Ep. 2 - Beau Bourgeois | Buurgeois Meat Market | 4th Generation Owner Continues the Legacy - Miracles in Meat

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.

(00:05):
You're listening to the Miracles in Meat podcast. I'm Shane Thibodaux,
a fourth-generation butcher at one of the oldest meat markets in the world.
My great-grandfather started this business by slaughtering one cow or pig at
a time and selling the cuts door-to-door on horse and buggy.
Today, our products are enjoyed across the globe. I will attempt to give you
some insight as to how we got here and explore the challenges we've had along the way.

(00:28):
At Bourgeois, our mission is to preserve our heritage generation after generation
through legendary Cajun flavors and the development of relationships not customers.
Since 1891, Bourgeois has maintained age-old culinary traditions that fuel the
South Louisiana lifestyle.
Over the past 133 years our Cajun products have gained global recognition and

(00:49):
for tens of thousands of folks around the world the Bourgeois Cajun Lady logo is a symbol of home.
Today the fourth generation butchers sit at the nine-foot maple block with loyal
loyal customers to discuss the adventures, skills, and passions that guide each of their legacies.
These conversations will become priceless resources for future generations of any industry.

(01:09):
This is our way of maintaining the spirit, purpose, and traditions of our lost
arts in a world of change.
133 years, four generations. We're just getting started.
Music.
All right, episode two of the Miracles of Meat podcast. Episode one was with

(01:33):
Donald Bourgeois, the third generation owner of Bourgeois' Meat Market.
If you missed that one, be sure to go listen.
Today, I'm with Donald's son, Beau Bourgeois, who is the fourth generation owner.
Beau is my older cousin, and I've looked up to Beau ever since I can remember.
And I'm very lucky to have been by his side as he expanded this 130 year old

(01:55):
family business with a second location that opened up in March of 2023.
Bo and I have been through a whole hell of a lot together and I just I feel
like there's so much more left for us to accomplish and I'm very excited to work with Bo.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Bo is who I would consider to be the most

(02:17):
intelligent person I've ever met.
It's very overwhelming. And honestly, it's exhausting at times for us normies.
You know, I remember all the things I had to learn in school as a kid,
middle school, high school, all of the things.
You know how it's really hard to remember all those dates and all those events

(02:39):
and formulas and names and all that boring stuff?
Well, Bo Bo not only remembers all of that stuff, but he can apply it in front
of your face in real time in actual scenarios and actual problems that need to be solved.
And I got to watch that over the past, you know, 10 years and it's fun, man. It really is fun.

(03:04):
I love working with Bo and he is absolutely the right guy for the job.
So let's get a bit more into his brain and see what we can dig out.
Let's go, Beau Bourgeois.
Beau, what you got? You're my cousin, and I know almost everything about you, but...
No one else does. Yeah. Not, maybe not the people that are going to hear this.

(03:28):
So we're going to try to, try to fade in an intro and then get into some,
some deeper things with you.
But first, this will be fun for me to learn. Tell me about maybe your first
memories of the meat market.
I have my, my first early memories, but I guess I don't really know yours.
I don't know, you know, how far back you can remember and what that was like.

(03:51):
How far back I can remember.
So my parents got divorced when I was three, uh, and I lived with my mom,
but every weekend that I was at my dad's house on Saturdays,
I would come to work with him. I said, we're open seven to one.
And I dude, how trying to think of how old I was that I can remember,

(04:14):
but I don't know, seven, eight years old, I'm sure.
And yeah, so I would hang out with dad, answer the phone, not really do any work.
I was a little kid, but just talking to everybody and seeing how the place ran.
And there was probably five or six workers back then. And I would just wait

(04:35):
until I could see people playing outside at Mama and Papa's house across the street.
And then I would go over there and play the rest of the day.
So that's probably my first memories of the market.
So if you're standing in front of the market or you're standing in Papa's front
yard, which is the yard directly across, and you're looking at the market,

(04:55):
how was it different? How was that view different?
When I was a kid, even up until probably high school, probably up until Katrina.
So the whole parking, well, for sure the front of the market was smaller.
We added that on in like 2011.
But more importantly, there was also no parking lot on the left side at all

(05:18):
where that gravel parking lot is.
There was a very narrow path that was like really overgrown.
There was a chain link fence that you had to walk on side of the market to get
around to the back to get in.
And there was a old man named Leander that lived in that house.
And I, the main thing I remember about that house is that you could barely see it.

(05:39):
The whole yard was overgrown and everything, but he was an old man and.
Passed away i'm guessing in the early 2000s and
dad wound up buying the lot they well the
hansons actually lived in there for katrina so they remember that
yeah so in 2005 they lived in
that house and then at some point after that they moved the house off of the

(06:03):
property and dad turned it into a parking lot so it did look a lot i would say
a good bit different the building itself maybe didn't look a lot different we
only added on like 400 square feet in the front right there and then,
the parking was the big the big difference you could only park in front of the store.
And that included employees right so there was a lot of parking going on across

(06:28):
the street and for christmas i mean cars would park all the way down to the
bridge back there yeah i remember that house i remember the pathway to get on
around the left side of the market It was a little sketchy, huh?
I remember carrying a pirogue from Pawpaw's house through that gap and then into the bayou.
And then the bayou was actually beautiful back then.

(06:49):
You had trees on both sides. You couldn't see the road. It was very pretty. Yep.
The water was, I remember the water being cleaner and just looked nice.
Looked like a bayou and not a ditch.
You didn't realize you were in town. It felt like you were in the middle of
a swamp or the woods or something. It was really cool. So, of course,
being a kid, too, changes your perception.

(07:09):
But I remember us. I remember we called them the boys, but it was Nick,
Jason, and Brody. The boys. The boys.
And, yeah, we would do that. We'd take that P-Rogue all the way into those bridges
as far as we dared. Each time we'd go a little farther.
Lots of spiders under those bridges. It's fun.
Yeah, and the Main Street was a two-way on one side.

(07:33):
Not in my time. Not then, but before then. Well, yeah, originally it was just
a gravel road on the far side of the bayou, and this side was a two-lane, like not a one-lane.
And for those of you who don't know, our great-grandfather, he would slaughter
a cow or a pig, and he would wrap up the cuts, you know, the fresh cuts,

(07:57):
and he would hit the road, that road right there.
It was an old gravel road. He would hit that road on a horse and buggy and go
door to door and he would just make sales and wouldn't come back until it was gone.
So we've come a long way since then. You couldn't in those days.
There was no refrigeration.
So the whole cow had to get sold that day and then whoever bought it had to eat it that day.

(08:21):
So yeah, you were, you were young and you were kind of just,
it was kind of a daycare for you of sorts. Yeah.
That's kind of, kind of my memories too. I remember wrapping a little bit of
jerky for customers and standing on a little stool.
And I remember when the, you know, Ms. Karen and Jenny and Ms.

(08:43):
Kathy would, would let me wait on customers.
They would basically just tell me what questions to ask. And then I would ask
it. And when the customer gave me the answer, I would just look at them for what to do next.
And they would, you know, they would let me give them the total.
And I would say, okay, it's $575.
And then they would give me the money and then I would just give it to Karen.

(09:04):
And she would say, okay, now give them back $1.20.
And then I would give it back.
But yeah, I remember that. When we would get busy and I was little and try to
help and wait on customers, I'd ask somebody what they need.
And if it wasn't something easy that I knew how to get, I'd be like,

(09:26):
listen, they're going to help you in just one second. Next.
And if they wanted something easy, like a pound of Hogshead cheese or something, I could get that.
And then I'd put it on the scale and I'd have to jump up and hold myself on the counter.
Because you remember those dial scales you couldn't you couldn't just look up
at them you had to be at the right angle so I had to get I had to hold myself
up at the counter to get the price and then hop down and write it on the pack.

(09:52):
Some people might have got charged
the wrong amount in those days sure no problem it's for the kids yeah.
So, all right, tell us a little bit about your family.
Okay. My wife is Chelsea. She's from a little bit all over the place,
but mostly like Napoleonville, I guess.

(10:14):
And I met her in college at Nichols. We got married in 2014,
so we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary.
And we got four kids. My oldest is Theodore Bourgeois. We call him Teddy. He's eight.
And then next comes Thomas. he's about
a year and a half younger and then the
girls are next so rosie is four about to

(10:36):
be five and adeline just turned one how do you convince chelsea to marry a butcher
i don't i hope i think she wasn't thinking about that she was just after the
dance moves yeah definitely the dance moves,
and yeah you got four kids and y'all

(10:57):
are doing the kids stuff right now y'all are doing
sports and traveling the country for peewee
baseball not yet well it's sort of we do go to hammond and all that they they
just finished up travel baseball boys are on the same team and they do anytime
they're in between sports they're doing jujitsu of course of course and uh beau is a black belt in,

(11:24):
guerrilla jiu-jitsu.
Sure, that's fair to say. Yeah.
No big deal. We won't talk about that.
What's your, what's your favorite products that we're selling right now?
What's like your go-to, let's do this. What's your staple, what's the things you always take home?
And what's the, what's the, just your favorite product right now?

(11:47):
Maybe a new product that we have or just something that's just always been your,
your favorite little treat.
Okay. So the things I take home the most often are hamburgers and pork chops
because, you know, we're always on the run.
But my favorite things to take home for ever has always been calf cuts stuff that's about to go bad.

(12:08):
And we do a lot of roast too it's just it's easy to what's a good uh calf cut to grab.
On a weeknight like i said whatever's going bad whatever's going bad so you
can they're all good and you just smother them down so taste delicious speak
more on that how'd you learn how'd you learn how to just do that.
Papa and my dad, I think that's all my, I think that's the only meat my grandpa

(12:32):
and dad ate growing up was the stuff that wouldn't sell.
Right. So he's talking about, we have a cooler full of meat.
We've got tenderloins and we've got the ribeyes and we got all the great stuff.
But what Papa would do and Uncle Donald
would do is save that stuff for
the customers because that's how you make money so the

(12:55):
stuff that hasn't sold you know
it's a few days old and it's it's time to do something with it that's what goes
home and that's what gets cooked and that's what feeds the family and that's
in the tradition that's what that's what they did that's what our our parents
grew up on and with that comes maybe a different cooking style than

(13:17):
most are used to because you kind
of have to know what to do with some of these cheaper cuts of
meat you know it's like the calf the calf the cuts the veal cuts they're all
grass fed grass finished which is a much different taste and texture than what
everyone else is used to to cook and it's not a restaurant style flavor so if

(13:39):
you take a what are you taking like a neck chop.
An old old rusty neck chop home and what
are you doing with it i like rusty just to
add to that a little bit so the the calf cuts
are kind of like a dying thing these days you know
nowadays we probably get you know one calf a week maybe one calf every two weeks

(13:59):
or something but in in years past you know dad dad and papa and all they would
slaughter multiple calves every week to fulfill fail customer orders and a big
part of papa's business for a long time was slaughtering,
people's other people's calves and cutting and wrapping it for them so yeah
people don't people don't cook

(14:20):
that way anymore and they're not you seeing that and it's also not like a.
How do you say this? It's not, it's not, it's not a, you might have to,
you might have to cut my stumbling, but it's not like an industrialized thing.
Like you can buy, you can buy a box of ribeyes, for example.
You can buy a box of tenderloins. You can buy a box of chuck roasts.

(14:41):
You can't buy, you can't buy like calf chuck chops.
It's not, it's not something that, that is sold.
It's not like mass produced and packaged.
Thank you. You can't, yeah, you can't, you can't buy a case of Chuck Chops. Right. Right.
And so, but so yeah, customers have always gotten a little aggravated and I

(15:06):
understand the frustration, but you know, when we break, we break a quarter
at a time, either front quarter or hind quarter.
And you can't just, if everybody wants the number sevens, for example,
which are still really popular, you can't just break another front because you're
out of sevens. You have to wait till the rest of the, the cuts are sold.

(15:26):
So yeah, as soon as you, as soon as you start breaking and cutting into the
meat, it starts going bad a lot faster.
Right. So, and we really rely on those, those customers that they,
they have these recipes because they were passed down from their,
their grandparents and they know how to cook the veal sirloins and they,

(15:47):
they cook round steaks and they do all this stuff.
And we rely on those customers to show up because if they don't show up for
two or three weeks then we're sitting on meat that now we have to take home
the cup all right and now my kids are sick of rice and gravy um they'll ever
be sick of rice and gravy so as quickly as possible,

(16:09):
explain how to cook neck chop all right there's like three pretty easy ways
but you get them slice relatively thin maybe a half inch but some people like them a little thicker.
Here's maybe an easy way that most people could already do it that know how to cook.
You just season them, brown them, take them out, make a roux,

(16:31):
add onions, put them back in, a little water, cover it until it's tender.
That's simple. Boom. If you want to do it even faster, you dust them in flour
first before you pan fry them with some oil. And that kind of makes your roux.
Then you take them out, add your onions, cook them down, and then put it back
in the pot, a little water, cover it.
Simple. Down the hatch. That's it. Salt and pepper.

(16:53):
I think me and you both learned to cook with a very simple preparation, I guess.
There's not really crazy, complicated recipes.
Most of the things we cook probably follow just a few key principles,
and we do that with everything.

(17:15):
And um they're simple and they
they they do take time but i i
do think that that's why papa and mama and my dad and all are such good cooks
is that they had to learn how to cook stuff that people didn't want the less
desirable parts of the animal right anyone can make a a porterhouse take tastes
good right but and in 15 minutes instead of two hours,

(17:40):
But yeah, to take an old, nasty neck chop.
And you need to make it taste good and split it nine different ways because
they had seven kids. And you got to get the kids to like it.
I don't think they ever cared about that back in those days.
You're right. Here's the food.
Sorry, y'all. Sorry, y'all had to go through that.

(18:02):
It's before they had food. That was a long time ago. Before they had grocery stores. Yeah.
All right, so you graduated from Vanderbilt.
Yeah. Played football, dabbled in some martial arts, some jujitsu, some what else?

(18:23):
That's about it. I was real big into football in those days and took that pretty
seriously. And then, yeah, I started doing jujitsu like sophomore year, 2002-ish.
I graduated in 2005.
And hunting and fishing throughout. Yeah.
Any chance, well, just put it
this way, any time Dad called and there was anybody, I was going. Right.

(18:45):
Pretty big in our family. I think most of the men in the family were avid fishermen and hunters.
Yeah, we mostly fished growing up.
Dad got into deer hunting a little later, but we would still go probably once a year.
And then did a little duck hunting for a while.

(19:06):
And but mostly i remember going to uncle john's camp
which was mostly a fishing camp in du large but man
every once a year beginning of february we
would do right after a deer season ended we would do a
big family rabbit hunt with all the guys and it
was a lot of fun and it was really weird what was

(19:28):
weird you know you were there so the
rabbit hunt was it was like a coming of age thing in
the bourgeois family and you get you get
invited to uncle john's camp you know maybe throughout the summer and you go
hydro sliding and you go maybe frogging and fishing and all this stuff and all
the fun times but the rabbit hunt was something different the rabbit hunt was

(19:50):
for the men and big kids yeah and i don't know how old were we when we probably did our first dude you.
Seven or eight i might have been 10 or 11 best guess
could be a couple 20 gauges maybe i
know i had a youth punk 20 gauge and we
would hit the levee and we would we would walk and we would rabbit hunt but

(20:14):
the rabbit mostly the rabbit dogs right we would go flush out the rabbits so
the the grown-ups can shoot but the focus of the rabbit hunt wasn't necessarily
the rabbit hunting It was more,
more so the shenanigans back at the camp. Yeah.
Yeah. You're right. It got weird.
Lots of loud noises, lots of horns. Vacuum cleaners. Yeah. Bridges being opened and closed.

(20:40):
They would take a PVC. Donuts in the body.
It would take a 12 foot, maybe three quarter inch PVC pipe and,
and blow into it as hard as they can for as
long as they can which was like thinking back now some
of some of our uncles can do that hold that note for
four or five minutes at least and or where they might have been passing it on

(21:03):
i don't know i've seen a cigar smoked i've seen like a one foot cigar smoked
i've never seen a normal size cigar at that camp right ever lots of stuff lots
of vacuums and you may or may not,
you may or may not be woken up by a vacuum running across your face.
Or put to sleep on one. Yeah. Right.

(21:25):
But yeah, rabbit camp was, the rabbit hunt was special times.
And it's about time we start introducing something like that with our kids. Yeah.
Something a bit scary, exciting, and dangerous.
I'd say would be the key factors there. So, you graduated from Vanderbilt and

(21:49):
then off to college. Yep. Went to Nichols.
Graduated in three years in computer science after about...
Well, so I chose computer science
because it, I don't know, computers seemed cool back in those days.
And then after about a year and a half, I realized that I hated computers and

(22:10):
programming especially.
But I was like, I'm only a year and a half away from graduating.
So I just buckled down and finished it.
I was a bit of an idiot in college in general, if anybody knew me back then.
But I did do the coursework and graduate.
Quickly because I didn't like it but after

(22:32):
I graduated I got interested in all
of them well I had to take a lot of math classes for computer science and
I did I've always liked math and I decided
I wanted to try to get a graduate degree in math and Nichols did not have a
PhD program but Tulane did and I decided Tulane sounded pretty cool it's obviously

(22:56):
really expensive so So, and hard to get in.
So I applied and it was kind of a deal where first I have to get in.
And second of all, if I don't get
an assistantship that will pay for everything, then it's off the table.
But all of that worked out. And yeah, I was in a PhD program for two years and

(23:17):
I probably had, I'd done most of the coursework, but I still had like four years left to do.
Like it takes that much longer to do your dissertation
and it just I mean I was 24 at that point and I was like no this is dumb I'm
gonna be working at the market anyway it's it's time to call it quits so you

(23:39):
had already decided that the market wasn't was next at Tulane or at Nichols or before then.
Say that again? When you actually decided that you were going to pursue the meat market.
I'm not sure of that. Did that happen in high school or college?
I don't know. I guess I always knew that it was going to happen.

(24:01):
I guess I didn't think much about it.
It's not like I ever considered doing anything else.
Yeah, I don't know. The school part was just for fun.
And then you came back after Tulane. and you came back and you taught some classes
at Nichols or did you teach at Tulane as well?
Yeah, so that's part of the assistantship deal is you teach classes,

(24:25):
and you teach basically undergrad classes and you get a tuition waiver and a
small stipend, $17,000 a year.
And I heard that your class was pretty hard to pass. No, that was at Nichols.
The Tulane, Tulane, everything was cool. Yeah, when I, when I came back,

(24:47):
the head of the math department, his name was Dr. Beslan.
He had reached out to me to see if I'd be interested in teaching some summer courses.
It was night classes and I had some experience doing it already. It sounded fun.
Pay wasn't, wasn't really a factor.
But yeah, I had fun doing that. I did that for a couple of summers.

(25:08):
And yeah, I might not have been known as the easiest teacher.
Good. I think I had a 25% pass rate.
And around, is that around the time you took your backpacking trip?
I took the backpacking trip in the middle of Tulane. So I was at Tulane for two years.

(25:30):
And then the summer in between, I had met. So there's not, there's not too many
Americans in math and physics graduate programs in this country.
A lot of Asians and a lot of Europeans.
They made up more than 50% of the, the, like my incoming class.
And anyway, yeah, I'd made some friends with a bunch of people throughout Europe, Germany, Cyprus.

(25:57):
Yeah england and my mom
my mom had booked a thing
through nickels like a european tour i
don't know what you call it but it was through nickels a professor came with
us it was a giant group of us it was two weeks and it
was really cool but she was paying for that
and so i decided like hey i might i might

(26:19):
just stay the rest of the summer by myself and and go
visit some of my friends that were home for the summer
so yeah he just called him up and said
hey i'm coming over well we had talked about it before i before i left but yeah
and where so where'd you go oh i'd have to look back i think it was 10 or 11
countries i went a little bit everywhere so england germany amsterdam italy norway cyprus.

(26:48):
Czech republic a bunch of places it was really
cool and you did that i just had a backpack i had two shirts what kind of shirts
shorts tap out shirt wool wool of course oh yeah you had ice you had merino
wool before it was cool before it was cool wait didn't you have a first light before it was cool?

(27:09):
Yes. Yeah, an old first light. Like, from when?
Uh, 2000...
2010? Yeah, that's OG. Yeah. That's an OG first light consumer.
I was really just looking for anything merino wool for thermals. Right. For hunting.

(27:29):
Function, not fashion. Yeah. That was before Sitka. Yeah.
Man, that's pretty special. You should never get rid of that.
That first light. Oh, I still wear it. It's great.
It's actually better than the stuff they make now, I think. So you got to do
the whole traveling thing. You got to do the subway systems,
and did you take some trains and all of that?

(27:50):
Trains were the best way to travel. They were cheap.
And, yeah, I would grab a bottle of wine and a sandwich, and I had a little tiny laptop.
I would just watch movies for, like, the six-hour ride and drink a whole bottle
of wine and eat a sandwich.
Would you recommend that to the college grad traveling?
If it's still affordable, yeah. I did it for really cheap. I know a lot of people

(28:12):
are doing the hostels and stuff like that. And I think that's the way to do it if you're in college.
Yeah, I did hostels when I had to. But I would also, I liked sleeping in like
train stations and airports because that was free.
And all the flights that I took, dude, I took, I don't think I ever paid more
than $50 for a flight. Most of them were $20 or less.
And of course, with that comes like the flights leaving at three in the morning

(28:36):
or five like ridiculous hours.
You have to stand up the whole time. Well, that was a bonus for me because it
saved me a night that I had to pay at a hostel.
I'd find some stairs to sleep under.
And there's that math, you know?
So. I take it back. The most expensive flight I took was coming home.

(29:00):
And that was $200. I flew from Norway to Iceland, Iceland to New York,
New York to Atlanta, Atlanta to New Orleans.
All those fights were $200 yeah not
gonna happen these days I was really good at finding fights back
then you'd be in for two stacks these days
but you did a lot of traveling growing

(29:22):
up too right you had you were always in a camper with your grandpa yeah so so
yeah my mom and dad got divorced and my mom's mom passed away like the next
year and then my mom and my grandpa were We're both teacher to principals.
And so they were off all summer. And Papa had a camper. And yeah,

(29:43):
every summer we would take off pretty much the whole summer as a kid.
And we'd go all over the place from Yellowstone to Washington, D.C. to wherever. Yep.
That's awesome. And then now you're doing it with your kids. Yeah.
We got a camper because obviously I loved it growing up and I wanted my kids

(30:04):
to experience that too. It's cool.
So after college, you came back and you started your active pursuit of the meat market.
How did that happen? What was that like?
Do you remember your first day full time?

(30:24):
I'm here permanently. I'm full-time. And now what?
I guess I don't remember it like that. I had always worked here in college and
usually over the summers and well, every Christmas.
And, you know, from the time I was probably 12 years old, every Christmas,
as soon as school was out, I was here 80 hours a week and I already knew everybody.

(30:46):
I, you know, it's not like, I guess, I guess it just, it didn't feel like anything.
It just felt like the next thing. Was there anything you weren't allowed to a
do at you know high school age like were you allowed to like cut on the saw
dad never really had rules like that it's not that he ever said don't cut on

(31:07):
the saw it's just i knew not to does that make sense do you know how he is.
That's a good question though i don't remember when i started cutting on the saw
but i was in college and when did
you learn how to smoke jerky i learned how to smoke jerky
around that time in 2011 12 when i

(31:29):
started full-time that was always something super top secret and at that time
we still had two guys that had been here shit 15 20 years at that point and
they were the two smokers and like it was it was just their job nobody else
was allowed to touch it take uh chris and calvin yeah,
but did they teach you how to smoke or did your dad teach you,

(31:52):
remember i don't it was probably it
was probably cal it was
either chris or calvin yeah i got a little bit
of everyone i i was able to get some calvin some you and a little bit of your
dad was chris on by the time you started yeah he was there through high school
and stuff but i didn't i was not learning how to do that in high school yeah

(32:15):
so when you so what was what was like your role? Did you kind of switch?
You had already done everything, but did you have like a specific role?
I didn't. At first I was just another worker. I guess I was a good hire.
Were you like a back of house?
Yeah, pretty much back of house. But, but in those days, everybody did a little bit of everything.

(32:40):
And so I was, you know, I spent 80% of my time in the back of the house,
but for lunch, when the girls up front would go to lunch, the guys in the back
would go up front and wait on customers and cut meat and do whatever.
So it was always a little bit of everything.
But yeah, most of my time was in the back of the house.

(33:03):
What would you like to do back there? So if you ask anybody here,
it's probably their least favorite thing.
But my favorite thing always was hanging jerky.
It's monotonous. It takes two hours every morning. But to me,
it was my favorite part of the day because, you know, everybody just got there.
Everybody's waking up, having their cup of coffee.

(33:25):
And, yeah, just some of the conversations that we've had at that jerky station.
Boy, boy, boy. Boy, if we would have had a podcast back then, huh? Yeah, dude.
Some conversations, you're right. You learn a lot about a lot as a kid.
We always had characters.
Yeah. They almost weren't real. You know people like Buddha? Buddha.

(33:47):
Boy, I learned a lot from Buddha. Yeah, he was like a movie character. He was awesome.
Yeah, you hear a lot of profanities back there. and just, you just learn how
to grow up, you know? Yeah. If it's.
Definitely rated R. It's a now, it's a now, it's a grow up now or never type of situation.
Yeah. And I guess that's still how it is.

(34:10):
We have some part-time high school kids. I'm sure they're learning a ton.
So Papa was still there at this time. He, and he, I'm assuming he was kind of
active, kind of there daily, maybe.
As a kid, Papa worked every day and worked.
Like he still, every time I was there as a kid, he was there and working. He was cutting the saw.

(34:36):
But stuffing the bag too. He was still stuffing sausage, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
But I'd say if we just separate 2011 when I started full time,
at that point and throughout the rest of his life, he still came to the market every single day.
It was usually to wait on customers and he still cut on the saw and he still

(34:59):
mostly just BS to the customers.
And yeah, it was, it was always great when you saw him riding his bike down the gravel road. Yeah.
And as he got older, he kind of stopped pedaling and the road has a gradual
decline from his house to the market. it.
And I remember seeing him, he would just hold both of his legs out wide and

(35:21):
he would maybe give like one or two pushes throughout the whole journey.
He would just kind of push off the, the hill and just coast all the way across.
And he would always cut his brakes off his bike as soon as he got them.
Not sure if he used that for something else,
maybe somewhere in the the barn or on a boat maybe but

(35:44):
he didn't have brakes and he didn't
want to stop his momentum if the cars were the cars were passing once he got
to the road so he would just make that curve and he would just you know side
hill the road until there was an opening in traffic and cut it across it was
always terrifying and then he'd have to run into the building to stop right Right.

(36:07):
We did see him get hit by a car one time. My car backed into him,
you know, just kind of knocked him over right in front of the window.
Yeah. Got to see that. And then, of course, there was a time where me and you
heard a big splash one day and we opened the door and there's a Toyota Camry

(36:28):
in the bayou and Papa was the one driving it.
Yeah, that was a wild little afternoon. We had just, we had just closed up.
It was about 5.05 or so. And me and Shane and Phil were, I don't know,
talking about something in the office before we left.
And we heard, we heard an unmistakable splashing sound.

(36:50):
And it took, it didn't dawn on me at first what it was, but I remember you immediately
saying, I think Papa's in the body, taking off out of there.
I don't know how you knew that that's what that sounded like, but you knew right away.
And yeah, I followed you out there and he, he didn't drive it into the body.

(37:13):
Let me say that. Not, not the way that it was positioned. He jumped it into the body. Right. Okay.
He launched it. It was all the way into the middle of the body.
It wasn't just like his front end kind of went in and yeah, we had to,
I remember both of us jumping into the body at the same time.
I forget who was on what side of the car but we had to pry the door open because

(37:35):
it's wedged down into the mud And i'm like paul. You okay?
He's like, yeah, i'm fine And uh, we're like, let me help you out and he's like no.
He made us take his groceries first. We had to save his groceries before we
could save him. You remember what the groceries were?
Yeah, I remember trying to pull him out the driver's side and I have him by
the arm and he's pulling against me, trying to go the other way.

(37:58):
And I thought he was, I thought he, cause Bo was on the right side, the passenger side.
And I thought he was trying to go out towards you.
And I got him by the arm and he's leaning the other way. I'm like,
no, Paul, come this way. I already got the door open. him?
Well, he sticks his arm in the, you know, the leg room of the front passenger
seat and the muddy water was all the way up to the seat.

(38:22):
So floorboard to seat is just muddy water and I can't see into it.
And he's reaching down in there and he pulls up bag of shallots and a loaf of
bread. Yep. I remember that distinctly.
Shallots and bread. And he, and he handed them to me And he said,
don't forget my groceries.

(38:46):
And I do remember we had got him out. We pulled him out. And the first step
he took outside of the car, his leg went into the mud.
And he pulled up his foot with no shoe.
And keep in mind, his shoe's got to be 10 years old and overhauled several times.
And once we got on the bank, he realized that his shoe was gone.

(39:08):
And I did have to go get this shoe.
And that's some deep nasty mud too if you
if you visit the the new location
in gray right when you come into the door you look
on that the little half wall by the grocery section and
there's a picture of pawpaw with the car behind him in the bayou and he's holding

(39:32):
up a pack of shallots and a loaf of bread so that's something to see now you
know the story yes so what was it like Like working with your dad,
that's maybe an uncommon situation for most.
What do you remember? How was that hard? And yeah, just tell us a few things.

(39:52):
So it's definitely tough working for your dad.
If there's anybody out there that's done it, they'll know that. But I really did love it.
I loved seeing him every day and talking to him.
And I loved the work that we did. And I think we were a good team.
We did that for almost 10 years before he retired.

(40:13):
So I really liked it. And the thing that I actually missed the most about him
retiring was I went from, you know, Seeing him and talking to him eight hours,
ten hours a day to once a week now, it kind of sucks. He's busy, man.
Retired, and he's got a lot of things to keep him busy. Oh, yeah.

(40:34):
Which is good. You want him to not stop, you know?
Yeah, that's how Papa did. I think that's a big part of why he made it to 97.
Yep. But, yeah, you know how that is. He's got a garden at the property on 308.
He's got, you know, he might have to go run two and a half hours to the camp

(40:54):
to get some well water for his illicit still.
You just never know. You never know with him. He had some things, some projects.
Papa always had projects. He would always come across the street to the market
with something he was making.
That's a fact. They might make him a new spatula out of a piece of cypress he

(41:19):
found or you name it. Yeah, middle of the day, busy lunch rush.
We're cutting all kind of meat on the saw. He's like, hang on,
boy, I need a saw for a second.
All right. And, yeah, he'll shave off three-quarters of an inch of a piece of
a block that he's using to build a rod holder in his boat or something. Or a toilet.
Yeah. And I'm like, all right.

(41:41):
And then, you know, he's already gone. Oh, yeah. thing and now we gotta like
stop take the sock completely apart and clean yep notorious oh yeah,
yep i think we're like that though i think
we know when when we're on to something it has to happen now
oh yeah and i think we got that from them man you

(42:02):
remember you remember slaughtering any cows
with papa so well i
guess to start off my slaughter experience dad stopped slaughtering i'm gonna
guess i'm gonna guess like around 2000 say and so i would have been you know
12 or something 13 and that was something that they i think they did it on like

(42:27):
mondays or tuesdays maybe maybe.
But the point is I was never around for most of that. And of course, occasionally I got to.
I got to go watch. I never, I was never at the age or,
or the point where I could help with any of it, but you know,
they'd let me like shoot the cow or, or watch or, or clean up a little bit,

(42:49):
but very limited experience with slaughtering while, while we did it.
And then like later on, when I was say, say after 2011, when I was here full
time, there were, there were just random occasions.
Cause dad still liked doing it. So he'd take every opportunity he could.
So uncle Biff had cattle for a while that we would, that, you know,

(43:12):
he'd slaughter one a year or something.
I'm sure you were involved with one of those at some point.
And there's another meat market around here, which I'll just leave at that.
And you know, sometimes they, they had orders to fulfill and,
and their butcher was out sick or something.
And so they, they called dad I had to go give him a hand for the day and we'd do something like that.

(43:35):
So I had pretty limited experience with that up until COVID.
So with COVID, meat got really hard to come by.
They shut down a lot of the slaughterhouses and, you know, we don't,
we don't really take no for an answer too good.
So we still, we still know people that know people that got stuff.

(43:57):
And so, yeah, we would get a cow. I don't know. Keep in mind,
this was only for our personal use. Okay.
I mean, just put that caveat out there, but yeah, we, we slaughtered several
cows for COVID and then the fireman's fair, we slaughtered some for that too.
And so that, that around that time is when I got the most exposure to it and

(44:21):
got like, learn how to do it the right way and all the way.
So yeah. And one One of them, one of them, Papa, well, that dad couldn't be there for some of them.
And so me and Papa did some too. That was really cool. Got some pictures of it.
I remember Uncle Biff coming, come stop by for one or two too.
Yep. And it's pretty cool to see him skin a cow after, I don't know,

(44:46):
how many years has he, you know, skipped doing that? I don't know.
Yeah. I'm sure he did a bunch. Uncle Biff was the oldest. as
he was probably what eight or eight years older than dad
so he he did a lot of it in his
younger days and so but yeah dude that was it was cool 40 50 years ago and he
still got it it looked like he didn't forget all right one single step very

(45:09):
cool to watch this is very much a lost art and when you get to see those guys
do that you realize what it is you know it really is a skill.
So COVID, before COVID, you had these dreams to expand the business and open up a new location.

(45:31):
What was the trigger for that?
Well, that actually goes back way, way far.
So in, let's say, 2000, I'm going to guess, dad bought some property near Highway 90.
Actually like right across the street almost from where we wound up building

(45:51):
and then yeah he bought that property with the plan of eventually building a
new location there well in maybe 2005 or 6 is when dad bought out uncle john
and that kind of went on the back burner for a while and then,
synergy bank came along and made a great deal on it so he sold the property

(46:11):
to them which that's That's where that synergy bank is right there in gray near highway 90.
And then he turned around and bought the piece of property across the street
from him on the Bayou side.
There was a house there and that's where we ultimately did build the market.
But that is that, that house actually I lived in for a little while when I came back from Tulane.

(46:33):
What was the question again?
Oh, okay. Yeah. It is the, how all that started. Okay.
So 2010 or so, dad is now thinking about doing it again.
And he had always been thinking about it. It was always, I think, a long-term goal of his.
And the old market is just, we were outgrowing it. It was small.

(46:59):
It was just not efficiently designed because Popo had just added on so many times over the years.
You have to walk through the front cooler to get to the back.
It's, it's just, it is, and it's old.
Pawpaw built it himself in the late forties, early fifties, I guess.
So it, it, we, we needed, we needed something, but anyway, 2010,

(47:23):
2011, I came home and dad was still thinking about doing, he decided,
he decided he was going to hold off a little while longer and he was going to
add on to the, to the old market.
And that's when we added on that 400 square feet to the front.
That's where where the registers are.
There's a little office back there. It's where the hotbox is for the boudin
burritos and stuff like that.
And just over time, he still just, I guess he got to the point where he decided

(47:49):
he was going to be retiring and decided that it needed to just be my problem.
But yeah, so since 2011, it's been on my mind and it's something that I've been working on.
And what'd you think about this location right here? Were you,
I don't know, did you ever consider not doing it right here?

(48:12):
Yeah, I thought maybe Homo would be a better location for it.
You know, but after talking to dad and just, I guess, thinking on it a little
bit, I decided to access the Highway 90 might ultimately be a smarter move.
Plus the property, plus dad had already bought the property. Right.
Yeah, 90 is a big corridor for the rest of the world.

(48:35):
And being right off of it really is a huge benefit because that,
what, six-minute drive from here to the Thibodeau store is a determining factor
for some people. If they have to go that far, they're not going.
And even if it's, yeah, even if it's not the distance factor,
it's the fact that you can see it from the interstate kind of.

(48:59):
So what's what's the steps you had to take like how do you how do you build
a new location and how do you what's the scaling like when you when you double
up on equipment and staff and,

(49:19):
what was all that like do you remember thinking about how you were going to
do it do you remember or having a specific plan.
Yeah, it's all I thought about for a long time. You were there for the most of it.
But my first step, my very first step, was to realize that I couldn't do it
by myself. I couldn't be in two places at once.

(49:41):
The way that dad ran the oil market and the way that I kind of learned from
him to do it was he was kind of like a control freak, like a micromanager.
He had his hand in everything. everything and of course that's that's how i
always was and i'm like well that's physically impossible to do in two places
at once so the first thing i need is another person like me,

(50:02):
and that's where you came in so you were the first and most important step and
then from there you were you were there for the rest of it we i mean how many
how many hours did we sit around with,
with what you call that grid paper just drawing floor plan after floor plan
there's thousands of So the graphing paper days, yeah.

(50:23):
We got pretty good with Triple Edge.
Of scale yep but yeah i remember
drawing up design after design
after design and drawing up the individual rooms
and we we drew equipment to scale and
we did that from when until when i mean
we did that for a couple years and then let's

(50:47):
see dad retired in what 18 or 19 and then
i was like okay now we just need money
so it took a couple years to get the
to get enough money for you know because we
had talked to the bank to see what they needed to put down kind of
stuff and and we just we had to make it work financially because you know i
owed dad money at the time for for the market still do and and yeah we were

(51:14):
about ready to pull the trigger and then a car crashed into the market in February of 2020.
So February 2020, a white Mustang pulls into the market all the way.
And when you say all the way, I mean, none of it was sticking out.
You mean into the parking lot? None of the white Mustang was out of the building anymore.

(51:36):
It was all the way in. We had some injuries, no fatalities.
It was a bit of a mess. Thank God for the purples and everybody else that had a hand in that.
And then a month after that, finally we're squaring stuff away,
which the boatlands actually were the ones that fixed that, that fixed up the

(51:57):
market that we had already contacted them because they were the ones that were building a new market.
And then, yeah, a month after February 2020, when the car crashed,
we had a little something called COVID, the lockdowns and all that happened
in March or April or whenever that was. us. And that was a whole nother nightmare.
It turned out okay. I was really, we were all really nervous about it and weren't

(52:22):
sure how we were going to make it, but yeah, it worked out great.
And then the following year we're ready to pull the trigger again.
And then that summer of 21, we had hurricane Ida and I'm like,
holy shit, dude, Ida was bad. Ida was real bad.
But we came around after that, and that's when I think construction started not too long after that.

(52:48):
It took about a year and a couple months.
It probably started in January 22-ish.
Yeah, there was several years of rendition after rendition of final,
final floor plans and final 2.0.
They're still on my computer. And final, final, never delete.

(53:12):
We have folders and folders of final floor plans that are all incorrect.
And then all this planning is taking place, and then you finally get to see the equipment on site.
And I remember coming right over here when it was just excavators out there
and dropping off pylons and stuff.

(53:34):
So what did that feel like when you get to see that stuff?
Finally, something's moving. you know dude once the walls were up it was like
up until that point i wasn't too impatient but once the walls were up i was
like holy crap i can i can see it and feel it and i want it now.
Because yeah it was it's it's so cool to see something that you've you've just

(53:57):
dreamt about for for so long yeah you get this you get to actually see it you
can see where the toilets are going to be, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. I remember walking the slab and you get the, you just,
you know, imagining a line of customers wrapped right here out the building,

(54:18):
you know, up to the counter and you're imagining taking the trees of sausage
and slinging it across the rail, across the back room.
And you're picturing where the grinder is going to be and all this stuff,
we've been doing it for so long and we know all the processes and where everything goes,

(54:38):
and this building isn't a whole lot different than our other concept of the old market.
It's just more efficient and spread out and bigger.
And again, we lived, we lived it on paper for such a long time.
It's, it's really like we, we knew where we were getting, you know,
just walking on the slab.
You really understand what's, where you're standing in the building.

(55:00):
Yeah. Which is really, really cool. And then, yeah, you're right.
Once the walls are up, it really felt, it felt like this just thing,
man, just felt like we're in a factory, you know, big industrial factory.
Factory much different than than the
humble beginnings yeah it was really

(55:22):
exciting and so our our vision
as you already know but our vision was you
know we wanted everything to be exactly the same as
at the old market we just needed more space in
each place the only thing that we wanted to add
different was we wanted
a kitchen and we wanted some customer like

(55:46):
retail area to put to put a few more things on the
shelves but other than that everything's the same
we had the same guys build the smoke houses
old old mr landrum we hanged yep hank and hank old hank and his son hank boy
they did some they did some building yeah they did a lot of stuff for popo back

(56:07):
in the day but yeah they built the smoke houses we had the pots built to the same
specs as the old pots, you know, all of that stuff stayed the same.
But some of the things that couldn't stay the same just because of the building
design, for example, was like the meat railing.
So if for those of you, I've never seen the back of a meat market,

(56:28):
there's this railing that goes throughout the building where you can,
it helps you move product around.
So it's got these things called trees on them, which maybe look a little bit
like a really dangerous tree that you can hang meat on, or you can tie string
around sausage and hang it on these trees.
So as, as you're working, as you're bundling sausage or boudin,
you can put it on the tree and then you slide the tree into the cooler.

(56:50):
So you have to have an same thing with the big hanging meat.
You need a, you need a way to keep that off the ground and you can't set it on a shelf.
So at the old market, all that's tied into the ceiling and Joyce and Harvard,
however, However, Pablo did that back in the day, but that wasn't an option
here. We had higher ceilings.
The ceilings are just like that. I don't know that hanging ceiling kind of thing.

(57:13):
You're not anchoring anything to it.
So we had to figure out how to, we had to figure out a lot of stuff like that, but we did.
Yeah. A lot of, it was math. It was math involved for sure.
Sure. Somebody did so. So, and a lot of, lots of engineering and,
and lots of making sure, lots of research.

(57:37):
It was a big process, long, long process, very, very complicated.
And I think that's the thing about this place is whether it's because we're
stubborn or our ways really are the best for what we do.
We did absolutely want everything to be a certain way, even though someone could

(58:00):
come up with a much easier idea.
We were afraid of getting rid of the way that already worked,
you know, so I I feel the same way but you know growing up I I would ask dad
you know why do we why do we put this in this or why do we do this this way
and his answer was always was that's how papa showed me or that that's how he

(58:21):
did it or whatever so that that's always been my answer for everything and,
a lot of people don't like that or get that whether they be in the building
industry and And, you know, Kirby,
Kirby is the guy that did a lot of the, he's a welder, incredible welder that
did a lot of the special stuff for our pots and, and rail system and all that.

(58:44):
But yeah, he, I think he was ready to either bang me on the head or I was going
to bang him on the head because, because he was tired of, of why he had to do
it a certain way. I'm like, dude, I don't know why.
And why it doesn't matter. This is just how we want it.
So, yeah, there might be a better way to do everything that we do,
but we're not going to find out.

(59:05):
Maybe that's stupid, but. Kirby is with, or he owns GWR Services,
which is that welding shop right before you get to Highway 90.
It's like the last building across from the new Danos location.
And if you pass, you'll see him slapped, filled with cars and equipment and
forklifts and just things.
And he's incredibly busy, but he works with his dad. And his dad is still in

(59:29):
the, if you pass and you see welding sparks flying, his dad was probably going to be on the gun.
And those two are pretty impressive to work with and they can,
man, they can make anything. And they built all kinds of custom things for us.
Meat rails, pots, dippers and scoops and nets and you name it.

(59:50):
We, we draw it up, tell them what we want. And a couple of days later or four
years later, we, it's, it's, it's, it's in our range.
Kirby, if you're listening to this, I still need some more jerky sticks.
But yeah, if you got a special project, you know, all of our stuff needed to
be stainless and there's lots of welders in the area that claim they can weld

(01:00:14):
stainless, you know, fin stainless,
but it's just might not be true when, when you, when push comes to shove,
they might back out. And that's what happened to us until we met Kirby.
So while we're on that subject, there were a lot of people like instrumental
in building a new market. So I'm going to give a few shout outs.
So Synergy Bank and Cassie Barrancato were like hugely beneficial.

(01:00:39):
They were easy to work with and really helped just iron out the loan process.
Ray and Bo Boudwin are the contractors that built the building.
And I cannot say enough amazing things about those guys.
If you have any commercial buildings...
That you're looking at doing, just go with these guys. They're honest.

(01:01:01):
They do a really good job. And yeah, stick with them.
ASEs out of Lafayette, Acadian Scales and Equipment, they did a lot of our heavy
equipment and they still help us out a lot with repairs and everything else still going on.
Rojig's Electric. So Chris had either just retired or was about to retire when

(01:01:24):
we started the building.
But man he still he was still here and still
helped us out and those guys are awesome pat and scott graber were the plumbers
and they're awesome in fact they just came out the other day to hook up the
generator richard supply ryan and his team helped us out with some of the kitchen
equipment but more importantly they helped us design the kitchen which was way over my head,

(01:01:47):
and uh speaking of design we have kevin grow with gfp design they they did the
architecture plans or whatever you call that.
Did a great job. I mentioned Kirby already.
And then of course my wife, Chelsea, there's nobody else that I had to,
that had to put up with me for the year or so of building this thing.

(01:02:09):
But she was awesome to bounce ideas off of and pick out paint colors and bricks.
Cause all the dude, that's all the type of stuff you don't think about,
you're like, this building's going to be awesome.
And then, you know, Mr. Ray will call you and say, hey, what kind of bricks
you want for the front? I'm like, what?
I never once thought about that. What color you want the walls?

(01:02:31):
Dude, I don't know. I want them wall colored.
Yeah. You know, the walls at the old market, if you ever pay attention,
the brick wall on the right inside used to be the outside wall and they painted it like a mint green.
A nasty little color but i love it i'm never gonna change it
yeah balls of wall i remember you

(01:02:54):
talking to you know the guys that did the flooring oh and you know yeah i remember
you talking to them and they're like yeah what you want to go with and you're
like well you know that stuff at the old market it's got like the little kind
of like a digital print on it a little pebbles and And could you get that?
And they're like, are you sure?

(01:03:16):
I mean, you could have anything you can get. You know, there's lots of new,
there's lots of new technology out there with flooring.
I think they still make that. Maybe we could get it. Yeah. But why?
And they're like, what color? And you're like, this just exactly was on the
old market. The same thing.
And he's like that you want that color at the end. You want that in the new building? Yeah.

(01:03:41):
All right. Okay. Hey, a lot of conversations like that.
Same thing with the countertops. Same thing with the paint colors.
With the countertops. But yeah. Like you want that? But I wanted it to look
exactly like the old market.
So when all of our old customers walk into Gray for the first time,

(01:04:02):
we kind of wanted them to go, oh, man, this is cool.
It feels like I'm in Timberville. Yeah, like when you're standing at a counter
for it to look the same. Right. I don't know that I succeeded.
All the way but I tried right is the only aesthetic that I considered in the
entire building, right?
You got this big new Fancy building and we kind of wanted it to feel a little

(01:04:24):
more homey, you know, then it was Then it was looking you know.
Speaking of like Chelsea and family and stuff like, you know,
I'm sure you were up every night, especially when things started moving along.
I'm sure you're up late or up early with ideas or new, you know,

(01:04:47):
solutions to problems or coming up with new problems.
And that's like a 24-7 thing so how do
you kind of balance work life
during something as exciting as
this something you've been working on it's really hard to get
you know tunnel vision and kind of forget about everything else how do you how

(01:05:07):
do you balance all that well it is it is hard first of all but second of all
i think i think dad was good at it and papa was good at it and i I learned it
from them is that when they weren't here, they, they weren't here.
They didn't, they didn't really bring work home with them.
And so for example, Papa and my dad always took one day off during the week

(01:05:30):
and they'd usually go fishing, but whatever, whatever it was,
when they were off on their Tuesday, like that, that was it.
They, they didn't think about work and dad was always like that.
So I kind of, I kind of, I kind of, I don't know, developed that way myself.
So I was always good at, at separating the two, but that being said,

(01:05:50):
yeah, when you're in, when you're in the middle of a hurricane Ida or,
or a new building on the verge of opening up and you're thinking about all the
new hires you're about to have to make.
And did you, did you think to do this? Did you think to do that? Yeah.
I'm sure I wasn't the most pleasant person to be around, but we're still married.

(01:06:12):
It's something right yeah man hurricanes
and covid remember pulling up
to the market that next day after the hurricane yeah how
can i forget boy it was all the oak trees across the street all the beautiful
300 year old oak trees were snapped and branches everywhere just getting here

(01:06:32):
was an adventure yeah and we had to pull that that big pine tree and snap it
along with my the chassis I said, yeah, my truck.
The only thing that could have been worse was what happened to Brody, man. Poor Brody.
Yeah. He came all the way back from Joe to help us out one day. To slaughter a cow.

(01:06:54):
Yeah. And he ran over a telephone pole.
Almost all the way. He hit it hard. Yep. Brand new truck. Yeah.
Yeah so what we're like i
guess what were the hardest struggles that came
with covid or or the hurricane you

(01:07:17):
know i know supply issues were were
big for both but with that
with anything with lack of supply or or
all this stuff or new rules it forces decision
forces you to make decisions you know
things like masks mask mandates
and you know do you

(01:07:39):
go up on pricing right now because rounds just
went up two dollars a pound do you do you hold out to pass the savings loan
to the customer are you scared and you need to go up now how do you make those
decisions so covid covid was so hard at first because of the uncertainty you
know they were they were shutting businesses down left and right.

(01:08:00):
And we thought like, well, dude, what the hell are we going to do if they come
in and shut it down? You know?
So I guess once we got over that fear, it was, everything was the only other
huge issue to navigate was support the supply chain issues, man.
It was, it was a nightmare trying to, trying to find supplies.

(01:08:22):
And then when you did, the prices were just unbelievable, you know.
Meat prices had shot up, you know, in some cases double or more.
300%. Yeah, you know, rounds had gone from like $2.50 to $9 a pound. Right.
And, you know, some of that stuff is just, like, there's no way to make money and buy that.

(01:08:44):
And then some things you just, you can't get. So what you do?
How you make boudin without pork, you know?
That was hard and stressful. And then having to watch prices every single time
you ordered, change the prices every day.
And then, yeah, figure out what to do when somebody in the market had COVID.
Do you shut the whole place down?

(01:09:06):
Do you tell them to go home for how long? And it was all a mess, but it all worked.
So explain what our plan was that we implemented for COVID and for, what did they call it?
What they call the uh you talking
about with the employees yeah i forgot the

(01:09:26):
term that everyone was using you had to isolate what
would they call it a quarantine the quarantine so explain that i think we had
three teams and so each team which it kind of lucked out because we had started
hiring for the new market at that point okay that's well that's where i was
going was hiring so how many How many employees did we have,

(01:09:49):
let's say, the year before the expansion?
Probably right under 30. Under 30. And then? And we probably only needed 20.
But, you know, we had made some key hires to, we had to duplicate a lot of the key positions.
And so, and we couldn't hire them day one because now you got a manager and

(01:10:10):
it's his first day on a job.
That's not how we like to do things.
So yeah, we had started early. We had, we had extra employees luckily.
And yeah, we separated us into three teams. So we're each going to work trying
to remember the details, but I think we each worked one week at a time.
Everyone else was instructed to like, go home and don't catch COVID. That was their only job.

(01:10:32):
And if somebody on your team that week caught COVID,
then everybody goes home and now they're
quarantining and the next team comes in you know
we do we just we come up with the most ridiculous things
and you think i don't
know you're just trying to keep the place open so what do

(01:10:52):
you do at first it's funny and then it sounds like it
might be the best plan i remember your first
plan was well let's do this we
just can't all catch covid at the same time correct yeah
I was gonna go to the hospital and start licking doorknobs yeah he
said after I caught it I could be
safe and come back to work he's like okay me

(01:11:13):
and you can't catch at the same time and then Phil and Lacey can't catch it
at the same time but if but if me and Phil catch it that's okay or if you and
Phil catch it that's okay that's kind of how it was so Bo was like I'm gonna
go to the hospital and lick some doorknobs and you go to the camp and just go go hunting.
And then as soon as I catch it, we'll switch.

(01:11:35):
I'll go to the camp and then you hurry up and come back and catch it so that we can be done with it.
Yeah, for some reason we decided to table that plan, but.
Anyway, it worked out. We stayed open. And I think we, I like to think that
we helped some people out because we were able to keep prices down because of

(01:11:58):
just, we do things a little differently than the mass market grocery store stuff.
Yeah. It was scary times. It was emotional times. It was, you had,
you know, you had employees with family members catching it and,
you know, falling ill and some bad stuff.
You know, it was, it was pretty nasty for, for a very long time.

(01:12:19):
And this doesn't stop, you know, the business doesn't stop because,
because COVID is happening and, you know, people still have to provide for their
families and everyone's.
Everyone's worried and we don't have the answers, but you kind of have to,
I don't know, that's where, that's where the leadership comes in at, you know, you have to,

(01:12:40):
you have to manage expectations and you have to show everyone that you'll figure it out,
right i think that that's what you're good at
is i think anyone who's who's
worked with you worked under you i think they're
they're always confident that even if they're not capable you are you know so

(01:13:02):
if they just attach their self to you somehow we'll get through it that's that's
how i've always felt so now we're here and we're in the new market and it's
been a year what was the the first year,
like it was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
Everything was smooth. We had, turns out we did have some good hires, which I knew about.

(01:13:24):
I knew that we did, but you know, people like Phil and Lacey and Brad and Mark,
and a lot of these other key members that, that we had hired with the intention
of, you know, each one is going to have to be able to do their job on their own.
And they, they all succeeded kind of beyond our wildest expectations, you know? Yeah.

(01:13:46):
So that, that took a lot of pressure off of me. And then it was just a matter
of trying to figure out the best way to do things.
Sure. And man, it's, I'm interested to start, you know, talking to some other
business owners around here because it's like, we don't get to see,
we don't get to see what it's like. We don't, we don't really have anything to compare to.

(01:14:07):
We just know the way we do it and we know our people, but you know,
these other, these other companies, like, man, if they don't have,
if they don't have a Phil,
a Brett, a Mark, a Lacey, a Brody, a Stacey, like if they don't have that, what,
what are they going to do, you know?
So I'm interested to kind of dig in to other people and, and figure out if they,

(01:14:32):
if they do have that, or if they're just winging it and they're doing it alone, you know?
It's not the way to go. It's not. It's not. You have to trust people.
You have to, you have to give up some of the, the control.
You have to let people's good ideas blossom and only good things will come out of it.

(01:14:55):
You know, they're going to, they'll respect you more for it.
They'll trust you more and you have to, man, you can't, you can't do it alone.
That was, that was honestly the hardest part for me.
And of course it happened before we opened, but yeah, the hardest part was letting
go of some of that because I was, I was the same way as my dad,
you know, every boudin day I'm in the background and boudin I'm on the front

(01:15:18):
making sausage every morning.
I'm making sure that this is happening and that's happening and that's all fine.
I don't mind doing that, but, but ultimately it's not something that is,
uh, sustainable with two places and,
you know, it's not really how you want to live your life, scared to death to
go on a vacation or be sick, you know? Right.

(01:15:41):
So you need, you need people that you trust and can do a damn good job.
And so just, just as an example, like, you know, we had, we were aware,
let's just say of some negative views of the market on our customer service over the years. Right.

(01:16:02):
And so, you know, I decided we, or Shane and I decided that we needed to do
something about it and it wasn't in our wheelhouse. It was not something we
ever once thought about, right?
We thought good. This is what we grew up thinking.
Good customer service was if whatever you want is going to be the best that

(01:16:24):
it can be made and you're going to get it as fast as you can.
And that's the only thing that matters, right?
If you asked anybody that worked here in those days, that's what they,
that would be their answer.
And you didn't, you might not have gotten a high or even a smile,
but you were going to get the best product that we can make.

(01:16:44):
And you were going to get it as fast as we could possibly get it for you.
And we needed, we needed some outside help to fix that. Okay.
So like, just as an an example. My dad kind of taught me how to hire, sort of.
And this is how he would hire new people. He would ask them,

(01:17:06):
you know, when he would ask them to come in and then he would watch them walk
from their car to the counter.
And if they walked from their car to the counter really fast, then he would hire them.
And if they didn't, he would not hire them.
That's how he chose, that's how he picked people to hire.
And I mean, who's to say that that's wrong.

(01:17:26):
It worked for us for a long time, but well, now we take in some other factors and yeah.
Anyway, all this goes to say is we hired Phil in 2018, 19, 2018,
let's say, and Phil Cass is like customer service savant.
If, if you don't know who he is, if you come into the new market,

(01:17:51):
when he's working, you will immediately know who he is.
He's, he's just got that it factor and he's worked in so many customer service
related industries and he knows how to do it.
He knows how to hire for it. He knows how to train for it.
And all of those are things that I didn't know how to do.
So yeah, that's just an example of, of like hiring for skills that you don't have.

(01:18:15):
And, and Phil's been a fucking, and I have to cut that.
Phil's been an amazing member of the team.
Is weird. You know, sometimes you get, sometimes you think you have too much
skill. Sometimes you think you have all the skills.
It's, it's very easy for this to happen to, to anyone in a leadership position
is just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at the rest of the things.

(01:18:40):
And you have to know where those lines are.
And sometimes that means you used to be the best at it, you know,
but when you got guys that have been here for 10 years, you can't say you're the best at it anymore.
You know, when they've, when they've been doing the boot ant for,
for 10 years, you know, we're no longer the best at it.

(01:19:00):
And we have to learn to trust those guys' opinions.
And I do think we're good at that. And maybe we just learned to get good at
it, but that is super important.
You can't, you can't, you can't be like that. You can't hold people back.
And you, you know, you're not always the one in every room, you know?
And I think that that's probably common for business owners is to never let that go.

(01:19:24):
And they always have to be the one that has final say on, you know,
complicated situations that they may not have touched in several years because they've hired,
you know, they've hired that part of the business out to someone.
And yeah, we have a wide range of skill here.

(01:19:46):
We've got Mark and Stacy that
just hit it 10 years with us you know that's pretty cool
historically the market has had high
tenure and we've had you know people that
have made careers out of this place to you know damn near 20 years several of
them and that's i think that's something to be proud of as a as a small business

(01:20:08):
to be able to do that you know and if we can do it with you know 10 people i
guess next is can we do that with
a staff of 40 or 50 can we keep some you know multiple 10-year hires 20-year so what's,
what's next what's the plan what's the plan this year what's the plan next year

(01:20:32):
this will be our so last year was our first christmas in this place and i guess
you're saying it went sort of as planned i don't know about as planned but it
went smooth yeah everything Everything worked out,
no catastrophes, no burnt batches of boudin or whatever.

(01:20:53):
From here on out, I think it's more of the same.
Know what we're doing, you know, keep training the relatively new employees
that we have, try to get more efficient.
But, but you know, this as well as I do, we have different goals for each market.
The goal kind of for the new market is to, to, to grow, might do a little more

(01:21:15):
advertising next year or two, but for the old market, it's to get,
it's to get more efficient,
and, you know, cross train people and just get it, get it kind of back to how
it was when we were kids, which is really exciting for me. And I think my dad really likes it too.
Every time he goes over there, I think he gets excited seeing it like it used to be.

(01:21:35):
What Bo is talking about is over the past few years, we've, we've like split
into sort of departments or like specialties for everyone.
So like we're hiring people based on a particular role that they're going to
fill, which is very new to how the way it used to be when we were kids.
And we, we came into it was everyone did everything.

(01:21:57):
You started in the back, you know, you started as help, you started as a hand
and you prove yourself with, you know, attaining new skills and,
and building trust with people.
And you get to learn, you know, you stick around long enough,
you get to learn the next thing, the next, you know, more important thing.
And it keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. And eventually if you've been there for 10 years,

(01:22:20):
you can, And, you know, you can answer the phone, you can clean a pot,
you can make boudin, you can smoke jerky, you can smoke sausage,
you can take in a deer order, you can break down a calf,
you can cut pork chops, you can check people out on the register,
you know, you can do everything. And...
From the, I don't know what year, but up until we split, we kind of got rid

(01:22:44):
of that. And we sort of had back of house, front of house.
And that's how it kind of stayed.
You know, if you're hired for
the front of house, you don't know how to make ground meat in the back.
You don't know how to hang turkey. And we're slowly trying to get back to the
way it was because it is much more efficient.
And I think it might be a little more fulfilling for people.

(01:23:06):
You know, you get to see some different things throughout the day.
And it's a little less mundane and maybe a little funner.
Yeah, it was absolutely.
And it was tough as the old market got, got bigger and busier.
It got harder to, it got harder to do those things, right?
Like the guys in the back, because they were so busy making things all the time,

(01:23:30):
they couldn't really get to the front to help out and you
know vice versa so it it started specializing
on its own and then we just kind
of made it more so and i
guess when you combine that with with like
training new hires and turnover it got it got
to be too much because you know you've got this person that's been there

(01:23:52):
for two years and they've learned everything and now now they're
gone and it takes two more years to train somebody to
do everything whereas it takes two weeks
to train somebody how to wait on a customer and if
that's all they need to do then you're done but yeah that's a tough that's a
tough call yeah but since the new markets open the old markets uh it's slowed

(01:24:13):
down a little bit and so it it's it's a lot more viable and makes more sense
training's hard here because we we're holding on to the the sort
of wild west mentality that we have here compared to a supermarket.
Whereas they have to have all these rules, you know, put down on, onto them.

(01:24:36):
And it becomes less, you know, less of a custom experience for the customer.
You only get what you see.
Whereas we, we try to hang on to this vibe of we can do anything.
Well, you know, you, if you want it, we'll do it for you because we're,
because we're allowed to and because we know how.
And that's very hard to train an employee to understand all of the complicated

(01:25:00):
requests and ways to answer customers.
And, you know, without, you know, if a customer asks for something they've never
heard of, you know, avoiding that employee, just giving them a no, sorry.
You know, we're not, we try not to be a no, sorry.
We don't have that place. We try to be a, I'm not sure what that is.
Let me go ask the butcher.

(01:25:21):
And then the And the butcher comes up and the butcher says, absolutely.
To use a different cut. Would you mind if I use a different cut for that?
You know, tell me, tell me what you're cooking. What are you trying to achieve?
And I'm going to help you through this process versus, you know,
check out our stocked meat counter.
That's what you see is what you get. You know, we don't want to be viewed as that.

(01:25:44):
And with that comes really hard training. And we've had to implement,
you know, SOP binders and all this stuff that big corporations do.
We've had to kind of dabble with, with all that stuff and it's, and I hate it.
It's complicated, but it, it seems to be necessary, even if it's just a phase

(01:26:06):
we had to go through for the time and, you know, we can kind of get back to
just kind of winging it, you know, I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, we, whenever we opened, we planned on hiring, I forget how many
now, 50 or probably 50 people. Right.
And so, yeah, we needed, we needed all that going in because how do you train
50 brand new people to open a store?

(01:26:29):
You know, I think some places like, uh, like a raising canes or whatever,
like they, you know, they have all this figured out. They, they know how to open a new store easy.
They've done it hundreds of times or whatever, but this is our first time.
And so we had to figure it all out. So, but yeah, some, some of that's hard
to, some of that's hard to get around.

(01:26:49):
And I, that's what I like about, about what's happening at the old market is
I think a lot of that is doable and coming back.
But just as an example with your stuff, man, I can't tell you how many customers
I've waited on that either wanted something we didn't have or was asking for
something kind of ambiguous, like, like, like beef chops, right? Is the famous ask.

(01:27:10):
I want beef chops. Well, of course a beef chop is almost any cut off of a calf.
So, you know, when you're asked for, when you're asked for something like that,
you know, my immediate question was, what you cooking?
You know, oh, I'm frying them. Well, didn't you want rib chops?
You know, I'm smothering. Well, you, you probably want chuck chops.
You know, we're, we're out of, we're out of chuck chops, but I'm,

(01:27:32):
I'm smothering something down. What you got? We got shoulder,
we've got shoulder steaks.
They're, they're even better. So yeah.
The kind of stuff that's so hard to train and it's not even
something you can train people to do it's like and
this is what i do with all the butchers i'm like guys take stuff home cook it
if you're not sure how to cook it ask me come to my house i'll cook it for you

(01:27:54):
like you gotta you have to experience all those things to know what to know
what they're doing what's going on there's no,
there's no book for the way we do it
you know this we do we do do it a bit different
than you know maybe the bearded
butchers on youtube the way they break down an

(01:28:16):
animal is a bit different than the way we we
traditionally do it here because people don't cook the same
things down here as they do up north and you know
they they're looking for different cuts the demand is
higher on certain parts of the animal and lower on on
other parts and it might be the opposite here just based on
culture and and recipes and availability of

(01:28:36):
other things that that people need or you
know what people like to do and it's very
shane ask me ask me why we break a calf like we do why because that's how dan
and paul talk exactly i don't know why and no i had a thought earlier you're
talking about customer service and the best way the best example i can

(01:29:00):
give people is, is we were very much similar to like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld.
If you look hard enough, there is a review that might refer to a girl that works
for us currently as the soup Nazi.
We, you know, we want you to get in line.

(01:29:20):
We want you to wait your turn. Be specific. Tell us what you want.
We're going to get you exactly what you want.
It's going to be the best thing you can find. And it was going to come to you fast.
And then we need to wait on the next person. That was our view of customer service. It really was.
And we loved it. You know, it's fun.

(01:29:41):
It's fun to fly around the building and run in each other and all this and wrap
people's stuff as fast as we can and send them.
You know, but we've learned that some people don't like that.
They need to be schmoozed a bit and, you know, got a little better at,
at slowing down and just kind of having the conversations with people and making

(01:30:02):
sure that their experiences,
is nice is what they, is what they wanted, not what we think everyone wants, you know?
Yeah. Phil, Phil told me something kind of profound that, that helped change
my opinion on it or whatever.
And it's, you know, if, if a customer has a problem or, or even if they don't, that.
So the goal isn't for you to be right.

(01:30:25):
It's for the customer to leave happy, whatever, kind of whatever that means.
And that even includes just them having a regular shopping experience.
Even if they don't have a problem, you want them to leave happy.
And that's different for every person.
Now, you know, maybe not hugely different, but, you know, that salesman in the morning is in a hurry.

(01:30:46):
He doesn't care if you're nice to him. He needs to get the hell out so that
he can drive 300 more miles to Houston or whatever, right?
Whereas, you know, the little old lady that's shopping in the afternoon,
she might want to talk to you.
So you got to be able to read people and Phil's good at that.
So I heard you say one time, I don't know if I asked you, I think,

(01:31:12):
I don't know, I may have asked you, it was either me or someone else.
Could have been a reporter. I don't know.
But you were asked like, you know, what's it like to own this meat market?
It's been around for, we're in the fourth generation and, you know, 133 years in existence.

(01:31:32):
What's it like to be the, to be the, you know, the owner.
And you said something that stood out to me.
You said something along the lines of, you know,
I don't, I don't think, think I don't look at myself as
the owner like no one can own this thing like
this thing is bigger than it's bigger than we
can be you know kind of

(01:31:54):
making sure it can get to the next generation you know I remember you saying
that I remember it making a lot of sense and why do you feel like why why do
you feel that way or can you can you explain that more I guess I so yeah I think I
think I said something along the lines of, yeah,

(01:32:16):
I don't, it doesn't really feel like mine.
You know, I'm looking after it for now until the next generation comes along
and, you know, hopefully that'll be my kids.
But if, if it's not something they're interested in doing, you know,
my dad never put pressure on me.
It doesn't have to be them, right? It could be Shane's kids.
It could be Brody's kids. I've got 36 first cousins.

(01:32:38):
It'll be somebody's kids.
Point is, yeah, I'm the, I'm the fourth.
I'm the, it's, it's a little cliche, but you know, the,
the Isaac Newton quote of standing on the shoulders of giants,
it's, it's, it's, it's probably a bit much, but you know, it is,
it is true in a sense that, you know, this is this, the market is its own thing.

(01:33:03):
It's its own entity at this point. And I'm not, I guess I, yeah, Yeah. I don't know.
It's a weird thing to talk about, but yeah, I just, I feel like I'm, I'm hanging on to it.
I'm going to, you know, I plan on leaving my impact, which hopefully is this new location.
And even, even the new location for me was to me, it's a, it's an insurance policy, right?

(01:33:28):
This building has to survive. And what happened if the old one burnt down?
Well, now if the old one burns down, no problem. Everybody can come work over
here until we rebuild it.
Yeah, I wanted to make sure it survived to the next generation.
And that's, I guess that's my ultimate goal. Yeah.
What do you think it's going to be like then, you know, when our kids are in

(01:33:52):
their 30s, you think this meat business will be any different?
Will people still, you know, what are they going to stop buying then?
I don't know. It's kind of weird to think about that. Will people stop buying
the veal cuts? Will they stop smoking's trendy right now? Will they stop smoking meats?

(01:34:12):
I don't know. It's a great question, Shane.
And unfortunately we are, or not unfortunately, maybe fortunately,
but we're ultimately at the mercy of our customers.
And so this kind of haunts me that happened to Pawpaw, right?
So Pawpaw was selling mostly fresh cuts of meat. for, I don't know, a long time.

(01:34:38):
He would slaughter cows, pigs, chickens, and sell the cuts. That was mostly what he did.
The whole purpose of boudin and hog's head cheese and even sausage and these
other things was to find a way to sell the stuff that didn't.
Going bad right you you cook it and turn it into boudin or the

(01:34:59):
parts that that you can't sell right if you can't nobody wants
pork liver this week is going into boudin nobody wants
a whole hog head so we'll make hog's head cheese same thing with the sausage
like sauce smoked sausage as far as i know it didn't start off as a seasoning
it started off as a way to make your sausage last a few more days so you could
sell it so that that's what papa was doing and all of the specialty stuff was

(01:35:25):
small it was it was small it
was his leftovers and it's not it's not necessarily what
people were shopping for okay and then in the
70s or late 60s
i forget the year of course this was before my time but papa said
they opened the first supermarkets in thibodeau and it killed it killed his

(01:35:45):
business so he went from slaughtering lots of chickens to now the grocery stores
with their mass produced selling chicken farms are selling chickens cleaned
and all that for cheaper than he can buy a live chicken.
So like what you do, you can't sell chickens no more. Nobody's going to buy
your chickens. They ain't that much special than, than the grocery store chicken.

(01:36:07):
And then of course they were selling cuts of meat too, that were,
you know, cheaper and stuff.
And so what did he do? He adapted, he started, he started making more of the
stuff that, that we're known for today, day, like the boudin, the hog's head cheese,
the smoked sausages and the different sausage flavors and, you know,
stuff you couldn't get at the grocery store.

(01:36:28):
So I'm sure something like that could happen again.
I hope it doesn't. I hope we can keep everything status quo, but we'll see.
I definitely hope it's not my problem at that point. Sorry.
Sorry, kids. Yep.
I wonder, what would you advise if your kids wanted to go to school,

(01:36:51):
they wanted to go to college, and their plan was to take this business over?
Any field of study you think they should focus on? Yeah, not math.
Math didn't help too much. Because we have calculators, right? Yeah.
I probably would have taken some more business classes.
I guess I don't know enough about it to think that they would help me run the business.

(01:37:16):
But some, but some financial classes would have helped so that I,
there wasn't such a learning curve on reading all the financial statements and all that other stuff.
That way I would have a better understanding of all of it, especially from the
get go that, that that's what you really need to figure out.
If you know, you need to cut labor or go up on prices or try to find cheaper

(01:37:40):
supplies eyes or, you know, whatever, whatever that, that helps you make a lot
of decisions without having to figure it out on your own.
The old market, if anyone's ever been inside the back of the old market,
when we say that there's nothing special to it, we mean it, but also we don't.
I mean, there's a lot of things that are special to it.

(01:38:01):
Mainly the, like the ingenuity of the place. And I think that's something we
were passed down. Right.
And it's something that I think, you know, guys that are building businesses
today, they maybe they just didn't get a glimpse of that.
They didn't get a glimpse of using something until it breaks and then fixing

(01:38:22):
it and then using it again.
And if another thing breaks, then putting those two machines together to make
something else and use that until it breaks.
Because the thing that helps us too with that though, Shane,
is we remember, we still remember doing all those things without the machine, right?

(01:38:43):
Like if the jerky slicer breaks, you know, if this was any other business like
that, that relied on a machine, they'd be like, well, I guess,
I guess we don't have jerky anymore.
But we still know how to make it by hand. It wouldn't even slow us down.
Well, it'd slow us down, but. Right.
And the building and the equipment has just been fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed again.

(01:39:08):
Papa could do a lot with a little and he never threw anything away.
Right. Including his Ziploc bags and all that.
That would be my advice to a new business is don't compare yourself to any other businesses.
Worry about what your goal is. what
are you trying to provide for people or what's the

(01:39:29):
skill or the service that you're offering and that
has to be the first thing like that that thing that product that service that
skill that is the important thing and all the other stuff can come later you
know or or it doesn't have to come at all you know you don't need the you don't
need the fancy stuff you just

(01:39:50):
need the things that are required to make your product.
So my advice would be, you know, bare bones it for a long time because we,
you know, we did, we didn't have to go through it, but we did.
And I would, I would attribute a lot of the success to that.
You know, I think if Pawpaw was worried about putting a new awning on the building,

(01:40:13):
you know, what, what would have suffered because of it, you know,
where would we have maybe slipped along the way?
And when you get, you know, as we've experienced, when you, when you build a
new building, things can get out of control really quickly.
Cause you, you know, if you got a new room, then you need a new chair to put

(01:40:33):
in the room, you know, whereas that, that concept didn't exist before we built the new building.
Uh, and I think we're, we're settling back into the ways of old,
you know, here, but But I think, you know, not these days, if you don't start
off with that mentality, you'll burn up quickly, you know?
Yeah. My advice for new businesses is put 100% of your effort or time or whatever

(01:41:00):
into the product or service because that's the only thing that's going to make you money, right?
If you don't have something people want, then nothing else matters.
The pretty building, all the employees, none of that.
Does anything for you so you know everything you do should be tied to that right
if you need to hire an employee it should be because you need to make more of

(01:41:25):
something or you need help with something but they need to be they need to be
on board and can do it you know.
It all needs to be tied into that. And you, man, you can't, you can't forget.
I would say they shouldn't forget this is that if you're building a new,

(01:41:45):
you know, if you're building a new meat market and you think that you need to,
you need to build this, you know, fancy state of the art smoker.
And you need to post your picture on Instagram of your brand new smoker.
And that's the focal point is how awesome and new this thing is.

(01:42:07):
There may be a business down the road that gets the, they're bragging about
their beat up, used, rusted up, ugly thing.
Thing and that's working for them too so it isn't it isn't about the it isn't about the things,

(01:42:28):
you know the things that you use i think that can be maybe a trap for some people
yeah for sure especially in this day and age and i think it just comes from,
from social media and you know seeing kind of seeing everywhere else and see
you seeing the way everyone else does things you know it doesn't have to be

(01:42:48):
the way you do things Yeah.
And don't get something because it makes it easier. Get something because it does it better. Yep.
Yeah. This was, I remember talking about this before we, I don't know,
before we, before we really started making the hires to kind of double up on,
on staff and roles and everything.
We talked about, you know, the fact that you have to get better before you get bigger.

(01:43:14):
And it's a, it's an easy trap to just want to get bigger in that you're assuming
that that That makes you better.
You know, having two locations doesn't make you better than having one location.
It cost us a lot of money to double hire all of our managers for over a year.
Right. But it made the product better because when we opened,

(01:43:35):
they weren't, you know, they knew what they were doing.
Heck, Phil, we hired in 18 or 19. Yeah. And we opened in 2023.
Right. When we hired him, we told him we were going to open next year. Thank you.
Else I think this was good I think we

(01:43:56):
got a lot we got a lot said um you and
I can sit and tell stories um for
hours I'm sure and maybe we'll do that next time uh
pick some pick some key stories that we can just reminisce about there's some
good ones well all right I think that's that's enough for today boo and we'll

(01:44:16):
we'll get back and we'll do this more and and uh tell some more More stories
let people in a little deeper.
Sounds good. Thanks Shane. All right. Later.
All right. That's it for this episode of the Miracles to Me podcast.
We ask that you share it with at least one person in your life that you think needs to hear it.

(01:44:37):
You know, if you got a little something from it, you got some little goose pimples
or it just gave you some feel goods.
You know, send it to someone else. Let them let them feel that too.
And if you loved it, please leave us a five star review. That'll really help out.
And if you only loved it like four stars or so, please do not leave a review.
Same thing with the one through three. Not interested in any of those. Only five stars.

(01:45:01):
If you have any personal questions or comments about the episode,
shoot them over to Bourgeois Meat Market on Facebook or Instagram.
And we'll reach back out. And if you have any ideas for any cool future guests,
please shoot those over, too.
We're always interested in hearing. sharing um who else is out there and what

(01:45:22):
kind of cool stories we might be able to bring into this place see you next
time thanks for listening.
Music.

All Episodes

Ep. 2 - Beau Bourgeois | Buurgeois Meat Market | 4th Generation Owner Continues the Legacy

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Crime Junkie

Ridiculous History

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 2 - Beau Bourgeois | Buurgeois Meat Market | 4th Generation Owner Continues the Legacy