Specs

Meet the family that for 3 generations has developed the iconic wine, spirits and fine foods retailer of Texas.

https://specsonline.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie r H'sSheriff Fryar and this is my heart of
Texas. The fun starts here.That's not only the long running slogan of

(00:36):
the Texas liquor store like no other, it is the even longer running attitude
of the family who own and overthree generations in counting, have innovated a
retailed juggernaut of national renown specs,wines, spirits, and finer foods.
It's definitely a Texas tailworth hearing fromthe daughter and granddaughter of the roller skating

(00:58):
founder spec jack Lindy Jackson Reedman andLisa Redman Lindsay take time to talk family
and they're fascinating world of retail intheir busiest and as it turns out,
their favorite season, and that revealsa lot about these two dynamos. You

(01:27):
know what I love this season.I live for the moment. My favorite
thing is to work the sales floor, so that's typically what I do in
December. I love messing with myemployees, I love messing with my customers.
It's just the coolest thing ever.Very often during the holidays you'll find
us shoulders shoulder downstairs showing customers wherethey need to go answering questions. And

(01:53):
then one of my favorite things isas we get closer to Christmas, standing
on the other side of the registersas people have made their way through and
thanking people on their way out andtelling them Merry Christmas or you know,
a few days later, same thing, Happy New Year, see you next
year, thank you for your business. We appreciate you. That's my favorite

(02:14):
part because the smiles on people's facesas they're coming through. You'll catch a
grinch here and there, but byand large, our customers are happy.
And when you tell them Merry Christmasor thank you for your business or Happy
New Year, and they look youin the eye and a lot of them
are really surprised. They don't knowwho we are, and that's fine.

(02:34):
They don't need to know who weare. We're there telling them thank you
for being there, and that itjust that's my favorite part. It's like,
you know, without you, Idon't have a job. Thank you.
Right. With that attitude and workethic, Lindy Jackson Readman and husband
John Readman, and ultimately their daughterLisa, grew this juggernaut of an enterprise
begun by Carol Spec Jackson nicknamed forhis big eyeglasses, giving birth the Spects

(02:59):
in nineteen sixty two. I can'tdecide whether Speck, who gave us the
epotomous name, did he have avision. Was this a vision or was
he just so rooted in this ideathat the business of Houston is business.
That's an interesting question because he neverenvisioned growing the way we've grown. My

(03:23):
dad died in nineteen ninety five,and at that time we had seven stores,
and he was actually toying with theidea of selling some of those stores
because he thought that the Smith Streetlocation and a couple of other stores in

(03:43):
our Houston area would be enough tosustain our family. I didn't agree with
that. John didn't agree with that. My mother didn't agree with that.
But it was a democracy, andhe counted the votes. Let I hear
it. That's the way it kindof was in nineteen nine. But after
he died, my mother kind ofcame alive, if you will. I

(04:05):
mean, she was always extremely infragralin the company, but she decided,
you know what, I don't wantto sell the stores that we have.
And it just so happened that thepeople who were under contract to buy them
had defaulted on the contract, somy mother said, no, we're not
going to sell, We're going tokeep what we have. Then mother died

(04:27):
early in nineteen ninety six, andJohn and I took over and we were
and are still hungry. So weare the ones that actually took the company
out of the city of Houston.But obviously our roots are here. Are
our home is here, our mothershipis here. Houston is our lifeblood.

(04:50):
This is home. It seems sovery Texan of you, though. This
is such an incredibly Texan company tome, because you start small and you're
rooted not just in a place geographically, but you're rooted in certain concepts of
what is right, doing the rightthing. I remember that lapel pen.

(05:13):
You're my only customer, right right? We wear them today. Explain that
to me. It actually had itsbirth, if you will, in the
eighties when the oil industry here inHouston kind of went and we kind of
looked around and it was tough.It was really tough business, and my

(05:34):
dad wanted to do something to energizeus and get us focused the right direction
instead of focusing on what we didn'tdo or didn't have. Why don't we
focus on what we know to betrue, and what we know to be
true is if you treat the customerright, you're going to be just fine.

(05:56):
And it doesn't matter the economic timesbecause they come and go just it's
like a roller coaster like anything else. It's cyclical, and we know that.
So he came up with this ideaof what would you do if you
had a customer today and you weregoing to be paid based on what that

(06:17):
customer bought today and you had rentdo tomorrow. What would you do with
that customer? How would you treatthem? And you would treat them as
if it was the only person youwere going to deal with the entire day.
And that kind of changed everybody's wayof thinking about a lack because then

(06:40):
it became a positive of what wedo have, what we can do,
and it just made all the differencein the world. And we wore those
pins for quite some time, andthen somewhere along the line, I don't
really even know, but they kindof went away. We just didn't really
keep it up, and we weredoing our fiftieth anniversary and we were trying

(07:03):
to think of things that we coulddo to make a statement, to do
that and I was sitting at mymother's old desk and I pulled out the
middle drawer and from the back ofthe drawer this pen slid up and it
was that you are my only customer. And I said, that's it,
a voice from the grave. Absolutely, absolutely, And we wear those pins

(07:27):
to this day and we will alwayswear these pins. And I tell my
folks, it's not just a pieceof uniform. You have to think about
it every morning when you pin iton your lanyard or your shirt or whatever.
You have to think about the importanceof that. You've talked about ethics.
One of our core values is tobe ethical and humble, and we

(07:53):
pound those core ethics pretty strong.You know, you apply. I can
go in so many directions from this. I'm going to get back to your
dad in the roller skates in alittle bit, but I want to follow
through on this. You treat youremployees the same way you treat customers.
I sure try to without them.What do I have right? They're extremely

(08:18):
important. I think that's what Iwas going for when I was talking about
being rooted. Yes, you're rooted, and this is the mothership here in
Houston, but this is a bigstate and you have been able to apply
your standards, your deep rooted,deep sense of what is right, what
is ethical, throughout this massive expansion. How many employees do you have now?

(08:39):
And how many stores? We havetwo hundred and eight locations to ten,
sorry to ten. Yeah, wejust opened one a couple of days
ago. Day's not over yet.We have, oh god, an thirty
four hundred employees. Well, we'regoing to We're going to get to a

(09:00):
lot of the things that you dowith and for your employees in a minute
too. But I want to goback to this original thing. I moved
to Houston in nineteen eighty. Iwent down Despects. I can't remember if
it was for a story, butI know that originally about this time of
year. He was prepping for Christmasand of course New Year's And I went

(09:20):
down and Bigot did a big story. I had never seen the size of
a liquor store like that in mylife, with so much variety, and
this guy on roller skates, Ihad just never seen anything like it,
and it made such an impression.And he made such an impression on me

(09:43):
because he treated me. I realizedI was a reporter, but so what
he treated me with so much courtesyand dignity. And when I told him
I'd like to see how much champagneyou've ordered you've stockpiled for New Year's Eve,
he took me out back and putme on a four and raised me
to the top of the crates.That sounds like him, It does sound

(10:05):
like you know. That was reallyhis idea more than mine. And my
boss has loved it. You know, ty camera on me and pulling back
showing me sitting on a stack ofchampagne grades. That's fun. Was he
the original concept of big box stores? Do you think in Houston? You
know, when he built this locationon Smith Street, he didn't do it

(10:30):
to get in the record books,although it was at the time the largest
flicker store in the country. Hedid it because he thought it would be
a kick to see how much merchandisewe could put in here. And he
just wanted to try something new.He was always trying something new. And
the skates actually came about because mymother was joking with him and said,

(10:54):
you know, you're going to needroller skates. That place is so big,
and he said, oh, that'sa great idea. Has a wonderful
idea. And he had learned toskate as a kid. So he went
and bought a second hand pair ofskates and that was it. That's that's
where it started. And he worethose silly skates and he did everything on
skates that everybody else did. Uh. He was. He was very athletic

(11:18):
at that at that time of hislife, he was a very good skater,
and he just had a blast.He would carry kates of whiskey on
his liquor on his shoulders in youcarry him down aisles and just like like
she said, he would do everythingthat everybody else did, but just on
skates. It was an amazing thingto see. It really was. And

(11:39):
today it's so cool because I willhave customers come in and they talk about
they were here with their parents whenthey were little kids and they saw this
goofy guy on roller skates, andthey they want to know, was did
I really see that? Was itreally a thing? And absolutely it was
a thing. And Lisa, Iguess you grew up. I think I

(12:01):
read somewhere you grew up roller skatingin the warehouse, not my own skates.
I would take his skates and Iwould put him on, and they
were entirely too large for me,and I would hoist my feet around and
the sounds that I would make ifthe skates would hit, you know,

(12:22):
pound on the floor because they weretoo heavy for me. But I would
skate as much as I could inthe office and go downstairs to the floor
and skate a little bit. ButI couldn't get in the way of customers,
but I did try, and Ihad some fun with it. It's
my understanding what, Lindy, youwere pregnant with Lisa. That was probably

(12:43):
her first entrance into the store.Absolutely. The building was built in nineteen
seventy two, and that was theyear I was born. Oh my word,
that is so funny, Lindy.Not both of you. I mean,
basically your adult lives have been spentwith Specs. Was it truly by
choice or was it just, Idon't know, if the legacy was too

(13:07):
much, or you saw the needto step in, certainly after your parents
died, I mean, what wasit you'd already been there. You joined
the store in nineteen seventy one,Yes, I did. That came out
of necessity. John and I weresupposed to be music teachers. I was
going to be the high school choirdirector, and he was going to be

(13:28):
the high school band director. Andthen we realized we were going to starve
to death teaching school. It's badfact did they don't pay teachers any better
today than they did back then.But I'm an only child. So we
actually came to Houston to work formy mother and dad for the summer while
we looked for teaching positions, andwe realized quickly that at a dollar seventy

(13:50):
an hour, we were making moremoney than we could teaching school. So
we went to my mother and dadand said, what do you think if
we if we stay, would youlike us to stay in your company?
And they said of course. AndI'm thinking back, they were probably scared
to death because we didn't know athing about business, not a thing,
but they taught us well. Theytaught us well, so when they died,

(14:15):
we were ready. We knew readyyou were ready because when I think
about John and this whole expansion intowines, your dad was open to new
ideas, but you brought in thetimes. What was the inspiration, How
in the world did John and howmuch did you contribute to that? And

(14:37):
what was the reaction from your parents? It was one hundred percent John,
and he got his inspiration from customers. We had people coming in asking for
things that we had never heard of. My dad was a hardcore whiskey guy,
and John went to my dad andmom and said, I think this
wine thing could become really important someday. And my dad said, well,

(15:01):
okay, let's see what you cando with it. So he started reading
everything he could get his hands on. But more importantly, he talked to
customers and listened to them and rememberedwhat they asked for and why they wanted
it, and what it tasted likeand that kind of thing. And John
would have been the most successful ditchdigger in the world because that's the kind

(15:22):
of guy he is. And hejust threw himself into it, fell in
love with it, and now hasa worldwide reputation of being a very,
very knowledgeable person about wine. Butit's because of him that were in the
wine business, because customers wanted it, yes, absolutely, And then that
led to food. Yes, wethought, why let somebody go to the

(15:46):
grocery store after they come to seeus if they're going to need cheese and
crackers. It started with cheese,crackers and can sardines. Quite a combo.
Yes, customers were asking for it. So every time we've gone into
a new direction, it's because customershave asked. And then you made it

(16:08):
your business to become the experts.Sure, you're going to do it.
You got to do it. Didyou ever look back with regret thinking,
gosh, maybe I could have hadI could have turned out some incredible world
renowned musicians. Not a day.Because we love what we do, we

(16:30):
love our people, we love ourcustomers. We fell in love with retail,
and we now are able or ina position where we can support the
arts with our time, our efforts, our pennies. The things that are
important are still important, and wemake it happen with scholarships and support of

(16:56):
the Houston Symphony and oh my gosh, so many wonderful opportunities that we have
to do those things. You saypennies, but it's really gone way beyond
pennies. Didn't you just have most? Was it? This past Saturday?
You just had another gala for thesymphony that you were a major and a
writer for. Yes, ma'am,we did. How did you do?

(17:18):
We are still getting our final numberthen, but we had seven hundred covers,
I believe yes, So it's everybit of what we raised goes to
the educational outreach of the symphony.We get sponsors for everything so that we
really really work hard on making itas profitable as we can. Specifically,

(17:41):
what does your gift to the Symphonydo for the Houston Symphony. It pays
for their educational outreach program, whichbrings last year brought fifty thousand kids down
to Jones Hall to hear the symphony. It does the outreach of musicians that
go to the schools to perform andto teach. They take instruments to the

(18:07):
inner city schools in Houston and theylet the students touch the instruments. They
play current music on the instruments insteadof just you know, Bach and Mozart
and that beautiful music. But theyshow them how you can take contemporary music
and play it with these classical instrumentsand really open kid's eyes to the world

(18:29):
of classical music, into that wholegenre of art. It's a beautiful,
beautiful thing. I was a kidon a school bus in the sixth grade
come in from Halllettsville to the brandnew Jones Hall to hear the symphony perform.
Absolutely and it made an impression onme years later, when I'm here
as a reporter, I always wantedto go down and cover anything that happened

(18:52):
to Jonesall. I was there tocover it, right, because I had
those memories. I never forgot allRight, North Texas. Yes, it
was news to me. Again.It was in one of your stores.
I was just sort of chit chattingwith one of your managers somewhere in this
central Texas in the Hill country,and I was informed about the scholarships that
you provide for the children of youremployees. How many liquor stores do that?

(19:22):
How many companies do that. It'ssomething that my mother and dad thoroughly
believed in education, and when theydied, they had already put in motion
the SPEC's Charitable Foundation, and throughthat we are able to fund the unt

(19:45):
they administer, so our people don'thave to pay income tax. They administer
the scholarship. Obviously, it's regulatedby grades and things like that, but
if our kids can qualify, it'sa full ride, room, board,
books, tuition, the whole thingall four years. And we've had probably

(20:11):
fifteen kids so far have graduated thatwould not necessarily have even gone to college.
So we are extremely proud of that. Now you had a partnership of
sorts with the Galveston Houston Diocese fora while. We still do that's here
in the Houston area only, unfortunately, but yes, if they want to

(20:33):
send their kids to Catholic school,we pay the tuition from elementary all the
way up through high school. Howdid you have time to even think of
this and get it going when you'rethis is cutthroat business, retail, all
the changes that retail has gone through, and certainly business has gone through the

(20:55):
ups and downs here in Houston andthen ultimately the state of Texas all the
way up through COVID and let's nottalk about bureaucracies and and liquor laws and
that sort of thing. I mean, it's like you've had to withstand every
test. It's sort of like theState Song of Texas, right was standing

(21:17):
every test exactly. Yeah, youmake time for what's important. And I
think it was also a necessity whenyou know, when my grandparents passed away,
we had this foundation that we theywilled it that we had to we
had to make this happen. Sothe Catholic Diocese was the first step that

(21:37):
we took. We were trying tohelp our employees and how could we help
our employees and make use of whatour founders wanted us to do. So
that's how we That's how we started. And we're not Catholic, uh,
but they were the ones that hadthe best system of schools that we could
that we could work with. Sothat's how we started it. North Texas

(22:02):
came a bit later. That's wheremy mom and dad graduated from. That's
kind of the genesis of it.We just had to do it. It
wasn't that we didn't have the timeor we had to make the time.
We just it was something we justhad to do. We were compelled,
right, Lisa, you formerly cameaboard what after you got your degree?
Yes, ma'am. I came innineteen ninety five, right before my grandparents

(22:26):
passed. So you were able towhat audition? Is that the word?
Or you just interviewed with your grandfatherto be hired. I did. Yes,
that's funny. It was brutal.It wasn't funny. It wasn't fun
at the time at all. Itwasn't funny at all. He told me

(22:48):
after the interview. He said Iwas mean to her. He was so
proud, And I said, whywere you mean to her? And he
said, because she has to knowjust because she's family doesn't mean she gets
the job. She's got to wantit heart and soul, and she's got
to do better than anybody else,being paid less than anybody else. And
I thought to myself, well,hell, I could have told her that
he wanted to already put in anawful lot of hours of work equity growing

(23:11):
up. I did. I did. I had worked here pretty much every
summer that I can remember, anddid different jobs, just dependent on my
age. And but he wanted totest my metal, I guess, so
yeah, So I joined, andthen in summer of ninety five, and
then he passed in December, sowe didn't have a whole lot of time
to work together. And then afew short months later, my grandmother passed.

(23:36):
I want to ask you each independently. Maybe it might be embarrassing for
you, but I doubt it.You seem to be a really happy family
together. So, Lisa, whatdo you think you learned the most from
watching your mother in action? Notjust your grandmother and your grandfather, but

(23:56):
watching your mother and your father inaction. What did you learn from them?
About how they dealt with their legacy. Well, I'm still watching it
and I'm still learning from it.It's been impressive to watch their there's tallwark
command and the things that they theywant to do. They seem to not

(24:19):
have a ceiling, and the ideasthat they come up with are impressive.
And what they put up with growinggrowing up, as they grew up in
the business, as I was growingup, I wasn't really privy to a
lot of what was happening in thecompany. But you know, they didn't
have the easiest of time. Youknow, you heard how my grandfather grilled

(24:41):
we just by having an interview.Well they got that grilling every day.
They never let it really show,and they just kept kept going and kept
going and kept going because they knewthat they had something good on their hands
and what they could do with it. And so I think that's that's really

(25:02):
the most impressive thing to me.And to not have the not have somebody
be able to stop you really becausenobody stops them if they haven't, if
they have an idea, they justthey don't. You don't, They just
go there. They're the little energizerbunny rabbit, right, And it's impressive.

(25:23):
It's been fun to watch and asan adult. Now, as an
adult, I'm still their baby,but you know, fifty one year old
baby. It's just nice to seeLindy. I want to ask you with
your daughter aboard and even though she'sbeen integraly involved with the company for many

(25:44):
years, what is it that shebrings that opens your eyes to the future.
She brings enthusiasm, she brings theyouthful side of we can do anything,
of where are our limits? Wedon't have any that kind of thing.
You know, as I look andthink about maybe, oh, is

(26:08):
it time to slow down, No, it's not. And it's because she's
right there going no, why shouldwe do that? It's impressive to see
it really is. It's impressive.She's a very very smart young woman.
And she does a great job.By the way, on our ads,

(26:30):
the TV ad, she's just remarkablein those. Oh she's quite a star.
All I have to do is say, it's that cute blonde who's on
roller skates, and I said,they're not blades or skates exactly exactly.
And she has a wonderful work ethic. I'm just constantly impressed. I have
to say that I'm impressed with allyour employees. I've gotten to know them

(26:52):
quite well. They make incredible recommendations. I like to see people face to
face, and we should have openedup with Specs Online because this is the
way the company goes. This isa way retailers have to go or die.
And it seems to me your websiteand what you do in your outreach

(27:15):
is pretty incredible. And yet somehowyou bring that personable feeling of your employees
that I get every time I walkinto a store into your website. Now,
how do you do that? AndLisa, I'm looking at you,
I think maybe you have something todo with this. Y Our website is

(27:36):
continually being changed and that is somethingthat we have to face as our world
is changing, so too our businessmust and our brick and mortar stores are
exceedingly important. But we have totalk to customers wherever they are, and

(27:56):
so that's why we have the appthat we have, the website that we
have. We work with every partnerwe can manage. If they're if they
do the shop and deliver, wedo it. Whether it's Drizzly or Instacart
or reserve Bar or Uber Eats oryou name it. We're on every single
platform because we have to. Thetrick is, like you say, trying

(28:21):
to make sure that our image staysthe same no matter which platform we're on.
And we only have so much sayas to what Drizzly does on their
website or Instacart, but our websiteis our own, and that we try
to keep our message the same nomatter the medium, whether it's a radio
ad or an Instagram post or aFacebook PA post or a YouTube video or

(28:44):
billboards. We try to take thatsame idea of who we are. We're
quirky, We're Texas, We're fun. We're selling fun for crying out loud.
We don't need to take ourselves soseriously all the time, and so
we put that on and it's aconcerted effort to make sure that our website
stays with that message. The funstarts here exactly. And where do they

(29:11):
see all of this leading into thealcohol culture and competition moving forward? We'll
be right back on the cusp ofthe new year and a leap here at
that. I wanted to hear whatthese two experts have to say about navigating

(29:33):
into their future as they always havethe past, not just the business of
retail alcohol and specialty foods, butthe culture that constantly redefines it. But
now it's like every celebrity in theplanet has their own line of liquor and

(29:53):
it is some sort of flavored liquor. Where in the world is this going?
And I think, Lisa, it'sgoing to be on you. I
have no idea where it's going,but you're right. It seems like every
other day we're talking about some newbeverage from some celebrity. Some of them

(30:15):
are good, some of them aren't. And some of the celebrities really want
to work their brands right, andsome of them don't. They make a
splash about oh, we're going tobe here, We're behind the product,
and then they kind of disappear,and we know that going in I guess.
But like Lisa said, some ofthem are really good brands, and

(30:37):
some of them are like hmm,you know, we give everything a try,
yeah, because that's what we do. That's part of our our business
is that we have the best selectionout there. So we're going to continue
to try everything where it will willstop. I don't know, there's got
to be a stopping point in somesome many hours you have I mean,

(31:02):
how many. You know, howmany new whiskeys can you bring in better
a celebrity brand? How different canthey possibly be? They just can't.
But we'll give it a go andwe'll see. We'll see how they how
they work, and I think someof them will will fall to the wayside.
Is it a perk hanging with thecelebrities or getting to meet these celebrities
or having them come to you,whatever is happening there, Is this a

(31:26):
perk or is this just part ofthe problem of having to manage a big,
big company. No, I thinkit's a perk for sure. I
mean, we got to meet theRock, We've gotten to meet Kevin Hart,
j Low, Michael Buble, MichaelBouble, Prus Stapleton, We've gotten
to meet a ton of celebrities,and that's yeah, that's a perk because

(31:49):
that's it's fun. That's fun.I wish that they would do more for
our customers meeting customers, then theydefinitely would sell a lot more. But
but sure, that's a perk.Yeah, I think j Loo that would
be cause quite a sensation. Huhuh. It did cause quite a stir.
She was here and she talked toa lot of customers and got pictures

(32:12):
with them, and those that gotin while she was here, because you
know, they only stay a certainamount of time. They were thrilled out
of their minds. Well, andhers wasn't supposed to be a customer event.
No, it wasn't. It justwas we were walking downstairs and we
were going to take some pictures ofher next to her giant display of her
new product, and people. Thestore was already opened by the time that
they were downstairs, and of coursepeople know who she is, so it's

(32:36):
just kind of happened. Yeah,So it wasn't supposed to be a customer
event. So but she was verygracious about it. She was, and
then just as soon as she wasthere, she was gone. So is
that a cagi in success? Beingimpromptu, going with a flow, being
flexible? Of course, we're extraordinarilynimble. You have to. You have
to be. One of the thingsI tell our newbie class, which is

(32:58):
one of the things I love doing. You know, really smart business people
have a five year plan or aten year plan. John and I are
music majors. We have a dayplan. You have to you have to
stay nimble. You have to bechangeable and flexible and again, one of
our core values is embraced change.You cannot stay the same because then you're

(33:21):
going backwards, and that is notan option for us. So yeah,
I love I love change. I'mnot afraid of it at all. And
we've always we've always decided that ifwe want to try something, we're going
to try it. If it doesn'twork, we throw it out, we
start over. And that's why that'swhy I say we're nimble again. How
do you have time? You haveraised children, you have had families,

(33:44):
You've got other things, you're doingyour charity work, you've got a life.
How do you do this? Wehave a lot of really good people
that work with us. I wasjust going to say the same thing.
We got a lot of folks thatknow what they're doing. How to do
we simply sit back and let themlet them run. We couldn't do it
without our of course, not ourpeople, and we try to surround ourselves

(34:07):
with people who are much smarter thanwe are. Like any good leader,
I think that's that's one of thethings you have to do. I love
to see that the creativity that ourpeople can come up with. You're expanding,
you're building news stores who oversees thatit's an orchestra of people. I
was just going to tell you againthat's we have. We have a real

(34:28):
estate department, we have a constructiondepartment. We have again people. It
goes down to the people that youtrust, and that we have one young
lady who is a wizard at layingout stores and picking the color schemes.
We taught her many years ago whatwe like to see, how we like

(34:49):
a store to look, uh,and she goes in and makes it happen.
And we've gotten to the point nowwhere when we're ready to open a
store, good lord, it comestogether so quickly. It's just it's remarkable,
just remarkable. It reminds me alittle bit of ants. When you're
opening a store. It looks likethey're just running everywhere and that there's no
rhyme or reason to it, butthere's really a design behind all of it.

(35:13):
And that's pretty much how our storescome together. And how are people
put them together for us and getthem ready and show ready if you will.
It's very choreographed, but it's fromthe surface it might look a little
bit crazy. You seem to reallyenjoy being the maestros of all of this,
and I have to wonder you mustobviously look forward to going to work

(35:36):
every day, but you take ithome as well, or it's not.
Really, it's just interwoven. It'sjust your life. Sure, that's not
what we do, it's who weare. You know. My mother and
dad work together their whole lives.John's mother and dad owned a hardware store
together, you know. So whenpeople say how do you work with your
husband? I say, how doyou not? I mean, it's all
I've ever known. We have separateduties, of course, which helps we

(36:00):
get into work, and we haveour own things going on, and John
and I actually go home and talkabout business. You know, what did
you do today? This is whatI did? And we live, breathe,
eat and sleep this thing. AndI wouldn't necessarily want that for my
employees, but I think, ifI had to say it, we probably
have a lot of folks who dothat. We have quite a few that

(36:21):
do that. Yeah, it's reallyjust absolutely remarkable. What are people accomplish
on a day to day basis.The boots on the ground, Oh my
god, I'm so proud of eachand every one of them. They're doing
exactly what I need them to do, which is take care of our customer.
You developed some incredible employees and expertsin specific fields. I think a

(36:43):
Bear Dalton, I mean, whata guy. What a guy he was.
I drink the single malt Scotch thatI drink today, my favorite because
it was recommended by one of youremployees, and not at your flag Ship
store. It was just, youknow, one of my neighborhood's stores.
I drink tam Do. Okay,I never knew anything about tam Do,

(37:05):
and now I do tequila again.Lay nine two five, recommended by one
of your employees. And I hadto laugh because these are not always so
easy to get, so I havea tendency to buy them in bulk when
I can get them, especially thecasts strength, you know, the special

(37:28):
lots, the double ers five.And I was driving to Galveston to do
something for the Brian Museum one day, had a friend with me, and
within five minutes I got two separatetexts from two different of your employees.
One time You're right here, yeahyeah, telling me we just got in
some new whatever. Oh that's cute. I like that the liquor store has

(37:52):
your phone number. I said yes, but I said this isn't the store,
this is this is the people,this is we have a personal relationship.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that'sjust awesome. I really do.
Well, it's really true. Andeven if they don't stay in the Houston
area. I mean, one ofmy favorite guys has moved over to the

(38:15):
hill country out towards Spicewood somewhere outthere, and I have yet to go
see him, but I will wentnext time my Mounta in that area,
just to say hi and see howhe's doing. Well. That's one of
the things we're able to do nowadays. When we have somebody who wants to
relocate and wants to stay with ourcompany, heck yeah, we just make
that happen. Tell me about tequila. Tequila is something that has was really

(38:37):
the flame and really the thing isit still this sought after commodity or people
really turn to whiskeys? Now,what's happening in the culture of alcohol.
I would say that whiskey's not goneas far as the love of it.
I think what we're seeing is fractionsof people that they love whiskey. Still.

(38:59):
There's whiskey is huge, huge,too huge, But then there's now
people are have gone to tequila.So you have this tequila contingent of people
that they want to find the latestand greatest, the most expensive, the
best on yehs, the you nameit, you know, the kind,
the zipping kind. They're really toughto get, just like the bourbon people

(39:22):
did. And but the Bourbon peopleare still out there and still fanatical.
Yeah, so tequila and COVID.Thanks to COVID, I think you saw
a birth of people really trying toget tequila because we couldn't get it.
Just like bourbon, we have atough time getting specialty bourbons because they do

(39:43):
it by design. The people thatmake them, they don't make a lot
and then they allocate it and theythey've done a masterful planet making people want
what they can't get. Right.So, too happens with COVID. We
couldn't get a lot of the highend tequilas, and so then what do
people want what they can't get?So tequila had its own little birth,

(40:04):
and so we still have. Wedon't have such a problem getting it any
longer, but you still have thepeople out there that are fervin crazy for
tequila. Do you have any crystalball as to what's next? Well,
we saw a little surge in Japanesewhiskey, but again it hard to get

(40:25):
so people I think lost their interest. My crystal ball really tells me that
tequila is going to keep going likecrazy. Is there enough a gave in
the world, that's the problem.There's not and it takes a while.
I believe it takes what's seven yearsfor the agave plant to mature before you
can harvest it. Mescal is anotheroffshoot of that, So maybe Mescal's where

(40:52):
it's going to be. You know, with the cocktail scene as it is,
we're seeing a lot lot of theold is New again gen and tonics
and the aviations and the negronies.We're seeing all of that really really take
off, and you're seeing the cocktailmasters really doing it in a different way,

(41:15):
like the rum old fashions instead ofthe with key old fashion. And
then the negronies are taking a turnwith what they put in them and specialty
chends going into that new bidders thatpeople are making. I think, really
that's kind of where we're seeing ourcustomers get really excited about finding something new

(41:37):
here. I have to se Oneof the things tickled me about COVID if
you can find anything that was funnyabout it. People were home, they
couldn't go out. They started searchingout things to drink and make it home
and all their cocktail books that they'vehad forever, and it was really something
else to see. Obviously, thatwas the birth of curbside and things like

(42:00):
that, but we worked with that. I don't think that'll ever go away.
Frankly, I think everybody's interests inthe different drinks, the old fashioned
drinks. That's where it started,I believe, and now that we're back
in the real world, that's takenover in bars as well. Do you

(42:20):
think that it's the flavored stuff thatis really where we're headed. I mean,
this seems to be the way ofthe world. First it was the
flavored vodkas. Now it seems likeit's the flavored whiskeies. What is with
that. A lot of people don'treally like alcohol, so they want it
sweet, and they think by aflavoring making it sweet, it's a little

(42:42):
more tolerable to them. That's myopinion of it. Why on earth would
you drink a pineapple flavored Scotch Ijust can't imagine. But that's tearing it
up right, now is pineapple flavoredScotch? You can? You can?
And pineapple? Yeah, tagger throughmy heart. I also know that the

(43:02):
distillers are trying to find a wayto teach people that don't necessarily enjoy alcohol
how to enjoy alcohol, and soin the wine industry we're having a problem.
In the wine industry. People havestopped really drinking very much wine,
so they're trying to find a wayto get, if you will, new

(43:22):
drinkers, or how do we teachthe younger. By younger, I mean
obviously over twenty one, how toenjoy wine. They tend to like things
that are sweeter, So same thingin the liquor side, they're doing things
that are sweeter to try to getpeople to enjoy more and bub more or
imbibe at all, because we don't, you know, we've got to stay

(43:43):
again. It's that staying current,staying fresh. So I think that's where
you're seeing some of the flavored stuffcome in. I don't personally care for
a lot of it, but that'sokay. There's we've got thirty thousand different
products. I don't have to drinkevery one of them or like them myself.
Oh you couldn't because you just couldn'tthen function pride. Yeah, I

(44:05):
tried. It's to you said,two hundred and ten stores. So Texas
is a big place. How doyou handle the demand that is I would
imagine growing not just in the urbanareas but in the rural areas. How
are you going to do that?Well, Texas is big. You're right.
We have always expanded based on whatour customers are asking of us.

(44:31):
That's really all we all we're herefor is what our customers want and what
we offer downstairs. As to whereour stores are, it's all about what
the customers are asking us for.And we watched demographics and the areas that
are new and upcoming, and theexplosion in North Texas is just incredible.
As a matter of fact, that'swhere our newest store opened, was Grand

(44:52):
Prairie. So it's it's based onwhat we see happening in the state population
wise, and also when you haveareas like up in North Texas that have
historically we're dry and then they geta vote on and they go wet.
We try to be there as fastas humanly possible to get to market first.

(45:16):
Kind of hard for anybody to competewith you now, I would think
in Texas we have competitors everywhere,and sometimes even our people seem to concentrate
on that. I don't want todo that. I want us to do
us. You know, obviously they'reout there and we know that, but

(45:42):
we do what we do. Ithink our biggest competitor is us, Like
she was saying, we know what. We have competitors out there, they're
everywhere. We know what they do, but we don't focus on it because
if we do, then we're notpaying attention to our own business. Right
with the economy the way it is, what are you seeing right here and
now in the state of Texas,it's a challenge. We've seen a slight

(46:05):
downturn. People are buying, butthey may be trading down a bit.
Obviously, it's a cyclical kind ofthing and we're going to tough it out,
just happy for anything we can get. Right. The reason why I
wanted to do this podcast with youis there's this fascination I think respects anybody
who's first introduced to it, andpeople in Houston, we just think of

(46:29):
you as you're more than an icon. You're an iconic institution, is what
you are. It's just amazing.But you are evidence of everything that I
love about Texas. The way youstand your ground, the way you take
opportunity, the way you see unlimitedhorizons. What is it that you like
about Texas or that you think thatis Texan most Texan in each of you.

(46:54):
That's a very tough question. Ilove Texas. I wouldn't live I
wouldn't live where anywhere else. I'mso proud of of our people. And
when you travel and people find outwhere you're from, you're like, oh,
you're from Texas. That's right,camp straight, I'm from Texas.
I wouldn't be I wouldn't move anywhereelse. We call it Texas friendly when

(47:15):
we're when we're nice to people,it's just it's so ingrained in who we
are. And oh my gosh,I love the history of our states,
of our people. It's nice thatwe get people to move here from other
states. Maybe depending, but youknow, it's Texas is amazing. We're

(47:38):
ever green. You can't. We'regoing to continue to change and grow.
But you're never going to take aTexan, the Texan spirit out of a
true Texan. No, you willnot. I mean, you can get
businesses that move into the state ofTexas from elsewhere like Delaware or Massachusetts,
Maryland, They're never going to beTexan no matter what they want to do.

(47:59):
Come in, take it. Wehave a flag up here on our
fourth floor coming into our offices,a come and take it flag. We're
not going down without a fight,and that's what Texas Texans are all about.

(48:24):
So personally, I'm wrapping this upand headed downtown right now to the
mothership where the fun starts, andI expect to find Lindy John and their
daughter Lisa greeting the last minute Christmasshoppers and the beginnings of the new year's
rush. Go to specsonline dot comanytime to see for yourselves what this so

(48:45):
very Texas retail operation is to experience. My thanks to Specs for sharing their
story to my heart of Texas,and I know they join kt r H
News producer Jeff Biggs and the guyadding all this spirited touches of creative producer
Jacob Dantone and me Sheriff Fryer,and wishing y'all merry Christmas and the best

(49:07):
in the coming year of twenty twentyfour.