July 4, 2025 • 44 mins
Ever wondered what happens when social media stardom collides with the gritty reality of restaurant ownership? This episode pulls back the curtain on that journey as we welcome back Mr. Make It Happen, Matt Price, who shares the raw, unfiltered truth about opening his hot new DC restaurant, FRAICHE.
After building a 4 million+ following online Mr. Make It Happen really did make it happen by opening a brick and mortar restaurant in DC. We talked about this in our first episode with Matt in season one of the show (go back and check it out) and Chef Tony has provided consulting and feedback for the past year to help. It has been a journey and we are getting real and raw with the reality of opening a spot and delivering daily.
"The food side of things has been the least of my worries," he confesses, shattering the typical chef narrative. Instead, we got real on the challenges that actually determine restaurant success: assembling a reliable team, managing constantly breaking equipment, dealing with slim profit margins, and handling customer expectations when you're known from YouTube. Chef Tony and Matt agree on the advice to double whatever budget you've planned for opening a restaurant might save aspiring restaurateurs from financial disaster. Because it IS going to happen!
We went into practical restaurant management – from handling employees who take naps behind dumpsters to addressing bad reviews with FBI-level investigation. We explore the psychological journey of perfectionism that all restaurant owners face, "It's going to take you two to three years before it's not even going to be a thought in your head yet, because you're going to have a very hard time releasing it." - Chef Tony
Perhaps most valuable is the counterintuitive wisdom that resonates throughout: "Don't worry about the food. Your menu should be so secure that you're going to build an empire around it." This perspective shift – focusing on operations, systems, and business fundamentals rather than culinary creativity – offers a roadmap for anyone considering the leap from social media to brick-and-mortar. It is time to treat your restaurant LIKE A BUSINESS!
Ready to see these principles in action? Visit FRAICHE at 3345 14th Street Northwest in Washington DC's Columbia Heights neighborhood, open every day except Monday, and experience the culmination of this journey yourself.
Thank you again Matt for continuing to share your journey with us on the show and being a supporter of Luce as well. We can't wait to get up to DC!
Support him by subscribing to his YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/ @MrMakeItHappen
Check out his Make It Happen products here:
https://mrmakeithappen.com
Follow him on Instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/_mrmakeithappen_
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*The views and opinions on this show are meant for entertainment purposes only. They do not reflect the views of our sponsors. We are not here to babysit your feelings, if you are a true industry pro, you will know that what we say is meant to make you laugh and have a great time. If you don't get that, this is not the podcast for you. You've been warned. Enjoy the ride!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up, guys?
It's Mr, make it Happen andyou're tuned in to the Burnt
Hands Perspective Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Alright, shoot days always fun.
Always a good time Always funand the best part about it is
that, no matter what the hell wegot going on, no one realizes
how much it takes to get it here.
So it's like we just look coolon the screen right now.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yeah, I'm not cool right now.
I'm fucking, I don't know it'sbright.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
But what I'm getting at is the shoot.
Days always make it better.
They do no matter what happens,especially when we have great
guests like him.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Because we make it happen.
Because we make it happen,hence the name.
No pun intended.
Sorry, that was cheesy.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, it's good, though that's what we need.
We need some cheese, Parmesan,margiano, whatever it on.
So it's good to always bringyou back, because you're like us
.
You're always into something.
You're always moving, shakingand baking.
You always got somethingcracking, which is good, because
I'm the same way.
Kristen's definitely the sameway.
We're always trying to reinventwhat we can do next.
(00:53):
I don't know if reinvent's theright word.
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Grow expand, which you've done.
I mean yeah, that's why wetoday, because we wanted to see,
because it's like this you'vehad this trajectory of turning,
you know, social media, youtubestardom into an actual brick and
mortar, and we talked about iton the last episode where chef
was giving you some advice onopening, building the restaurant
out.
Now it's all happened and it'shere.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's open for sure so what are you thinking, man?
Let's go, let's talk about this, because what?
What the listeners need to knowhere?
I think some of the peopletuning in they all know who you
are.
Like Kristen just said, you'rekind of a phenomenon when it
comes to social media.
Everybody knows who you are.
You do a great job, but nowhere you are in brick and mortar
where you have to proveyourself and your team and your
capabilities, and now it's awhole different thing because
the camera doesn't shut off.
(01:35):
For sure there's no retakes.
Exactly.
The likes walk through the dooror they do not.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
The likes walk through the door or they do not.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Right, yeah, so go ahead.
Tell us what's your experience,man and I want to chop this up
a little bit because it'simportant for people to know I'm
always the chef who startedwith no social media didn't
exist, and then I've tried towork myself into social media
not so successful, right, whenit comes, compared to someone
like you.
However, flip the thing aroundand I'm a chef who's luckily
very successful in brick andmortar and with actual people,
(02:07):
and it's hard, so you know.
Flipping it around on your endis you're now a social media guy
flipping over to the restaurant, right, so go ahead.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, I mean I'm just learning a lot every day.
I mean there's something newevery day.
I think you said one of the keywords a minute ago team.
I think that's the moredifficult part, in my opinion is
assembling the right team,having people that care Nobody's
going to care as much as you,but care enough that they can
stay on the team, care about theguest experience, care about
(02:36):
the little things not walkingover trash that's on the floor,
cleaning up, just doing thesmall things that I kind of lose
sleep over.
The food side of things, Idon't want to say it's been easy
, but in relation to everythingelse, that's been like the least
of my my worries.
My worries have been more onthe service side things breaking
(02:59):
down.
We're in an old, historicbuilding in dc, so constantly
having to repair things, replacethings, just every day
something new, whether it's adishwasher, a leak, a walk-in,
whatever you name it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Whatever could break has broken, it will break, and
even if you think you fixed itjust now, all you did was bought
yourself time Right, becausethat's just the way it is.
This equipment, everything weuse, is nonstop.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It doesn't stop your refrigerators never take a break
your freezers never stop.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You know, the ovens, ranges, gas lines, they never
stop.
Everything's consistentlymoving parts at all times and
people got to take care of thestuff.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's the thing, like I said, the team part of it
is like just use a littlecommon sense, let's treat it
like it's yours.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, and a lot of them don't.
So at this point, how long haveyou been open?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We opened we had a soft opening in the middle of
February.
We officially opened probablythe end of February going into.
March.
So from March till now went onabout four months.
But yeah, I mean things.
Luckily we've been busy.
I mean the business has beenreally good, especially for a
(04:08):
brand-new restaurant and in avery competitive market like DC.
There's tons of great optionsto eat in DC in a very you know
walkable city Per capita.
There's probably more greatrestaurants there than I mean
outside of like New York andsome of the you know mega cities
.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And there's a lot of.
You know, you have everythingfrom Michelin stars all the way
down to food trucks that arephenomenal, so the options are
endless.
But the good part about it,though, is I'm always a big fan
of this.
People say well, what ifanother Italian opened a
restaurant?
I'm opening up a deli.
Now, three doors down, there'sanother deli opening.
Now, all of a sudden, sucks forthem.
Well, that's what I say, butnot only that.
(04:50):
If you're good at what you do,your product's good, your
knowledge is good, you have areputation and you're putting
out a product.
If there's three or four moredelis, that's just three or four
more reasons for more people tocome downtown, sure.
So, as long as you're puttingout that product and you put out
a good product.
So that's what you have to dois keep the product right.
And people are going to comeBecause out of all those people,
especially in DC right, whenyou have a city with all these
numbers and all these people,you have more options because
there's just plenty to go around.
(05:10):
Here, where I am in Chesapeake,there's only so many options
because we have a per capitaright so you can only have so
many great restaurants for allthe people that go to this type
of restaurant in this communityto go to.
So you have to be the best herebecause you have to be the
first choice.
Sure, over there you can dabbleRight and as long as your
product is going good, you'regoing to.
You're going to win that.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, and consistency is something that we're really
focused on, particularly withthe food.
I think we've we've gotten to abetter place there, but just
you know, I'm still trying toget the service where I want it
to be.
But just you know, I'm stilltrying to get the service where
I want it to be and it's justlike you said, the same thing
with customer options of wherethey can go, worker options of
(05:50):
where they can work.
There's a lot of places in DCyou can go make good money as a
server or a bartender.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It's just trying to acquire the talent and then keep
the talent.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
We'll have a great.
I think our line cooks arephenomenal, but some of these
guys will sell you out for 50cents more per quick, per dollar
.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I mean my analogy to that is this I can give one of
my employees a brand new car,yeah, and they would leave me
the second.
Someone gave them a place towork, to park it for free if
someone gave them a free parkingspot.
They would leave here withtheir brand new car and go park
it for free.
Definitely, you see what I'msaying.
That's, some of them are likethat.
Then again you have some thatare loyal as shit.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
But the loyal ones are going to help you succeed
and that's going to help yougrow, and they're going to be.
Everything's going to work well.
It's not as detrimental as theones that are shitty, though.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
When someone's shitty in the kitchen, immediately
known than someone who's loyaland cool.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Their presence is known because you can rely on
them, got it.
That works well.
But if you have someone who'stoxic in the kitchen or lazy or
something that is felt instantly, Got to get rid of them.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
One of the best pieces of advice I heard from
somebody was like as soon as yousee a red flag, clip them, Clip
it.
Like don't give them a secondchance, and it's easy to say
that sitting here right now,it's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But it's hard to do because that red flag is also
something you need to do tocontinue.
So sometimes getting rid of ared flag just like this is
typically someone's advice thatdoesn't have to deal with the
aftermath.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So usually a restaurant owner will be.
I'm a chef owner, so I'm in thekitchen nonstop and I'm also on
the floor watching everythingbecause I want my food to come
out a proper way, all that andso on.
So if you get rid of a red flagsometimes and you're in the
kitchen working with that redflag, getting rid of that red
flag may not be convenient,because now who's going to do
the work Sometimes dealing withthat red flag is necessary.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
We had a busy weekend this weekend.
What are you going to do?
You just kick the guy at workto grill you.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
How are you going to go out and take care of
everything else?
I mean, yes, I will.
I always will, if I have to.
They're going to be.
They're going to be that wayand they're not going to stop.
(08:06):
They're only going to get worseFor sure, because once comfort
sits in and now they know theycan get over on you.
Even the best employees getcomfortable.
They have their little tricks,their little things.
They come in, they know when tosneak out, and that's okay.
But when someone who's ashithead gets comfortable?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
That is a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
We just had to let a guy go on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
this past Sunday I forgot to send you the picture.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
One of my guys got a storage.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh man, I love the pictures.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Now we need the picture.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Now we need the picture we got a storage in the
back for like extrarefrigeration and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So one of my chefs is going back to grab something to
bring back for service.
He sees some you know dressshoes just sticking out from
behind a trash.
Can the guy's drunk middle ofthe day Dress shoes?
One of our busboys, drunk, laidout asleep on the ground.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
On the clock Like the Wizard of Oz.
The shoes are hanging outWicked witch.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He sends me a picture .
He's on the clock, asleep inthe back, drunk.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Did you take his shoes off and his feet curled up
?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
No, but I clocked him out immediately.
You should have stole his shoes.
I just stole his shoes, Dude.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
one time I had a kid put an iron directly on my brand
new VanCat leather one brown,one in the back.
Hot iron on there.
You know what his excuse was.
I didn't think it was still hot.
You're fucking ironingliterally right now.
Skylar, remember this kid.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Skylar's back there.
She's kind of cracking up alittle bit.
She knows what time it is.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I'm trying to remember.
The worst one, varte, was whenyou went back and we used to
have drinks that all had whippedcream on them and just like
cheesy drinks at the oceanfrontfrozen drinks and all the
whipped cream.
You'd keep grabbing cans andnone of them worked and cans and
none of them worked.
And these fuckers are back therejust doing whippets all day
from the kitchen staff justsitting there, and so you've got
literally 36 bottles of whippedcream you can't use.
So you just ate all that costand they're just high for 10
(09:51):
seconds and then going back outthere maybe five right, not even
that it was so dumb.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I'm like guys, come on, man, like we know it's you
like?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
there's no way, we're not gonna know.
It's not us, yeah us, yeah, yougot it wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Come on, I got a thing, like when people are like
oh, we're having a, this is agood shift, I'm like shh, yeah,
not even nine o'clock yet, sothat's going good then.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Like the shift part, but we, like you, have to talk
about the opening process too,because this was, your like,
first experience opening abuilding.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, it's been a grind man.
I mean, I've had to be thereLike I got an apartment in DC
now, so I'm actively splittingtime between here and DC.
I think part of it is I justdon't have enough people that
can get the job done at thelevel that I would want it to
get done.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, you won't yet, man, it's going to take you a
year or two to understand that.
And here's another thing I'mgoing to tell you, and I can
tell everybody out therelistening it's going to take you
two to three years before it'snot even going to be a thought
in your head yet, because you'regoing to have a very hard time
releasing it.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Whether there's someone there you can count on
or not, that person's only goingto make you feel better while
you're there.
It's going to take you a verylong time.
It took me almost nine yearsbefore I could walk out of my
place and open up another one,because I was so adamant about
being there all the time.
Yeah and yes, no matter what.
No disrespect to my team.
I love them.
They're amazing, but no matterwhat, the standard is going to
(11:16):
drop a little bit becausethey're not you yeah they want
to get through the day.
They want to get.
They want to make sure you'resatisfied.
They don't want to get yelled.
They want to make sureeverything's good.
Don, they don't want to getyelled, they want to make sure
everything's good.
Don't get me wrong.
They do have a passion aboutthem, which is very clear.
However, it's still not youright.
So you have to understand thatwhen you are ready to make the
next move or take a day off, youhave to give up some level of
(11:37):
that expectation or you're goingto be chained to it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And that's okay.
That's a balance I'm trying tofigure out.
It'll take time.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And I don't know if you'll figure it out until the
day you're ready.
A day will come where you'rejust ready to say, okay, I'll
let that go, that little pieceof paper on the floor where you
would just flip out over someonewalking over.
You'll just walk overnonchalantly and just pick it up
and you're going to choose yourbattles differently.
Right, you know what I'm saying?
Because there's so many littlethings that happen that are
never going to go the way youwant it.
(12:06):
If it does, dude, you're goingto move on to something else.
Yeah, because now it's going tobe boring, right For sure.
So, like Kristen said at thebeginning here, when opening up,
what recommendations do youhave?
Everyone's already seen you onthe show.
If not, go back and check, cancheck them out.
They can see them on yourwebsites and instagram.
We'll plug that in a littlewhile.
But, um, how, how do you?
What do you recommend?
(12:27):
As far as what would you havedone differently?
Man, go right to the fuckingdirt.
What would you have done, right?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
away.
I would have taken my timemaking, uh, the, the important
hires like the, the cornerstonepieces, the gm, the, the
executive chef or whoever'sgoing to be there when you're
not there, kind of deal, this,whatever you want to call them,
cdc, chef, chef, whoever thatperson is.
If you're the executive chef,obviously, whoever's under you,
whoever you're trust, whoeveryou trust the most in the in the
(12:52):
building, take your time makingthose hires.
I kind of pulled the trigger alittle quick on a couple of
those hires that I ended upregretting um, whatever your
budget is, uh, throw that shitaway.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Add a double yeah, at least.
And you know, do your duediligence.
Like have somebody, an expert,come in and like give you a full
rundown, like come in here andpick this place apart, tell me
everything that's wrong with it,instead of like going into it
with you know, let's hope forthe best and just, you know, do
what we want to put a blind eyeto the actual problems.
(13:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I was getting ready to get into a contract or a
lease with some situation and itjust things kept piling and
escalating, and what it was thatpiling up for me was money.
Yeah, yes, you're going to helpme.
Yes, you're going to help me,but you're going to help me with
shit I shouldn't need help with.
You're going to help me with aportion of the money I have to
spend.
That's not what I want to hear,because it's not this, it's not
(13:48):
ready yeah and these are thingsI've learned growing right just
like you said, and and when Iwhen this place, when I built
this place, I had a lot of great, great assistance and we had
the best matter of fact, we'llbe interviewing one of my
designers, or my designerheather, who has this type of
advice.
Yeah, I call her now foreverything.
Yeah, even if I'm having anidea or a thought thing, I'll,
(14:09):
I'll pass it over, kristen,we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I'm gonna check you a little bit, like you kind of
need some people to say no right, you need the people that have
either been there or are willingto stand up to you as an owner
or, you know some, anyone withnotoriety be like no that's not.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
have you ran that Correct, have you?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
actually ran pro forma for the next five years.
That's exactly right.
You know exactly what's goingto happen.
Then you can say to themstraight up.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
How much is this going?
How is my vision?
If you find someone that workswith you, well, Heather and I
work really good together.
We have a really good visiontogether.
When it comes to what I want ina restaurant, she's really good
Heather and say hey, how muchis this going to cost me?
Right, and she'll tell me amillion and a half, at least
three million Right away, nodoubt.
You know what I'm saying andit's like, okay, that was a good
(14:51):
idea.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, that was a great idea.
It might not be practical.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It might not be practical for that application
we could take three millionsomewhere else, so on, so on, so
on.
Just like you said, if you'regoing to go into a building and
you don't inspect the buildingto see what the problem is, yeah
, these are things thatlisteners need to know,
especially my camera.
All you chefs out there who aregoing to open your restaurant
and go open up your littlefucking pop-up cool man, I don't
(15:17):
want to down you.
Everyone has the right to go dothis.
Yeah, understand what it isyou're doing.
It's being a chef owner is waydifferent than working for
someone as a chef for a verylong time.
You're always underneath thecushion of that umbrella.
You're always under theumbrella of someone else and it
seems easy.
But when you go and open upyour own place, you don't worry
(15:38):
about the food.
Don't even worry about yourfood, because your food can't do
shit unless it gets to thetable.
You know what I mean.
It can't do shit unless it getsto the table.
You know what I mean.
It can't get to the pan, or itcan't get to this, that and the
other.
It can't do shit, right?
So you need to make sure thatyour food is the last thing you
worry about, because you shouldbe as confident in the chef and
your food, no matter what you'redoing.
So if you're so confident inyour food, stop worrying about
the food.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
It's everything else.
Every chef I know is so worriedabout them.
Chef, you've got to see thismenu I'm working on.
That's cool, dude.
But what are you going to doabout your restroom?
How about the floors?
How about this, that and theother?
Don't worry about the food.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Your food should be People having clean towels.
What do you do when you get afruit fly infestation?
There's a million things thatcould happen Exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And you're lock in your food should be so secure.
Your menu should be so fuckingdirect that you're going to
build an empire around it.
You shouldn't even be worriedabout your food right now.
Your food is the least thing.
You should be so confident inyour food that you should go to
bed at night, not worry about myfood.
My deli is opening soon.
Haven't even considered a menu.
My sandwiches, my menu, mysalads, all the accoutrements,
everything I'm going to be doingI'm not even worried about that
.
I'll tell you what put all myingredients in the building and
(16:48):
then I'm going to make a menu inabout an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
That's experience.
Yeah, because when you're doingit for the first time, you kind
of focus on what you think isthe most important thing, but
you don't know what you don'tknow thing, but you don't, but
you don't know what you don'tknow.
Yeah, so, like this is goodadvice and people should
definitely, definitely listen toit.
That's something that that Ikind of didn't really, I didn't
know what I was getting myselfinto completely, and I'm good
(17:12):
for just jumping in the pool, so, um, that's that's kind of what
.
What ended up happening for metoo is just like I'm learning
all of the the P&L stuff, likehow to, how, like how to make
this thing profitable, like Iknow how to make the food.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Well, the numbers I mean and that's the part that we
always say it, and I mean wesay it in marketing, with our
clients all the time.
And you know, being in therestaurants for so long, I had
to deal with the liquor costsand things like that, but I
didn't care as much about thebig picture because I was again
just an employee or a manager.
I, I was sitting there grindingnumbers all night and wondering
how everybody was going to getpaid.
So you're the only person doingthat and it is hard.
(17:47):
I mean you just have toactually treat it like I say you
are a brand, you've created amassive brand, but you are your
brand.
Your brand is your business,and if you don't treat it as a
business, you're going to fail.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That would be my other piece of advice is to try
to focus on having those systemsin place so that when you open,
you can plug everything intoyour spreadsheet and it'll spit
out.
You know you're at 15% here,you're at 7% here, you're 3%
over over here.
Next month you need to watchyour labor.
You got to do this, or evenknow what your labor should be
(18:18):
or know what your projectionsare in all those spaces, Labor
is always going to be the issue.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Man Employees and labor are always going to be the
biggest issue in the restaurantbusiness because you have to
have them yeah, and a lot ofthem don't have things bringing
back your wait staff.
They get paid the least by thehour.
It's the best on your employeeas far as your payroll is right.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Because it's the best .
However, they bring the mostfrom it, so you're paying them
the least and they're bringingthe most.
However, a dishwasher essential, very key.
I pay mine very well, yeah, buttheir position is a necessity,
not a bring it doesn't bringmoney in right yeah it's a hard
cost, it's a loss yeah, period,no matter how you look at it,
(19:00):
when financially it's a loss,it's needed to be done.
But there's no profit comingfrom their position whatsoever,
right?
Bartenders, servers, bus people, kitchen support staff their
job is directly to the customer,at least adding money to the
thing.
So you got to go in the kitchenwhere a lot of the some of the
places places prep salads,things like that.
(19:22):
Their portion is notoutweighing their salary, right,
that?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
makes sense, and that's another.
The labor, particularly on theprep side, is something that
I've been working with ortalking to my team about.
It's like if you give a humaneight hours to do a thing,
they're going to take eighthours to do that thing.
Give them six, yeah.
Instead of coming in at sevenin the morning and leaving at
three, make them come in at nineand I bet you they get the same
exact amount of work?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Of course they will, because they're going to take
advantage of everything.
The only problem is when youhave someone come in at six and
it takes them fucking seven andit used to take them nine.
You see what I'm saying andthey're still not doing it,
because they still learn how tosnake and take naps behind a
dumpster with their new shoes on.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Take a quick nap.
New shoe goofing.
Well, so we've seen therestaurant line.
I mean it looks awesome.
So I guess, since we're goingto have design coming up, how
did you?
Did you kind of have a visionfor what you wanted visually?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Did you have a designer come in, jimmy Drummond
, who's very well-known in theDC area.
He's done a lot of very, verywell-known restaurants, big name
.
He did the initial design.
Then we had another team comein and kind of finish the job in
terms of the actual labor andthe construction.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So it's a dance between two partners, and that's
you with your vision and himwith his idea of how he's going
to bring it to life, whilethey're always going to add
their twist, for sure, and andsometimes, though, with me and
heather, her twist always endsup cool yeah it works out well
because it's a it's another viewI haven't seen right or she has
(20:57):
access to things that I haven'thad access to, or stuff and and
it really just refinesperfectly.
Now I have worked with someonebefore that was not on the same
page Right, and that was agoddamn nightmare, and I said
look.
I just sat down with thisperson and I said hey look, I am
.
This is not going to work.
Your vision is not my vision.
We are on two totally differentplanets.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
You're trying to decorate Marsand I'm on Uranus.
(21:18):
Yeah, you know what I'm sayingLiterally.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Literally, I'm on your ass all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I'm on your ass.
I'm all up in Uranus.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, but he did it.
He did a good job.
We kind of had a couple of likewell-known.
There's a guy, kelly Tauszig.
He does the Wall Festival in DC.
It's like a street art festival, biggest art festival in DC
every year.
So he came in and did a muralat the bar and then that kind of
got us doing a couple differentart pieces throughout the
(21:49):
restaurant.
That came together nicely.
There's like three separatedining areas in the restaurant.
They each have their own kindof vibe.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
You've got the street art at the bar with the mural.
When you first walk in it'slike uh, the cherry blossoms in
dc are a huge thing so there'slike a cherry blossom uh mural
in the front and then in theback.
It's more of like the the datenight kind of vibe that's good.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's good because you have your different
perspectives in different places.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
If you could, eat there three times and feel like
you were at a different time.
That's's cool, that's a funconcept.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Actually, kristen and I are going to go up there and
we're going to actually dosomething.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
We have to go, we have to see it, we've been doing
this for two years now you andI talking.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I've been watching your progression and because
I've been so busy right now Idon't know what the hell is
going on here, but we aregetting so freaking busy that
I'm having to reconfigure howwe're doing things in the
kitchen and how we're taking ourreservations, because it is
affecting the quality of service, because there's so many people
coming and, unfortunately, thetype of people that are coming
(22:50):
don't understand what we'redoing and they don't have the
patience for what it is we'redoing.
And the more people that come,the more patience is required,
because we can't expedite, wedon't have microwaves.
I'm not going to dummy stuffdown to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
No.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Your food doesn't come out in 10, 15 minutes.
It doesn't come out so right.
So people have to understand.
When it is busier, so are we.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Your food's going to take 45 minutes.
Still takes me the same amountof time.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You got it.
You know what I'm saying.
To come feed something doesn'tchange the time frame.
To take something out of thesous vide and let it set and
then and then sear.
It is the same time, but now Ionly have seven of them to do
instead of two.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know it doesn't stop, you know.
Yeah, how do you deal with thatwhen you, when you have like
bad reviews, or people come inand and say oh, you have we have
some bad reviews lately.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I'm not gonna lie, we always have really good I think
everybody has, at least ofcourse you're not doing good.
If you're not causing hell,you've got to raise hell.
If you have bad reviews, youhave to instantly go through
them.
Look at all of them.
Read the ones that make sense,fuck the ones that don't.
(23:57):
Because you can't get crazy overeverything.
You know what I mean.
So what I do is we take them mymanager meetings every Thursday
.
We'll go through the reviewsand we'll put them in categories
and we'll go by kind of likeaverages On the average.
They're talking about this,right, it seems like there's
four.
Right, there's four reviewscoming in in the last week bad
(24:21):
ones which is not heard of.
It doesn't happen like that,but when they do, we're all down
.
We are all down and we'reinstantly going into the
situation room.
So once we sit there, we goover it every Thursday and we're
going to sit there and, on theaverage, look at what's going on
.
All right, obviously there's aproblem with people taking too
long to get this.
Let's attack it.
(24:41):
Why, right?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And then we'll frigging.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Do the FBI board on the wall when they're trying to
find a serial killer, right?
Tracking everything reason whyyou go through the numbers what
time they got in.
Look at their reservations.
People don't realize that whenthey put a bad review, they're
getting interrogated.
Yeah, because we've got to findout who they are, what level of
food they're at, what type ofatmosphere they are, so we can
really gauge what we're doingand what we're going with.
(25:05):
Fbi level research.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, whatever you want to call it right Food
beverage investigation, right,fbi.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So what we're doing is we're just trying to make
sure of that, right?
So you have to analyze whythey're talking, what it is and
then nip it in the bud.
What it is.
Typically when it comes to us,what it comes down to is
overload too fast in the kitchen.
Yeah, too many reservations atthe wrong time.
The Resi system that we useshout out Resi, that'll be some
sponsorship money, please.
Thank you, just get up with ourassistant.
(25:33):
Anyhow, we have to take ourtime now and we cap it.
We have to rearrange the diningroom right now.
We're going to talk about itthis thursday.
This is a hot topic, right?
So if you ignore all theresidents, all the uh reviews
because some of them arelegitimate for sure I'll read a
couple today that actuallylegitimate I have one that's
(25:54):
legitimate, because we can'talways bastardize the reviews no
, but it's fun as hell.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
When someone's a knucklehead, well you can tell,
and one's like an anomaly, butthen when it's consistent more
than two or three.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You know there's an issue, who knows what they're
talking about?
And when one is valid, thenit's like that one kind of hits
home when it's just somebodythat's sure.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
and here's matt, this is what I'm going to tell you,
and everybody else too.
When it comes to reviews, whenit comes to perfection, that
piece of paper you talked to onthe floor before earlier, you
said something about a piece ofpaper on the floor that they
walk by.
Yeah, that is a perfect example, right, because it all happens
at the front door, right thereat the front door, as soon as
they walk through your frontdoor and something goes wrong,
(26:33):
right there.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You've already changed the tide of the day.
You've already changed it right.
Yep, you've already createdsome sort of fixing mode.
Now you have to fix it ifsomething went wrong.
A snarky attitude from thehostess their reservation got
jammed up.
Or you're kind of telling themthey don't have a reservation.
They did.
And how you present it, all thethings.
When they walk in, there's noplace to sit.
(26:55):
No one grabbed their jacket.
They sat there for 15 minutesand no one even came.
Anything that could go wrong atthe beginning is going to
escalate?
Yeah, because everybody wants astory In every review, even if
it was.
Oh, we sat 10 minutes before wegot served, okay, well, if that
wasn't properly addressed nowcouldn't stop staring While I
(27:18):
sat there for 10 minutes.
They're reviewing.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Now I sat there for 10 minutes and I was staring at
a piece of toilet paper thatmust have been on someone's shoe
at the bathroom and no onepicked that up.
Uh, by the time the waiterfinally got to us, I realized
that my fork had stains on itbecause I was sitting there
staring.
This is how bad reviews happen,yeah, and the food got there.
And finally the food got there.
The food was okay, it wasdecent.
We'd probably come back for thefood, but we more than likely
won't because of everything else.
That means the food was fuckingexcellent and they had the
goddamn create a story to maketheir valid, to make their valid
(27:49):
right.
They have to be valid and theyhave to have a really good
reason to bitch.
So they're gonna create a Justan avalanche of shit that
they're gonna pick out.
There was chips on the wall,the, the weights that everyone's
aloof.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
They're gonna make things up to me dusty.
There was a dust bunny in thebathroom corner.
There's a bat up there.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I had a guy mad because one of our light bulbs
was out in a chandelier.
It's been out since we openedbecause it was blown during the
process of building.
The problem is it's a $30,000chandelier and fixing it right
now is probably not good.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
It's not the highest priority.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, we're going to damn fixture, so that's what
needs to happen.
But people don't understandthat and they would have never
said a damn thing.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
They wouldn't have noticed it at all.
If they were happy and in agood mood, they wouldn't have
cared.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I've had people come in and rave like type up a
raving review and then leave afour star.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, and they still do that too, because they think
a four star is bad.
They don't understand whatthey're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
when they do that, they they're trying to save face
for themselves, Like nobody'sperfect or I'm such a good
reviewer that I have to save theperfect.
I hate those people.
Yeah, you're not David Portnoywith a pizza slice, bro you know
what.
I'm saying, is that his nameDavid?
I think so, david Portnoy.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Well, and it's funny because you're new and you're in
like a highly competitivemarket.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So they've already started your website.
They're judging that.
They're judging walking up tothe building.
They're judging their firststep in, like they're starting
to judge you before you.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So if you're not having your shit together and
that's what I try to articulateto the staff- is like nobody's
going to be like hey, you know,chef Mark fucked up today.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He shit up today.
He shit the bed.
They're like matt can't cook.
I knew that youtube guy was.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You're not even there that night like yeah he fucked
up my whole meal.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I need you guys to pay attention well, here's
another thing that goes on toosometimes, and people are used
to seeing me.
They're coming here, they seeme in the news, they see me on
the magazine, whatever it may be, and then when they come here
for the first time, they'reexcited to see me and it might
be a night.
I'm off, yeah, so because Iwasn't here, everything was not
the same.
Not understanding that Iprobably didn't cook it anyway
if I was here.
I have a phenomenal team backthere and they all cook amazing.
(29:52):
I go through all of it withthem.
We train, we teach, we talk toeach other, we taste each
other's food, right, so I couldbe literally here and someone
would be happy because I'm herenot realizing I didn't cook your
(30:12):
food.
That same person.
I won't be here, you know,think that I.
It wasn't good because I wasn'there making and it's.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It's impossible for you to cook everything.
Hell, no, I don't know, I can'tif it's 130 guests in the
dining room.
I can't cook that many things.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I can cook a station or maybe even two.
I can touch two stations.
I'm not gonna be able to cookeverything that you ate tonight.
Like people are like did youcook this?
I tell people all the time ifyou want me to cook for you
first show up on a night I'mhere which is pretty much every
night.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Secondly, on the weekends we have chef specials.
Yeah, I cook them.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Me.
I'm the chef, it's my special,I cook.
If you want me to cook for you,come on the weekend and order
the specials, and I am literallycooking for you now.
You now have a personal chef.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, period.
But even then the prep teamprobably did you know something,
they might have pickled the.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Of course they did.
You know what I mean.
Of course they did.
It's always you can't do it all.
No-transcript.
Other things to worry about.
(31:12):
I'm worried about cooking.
I'm worried about why, the whythe wine room door is cracked
open and we're losing thecooling system.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Air out of there you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
there's a lot of things going on, but right now
the team is solid and you'regoing to find as you grow that
you have new car syndrome, right, remember when you got a new
car and you see a little pieceof dust on the carpet and you
pick it up, get all pissed off,go run the thing through the
wash and get your detailer over.
Then in about two years you'llsee dirt on the floor and be
like, ah, fuck it, I'm going toget another car one day anyway,
right?
So I'm not saying you're goingto say, oh, fuck it, don't get
(31:43):
me wrong, right, but it's at thebeginning, the first few years,
man, every little thing isgoing to drive you bananas.
Yeah, it is, and it will, and itwill and you'll lose sleep at
night and your wife is going tobe like dude.
I didn't sign up for this.
Yeah, neither did you.
Right?
You know what I?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
mean know right and and then you start.
If you have that passion in you,bro, it's over, it just gets
worse.
Yeah, that would be the otherlast piece of advice that I
would give to answer theoriginal question is if you have
partners, sit down with themand have very real, honest
conversations about what I canexpect you to contribute to this
and what I, what you're notwilling to contribute to it.
Because in the beginningeverybody's like, oh, I'll do
(32:26):
this, I'll do that, I'll do.
Most of them aren't going to doshit, or not half of what they
say that they're going to do.
So it's like, let's just have areal like I'm okay with doing
the work, that's fine, and ifyou're going to write the checks
, I'm cool with that too.
Like, whatever the conversationmay be, or whatever the
agreement that y'all have needsto be outlined very, very well
(32:47):
documented, and you know we allagree on it, because that's
something not not necessarilyjust with this restaurant, but
other business ventures I've hadin the past it's like I always
run into like all right, well, Iend up like kind of putting it
on my back because I don't wantit to right, we don't want to
fail and to piggyback off that,bro.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Bro, I'm going to go a step further and my advice
when it comes to partners isdon't have any.
That's a good advice.
Don't have any Seriously,because you're going to make a
big decision, right, when youmake a partnership.
But the other problem is thisIf you do have one now, if you
do like you're saying, you havea difference.
(33:26):
So some people confuse the twoideologies.
Some say, yeah, I'm a partnerin that place.
No, you're not.
You're a financial investor,right, and that needs to be said
, like you said at the beginning.
So you have to know your roles,because if you're an investor,
then step off and let me do mywork.
You've invested, you did yours.
Now Let me make sure we can payback this investment, right,
right, if you're an investor,partner, you need to say that
(33:49):
Now.
If you're a partner in sweatequity, you need to say that,
because now you owe back thatmoney because you weren't a
financial investor.
So you're absolutely right, youneed to really streamline what
it is each person is doing.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And the same thing in your industry, your other
industry with Reframe.
Yeah, with marketing it's thesame thing.
I mean I have a partner in mybusiness and you know, I mean we
have a partner, like we haveactual roles dictated.
Who does what who's?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
better at what?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And solid and outside of that also kind of the moral
compass and what you want inagain like I keep saying five to
ten years.
So we had, you know, very clearexpectations for years one, two
, three, Like we're not takingmoney, You're not getting paid,
I'm not getting paid.
That's an important conversationso you need to know what you're
willing to sacrifice to get tothe end result, whatever that
(34:35):
may be If you're building tosell, if you're building to
scale, if you're building tofranchise, whatever.
So I think it's a lot, yeah,but being very, very specific
and getting everything inwriting is like two of the
things that people don't want todo when they're new to any
business, and it will literallydestroy your bank account and
your friendships.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The things that you don't want to do are the things
you should do first.
Yeah, do those immediately.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
We call it the unsexy work and like you're
responsible for learningeverything.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Like you can't.
You're you're um negligence oryeah, you know you're.
You what you don't understand.
You can't hold that againstsomebody else.
Like you're responding, you'rean adult, you're, you're like
it's.
I put it on myself too, likethere's a lot of things about
the restaurant industry that Ididn't know.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Like now I'm learning those things and the more you
go, the more you're going tolearn.
You don't know?
Yeah, I'm still learning bro.
Yeah, there's still a lot ofthings now that I'm learning
those things and the more you go, the more you're going to learn
.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You don't know, yeah, because I'm still learning bro.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, there's still a lot of things now that I'm
learning that have nothing to dowith what we would have thought
.
Now the restaurant businessjust get rid of the word
restaurant and just call itbusiness, Because I knew the
restaurant business but now I'mlearning business.
You see what I'm saying Becausethe fucking financing the bills
, the banks.
It doesn't matter what businessyou?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
are in.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
It all comes down to how are you going to manage
business?
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Business For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Business people you talk to.
What do we call it when wenetwork?
Right yeah, we go networkingyou can go into business groups.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Sure BNI EO there's a lot of business, entrepreneur
organizations that will help youwith other things.
Exactly but the place I workedfor.
They decided.
They decided not to pay theirtaxes for almost three years.
And they came and literallychained the doors, closed Like I
mean, took a chain and put itaround all of their doors three
restaurants in this area andthey decided they wanted to do
more Coke and champagne thanthey did, pay their taxes, and
(36:16):
they had, you know, suits andclothes and paid and didn't, you
know, live the high lifebecause they thought that's what
they were supposed to do asrestaurant owners.
They never worked in therestaurant, these were just the
owners, and all of them one ofthem's fucking extradited to
another, like hiding in anothercountry now.
So I mean, that was theirs,Like, oh yeah, well, we have
someone handling it.
That's the other problem.
If you have someone doing yourbills and your books, you have
(36:37):
to check on them.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You have to have checks, do it.
You can't do it all If you sitthere.
It's good to do it all.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
You need to learn how to do it now.
So at least I know it.
I know how to do it.
If I have to do it, I can't.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
You come from the financial background.
You're a bank in background,weren't you?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I was in sales.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I worked for a bank but I was a sales rep, so you
know exactly what it's like froma business perspective.
Hence getting rid of the wordrestaurant and using the word
business.
So that's the biggest thingEveryone in the not everyone I
can't say.
(37:17):
I say everyone a lot, but Idon't mean it that way but a lot
of people who get into this.
I want to go be a chef and openmy own restaurant.
They may understand arestaurant, but they never have
no clue about business yeah andthat's the problem you know it's
it's a lot more in in depth,like people say.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
When people say the restaurant industry is one of
the toughest industries, they'renot.
It's not just bullshit.
They're not blowing smoke upyour ass to try to get you to
not do it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
It's hard, it's hard you have it's hard, even if you
kill it.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
The margins are like very small, the margins are
small.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Okay, if you own a concrete company, right, and you
bid out a concrete job, and youhave your trucks, your skid
stairs, your fucking connections, all your things are perfect,
right, yeah, you can have ashitty day and still make a
fucking $30,000 job happen in aday and a half and still, if it
goes wrong or something likethat, you still have a lot of
profit to fluctuate yeah in therestaurant.
(38:07):
If you drop one fucking ribeyeon the floor, yeah, with today's
prices you pretty much startlosing profit off that whole
thing yeah so if you cut afillet out a tenderloin, and and
you get eight portions goodsize out of that right.
Probably five of those portionsare going to pay back the plates
.
You only have about threeportions left for profit yeah
(38:28):
now that profit's not much.
We're talking 90 over the threeyeah you drop one of them on
the floor.
Now you're down to two.
Yeah, someone leaves two ofthem out.
Now you're to three.
Now you have fucking four ofthem that got screwed up somehow
because they couldn't figureout the temperature right now.
You owe yourself money forhaving now you've lost money.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
That's a great way to put it it happens.
Yeah, I think we do need toread the review, so we gotta
read.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I know you have them so you're gonna, let's do we're
gonna do this with you next time, matt.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
When you like, we'll do your reviews and just yeah,
it'll be hysterical.
It's a good idea okay, so youwant to pick one and read it,
yep okay, I'm doing that rightnow pick your favorite out of
all of them and then we'll we'llgo through and get you to
respond and then, Matt, you cankind of pretend it was your
restaurant and respond to what?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
you say online.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Okay, okay, okay, here we go.
Um, I'll just go with the firstone.
It is the.
This is a good one.
It's one of them ones where itneeds attention.
The space is absolutelystunning, but the service was
shockingly poor.
We had a reservation, but westill waited 15 minutes to be
seated, while staff seemedconfused and disorganized.
Our server barely acknowledgedus, forgot our appetizer and
(39:36):
never refilled our water once.
At one point we had to walk upto the bar just to ask for our
check.
The food was decent, but theexperience was so frustrating we
left more annoyed thansatisfied.
Now I can understand thistotally.
What I don't understand is howthe hell this would happen here,
because there's so many pointsof you have a lot of points of
(39:56):
service and contact from whenthey walk in right.
The steps of service here are sovast.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
We have so many did you determine what time and
night or anything.
That doesn't say anything.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
We haven't done that yet, so disappointing
anniversary dinner and thatblows my, that hurts my feelings
.
That really is something.
This is one of the ones we'regoing to look at, and this goes
into the situation room.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
You know what I mean?
That's a decent.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
This is a very sought-after review.
Not sought-after, that's thewrong thing.
So it was two stars On payingattention to it.
That's one of the ones thatokay.
There's some decent words herethat seem like they might be an
issue, so that's one of them.
That's a good one.
What would you say about thatone?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Obviously the service piece of it, like having them.
It seems like if they wouldhave simply had attention they
would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
That's all it takes.
So sometimes there are flawsthere.
Something could have been wrong.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You're right, breeding them with happy
anniversary, mr Jones,immediately now.
I'm happy we have cards on thetable.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Everyone knows the drill we keep cards on the table
just so you can literally seethem, and the staff can see them
, and every person in the staffwalks by.
We have a routine.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And having your water not filled is ridiculous to me,
because we have not thewaitstaff, we have service
assistants, we have other people.
Water is a big thing.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
That one surprises me that they missed that, which
means that either it was super,super busy and the timing
Sometimes there's like that justterrible timing, like you walk
in between while everybody'sbusy and there's going to be a
few minutes.
You know, I mean I get that,but what if they also didn't say
that it was their anniversaryon the reservation I mean.
So you didn't get a card onyour table probably because you
didn't say it.
(41:33):
So you have to look at what isyour fault.
There are times where it's likeyou're getting held accountable
for things that you know notreally, but but this is the
point you brought up, Chef wasthat they said the food was
decent.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, the food was decent.
They didn't want to say it wasbad because it was probably
absolutely delicious, but theyhave to critique it.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
They can't put anything good in that thing
because it just takes away fromtheir— and nothing tastes as
good as it could.
If I'm already pissed off,Right, Like you've got to really
blow me away if I'm pissed offand I'm waiting and I'm sitting
here.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Of course You're never going to give props.
This was so good.
Fuck everything that comes downto the team.
Did you want to read another?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
one.
Do we have time for one more?
Next time?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
we have to start doing yours and let him respond
in a way that you probablywouldn't, which will be really
fun.
I'll respond fun, I can'trespond bad to that one, because
there's some legitimate thingsthat need to be looked at.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
They need attention.
We need to look at it and makesure that we're not slipping
there.
We'll do it again, but you haveto shout, tell everybody where
the restaurant is.
Where can we go and check itout?
Speaker 1 (42:33):
The restaurant's name is Fresh.
It's spelled F-R-A-I-C-H-E, theFrench spelling for fresh.
It's on 14th Street.
3345 14th Street, northwestWashington DC, in Columbia
Heights.
We're open every day exceptMonday.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Perfect, and we're going to any other plugs you
want to put out there for yoursocials.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
MrMakeItHappencom for all of my free recipes for the
blog, for my products the spices, the chef knives, the skillets,
all that good stuff.
You can find me on YouTubeMrMakeItHappen pretty much on
every platform.
Sounds wonderful and we'regoing to make our way up there
soon.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
We are going to make it.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
We're going up there, we're going to come up there
and bring cameras, not really doa review, but do a review Sure
More like a chef's perspective.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Of what you got going on there.
We can do a little specialbonus episode.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Right, we're planning that pretty soon yeah let's do
it All right.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
We're coming to DC.
Man, we're coming in hot.
It'll be fun, It'll be a goodtime.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
And thank everybody for watching.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Hit like, subscribe all that good stuff.
Give us some support, follow usand love to have you, love
talking to you.
Ciao for now.
Ciao.
What's up, guys?
It's Mr, make it Happen andyou're tuned in to the Burnt
Hands Perspective Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Alright, shoot days always fun.
Always a good time Always funand the best part about it is
that, no matter what the hell wegot going on, no one realizes
how much it takes to get it here.
So it's like we just look coolon the screen right now.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yeah, I'm not cool right now.
I'm fucking, I don't know it'sbright.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
But what I'm getting at is the shoot.
Days always make it better.
They do no matter what happens,especially when we have great
guests like him.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Because we make it happen.
Because we make it happen,hence the name.
No pun intended.
Sorry, that was cheesy.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, it's good, though that's what we need.
We need some cheese, Parmesan,margiano, whatever it on.
So it's good to always bringyou back, because you're like us
.
You're always into something.
You're always moving, shakingand baking.
You always got somethingcracking, which is good, because
I'm the same way.
Kristen's definitely the sameway.
We're always trying to reinventwhat we can do next.
(00:53):
I don't know if reinvent's theright word.
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Grow expand, which you've done.
I mean yeah, that's why wetoday, because we wanted to see,
because it's like this you'vehad this trajectory of turning,
you know, social media, youtubestardom into an actual brick and
mortar, and we talked about iton the last episode where chef
was giving you some advice onopening, building the restaurant
out.
Now it's all happened and it'shere.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's open for sure so what are you thinking, man?
Let's go, let's talk about this, because what?
What the listeners need to knowhere?
I think some of the peopletuning in they all know who you
are.
Like Kristen just said, you'rekind of a phenomenon when it
comes to social media.
Everybody knows who you are.
You do a great job, but nowhere you are in brick and mortar
where you have to proveyourself and your team and your
capabilities, and now it's awhole different thing because
the camera doesn't shut off.
(01:35):
For sure there's no retakes.
Exactly.
The likes walk through the dooror they do not.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
The likes walk through the door or they do not.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Right, yeah, so go ahead.
Tell us what's your experience,man and I want to chop this up
a little bit because it'simportant for people to know I'm
always the chef who startedwith no social media didn't
exist, and then I've tried towork myself into social media
not so successful, right, whenit comes, compared to someone
like you.
However, flip the thing aroundand I'm a chef who's luckily
very successful in brick andmortar and with actual people,
(02:07):
and it's hard, so you know.
Flipping it around on your endis you're now a social media guy
flipping over to the restaurant, right, so go ahead.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, I mean I'm just learning a lot every day.
I mean there's something newevery day.
I think you said one of the keywords a minute ago team.
I think that's the moredifficult part, in my opinion is
assembling the right team,having people that care Nobody's
going to care as much as you,but care enough that they can
stay on the team, care about theguest experience, care about
(02:36):
the little things not walkingover trash that's on the floor,
cleaning up, just doing thesmall things that I kind of lose
sleep over.
The food side of things, Idon't want to say it's been easy
, but in relation to everythingelse, that's been like the least
of my my worries.
My worries have been more onthe service side things breaking
(02:59):
down.
We're in an old, historicbuilding in dc, so constantly
having to repair things, replacethings, just every day
something new, whether it's adishwasher, a leak, a walk-in,
whatever you name it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Whatever could break has broken, it will break, and
even if you think you fixed itjust now, all you did was bought
yourself time Right, becausethat's just the way it is.
This equipment, everything weuse, is nonstop.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It doesn't stop your refrigerators never take a break
your freezers never stop.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You know, the ovens, ranges, gas lines, they never
stop.
Everything's consistentlymoving parts at all times and
people got to take care of thestuff.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's the thing, like I said, the team part of it
is like just use a littlecommon sense, let's treat it
like it's yours.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, and a lot of them don't.
So at this point, how long haveyou been open?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We opened we had a soft opening in the middle of
February.
We officially opened probablythe end of February going into.
March.
So from March till now went onabout four months.
But yeah, I mean things.
Luckily we've been busy.
I mean the business has beenreally good, especially for a
(04:08):
brand-new restaurant and in avery competitive market like DC.
There's tons of great optionsto eat in DC in a very you know
walkable city Per capita.
There's probably more greatrestaurants there than I mean
outside of like New York andsome of the you know mega cities
.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And there's a lot of.
You know, you have everythingfrom Michelin stars all the way
down to food trucks that arephenomenal, so the options are
endless.
But the good part about it,though, is I'm always a big fan
of this.
People say well, what ifanother Italian opened a
restaurant?
I'm opening up a deli.
Now, three doors down, there'sanother deli opening.
Now, all of a sudden, sucks forthem.
Well, that's what I say, butnot only that.
(04:50):
If you're good at what you do,your product's good, your
knowledge is good, you have areputation and you're putting
out a product.
If there's three or four moredelis, that's just three or four
more reasons for more people tocome downtown, sure.
So, as long as you're puttingout that product and you put out
a good product.
So that's what you have to dois keep the product right.
And people are going to comeBecause out of all those people,
especially in DC right, whenyou have a city with all these
numbers and all these people,you have more options because
there's just plenty to go around.
(05:10):
Here, where I am in Chesapeake,there's only so many options
because we have a per capitaright so you can only have so
many great restaurants for allthe people that go to this type
of restaurant in this communityto go to.
So you have to be the best herebecause you have to be the
first choice.
Sure, over there you can dabbleRight and as long as your
product is going good, you'regoing to.
You're going to win that.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, and consistency is something that we're really
focused on, particularly withthe food.
I think we've we've gotten to abetter place there, but just
you know, I'm still trying toget the service where I want it
to be.
But just you know, I'm stilltrying to get the service where
I want it to be and it's justlike you said, the same thing
with customer options of wherethey can go, worker options of
(05:50):
where they can work.
There's a lot of places in DCyou can go make good money as a
server or a bartender.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It's just trying to acquire the talent and then keep
the talent.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
We'll have a great.
I think our line cooks arephenomenal, but some of these
guys will sell you out for 50cents more per quick, per dollar
.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I mean my analogy to that is this I can give one of
my employees a brand new car,yeah, and they would leave me
the second.
Someone gave them a place towork, to park it for free if
someone gave them a free parkingspot.
They would leave here withtheir brand new car and go park
it for free.
Definitely, you see what I'msaying.
That's, some of them are likethat.
Then again you have some thatare loyal as shit.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
But the loyal ones are going to help you succeed
and that's going to help yougrow, and they're going to be.
Everything's going to work well.
It's not as detrimental as theones that are shitty, though.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
When someone's shitty in the kitchen, immediately
known than someone who's loyaland cool.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Their presence is known because you can rely on
them, got it.
That works well.
But if you have someone who'stoxic in the kitchen or lazy or
something that is felt instantly, Got to get rid of them.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
One of the best pieces of advice I heard from
somebody was like as soon as yousee a red flag, clip them, Clip
it.
Like don't give them a secondchance, and it's easy to say
that sitting here right now,it's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But it's hard to do because that red flag is also
something you need to do tocontinue.
So sometimes getting rid of ared flag just like this is
typically someone's advice thatdoesn't have to deal with the
aftermath.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So usually a restaurant owner will be.
I'm a chef owner, so I'm in thekitchen nonstop and I'm also on
the floor watching everythingbecause I want my food to come
out a proper way, all that andso on.
So if you get rid of a red flagsometimes and you're in the
kitchen working with that redflag, getting rid of that red
flag may not be convenient,because now who's going to do
the work Sometimes dealing withthat red flag is necessary.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
We had a busy weekend this weekend.
What are you going to do?
You just kick the guy at workto grill you.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
How are you going to go out and take care of
everything else?
I mean, yes, I will.
I always will, if I have to.
They're going to be.
They're going to be that wayand they're not going to stop.
(08:06):
They're only going to get worseFor sure, because once comfort
sits in and now they know theycan get over on you.
Even the best employees getcomfortable.
They have their little tricks,their little things.
They come in, they know when tosneak out, and that's okay.
But when someone who's ashithead gets comfortable?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
That is a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
We just had to let a guy go on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
this past Sunday I forgot to send you the picture.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
One of my guys got a storage.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh man, I love the pictures.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Now we need the picture.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Now we need the picture we got a storage in the
back for like extrarefrigeration and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So one of my chefs is going back to grab something to
bring back for service.
He sees some you know dressshoes just sticking out from
behind a trash.
Can the guy's drunk middle ofthe day Dress shoes?
One of our busboys, drunk, laidout asleep on the ground.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
On the clock Like the Wizard of Oz.
The shoes are hanging outWicked witch.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He sends me a picture .
He's on the clock, asleep inthe back, drunk.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Did you take his shoes off and his feet curled up
?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
No, but I clocked him out immediately.
You should have stole his shoes.
I just stole his shoes, Dude.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
one time I had a kid put an iron directly on my brand
new VanCat leather one brown,one in the back.
Hot iron on there.
You know what his excuse was.
I didn't think it was still hot.
You're fucking ironingliterally right now.
Skylar, remember this kid.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Skylar's back there.
She's kind of cracking up alittle bit.
She knows what time it is.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I'm trying to remember.
The worst one, varte, was whenyou went back and we used to
have drinks that all had whippedcream on them and just like
cheesy drinks at the oceanfrontfrozen drinks and all the
whipped cream.
You'd keep grabbing cans andnone of them worked and cans and
none of them worked.
And these fuckers are back therejust doing whippets all day
from the kitchen staff justsitting there, and so you've got
literally 36 bottles of whippedcream you can't use.
So you just ate all that costand they're just high for 10
(09:51):
seconds and then going back outthere maybe five right, not even
that it was so dumb.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I'm like guys, come on, man, like we know it's you
like?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
there's no way, we're not gonna know.
It's not us, yeah us, yeah, yougot it wasn't me.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Come on, I got a thing, like when people are like
oh, we're having a, this is agood shift, I'm like shh, yeah,
not even nine o'clock yet, sothat's going good then.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Like the shift part, but we, like you, have to talk
about the opening process too,because this was, your like,
first experience opening abuilding.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, it's been a grind man.
I mean, I've had to be thereLike I got an apartment in DC
now, so I'm actively splittingtime between here and DC.
I think part of it is I justdon't have enough people that
can get the job done at thelevel that I would want it to
get done.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, you won't yet, man, it's going to take you a
year or two to understand that.
And here's another thing I'mgoing to tell you, and I can
tell everybody out therelistening it's going to take you
two to three years before it'snot even going to be a thought
in your head yet, because you'regoing to have a very hard time
releasing it.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Whether there's someone there you can count on
or not, that person's only goingto make you feel better while
you're there.
It's going to take you a verylong time.
It took me almost nine yearsbefore I could walk out of my
place and open up another one,because I was so adamant about
being there all the time.
Yeah and yes, no matter what.
No disrespect to my team.
I love them.
They're amazing, but no matterwhat, the standard is going to
(11:16):
drop a little bit becausethey're not you yeah they want
to get through the day.
They want to get.
They want to make sure you'resatisfied.
They don't want to get yelled.
They want to make sureeverything's good.
Don, they don't want to getyelled, they want to make sure
everything's good.
Don't get me wrong.
They do have a passion aboutthem, which is very clear.
However, it's still not youright.
So you have to understand thatwhen you are ready to make the
next move or take a day off, youhave to give up some level of
(11:37):
that expectation or you're goingto be chained to it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
And that's okay.
That's a balance I'm trying tofigure out.
It'll take time.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And I don't know if you'll figure it out until the
day you're ready.
A day will come where you'rejust ready to say, okay, I'll
let that go, that little pieceof paper on the floor where you
would just flip out over someonewalking over.
You'll just walk overnonchalantly and just pick it up
and you're going to choose yourbattles differently.
Right, you know what I'm saying?
Because there's so many littlethings that happen that are
never going to go the way youwant it.
(12:06):
If it does, dude, you're goingto move on to something else.
Yeah, because now it's going tobe boring, right For sure.
So, like Kristen said at thebeginning here, when opening up,
what recommendations do youhave?
Everyone's already seen you onthe show.
If not, go back and check, cancheck them out.
They can see them on yourwebsites and instagram.
We'll plug that in a littlewhile.
But, um, how, how do you?
What do you recommend?
(12:27):
As far as what would you havedone differently?
Man, go right to the fuckingdirt.
What would you have done, right?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
away.
I would have taken my timemaking, uh, the, the important
hires like the, the cornerstonepieces, the gm, the, the
executive chef or whoever'sgoing to be there when you're
not there, kind of deal, this,whatever you want to call them,
cdc, chef, chef, whoever thatperson is.
If you're the executive chef,obviously, whoever's under you,
whoever you're trust, whoeveryou trust the most in the in the
(12:52):
building, take your time makingthose hires.
I kind of pulled the trigger alittle quick on a couple of
those hires that I ended upregretting um, whatever your
budget is, uh, throw that shitaway.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Add a double yeah, at least.
And you know, do your duediligence.
Like have somebody, an expert,come in and like give you a full
rundown, like come in here andpick this place apart, tell me
everything that's wrong with it,instead of like going into it
with you know, let's hope forthe best and just, you know, do
what we want to put a blind eyeto the actual problems.
(13:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I was getting ready to get into a contract or a
lease with some situation and itjust things kept piling and
escalating, and what it was thatpiling up for me was money.
Yeah, yes, you're going to helpme.
Yes, you're going to help me,but you're going to help me with
shit I shouldn't need help with.
You're going to help me with aportion of the money I have to
spend.
That's not what I want to hear,because it's not this, it's not
(13:48):
ready yeah and these are thingsI've learned growing right just
like you said, and and when Iwhen this place, when I built
this place, I had a lot of great, great assistance and we had
the best matter of fact, we'llbe interviewing one of my
designers, or my designerheather, who has this type of
advice.
Yeah, I call her now foreverything.
Yeah, even if I'm having anidea or a thought thing, I'll,
(14:09):
I'll pass it over, kristen,we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I'm gonna check you a little bit, like you kind of
need some people to say no right, you need the people that have
either been there or are willingto stand up to you as an owner
or, you know some, anyone withnotoriety be like no that's not.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
have you ran that Correct, have you?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
actually ran pro forma for the next five years.
That's exactly right.
You know exactly what's goingto happen.
Then you can say to themstraight up.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
How much is this going?
How is my vision?
If you find someone that workswith you, well, Heather and I
work really good together.
We have a really good visiontogether.
When it comes to what I want ina restaurant, she's really good
Heather and say hey, how muchis this going to cost me?
Right, and she'll tell me amillion and a half, at least
three million Right away, nodoubt.
You know what I'm saying andit's like, okay, that was a good
(14:51):
idea.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, that was a great idea.
It might not be practical.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It might not be practical for that application
we could take three millionsomewhere else, so on, so on, so
on.
Just like you said, if you'regoing to go into a building and
you don't inspect the buildingto see what the problem is, yeah
, these are things thatlisteners need to know,
especially my camera.
All you chefs out there who aregoing to open your restaurant
and go open up your littlefucking pop-up cool man, I don't
(15:17):
want to down you.
Everyone has the right to go dothis.
Yeah, understand what it isyou're doing.
It's being a chef owner is waydifferent than working for
someone as a chef for a verylong time.
You're always underneath thecushion of that umbrella.
You're always under theumbrella of someone else and it
seems easy.
But when you go and open upyour own place, you don't worry
(15:38):
about the food.
Don't even worry about yourfood, because your food can't do
shit unless it gets to thetable.
You know what I mean.
It can't do shit unless it getsto the table.
You know what I mean.
It can't get to the pan, or itcan't get to this, that and the
other.
It can't do shit, right?
So you need to make sure thatyour food is the last thing you
worry about, because you shouldbe as confident in the chef and
your food, no matter what you'redoing.
So if you're so confident inyour food, stop worrying about
the food.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
It's everything else.
Every chef I know is so worriedabout them.
Chef, you've got to see thismenu I'm working on.
That's cool, dude.
But what are you going to doabout your restroom?
How about the floors?
How about this, that and theother?
Don't worry about the food.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Your food should be People having clean towels.
What do you do when you get afruit fly infestation?
There's a million things thatcould happen Exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And you're lock in your food should be so secure.
Your menu should be so fuckingdirect that you're going to
build an empire around it.
You shouldn't even be worriedabout your food right now.
Your food is the least thing.
You should be so confident inyour food that you should go to
bed at night, not worry about myfood.
My deli is opening soon.
Haven't even considered a menu.
My sandwiches, my menu, mysalads, all the accoutrements,
everything I'm going to be doingI'm not even worried about that
.
I'll tell you what put all myingredients in the building and
(16:48):
then I'm going to make a menu inabout an hour and a half.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
That's experience.
Yeah, because when you're doingit for the first time, you kind
of focus on what you think isthe most important thing, but
you don't know what you don'tknow thing, but you don't, but
you don't know what you don'tknow.
Yeah, so, like this is goodadvice and people should
definitely, definitely listen toit.
That's something that that Ikind of didn't really, I didn't
know what I was getting myselfinto completely, and I'm good
(17:12):
for just jumping in the pool, so, um, that's that's kind of what
.
What ended up happening for metoo is just like I'm learning
all of the the P&L stuff, likehow to, how, like how to make
this thing profitable, like Iknow how to make the food.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Well, the numbers I mean and that's the part that we
always say it, and I mean wesay it in marketing, with our
clients all the time.
And you know, being in therestaurants for so long, I had
to deal with the liquor costsand things like that, but I
didn't care as much about thebig picture because I was again
just an employee or a manager.
I, I was sitting there grindingnumbers all night and wondering
how everybody was going to getpaid.
So you're the only person doingthat and it is hard.
(17:47):
I mean you just have toactually treat it like I say you
are a brand, you've created amassive brand, but you are your
brand.
Your brand is your business,and if you don't treat it as a
business, you're going to fail.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That would be my other piece of advice is to try
to focus on having those systemsin place so that when you open,
you can plug everything intoyour spreadsheet and it'll spit
out.
You know you're at 15% here,you're at 7% here, you're 3%
over over here.
Next month you need to watchyour labor.
You got to do this, or evenknow what your labor should be
(18:18):
or know what your projectionsare in all those spaces, Labor
is always going to be the issue.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Man Employees and labor are always going to be the
biggest issue in the restaurantbusiness because you have to
have them yeah, and a lot ofthem don't have things bringing
back your wait staff.
They get paid the least by thehour.
It's the best on your employeeas far as your payroll is right.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Because it's the best .
However, they bring the mostfrom it, so you're paying them
the least and they're bringingthe most.
However, a dishwasher essential, very key.
I pay mine very well, yeah, buttheir position is a necessity,
not a bring it doesn't bringmoney in right yeah it's a hard
cost, it's a loss yeah, period,no matter how you look at it,
(19:00):
when financially it's a loss,it's needed to be done.
But there's no profit comingfrom their position whatsoever,
right?
Bartenders, servers, bus people, kitchen support staff their
job is directly to the customer,at least adding money to the
thing.
So you got to go in the kitchenwhere a lot of the some of the
places places prep salads,things like that.
(19:22):
Their portion is notoutweighing their salary, right,
that?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
makes sense, and that's another.
The labor, particularly on theprep side, is something that
I've been working with ortalking to my team about.
It's like if you give a humaneight hours to do a thing,
they're going to take eighthours to do that thing.
Give them six, yeah.
Instead of coming in at sevenin the morning and leaving at
three, make them come in at nineand I bet you they get the same
exact amount of work?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Of course they will, because they're going to take
advantage of everything.
The only problem is when youhave someone come in at six and
it takes them fucking seven andit used to take them nine.
You see what I'm saying andthey're still not doing it,
because they still learn how tosnake and take naps behind a
dumpster with their new shoes on.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Take a quick nap.
New shoe goofing.
Well, so we've seen therestaurant line.
I mean it looks awesome.
So I guess, since we're goingto have design coming up, how
did you?
Did you kind of have a visionfor what you wanted visually?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Did you have a designer come in, jimmy Drummond
, who's very well-known in theDC area.
He's done a lot of very, verywell-known restaurants, big name
.
He did the initial design.
Then we had another team comein and kind of finish the job in
terms of the actual labor andthe construction.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So it's a dance between two partners, and that's
you with your vision and himwith his idea of how he's going
to bring it to life, whilethey're always going to add
their twist, for sure, and andsometimes, though, with me and
heather, her twist always endsup cool yeah it works out well
because it's a it's another viewI haven't seen right or she has
(20:57):
access to things that I haven'thad access to, or stuff and and
it really just refinesperfectly.
Now I have worked with someonebefore that was not on the same
page Right, and that was agoddamn nightmare, and I said
look.
I just sat down with thisperson and I said hey look, I am
.
This is not going to work.
Your vision is not my vision.
We are on two totally differentplanets.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
You're trying to decorate Marsand I'm on Uranus.
(21:18):
Yeah, you know what I'm sayingLiterally.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Literally, I'm on your ass all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I'm on your ass.
I'm all up in Uranus.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, but he did it.
He did a good job.
We kind of had a couple of likewell-known.
There's a guy, kelly Tauszig.
He does the Wall Festival in DC.
It's like a street art festival, biggest art festival in DC
every year.
So he came in and did a muralat the bar and then that kind of
got us doing a couple differentart pieces throughout the
(21:49):
restaurant.
That came together nicely.
There's like three separatedining areas in the restaurant.
They each have their own kindof vibe.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
You've got the street art at the bar with the mural.
When you first walk in it'slike uh, the cherry blossoms in
dc are a huge thing so there'slike a cherry blossom uh mural
in the front and then in theback.
It's more of like the the datenight kind of vibe that's good.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
That's good because you have your different
perspectives in different places.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
If you could, eat there three times and feel like
you were at a different time.
That's's cool, that's a funconcept.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Actually, kristen and I are going to go up there and
we're going to actually dosomething.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
We have to go, we have to see it, we've been doing
this for two years now you andI talking.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I've been watching your progression and because
I've been so busy right now Idon't know what the hell is
going on here, but we aregetting so freaking busy that
I'm having to reconfigure howwe're doing things in the
kitchen and how we're taking ourreservations, because it is
affecting the quality of service, because there's so many people
coming and, unfortunately, thetype of people that are coming
(22:50):
don't understand what we'redoing and they don't have the
patience for what it is we'redoing.
And the more people that come,the more patience is required,
because we can't expedite, wedon't have microwaves.
I'm not going to dummy stuffdown to make it happen.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
No.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Your food doesn't come out in 10, 15 minutes.
It doesn't come out so right.
So people have to understand.
When it is busier, so are we.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Your food's going to take 45 minutes.
Still takes me the same amountof time.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You got it.
You know what I'm saying.
To come feed something doesn'tchange the time frame.
To take something out of thesous vide and let it set and
then and then sear.
It is the same time, but now Ionly have seven of them to do
instead of two.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know it doesn't stop, you know.
Yeah, how do you deal with thatwhen you, when you have like
bad reviews, or people come inand and say oh, you have we have
some bad reviews lately.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I'm not gonna lie, we always have really good I think
everybody has, at least ofcourse you're not doing good.
If you're not causing hell,you've got to raise hell.
If you have bad reviews, youhave to instantly go through
them.
Look at all of them.
Read the ones that make sense,fuck the ones that don't.
(23:57):
Because you can't get crazy overeverything.
You know what I mean.
So what I do is we take them mymanager meetings every Thursday
.
We'll go through the reviewsand we'll put them in categories
and we'll go by kind of likeaverages On the average.
They're talking about this,right, it seems like there's
four.
Right, there's four reviewscoming in in the last week bad
(24:21):
ones which is not heard of.
It doesn't happen like that,but when they do, we're all down
.
We are all down and we'reinstantly going into the
situation room.
So once we sit there, we goover it every Thursday and we're
going to sit there and, on theaverage, look at what's going on
.
All right, obviously there's aproblem with people taking too
long to get this.
Let's attack it.
(24:41):
Why, right?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And then we'll frigging.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Do the FBI board on the wall when they're trying to
find a serial killer, right?
Tracking everything reason whyyou go through the numbers what
time they got in.
Look at their reservations.
People don't realize that whenthey put a bad review, they're
getting interrogated.
Yeah, because we've got to findout who they are, what level of
food they're at, what type ofatmosphere they are, so we can
really gauge what we're doingand what we're going with.
(25:05):
Fbi level research.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, whatever you want to call it right Food
beverage investigation, right,fbi.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So what we're doing is we're just trying to make
sure of that, right?
So you have to analyze whythey're talking, what it is and
then nip it in the bud.
What it is.
Typically when it comes to us,what it comes down to is
overload too fast in the kitchen.
Yeah, too many reservations atthe wrong time.
The Resi system that we useshout out Resi, that'll be some
sponsorship money, please.
Thank you, just get up with ourassistant.
(25:33):
Anyhow, we have to take ourtime now and we cap it.
We have to rearrange the diningroom right now.
We're going to talk about itthis thursday.
This is a hot topic, right?
So if you ignore all theresidents, all the uh reviews
because some of them arelegitimate for sure I'll read a
couple today that actuallylegitimate I have one that's
(25:54):
legitimate, because we can'talways bastardize the reviews no
, but it's fun as hell.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
When someone's a knucklehead, well you can tell,
and one's like an anomaly, butthen when it's consistent more
than two or three.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You know there's an issue, who knows what they're
talking about?
And when one is valid, thenit's like that one kind of hits
home when it's just somebodythat's sure.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
and here's matt, this is what I'm going to tell you,
and everybody else too.
When it comes to reviews, whenit comes to perfection, that
piece of paper you talked to onthe floor before earlier, you
said something about a piece ofpaper on the floor that they
walk by.
Yeah, that is a perfect example, right, because it all happens
at the front door, right thereat the front door, as soon as
they walk through your frontdoor and something goes wrong,
(26:33):
right there.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You've already changed the tide of the day.
You've already changed it right.
Yep, you've already createdsome sort of fixing mode.
Now you have to fix it ifsomething went wrong.
A snarky attitude from thehostess their reservation got
jammed up.
Or you're kind of telling themthey don't have a reservation.
They did.
And how you present it, all thethings.
When they walk in, there's noplace to sit.
(26:55):
No one grabbed their jacket.
They sat there for 15 minutesand no one even came.
Anything that could go wrong atthe beginning is going to
escalate?
Yeah, because everybody wants astory In every review, even if
it was.
Oh, we sat 10 minutes before wegot served, okay, well, if that
wasn't properly addressed nowcouldn't stop staring While I
(27:18):
sat there for 10 minutes.
They're reviewing.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Now I sat there for 10 minutes and I was staring at
a piece of toilet paper thatmust have been on someone's shoe
at the bathroom and no onepicked that up.
Uh, by the time the waiterfinally got to us, I realized
that my fork had stains on itbecause I was sitting there
staring.
This is how bad reviews happen,yeah, and the food got there.
And finally the food got there.
The food was okay, it wasdecent.
We'd probably come back for thefood, but we more than likely
won't because of everything else.
That means the food was fuckingexcellent and they had the
goddamn create a story to maketheir valid, to make their valid
(27:49):
right.
They have to be valid and theyhave to have a really good
reason to bitch.
So they're gonna create a Justan avalanche of shit that
they're gonna pick out.
There was chips on the wall,the, the weights that everyone's
aloof.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
They're gonna make things up to me dusty.
There was a dust bunny in thebathroom corner.
There's a bat up there.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I had a guy mad because one of our light bulbs
was out in a chandelier.
It's been out since we openedbecause it was blown during the
process of building.
The problem is it's a $30,000chandelier and fixing it right
now is probably not good.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
It's not the highest priority.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, we're going to damn fixture, so that's what
needs to happen.
But people don't understandthat and they would have never
said a damn thing.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
They wouldn't have noticed it at all.
If they were happy and in agood mood, they wouldn't have
cared.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I've had people come in and rave like type up a
raving review and then leave afour star.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, and they still do that too, because they think
a four star is bad.
They don't understand whatthey're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
when they do that, they they're trying to save face
for themselves, Like nobody'sperfect or I'm such a good
reviewer that I have to save theperfect.
I hate those people.
Yeah, you're not David Portnoywith a pizza slice, bro you know
what.
I'm saying, is that his nameDavid?
I think so, david Portnoy.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Well, and it's funny because you're new and you're in
like a highly competitivemarket.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
So they've already started your website.
They're judging that.
They're judging walking up tothe building.
They're judging their firststep in, like they're starting
to judge you before you.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So if you're not having your shit together and
that's what I try to articulateto the staff- is like nobody's
going to be like hey, you know,chef Mark fucked up today.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He shit up today.
He shit the bed.
They're like matt can't cook.
I knew that youtube guy was.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You're not even there that night like yeah he fucked
up my whole meal.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I need you guys to pay attention well, here's
another thing that goes on toosometimes, and people are used
to seeing me.
They're coming here, they seeme in the news, they see me on
the magazine, whatever it may be, and then when they come here
for the first time, they'reexcited to see me and it might
be a night.
I'm off, yeah, so because Iwasn't here, everything was not
the same.
Not understanding that Iprobably didn't cook it anyway
if I was here.
I have a phenomenal team backthere and they all cook amazing.
(29:52):
I go through all of it withthem.
We train, we teach, we talk toeach other, we taste each
other's food, right, so I couldbe literally here and someone
would be happy because I'm herenot realizing I didn't cook your
(30:12):
food.
That same person.
I won't be here, you know,think that I.
It wasn't good because I wasn'there making and it's.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It's impossible for you to cook everything.
Hell, no, I don't know, I can'tif it's 130 guests in the
dining room.
I can't cook that many things.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I can cook a station or maybe even two.
I can touch two stations.
I'm not gonna be able to cookeverything that you ate tonight.
Like people are like did youcook this?
I tell people all the time ifyou want me to cook for you
first show up on a night I'mhere which is pretty much every
night.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Secondly, on the weekends we have chef specials.
Yeah, I cook them.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Me.
I'm the chef, it's my special,I cook.
If you want me to cook for you,come on the weekend and order
the specials, and I am literallycooking for you now.
You now have a personal chef.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, period.
But even then the prep teamprobably did you know something,
they might have pickled the.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Of course they did.
You know what I mean.
Of course they did.
It's always you can't do it all.
No-transcript.
Other things to worry about.
(31:12):
I'm worried about cooking.
I'm worried about why, the whythe wine room door is cracked
open and we're losing thecooling system.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Air out of there you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
there's a lot of things going on, but right now
the team is solid and you'regoing to find as you grow that
you have new car syndrome, right, remember when you got a new
car and you see a little pieceof dust on the carpet and you
pick it up, get all pissed off,go run the thing through the
wash and get your detailer over.
Then in about two years you'llsee dirt on the floor and be
like, ah, fuck it, I'm going toget another car one day anyway,
right?
So I'm not saying you're goingto say, oh, fuck it, don't get
(31:43):
me wrong, right, but it's at thebeginning, the first few years,
man, every little thing isgoing to drive you bananas.
Yeah, it is, and it will, and itwill and you'll lose sleep at
night and your wife is going tobe like dude.
I didn't sign up for this.
Yeah, neither did you.
Right?
You know what I?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
mean know right and and then you start.
If you have that passion in you,bro, it's over, it just gets
worse.
Yeah, that would be the otherlast piece of advice that I
would give to answer theoriginal question is if you have
partners, sit down with themand have very real, honest
conversations about what I canexpect you to contribute to this
and what I, what you're notwilling to contribute to it.
Because in the beginningeverybody's like, oh, I'll do
(32:26):
this, I'll do that, I'll do.
Most of them aren't going to doshit, or not half of what they
say that they're going to do.
So it's like, let's just have areal like I'm okay with doing
the work, that's fine, and ifyou're going to write the checks
, I'm cool with that too.
Like, whatever the conversationmay be, or whatever the
agreement that y'all have needsto be outlined very, very well
(32:47):
documented, and you know we allagree on it, because that's
something not not necessarilyjust with this restaurant, but
other business ventures I've hadin the past it's like I always
run into like all right, well, Iend up like kind of putting it
on my back because I don't wantit to right, we don't want to
fail and to piggyback off that,bro.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Bro, I'm going to go a step further and my advice
when it comes to partners isdon't have any.
That's a good advice.
Don't have any Seriously,because you're going to make a
big decision, right, when youmake a partnership.
But the other problem is thisIf you do have one now, if you
do like you're saying, you havea difference.
(33:26):
So some people confuse the twoideologies.
Some say, yeah, I'm a partnerin that place.
No, you're not.
You're a financial investor,right, and that needs to be said
, like you said at the beginning.
So you have to know your roles,because if you're an investor,
then step off and let me do mywork.
You've invested, you did yours.
Now Let me make sure we can payback this investment, right,
right, if you're an investor,partner, you need to say that
(33:49):
Now.
If you're a partner in sweatequity, you need to say that,
because now you owe back thatmoney because you weren't a
financial investor.
So you're absolutely right, youneed to really streamline what
it is each person is doing.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And the same thing in your industry, your other
industry with Reframe.
Yeah, with marketing it's thesame thing.
I mean I have a partner in mybusiness and you know, I mean we
have a partner, like we haveactual roles dictated.
Who does what who's?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
better at what?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And solid and outside of that also kind of the moral
compass and what you want inagain like I keep saying five to
ten years.
So we had, you know, very clearexpectations for years one, two
, three, Like we're not takingmoney, You're not getting paid,
I'm not getting paid.
That's an important conversationso you need to know what you're
willing to sacrifice to get tothe end result, whatever that
(34:35):
may be If you're building tosell, if you're building to
scale, if you're building tofranchise, whatever.
So I think it's a lot, yeah,but being very, very specific
and getting everything inwriting is like two of the
things that people don't want todo when they're new to any
business, and it will literallydestroy your bank account and
your friendships.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The things that you don't want to do are the things
you should do first.
Yeah, do those immediately.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
We call it the unsexy work and like you're
responsible for learningeverything.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Like you can't.
You're you're um negligence oryeah, you know you're.
You what you don't understand.
You can't hold that againstsomebody else.
Like you're responding, you'rean adult, you're, you're like
it's.
I put it on myself too, likethere's a lot of things about
the restaurant industry that Ididn't know.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Like now I'm learning those things and the more you
go, the more you're going tolearn.
You don't know?
Yeah, I'm still learning bro.
Yeah, there's still a lot ofthings now that I'm learning
those things and the more you go, the more you're going to learn
.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You don't know, yeah, because I'm still learning bro.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, there's still a lot of things now that I'm
learning that have nothing to dowith what we would have thought
.
Now the restaurant businessjust get rid of the word
restaurant and just call itbusiness, Because I knew the
restaurant business but now I'mlearning business.
You see what I'm saying Becausethe fucking financing the bills
, the banks.
It doesn't matter what businessyou?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
are in.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
It all comes down to how are you going to manage
business?
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Business For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Business people you talk to.
What do we call it when wenetwork?
Right yeah, we go networkingyou can go into business groups.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Sure BNI EO there's a lot of business, entrepreneur
organizations that will help youwith other things.
Exactly but the place I workedfor.
They decided.
They decided not to pay theirtaxes for almost three years.
And they came and literallychained the doors, closed Like I
mean, took a chain and put itaround all of their doors three
restaurants in this area andthey decided they wanted to do
more Coke and champagne thanthey did, pay their taxes, and
(36:16):
they had, you know, suits andclothes and paid and didn't, you
know, live the high lifebecause they thought that's what
they were supposed to do asrestaurant owners.
They never worked in therestaurant, these were just the
owners, and all of them one ofthem's fucking extradited to
another, like hiding in anothercountry now.
So I mean, that was theirs,Like, oh yeah, well, we have
someone handling it.
That's the other problem.
If you have someone doing yourbills and your books, you have
(36:37):
to check on them.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
You have to have checks, do it.
You can't do it all If you sitthere.
It's good to do it all.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
You need to learn how to do it now.
So at least I know it.
I know how to do it.
If I have to do it, I can't.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
You come from the financial background.
You're a bank in background,weren't you?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I was in sales.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I worked for a bank but I was a sales rep, so you
know exactly what it's like froma business perspective.
Hence getting rid of the wordrestaurant and using the word
business.
So that's the biggest thingEveryone in the not everyone I
can't say.
(37:17):
I say everyone a lot, but Idon't mean it that way but a lot
of people who get into this.
I want to go be a chef and openmy own restaurant.
They may understand arestaurant, but they never have
no clue about business yeah andthat's the problem you know it's
it's a lot more in in depth,like people say.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
When people say the restaurant industry is one of
the toughest industries, they'renot.
It's not just bullshit.
They're not blowing smoke upyour ass to try to get you to
not do it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
It's hard, it's hard you have it's hard, even if you
kill it.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
The margins are like very small, the margins are
small.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Okay, if you own a concrete company, right, and you
bid out a concrete job, and youhave your trucks, your skid
stairs, your fucking connections, all your things are perfect,
right, yeah, you can have ashitty day and still make a
fucking $30,000 job happen in aday and a half and still, if it
goes wrong or something likethat, you still have a lot of
profit to fluctuate yeah in therestaurant.
(38:07):
If you drop one fucking ribeyeon the floor, yeah, with today's
prices you pretty much startlosing profit off that whole
thing yeah so if you cut afillet out a tenderloin, and and
you get eight portions goodsize out of that right.
Probably five of those portionsare going to pay back the plates
.
You only have about threeportions left for profit yeah
(38:28):
now that profit's not much.
We're talking 90 over the threeyeah you drop one of them on
the floor.
Now you're down to two.
Yeah, someone leaves two ofthem out.
Now you're to three.
Now you have fucking four ofthem that got screwed up somehow
because they couldn't figureout the temperature right now.
You owe yourself money forhaving now you've lost money.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
That's a great way to put it it happens.
Yeah, I think we do need toread the review, so we gotta
read.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I know you have them so you're gonna, let's do we're
gonna do this with you next time, matt.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
When you like, we'll do your reviews and just yeah,
it'll be hysterical.
It's a good idea okay, so youwant to pick one and read it,
yep okay, I'm doing that rightnow pick your favorite out of
all of them and then we'll we'llgo through and get you to
respond and then, Matt, you cankind of pretend it was your
restaurant and respond to what?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
you say online.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Okay, okay, okay, here we go.
Um, I'll just go with the firstone.
It is the.
This is a good one.
It's one of them ones where itneeds attention.
The space is absolutelystunning, but the service was
shockingly poor.
We had a reservation, but westill waited 15 minutes to be
seated, while staff seemedconfused and disorganized.
Our server barely acknowledgedus, forgot our appetizer and
(39:36):
never refilled our water once.
At one point we had to walk upto the bar just to ask for our
check.
The food was decent, but theexperience was so frustrating we
left more annoyed thansatisfied.
Now I can understand thistotally.
What I don't understand is howthe hell this would happen here,
because there's so many pointsof you have a lot of points of
(39:56):
service and contact from whenthey walk in right.
The steps of service here are sovast.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
We have so many did you determine what time and
night or anything.
That doesn't say anything.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
We haven't done that yet, so disappointing
anniversary dinner and thatblows my, that hurts my feelings
.
That really is something.
This is one of the ones we'regoing to look at, and this goes
into the situation room.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
You know what I mean?
That's a decent.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
This is a very sought-after review.
Not sought-after, that's thewrong thing.
So it was two stars On payingattention to it.
That's one of the ones thatokay.
There's some decent words herethat seem like they might be an
issue, so that's one of them.
That's a good one.
What would you say about thatone?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Obviously the service piece of it, like having them.
It seems like if they wouldhave simply had attention they
would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
That's all it takes.
So sometimes there are flawsthere.
Something could have been wrong.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You're right, breeding them with happy
anniversary, mr Jones,immediately now.
I'm happy we have cards on thetable.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Everyone knows the drill we keep cards on the table
just so you can literally seethem, and the staff can see them
, and every person in the staffwalks by.
We have a routine.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And having your water not filled is ridiculous to me,
because we have not thewaitstaff, we have service
assistants, we have other people.
Water is a big thing.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
That one surprises me that they missed that, which
means that either it was super,super busy and the timing
Sometimes there's like that justterrible timing, like you walk
in between while everybody'sbusy and there's going to be a
few minutes.
You know, I mean I get that,but what if they also didn't say
that it was their anniversaryon the reservation I mean.
So you didn't get a card onyour table probably because you
didn't say it.
(41:33):
So you have to look at what isyour fault.
There are times where it's likeyou're getting held accountable
for things that you know notreally, but but this is the
point you brought up, Chef wasthat they said the food was
decent.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, the food was decent.
They didn't want to say it wasbad because it was probably
absolutely delicious, but theyhave to critique it.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
They can't put anything good in that thing
because it just takes away fromtheir— and nothing tastes as
good as it could.
If I'm already pissed off,Right, Like you've got to really
blow me away if I'm pissed offand I'm waiting and I'm sitting
here.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Of course You're never going to give props.
This was so good.
Fuck everything that comes downto the team.
Did you want to read another?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
one.
Do we have time for one more?
Next time?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
we have to start doing yours and let him respond
in a way that you probablywouldn't, which will be really
fun.
I'll respond fun, I can'trespond bad to that one, because
there's some legitimate thingsthat need to be looked at.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
They need attention.
We need to look at it and makesure that we're not slipping
there.
We'll do it again, but you haveto shout, tell everybody where
the restaurant is.
Where can we go and check itout?
Speaker 1 (42:33):
The restaurant's name is Fresh.
It's spelled F-R-A-I-C-H-E, theFrench spelling for fresh.
It's on 14th Street.
3345 14th Street, northwestWashington DC, in Columbia
Heights.
We're open every day exceptMonday.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Perfect, and we're going to any other plugs you
want to put out there for yoursocials.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
MrMakeItHappencom for all of my free recipes for the
blog, for my products the spices, the chef knives, the skillets,
all that good stuff.
You can find me on YouTubeMrMakeItHappen pretty much on
every platform.
Sounds wonderful and we'regoing to make our way up there
soon.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
We are going to make it.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
We're going up there, we're going to come up there
and bring cameras, not really doa review, but do a review Sure
More like a chef's perspective.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Of what you got going on there.
We can do a little specialbonus episode.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Right, we're planning that pretty soon yeah let's do
it All right.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
We're coming to DC.
Man, we're coming in hot.
It'll be fun, It'll be a goodtime.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
And thank everybody for watching.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Hit like, subscribe all that good stuff.
Give us some support, follow usand love to have you, love
talking to you.
Ciao for now.
Ciao.
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