through the COVID experience to this to
this point, the cost of doingbusiness has pretty much gone up about thirty
percent, and which makes it reallytough. Restaurants typically operate on a pretty
razor thin margin of you know,anywhere between four, you know, three

(02:29):
and five percent profit is the goal. And when your cost of doing business
goes up thirty percent, that's unachievable. I heard one restaurant patron this went
to this restaurant that I was talkingabout. They said, it's very expensive.
I can't believe they've raised their pricesso high. But then I heard
a restaurant tour say, listen,I'm buying meat from the wholesaler at about

(02:50):
the price I used to sell itfor on the menu. Help me understand
when we say cost of doing businesshas gone up, how much did the
food cost increase in the last sevenfor years. Well, the food cost
side of things aren't nearly as badas the labor cost side of things.
So the food cost side of things, yes, have gone up for sure,
and so you can adjust your pricingto affect that pretty reasonably, and

(03:16):
you know, not do too muchdamage and trying to cut back or make
smaller portions and so on and soforth. It's still very difficult because you
want to buy the best products outthere possible. But the main, you
know, the main issue and dealfor us is just, you know,
the cost of labor, and thecost of labor is thirty percent of your
or should be thirty percent of youroverall cost of doing business. And for

(03:38):
the last year or so, theprice you know, the wages, minimum
wage is even a consideration for meanymore, because we've so far beyond that.
We started out paying cooks in twentyseventeen around fourteen dollars an hour,
and I just at the end oftwenty twenty three was at twenty four dollars
an hour for my cooks, soother considerable leap, and especially when you

(04:00):
add in the taxes and the taxesyou can just put ten percent on top
of that, So that's that's thebiggest deal. But yes, food,
I mean I could have every nowand then you run out of something,
you've got to raise the King Soupersto pick up some product. And there'd
be times where I'd go into KingSoupers butter, for instance, King Supers
is selling butter for cheaper than whenI'm buying it for a wholesale and that

(04:25):
is h apples. There's apples tooranges across the board because as a small
business owner you have a less purchasingpower as well, So big corporations have
a far greater advantage because they're buyingso much food. And when you're a
little guy, you're you know,you're subject to the basement, you know,

(04:46):
or the the very least price theycan sell you stuff. For the
voice of Troy Heller, you mayknow him as the chef from Heller's Kitchen,
Catch a Tory, probably the mostrecent restaurant adventure. You may remember
that the location and for Collins endedWindsor. Let's talk about obviously, every
time I turn on the television,is he an Applebe's or a Chili's commercial.
But guys like you, I haveshut down Chef Clay with Beta Gumbo.

(05:11):
He tried to make it out inWindsor and in Loveland. He shut
down his locations. Why is itso hard, I guess on the independence
and yet it seems like you canhave a date nighted Applebee's and they're always
offering specials. Yeah, I mean, it's like I said, one of
the things is purchasing power. Anotherissue is i'm a my business. We

(05:32):
leased our space. A lot ofthe corporate restaurants their spaces are owned,
so they own the real estate,which makes things a little better for them.
We incur every time the property valuegoes up on a space that you
lease, you incur the taxes onthat space as well, so your rent
isn't static either. So we hadthat issue last year too. The property

(05:56):
value of the space that we werein, the taxes on it double,
which increased our actually created an entirenew rent payment for the year, so
we had twelve or thirteen instead oftwelve rent payments. So that's one of
the factors that goes into it.Wow, Chef Troy Heller's kitchen catch a
Tory maybe his most recent venture nowclosed up in windsor Great Tigan Food that

(06:19):
it was, and we'll tell youwhat Chef Troy is doing now. But
Chef we continue the topic of conversation. It's this is what you wanted to
do, this is what you dreamtof doing. You had at two location
restaurant, things were going well.When did it all change? Was it
the COVID shut down, the lockdownwhere it seemed like everybody lined up against

(06:42):
the restaurant and said, you survived, but you get no customers, or
put it in a styrofoam box.Did when did the when did the dream
turn into kind of a nightmare?Well, exactly during COVID. We opened
two months before COVID hit in Windsor, and we were off to a we
were off to a great start andvery promising our faces, our space was

(07:05):
filled, and we were we weregoing gangbusters. And then yeah, the
whole, the whole COVID ordeal wasreally rough, and it really took quite
a bit of time. Twenty twentytwo, if we started to see you
know, more than sixty percent ofour space filled and things things were looking
up, things were getting better intwenty twenty two, and then at that

(07:30):
point that's when the wages really startedto go. We had a you know,
people during COVID figured out that therewas other jobs out there that they
could do for less effort, andyou know, driving jobs and so on,
and they're paying you know, overtwenty dollars an hour, So that
took away a big part of ourlabor pool. And then being in Windsors,
Windsors kind of right smack in themiddle of in between Loveland, Greeley

(07:54):
and for Collins, so those folkswould you know, have easy your access
in those cities. So it's alittle it creates a harder recruiting situation for
us, and so we wind uppaying more money than even with the market
demand. So that's like I said, that's that's the biggest deal. So
COVID was kind of a catalyst there, And obviously you and I talked I

(08:16):
know a lot during that time onair and some off air, as just
the government told you you could notoperate, but I'm guessing you were still
having to pay some bills. Soif there's ever a reserve that you might
have had for Heller's Kitchen, thatprobably didn't last long because you were still
having to hold those spaces even thoughthe government said you could not operate at

(08:37):
any capacity or full capacity, oryou can only operate during certain hours.
I mean, they told you howto run your business, but you still
had the same amount of bills duringCOVID. Yeah, of course, yeah,
there's we were still even last year, we're still paying for some of
COVID. We had our least paymentdeferred, and during COVID which was very

(08:58):
nice. But you know that's thatBill comes to do sooner rather than later.
And yeah, COVID was definitely afactor. Yeah, for sure,
You've been a part of the communityfor a long time. Folks have never
ate at your food, that ateat your restaurants. That is very disappointing
on their part as they missed areal tree. But you've been an active

(09:18):
part of the community. So talkabout what Yeah, obviously you go down
a thought pattern. Maybe it's timeto close the door. You shut the
door on the Fort Collins location.Now you've got windsor kind of talking about
what goes into the thought process becausethis was the dream, this is where
you you had built everything up tothose locations and then you have to make

(09:39):
a very tough decision. How longdoes that decision make a take and what
was in the thought process of it. Yeah, we last year, right
before the summertime, I had todo a many a menu analysis and try
to figure out, you know,where where can we work, how we
how can we sustain this because we'reyou know, we're we're underwater because of

(10:01):
you know, our costs, andso we raised prices and did some other
things to try to address that,and that's that last price increase really hurt
us last summer. Like you said, the general public, the inflation is
hurting everybody. You know, thecost of living has gone up seventeen percent

(10:22):
of the minimum in my opinion,is way more than that. And so
the discretionary spending is a lot less. And so when you walk into an
Italian restaurant, you're used to gettinga play to pasta that normally cost you
twenty bucks, and now it costsyou twenty five bucks, you reevaluate how
often you're going to be coming backin there. And so we had a
tough summer and during that process wehad to talk about, you know,

(10:45):
what do we do this continues.We did recover a little bit in the
last quarter. We had a bettertime in the last quarter, particularly obviously
during the holidays, but we hadto make a tough decision. So we
definitely neither myself nor my partner couldafford to, you know, lose any
more money. So we had todecide, well, can we find somebody

(11:07):
to lease the space or what shouldwe do? And that's what we wound
up doing, and we found somebodyto lease the windsor space and recovered about
half of our invest my partners halfof half of my partner's investment, and
still ultimately that is that was ayou know, wound up being a good

(11:28):
thing. Plus plus, we're terriblyworried about the way the economy is headed.
I don't think, don't I reallydon't believe that it's going to get
all that much better in the future. It was tough getting through twenty twenty
three out. We've just agreed thatwe didn't want a chance. Twenty twenty
four The voice of Troy Heller ChefTroy Heller's Kitchen and Catch At Toys where
you may know them from. Bothlocations now closed up real quick. A

(11:50):
couple more questions before we run shorton time. What's Chef Troy up to
now? Are you going to getback into the storefront restaurant or you're still
in the food business? What areyou do well? Jimmy, I've actually
been blessed with a very good friendof mine that has a shop here and
Windsor called the Bottled All of Pantry, and she's given me the opportunity to
start some cooking classes, and sowe're going to lean into that and trying

(12:13):
to teach people how to how tomake great food for themselves in their own
in their own space, and hopefullycarry that over to an online type of
cooking class and some little bit ofcatering. If you're if to people that
are patrons, maybe they were yourpatrons, Maybe they go to the local
independent restaurants and they're feeling the angst, they're feeling the pain. They want

(12:37):
to help small businesses or any wordof I don't know, encouragement or wisdom.
I mean, it's even defending.It's not the guy's fault that he
went up four or five bucks ona meal. I mean, what do
you say to the patron out therethat wants to support local business but sometimes
the pocketbook doesn't allow it with theseinflationary bidnomics we live in. Yeah,

(12:58):
I don't have a really great answerfor that, because it's hitten across the
board. I mean, you've seenwhat happened in California with the minimum wage
increase for the fast food restaurants,and you know, it's just it's it's
tough out there, and that's,you know, one of the main reasons
why I want to help people discoverhow to cook their own food. Cleanly
and healthfully, and we're going tobe doing that through We're still called Heller's

(13:22):
Kitchen at LLC and we still havethe same Facebook page as Catchatory, so
we can be found there and I'dlove to cook for people Heller's Kitchen.
Look up that h E. Le R s on the Facebook. Heller's
Kitchen LLC working out of the bottledolive of pantry right now in Windsor.
But to teach you some cooking classes. If somebody is a local independent restaurant

(13:45):
owner and they're like Chef Troy,what do I do? I'm stock here
any advice for those independent restaurant toursAnd again they went to culinary school,
they became chefs. They love theindustry, they love they love cooking for
people. But in these times thatwe live in and the cost of wages
and cost of food, what wordsdo you give the people that are still

(14:05):
in this business right now it's stilltrying to hold on well. I think
that the model that's going to startbeing followed is there's just going to be
more counter service. I think someof the restaurants are going to be streamlining
their menus. The menus are goingto shrink down to four or five items,
and they're going to be walking upto a counterplace in their order through
a kiosk and they're going to bepicking it up just like they would at
McDonald's. And as far as afull service venu, it's just very hard,

(14:31):
and you're seeing even those guys streamlinetheir menus. So I was one
of the few restaurants that was stillgiving soup and salad. It's your pre
course with your meal. Those daysare gone and the independent operator is going
to be charging for those salads beforeyou get your original meal, or they're

(14:52):
going to be gone altogether to streamlineit. Because you have to do this
business. You only have a certainamount of hours of opportunity and you've got
to make the most of those asfast as you can. So it's going
to be tough. When you seethe local burger spot Wendy's advertising twenty one
bucks an hour for a prefab Wendy'sburger, you kind of know that fine
dining is going to be tough tocompete because again, I mean, right

(15:13):
now, Hell's Bell's a A happymeal or some meal at some fast food
restaurant costs what you used to beable to pay at a fine dining or
cashwell dining restaurant, so it's abizarre world. Heller's Kitchen, Troy Heller,
I wish you the best, myfriend. I'm glad you hopped on
the program to do a little splainand as to what's happening in the independent
local restaurant world out there, Heller'sKitchen, LLC. Look them up on

(15:37):
Facebook. I appreciate your Troy,God blessed. We'll talk again very soon.
Yeah. Not Yeah, it's atough road out there. Stand by
six hundred KCl