August 6, 2026 • 39 mins
Is there an issue that can unify Americans? To find the answer, we tell the story of chef and restauranteur and chef Andrew Gruel. Andrew didn’t set out to be a rebel – but when facing the Covid bureaucrats, he took a stand…and found an issue that should bring us all together.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America. The revelations of doctor Fauci's
diary have us all angry reliving the lunacy of the
COVID shutdowns. We must never forget how COVID brought a
taste of communism into America. While we're working on new episodes,
this week we'll be playing a few episodes from the
COVID era that we haven't replayed in years, including this
(00:23):
one titled The Tipping Point, which was originally broadcast on
December twelfth, twenty twenty. And if you want to get
Red Pilled America ad free, go to Redpilled America dot
com and click join in the top of the menu.
Now on with the show. We live in incredibly polarizing times.
(00:44):
Some say not since the Civil War have Americans been
so divided.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So this is just a warning to you trumpers, be careful,
walk lightly.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We ain't playing with you.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Put your mask one.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Does it bother anybody else that she doesn't have to
wear a mask?
Speaker 5 (01:02):
All?
Speaker 6 (01:03):
Destroying property which can be replaced is not violent.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All the Republican telling.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Among our people there is no shortage of disagreement, but
can anything bridge the gap? Is there an issue that
can bring Americans together. I'm Patrick Carrelci and.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
I'm Adriana Cortes, and.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. Even our oldest scholars agree that we
(02:08):
live in the most polarizing moment of modern times. At
no time since the Civil War have Americans been so
divided on fundamental issues gripping our republic. But even in
these vitriolic times, is there an issue that can unify Americans.
To find the answer, We're going to tell the story
of Andrew Gruel, a chef and an entrepreneur that grinded
(02:31):
away until he achieved his American dream becoming a successful restauranteur.
Andrew didn't set out to be a rebel, but when
the moment arose, he took a stand and found an
issue that should bring us all together.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Along with his wife, Lauren, Andrew Grule is the co
founder and executive chef of Calico, a Huntington Beach based
seafood chop house celebrating all things land and sea. He's
also the purveyor of a food porn newsletter called American Gravy.
He knows better than anyone about the challenges of owning
a restaurant during the never ending government shutdowns.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Right before I got on this podcast, I'm looking over
bills from agencies I didn't even know existed. Office of Tourism.
Who knows what office they're trying to hit us with
in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
That's Andrew.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We haven't been able to open in one of our restaurants,
but I'm still getting hit with all the ABC bills.
So yeah, it's tough. It's tough in the restaurant industry
and retail in general.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
With movie star good looks and an electric personality to match,
he never meant to become the pioneer of a resistance,
but Andrew became exactly that. Chef Andrew Grule grew up
in New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I was the product of two working parents. Lash key child.
If you will, you know they're working their butts off
all day, every day until eleven of twelve o'clock at night.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
His upbringing did not exactly trigger his later passion.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I make the joke I say, I'm the Sarah Lee chef.
It was Microwave Sarah Lee and every now and then.
We were fortunate enough when my sister got our license
that I could go get McDonald's. So, you know, that
was that was the height of my culinary upbringing. However,
I realized at a young age I loved food because
I used to skip school and I caught myself at
home watching all those original this is pre Food Network
(04:17):
PBS shows, Yan Khan, Cook, Lydia Bastianich, Jacques pa Pen
those just real comfortable, dump and stir TV shows. I'm
going to show you two type of omelet.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
I kind of country franch chimelet, which.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Is basically the way we do it in America, and
then a classic franchchimelet.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So that definitely gave me the bite. And then I
started reading a scoff Ya and like Joy of Cooking
and all these cookbooks that my mom had at home
making a mess in the kitchen when I'd skipped school.
She'd come home. You know, hit me with the wooden spoon.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
When he was old enough to begin working, Andrew naturally
looked for a kitchen with an opening.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
My first job was in a food service restaurant catering,
and then proceeded to keep working food jobs while I
was trying to go to college for other avenues.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
Andrew went to Bait College, a private liberal arts school
in Maine, initially to study piano performance and philosophy.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I went to a small liberal arts college up in Maine.
I mean it was like fifteen hundred kids, and everybody
was up there like studying art history and things in
which you would never have any career path. I thoroughly
enjoyed the intellectual gymnastics, if you will. But I realized
right away, like I need to work. I mean I
was working sixty seventy eighty hours a week.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
And that desire to get his hands dirty was driven
by his love for the ocean, and he just so
happened to be in the lobster capital of America.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I always loved the ocean, right, so while I failed
in science, I had a passion for a marine biology
and understanding what was going on with the ocean and
kind of the biodynamic nature of that environment and how
it affects us. So it was certainly a passion that
I never was truly able to galvanize from a science perspective,
but being able to get hands on with it in
(06:02):
an econo me right, I mean, because the main economy
is driven by the lobstermen. I mean it's a true
fisherman's economy, one of the few artisanal fishing economies that's
left in the United States. I worked at a lobster
restaurant right on the coast, and part of their their
(06:24):
selling proposition and as well as their business model was
they owned part of the supply chain, so they had
lobster boats that would go out and I was able
to kind of help haul, you know, pull up traps,
do a lot of the basic things, not specifically with
that restaurant, but with other lobstermen around the area. So
it was always just about a couple extra hours here
or there, you know, hands on stuff and learning the industry,
(06:44):
learning learning seafood, really getting into the industry and getting
my hands dirty. And said to myself, this is this
is the career path I want. So it just bit
me in the button.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I left college only after a short period of time
and then just hit the road working for as many
chefs as I could.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Andrew worked in every kind of kitchen you could have made,
from fine dining restaurants and hotels like the Ritz Carlton
to the midnight shift at Denny's.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Every kitchen has its own personality, and that's the beauty
of the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I mean, it's always a band of pirates. I think
that it's become different nowadays because it got glamorized, and
you know, Hollywood took over with the Food Network, so
you started seeing every single kid go to culinary school
for sixty thousand dollars a year thinking they're going to
step out and become an executive chef. But I remember
when I was going through the Ringer, you know, it
(07:32):
was the days of the Anthony Bourdain type of kitchens.
You know, bone in the throat, band of pirates, just
a bunch of people who were outcasts in other areas,
and everybody ended up in the kitchen together and that
becomes your family, your team, and everything beyond. So after
(07:53):
years of working in the industry, ultimately I landed back
in Jersey, which is where I'm from, and I was
running a few restaurants out there, huge restaurants, five hundred
seats underneath the toke. If you will come to two
thousand and eight. When the economy crashes.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
In the throes of the two thousand and eight financial crisis,
restaurants got hit extra hard and it forced downsizing throughout
the industry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And I said, you know what, this is an opportunity
for me to step out and try and follow through
on some passion projects of mine. So at the time
I was thinking about opening my own restaurant, I held
back on that.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
Instead, he went back to school to study food marketing.
He also got a degree in culinary arts from Johnson
and Wales University. And it wasn't long after that that
his phone.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Rang and just serendipitously, I got a call from hear
Me out the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California,
because they were headhunting. They got a grant from the
Pacific Life Foundation to start a sustainable seafood program.
Speaker 6 (08:48):
Sustainable seafood works to create a healthy balance between harvesting
the ocean and the financial needs of fishing dependent communities.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The crux of their program was that they wanted to
target chefs because eighty percent of the seafood consumed in
the US has done so in restaurants, So they figured
if they could train chefs to serve more responsible seafood,
or at least have a more responsible dialogue about the
type of seafood we're eating and the effects it has
on the ocean, then they could target a larger number
of people. So they needed somebody to run this program,
(09:17):
a director of the program. They wanted a chef with
marketing background and true culinary chops to talk to other chefs.
So I was like, hey, let's back up. Remember I
love this marine biology thing. This is like my dream opportunity.
So I packed up. I mean, in this nonprofit right,
this was not paying money, so it was like cash
(09:38):
out all my savings come out to California, and the
next thing I know, I'm working in the aquarium, spending
half my time on like touch tanks, while simultaneously going
out and working with all these chefs throughout Los Angeles,
San Diego, Orange County, trying to engage them in the
conversation about sustainable seafood.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Andrew worked on the program for about three years and
through the process an idea began to form over the
years come to the realization that in the seafood world
there was either really high end establishment or greasy fried
Long John Silver type restaurants. There was no in between.
A sweet spot wasn't being served. At the same time,
through his work with the Aquarium, he was learning more
(10:18):
about the supply chain of seafood, and.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
When the grant came to the end of its end
of its time, I said, you know what, I'm going
to put my money where my mouth is. I've been
preaching this for two and a half three years. I'm
going to do it.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
I'm going to launch a concept that's for the people,
fast casual where we're going to serve the quality of
fine dining seafood.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
At the costing convenience of faster food. Because I realized
in the seafood world, you've got either high high high
end or greasy fried Long John Silver.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
So in twenty eleven, Andrew tried to raise money to
open a restaurant. However, in the wake of the financial crisis,
he quickly learned that it wasn't going to happen. But
as luck would have it, there was a new trend
exploding within the food industry.
Speaker 8 (10:58):
Food trucks in cities across the country. These rolling restaurants
are upping up everywhere, providing hungry lunch breakers and late
night bar crawlers with a corner copy of Fast easy
fuel and all on the cheap and running one means
no office politics, just cooking and cash.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Food trucks had been around in one form or another
for well over a century, but they had largely been
focused on fattening comfort food. The financial crisis presented an opportunity.
Investors in new brick and mortar restaurants were nowhere to
be found, while at the same time people were looking
for bargain eateries to meet their smaller budgets. Food trucks
provided the perfect vehicle to bridge the gap. The startup
(11:39):
cost was much cheaper than that of a restaurant, and
the savings could be passed on to the customers, and
there were some real success stories. The Kogi Truck, a
mobile Korean barbecue taco kitchen, was one of the first
to show how this new business model could be lucrative.
Andrews saw this new trend as a path to creating
his first restaurant, albeit one on wheels.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So I said screwed. I got as many credit cards
as I could. I'd leverage myself to the brim. I
went into massive debt and started renting food trucks.
Speaker 6 (12:06):
He found a guy selling tacos out of a truck.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I said, how much you make on your rid? He
goes four to fifty week. I said, I'll give you
five hundred, give me the truck, and I'll buy my
own stock.
Speaker 6 (12:14):
He then got on the phone with his old seafood
contacts in.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Mate started having those guys ship lobsters out to me,
friends from decades ago, and selling lobster rolls and fish
tacos at like five and ten dollars off the food truck.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
At first, he manned his mobile restaurant on his own.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So I went out with a white truck and I
had somebody print a banner. I sketched out the logo,
which was slapfish with the hand, and we hung the
banner on the side of the truck. I had a
little bit of a social following, so I tweeted out,
I'm doing five dollars lobster rolls, real main lobster. I mean,
I'm losing money, but I was doing it just to
get people in, you know, first hits on me. The
pusher don't care. So yeah, people just start showing up
(12:56):
and before I knew it, within like a week we
had lines of people and it just blew up.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
He started making money. He invested back into the business.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So we wrapped the truck. I created a dish called
the Lobstacle, so the hood it set home with the lobstacle,
but it was spelled backwards so that when you were
driving and you looked in your rearview mirror, you'd read
it the right way. And we went from one to
four food trucks over a six month period. We had
like forty five employees. It was really shooting fish in
a barrel pun intended. So in that short timeframe I
(13:29):
was able to build up a huge following.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
Things were taking off, but it wasn't long before the
big hand of government came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Another passion mine has always been politics. I volunteered all
throughout high school.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I ran our Youth and Government program and did a
lot with various senators throughout New Jersey, so I.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Was always aware of regulations. Got a passion for reading
things like the you know, the federalist papers, et cetera.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
So he understood that government tends to find a way
to make money on a profitable enterprise.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
When I opened up the food trucks, I said, we're
driving through loopholes right now. Within four months, the government's
going to catch on to us and they're going to
have their hands out. We paid two hundred and fifty
dollars for one business license when we started with the
food truck. When I pulled the food truck up to
its last stop in December of that year, I was
paying upwards of three thousand dollars a month and fees,
business license, etc. The government realized how to get their
(14:17):
hands into that industry very quickly.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
With winter on the horizon, Andrew could see that he
was under some time pressure to evolve the business.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And then once the weather hit, I said, shoot, if
we don't get into a brick and mortar by December,
we're done. So I literally went around knocking on people's
restaurants that looked like they were empty and saying, hey,
can I buy a restaurant? Can I buy a restaurant?
How much cash to get out right now? I found
a guy in Huntington Beach wanted to get out of
his bagel shop. He's like, give me seventy thousand dollars
(14:45):
and you can have it. And so I went around
and bowed money from friends and family and anybody I could.
Thousand dollars here, five hundred dollars there.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
He gave them all equity in the business and began
the transition from being a mobile to a brick and
mortar restaurant. Like any small business, especially in the restaurant industry,
Andrew was running on an extremely tight budget, so he
had to do everything himself. Once he secured the bagel shop,
he started to esthetically transform the space with his small team.
(15:13):
But just as he was preparing to open in April
twenty twelve, the pesky hand of the government came knocking
on his front door again, and this time it looked
like they were going to put him out of business
before he even got started. All right, if you guys
know anything about me, you know that I am crazy
about my dogs. And let me tell you something. My
(15:35):
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(16:00):
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(16:24):
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(16:45):
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Speaker 5 (17:03):
Back.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So Andrew was living the life of an entrepreneur. He
saw a niche in the restaurant market that was wide
open fine dining seafood at the cost and convenience of
fast food. He started with a mobile kitchen, and his
Slapfish food truck blew up so much so that he
decided to open a brick and mortar version in Huntington Beach.
But just as he was getting ready to open, the
(17:25):
pesky hand of government came knocking. Opening a restaurant is
not an easy task anytime you're serving food. There's a
labyrinth of regulations that must be met and the process
is not at all clear. But typically when you move
into an existing space you skip many of the obstacles
set for new restaurants. When Andrew opened his brick and
(17:45):
mortar Slabfish by buying the Bagel Shop, he thought he'd
avoided those obstacles.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
We were set to open on April twentieth, twenty twelve.
I had marketed it. Everything we got passed through health
department by having an above ground grease interceptor, etc. Etc.
What was there this new pro they established called the
Fog Program fats oils in Greece. They knock on my
door on like April fifteenth and they're like, where's your
grease interceptor? I said, we were grandfathered in. They said, well,
(18:11):
in July there's gonna be new regulations that you need
an underground one. I said, great, I'll open up, get
some revenue, and i'll you know, we'll get it all
set for July. And they were like, no, you need
an underground grease interceptor now per what statute? I don't know.
They're like, you're not opening.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So Andrew had to scramble to borrow another thirteen thousand
dollars to dig a hole in the ground to comply
with this new, not yet enacted statute. But being the
savvy entrepreneur that he was, he found a way to
comply with yet another government regulation, a skill that would
later be put to the test on a level he
could never have imagined. Like his food truck, his Huntington
(18:48):
Beach Slapfish restaurant was an immediate hit, so Andrew wanted
to expand on the success.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Well, the idea was to build this to scale. Right,
the best effect I could have I thought was to
get people to eat more of the right types of seafood.
But we need to do that as scale in order
to really have that secret. So we needed to buy
in larger bulk, right, cut out the middleman buying bulk.
The more bulk you can buy, the better the price.
So we had to scale quickly, and we couldn't raise
capital once again. You know, even though we were showing
(19:13):
strong unit economics on a store level, they kept saying,
come back at ten locations. All of them said, get
to ten locations. Well, I figured the only way I
could get there was through franchisinges.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So in twenty thirteen, Andrew began franchising Slapfish.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So we opened our next location in thirteen, then fourteen
and started growing from there.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It eventually grow to twenty seven locations, including Arizona, throughout
southern California and Silicon Valley, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia,
and even the UK. Slapfish was spreading. Andrew was also
finding success in other arenas. His energy attracted Hollywood, which
led to appearances on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel,
(19:50):
and even the Today show.
Speaker 8 (19:51):
We're Just wrapping up our shrimp cubana that we did
for you on the web, and now good to have
you Andrew.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Congratulations, we're gonna make it here.
Speaker 9 (19:57):
What are you gonna keep burger surfing turf.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, we're gonna do a surfing turf burger.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So if you want to grab some meat here with me,
we're just gonna pack some of these patties up.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
Though, guys, Andrew got married this weekend.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Congratulation, Thank you, thank you, really really grave So that's
our honeymoon.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He also met a woman. They fell in love and
quickly married, and after just a few months they had
a little one on the way. Andrew's entire life was
falling into place. He had a successful restaurant and franchise business.
He put his money where his mouth was by selling
the sustainable seafood he'd been preaching for years, and he
and his wife were growing the family. With three little
ones under the roof and a fourth on the way,
(20:31):
life couldn't have been better until the early days of
twenty twenty.
Speaker 11 (20:38):
China has identified the cause of the mysterious pneumonia outbreak
in Uhan City, and it's from the same family that
caused the deadly SARS epidemic seventeen years ago. It's a
new type of coronavirus.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The word of a new virus coming out of China
was slowly making its way into the news, But the
first sign that trouble was brewing came to Andrew from
a different source.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You know, I'm really a cue into what's going on
in the East because of seafood trade. So I had
a lot of contacts that were in China and all
these different spaces that were saying, look something's coming and
just keep an eye out. It was affecting seafood prices
and trade. So I was using some commodity index to
kind of at least see what was on its way.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Then whispers from another avenue corroborated what he was seeing
in the market.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Without naming names, We know some people that were on
the inside and kind of gave us a little bit
of a heads up what the framework was going to
look like. I don't necessarily think anybody understood the level.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
In mid March twenty twenty, the Trump administration announced new
guidance on the building coronavirus crisis.
Speaker 12 (21:41):
Over the next fifteen days, as we combat the virus,
seats and every one of us as a critical role
to play.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
It still wasn't clear how this would affect Andrew's industry,
but the severity of the situation became clear a few
days later when California became the first state to shut
almost everything down.
Speaker 13 (21:59):
We need to bend the curve in the state of California,
and in order to do that, we needed to recognize
the reality. The fact is the experience we're having on
the ground throughout the state of California, the experience it's
manifesting all across the United States and for that matter,
around the rest of the world, require us to adjust
our thinking and to adjust our activities.
Speaker 14 (22:22):
Overnight, the governor of California issuing a strict stay at
home order to estates forty million residents, warning more than
half of them half could become infected in the weeks ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
We shut down for a few days. We had to
close and look, you know, you go into you just
go into kind of muscle memory, right, what's your panic response?
My panic response is how's this going to affect the family?
And then what can we do to help?
Speaker 15 (22:46):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Like that's our kind of family motto.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So they regrouped and began to put their motto into action.
As chance would have it. Being in the seafood business
meant that he had some backstock of a product that
was in high demand.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
We're using face masks a lot because we get a
hold tuna and you want the face mask on. So
I put a call out, like I had customers that
were coming in and getting face masks from us. You
remember when nobody could get one, So we were giving
out face masks to customers. I mean, we turned into
like emergency mode.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They also began cooking food for their staff and others.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Right when we did reopen a few days after closing.
We right away we said okay, police fire emt all
health workers eat for free, hands down, and then we
just kind of went into help mode.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And then, like any small business facing an unprecedented downturn,
Andrew and his wife had to start making some tough decisions.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
We were trying to figure out, what's the avenue through
which we're going to be able to support our team members.
How many people do we have to let go? Can
we pivot? How quickly can we pivot? So my wife
and I she's incredibly involved in the business. It was
just that spinning right.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Most restaurants around the country were allowed to provide takeout services,
but for many that wasn't enough to pay the bills.
Two weeks to slow the spread came and went, and
it was unclear when governors were going to lift the
ban on in person dining.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Brilliant communication strategy. Fourteen days to slow the spread, right,
I mean why not? What's fourteen days? Oh, and there's
a stimulus on the way. Twelve hundred dollars to every American.
Sounds like a reasonable proposition to me. So I was
on board with that. I think most people were, because
it was kind of like, Nah, this isn't gonna this
(24:33):
is no way, this would never you know, kind of
trigger something bigger.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In the state of his flagship restaurant. It wasn't until
California started approaching day thirty that Governor Gavin Newsom began
showing some sign of allowing restaurants to open for in
person dining.
Speaker 13 (24:48):
But in this transition where we do see like at
the end of the tunnel, where there is a ray
of optimism and hopefulness that this too shall pass, it's
also perhaps the most difficult and challenging phase.
Speaker 16 (25:04):
Of all.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
But the governor still wasn't pulling the trigger. As the
two weeks shutdown turned to seven, a few restaurant owners
on a desperation began to flout the governor's order. But
if you own a restaurant, you're not just in the
food business, you're in the people business, and the people
were clearly polarized on the issue of whether or not
to reopen. The few restaurant owners that took the leap
(25:26):
and opened their doors to in person dining were getting
some support from their regulars, but that was drowned out
by the Karens and the media, who labeled anyone that
didn't comply as super spreaders or worse.
Speaker 14 (25:38):
A San clement A restaurant owner who is reopening today,
once again defying our states shut down orders.
Speaker 17 (25:44):
We're here at Nomad's Canteen in San Clementy. After a
very popular reopening last week in which they sold out
of everything. They are reopening again today, bringing those customers
in for a dine in service, which of course is
not really allowed under various state and county orders. But
everyone appears to be looking the other after restalking, they
(26:04):
are planning to follow strict guidelines inside the restaurant once
again using social distancing with tables six feet apart. They
of course, are getting a lot of attention for this,
and it's not all positive, including death threats.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Andrew was still trying to comply with the state's mandate.
To do otherwise at the time would have been a
risk that far outweighed the benefits. Most just weren't ready.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The point at which I realized that this was that
the fourteen days to turn to spread was kind of
turning on us. Was everything just became so polarized. People
started tattletaling on their neighbors. You know, on the one
end of the spectry, it's like there's two options, right,
You're either a denier or you're a communist. You know,
there's nothing in between.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It wasn't until over nine weeks after the two weeks
shutdown began that the California governor gave the thumbs up
to restaurants to accept in person dining, but with major restrictions.
Speaker 12 (26:57):
So Orange County settles into phase two of its reopening plan.
Businesses continue to make adjustments to their plans try and
keep employees and customers safe.
Speaker 18 (27:05):
We stepped inside Newport Coffee Company, which opened its doors
fully to customers while still requiring physical distancing.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
If you're in a group of more than four, only
one person can come in to kind of get your
whole family's order.
Speaker 18 (27:17):
Welcome to phase two of reopening businesses and restaurants in
Orange County.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So, you know, obviously plexiglass all over the space. Redesign
the architecture in the footprint of all of our restaurants
so that we can avoid having too many people close together,
you know, printing the stand here signs. You know, you
kind of see the cut copy and paste across any
retail operation. They're all the same.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
But as he prepared to reopen, Andrew was facing an
unexpected dilemma. The government was doing out unemployment at a
level that incentivized people to stay home.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I had employees who I was trying to bring back
and they were like, look, I'm making eleven hundred dollars
right now not to work. Granted, I know I could
probably make fourteen hundred, but I'd rather take the three
hundred dollars loss to not work at all.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Andrew took to social media just to highlight this phenomenon,
and when he did, he was blast for simply conveying
the issue.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You know some people, their response is, well, you're not
paying your employees enough. We pay our employees twenty twenty
five dollars an hour right when the minimum wage is thirteen.
Then they make tips. They can make upwards of forty
to forty five dollars an hour with tips. That's not
the point. The point is if you don't have to work,
and you can make enough to cover your bills and more,
(28:25):
you're not gonna work. Right, Like, I get it. I'm
not calling those employees lazy. I totally get it. You know,
I had employees who are like, hey, I've I've always
wanted to read Moby Dick. I'm gonna sit home and read. Okay. Cool.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The climate the service industry faced was daunting. They had
to reduce their occupancy. Most California establishments had to limit
in person dining to outdoors. All the workers had to
wear masks and face shields. But like the thousands upon
thousands of restaurants, nail and hair salons, gyms, and the
like that were starting to reopen, and you and his
wife were just happy to get things moving again. But
(29:06):
as winner began to approach the red flags for a
second shutdown began to show.
Speaker 9 (29:10):
You may have heard that California Governor Gavin Newsom, or
first Comrade as I prefer to think of him, has
issued a set of dict tots about how and with
whom and for how long you may celebrate Thanksgiving this year.
It's a sad list. First rule of this year's Thanksgiving
for our California comrades, your free celebration must be held outside.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
These restrictions are getting out of hand, especially in California,
and I think we're reaching the point where people are
going to say.
Speaker 8 (29:42):
Stick it.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I'm not going to live with this. I'm going to
break out now.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Up to this point, only a few restaurant owners disregarded
the shutdown mandates. But then something happened. The dictators were
getting caught disregarding their own orders.
Speaker 19 (29:57):
Tonight, while Governor Newsom is telling all of us to
have Thanksgiving dinner outside, facing some new fallout for that
fancy birthday dinner party he went to at the French laundry.
Speaker 13 (30:09):
I was asked to go to a friend's fiftieth birthday,
and as soon as I sat down at the larger table,
I realized it was a little larger group than I
had anticipated, and I made a bad mistake.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Instead of sitting.
Speaker 15 (30:23):
Down, I should have stood up and walked back, got
in my car and drove back to my house. Instead,
I chose to sit there with my wife, in a
number of other couples that were outside the houshold.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And Gavin Newsom wasn't the only hypocrite well.
Speaker 9 (30:41):
San Jose Mayor Sam Lecardo may have broken his own
county's protocols by spending Thanksgiving with his elderly parents at
their home in Saratoga.
Speaker 20 (30:51):
Just hours after Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Cule voted
to ban outdoor dining at La County's thirty one thousand
restaurants over COVID nineteen safety concerns. We visited a restaurant
in Santa Monica where she dined.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Outdoors for months. Austin Mayor Steve Wadler has taken to
Facebook live most nights to keep the community informed about
the spread of COVID nineteen and in fact, but as
he issued this message on the night of November ninth.
Speaker 12 (31:21):
And then we need to stay home if you can.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
He was doing it from a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Within days of getting caught ignoring his own edicts. Governor
Newsom made a mind blowing announcement just three weeks before Christmas.
Speaker 13 (31:35):
Today, we are pursuant to the blueprint we put out
some fourteen or so weeks ago of pulling that emergency brake.
We've done it sequentially over the course the last number
of weeks, but we're doing it in a much more
broad and much more comprehensive way. Today we are announcing
and introducing a regional stay at home order in the
(31:57):
state of California.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And I kept saying it on social I said, watch,
this is going to spread news. And God busted for
breaking his own rules, and he's going to take it
out on small businesses because we're the ones who are
banging the drum loud enough. And he did.
Speaker 6 (32:16):
Do you want to hear red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the top menu. Join
today and help us save America, one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in late twenty
twenty one, by one, politicians like California's Governor Gavin Newsom
were caught breaking their own COVID shutdown orders, but in
a mind blowing turn, Gavin Newsom made an announcement just
three weeks before Christmas. He called for a regional stay
at home order in California, and I.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Kept saying it on social I said, watch this is
going to spread. Newsom God Boss died for breaking his
own rules, and he's going to take it out on
small businesses because we're the ones who are banging the
drum loud enough. And he did, you know, banning outdoor
dining in Los Angeles. I said, it's going to happen
in this day, you know, Garcettian Newsom. They're doing this.
They're testing to see how far they can push things.
Speaker 13 (33:08):
Here's what we are introducing today. We are now mandating
that we are implementing a stay at home order for
three weeks.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That was it. That was the tipping point that began
the resistance of shut down two point zero. Andrew was
one of the first to declare that he was going
to defy the order. He took to social media to
make his case.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Okay, I've got everybody blowing up my replies right now
saying I'm a grandmother killer. And that we don't take
this pandemic seriously. So I'm just gonna address it all
right here so that I actually don't have to individually
go back and forth and box with every single one
of these fake accounts.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So here's the situation. Do we take the pandemic seriously?
Of course we do.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Am I saying that we shouldn't close outdoor dining?
Speaker 7 (33:47):
Yes, I am.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
At every single juncture along the way here, from the
beginning shut down to today, we've listened to all of
the advice from our government officials, only to be shut
down over and over and over again and then not
compensated for the elements that we put in place in
our businesses in order to protect our customers. We shut
down indoor dining, no problem. I got a warehouse full
of plexiglass right now. Okay, we went outdoors, all right, now,
(34:11):
that's getting shut down. I just put thousands of dollars
into outdoor heaters. There is zero scientific evidence that proves
that outdoor dining is contributing to a rise in cases
related to this, all right, I am the only saying
that we are going to continue dining outdoors because I
can get on an airplane and I can fly and
eat and do whatever I want, and don't tell me
it's the hippo filters. Okay, because that's not the case.
(34:33):
You don't turn those on until you get onto the plane.
Before that, everybody's fornicating on top of each other. I
can go into Walmart. Heck, I don't even have to
wear pants. Nobody wears a masket Walmart. I can go
get a pink cockatoo for my Christmas tree. But I
can't go and dine outdoors at a restaurant. I can
go to Target. Amazon's making tons of money. All big
business is getting rich.
Speaker 13 (34:50):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Outdoor dining does not lead to any of that.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Therefore, screw that we're staying open outdoors.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
It's that simple.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm not an asshole.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
The governor is, and quickly after a trend that began
in California.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Gut wrenching video of a restaurant owner's outrage she's forced
to shut down outdoor dining at her local bar and grill,
But then she sees a production crew set up craft
services just a few feet away.
Speaker 16 (35:15):
Mayor Garcetti and Gavin Newsom is responsible for every single
person that doesn't have unemployment. That says not have a
job and all the businesses that are going under and
we need your help.
Speaker 15 (35:27):
Rep Reap restaurant.
Speaker 12 (35:33):
And bar owners protesting outside supervisor Sheila Hules House in
Santa Monica today, angry that outdoor dining in La County
has been shut down.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
Hello everyone, and welcome to day eight of my illegal
walk in Los Angeles. And today I'm walking with a
purpose because I'm.
Speaker 13 (35:49):
Walking to a peaceful protest at ten Horned Flatten.
Speaker 19 (35:53):
Saloon and Grill.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
It's a protest with burghers and payer.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
It wasn't long until the courts agreed that the government
was overreaching. Eight twenty twenty, judge tentatively ruled against the
ban on outdoor dining in La County.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Outdoor dining is not to be able to come back
immediately right now. What this judge is ruling because we're
still under the state stay at home order. What it
means is La County's official outdoor dining ban will end
on December sixteenth, and once the state's order is lifted,
outdoor dining can then returned to La.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
County with the case showed astonishingly was that the county
officials ban on outside dining had no scientific basis. They
just arbitrarily invoked it.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
If they took this as seriously as they portend, then
why would they break their own rules. Wouldn't they take
it seriously. We just had a newborn. We take it
very seriously. My wife and I didn't go out. We
were basically quarantining as much as we could. I was
not going into the restaurant. I was following what I preached.
They're not following anything of what they preached. So it's political.
(36:57):
Now I can open a restaurant and have a membership,
and I can be open according to the rules and regulation.
So it's not the activity, it's the economics, which.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Leads us back to the question, is there an issue
that can unify Americans? The answer is tyranny. When our
leaders demand we do as they say and not as
they do, resisting their overreach should be an issue that
unifies us. With the coronavirus shutdowns, many of our leaders
have clearly not practiced what they've preached.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Caught on camera, House speaker Nancy Pelosi seem getting our
hair done inside a San Francisco salon.
Speaker 21 (37:50):
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock gave you the bird for Thanksgiving
told you to stay home for the holiday during the pandemic,
but then he got on a plane to go see
his family out of state.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
The government can't our arbitrarily keep us from seeing our families,
from making a living, to feed them, from just living
life with all its risks, And they most definitely can't
shut us down for no good reason while they disregard
their own orders.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Partisan politics has clouded the minds of so many people.
Independent thought is the most important way through this. Look
at the data, assess it from your own risk category.
We all have a different risk threshold.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
If there's one thing in these polarizing times that should
unify Americans, it's rejecting the hypocrisy of our leaders and
resisting their overreach. We should we must enjoy the same
freedoms that they afford themselves. And if we can't agree
on that, maybe it's time to start thinking outside the box.
Speaker 10 (38:47):
I've referenced this, I've alluded to this a couple of
times because I've seen others alude to this. I actually
think that we're trending toward secession.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast owned and
produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of Informed Ventures.
Now you can get ad free access to our entire
archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe,
visit Redpilled America dot com and click join in the
top menu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America. The revelations of doctor Fauci's
diary have us all angry reliving the lunacy of the
COVID shutdowns. We must never forget how COVID brought a
taste of communism into America. While we're working on new episodes,
this week we'll be playing a few episodes from the
COVID era that we haven't replayed in years, including this
(00:23):
one titled The Tipping Point, which was originally broadcast on
December twelfth, twenty twenty. And if you want to get
Red Pilled America ad free, go to Redpilled America dot
com and click join in the top of the menu.
Now on with the show. We live in incredibly polarizing times.
(00:44):
Some say not since the Civil War have Americans been
so divided.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So this is just a warning to you trumpers, be careful,
walk lightly.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We ain't playing with you.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Put your mask one.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Does it bother anybody else that she doesn't have to
wear a mask?
Speaker 5 (01:02):
All?
Speaker 6 (01:03):
Destroying property which can be replaced is not violent.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All the Republican telling.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Among our people there is no shortage of disagreement, but
can anything bridge the gap? Is there an issue that
can bring Americans together. I'm Patrick Carrelci and.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
I'm Adriana Cortes, and.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. Even our oldest scholars agree that we
(02:08):
live in the most polarizing moment of modern times. At
no time since the Civil War have Americans been so
divided on fundamental issues gripping our republic. But even in
these vitriolic times, is there an issue that can unify Americans.
To find the answer, We're going to tell the story
of Andrew Gruel, a chef and an entrepreneur that grinded
(02:31):
away until he achieved his American dream becoming a successful restauranteur.
Andrew didn't set out to be a rebel, but when
the moment arose, he took a stand and found an
issue that should bring us all together.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Along with his wife, Lauren, Andrew Grule is the co
founder and executive chef of Calico, a Huntington Beach based
seafood chop house celebrating all things land and sea. He's
also the purveyor of a food porn newsletter called American Gravy.
He knows better than anyone about the challenges of owning
a restaurant during the never ending government shutdowns.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Right before I got on this podcast, I'm looking over
bills from agencies I didn't even know existed. Office of Tourism.
Who knows what office they're trying to hit us with
in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
That's Andrew.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We haven't been able to open in one of our restaurants,
but I'm still getting hit with all the ABC bills.
So yeah, it's tough. It's tough in the restaurant industry
and retail in general.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
With movie star good looks and an electric personality to match,
he never meant to become the pioneer of a resistance,
but Andrew became exactly that. Chef Andrew Grule grew up
in New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I was the product of two working parents. Lash key child.
If you will, you know they're working their butts off
all day, every day until eleven of twelve o'clock at night.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
His upbringing did not exactly trigger his later passion.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I make the joke I say, I'm the Sarah Lee chef.
It was Microwave Sarah Lee and every now and then.
We were fortunate enough when my sister got our license
that I could go get McDonald's. So, you know, that
was that was the height of my culinary upbringing. However,
I realized at a young age I loved food because
I used to skip school and I caught myself at
home watching all those original this is pre Food Network
(04:17):
PBS shows, Yan Khan, Cook, Lydia Bastianich, Jacques pa Pen
those just real comfortable, dump and stir TV shows. I'm
going to show you two type of omelet.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
I kind of country franch chimelet, which.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Is basically the way we do it in America, and
then a classic franchchimelet.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So that definitely gave me the bite. And then I
started reading a scoff Ya and like Joy of Cooking
and all these cookbooks that my mom had at home
making a mess in the kitchen when I'd skipped school.
She'd come home. You know, hit me with the wooden spoon.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
When he was old enough to begin working, Andrew naturally
looked for a kitchen with an opening.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
My first job was in a food service restaurant catering,
and then proceeded to keep working food jobs while I
was trying to go to college for other avenues.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
Andrew went to Bait College, a private liberal arts school
in Maine, initially to study piano performance and philosophy.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I went to a small liberal arts college up in Maine.
I mean it was like fifteen hundred kids, and everybody
was up there like studying art history and things in
which you would never have any career path. I thoroughly
enjoyed the intellectual gymnastics, if you will. But I realized
right away, like I need to work. I mean I
was working sixty seventy eighty hours a week.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
And that desire to get his hands dirty was driven
by his love for the ocean, and he just so
happened to be in the lobster capital of America.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I always loved the ocean, right, so while I failed
in science, I had a passion for a marine biology
and understanding what was going on with the ocean and
kind of the biodynamic nature of that environment and how
it affects us. So it was certainly a passion that
I never was truly able to galvanize from a science perspective,
but being able to get hands on with it in
(06:02):
an econo me right, I mean, because the main economy
is driven by the lobstermen. I mean it's a true
fisherman's economy, one of the few artisanal fishing economies that's
left in the United States. I worked at a lobster
restaurant right on the coast, and part of their their
(06:24):
selling proposition and as well as their business model was
they owned part of the supply chain, so they had
lobster boats that would go out and I was able
to kind of help haul, you know, pull up traps,
do a lot of the basic things, not specifically with
that restaurant, but with other lobstermen around the area. So
it was always just about a couple extra hours here
or there, you know, hands on stuff and learning the industry,
(06:44):
learning learning seafood, really getting into the industry and getting
my hands dirty. And said to myself, this is this
is the career path I want. So it just bit
me in the button.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I left college only after a short period of time
and then just hit the road working for as many
chefs as I could.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Andrew worked in every kind of kitchen you could have made,
from fine dining restaurants and hotels like the Ritz Carlton
to the midnight shift at Denny's.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Every kitchen has its own personality, and that's the beauty
of the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I mean, it's always a band of pirates. I think
that it's become different nowadays because it got glamorized, and
you know, Hollywood took over with the Food Network, so
you started seeing every single kid go to culinary school
for sixty thousand dollars a year thinking they're going to
step out and become an executive chef. But I remember
when I was going through the Ringer, you know, it
(07:32):
was the days of the Anthony Bourdain type of kitchens.
You know, bone in the throat, band of pirates, just
a bunch of people who were outcasts in other areas,
and everybody ended up in the kitchen together and that
becomes your family, your team, and everything beyond. So after
(07:53):
years of working in the industry, ultimately I landed back
in Jersey, which is where I'm from, and I was
running a few restaurants out there, huge restaurants, five hundred
seats underneath the toke. If you will come to two
thousand and eight. When the economy crashes.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
In the throes of the two thousand and eight financial crisis,
restaurants got hit extra hard and it forced downsizing throughout
the industry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And I said, you know what, this is an opportunity
for me to step out and try and follow through
on some passion projects of mine. So at the time
I was thinking about opening my own restaurant, I held
back on that.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
Instead, he went back to school to study food marketing.
He also got a degree in culinary arts from Johnson
and Wales University. And it wasn't long after that that
his phone.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Rang and just serendipitously, I got a call from hear
Me out the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California,
because they were headhunting. They got a grant from the
Pacific Life Foundation to start a sustainable seafood program.
Speaker 6 (08:48):
Sustainable seafood works to create a healthy balance between harvesting
the ocean and the financial needs of fishing dependent communities.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The crux of their program was that they wanted to
target chefs because eighty percent of the seafood consumed in
the US has done so in restaurants, So they figured
if they could train chefs to serve more responsible seafood,
or at least have a more responsible dialogue about the
type of seafood we're eating and the effects it has
on the ocean, then they could target a larger number
of people. So they needed somebody to run this program,
(09:17):
a director of the program. They wanted a chef with
marketing background and true culinary chops to talk to other chefs.
So I was like, hey, let's back up. Remember I
love this marine biology thing. This is like my dream opportunity.
So I packed up. I mean, in this nonprofit right,
this was not paying money, so it was like cash
(09:38):
out all my savings come out to California, and the
next thing I know, I'm working in the aquarium, spending
half my time on like touch tanks, while simultaneously going
out and working with all these chefs throughout Los Angeles,
San Diego, Orange County, trying to engage them in the
conversation about sustainable seafood.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Andrew worked on the program for about three years and
through the process an idea began to form over the
years come to the realization that in the seafood world
there was either really high end establishment or greasy fried
Long John Silver type restaurants. There was no in between.
A sweet spot wasn't being served. At the same time,
through his work with the Aquarium, he was learning more
(10:18):
about the supply chain of seafood, and.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
When the grant came to the end of its end
of its time, I said, you know what, I'm going
to put my money where my mouth is. I've been
preaching this for two and a half three years. I'm
going to do it.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
I'm going to launch a concept that's for the people,
fast casual where we're going to serve the quality of
fine dining seafood.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
At the costing convenience of faster food. Because I realized
in the seafood world, you've got either high high high
end or greasy fried Long John Silver.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
So in twenty eleven, Andrew tried to raise money to
open a restaurant. However, in the wake of the financial crisis,
he quickly learned that it wasn't going to happen. But
as luck would have it, there was a new trend
exploding within the food industry.
Speaker 8 (10:58):
Food trucks in cities across the country. These rolling restaurants
are upping up everywhere, providing hungry lunch breakers and late
night bar crawlers with a corner copy of Fast easy
fuel and all on the cheap and running one means
no office politics, just cooking and cash.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Food trucks had been around in one form or another
for well over a century, but they had largely been
focused on fattening comfort food. The financial crisis presented an opportunity.
Investors in new brick and mortar restaurants were nowhere to
be found, while at the same time people were looking
for bargain eateries to meet their smaller budgets. Food trucks
provided the perfect vehicle to bridge the gap. The startup
(11:39):
cost was much cheaper than that of a restaurant, and
the savings could be passed on to the customers, and
there were some real success stories. The Kogi Truck, a
mobile Korean barbecue taco kitchen, was one of the first
to show how this new business model could be lucrative.
Andrews saw this new trend as a path to creating
his first restaurant, albeit one on wheels.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So I said screwed. I got as many credit cards
as I could. I'd leverage myself to the brim. I
went into massive debt and started renting food trucks.
Speaker 6 (12:06):
He found a guy selling tacos out of a truck.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I said, how much you make on your rid? He
goes four to fifty week. I said, I'll give you
five hundred, give me the truck, and I'll buy my
own stock.
Speaker 6 (12:14):
He then got on the phone with his old seafood
contacts in.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Mate started having those guys ship lobsters out to me,
friends from decades ago, and selling lobster rolls and fish
tacos at like five and ten dollars off the food truck.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
At first, he manned his mobile restaurant on his own.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So I went out with a white truck and I
had somebody print a banner. I sketched out the logo,
which was slapfish with the hand, and we hung the
banner on the side of the truck. I had a
little bit of a social following, so I tweeted out,
I'm doing five dollars lobster rolls, real main lobster. I mean,
I'm losing money, but I was doing it just to
get people in, you know, first hits on me. The
pusher don't care. So yeah, people just start showing up
(12:56):
and before I knew it, within like a week we
had lines of people and it just blew up.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
He started making money. He invested back into the business.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So we wrapped the truck. I created a dish called
the Lobstacle, so the hood it set home with the lobstacle,
but it was spelled backwards so that when you were
driving and you looked in your rearview mirror, you'd read
it the right way. And we went from one to
four food trucks over a six month period. We had
like forty five employees. It was really shooting fish in
a barrel pun intended. So in that short timeframe I
(13:29):
was able to build up a huge following.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
Things were taking off, but it wasn't long before the
big hand of government came knocking.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Another passion mine has always been politics. I volunteered all
throughout high school.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I ran our Youth and Government program and did a
lot with various senators throughout New Jersey, so I.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Was always aware of regulations. Got a passion for reading
things like the you know, the federalist papers, et cetera.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
So he understood that government tends to find a way
to make money on a profitable enterprise.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
When I opened up the food trucks, I said, we're
driving through loopholes right now. Within four months, the government's
going to catch on to us and they're going to
have their hands out. We paid two hundred and fifty
dollars for one business license when we started with the
food truck. When I pulled the food truck up to
its last stop in December of that year, I was
paying upwards of three thousand dollars a month and fees,
business license, etc. The government realized how to get their
(14:17):
hands into that industry very quickly.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
With winter on the horizon, Andrew could see that he
was under some time pressure to evolve the business.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And then once the weather hit, I said, shoot, if
we don't get into a brick and mortar by December,
we're done. So I literally went around knocking on people's
restaurants that looked like they were empty and saying, hey,
can I buy a restaurant? Can I buy a restaurant?
How much cash to get out right now? I found
a guy in Huntington Beach wanted to get out of
his bagel shop. He's like, give me seventy thousand dollars
(14:45):
and you can have it. And so I went around
and bowed money from friends and family and anybody I could.
Thousand dollars here, five hundred dollars there.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
He gave them all equity in the business and began
the transition from being a mobile to a brick and
mortar restaurant. Like any small business, especially in the restaurant industry,
Andrew was running on an extremely tight budget, so he
had to do everything himself. Once he secured the bagel shop,
he started to esthetically transform the space with his small team.
(15:13):
But just as he was preparing to open in April
twenty twelve, the pesky hand of the government came knocking
on his front door again, and this time it looked
like they were going to put him out of business
before he even got started. All right, if you guys
know anything about me, you know that I am crazy
about my dogs. And let me tell you something. My
(15:35):
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his food, and boy, what a difference that made. This
stuff is amazing. Now Pablo is a rough greens dog
for life. Rough Greens supports long term health by providing live,
bioavailable nutrients including essential vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and
(16:00):
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(16:24):
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(16:45):
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code RPA. So don't change your dog's food. Just add
rough greens and watch the health benefits come alive.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
Back.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So Andrew was living the life of an entrepreneur. He
saw a niche in the restaurant market that was wide
open fine dining seafood at the cost and convenience of
fast food. He started with a mobile kitchen, and his
Slapfish food truck blew up so much so that he
decided to open a brick and mortar version in Huntington Beach.
But just as he was getting ready to open, the
(17:25):
pesky hand of government came knocking. Opening a restaurant is
not an easy task anytime you're serving food. There's a
labyrinth of regulations that must be met and the process
is not at all clear. But typically when you move
into an existing space you skip many of the obstacles
set for new restaurants. When Andrew opened his brick and
(17:45):
mortar Slabfish by buying the Bagel Shop, he thought he'd
avoided those obstacles.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
We were set to open on April twentieth, twenty twelve.
I had marketed it. Everything we got passed through health
department by having an above ground grease interceptor, etc. Etc.
What was there this new pro they established called the
Fog Program fats oils in Greece. They knock on my
door on like April fifteenth and they're like, where's your
grease interceptor? I said, we were grandfathered in. They said, well,
(18:11):
in July there's gonna be new regulations that you need
an underground one. I said, great, I'll open up, get
some revenue, and i'll you know, we'll get it all
set for July. And they were like, no, you need
an underground grease interceptor now per what statute? I don't know.
They're like, you're not opening.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So Andrew had to scramble to borrow another thirteen thousand
dollars to dig a hole in the ground to comply
with this new, not yet enacted statute. But being the
savvy entrepreneur that he was, he found a way to
comply with yet another government regulation, a skill that would
later be put to the test on a level he
could never have imagined. Like his food truck, his Huntington
(18:48):
Beach Slapfish restaurant was an immediate hit, so Andrew wanted
to expand on the success.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Well, the idea was to build this to scale. Right,
the best effect I could have I thought was to
get people to eat more of the right types of seafood.
But we need to do that as scale in order
to really have that secret. So we needed to buy
in larger bulk, right, cut out the middleman buying bulk.
The more bulk you can buy, the better the price.
So we had to scale quickly, and we couldn't raise
capital once again. You know, even though we were showing
(19:13):
strong unit economics on a store level, they kept saying,
come back at ten locations. All of them said, get
to ten locations. Well, I figured the only way I
could get there was through franchisinges.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So in twenty thirteen, Andrew began franchising Slapfish.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So we opened our next location in thirteen, then fourteen
and started growing from there.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It eventually grow to twenty seven locations, including Arizona, throughout
southern California and Silicon Valley, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia,
and even the UK. Slapfish was spreading. Andrew was also
finding success in other arenas. His energy attracted Hollywood, which
led to appearances on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel,
(19:50):
and even the Today show.
Speaker 8 (19:51):
We're Just wrapping up our shrimp cubana that we did
for you on the web, and now good to have
you Andrew.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Congratulations, we're gonna make it here.
Speaker 9 (19:57):
What are you gonna keep burger surfing turf.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, we're gonna do a surfing turf burger.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So if you want to grab some meat here with me,
we're just gonna pack some of these patties up.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
Though, guys, Andrew got married this weekend.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Congratulation, Thank you, thank you, really really grave So that's
our honeymoon.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He also met a woman. They fell in love and
quickly married, and after just a few months they had
a little one on the way. Andrew's entire life was
falling into place. He had a successful restaurant and franchise business.
He put his money where his mouth was by selling
the sustainable seafood he'd been preaching for years, and he
and his wife were growing the family. With three little
ones under the roof and a fourth on the way,
(20:31):
life couldn't have been better until the early days of
twenty twenty.
Speaker 11 (20:38):
China has identified the cause of the mysterious pneumonia outbreak
in Uhan City, and it's from the same family that
caused the deadly SARS epidemic seventeen years ago. It's a
new type of coronavirus.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The word of a new virus coming out of China
was slowly making its way into the news, But the
first sign that trouble was brewing came to Andrew from
a different source.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You know, I'm really a cue into what's going on
in the East because of seafood trade. So I had
a lot of contacts that were in China and all
these different spaces that were saying, look something's coming and
just keep an eye out. It was affecting seafood prices
and trade. So I was using some commodity index to
kind of at least see what was on its way.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Then whispers from another avenue corroborated what he was seeing
in the market.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Without naming names, We know some people that were on
the inside and kind of gave us a little bit
of a heads up what the framework was going to
look like. I don't necessarily think anybody understood the level.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
In mid March twenty twenty, the Trump administration announced new
guidance on the building coronavirus crisis.
Speaker 12 (21:41):
Over the next fifteen days, as we combat the virus,
seats and every one of us as a critical role
to play.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
It still wasn't clear how this would affect Andrew's industry,
but the severity of the situation became clear a few
days later when California became the first state to shut
almost everything down.
Speaker 13 (21:59):
We need to bend the curve in the state of California,
and in order to do that, we needed to recognize
the reality. The fact is the experience we're having on
the ground throughout the state of California, the experience it's
manifesting all across the United States and for that matter,
around the rest of the world, require us to adjust
our thinking and to adjust our activities.
Speaker 14 (22:22):
Overnight, the governor of California issuing a strict stay at
home order to estates forty million residents, warning more than
half of them half could become infected in the weeks ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
We shut down for a few days. We had to
close and look, you know, you go into you just
go into kind of muscle memory, right, what's your panic response?
My panic response is how's this going to affect the family?
And then what can we do to help?
Speaker 15 (22:46):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Like that's our kind of family motto.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So they regrouped and began to put their motto into action.
As chance would have it. Being in the seafood business
meant that he had some backstock of a product that
was in high demand.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
We're using face masks a lot because we get a
hold tuna and you want the face mask on. So
I put a call out, like I had customers that
were coming in and getting face masks from us. You
remember when nobody could get one, So we were giving
out face masks to customers. I mean, we turned into
like emergency mode.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They also began cooking food for their staff and others.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Right when we did reopen a few days after closing.
We right away we said okay, police fire emt all
health workers eat for free, hands down, and then we
just kind of went into help mode.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And then, like any small business facing an unprecedented downturn,
Andrew and his wife had to start making some tough decisions.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
We were trying to figure out, what's the avenue through
which we're going to be able to support our team members.
How many people do we have to let go? Can
we pivot? How quickly can we pivot? So my wife
and I she's incredibly involved in the business. It was
just that spinning right.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Most restaurants around the country were allowed to provide takeout services,
but for many that wasn't enough to pay the bills.
Two weeks to slow the spread came and went, and
it was unclear when governors were going to lift the
ban on in person dining.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Brilliant communication strategy. Fourteen days to slow the spread, right,
I mean why not? What's fourteen days? Oh, and there's
a stimulus on the way. Twelve hundred dollars to every American.
Sounds like a reasonable proposition to me. So I was
on board with that. I think most people were, because
it was kind of like, Nah, this isn't gonna this
(24:33):
is no way, this would never you know, kind of
trigger something bigger.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In the state of his flagship restaurant. It wasn't until
California started approaching day thirty that Governor Gavin Newsom began
showing some sign of allowing restaurants to open for in
person dining.
Speaker 13 (24:48):
But in this transition where we do see like at
the end of the tunnel, where there is a ray
of optimism and hopefulness that this too shall pass, it's
also perhaps the most difficult and challenging phase.
Speaker 16 (25:04):
Of all.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
But the governor still wasn't pulling the trigger. As the
two weeks shutdown turned to seven, a few restaurant owners
on a desperation began to flout the governor's order. But
if you own a restaurant, you're not just in the
food business, you're in the people business, and the people
were clearly polarized on the issue of whether or not
to reopen. The few restaurant owners that took the leap
(25:26):
and opened their doors to in person dining were getting
some support from their regulars, but that was drowned out
by the Karens and the media, who labeled anyone that
didn't comply as super spreaders or worse.
Speaker 14 (25:38):
A San clement A restaurant owner who is reopening today,
once again defying our states shut down orders.
Speaker 17 (25:44):
We're here at Nomad's Canteen in San Clementy. After a
very popular reopening last week in which they sold out
of everything. They are reopening again today, bringing those customers
in for a dine in service, which of course is
not really allowed under various state and county orders. But
everyone appears to be looking the other after restalking, they
(26:04):
are planning to follow strict guidelines inside the restaurant once
again using social distancing with tables six feet apart. They
of course, are getting a lot of attention for this,
and it's not all positive, including death threats.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Andrew was still trying to comply with the state's mandate.
To do otherwise at the time would have been a
risk that far outweighed the benefits. Most just weren't ready.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The point at which I realized that this was that
the fourteen days to turn to spread was kind of
turning on us. Was everything just became so polarized. People
started tattletaling on their neighbors. You know, on the one
end of the spectry, it's like there's two options, right,
You're either a denier or you're a communist. You know,
there's nothing in between.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
It wasn't until over nine weeks after the two weeks
shutdown began that the California governor gave the thumbs up
to restaurants to accept in person dining, but with major restrictions.
Speaker 12 (26:57):
So Orange County settles into phase two of its reopening plan.
Businesses continue to make adjustments to their plans try and
keep employees and customers safe.
Speaker 18 (27:05):
We stepped inside Newport Coffee Company, which opened its doors
fully to customers while still requiring physical distancing.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
If you're in a group of more than four, only
one person can come in to kind of get your
whole family's order.
Speaker 18 (27:17):
Welcome to phase two of reopening businesses and restaurants in
Orange County.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So, you know, obviously plexiglass all over the space. Redesign
the architecture in the footprint of all of our restaurants
so that we can avoid having too many people close together,
you know, printing the stand here signs. You know, you
kind of see the cut copy and paste across any
retail operation. They're all the same.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
But as he prepared to reopen, Andrew was facing an
unexpected dilemma. The government was doing out unemployment at a
level that incentivized people to stay home.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
I had employees who I was trying to bring back
and they were like, look, I'm making eleven hundred dollars
right now not to work. Granted, I know I could
probably make fourteen hundred, but I'd rather take the three
hundred dollars loss to not work at all.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Andrew took to social media just to highlight this phenomenon,
and when he did, he was blast for simply conveying
the issue.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You know some people, their response is, well, you're not
paying your employees enough. We pay our employees twenty twenty
five dollars an hour right when the minimum wage is thirteen.
Then they make tips. They can make upwards of forty
to forty five dollars an hour with tips. That's not
the point. The point is if you don't have to work,
and you can make enough to cover your bills and more,
(28:25):
you're not gonna work. Right, Like, I get it. I'm
not calling those employees lazy. I totally get it. You know,
I had employees who are like, hey, I've I've always
wanted to read Moby Dick. I'm gonna sit home and read. Okay. Cool.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The climate the service industry faced was daunting. They had
to reduce their occupancy. Most California establishments had to limit
in person dining to outdoors. All the workers had to
wear masks and face shields. But like the thousands upon
thousands of restaurants, nail and hair salons, gyms, and the
like that were starting to reopen, and you and his
wife were just happy to get things moving again. But
(29:06):
as winner began to approach the red flags for a
second shutdown began to show.
Speaker 9 (29:10):
You may have heard that California Governor Gavin Newsom, or
first Comrade as I prefer to think of him, has
issued a set of dict tots about how and with
whom and for how long you may celebrate Thanksgiving this year.
It's a sad list. First rule of this year's Thanksgiving
for our California comrades, your free celebration must be held outside.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
These restrictions are getting out of hand, especially in California,
and I think we're reaching the point where people are
going to say.
Speaker 8 (29:42):
Stick it.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I'm not going to live with this. I'm going to
break out now.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Up to this point, only a few restaurant owners disregarded
the shutdown mandates. But then something happened. The dictators were
getting caught disregarding their own orders.
Speaker 19 (29:57):
Tonight, while Governor Newsom is telling all of us to
have Thanksgiving dinner outside, facing some new fallout for that
fancy birthday dinner party he went to at the French laundry.
Speaker 13 (30:09):
I was asked to go to a friend's fiftieth birthday,
and as soon as I sat down at the larger table,
I realized it was a little larger group than I
had anticipated, and I made a bad mistake.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Instead of sitting.
Speaker 15 (30:23):
Down, I should have stood up and walked back, got
in my car and drove back to my house. Instead,
I chose to sit there with my wife, in a
number of other couples that were outside the houshold.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And Gavin Newsom wasn't the only hypocrite well.
Speaker 9 (30:41):
San Jose Mayor Sam Lecardo may have broken his own
county's protocols by spending Thanksgiving with his elderly parents at
their home in Saratoga.
Speaker 20 (30:51):
Just hours after Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Cule voted
to ban outdoor dining at La County's thirty one thousand
restaurants over COVID nineteen safety concerns. We visited a restaurant
in Santa Monica where she dined.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Outdoors for months. Austin Mayor Steve Wadler has taken to
Facebook live most nights to keep the community informed about
the spread of COVID nineteen and in fact, but as
he issued this message on the night of November ninth.
Speaker 12 (31:21):
And then we need to stay home if you can.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
He was doing it from a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Within days of getting caught ignoring his own edicts. Governor
Newsom made a mind blowing announcement just three weeks before Christmas.
Speaker 13 (31:35):
Today, we are pursuant to the blueprint we put out
some fourteen or so weeks ago of pulling that emergency brake.
We've done it sequentially over the course the last number
of weeks, but we're doing it in a much more
broad and much more comprehensive way. Today we are announcing
and introducing a regional stay at home order in the
(31:57):
state of California.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And I kept saying it on social I said, watch,
this is going to spread news. And God busted for
breaking his own rules, and he's going to take it
out on small businesses because we're the ones who are
banging the drum loud enough. And he did.
Speaker 6 (32:16):
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today and help us save America, one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in late twenty
twenty one, by one, politicians like California's Governor Gavin Newsom
were caught breaking their own COVID shutdown orders, but in
a mind blowing turn, Gavin Newsom made an announcement just
three weeks before Christmas. He called for a regional stay
at home order in California, and I.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Kept saying it on social I said, watch this is
going to spread. Newsom God Boss died for breaking his
own rules, and he's going to take it out on
small businesses because we're the ones who are banging the
drum loud enough. And he did, you know, banning outdoor
dining in Los Angeles. I said, it's going to happen
in this day, you know, Garcettian Newsom. They're doing this.
They're testing to see how far they can push things.
Speaker 13 (33:08):
Here's what we are introducing today. We are now mandating
that we are implementing a stay at home order for
three weeks.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That was it. That was the tipping point that began
the resistance of shut down two point zero. Andrew was
one of the first to declare that he was going
to defy the order. He took to social media to
make his case.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Okay, I've got everybody blowing up my replies right now
saying I'm a grandmother killer. And that we don't take
this pandemic seriously. So I'm just gonna address it all
right here so that I actually don't have to individually
go back and forth and box with every single one
of these fake accounts.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So here's the situation. Do we take the pandemic seriously?
Of course we do.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Am I saying that we shouldn't close outdoor dining?
Speaker 7 (33:47):
Yes, I am.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
At every single juncture along the way here, from the
beginning shut down to today, we've listened to all of
the advice from our government officials, only to be shut
down over and over and over again and then not
compensated for the elements that we put in place in
our businesses in order to protect our customers. We shut
down indoor dining, no problem. I got a warehouse full
of plexiglass right now. Okay, we went outdoors, all right, now,
(34:11):
that's getting shut down. I just put thousands of dollars
into outdoor heaters. There is zero scientific evidence that proves
that outdoor dining is contributing to a rise in cases
related to this, all right, I am the only saying
that we are going to continue dining outdoors because I
can get on an airplane and I can fly and
eat and do whatever I want, and don't tell me
it's the hippo filters. Okay, because that's not the case.
(34:33):
You don't turn those on until you get onto the plane.
Before that, everybody's fornicating on top of each other. I
can go into Walmart. Heck, I don't even have to
wear pants. Nobody wears a masket Walmart. I can go
get a pink cockatoo for my Christmas tree. But I
can't go and dine outdoors at a restaurant. I can
go to Target. Amazon's making tons of money. All big
business is getting rich.
Speaker 13 (34:50):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Outdoor dining does not lead to any of that.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Therefore, screw that we're staying open outdoors.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
It's that simple.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm not an asshole.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
The governor is, and quickly after a trend that began
in California.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Gut wrenching video of a restaurant owner's outrage she's forced
to shut down outdoor dining at her local bar and grill,
But then she sees a production crew set up craft
services just a few feet away.
Speaker 16 (35:15):
Mayor Garcetti and Gavin Newsom is responsible for every single
person that doesn't have unemployment. That says not have a
job and all the businesses that are going under and
we need your help.
Speaker 15 (35:27):
Rep Reap restaurant.
Speaker 12 (35:33):
And bar owners protesting outside supervisor Sheila Hules House in
Santa Monica today, angry that outdoor dining in La County
has been shut down.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
Hello everyone, and welcome to day eight of my illegal
walk in Los Angeles. And today I'm walking with a
purpose because I'm.
Speaker 13 (35:49):
Walking to a peaceful protest at ten Horned Flatten.
Speaker 19 (35:53):
Saloon and Grill.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
It's a protest with burghers and payer.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
It wasn't long until the courts agreed that the government
was overreaching. Eight twenty twenty, judge tentatively ruled against the
ban on outdoor dining in La County.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Outdoor dining is not to be able to come back
immediately right now. What this judge is ruling because we're
still under the state stay at home order. What it
means is La County's official outdoor dining ban will end
on December sixteenth, and once the state's order is lifted,
outdoor dining can then returned to La.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
County with the case showed astonishingly was that the county
officials ban on outside dining had no scientific basis. They
just arbitrarily invoked it.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
If they took this as seriously as they portend, then
why would they break their own rules. Wouldn't they take
it seriously. We just had a newborn. We take it
very seriously. My wife and I didn't go out. We
were basically quarantining as much as we could. I was
not going into the restaurant. I was following what I preached.
They're not following anything of what they preached. So it's political.
(36:57):
Now I can open a restaurant and have a membership,
and I can be open according to the rules and regulation.
So it's not the activity, it's the economics, which.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Leads us back to the question, is there an issue
that can unify Americans? The answer is tyranny. When our
leaders demand we do as they say and not as
they do, resisting their overreach should be an issue that
unifies us. With the coronavirus shutdowns, many of our leaders
have clearly not practiced what they've preached.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Caught on camera, House speaker Nancy Pelosi seem getting our
hair done inside a San Francisco salon.
Speaker 21 (37:50):
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock gave you the bird for Thanksgiving
told you to stay home for the holiday during the pandemic,
but then he got on a plane to go see
his family out of state.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
The government can't our arbitrarily keep us from seeing our families,
from making a living, to feed them, from just living
life with all its risks, And they most definitely can't
shut us down for no good reason while they disregard
their own orders.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Partisan politics has clouded the minds of so many people.
Independent thought is the most important way through this. Look
at the data, assess it from your own risk category.
We all have a different risk threshold.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
If there's one thing in these polarizing times that should
unify Americans, it's rejecting the hypocrisy of our leaders and
resisting their overreach. We should we must enjoy the same
freedoms that they afford themselves. And if we can't agree
on that, maybe it's time to start thinking outside the box.
Speaker 10 (38:47):
I've referenced this, I've alluded to this a couple of
times because I've seen others alude to this. I actually
think that we're trending toward secession.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast owned and
produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of Informed Ventures.
Now you can get ad free access to our entire
archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe,
visit Redpilled America dot com and click join in the
top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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