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If you are a Tucson local restaurant owner looking to increase your sales by engaging more in your community, this episode is for you.
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Shane Reiser, CEO and "Head Foodie of Tucson Foodie," joins me, Christin Marvin, to dish out his flavorful story behind Tucson Foodie. You'll be captivated by how Shane's leadership journey has been spiced up with lessons on setting healthy boundaries and transitioning from a single revenue stream to a smorgasbord of business ventures, all while keeping the local food scene sizzling post-COVID-19.
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As Tucson's palate expands, so does the need for innovative engagement. Feast your ears on how the Tucson Foodie Passport and Insiders Club are revolutionizing the way food enthusiasts connect with Tucson's diverse culinary landscape.
Shane and I chew over the growing pains and triumphs of rebranding the platform, emphasizing the importance of community support for local restaurants and the strength in numbers when it comes to Tucson's mouth-watering, locally-owned eateries.
Wrapping up our epicurean exchange, we get a serving of insight into Tucson Foodie's unique approach to sustainability in the food media industry. From ditching traditional revenue avenues to stirring up buzz with food festivals and wellness events, we're cooking up ways to keep our platform—and Tucson's restaurant scene—booming.
Join us at our table where collaboration is the secret sauce to success, and discover how Tucson's food culture is much more than just a trend; it's a testament to the power of community.
To Learn More about Tucson Foodie's Programs Visit:
http://www.tucsonfoodie.com
http://www.insiders.tucsonfoodie.com
http://passport.tucsonfoodie.com
More from Christin:
Grab your free copy of my audiobook, The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary at christinmarvin.com/audio
Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Christin Marvin (00:46):
Before we jump into today's episode, I have to
give a shout out to my formerco-host, Nick Spinelli.
Nick has some amazing thingshappening in his life right now
and has graciously promotedhimself to be a guest on the
show.
He will be missed, but fear not, he will not be a stranger.
So, Nick, thank you foreverything you've done to build
(01:06):
this foundation and help thisshow get off the ground.
Really appreciate it, buddy.
Okay, today we are welcomingShane Reiser to the show.
Shane is the head foodie.
Love this title of TucsonFoodie, which is the largest
media and events platform inSouthern Arizona, focused
exclusively on the local foodand beverage scene.
(01:28):
More than a quarter of Tucson'spopulation reads Tucson Foodie.
Each month, their social mediapresence exceeds 500,000, and
their dinners and festivals drawin tens of thousands of people
annually, which is incredible.
Hi, Shane, great to have you onthe show, hi.
Shane Reiser (01:46):
Christin, thanks for having me.
I'm just wondering what kind ofgreat things Nick Spinelli has
happening in his life.
That's what I want to know howexcited for him.
Christin Marvin (01:54):
Yeah, I mean there's some great life changes.
I know he can sometimes be alittle bit of a private person
so I'm not going to aireverything out.
I know you two know each other,but he's got some great
personal and professional thingshappening and good for him for
saying recognizing that he's gotmore on his plate right now and
setting a little bit of someboundaries, something that a lot
(02:15):
of us are still learning how todo.
Shane Reiser (02:17):
Oh, God, I'm still learning how to set boundaries
as well, yeah, me too, it'sdifficult.
Have you talked aboutboundaries on this podcast,
given boundaries are animportant part of leadership,
right?
Christin Marvin (02:27):
Yeah, they sure are, absolutely yeah, we can
dive into that.
If you want to come back on theshow at some point and talk
about that, that would beamazing.
Shane Reiser (02:36):
I know other people that are way better at
that than me.
Christin Marvin (02:38):
Okay, sounds good.
Just wanted to open thatinvitation for you Love it?
Well, thanks for being heretoday.
I'm so excited to share yourjourney with our listeners.
You and I had a chance toconnect about a month ago and I
just think you have such afascinating, interesting story
and I'm just super excited aboutyour mission and everything
(02:58):
that you're doing with TucsonFoodie, and I'm excited to share
some of the challenges thatyou've shared with me that you
have faced since you acquiredTucson Foodie last year, and
dive a little bit deeper intoyour vision for the company and
explore why community is such abig deal for you I know that's
one of your big values and a bigdeal for the company and
(03:20):
showcase how you're building aprofitable revenue model with
community at the center, becausethat's not easy to do with the
business that you're in.
Yeah, that's my journey.
Yeah, you have a veryinteresting background, but it's
not necessarily rooted in food,so share a little bit about how
(03:41):
that journey led you to TucsonFoodie.
Shane Reiser (03:43):
Not at all, In fact.
I mean I had a pretty boringfoodie upbringing, I would say.
I mean my mom would cook one of10, 15 dishes and we'd go out
to eat at a Chinese restaurant,in a pizza place.
It wasn't until I left thehouse and realized that there
are all these other cuisinetypes and just regional cuisines
(04:08):
and started exploring and doingsome traveling that I started
calling myself a foodie, if youwill.
Nice, yeah, Sorry, what was thequestion?
Yeah, Just yeah.
Christin Marvin (04:21):
Absolutely no.
You're good, Sounds like youand I have similar backgrounds
as far as our foodie upbringingtook some exploration and travel
.
I wanted to really share withthe listeners how your life
journey has led you to TucsonFoodie.
Shane Reiser (04:37):
Oh gosh, I bought Tucson Foodie on a whim, if you
will.
So when I moved here in Tucsonto Tucson nine years ago, I was
kind of forced to move here.
I moved here to continueco-parenting my daughter.
Her mom was in the Air Force.
A lot of people end up inTucson for similar reasons and
(04:59):
my girlfriend was like, hey,there's actually a lot of stuff
going on in Tucson, youshouldn't be so sad about it.
Have you found Tucson Foodie onInstagram?
So I created my first Instagramaccount no background in social
media and yeah, tucson Foodiewas part of my falling and love
(05:22):
journey.
With Tucson I started checkingout great restaurants.
I started making friends in therestaurant scene, to restaurant
owners, et cetera.
They're very accessible here inTucson Now you can.
They're usually working in therestaurant.
You can meet them.
So Tucson Foodie absolutelyplayed a role in my kind of
(05:43):
getting to know Tucson andstarting to call Tucson home.
I've never called anywhere homeexcept St Louis, where I grew
up, until I moved here, and I'velived at a lot of different
places in between Missouri andArizona.
So I fell in love with TucsonFoodie and fell in love with
(06:03):
Tucson because of Tucson Foodie.
Fast forward, you know, nineyears COVID hits.
Tucson Foodie is not doing sowell and I'm sad because I'm
just a reader and subscriber andI had met Adam, the guy who
started Tucson Foodie, a coupleof times.
So I reached out and you knowTucson Foodie had one revenue
(06:28):
stream and we'll get into this alittle bit later, kind of all
the different new revenuestreams that we started to
launch and grow but he had oneprimary revenue stream and that
was sponsored content fromrestaurants.
He also had a paywall up.
You can only read so manyarticles before you had to pay
(06:48):
some money to keep reading.
So he kind of had those tworevenue streams but the bulk was
restaurants paying him tocreate content and that went to
zero as soon as the mayor shutthe city down when COVID hit.
So Tucson Foodie struggled hard.
And also Adam had a nine yearrun with Tucson Foodie maybe 10
(07:11):
years right, like he started andgrew to what it is today and
he's getting a little burned out.
So I helped him explore somepossibilities of selling the
company and there was a lot ofinterest but everybody was
moving really slow and out offrustration Adam looked at me
(07:33):
one day and said why don't youbuy it?
Why don't you buy Tucson Foodie.
And within five seconds I saidyes.
And in those five seconds allkinds of great stuff happened in
my brain, like my heart saidyes.
Immediately you know bigemotional pull.
I was like yeah, and then myheart also said and we can't let
(07:53):
Tucson Foodie die.
Like Tucson needs this.
This is part of the connectivetissue of Tucson.
It's an economic driver.
All these people I know who runrestaurants and work in
restaurants rely on TucsonFoodie.
It actually has a huge impact.
We've dropped articles thatoverwhelm restaurants and, yeah,
sometimes that's a problemactually, but yeah, it can be a
(08:15):
good problem to have.
We actually wait a little whileafter a rest.
We do a little announcement nowlike this restaurant's opening,
and then we wait like a coupleof months before we do like a
deep story so they can get theirfeet under them.
So my heart was saying this isfun, it's a new challenge.
You already love the brand andthe company and this can't die.
(08:38):
It's important to the city thatyou know love.
But also, within those fiveseconds, I thought of 10
different revenue streams thatyou know Tucson Foodie could go
after and all the stuff I alwayswanted Tucson Foodie to do.
But you know I wasn't involved,right?
So I thought, man, what anopportunity.
So I said yes, on the spot andthen figured it out.
Christin Marvin (09:02):
Nice.
Those are the best kind ofdecisions sometimes right.
I love it.
I love it.
I mean clearly your heart waswas leading.
You know your heart and yourhead working together.
But I love that you have saidthat you you're now calling
Tucson home and that TucsonFoodie helped you establish
yourself here here and build acommunity, and you want to turn
around and do that for otherpeople, which is beautiful.
(09:23):
That's a great purpose, sothank you for doing that.
Shane Reiser (09:26):
Well, you are very welcome.
My background is in communitybuilding.
I've in entrepreneurship.
I've started seven companies.
This is the first company thatI acquired and I highly
recommend it.
It's so much harder to startfrom zero, from nothing and
(09:47):
build up and convince the firstfew crazy people to follow you.
Tucson Foodie had a hugeaudience, a well loved brand, so
much potential.
So being able to start with allof that and start to experiment
right On top of all of theassets and the audience and the
numbers and the brand equitythat Tucson Foodie had, just
(10:12):
it's a dream compared to theseven times I've started
companies from zero.
My background is in communitybuilding.
One of the first jobs I mean Ihad a couple of boring corporate
jobs, right.
Christin Marvin (10:27):
And then I love the robot arms.
Shane Reiser (10:28):
I know people can't see us, but go through the
dimensions A couple of boringcorporate jobs and, looking back
, they weren't that bad actually, but at the time I hated them
and I took the jump into workingin a nonprofit called Startup
Weekend.
Startup Weekend was definitelya community.
It was a volunteer runorganization.
(10:50):
People would sign up tovolunteer and they'd run a three
day event in their hometown andthis event brought together 100
, 125 aspiring entrepreneurs.
People would pitch ideas fornew companies they wanted to
start, or sometimes just aproblem they wanted to solve,
and they'd form teams and try toliterally launch a new company
(11:10):
within 72 hours.
It was educational, but moreimportant than educational, it
was about community building.
People forged relationshipsthat were deep.
When you're stuck in a roomwith somebody for three days and
you're trying to solve aproblem, you get to know them
really well, you bond.
So the relationships that wereforged at these events were
(11:37):
meaningful and we'd have tons ofstories after Startup Weekend
about oh, I started anothercompany with this guy, or I got
hired, or I hired this guy, Igot married to somebody I met at
a Startup Weekend.
It brought the communitytogether and connected it more
deeply and we were able to runStartup Weekends in almost every
country in the world.
Well over half a million peoplehave been to them.
(12:01):
It was a high growth nonprofitand I was the Chief Operations
Officer and I got to train thevolunteers that ran these events
and see how it changed theirlives, transform, put them on a
new path, some of them eyes opento how much potential they even
had as a person.
Their whole trajectory changedMultiple dozens, hundreds of
(12:26):
companies.
I actually got started atstartup weekends, which went on
to hire people, create economicgrowth, change lives.
So it mattered a lot and I gotthe bug of community building.
I called myself a communitybuilder then and since then,
everything I've done.
I thought well, what's thecommunity around this thing?
Whether it's a product, atechnology, a brand, a person, a
(12:51):
cause, whatever it is, there'speople around it that identify
with it, that want to beinvolved, that want to help
further it.
Maybe they just buy it and theyuse it, but they want to meet
other people that use it andlearn and connect.
People are thirsting forconnection, for community.
With just a little bit ofeffort, you can put some
structure around that and bringpeople together, make it a lot
(13:13):
more meaningful and then usethat community as a competitive
advantage.
Nice Right.
So Tucson Foodie is a mediacompany.
There are other media companieshere in town that I mean not
anymore I call it a communitynow but are one of our primary
pillars.
In how most people know, itsays a news organization.
(13:33):
There are other organizationsthat write about restaurants,
but I don't see people wearingtheir t-shirts like texting me,
thanking me for what we do,hearing stories about people who
met at our events or members ofour communities meeting each
(13:56):
other and becoming friends.
You don't hear that about someof the other news organizations
in town, and that's the bigdifference.
We rewrote our missionstatement to be we bring people
together over a shared level offood.
So everything we do now I thinkhow is this bringing people
(14:16):
together?
And if it doesn't, we don't doit.
Christin Marvin (14:20):
I love that.
It sounds like you're speakinga little bit about how you're
really impacting the communityon a large scale, which is great
, and bringing people together.
People are meeting each otherat events, forming friendships,
sharing their common love forfood.
How is Tucson Foodie making animpact directly to restaurants
and you mentioned a little bitof this earlier, but speak a
(14:41):
little bit more on that.
Shane Reiser (14:43):
Sure, Well, that was already in place when I
acquired the company.
Already a huge audience, Peoplealready looking to Tucson
Foodie to hear about newopenings, new menus, new chefs
etc.
So there's a bit of athunderclap effect with Tucson
Foodie.
When we drop something onInstagram or on our website or
(15:04):
we send something out in ournewsletter, it drives people to
go shop local.
We only write about locallyowned businesses.
I believe in the power of localeconomic development so we
focus on that and a lot ofpeople understand that that
matters.
But also for all the good foodis, I mean, there's exceptions.
I love me some North Italia.
(15:26):
The place is fantastic.
It's not locally owned.
It actually sort of has historyhere because it's a Fox concept
.
Christin Marvin (15:33):
Yeah, same as around here.
Shane Reiser (15:38):
And True Food Kitchen just opened up.
They have some great food, alsosome deep Tucson connections,
but technically notheadquartered in the state of
Arizona, so when you spend moneythere, most of the money will
flutter across state lines andit's gone.
It doesn't help us grow ourcommunity or keep our community
strong, but all the good food,most of the good food, is family
(16:01):
owned businesses Hiring local,and when you spend local, that
money stays in our economy.
So we drive business torestaurants through our content,
through our news.
But now we do it in a new waytoo, through community.
So we've got the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club and we've got the
(16:26):
Tucson Foodie Passport.
These are two new products thatwe dreamed up and launched
within the last 12 months.
The passport is directlytargeting getting more people to
go to local restaurants andit's kind of a coupon book.
Right, it's $300 and you getover $3,000.
(16:47):
It's now up to like $3,600worth of vouchers to like 75
locally owned restaurants.
Christin Marvin (16:53):
Wow.
Shane Reiser (16:56):
And the people that buy that are super foodies.
They want to explore.
Maybe they're stuck in a rutand go to the same five or six
restaurants and they want to getout and explore because they
keep hearing like wow, Tucson'sa UNESCO City of gastronomy,
what am I missing?
I don't even believe thatthat's possible.
So we reached out to all thebest, looked on restaurants.
(17:17):
They throw vouchers into thepassport and it's basically as
good as cash.
Right, you go there, you showthat you're a member, they take
it right off your bill and it'sa great way to discover and
explore.
So that drives businessstraight into the doors of
restaurants.
And then the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club.
(17:38):
That's our club.
That's our real community.
It's $20 a month.
You can pause or quit at anytime, but we get people together
and we do that at restaurantsand we do that in all other
types of places as well.
We do a monthly dinner serieswith different chefs.
It's a private event just forinsiders.
Chefs open up their restaurantand cook tasting menus so that
(17:59):
they can experiment withdifferent dishes they're
thinking about adding to futuremenus and insiders love that.
I love doing that.
I think it's really fun.
You get to meet the chef shaketheir hands, learn about their
story.
There's a fireside chat.
Chef comes out, shakes people'shands and explains each dish
and it's very accessible.
So creating that connectivitybetween diners that they may not
(18:23):
normally get when they just goeat at a restaurant and the chef
or the business owner, that'sdeliberate.
We're trying to do that andthen we're just trying to get
people to discover just howdiverse and delicious Tucson's
restaurant scene really is.
Christin Marvin (18:38):
Yeah, it's incredible.
I think 67% of our restaurantsare local here.
That's what I read.
Do you have any?
Shane Reiser (18:45):
sense Kristen.
If that is higher or lower thanthe average, I'm guessing
higher.
Christin Marvin (18:50):
I don't, I don't.
I need to look into that.
But it sounds like anincredible number to me.
Just driving around and lookingat the landscape, it seems to
be a lot higher than where elseI've lived Missouri and Colorado
and here, so yeah.
Shane Reiser (19:06):
I do know one stat .
Jonathan Maybury, who runs theCity of Gastronomy, the Tucson
City of Gastronomy here, told methat we have more food trucks
per capita than Los Angeles.
Christin Marvin (19:17):
Really.
Shane Reiser (19:19):
We have a lot.
I have a database of 250.
I mean it's massive.
I mean everything north of like22nd there's a lot but not that
many.
But once you get down to thesouth side, on Irvington and all
these other streets South 16th,south 25th there are so many
trucks and carts.
(19:39):
Huge, thriving scene of foodtrucks down there.
Christin Marvin (19:44):
That's awesome.
I've got a lot of exploring todo.
I've been at the pit a coupleof times, over 20 seconds.
Pantano, that's my side of town, but we need to go exploring
south, for sure A little bitmore than we have.
So you mentioned earlier thatyou immediately said yes to
taking over Tucson Foodie.
You knew it was struggling.
You had some big ideas.
10 revenue streams popped intoyour mind right away.
(20:05):
What's been your biggestchallenge since acquiring the
company?
Shane Reiser (20:11):
Okay Well, yeah, here's a struggle for buying a
business.
It already had a reputationright and people thought it
thought of it in a certain wayand I was looking to change that
.
So it's been a struggle tochange minds and sometimes
change hearts, but even just toeducate and explain.
(20:33):
New team, new leadership, newdirection, new products, new
offerings.
I've learned from talking topeople that some people think of
Tucson Foodie as nothing morethan an Instagram account.
Some people thought we're justa newsletter.
Some people thought we're justa website, so you can, you just
(20:54):
go and grab the money.
Are you okay with that?
You know, taking the city that Ilive in on this journey with me
and getting them to considerTucson Foodie in a new light has
been very difficult.
There are still restaurantowners, despite my best efforts
to call them to visit them, thatthink Adam still runs Tucson
Foodie.
You know and are surprised tolearn that we don't charge
(21:20):
restaurants for anything anymore.
We're never going to ask aTucson restaurant for money.
We you know, we those importantto me.
I wanted to take that away.
There are people who stoppedyou reading Tucson Foodie when
the paywall went up and aresurprised and delighted to hear
that the paywall doesn't existanymore.
All of our content's free.
Oh, and it's been like that fora year, you know.
(21:42):
So, yeah, that's been achallenge.
Building a team has been reallyhard to Kristen, and you know,
now that you're asking me, I'vegot like 10 other challenges
that come to mind.
Christin Marvin (21:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, say more about the team
component.
Shane Reiser (21:57):
Sure, you know, tucson Foodie didn't have any
employees when I acquired it butI was able to get Matt Sturner,
who was the editor under Adam,to come back and work full time
for foodie.
But everybody else was new tofoodie and figuring out like
what the team needed to evenlook like.
Obviously we investing big inthe community so we need like a
(22:22):
community manager or somebodywho's deeply connected already
and great in front of people.
I was also looking to do thingsbigger than foodie had ever
done before.
So, you know, brought somebodyon to tackle operations and
build out systems anddocumentation so that we had the
(22:42):
infrastructure to scale.
Events has been really hard.
We've gone through a fewdifferent event directors
decided against it actually notevents, but against having
having an internal eventsdirector and said we're hiring
out production companies and I'mdoing.
I have a background with events.
I've run so many events, bigconferences.
(23:04):
I have the bandwidth for it's afull time job to run festivals
and events, especially thequantity that that we do at
foodie.
So, figuring out what that teamneeds to look like, I thought
it would be one person who was,just like you know, running and
controlling.
It turns out it's four or fivepeople that come together,
(23:25):
sometimes more intensely than atother periods of time, and we
make stuff happen.
As long as we have gooddocumentation and good processes
in place, it works great.
Yeah, my first hire after Mattwas Hannah Hernandez, and that
was a dream hire.
Social media is also one of ourthree pillars, right.
(23:46):
So it's editorial.
It's editorial, social andcommunity.
Those are kind of our threepillars of foodie.
Our social media is so big andso many people follow us and
that's all they do.
They interact with us in thatway and it's a funnel.
Now, right, we want to connectpeople into our clubs through
(24:08):
all of these different channels.
Bringing Hannah on was justsuch a key hire.
What I did there is I justlooked around Tucson and I found
somebody doing social media inthe way that I thought it should
be done, with the right voice,style and consistency, and then
I just aggressively pursued her.
Christin Marvin (24:31):
How long did it take you to bring her on at
this point?
Shane Reiser (24:35):
A couple months she was definitely open to it,
but getting her to finally sayyes and then jump into it and
then supporting her.
So she's successful.
But she's been amazing.
She's doubled our social mediafollowing In a year, across all
platforms.
Christin Marvin (24:49):
That's incredible.
Shane Reiser (24:50):
In like 16 months, right, yeah, and she's just so
wonderful to work with.
She's very client facing, right.
She's out shooting.
She's like her.
She's leveled up herphotography game or videography
game, but she's so good now thatshe's out bumping in the
restaurant owners grabbingcontent she's now selling, she
(25:11):
tells them about our restaurantpartnership program.
She lets them know our paywallsdown, like she's an advocate
and ambassador and not just afull-time employee.
But, yeah, building a team hasbeen tough.
I made the mistake that I'vemade prior.
Maybe, if you have any adviceon this for me or your audience,
(25:34):
how do you avoid shiny objectsyndrome?
This is just me.
I wanted to do so many thingsright out of the gate.
I went big, I did way too much,yeah, spent way too much money,
didn't kill projects quicklyenough and because of that,
other things that should havegotten the time and money didn't
(25:56):
and some growth metrics werehurt.
But also just the emotionaljourney of putting my heart into
a project.
Like we launched a video series, we launched like a TV show and
we tried so expensive, so muchof my time, and it just didn't
work.
Christin Marvin (26:16):
Yeah, it's interesting when you're in that
creative space, right, becauseyou're constantly reinventing
and the more creative you are,the more you're flexing that
muscle, the more exciting it is.
Right, it's kind of like it'sjust it's that dopamine rush, I
think.
When you talk about the shinyobjects, I mean I've been
growing local restaurants forthe last, you know, 20 years, so
(26:39):
every day was about chasingshiny objects, right, every day
is different in the restaurantbusiness, especially when you're
in high volume, and I've reallyrealized that, you know, being
an entrepreneur now, over thelast you know, just over a year,
and there's so many things thatI'm learning every day and
(26:59):
there's so many things I want totry and I want to stay
innovative and sharp and buildmy skills around editing and,
you know, editorial, theeditorial piece, the social
media piece, every aspect ofwhat I do right, the best way
and I've got clients thatstruggle with this too, who have
15 concepts that are differentor six concepts that are the
(27:21):
same and want to grow.
If you can get really clear onyour vision and I mean really
clear and detail out everysingle aspect of that vision and
you are constantly checking inon where you're going, that's
going to help you stay connectedto it and help inform every
(27:42):
decision that you make by sayinghang on.
Before we go through thisprocess, before we roll out
something else, let's talk abouthow this is helping us get
closer to the vision.
Shane Reiser (27:54):
Yeah, we're keeping that top of mind right.
It's so hard, especially whenyou're growing.
You get a little bit of success, opportunities start popping up
and some of them seem like whoa, this could be a game changer,
totally Reminding yourself inthe moment.
Okay, what's my vision?
(28:15):
What is the goalpost?
Does this get me there?
Does it distract?
Christin Marvin (28:20):
Yeah, and you said earlier, you jumped at
Tucson Foodie within fiveseconds.
I don't know if you have atendency to jump that fast with
every object, right, butsometimes just sleeping on it
and then seeing if thatexcitement is there the next day
can really help slow thingsdown a little bit.
Shane Reiser (28:40):
Another move that I made, maybe six months ago I
can't remember exactly when butI saw this pattern in myself.
I was really happy that I sawthis pattern and was able to
kind of acknowledge it and dosomething about it.
But I wasn't able to justchange, could just change my
behavior, and I couldn't stopjust saying yes to things that
(29:02):
seemed amazing.
So I brought somebody on, nice,I brought a partner on who is
amazing at accountability andsaying no and staying focused,
asking why are we doing this?
What's the priority?
Have we looked at the money?
(29:22):
Have we looked at the time?
Time is money.
So that's been amazing.
And then, of course, actuallyletting her, or actually
listening to her.
It's supposed to be like canyou do this?
And then I mean, I don't knowabout you.
I've worked with coaches andaccountability partners and they
(29:44):
just I wasn't ready, I guess,for that, but I was ready and
also I had almost run foodieinto the ground.
It was sort of a desperatesituation.
I was like, okay, I'm spendingway more than I have, than we're
making, I'm out of money.
I'm so excited for this project, but I'm just burned out and
(30:06):
it's hurting my health andrelationships.
This thing has so muchpotential and I have full I
still have full confidence.
This thing is going to happen,but not on this current path,
because I am sabotaging it.
So what can I do?
Christin Marvin (30:21):
Yeah, well, good for you for recognizing
that.
And I mean, that's what teambuilding is all about, right?
It's surrounding yourself withpeople that are different than
you, that can challenge you andhold you accountable and offer
different perspectives andbalance you out a little bit.
So good for you for doing that.
Shane Reiser (30:39):
Thank you.
It was a long learning journeyto get there and sort of open up
emotionally.
The other big mind shift wasjust like stop making it about
myself.
You know, I don't know how toexplain that exactly, but I feel
like there was a mind shift atsome point where I feel like now
(31:00):
I just kind of work for TucsonFoodie and I'm like serving it.
I'm of like a serviceleadership mentality.
Tucson Foodie is bigger than me.
I'm not.
You know, it's going to existpast me, maybe hopefully it's
important for the community it'snot mine, right, it's the
(31:22):
communities and it's employingseveral people.
They rely on it.
It's not a passion project,it's in a very important
organization.
It's a group of people thathelp each other.
So I need to run it like in afiscally responsible way that
(31:44):
honors our mission and honorsthe people that depend on it,
including restaurant owners.
Yeah, so I didn't quiteinternalize that.
You know I was like, oh, I'mthe CEO of this new company, I'm
important.
You know that got in the way.
That mindset just got in theway and it prevented me from
(32:05):
looking at kind of the numbersand the books and all of that
stuff and just thinking big andexisting up here.
You know I still need to dothat right.
We still need to go to leaders,we need to step out, we need to
have that you know, time tothink big and have you know and
like consider our vision andplan annually and all of that
stuff.
But I used to do it, I used tojust live up there.
(32:29):
Now I'm like I've got my CEOdashboard, I've got my numbers,
every decision is data drivenand it feels so good.
I don't know why I was notletting myself do that.
Christin Marvin (32:43):
Well, it's just not sustainable to make
business decisions based onemotion.
You have to do it based on data.
And I see that sometimes withlocal restaurant owners is they
are so busy wearing so many hatsrunning every aspect of the
business when they wanted to bea chef or they wanted to run the
front of the house and nowthey're in charge of HR and
(33:03):
marketing and hiring andmotivation and all these things,
and they move so quickly thatthey often make decisions based
on emotion or solving somethingquickly instead of really
looking at the numbers andletting the numbers lead their
decision.
Shane Reiser (33:21):
That's so true, yeah, and they do something.
All of them do something reallywell, and maybe it's make food
really really well, but makingthe decision to start a company
really has nothing to do withthat.
It's totally an entirelydifferent thing.
I was just I caught up withYano's, kind of a famous old OG
(33:45):
chef here in Tucson.
I'll be working with himtonight.
Oh cool.
Tell him.
I said hi.
Christin Marvin (33:49):
I will.
Shane Reiser (33:50):
Do you know his motivation behind starting
Studio Yano's?
Christin Marvin (33:54):
Yes, but you tell me, you tell me Okay.
Shane Reiser (33:58):
Cool.
Christin Marvin (33:58):
I was hoping you'd say no.
Shane Reiser (34:00):
I'll tell you the story anyway.
Well, he told me that he'sstarted solo restaurants and
after he spent some time notworking in restaurants anymore,
he kind of realized just howmuch he missed cooking for
people, cooking for people.
And that's how he started.
(34:23):
You know, loved cooking forpeople.
But at some point, after youopen a restaurant and open
another restaurant and you havechefs working for you and cooks,
you don't have time to cook forpeople anymore.
The majority of your time ismanaging people, is managing
finances, all that stuff youjust said, all that HR,
(34:44):
marketing, sales, finance, likeall these things you have to do.
And he hadn't just cooked forpeople in a long time.
So that was sort of the conceptbehind Studio Yano's.
It's literally just one table,12 people.
You have to buy the whole damntable.
Yeah, you can't just settlelike it's usually a group coming
(35:05):
in and he's like welcome, I'mgoing to cook for you now.
Yeah, and it's just incrediblyintimate and it's, you know,
he's like loving life again.
Christin Marvin (35:15):
Yeah, and I will say, being you know, I help
him in the kitchen and on thefront of house side with the
studio, and what he's doingthere is so special and it's so
intimate and it's so, it's justan experience that you can never
, ever recreate because of thepeople in the space and it's
(35:36):
beautiful.
I mean, we take group photostogether at the end of the meals
, if you know, not, not not it'snot part of the show, you know,
or the experience, but lasttime I worked one of the guests
had their camera and we're like,let's everybody get back on the
chef's counter.
And you know the host was likelaying on the counter and wanted
to take a picture witheverybody.
There's just a lot of love inthat room and and passion, and
(36:02):
if you want to hear more aboutthat, listen to episode seven.
Janice and I have really goodconversation and his son Ben
joins us for that, which isgreat.
And he's going to talk a littlebit more about it.
We've got another episode.
We shot down at 10 West andtalked a little bit more about
T-Con to City of Gastronomy andJanice is just he's hilarious.
(36:23):
He is so kind, he's got such abig heart, he truly loves what
he does and it's just contagious.
So it's a it's a greatexperience, for sure.
Shane Reiser (36:33):
It's true, you get around, janice, you're just
smiling, yeah, but to bring itback, I think I was getting into
that because, you know, eveneven very successful restaurant
owners and chefs like likeJanice, you know, they start
because they love doingsomething and then they realize
that starting a business is atotally different thing, and we
(36:53):
have to, you know it's.
I almost wish that I had takena really pragmatic approach to
like the current company that Irun, instead of making a big
passion move, you know, becausenow I've had to set that aside,
which is fine, because noweverything is changing, now that
I'm like cool, shane, you lovethis, great, Just keep that
(37:15):
inside and run a business.
Man.
A business is an organization,exists to deliver a product, to
make money, you know.
So let's deliver products andmake money so we can keep this
thing going.
Christin Marvin (37:30):
Yeah, I mean there's you've got to have the
business side of it, but thepurpose is the driver right, I
mean you're.
You're not going to get upevery morning and keep doing
what you're doing if you're notpassionate about it.
And I'm curious from yourperspective, now that you've
built this team and you've hadthat mindset shift of serving
the community and understandingeven more important how how
(37:51):
Tucson food is even moreimportant to the community how
do you make that sustainable?
Shane Reiser (37:57):
You want to talk about like revenue streams.
Sure Is that what you're sayingso, you mean by sustainable?
Yeah, so the one of the firstthings that popped into my mind
in that five second window whenAdam asked me if I wanted to buy
Tucson foodie, was we've got todiversify revenue streams,
right?
Tucson foodie was basicallykilled by COVID at one revenue
(38:19):
stream.
I didn't want that to happenagain, wanted to build some
resilience into our revenuemodel.
So we've we've launched severalrevenue streams and we're I've
been wanting to launch more, butSam was like dude, like we've
invested so much time intobuilding such a great product,
(38:42):
before we move on to the nextone, can we go ahead and market
and sell the heck out of this,you know, to get it where it
needs to be.
So I've mentioned a coupleright and, by the way,
dismantled the only two we hadright when I took over, which
was sponsored content and whichI just I don't like it, it
(39:06):
doesn't feel good.
And the paywall, which also Idon't like it doesn't feel good.
But it was kind of a harddecision to make, cause, you
know, when I took over a mediacompany, of course and I never
run a media company before Iresearched like what's the, what
are the trends in the, in thein the journalists were in the
media world.
You know how are mediacompanies, how regional media
(39:28):
companies make making money.
What are the trends?
And paywalls were a trendthat's just increasing right,
add revenue sinking.
It's harder to get people'sattention.
But I decided to go in adifferent direction.
It's because my background incommunity I thought you know I
(39:49):
don't.
I want, I feel like it's goingto be more sustainable to be
dependent on the people that weserve, which is our audience.
But I want to do so in a valueadded way.
I want to do so in a deeplyconnected way.
Right, I didn't want to say wehave much of great content and
you can read a little bit, butyou have to stop.
If you want to keep reading it,you have to pay.
(40:09):
That almost feels like you'rebeing penalized.
It just doesn't feel good to meand I always hated it
personally.
Like that, that feeling whenyou go to Tucson for you and it
says, oh, you've already, you'vealready read your fifth article
this month.
It's just like a big middlefinger in your face.
You know I hated it.
It didn't feel good.
So I want good vibes.
(40:31):
And back to my you knowbackground bringing people
together we have.
So let me just tell you what ourrevenue streams are.
We have the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club.
I would I would say that'sprobably our biggest bet.
This is $20 a month and you getall kinds of stuff.
(40:51):
You get to invite to thosedinners.
We throw monthly mixers atrotating restaurants and you get
showered with discounts, notjust at the events that we run
but all kinds of food andbeverage events from other
organizations around town.
So it's for people that want toexperiment or sorry, explore,
discover, but also connect andmeet other foodies.
So we're trying to find allthose foodies that want to meet
(41:13):
each other in town, bringingtogether as often as possible
and give them cool experiences.
That's our big bet.
We're at 500 members.
I'm trying to get to 2000.
You can do the math on that andwe're going to get to 2000
members is $40,000 a month.
That's double our burn rate.
(41:33):
For every revenue stream and Idon't know if this is good
financial advice or goodleadership advice but for every
revenue stream we've launchedI've thought does this have the
potential to completely fund thecompany?
If it didn't not worth it,let's do stuff that.
Let's do five or six bigrevenue stream bets and if five
(41:55):
of them fail.
Fine, as long as one succeeds,we exist.
Tucson Foodie Insiders is a bigbet.
If we can get that to 1,000,2,000 members, we'll be
sustainable.
Then our organization, our team, gets to focus on happiness
reducing churn, increasingloyalty, making people happy so
(42:16):
they don't leave.
I'm way better at that.
I'd much rather serve and makesure people are happy and solve
their problems than sell them onsomething.
It's a lot easier, I think.
The passport is the other thing.
We can sell enough of thoseannually to cover our burn rate.
(42:40):
Festivals that's another big one.
Events and festivals weactually acquired a couple of
festivals in town that were atrisk of being shut down.
One is Restaurant Week.
It made a ton of sense.
Super synergistic, we were ableto bring Tucson Foodie's
audience to bear on RestaurantWeek in a way that never
happened the first year we tookit over.
We doubled it.
(43:00):
Doubled the number ofrestaurants participating,
doubled the number of peoplethat go out during Restaurant
Week and try the Restaurant Weekmenu.
Triple the economic impact werun that.
We make money on that throughsponsorships.
That's not a ticketed event butwe make good money on
(43:21):
sponsorship.
Visit Tucson supports us, helpsus do all the content we do
during the week.
Every city needs a RestaurantWeek.
Most cities do.
I have one.
Tucson deserves one,considering how great our food
scene is.
We took over the craft beercrawl.
We launched a great newfestival called the Vegan Night
(43:43):
Market.
It exploded.
I thought 300 people would cometo the first one.
1,300 people showed up.
Fire code violations left andright.
I love it.
The second one, I thought about1,000.
3,000 people showed up.
Our next one is tomorrow.
It's our third one.
I'm expecting 3,000 people.
(44:08):
I don't know, it's a littlecolder.
We'll see what.
If 4,000 people show up, whatare we going to do?
We've taken over the entireline of the Tucson Children's
Museum.
We've tripled the amount ofvendors.
There's so much food that's anexciting one.
Then we're planning a festivalin October in partnership with
(44:28):
Dr Andrew Wilde, focused onwellness.
There's a lot of overlapbetween wellness and food, not
just nutrition, but many otherways it's connected.
Yeah, festivals Huge revenuestream for us.
I think it's been our biggestso far.
I'm hoping that insiders willsurpass that soon.
(44:51):
We did lean into advertising.
We took the paywall down, wedid something, and I feel lucky
for this.
But we reached out to the adagency that represents Eater.
We said, hey, we have a lot ofpage views.
Now they said, yeah, you meetour requirements.
You have to have.
(45:11):
I think they require 500,000page views a month before they
even consider working with you.
Then they did a bunch ofdiligence on us.
We had to pass all kinds oftests around sentiment analysis.
They called our entire websiteIf we had too many cuss words or
negative words.
They wouldn't have, becausethey ultimately bring
advertisers to us.
Long story short, I thinkTucson Foodie was making less
(45:36):
than $200 a month on ad revenuethrough just Google ads.
Now that we're represented byRaptive, we make $4,000 to
$7,000 a month on theadvertisements on our website.
I hate advertisements.
I was scared all of our readerswere going to run away, but we
(45:58):
launched them.
Nobody is complained and wemake the money.
It supports our editorial staff.
It allows us to hirefreelancers to write articles.
It allows us to hirephotographers and videographers
to create good content.
That turned out to be a reallynice, really passive revenue
stream.
Christin Marvin (46:15):
That's awesome.
Shane Reiser (46:18):
Then we tried to sell direct ads.
For a long time.
I hated it.
Little onesie, twosies, $200,$200 ads.
We launched the new thing acouple of months ago.
It's working great.
We call it a brand partnership.
We make it scarce.
Basically, we're working with20 brands at a time.
They're not restaurants,they're anybody that wants to
(46:41):
get in front of the foodieaudience.
A lot of them are food adjacent, like Whiskey, dalbock or the
Tucson Community Food Bank orOpen and Farms packaged food
products.
We're talking with a dispensary.
We're talking with a couple oftheaters in town.
We're going to work with 20 ata time.
We're going to just cheerleadfor them in all of our channels
(47:06):
Newsletter ads, sponsorships atevents, hosting mixers with our
members at their facilities andjust be there for them all year.
For a retainer model Again,minimum $500 a month, somewhere
at the $1200 a month.
(47:26):
20 brands you do the math.
That can actually cover justthe brand partnerships, our
entire burn rate and thecompanies covered.
We're only working with 20companies that we love.
That's awesome.
It's working great man.
Christin Marvin (47:41):
I love it.
Shane Reiser (47:42):
Back to your advice.
Get really clear on what you do, focus Totally working.
Christin Marvin (47:48):
Yeah, it takes time and practice.
Yeah, and reflection.
I'm so in awe and impressedwith what your team has been
able to do over the last 16months.
You've outlined for us so manywonderful ways that you serve
and support the communitythrough the passport at the
insider, all these festivals andevents that you're doing.
(48:11):
There's so many wonderful waysthat the community can support
you too, which is awesome.
Thank you for everything you'redoing for the community.
I know when I moved herebecause we typically read Eater.
everywhere we go when we travel,we travel for sport, for to eat
, and Tucson Foodie was my guide, our guide to where to eat.
(48:34):
We immediately checked out acouple of the recommendations
and built trust with your brand,which is incredible.
Shane Reiser (48:43):
That's how I started doing the same thing.
Christin Marvin (48:46):
That's great.
How can restaurants get incontact with you?
Shane Reiser (48:53):
Well, we're highly accessible.
Shane at TucsonFoodiecom.
You can hit me up there.
There's a partners page on thewebsite that explains how we
work with restaurants, in casethey're curious, because there
are multiple ways we can help arestaurant.
They always have newsthroughout the year.
We want that news.
(49:14):
We love to break that news.
We'll be the first to write itand break it.
We don't charge for any of thatstuff.
We have the news desk, MattSturner.
It's his life's mission to findcool news stories.
He'll be the first person tobreak it.
He worked at K-Gun.
He loves doing that.
He'll just pump stuff out allday long.
(49:34):
Any restaurant in Tucson, inthe broader region of Tucson,
who has newsworthy information.
You're expanding to a newlocation.
You have a new seasonal menuthat just dropped.
You've got a new chef, whateverit is new happy hour, whatever.
It could be big or small.
You can hit our news desk.
You can hit Matt atTucsonFoodiecom.
(49:56):
There's a form to submit a newsstory.
You can invite the team down.
We do this once or twice a week.
We head to a restaurant Hannahwill go, dalton will go.
We'll shoot some photographs,we'll shoot some video.
We drop that stuff.
We drop it on Instagram orFacebook.
(50:18):
We might make an article out ofit.
We love doing that.
I love meeting the restaurantowners.
I love I interview them everychance I get.
Are you struggling right now?
How could we help?
How can we better serve you?
We have a restaurantpartnership program that I think
(50:39):
I mentioned briefly earlier.
It's an all trade program.
Here's how it works, in caseyou're curious.
There's no cash exchanged.
This is where the passportcomes into play.
Restaurants offer vouchers tothe passport holders.
(51:00):
We aim for a $40 value.
They can break that up into $4,$10 vouchers if they want to.
I think that's a greatmarketing exercise in itself,
because a voucher only costs therestaurant about 33%.
Suddenly, they put a $40 valueand they spend it in whatever.
That math is $13 or somethinglike that.
(51:21):
We're only selling 500passports.
Most passport owners don't useall of their vouchers, just like
the entertainment coupon book.
Remember that, yes, which iswhere I came up with this idea.
I don't have any original ideas, by the way.
I've stolen every idea.
Christin Marvin (51:36):
I'm looking at what other cities are doing.
You have to look at yourcompetition.
It's how you run business.
Shane Reiser (51:42):
For sure.
I'm like that looks cool.
We could do that in Tucson.
We can fund the passport to theinsider club, to the festivals
we launched, totally just rippedoff of other organizations who
succeed.
It's way easier to be a fastfollower than the first to
market.
Let the first guy make all themistakes.
Christin Marvin (52:04):
There's so many events here which is a great
thing that span all types ofinterests for people in hobbies
and what have you.
The weather, because it's sobeautiful all year around.
I can't even keep up witheverything that's happening here
.
What I have seen is that thelocal community just really
supports these festivals andthese events.
(52:25):
They love to show up for theircommunity, which is just amazing
, yeah.
Shane Reiser (52:31):
Definitely a local feel here in Tucson.
I'm starting to think abouttaking Tucson for the other
cities and launching, like SantaFe Foodie or San Diego Foodie
or even Phoenix Foodie,something Adam thought about,
tried a couple of times.
I will see.
It's going to be an experiment.
(52:52):
I'm not going to do it for awhile.
Back to Sam's voice in my headwe just got to build that
sustainability, that resilience,those processes, that
documentation.
Until it's really repeatable wecan just drop it and repeat.
The only experiment we'rerunning is that it's a new city,
not experiments around productor language or anything.
Christin Marvin (53:14):
You've got your framework built and you can
just duplicate.
Shane Reiser (53:18):
But it's a different city To your point.
What's the vibe like in SanDiego?
Do the locals support local asstrongly as Tucsonans do?
Will they show up?
Will they care?
How do we enter a new city?
Tucson Foodie has been here for10 years so that'll be
interesting.
But yeah, the people in Tucson,they really come out.
(53:40):
They do.
I think people love living here.
Christin Marvin (53:43):
Yeah, they do.
I do for sure.
So, shane, again, thank youenough for coming on the show
and sharing everything that youhave about Tucson Foodie and
being transparent and lettingthe community know how you
support them and how they cansupport you, and just giving us
an inside look at yourchallenges too.
(54:04):
It's super eye-opening and,from an entrepreneurial
standpoint, I can relate on allof those levels.
Shane Reiser (54:12):
I've been dying for somebody to ask me these
kinds of questions so that I canbe really transparent.
Are there, is there anythingelse that you think everybody
should know, or that you'rewondering that you feel like I
wouldn't answer because it's anopen book over here?
Christin Marvin (54:25):
Well, I know, when you and I met, you had said
that some people reach out toyou and say what kind of
restaurant should I open?
You're like I don't know.
Shane Reiser (54:34):
Oh, that's true.
Christin Marvin (54:36):
I was going to ask you where the trends are
going, where you're seeing thetrends, but you know, obviously
you.
It sounds like you're at theforefront with the vegan
festivals that you're doing, butany other trends that you see,
I think plant-based is a trendnationally, growing crazy.
Shane Reiser (54:54):
I wish local was a trend.
It's important for the futureof our country and the world, I
think, but for so many reasonsnot just like local resiliency
but also like sustainabilitythat trend is not quite.
I have a master's degree insustainability and I was hoping
(55:14):
that I could use Tucson Foodiein a way to sort of beat that
drum a bit.
You know that sustainability,plant-based matters, local
matters all these things are waymore sustainable.
So eat a little bit less meat,spend a little bit more local.
But people are moving at anincredibly slow pace there, so
it's not the kind of trend Iwish it was, but I don't know.
(55:40):
I've made a couple ofobservations and I don't know if
this is true or not, but I'venoticed that really
differentiated stuff succeeds,weird stuff I mean like, for
example and this isn't a localspot, but two hands Korean corn
(56:00):
dogs.
There's a restaurant thatopened up here in Tucson called
Two Hands and it's a chain.
But they came to Tucson and Iwas really surprised they came
to Tucson because it's like thesmallest town they've been to.
They came here for a reason andwildly successful they're doing
(56:23):
really well.
I bumped into the woman whohelped bring it to Tucson.
They've now opened up two otherspots there's three now in
Tucson and it's just corn dogsweird wacky corn dogs with all
kinds of crazy toppings rolledin crazy sauces and filled with
different things, injected withcheese and sausage, and that
sauce is crazy.
They're supposed to have avegan dog pretty soon.
(56:43):
I'm excited for that.
It's on the menu, but it sayscoming soon.
It's been that way for like ayear.
But every time I see arestaurant open then I'm like,
oh, I've never heard.
Oh, finally we have a Bosnianrestaurant.
That's going to do well, becausepeople just want new stuff.
They want new experiences, newtastes, they want to try things.
(57:04):
And when another barbecue spotopens up or another American
food restaurant, I'm like OK,well, how are you different?
Why are people going to seekyou out?
What's the differentiation here?
Because if there's notsomething that captures their
attention, it's going to be wildbefore they give it a try.
And that's tough when you'restarting a new restaurant.
(57:26):
You have limited time, limitedmoney.
You need to get people in there, they need to fall in love and
they need to get that word ofmouth and an organic marketing
happening as soon as possible.
That's how successful restaurantLike.
When a restaurant has a badopening, it's a really bad sign.
Chances are they'll be deadinside of 18 months.
Christin Marvin (57:46):
Yeah, if even that long yeah.
Shane Reiser (57:48):
Yeah.
Christin Marvin (57:48):
Did they make it to 18?
Shane Reiser (57:49):
You probably done better than I do.
Christin Marvin (57:50):
Well, it's so.
Yeah, I mean, I've opened 13different restaurants over the
course of my career and youreally have to lean into those
first 90 days for sure.
And some restaurants, a lot ofrestaurants, open up and they're
really busy in the first coupleof weeks and they think, oh,
this is great, we're going to bereally popular.
And then they drop off, whichis natural, and they're not
(58:11):
ready for that.
Sure.
But I think it's so importantfor the local restaurant scene
to continue to be diverse andoffer new, exciting concepts to
the local, to the people thatlive here, to encourage diners
to continue to go out and havenew experiences and just
(58:32):
strengthen our culture.
And we have such a hugepopulation of students and
snowbirds that spend only partof the year here, right, that I
think it's important for us toshow up really well and offer
them something exciting whenthey're here.
Shane Reiser (58:45):
So Absolutely OK.
I want more thing.
Yeah, please.
I've also noticed thatrestaurants that invest in the
community do well.
Yeah, the I'm not going to namenames here, but I think there
are some restaurants that are OKand I'm not a food critic, I
(59:10):
don't have a trained palate butthey're a handful of restaurants
that do so well because thechef and the owner are so
visible and friendly and theyinvest in the community and they
give back and they volunteerand they cook at events and they
participate in the competitions.
They're not on an island.
(59:30):
They help other chefs getstarted.
They believe in that and itpays dividends and people go
there because they want tosupport that guy and the food is
fine.
Well, no.
Christin Marvin (59:47):
I will say that one thing that I've really
noticed and appreciated frommoving here last year is that
this town is so collaborative.
I mean, I've spent so much timeconnecting with as many local
restaurant owners as I can andso many of them know everybody
and will say let me introduceyou to this person, Come help
with events with this location,or they just they love each
(01:00:10):
other, they support each otherand that really directly
contributes to helping the localdining scene thrive.
Because leadership is lonely.
A lot of restaurant tours areonly spending time in their four
walls and when they start tobranch out they feel less lonely
.
They can be strategic withother restaurant owners.
They build that network, theycollaborate together.
(01:00:31):
It's about again serving thelocal community, not just about
them and their business.
Similar to what you saidearlier, it's a game changer.
Shane Reiser (01:00:41):
So true, it really is, man, yeah, you got to get
yourself out of that lonelyleader guy at the top.
Man, it's just such a mental,it's so heavy feeling that way
and you just don't have.
Nobody has to feel that way.
Christin Marvin (01:00:57):
Right, all right.
My friend, great to spend moretime with you.
Thank you, I look forward tomore conversations.
Please come back.
Shane Reiser (01:01:04):
Thanks for having me on the show, Kristen.
I really appreciate it.
I'm going to go listen to thatJanos episode.
Christin Marvin (01:01:08):
Yeah, please do .
It's a who and I will tell youthe one that's coming up.
I don't have it scheduled yet,but Janos shares his fantasy of
wanting to get arrested byharvesting some local food, and
I'll leave it at that.
Shane Reiser (01:01:21):
That's funny.
We could just volunteer withIshka Sheetah.
Yes exactly that's hilarious.
Yeah, I can picture him justlike stealing some Meyer lemons
off of some neighbor's tree andthen all of a sudden he gets the
cops called on him Totally, andthen he's like do you know who
I am?
Christin Marvin (01:01:37):
He was in the chef's coat on, yeah.
Shane Reiser (01:01:40):
I love it.
Tucson Foodie would totallywrite a story about that.
Christin Marvin (01:01:44):
Janos' mug shot would be amazing, so awesome.
Shane Reiser (01:01:47):
I just wanted to preserve some lemons.
Christin Marvin (01:01:49):
Right, exactly.
Shane Reiser (01:01:50):
That's a good impression, hilarious.
Christin Marvin (01:01:52):
Awesome, we'll talk to you soon, friend.
Ok, bye, bye.
Before we jump into today's episode, I have to
give a shout out to my formerco-host, Nick Spinelli.
Nick has some amazing thingshappening in his life right now
and has graciously promotedhimself to be a guest on the
show.
He will be missed, but fear not, he will not be a stranger.
So, Nick, thank you foreverything you've done to build
(01:06):
this foundation and help thisshow get off the ground.
Really appreciate it, buddy.
Okay, today we are welcomingShane Reiser to the show.
Shane is the head foodie.
Love this title of TucsonFoodie, which is the largest
media and events platform inSouthern Arizona, focused
exclusively on the local foodand beverage scene.
(01:28):
More than a quarter of Tucson'spopulation reads Tucson Foodie.
Each month, their social mediapresence exceeds 500,000, and
their dinners and festivals drawin tens of thousands of people
annually, which is incredible.
Hi, Shane, great to have you onthe show, hi.
Shane Reiser (01:46):
Christin, thanks for having me.
I'm just wondering what kind ofgreat things Nick Spinelli has
happening in his life.
That's what I want to know howexcited for him.
Christin Marvin (01:54):
Yeah, I mean there's some great life changes.
I know he can sometimes be alittle bit of a private person
so I'm not going to aireverything out.
I know you two know each other,but he's got some great
personal and professional thingshappening and good for him for
saying recognizing that he's gotmore on his plate right now and
setting a little bit of someboundaries, something that a lot
(02:15):
of us are still learning how todo.
Shane Reiser (02:17):
Oh, God, I'm still learning how to set boundaries
as well, yeah, me too, it'sdifficult.
Have you talked aboutboundaries on this podcast,
given boundaries are animportant part of leadership,
right?
Christin Marvin (02:27):
Yeah, they sure are, absolutely yeah, we can
dive into that.
If you want to come back on theshow at some point and talk
about that, that would beamazing.
Shane Reiser (02:36):
I know other people that are way better at
that than me.
Christin Marvin (02:38):
Okay, sounds good.
Just wanted to open thatinvitation for you Love it?
Well, thanks for being heretoday.
I'm so excited to share yourjourney with our listeners.
You and I had a chance toconnect about a month ago and I
just think you have such afascinating, interesting story
and I'm just super excited aboutyour mission and everything
(02:58):
that you're doing with TucsonFoodie, and I'm excited to share
some of the challenges thatyou've shared with me that you
have faced since you acquiredTucson Foodie last year, and
dive a little bit deeper intoyour vision for the company and
explore why community is such abig deal for you I know that's
one of your big values and a bigdeal for the company and
(03:20):
showcase how you're building aprofitable revenue model with
community at the center, becausethat's not easy to do with the
business that you're in.
Yeah, that's my journey.
Yeah, you have a veryinteresting background, but it's
not necessarily rooted in food,so share a little bit about how
(03:41):
that journey led you to TucsonFoodie.
Shane Reiser (03:43):
Not at all, In fact.
I mean I had a pretty boringfoodie upbringing, I would say.
I mean my mom would cook one of10, 15 dishes and we'd go out
to eat at a Chinese restaurant,in a pizza place.
It wasn't until I left thehouse and realized that there
are all these other cuisinetypes and just regional cuisines
(04:08):
and started exploring and doingsome traveling that I started
calling myself a foodie, if youwill.
Nice, yeah, Sorry, what was thequestion?
Yeah, Just yeah.
Christin Marvin (04:21):
Absolutely no.
You're good, Sounds like youand I have similar backgrounds
as far as our foodie upbringingtook some exploration and travel
.
I wanted to really share withthe listeners how your life
journey has led you to TucsonFoodie.
Shane Reiser (04:37):
Oh gosh, I bought Tucson Foodie on a whim, if you
will.
So when I moved here in Tucsonto Tucson nine years ago, I was
kind of forced to move here.
I moved here to continueco-parenting my daughter.
Her mom was in the Air Force.
A lot of people end up inTucson for similar reasons and
(04:59):
my girlfriend was like, hey,there's actually a lot of stuff
going on in Tucson, youshouldn't be so sad about it.
Have you found Tucson Foodie onInstagram?
So I created my first Instagramaccount no background in social
media and yeah, tucson Foodiewas part of my falling and love
(05:22):
journey.
With Tucson I started checkingout great restaurants.
I started making friends in therestaurant scene, to restaurant
owners, et cetera.
They're very accessible here inTucson Now you can.
They're usually working in therestaurant.
You can meet them.
So Tucson Foodie absolutelyplayed a role in my kind of
(05:43):
getting to know Tucson andstarting to call Tucson home.
I've never called anywhere homeexcept St Louis, where I grew
up, until I moved here, and I'velived at a lot of different
places in between Missouri andArizona.
So I fell in love with TucsonFoodie and fell in love with
(06:03):
Tucson because of Tucson Foodie.
Fast forward, you know, nineyears COVID hits.
Tucson Foodie is not doing sowell and I'm sad because I'm
just a reader and subscriber andI had met Adam, the guy who
started Tucson Foodie, a coupleof times.
So I reached out and you knowTucson Foodie had one revenue
(06:28):
stream and we'll get into this alittle bit later, kind of all
the different new revenuestreams that we started to
launch and grow but he had oneprimary revenue stream and that
was sponsored content fromrestaurants.
He also had a paywall up.
You can only read so manyarticles before you had to pay
(06:48):
some money to keep reading.
So he kind of had those tworevenue streams but the bulk was
restaurants paying him tocreate content and that went to
zero as soon as the mayor shutthe city down when COVID hit.
So Tucson Foodie struggled hard.
And also Adam had a nine yearrun with Tucson Foodie maybe 10
(07:11):
years right, like he started andgrew to what it is today and
he's getting a little burned out.
So I helped him explore somepossibilities of selling the
company and there was a lot ofinterest but everybody was
moving really slow and out offrustration Adam looked at me
(07:33):
one day and said why don't youbuy it?
Why don't you buy Tucson Foodie.
And within five seconds I saidyes.
And in those five seconds allkinds of great stuff happened in
my brain, like my heart saidyes.
Immediately you know bigemotional pull.
I was like yeah, and then myheart also said and we can't let
(07:53):
Tucson Foodie die.
Like Tucson needs this.
This is part of the connectivetissue of Tucson.
It's an economic driver.
All these people I know who runrestaurants and work in
restaurants rely on TucsonFoodie.
It actually has a huge impact.
We've dropped articles thatoverwhelm restaurants and, yeah,
sometimes that's a problemactually, but yeah, it can be a
(08:15):
good problem to have.
We actually wait a little whileafter a rest.
We do a little announcement nowlike this restaurant's opening,
and then we wait like a coupleof months before we do like a
deep story so they can get theirfeet under them.
So my heart was saying this isfun, it's a new challenge.
You already love the brand andthe company and this can't die.
(08:38):
It's important to the city thatyou know love.
But also, within those fiveseconds, I thought of 10
different revenue streams thatyou know Tucson Foodie could go
after and all the stuff I alwayswanted Tucson Foodie to do.
But you know I wasn't involved,right?
So I thought, man, what anopportunity.
So I said yes, on the spot andthen figured it out.
Christin Marvin (09:02):
Nice.
Those are the best kind ofdecisions sometimes right.
I love it.
I love it.
I mean clearly your heart waswas leading.
You know your heart and yourhead working together.
But I love that you have saidthat you you're now calling
Tucson home and that TucsonFoodie helped you establish
yourself here here and build acommunity, and you want to turn
around and do that for otherpeople, which is beautiful.
(09:23):
That's a great purpose, sothank you for doing that.
Shane Reiser (09:26):
Well, you are very welcome.
My background is in communitybuilding.
I've in entrepreneurship.
I've started seven companies.
This is the first company thatI acquired and I highly
recommend it.
It's so much harder to startfrom zero, from nothing and
(09:47):
build up and convince the firstfew crazy people to follow you.
Tucson Foodie had a hugeaudience, a well loved brand, so
much potential.
So being able to start with allof that and start to experiment
right On top of all of theassets and the audience and the
numbers and the brand equitythat Tucson Foodie had, just
(10:12):
it's a dream compared to theseven times I've started
companies from zero.
My background is in communitybuilding.
One of the first jobs I mean Ihad a couple of boring corporate
jobs, right.
Christin Marvin (10:27):
And then I love the robot arms.
Shane Reiser (10:28):
I know people can't see us, but go through the
dimensions A couple of boringcorporate jobs and, looking back
, they weren't that bad actually, but at the time I hated them
and I took the jump into workingin a nonprofit called Startup
Weekend.
Startup Weekend was definitelya community.
It was a volunteer runorganization.
(10:50):
People would sign up tovolunteer and they'd run a three
day event in their hometown andthis event brought together 100
, 125 aspiring entrepreneurs.
People would pitch ideas fornew companies they wanted to
start, or sometimes just aproblem they wanted to solve,
and they'd form teams and try toliterally launch a new company
(11:10):
within 72 hours.
It was educational, but moreimportant than educational, it
was about community building.
People forged relationshipsthat were deep.
When you're stuck in a roomwith somebody for three days and
you're trying to solve aproblem, you get to know them
really well, you bond.
So the relationships that wereforged at these events were
(11:37):
meaningful and we'd have tons ofstories after Startup Weekend
about oh, I started anothercompany with this guy, or I got
hired, or I hired this guy, Igot married to somebody I met at
a Startup Weekend.
It brought the communitytogether and connected it more
deeply and we were able to runStartup Weekends in almost every
country in the world.
Well over half a million peoplehave been to them.
(12:01):
It was a high growth nonprofitand I was the Chief Operations
Officer and I got to train thevolunteers that ran these events
and see how it changed theirlives, transform, put them on a
new path, some of them eyes opento how much potential they even
had as a person.
Their whole trajectory changedMultiple dozens, hundreds of
(12:26):
companies.
I actually got started atstartup weekends, which went on
to hire people, create economicgrowth, change lives.
So it mattered a lot and I gotthe bug of community building.
I called myself a communitybuilder then and since then,
everything I've done.
I thought well, what's thecommunity around this thing?
Whether it's a product, atechnology, a brand, a person, a
(12:51):
cause, whatever it is, there'speople around it that identify
with it, that want to beinvolved, that want to help
further it.
Maybe they just buy it and theyuse it, but they want to meet
other people that use it andlearn and connect.
People are thirsting forconnection, for community.
With just a little bit ofeffort, you can put some
structure around that and bringpeople together, make it a lot
(13:13):
more meaningful and then usethat community as a competitive
advantage.
Nice Right.
So Tucson Foodie is a mediacompany.
There are other media companieshere in town that I mean not
anymore I call it a communitynow but are one of our primary
pillars.
In how most people know, itsays a news organization.
(13:33):
There are other organizationsthat write about restaurants,
but I don't see people wearingtheir t-shirts like texting me,
thanking me for what we do,hearing stories about people who
met at our events or members ofour communities meeting each
(13:56):
other and becoming friends.
You don't hear that about someof the other news organizations
in town, and that's the bigdifference.
We rewrote our missionstatement to be we bring people
together over a shared level offood.
So everything we do now I thinkhow is this bringing people
(14:16):
together?
And if it doesn't, we don't doit.
Christin Marvin (14:20):
I love that.
It sounds like you're speakinga little bit about how you're
really impacting the communityon a large scale, which is great
, and bringing people together.
People are meeting each otherat events, forming friendships,
sharing their common love forfood.
How is Tucson Foodie making animpact directly to restaurants
and you mentioned a little bitof this earlier, but speak a
(14:41):
little bit more on that.
Shane Reiser (14:43):
Sure, Well, that was already in place when I
acquired the company.
Already a huge audience, Peoplealready looking to Tucson
Foodie to hear about newopenings, new menus, new chefs
etc.
So there's a bit of athunderclap effect with Tucson
Foodie.
When we drop something onInstagram or on our website or
(15:04):
we send something out in ournewsletter, it drives people to
go shop local.
We only write about locallyowned businesses.
I believe in the power of localeconomic development so we
focus on that and a lot ofpeople understand that that
matters.
But also for all the good foodis, I mean, there's exceptions.
I love me some North Italia.
(15:26):
The place is fantastic.
It's not locally owned.
It actually sort of has historyhere because it's a Fox concept
.
Christin Marvin (15:33):
Yeah, same as around here.
Shane Reiser (15:38):
And True Food Kitchen just opened up.
They have some great food, alsosome deep Tucson connections,
but technically notheadquartered in the state of
Arizona, so when you spend moneythere, most of the money will
flutter across state lines andit's gone.
It doesn't help us grow ourcommunity or keep our community
strong, but all the good food,most of the good food, is family
(16:01):
owned businesses Hiring local,and when you spend local, that
money stays in our economy.
So we drive business torestaurants through our content,
through our news.
But now we do it in a new waytoo, through community.
So we've got the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club and we've got the
(16:26):
Tucson Foodie Passport.
These are two new products thatwe dreamed up and launched
within the last 12 months.
The passport is directlytargeting getting more people to
go to local restaurants andit's kind of a coupon book.
Right, it's $300 and you getover $3,000.
(16:47):
It's now up to like $3,600worth of vouchers to like 75
locally owned restaurants.
Christin Marvin (16:53):
Wow.
Shane Reiser (16:56):
And the people that buy that are super foodies.
They want to explore.
Maybe they're stuck in a rutand go to the same five or six
restaurants and they want to getout and explore because they
keep hearing like wow, Tucson'sa UNESCO City of gastronomy,
what am I missing?
I don't even believe thatthat's possible.
So we reached out to all thebest, looked on restaurants.
(17:17):
They throw vouchers into thepassport and it's basically as
good as cash.
Right, you go there, you showthat you're a member, they take
it right off your bill and it'sa great way to discover and
explore.
So that drives businessstraight into the doors of
restaurants.
And then the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club.
(17:38):
That's our club.
That's our real community.
It's $20 a month.
You can pause or quit at anytime, but we get people together
and we do that at restaurantsand we do that in all other
types of places as well.
We do a monthly dinner serieswith different chefs.
It's a private event just forinsiders.
Chefs open up their restaurantand cook tasting menus so that
(17:59):
they can experiment withdifferent dishes they're
thinking about adding to futuremenus and insiders love that.
I love doing that.
I think it's really fun.
You get to meet the chef shaketheir hands, learn about their
story.
There's a fireside chat.
Chef comes out, shakes people'shands and explains each dish
and it's very accessible.
So creating that connectivitybetween diners that they may not
(18:23):
normally get when they just goeat at a restaurant and the chef
or the business owner, that'sdeliberate.
We're trying to do that andthen we're just trying to get
people to discover just howdiverse and delicious Tucson's
restaurant scene really is.
Christin Marvin (18:38):
Yeah, it's incredible.
I think 67% of our restaurantsare local here.
That's what I read.
Do you have any?
Shane Reiser (18:45):
sense Kristen.
If that is higher or lower thanthe average, I'm guessing
higher.
Christin Marvin (18:50):
I don't, I don't.
I need to look into that.
But it sounds like anincredible number to me.
Just driving around and lookingat the landscape, it seems to
be a lot higher than where elseI've lived Missouri and Colorado
and here, so yeah.
Shane Reiser (19:06):
I do know one stat .
Jonathan Maybury, who runs theCity of Gastronomy, the Tucson
City of Gastronomy here, told methat we have more food trucks
per capita than Los Angeles.
Christin Marvin (19:17):
Really.
Shane Reiser (19:19):
We have a lot.
I have a database of 250.
I mean it's massive.
I mean everything north of like22nd there's a lot but not that
many.
But once you get down to thesouth side, on Irvington and all
these other streets South 16th,south 25th there are so many
trucks and carts.
(19:39):
Huge, thriving scene of foodtrucks down there.
Christin Marvin (19:44):
That's awesome.
I've got a lot of exploring todo.
I've been at the pit a coupleof times, over 20 seconds.
Pantano, that's my side of town, but we need to go exploring
south, for sure A little bitmore than we have.
So you mentioned earlier thatyou immediately said yes to
taking over Tucson Foodie.
You knew it was struggling.
You had some big ideas.
10 revenue streams popped intoyour mind right away.
(20:05):
What's been your biggestchallenge since acquiring the
company?
Shane Reiser (20:11):
Okay Well, yeah, here's a struggle for buying a
business.
It already had a reputationright and people thought it
thought of it in a certain wayand I was looking to change that
.
So it's been a struggle tochange minds and sometimes
change hearts, but even just toeducate and explain.
(20:33):
New team, new leadership, newdirection, new products, new
offerings.
I've learned from talking topeople that some people think of
Tucson Foodie as nothing morethan an Instagram account.
Some people thought we're justa newsletter.
Some people thought we're justa website, so you can, you just
(20:54):
go and grab the money.
Are you okay with that?
You know, taking the city that Ilive in on this journey with me
and getting them to considerTucson Foodie in a new light has
been very difficult.
There are still restaurantowners, despite my best efforts
to call them to visit them, thatthink Adam still runs Tucson
Foodie.
You know and are surprised tolearn that we don't charge
(21:20):
restaurants for anything anymore.
We're never going to ask aTucson restaurant for money.
We you know, we those importantto me.
I wanted to take that away.
There are people who stoppedyou reading Tucson Foodie when
the paywall went up and aresurprised and delighted to hear
that the paywall doesn't existanymore.
All of our content's free.
Oh, and it's been like that fora year, you know.
(21:42):
So, yeah, that's been achallenge.
Building a team has been reallyhard to Kristen, and you know,
now that you're asking me, I'vegot like 10 other challenges
that come to mind.
Christin Marvin (21:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, say more about the team
component.
Shane Reiser (21:57):
Sure, you know, tucson Foodie didn't have any
employees when I acquired it butI was able to get Matt Sturner,
who was the editor under Adam,to come back and work full time
for foodie.
But everybody else was new tofoodie and figuring out like
what the team needed to evenlook like.
Obviously we investing big inthe community so we need like a
(22:22):
community manager or somebodywho's deeply connected already
and great in front of people.
I was also looking to do thingsbigger than foodie had ever
done before.
So, you know, brought somebodyon to tackle operations and
build out systems anddocumentation so that we had the
(22:42):
infrastructure to scale.
Events has been really hard.
We've gone through a fewdifferent event directors
decided against it actually notevents, but against having
having an internal eventsdirector and said we're hiring
out production companies and I'mdoing.
I have a background with events.
I've run so many events, bigconferences.
(23:04):
I have the bandwidth for it's afull time job to run festivals
and events, especially thequantity that that we do at
foodie.
So, figuring out what that teamneeds to look like, I thought
it would be one person who was,just like you know, running and
controlling.
It turns out it's four or fivepeople that come together,
(23:25):
sometimes more intensely than atother periods of time, and we
make stuff happen.
As long as we have gooddocumentation and good processes
in place, it works great.
Yeah, my first hire after Mattwas Hannah Hernandez, and that
was a dream hire.
Social media is also one of ourthree pillars, right.
(23:46):
So it's editorial.
It's editorial, social andcommunity.
Those are kind of our threepillars of foodie.
Our social media is so big andso many people follow us and
that's all they do.
They interact with us in thatway and it's a funnel.
Now, right, we want to connectpeople into our clubs through
(24:08):
all of these different channels.
Bringing Hannah on was justsuch a key hire.
What I did there is I justlooked around Tucson and I found
somebody doing social media inthe way that I thought it should
be done, with the right voice,style and consistency, and then
I just aggressively pursued her.
Christin Marvin (24:31):
How long did it take you to bring her on at
this point?
Shane Reiser (24:35):
A couple months she was definitely open to it,
but getting her to finally sayyes and then jump into it and
then supporting her.
So she's successful.
But she's been amazing.
She's doubled our social mediafollowing In a year, across all
platforms.
Christin Marvin (24:49):
That's incredible.
Shane Reiser (24:50):
In like 16 months, right, yeah, and she's just so
wonderful to work with.
She's very client facing, right.
She's out shooting.
She's like her.
She's leveled up herphotography game or videography
game, but she's so good now thatshe's out bumping in the
restaurant owners grabbingcontent she's now selling, she
(25:11):
tells them about our restaurantpartnership program.
She lets them know our paywallsdown, like she's an advocate
and ambassador and not just afull-time employee.
But, yeah, building a team hasbeen tough.
I made the mistake that I'vemade prior.
Maybe, if you have any adviceon this for me or your audience,
(25:34):
how do you avoid shiny objectsyndrome?
This is just me.
I wanted to do so many thingsright out of the gate.
I went big, I did way too much,yeah, spent way too much money,
didn't kill projects quicklyenough and because of that,
other things that should havegotten the time and money didn't
(25:56):
and some growth metrics werehurt.
But also just the emotionaljourney of putting my heart into
a project.
Like we launched a video series, we launched like a TV show and
we tried so expensive, so muchof my time, and it just didn't
work.
Christin Marvin (26:16):
Yeah, it's interesting when you're in that
creative space, right, becauseyou're constantly reinventing
and the more creative you are,the more you're flexing that
muscle, the more exciting it is.
Right, it's kind of like it'sjust it's that dopamine rush, I
think.
When you talk about the shinyobjects, I mean I've been
growing local restaurants forthe last, you know, 20 years, so
(26:39):
every day was about chasingshiny objects, right, every day
is different in the restaurantbusiness, especially when you're
in high volume, and I've reallyrealized that, you know, being
an entrepreneur now, over thelast you know, just over a year,
and there's so many things thatI'm learning every day and
(26:59):
there's so many things I want totry and I want to stay
innovative and sharp and buildmy skills around editing and,
you know, editorial, theeditorial piece, the social
media piece, every aspect ofwhat I do right, the best way
and I've got clients thatstruggle with this too, who have
15 concepts that are differentor six concepts that are the
(27:21):
same and want to grow.
If you can get really clear onyour vision and I mean really
clear and detail out everysingle aspect of that vision and
you are constantly checking inon where you're going, that's
going to help you stay connectedto it and help inform every
(27:42):
decision that you make by sayinghang on.
Before we go through thisprocess, before we roll out
something else, let's talk abouthow this is helping us get
closer to the vision.
Shane Reiser (27:54):
Yeah, we're keeping that top of mind right.
It's so hard, especially whenyou're growing.
You get a little bit of success, opportunities start popping up
and some of them seem like whoa, this could be a game changer,
totally Reminding yourself inthe moment.
Okay, what's my vision?
(28:15):
What is the goalpost?
Does this get me there?
Does it distract?
Christin Marvin (28:20):
Yeah, and you said earlier, you jumped at
Tucson Foodie within fiveseconds.
I don't know if you have atendency to jump that fast with
every object, right, butsometimes just sleeping on it
and then seeing if thatexcitement is there the next day
can really help slow thingsdown a little bit.
Shane Reiser (28:40):
Another move that I made, maybe six months ago I
can't remember exactly when butI saw this pattern in myself.
I was really happy that I sawthis pattern and was able to
kind of acknowledge it and dosomething about it.
But I wasn't able to justchange, could just change my
behavior, and I couldn't stopjust saying yes to things that
(29:02):
seemed amazing.
So I brought somebody on, nice,I brought a partner on who is
amazing at accountability andsaying no and staying focused,
asking why are we doing this?
What's the priority?
Have we looked at the money?
(29:22):
Have we looked at the time?
Time is money.
So that's been amazing.
And then, of course, actuallyletting her, or actually
listening to her.
It's supposed to be like canyou do this?
And then I mean, I don't knowabout you.
I've worked with coaches andaccountability partners and they
(29:44):
just I wasn't ready, I guess,for that, but I was ready and
also I had almost run foodieinto the ground.
It was sort of a desperatesituation.
I was like, okay, I'm spendingway more than I have, than we're
making, I'm out of money.
I'm so excited for this project, but I'm just burned out and
(30:06):
it's hurting my health andrelationships.
This thing has so muchpotential and I have full I
still have full confidence.
This thing is going to happen,but not on this current path,
because I am sabotaging it.
So what can I do?
Christin Marvin (30:21):
Yeah, well, good for you for recognizing
that.
And I mean, that's what teambuilding is all about, right?
It's surrounding yourself withpeople that are different than
you, that can challenge you andhold you accountable and offer
different perspectives andbalance you out a little bit.
So good for you for doing that.
Shane Reiser (30:39):
Thank you.
It was a long learning journeyto get there and sort of open up
emotionally.
The other big mind shift wasjust like stop making it about
myself.
You know, I don't know how toexplain that exactly, but I feel
like there was a mind shift atsome point where I feel like now
(31:00):
I just kind of work for TucsonFoodie and I'm like serving it.
I'm of like a serviceleadership mentality.
Tucson Foodie is bigger than me.
I'm not.
You know, it's going to existpast me, maybe hopefully it's
important for the community it'snot mine, right, it's the
(31:22):
communities and it's employingseveral people.
They rely on it.
It's not a passion project,it's in a very important
organization.
It's a group of people thathelp each other.
So I need to run it like in afiscally responsible way that
(31:44):
honors our mission and honorsthe people that depend on it,
including restaurant owners.
Yeah, so I didn't quiteinternalize that.
You know I was like, oh, I'mthe CEO of this new company, I'm
important.
You know that got in the way.
That mindset just got in theway and it prevented me from
(32:05):
looking at kind of the numbersand the books and all of that
stuff and just thinking big andexisting up here.
You know I still need to dothat right.
We still need to go to leaders,we need to step out, we need to
have that you know, time tothink big and have you know and
like consider our vision andplan annually and all of that
stuff.
But I used to do it, I used tojust live up there.
(32:29):
Now I'm like I've got my CEOdashboard, I've got my numbers,
every decision is data drivenand it feels so good.
I don't know why I was notletting myself do that.
Christin Marvin (32:43):
Well, it's just not sustainable to make
business decisions based onemotion.
You have to do it based on data.
And I see that sometimes withlocal restaurant owners is they
are so busy wearing so many hatsrunning every aspect of the
business when they wanted to bea chef or they wanted to run the
front of the house and nowthey're in charge of HR and
(33:03):
marketing and hiring andmotivation and all these things,
and they move so quickly thatthey often make decisions based
on emotion or solving somethingquickly instead of really
looking at the numbers andletting the numbers lead their
decision.
Shane Reiser (33:21):
That's so true, yeah, and they do something.
All of them do something reallywell, and maybe it's make food
really really well, but makingthe decision to start a company
really has nothing to do withthat.
It's totally an entirelydifferent thing.
I was just I caught up withYano's, kind of a famous old OG
(33:45):
chef here in Tucson.
I'll be working with himtonight.
Oh cool.
Tell him.
I said hi.
Christin Marvin (33:49):
I will.
Shane Reiser (33:50):
Do you know his motivation behind starting
Studio Yano's?
Christin Marvin (33:54):
Yes, but you tell me, you tell me Okay.
Shane Reiser (33:58):
Cool.
Christin Marvin (33:58):
I was hoping you'd say no.
Shane Reiser (34:00):
I'll tell you the story anyway.
Well, he told me that he'sstarted solo restaurants and
after he spent some time notworking in restaurants anymore,
he kind of realized just howmuch he missed cooking for
people, cooking for people.
And that's how he started.
(34:23):
You know, loved cooking forpeople.
But at some point, after youopen a restaurant and open
another restaurant and you havechefs working for you and cooks,
you don't have time to cook forpeople anymore.
The majority of your time ismanaging people, is managing
finances, all that stuff youjust said, all that HR,
(34:44):
marketing, sales, finance, likeall these things you have to do.
And he hadn't just cooked forpeople in a long time.
So that was sort of the conceptbehind Studio Yano's.
It's literally just one table,12 people.
You have to buy the whole damntable.
Yeah, you can't just settlelike it's usually a group coming
(35:05):
in and he's like welcome, I'mgoing to cook for you now.
Yeah, and it's just incrediblyintimate and it's, you know,
he's like loving life again.
Christin Marvin (35:15):
Yeah, and I will say, being you know, I help
him in the kitchen and on thefront of house side with the
studio, and what he's doingthere is so special and it's so
intimate and it's so, it's justan experience that you can never
, ever recreate because of thepeople in the space and it's
(35:36):
beautiful.
I mean, we take group photostogether at the end of the meals
, if you know, not, not not it'snot part of the show, you know,
or the experience, but lasttime I worked one of the guests
had their camera and we're like,let's everybody get back on the
chef's counter.
And you know the host was likelaying on the counter and wanted
to take a picture witheverybody.
There's just a lot of love inthat room and and passion, and
(36:02):
if you want to hear more aboutthat, listen to episode seven.
Janice and I have really goodconversation and his son Ben
joins us for that, which isgreat.
And he's going to talk a littlebit more about it.
We've got another episode.
We shot down at 10 West andtalked a little bit more about
T-Con to City of Gastronomy andJanice is just he's hilarious.
(36:23):
He is so kind, he's got such abig heart, he truly loves what
he does and it's just contagious.
So it's a it's a greatexperience, for sure.
Shane Reiser (36:33):
It's true, you get around, janice, you're just
smiling, yeah, but to bring itback, I think I was getting into
that because, you know, eveneven very successful restaurant
owners and chefs like likeJanice, you know, they start
because they love doingsomething and then they realize
that starting a business is atotally different thing, and we
(36:53):
have to, you know it's.
I almost wish that I had takena really pragmatic approach to
like the current company that Irun, instead of making a big
passion move, you know, becausenow I've had to set that aside,
which is fine, because noweverything is changing, now that
I'm like cool, shane, you lovethis, great, Just keep that
(37:15):
inside and run a business.
Man.
A business is an organization,exists to deliver a product, to
make money, you know.
So let's deliver products andmake money so we can keep this
thing going.
Christin Marvin (37:30):
Yeah, I mean there's you've got to have the
business side of it, but thepurpose is the driver right, I
mean you're.
You're not going to get upevery morning and keep doing
what you're doing if you're notpassionate about it.
And I'm curious from yourperspective, now that you've
built this team and you've hadthat mindset shift of serving
the community and understandingeven more important how how
(37:51):
Tucson food is even moreimportant to the community how
do you make that sustainable?
Shane Reiser (37:57):
You want to talk about like revenue streams.
Sure Is that what you're sayingso, you mean by sustainable?
Yeah, so the one of the firstthings that popped into my mind
in that five second window whenAdam asked me if I wanted to buy
Tucson foodie, was we've got todiversify revenue streams,
right?
Tucson foodie was basicallykilled by COVID at one revenue
(38:19):
stream.
I didn't want that to happenagain, wanted to build some
resilience into our revenuemodel.
So we've we've launched severalrevenue streams and we're I've
been wanting to launch more, butSam was like dude, like we've
invested so much time intobuilding such a great product,
(38:42):
before we move on to the nextone, can we go ahead and market
and sell the heck out of this,you know, to get it where it
needs to be.
So I've mentioned a coupleright and, by the way,
dismantled the only two we hadright when I took over, which
was sponsored content and whichI just I don't like it, it
(39:06):
doesn't feel good.
And the paywall, which also Idon't like it doesn't feel good.
But it was kind of a harddecision to make, cause, you
know, when I took over a mediacompany, of course and I never
run a media company before Iresearched like what's the, what
are the trends in the, in thein the journalists were in the
media world.
You know how are mediacompanies, how regional media
(39:28):
companies make making money.
What are the trends?
And paywalls were a trendthat's just increasing right,
add revenue sinking.
It's harder to get people'sattention.
But I decided to go in adifferent direction.
It's because my background incommunity I thought you know I
(39:49):
don't.
I want, I feel like it's goingto be more sustainable to be
dependent on the people that weserve, which is our audience.
But I want to do so in a valueadded way.
I want to do so in a deeplyconnected way.
Right, I didn't want to say wehave much of great content and
you can read a little bit, butyou have to stop.
If you want to keep reading it,you have to pay.
(40:09):
That almost feels like you'rebeing penalized.
It just doesn't feel good to meand I always hated it
personally.
Like that, that feeling whenyou go to Tucson for you and it
says, oh, you've already, you'vealready read your fifth article
this month.
It's just like a big middlefinger in your face.
You know I hated it.
It didn't feel good.
So I want good vibes.
(40:31):
And back to my you knowbackground bringing people
together we have.
So let me just tell you what ourrevenue streams are.
We have the Tucson FoodieInsiders Club.
I would I would say that'sprobably our biggest bet.
This is $20 a month and you getall kinds of stuff.
(40:51):
You get to invite to thosedinners.
We throw monthly mixers atrotating restaurants and you get
showered with discounts, notjust at the events that we run
but all kinds of food andbeverage events from other
organizations around town.
So it's for people that want toexperiment or sorry, explore,
discover, but also connect andmeet other foodies.
So we're trying to find allthose foodies that want to meet
(41:13):
each other in town, bringingtogether as often as possible
and give them cool experiences.
That's our big bet.
We're at 500 members.
I'm trying to get to 2000.
You can do the math on that andwe're going to get to 2000
members is $40,000 a month.
That's double our burn rate.
(41:33):
For every revenue stream and Idon't know if this is good
financial advice or goodleadership advice but for every
revenue stream we've launchedI've thought does this have the
potential to completely fund thecompany?
If it didn't not worth it,let's do stuff that.
Let's do five or six bigrevenue stream bets and if five
(41:55):
of them fail.
Fine, as long as one succeeds,we exist.
Tucson Foodie Insiders is a bigbet.
If we can get that to 1,000,2,000 members, we'll be
sustainable.
Then our organization, our team, gets to focus on happiness
reducing churn, increasingloyalty, making people happy so
(42:16):
they don't leave.
I'm way better at that.
I'd much rather serve and makesure people are happy and solve
their problems than sell them onsomething.
It's a lot easier, I think.
The passport is the other thing.
We can sell enough of thoseannually to cover our burn rate.
(42:40):
Festivals that's another big one.
Events and festivals weactually acquired a couple of
festivals in town that were atrisk of being shut down.
One is Restaurant Week.
It made a ton of sense.
Super synergistic, we were ableto bring Tucson Foodie's
audience to bear on RestaurantWeek in a way that never
happened the first year we tookit over.
We doubled it.
(43:00):
Doubled the number ofrestaurants participating,
doubled the number of peoplethat go out during Restaurant
Week and try the Restaurant Weekmenu.
Triple the economic impact werun that.
We make money on that throughsponsorships.
That's not a ticketed event butwe make good money on
(43:21):
sponsorship.
Visit Tucson supports us, helpsus do all the content we do
during the week.
Every city needs a RestaurantWeek.
Most cities do.
I have one.
Tucson deserves one,considering how great our food
scene is.
We took over the craft beercrawl.
We launched a great newfestival called the Vegan Night
(43:43):
Market.
It exploded.
I thought 300 people would cometo the first one.
1,300 people showed up.
Fire code violations left andright.
I love it.
The second one, I thought about1,000.
3,000 people showed up.
Our next one is tomorrow.
It's our third one.
I'm expecting 3,000 people.
(44:08):
I don't know, it's a littlecolder.
We'll see what.
If 4,000 people show up, whatare we going to do?
We've taken over the entireline of the Tucson Children's
Museum.
We've tripled the amount ofvendors.
There's so much food that's anexciting one.
Then we're planning a festivalin October in partnership with
(44:28):
Dr Andrew Wilde, focused onwellness.
There's a lot of overlapbetween wellness and food, not
just nutrition, but many otherways it's connected.
Yeah, festivals Huge revenuestream for us.
I think it's been our biggestso far.
I'm hoping that insiders willsurpass that soon.
(44:51):
We did lean into advertising.
We took the paywall down, wedid something, and I feel lucky
for this.
But we reached out to the adagency that represents Eater.
We said, hey, we have a lot ofpage views.
Now they said, yeah, you meetour requirements.
You have to have.
(45:11):
I think they require 500,000page views a month before they
even consider working with you.
Then they did a bunch ofdiligence on us.
We had to pass all kinds oftests around sentiment analysis.
They called our entire websiteIf we had too many cuss words or
negative words.
They wouldn't have, becausethey ultimately bring
advertisers to us.
Long story short, I thinkTucson Foodie was making less
(45:36):
than $200 a month on ad revenuethrough just Google ads.
Now that we're represented byRaptive, we make $4,000 to
$7,000 a month on theadvertisements on our website.
I hate advertisements.
I was scared all of our readerswere going to run away, but we
(45:58):
launched them.
Nobody is complained and wemake the money.
It supports our editorial staff.
It allows us to hirefreelancers to write articles.
It allows us to hirephotographers and videographers
to create good content.
That turned out to be a reallynice, really passive revenue
stream.
Christin Marvin (46:15):
That's awesome.
Shane Reiser (46:18):
Then we tried to sell direct ads.
For a long time.
I hated it.
Little onesie, twosies, $200,$200 ads.
We launched the new thing acouple of months ago.
It's working great.
We call it a brand partnership.
We make it scarce.
Basically, we're working with20 brands at a time.
They're not restaurants,they're anybody that wants to
(46:41):
get in front of the foodieaudience.
A lot of them are food adjacent, like Whiskey, dalbock or the
Tucson Community Food Bank orOpen and Farms packaged food
products.
We're talking with a dispensary.
We're talking with a couple oftheaters in town.
We're going to work with 20 ata time.
We're going to just cheerleadfor them in all of our channels
(47:06):
Newsletter ads, sponsorships atevents, hosting mixers with our
members at their facilities andjust be there for them all year.
For a retainer model Again,minimum $500 a month, somewhere
at the $1200 a month.
(47:26):
20 brands you do the math.
That can actually cover justthe brand partnerships, our
entire burn rate and thecompanies covered.
We're only working with 20companies that we love.
That's awesome.
It's working great man.
Christin Marvin (47:41):
I love it.
Shane Reiser (47:42):
Back to your advice.
Get really clear on what you do, focus Totally working.
Christin Marvin (47:48):
Yeah, it takes time and practice.
Yeah, and reflection.
I'm so in awe and impressedwith what your team has been
able to do over the last 16months.
You've outlined for us so manywonderful ways that you serve
and support the communitythrough the passport at the
insider, all these festivals andevents that you're doing.
(48:11):
There's so many wonderful waysthat the community can support
you too, which is awesome.
Thank you for everything you'redoing for the community.
I know when I moved herebecause we typically read Eater.
everywhere we go when we travel,we travel for sport, for to eat
, and Tucson Foodie was my guide, our guide to where to eat.
(48:34):
We immediately checked out acouple of the recommendations
and built trust with your brand,which is incredible.
Shane Reiser (48:43):
That's how I started doing the same thing.
Christin Marvin (48:46):
That's great.
How can restaurants get incontact with you?
Shane Reiser (48:53):
Well, we're highly accessible.
Shane at TucsonFoodiecom.
You can hit me up there.
There's a partners page on thewebsite that explains how we
work with restaurants, in casethey're curious, because there
are multiple ways we can help arestaurant.
They always have newsthroughout the year.
We want that news.
(49:14):
We love to break that news.
We'll be the first to write itand break it.
We don't charge for any of thatstuff.
We have the news desk, MattSturner.
It's his life's mission to findcool news stories.
He'll be the first person tobreak it.
He worked at K-Gun.
He loves doing that.
He'll just pump stuff out allday long.
(49:34):
Any restaurant in Tucson, inthe broader region of Tucson,
who has newsworthy information.
You're expanding to a newlocation.
You have a new seasonal menuthat just dropped.
You've got a new chef, whateverit is new happy hour, whatever.
It could be big or small.
You can hit our news desk.
You can hit Matt atTucsonFoodiecom.
(49:56):
There's a form to submit a newsstory.
You can invite the team down.
We do this once or twice a week.
We head to a restaurant Hannahwill go, dalton will go.
We'll shoot some photographs,we'll shoot some video.
We drop that stuff.
We drop it on Instagram orFacebook.
(50:18):
We might make an article out ofit.
We love doing that.
I love meeting the restaurantowners.
I love I interview them everychance I get.
Are you struggling right now?
How could we help?
How can we better serve you?
We have a restaurantpartnership program that I think
(50:39):
I mentioned briefly earlier.
It's an all trade program.
Here's how it works, in caseyou're curious.
There's no cash exchanged.
This is where the passportcomes into play.
Restaurants offer vouchers tothe passport holders.
(51:00):
We aim for a $40 value.
They can break that up into $4,$10 vouchers if they want to.
I think that's a greatmarketing exercise in itself,
because a voucher only costs therestaurant about 33%.
Suddenly, they put a $40 valueand they spend it in whatever.
That math is $13 or somethinglike that.
(51:21):
We're only selling 500passports.
Most passport owners don't useall of their vouchers, just like
the entertainment coupon book.
Remember that, yes, which iswhere I came up with this idea.
I don't have any original ideas, by the way.
I've stolen every idea.
Christin Marvin (51:36):
I'm looking at what other cities are doing.
You have to look at yourcompetition.
It's how you run business.
Shane Reiser (51:42):
For sure.
I'm like that looks cool.
We could do that in Tucson.
We can fund the passport to theinsider club, to the festivals
we launched, totally just rippedoff of other organizations who
succeed.
It's way easier to be a fastfollower than the first to
market.
Let the first guy make all themistakes.
Christin Marvin (52:04):
There's so many events here which is a great
thing that span all types ofinterests for people in hobbies
and what have you.
The weather, because it's sobeautiful all year around.
I can't even keep up witheverything that's happening here
.
What I have seen is that thelocal community just really
supports these festivals andthese events.
(52:25):
They love to show up for theircommunity, which is just amazing
, yeah.
Shane Reiser (52:31):
Definitely a local feel here in Tucson.
I'm starting to think abouttaking Tucson for the other
cities and launching, like SantaFe Foodie or San Diego Foodie
or even Phoenix Foodie,something Adam thought about,
tried a couple of times.
I will see.
It's going to be an experiment.
(52:52):
I'm not going to do it for awhile.
Back to Sam's voice in my headwe just got to build that
sustainability, that resilience,those processes, that
documentation.
Until it's really repeatable wecan just drop it and repeat.
The only experiment we'rerunning is that it's a new city,
not experiments around productor language or anything.
Christin Marvin (53:14):
You've got your framework built and you can
just duplicate.
Shane Reiser (53:18):
But it's a different city To your point.
What's the vibe like in SanDiego?
Do the locals support local asstrongly as Tucsonans do?
Will they show up?
Will they care?
How do we enter a new city?
Tucson Foodie has been here for10 years so that'll be
interesting.
But yeah, the people in Tucson,they really come out.
(53:40):
They do.
I think people love living here.
Christin Marvin (53:43):
Yeah, they do.
I do for sure.
So, shane, again, thank youenough for coming on the show
and sharing everything that youhave about Tucson Foodie and
being transparent and lettingthe community know how you
support them and how they cansupport you, and just giving us
an inside look at yourchallenges too.
(54:04):
It's super eye-opening and,from an entrepreneurial
standpoint, I can relate on allof those levels.
Shane Reiser (54:12):
I've been dying for somebody to ask me these
kinds of questions so that I canbe really transparent.
Are there, is there anythingelse that you think everybody
should know, or that you'rewondering that you feel like I
wouldn't answer because it's anopen book over here?
Christin Marvin (54:25):
Well, I know, when you and I met, you had said
that some people reach out toyou and say what kind of
restaurant should I open?
You're like I don't know.
Shane Reiser (54:34):
Oh, that's true.
Christin Marvin (54:36):
I was going to ask you where the trends are
going, where you're seeing thetrends, but you know, obviously
you.
It sounds like you're at theforefront with the vegan
festivals that you're doing, butany other trends that you see,
I think plant-based is a trendnationally, growing crazy.
Shane Reiser (54:54):
I wish local was a trend.
It's important for the futureof our country and the world, I
think, but for so many reasonsnot just like local resiliency
but also like sustainabilitythat trend is not quite.
I have a master's degree insustainability and I was hoping
(55:14):
that I could use Tucson Foodiein a way to sort of beat that
drum a bit.
You know that sustainability,plant-based matters, local
matters all these things are waymore sustainable.
So eat a little bit less meat,spend a little bit more local.
But people are moving at anincredibly slow pace there, so
it's not the kind of trend Iwish it was, but I don't know.
(55:40):
I've made a couple ofobservations and I don't know if
this is true or not, but I'venoticed that really
differentiated stuff succeeds,weird stuff I mean like, for
example and this isn't a localspot, but two hands Korean corn
(56:00):
dogs.
There's a restaurant thatopened up here in Tucson called
Two Hands and it's a chain.
But they came to Tucson and Iwas really surprised they came
to Tucson because it's like thesmallest town they've been to.
They came here for a reason andwildly successful they're doing
(56:23):
really well.
I bumped into the woman whohelped bring it to Tucson.
They've now opened up two otherspots there's three now in
Tucson and it's just corn dogsweird wacky corn dogs with all
kinds of crazy toppings rolledin crazy sauces and filled with
different things, injected withcheese and sausage, and that
sauce is crazy.
They're supposed to have avegan dog pretty soon.
(56:43):
I'm excited for that.
It's on the menu, but it sayscoming soon.
It's been that way for like ayear.
But every time I see arestaurant open then I'm like,
oh, I've never heard.
Oh, finally we have a Bosnianrestaurant.
That's going to do well, becausepeople just want new stuff.
They want new experiences, newtastes, they want to try things.
(57:04):
And when another barbecue spotopens up or another American
food restaurant, I'm like OK,well, how are you different?
Why are people going to seekyou out?
What's the differentiation here?
Because if there's notsomething that captures their
attention, it's going to be wildbefore they give it a try.
And that's tough when you'restarting a new restaurant.
(57:26):
You have limited time, limitedmoney.
You need to get people in there, they need to fall in love and
they need to get that word ofmouth and an organic marketing
happening as soon as possible.
That's how successful restaurantLike.
When a restaurant has a badopening, it's a really bad sign.
Chances are they'll be deadinside of 18 months.
Christin Marvin (57:46):
Yeah, if even that long yeah.
Shane Reiser (57:48):
Yeah.
Christin Marvin (57:48):
Did they make it to 18?
Shane Reiser (57:49):
You probably done better than I do.
Christin Marvin (57:50):
Well, it's so.
Yeah, I mean, I've opened 13different restaurants over the
course of my career and youreally have to lean into those
first 90 days for sure.
And some restaurants, a lot ofrestaurants, open up and they're
really busy in the first coupleof weeks and they think, oh,
this is great, we're going to bereally popular.
And then they drop off, whichis natural, and they're not
(58:11):
ready for that.
Sure.
But I think it's so importantfor the local restaurant scene
to continue to be diverse andoffer new, exciting concepts to
the local, to the people thatlive here, to encourage diners
to continue to go out and havenew experiences and just
(58:32):
strengthen our culture.
And we have such a hugepopulation of students and
snowbirds that spend only partof the year here, right, that I
think it's important for us toshow up really well and offer
them something exciting whenthey're here.
Shane Reiser (58:45):
So Absolutely OK.
I want more thing.
Yeah, please.
I've also noticed thatrestaurants that invest in the
community do well.
Yeah, the I'm not going to namenames here, but I think there
are some restaurants that are OKand I'm not a food critic, I
(59:10):
don't have a trained palate butthey're a handful of restaurants
that do so well because thechef and the owner are so
visible and friendly and theyinvest in the community and they
give back and they volunteerand they cook at events and they
participate in the competitions.
They're not on an island.
(59:30):
They help other chefs getstarted.
They believe in that and itpays dividends and people go
there because they want tosupport that guy and the food is
fine.
Well, no.
Christin Marvin (59:47):
I will say that one thing that I've really
noticed and appreciated frommoving here last year is that
this town is so collaborative.
I mean, I've spent so much timeconnecting with as many local
restaurant owners as I can andso many of them know everybody
and will say let me introduceyou to this person, Come help
with events with this location,or they just they love each
(01:00:10):
other, they support each otherand that really directly
contributes to helping the localdining scene thrive.
Because leadership is lonely.
A lot of restaurant tours areonly spending time in their four
walls and when they start tobranch out they feel less lonely
.
They can be strategic withother restaurant owners.
They build that network, theycollaborate together.
(01:00:31):
It's about again serving thelocal community, not just about
them and their business.
Similar to what you saidearlier, it's a game changer.
Shane Reiser (01:00:41):
So true, it really is, man, yeah, you got to get
yourself out of that lonelyleader guy at the top.
Man, it's just such a mental,it's so heavy feeling that way
and you just don't have.
Nobody has to feel that way.
Christin Marvin (01:00:57):
Right, all right.
My friend, great to spend moretime with you.
Thank you, I look forward tomore conversations.
Please come back.
Shane Reiser (01:01:04):
Thanks for having me on the show, Kristen.
I really appreciate it.
I'm going to go listen to thatJanos episode.
Christin Marvin (01:01:08):
Yeah, please do .
It's a who and I will tell youthe one that's coming up.
I don't have it scheduled yet,but Janos shares his fantasy of
wanting to get arrested byharvesting some local food, and
I'll leave it at that.
Shane Reiser (01:01:21):
That's funny.
We could just volunteer withIshka Sheetah.
Yes exactly that's hilarious.
Yeah, I can picture him justlike stealing some Meyer lemons
off of some neighbor's tree andthen all of a sudden he gets the
cops called on him Totally, andthen he's like do you know who
I am?
Christin Marvin (01:01:37):
He was in the chef's coat on, yeah.
Shane Reiser (01:01:40):
I love it.
Tucson Foodie would totallywrite a story about that.
Christin Marvin (01:01:44):
Janos' mug shot would be amazing, so awesome.
Shane Reiser (01:01:47):
I just wanted to preserve some lemons.
Christin Marvin (01:01:49):
Right, exactly.
Shane Reiser (01:01:50):
That's a good impression, hilarious.
Christin Marvin (01:01:52):
Awesome, we'll talk to you soon, friend.
Ok, bye, bye.
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