Better Fast Food

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• The end of Title 42
• Restauranter Mark Brezinski on his work in the fast-food industry

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
What we need is more common sense. We got the youth plane comin breaking
down the world's nonsense about how Americancommon sense. We'll see us through with
the common sense of Houston. I'mjust pro common sense for Houston. From
Houston dot Com. This is theJimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by

(00:27):
Viewin dot Com. Now here's JimmyBarrett. Oh, it's Friday. We've
vented to Friday, y'all. Andtoday it's the first day we are officially
done with Title forty two. Whichyou know, everybody's made a big deal
about the end of Title forty two, and I gotta say, I'm not
so sure that it's such a bigdeal, only because the way this administration

(00:52):
has been going, they pretty muchhave let everybody in regardless, have we
really used Title forty two. Titleforty two has been a threat to I
guess, kind of stem the tideof people who are trying to get into
the country. But as far asthe device that we're using to kick people
out of the country or prevent peoplefrom coming into the country, this administration
hasn't really been using it at all, So I wonder what a big deal

(01:17):
it is. But but but Ido know this, and that is that
there have been just hordes of peoplewho have worked their way up to the
border and they are making their wayacross. And at least we had a
judge. The only thing really newin the story is at least we had
a judge who made a ruling thatthe my administration wanted to allow people in

(01:38):
without giving them a court date.You know, I've noticed to a peer
situation. As it is, we'relike two million cases behind. Nobody is
coming in is going to be seenby a judge anytime in the next five
years. So the whole thing isa joke. Anyway, the whole thing
is a hopeless joke. But thejudge, listen, you can't just because

(02:00):
the Bide administration was going to say, well, we're not going to give
anybody a notice to a peer ora court. They We're just going to
process them and let them in.And of course that means you have zero
record of all of who these peoplereally are and where they are going.
So at least the judge said,no, you can't do that. Like
I said, not that it's goingto make a difference. The only thing
that's going to make a difference isto prosecute the people who are allowing this

(02:25):
to happen, to impeach my yorkists, and to make this administration follow the
letter of the law as it relatesto immigration. But you know, there's
a lot of Republicans who don't wantthem to do it either. So I'm
not feeling very confident on any ofthese things. All right, let's get

(02:46):
a few opinions though. First ofall, let's grab a couple of reporters,
a couple of journalists, actual journalistswho are down at the border.
They've been down at the border keepingan eye what's going on. Sarah Carter,
who reports on the on the SeanHannity Show, and also Brandon Judd,
who's down with the border all thetime. Here they are talking about

(03:07):
what it was like last night.Is Title forty two came to an end.
It is going to get worse,and it's already worse. And what
they've done is they're trying to hidethis from the American people. They're trying
to keep this from the American people. Even today, when I was interviewing
Senator Bud they had requested that Iturned the camera and asked him the questions.
So that the audience could not seethe people that were lining up to

(03:30):
get on the buses, even thebuses themselves of course darkened windows. I
could tell you this. We havefootball fields, football fields of people lining
up coming into this country, andtens of thousands more over the other side
of the border. And Brandon andI have both been witnessing how many children,
also how many male aged males,military age males just coming across the

(03:53):
border filling bus loads. This iswhat is happening right now at the behest
of the Biden administration and John Seanand we are now witnessing probably one of
the worst in our modern history situationshere at the US southern border. The
only thing that we do is wefingerprint them see if they have a criminal
record here in the United States.We also look to see if they have

(04:14):
an inner poll hit and that's it. We can't check anything that's happening in
their countries. If they have acriminal record in their country, we're never
going to know about it. Andwhen you look at what the administration has
done, they've completely in totally turnedupside down what we have always done.
As far as the enforcement aspect ofit. We could get this under control
tomorrow. All we have to dois go back to the policies at President
Trump implemented. Joe Biden stole thosepolicies from us. He stole every single

(04:38):
one of our our enforcement tools thatwould allow us to get this under control.
We can keep the American public safe, but the only way we can
do it is if we re implementthe rule of law. Without that,
the American public is going to suffer. And we are going to suffer.
There's just no doubt about it.We are going to suffer. All right.
Here's another report, this one filedby Fox's Peter Doocey. Chaotic is
not a word that you ever hearMandarin chief views to describe one of their

(05:01):
own policies. But President Biden isbasically saying that's just the way it is.
Well that to day after the borderfor a couple of years, I
think he wants to see as manyas fifteen thousand, one hundred and fifty
thousands. Are you thinking about anymore than fifteen hundreds, Laura? What

(05:24):
we want to do at the borderthat a work where its designed to work.
That required for sety four, Agreat proper for the filing Judge but
there's already such a backlog that someborder crossers will be released with no way
for the FEDS to track them.DHS is explaining it like this to US.

(05:45):
US Border patrol sectors may consider releasingcertain migrants who have undergone strict national
security and public safety vetting to continuetheir immigration processes. This may include a
processing processing migrants for parole who reducethe amount of time they spend in custody.
The House leaders on the Republican sidepushing a border bill today are warning

(06:08):
against that kind of catching and releasing. Ye we're catching people from Yemen.
You got to understand. These aren'tpeople just coming from Mexico. They're coming
from one hundred and sixty countries,from from Yemen, from China, from
others. I mean, why arethey coming to America? Why aren't the
terrace watch list. We know whathas happened in this country. We've got

(06:28):
to protect our code. That's ourspeaker, by the way, Kevin McCarthy
at the end of the cut there, Um, yes, all this is
happening at the border. We areYeah. I think that one of the
worst things was what Brandon Judge said, Yeah, we have no way of
Thenny, any of these people comingfrom these other countries, we can run
them through inter Bowl for a criminalbackground and see if they have some sort

(06:51):
of internactual track record. But theycould be a convicted murderer coming from you
know, pick Uruguay, pick whatevercountry you want, and we have no
way of knowing that. All Right, we're gonna talk about the health or
lack there of of the restaurant industry. There's been a whole slew of long
standing family owned and operated restaurant's beenaround thirty or forty years or more.

(07:11):
They've an enclosing and they're blaming iton inflation. I wonder, I wonder
if that's really what's going on.But we'll talk to a great restaurant to
our. A guy has a lotof experience in this area's written a lot
of books and been part of thestartup of a lot of really great restaurants
you're going to recognize. We'll talkto him, Mark Brazinski coming up next
here on a nine fifty KRC.Well, addition to being hopefully an interesting

(07:43):
conversation, this also might be aconversation that makes you hungry. I find
that talking about food makes me hungry, so I'd better be prepared to go
grab something Nate when we're done talkingto this guy, because there's a lot
of things we can talk to aboutthe state of the restaurant industry, restaurant
concepts, and Mark Brazinski not onlyis a legendary restaurant tour who's been on
creative teams, he's responsible at leastpartially responsible four concepts like Payway, Asian

(08:09):
Diner, Velvet Taco. We haveboth of those here, Tin Star Eat
seas I don't think we have anyof those. Busy burger merchants, by
the way, is the latest Mark, Welcome to the show. Do we
have any busy burger merchants here inHouston? No, you don't too mean
we have. We have our maidenone here in Dallas that opened five months
ago, and we have one atthe Phoenix sky Hartbare Airport outside security kind

(08:31):
of like a mall concept. Butno, we're we're brand new. We're
brand new. Okay, So whatthe concept behind that is what kind of
like a gourmet Kobe beef burger,but you're you're serving a fast food style.
Yeah. Yeah, I've been inthe full service side of things.
I've been in the fast casual sideof things. I'm now I want to
be firmly in the fast food.I think there's a better way to do

(08:54):
fast food. I think that thebig boys, the McDonald's, Wendy's,
Jack in the Box, who nameit, burger Kings all have kind of
morphed into not as good as theycan be in my opinion. And I'm
a restaurant tour so I think wecan do better fast food. And that's
what busy is. Busy is myattempt at doing better fast food. How
do you know when a concept issuccessful? You said you're five months into

(09:16):
the Dallas experiment with business. Atwhat point do you know yet we hit
the nail on the head with thisone, or we have to go back
and maybe tweak this a little bit. When do you know? Yeah?
Yeah, that's a fascinating question.A matter of fact, I had a
long discussion with somebody yesterday because inour world and pretty much every world,
we always think success is tied tofinancial success, correct. I mean,

(09:37):
you're successful if you're making money period. Well, in a new concept,
you're successful if you've created your visionthe way you had it in your head,
if people are reacting well to itif it works the way you think
it works, if you collected theright team to execute it, and of
course sales. I mean it alwaysboils down to sales, right, It's

(09:58):
kind of like a a funnel,everything that comes down to Okay, all
that works, but isn't making money. And it's really hard on a new
concept to make money. If yougo back to Payway, you go back
to Balva Taco the early days,we're struggles for every new concept. So
you have to live through that.You've got to get through that rough water
to see if you can get thesmooth sailing once once you've got it all

(10:18):
figured out. But it's it's notfor the faint of heart, Jimmy,
definitely not for the faint of heart. No, no, no. I
think everybody thinks that opening up arestaurant would be a great idea, but
when you get right down to whenwe talk about the hours you put in,
the labor issues that you have,because we all know how difficult it
is to recruit waiters and waitresses,and even in the fast food concept,

(10:39):
those workers are difficult to recruit.Right now, I get the feeling that,
especially when it comes to the fastfood concept, Mark that a lot
of certainly a lot of the bigboys are beginning. Not that I'm surprised
by this, between the pressure ofpeople wanting of them to be paid fifteen
or twenty dollars an hour to workat a burger joint. In addition to
that, sure just it's hard torecruit good people. And I get the

(11:03):
impression that more and more the fastfood concepts are turning to AI. Yeah,
there's no doubt about it. Yousee every day more articles come out
about self serve kiosks, pick upareas that you know, you know,
people don't really interact with you.They put it in a cube or they
put it on a shelf and yougo pick it up. I don't understand

(11:24):
that dynamic as much because I'm kindof old school, right, I mean,
I grew up in the business thatwas high hospitality. Now it's kind
of moved away as people start interactingless and less. But you know,
our business is relentless. I mean, people are always going to eat.
The common denominator is that people wantto eat, and they want to eat
what they want to eat, andthey want to get it when they want

(11:46):
to get it. So the pressureon us is still the same as it's
always been. It's all in thedelivery, it's all in the speed,
and it's all in the value.But I've noticed, I've noticed that there's
a lot of old school family restaurantsthat have been around thirty forty or more
years, multigenerational restaurants. It's seemedto be shutting down. We've got a
burger joint, and forgive me,the name escapes me off the top of

(12:07):
my head, but it's a realmom and pop, old fashioned burger joint.
They's been in the West side ofHouston for almost fifty years and and
the current owner is he's retiring.He's going to shut it down. I
don't know if that's because he doesn'thave a child who wants to pick up
the mantel and carry on. Maybethey're not interested in doing that kind of

(12:28):
business. Maybe they sell hall hardhard the old man worked and they don't
want to want to work that hard. But it's kind of sad when he
starts seeing all these long time familyrestaurants shutting down. Yeah, and Jimmy,
I worked in Houston for number ofyears. I worked for the Mandola
family. In fact, you knowVincent Mandela passed, as you know,
during COVID and Damien Mandela opened theoriginal Carrabas. I actually worked in that

(12:52):
original Carrabas on Kirby Drive when Damianand Johnny Carrabba opened it, and Johnny,
Johnny and I still keep in touch. But you're right, Our restaurant
business kind of like a Rubik's cube. Right. You can get one side
right, and you think you've gotit solved, and then you turn it
and you see all the different colorson another side. So you might solve
the labor situation, and then turnaround and realize you haven't solved the pricing

(13:16):
situation. You turn it around andrealize that your landlord is just up your
rent and you can't accommodate for that. So so trying to get all that
together, try to get all sidesof the Rubi's cube to have the same
color, you know, is aconstant challenge. It's relenting us quite honestly.
Inflation right now seems to be oneof the biggest things I'm hearing,
and I'm sure you're hearing from restaurantowners as well. It's it's it's been.

(13:39):
I think in some ways it's beena pleasant surprise. I know that,
and I can only do this anecdotally. We eat out. We are
we are absolutely enamored with eating out. I mean, there's just the two
of us that if my wife alwayssays it's too hard to cook for two,
so we always, we always goout to eat, and we have
restaurants we go to all the time, and they are just as busy as

(14:00):
they ever have been, even thoughtheir prices have gone way up in order
to cover inflation and the cost ofdoing business. So I can't believe that
some of these restaurants who are shuttingdown are doing it because they can't attract
enough people to stay open. Butis it just the sheer frustration of having
to deal with so many unknowns ona constant basis. Yeah? Absolutely.

(14:22):
And you know, Houston and Dallasare the number one and number two per
capita expenditure cities for eating out inthe entire country. Right, so we
as consumers get very selfish, Likeyou just said, you're going to go
out to eat because cooking for twois not easy. You might adjust the
places you go to, but you'renot going to start all of a sudden

(14:43):
saying okay, let's start cooking home. You might get it to go,
you might trade down a little bitsometimes, but we get very selfish about
it, and we have some elasticitybuilt in. Right, Okay, we'll
do it this time, but maybewe won't get that second drink. We
very rarely give up the things wereally want. The issue becomes more how

(15:05):
can the operators stay open and bethere for us and solve all the different
problems. I'll give you a greatexample, and I'll try to be brief.
A good friend of mine up herein Dallas runs a restaurant and they
can raise their prices to accommodate thecost of goods. There's some elasticity there,
and they may have gone up almosttwenty five percent but last year.
But where it gets pinched is nowthe people that work for you. The

(15:28):
inflation is affecting them more than it'saffecting your ability to raise prices. So
now all of a sudden, yourkitchen manager that was making seventy five thousand
dollars comes to you and say,listen, my rent's going up, the
cost of food is going up,my kids schooling is going up. But
you can't raise those You might beable to raise your prices on your menu
to accommodate the cost of goods difference, But how do you accommodate all the

(15:52):
people that come to you and needto make more money. That's wheal where
the real pinch point comes. Ifyou ask me, you can't continue to
raise is to the point where youaccommodate everything. Something has to give,
and that's that's the biggest challenge,Jimmy. Honestly, yeah, I'll bet
now I've just had a curiosity herebecause you know, people who wait tables,
they depend on tips in order tobe able to make their living.

(16:14):
As the as the price of foodhas gone up, is restaurant bills have
gotten higher our patrons reflecting on theirtips. Are they tipping more because the
bill is higher? Or is theresome pushback there at all from people are
saying, you know what, I'mhaving to pay way too much for food.
I'm not going to the food's notworth that much more. The service
is not worth twenty five percent morethan the food now cost. I'm not

(16:36):
going to add twenty five percent ofmy tip. Yeah, well, we
don't see that. I mean,honestly, well, I'm glad you don't
see that. I believe it's takingvery good care of the wait staff.
Yeah. And that's the thing isof all the people that seem to be
getting through this the easiest, it'sthe servers because people are were like Pavlov's
dogs, Right, the bill comesin, we're locked into that fifteen twenty

(17:00):
percent. Some of the restaurants evenstart printing on there how much you know
fifteen twenty and even twenty two percentof that bill is. So it makes
it easy or to calculate. Andwhen you're using plastic and you're paying with
plastic instead of cash, you know, the difference between fifteen seventeen and twenty
percent is hard to calculate. IfI ask you, you and your wife
go out to eat all the time. If I ask you, how much

(17:22):
does that piece of salmon cost you? At take your pick papadough right or
some other restaurants, you probably couldn'tcome within two or three dollars of what
the actual cost is because you don'tfocus on the menu. But when the
tip comes you can calculate that prettyeasily because your mind is already set fifteen
twenty percent and you know how todo that so that the servers aren't suffering.

(17:44):
The people that are suffering. Thepeople that aren't aren't in the tip
pool, the hostesses, the cooks, the management team, etc. Do
you think we're at a point wherethe restaurant business has gotten difficult enough where
we're starting to see fewer startups?Are we going to see fewer concept restaurants
like yours? Are we going tosee a fewer people going into the restaurant
business because of the uncertainty, ordo you think it's going to remain pretty

(18:07):
steady. I know we lost alot of restaurants during COVID. I think
that's I think that's a to bedetermined, right. I think we believe
that the strong always survived. Imean, you probably if you had this
conversation with Chris or Harris Pappas orDamian or Johnny Kraba that you know they're
a little bit you know, Teffon, they're a little bit They probably a
little bit more protected than the averagenew brand. New brands are really hard

(18:30):
to get get traction, especially ifyou feel like people aren't going out as
much. Getting your share getting intothat rotation is a little harder if you're
a new brand, So you're you'reprobably right, you will see less people
taking a chance, because if you'repaying attention to the economy into the market,
you will see that there's fewer peopledoing as well as they used to

(18:52):
and it's not a good time togo jumping in. I jumped in because
I'm at a lower price point.Makes sense, all right? Before I
let you go on. You're alsoan author. You get a book out
called Fork Fight Whisks, Risks easyfor me to say, and Confluence Behind
the Restaurant Curtain. So it's akind of an insider's look at what the
restaurant business is like. Is thisdesigned to encourage people to become restaurantors or

(19:14):
discourage Well, it's kind of ajourney book, honestly, Jimmy. I
mean the publisher, you know,couches that the way we're marketing is called
the most compelling, insightful, whiteknuckle Journey behind the Restaurant curtains since Anthony
Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. It's an insiderto look at the highest lows and everything
in between of being an entrepreneur andall the travels that I've done around the

(19:36):
globe and the restaurant concepts that haveput together. It's it's a compelling an
often emotional look at the risks ofbeing an entrepreneur in the restaurant business.
And we're very excited about the factthat it came out awesome. So it's
out now available at Amazon, Iassume and where you usually buy books.
Yes, it is any any ofthe sites. It's also in store,

(19:57):
so we appreci anybody wants look atit. You can go to fork forkfightbook
dot com or Amazon and just typein fork Fight It's it's readily availed on
hardcover terriffic and again the author's MarkRasinski, B R E Z I N
s k I. Mark. Goodto meet you, Nice to talk to
you. Let's do this again sometime. Awesome. Thank you Jimmy for inviting

(20:18):
meet to your show. Happy todo so. Mark Rasinski joining us here
on name nine fifty KRC back withmore in a moment on the Jimmy Barrett
Show. All right, let's let'sdo a little trumptown hall to wrap up

(20:45):
the week and to wrap up today'sshow. Here the reaction that it's getting
it. It's so funny, sopredictable, you do exactly what would happen.
The Left has absolutely lost their mindsover CNN doing a trumptown hall.
In CNN's case, I think theythought going in they had nothing to lose,
and quite honestly, they don't haveanything to lose because their audience numbers

(21:07):
were so low. I think thebiggest the most amount of people that remember,
eight eight hundred thousand people, Ithink was the biggest audience that CNN
had going in any day part.You know, total people watching at any
given time, eight hundred thousand.Now that may seem like a lot,
but you gotta remember CNN is onevery cable system coast to coast, plus

(21:30):
Hawaii and Alaska, and we werein a country of three hundred and one,
three hundred and fifty million people.So the potential audience out there,
if it is a lot bigger thaneight hundred thousand, eight hundred thousand,
is, you know, a fractionof the amount of people who live in
the greater Houston metro a fraction ofthat, And that was their biggest audience.

(21:56):
In my understanding of the ratings fromthe town hall thing is they attracted
about three million people, three millionversus eight hundred thousand. That is almost
four times their normal audience. Sothat's what was in it for CNN.
Of course, CNN didn't do avery good job of handling the whole thing,
and the left is upset, soupset with CNN for even doing it.

(22:18):
In fact, here's kind of amontage of reaction of media types on
the left with CNN's coverage of thetown hall of Donald Trump. I just
don't really understand why they didn't justcut him off. But I didn't know
was that the audience would be filledwith his cult. I would like to
know if CNN was passing out koolaidbefore the events started. I think it

(22:44):
was a profoundly irresponsible decision. Thereis no sense in fact checking or replaying
the highlights. I'm sure you're goingto have more fact checks for us,
because there were more lies than Icould count. I think we needed a
chiron. This is a lie.This is a lie. This is a
lie. This is a lie.Oh, just besides himself, just beside

(23:04):
themselves. Audience was eating it up. Yeah, the audience were Republicans and
independence in New Hampshire. They wereeating it up. Here's Jesse Waters talking
about the reaction that the Trump townhall got. This is the perfect format
for Donald Trump. You're gonna putpresident Trump live in the middle of a

(23:26):
little arena, surrounded by fans,up against a thirty year old CNN anchor.
Oh my god, I mean thatwas not fair last night. That's
what everybody wants to see. Andso CNN, I think did well though,
because CNN is making a business decisionhere. They're gonna pivot and say,

(23:48):
we're gonna play in this political gameand the primary maybe, and we're
gonna chase ratings. They got agood number last night, and we're gonna
try to be normal again like weused to. The rest of the media
is hysterical because their strategy was tocensure and scandalize the president, don't let
him talk, ignore him, andtreat him like a disease. Now,

(24:14):
the media only works in a mob. And if CNN breaks, then Trump
just broke them, and CNM helpedthem break it. Trump was good just
by showing up. Trump's been outin the wilderness for a while and now
he's coming back to the mainstream media. He's re entered. He's becoming more
commercially viable, and that's what he'swanted. And when he started off really

(24:37):
calm and relaxed, that was smart. They wanted them to go out there
thrashing around, and he didn't,but he built up a crescendo and then
at the end he called her nasty, and that was the best part.
He loves conflict. The media hatesconflict because the media wants agreement, so
Trump and the media don't. Andthey're gonna have to wrap their heads around

(25:02):
this because he is going to beappearing on some of their programs and the
way they conducted that did not workfor them. And that's why the media
is so scared, because they seehow powerful he is once he gets his
message out. You know, Ithink one of the things that the Jesse
Water said, I want to focuson here for just a second, I
think is also a good explanation ofwhy it is women in particular have a

(25:25):
problem with Donald Trump. Trump doesthrive on confrontation. He loves it.
He loves sparring with people, Heloves he loves fighting with people. He
just he enjoys it. We allknow people like that, right, Not
a lot of people are like that, but we all know people like that.
But for those who don't, peoplewho don't like to spark, people

(25:48):
who don't like to disagree, peoplewho don't like to fight. It's uncomfortable.
I think he makes people nervous.I mean people who who are very
very passive, very confrontational, especiallywomen who are that way, really don't
like it. That's the problem he'salways had. You know, guys go
lay laugh. A lot of guyswill laugh at the way he conducts himself.

(26:11):
But there's a lot of women wholook at that and they're just oh,
that's horrible, and they just can'tstand that aspect of him. Now,
that's something that's not going to change. I mean, it just is
never going to change. I mean, if anybody's looking for Donald Trump to
evolve into somebody else or to behavedifferently, it is never going to happen.

(26:33):
So you either take him as heis or you don't take him at
all. All Right, Hey,listen, enough for a Friday, y'all,
have a great weekend. See Mondaymorning, bright and early five am
to share over on news Radio sevenforty KTRH. We are back here at
four on a nine fifty kprec