June 6, 2026 • 40 mins
Why is everything so expensive? This week on Flavorphiles, we’re talking about the money behind the meal.
First, food professor Sylvain Charlebois joins us to explain what’s really driving food prices, why grocery bills and menu prices keep climbing, and whether things are likely to get better or worse from here.
Then, Tanner pulls back the curtain on restaurant profit math. A packed dining room on a Saturday night might look like a gold mine, but once you factor in labor, rent, prep time, food costs, broken equipment, and all the invisible expenses, the reality is much tighter than most people think.
After that, we talk about how to get the most out of your money when dining out: why appetizers can be the best part of the meal, when big groups work in your favor, what’s worth splurging on, and what you can probably skip.
Finally, we get into the cash vs. cashless debate. Is it annoying when a restaurant tells you how you’re allowed to pay? Absolutely. But there are real reasons restaurants make those choices. Plus, Tanner and Grace have a special announcement.
This episode is all about price, value, and why the check at the end of the night tells only part of the story.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.
First, food professor Sylvain Charlebois joins us to explain what’s really driving food prices, why grocery bills and menu prices keep climbing, and whether things are likely to get better or worse from here.
Then, Tanner pulls back the curtain on restaurant profit math. A packed dining room on a Saturday night might look like a gold mine, but once you factor in labor, rent, prep time, food costs, broken equipment, and all the invisible expenses, the reality is much tighter than most people think.
After that, we talk about how to get the most out of your money when dining out: why appetizers can be the best part of the meal, when big groups work in your favor, what’s worth splurging on, and what you can probably skip.
Finally, we get into the cash vs. cashless debate. Is it annoying when a restaurant tells you how you’re allowed to pay? Absolutely. But there are real reasons restaurants make those choices. Plus, Tanner and Grace have a special announcement.
This episode is all about price, value, and why the check at the end of the night tells only part of the story.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Flavor Files. This is an episode called Show
Me the Money. Tenner is going to talk about why
is everything getting so expensive? In fact, we'll get some
expertise on that coming up restaurant profit math. We'll talk
about restaurants and bars that won't take cash, some that
won't take credit cards, and how you can maximize your
dollar at a restaurant or bar. But first of all, Tenner,
(00:21):
as always, what's your amuse booze for today?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Are amuse booze? If you're feeling everything's expensive and you're
looking for a good value at the bar. This is
just a shot of well Muskull. Well is what they
call it the house spirits. It's the well is a
rail that sits like right in front of the ice,
between the bartender and the ice, so it's really fast
to grab. Generally, well spirits are always priced the same thing,
(00:45):
so it's easier, you know, nine dollars, ten dollars, whatever
it's going to be. Vodka is the cheapest for the bar,
so they make the most money on it. Maskull is
the most expensive for the bar, so they make the
least money on it. And that's how you keep that
money in your pocket.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So that's it. Just order the house mescal. That's your advice.
House mescal.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Also tequila and muscall's generally good brands have less intervention.
So some people say that agave spirits give better hangovers.
So if you're going to be doing well shots until
you get a hangover, well muscal would be the way
I would go.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Good advice. So why is everything getting so expensive? Well,
we ask that in our regular life, and it certainly
is something that is of major concern to restaurants. We
hear about restaurants closing down, and in some cases it's
simply because they can't afford the cost of the food
and the running of the restaurant and they can't pass
that effectively along. But we've got an expert joining us
(01:43):
on this. Doctor Sylvan Charlebois is known in Canada as
the food Professor. He's with Sylvey or with who's going
to name the University of Sylvan University. I'm not there yet.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He's with Tellhousie University. Thanks for doing that, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Can you answer the question that all me and my
chef friends are asking about, which is why is everything
so damn expensive? For US now, I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It, Well, it depends what you're serving, right, I'd say
meat is a big issue right now. It's been an
issue for a while, especially beef. I'm sure you've noticed
that beef prices are really oh just in Texas. Yeah,
we've noticed, Yeah, because you guys eat a lot of
beef and you enjoy beef, and I mean demand is
actually still robust despite despite prices. But the reality is
(02:33):
that the herd size in the US is the same
as it was back in nineteen fifty one, and in
Canada is the same herd size as nineteen eighty nine.
So there's just no inventory and a lot of producers
are exiting the industry. They're cashing out, they're not coming back.
So the rebuild has been incredibly slow. So we're starting
(02:54):
to see more higher numbers, but it's going to take
a while. We're not expecting prices to stabilize before twenty
twenty seven, so that's that's a big one. The other
components of the meat trifecta, both pork and chicken, both
are actually more expensive in Canada. I mean, whole chicken
(03:17):
prices are up thirty percent, which is incredible. Produce is
a big deal. Also, we're predicting that prices will actually
increase by five to seven percent. That's also noticeable in
both in both countries right now in Canada and particular
because there was some pivoting going on moving away from
(03:38):
American goods. So we're getting fruits and vegetables from Peru,
South Africa, Egypt, Latin America, South America. It takes longer
to get to Canada, but it also costs more money
as well, and we're paying We're paying for that at
the tail, at the teller.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So do you think these are going to be more
temporary price increases or is this going to be something
we just need to settle in for, because you know,
I feel like I never ever see the prices go
back down. Sometimes if I have something like the lobster
population blooms, my price goes down. Sometimes lines get insane
and then they come back, But generally I feel like
it only ever ticks up on me.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
You're absolutely right, Tanner. I mean, demand for food is
inherently elastic, so it doesn't matter what price you're gonna buy,
and frankly when and this is why I hate I
hate politicians When all sudden they play around with taxes
and and and implementing measure that actually impacts prices all
of a sudden, because we have this this tendency to
(04:45):
get to get programmed to accept higher prices over time.
And so if say the price of beef is up,
well I don't expect prices to drop. That's why I
actually use the word stay price stabilization, because it's very
rare that prices will drop.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Coffee is a good example.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
In Canada. We had counter terraff on coffee last year,
counter terrace on coffee coming from the United States to
show Donald Trump, to show him that we're tough. But
the problem is that he made coffee more expensive. We're
not expecting coffee prices to drop. Even though counter terrafs
are gone now Privacy Carney actually eliminated them. But coffee
(05:30):
prices will won't drop. However, we are expecting some deals
here and there once in a while, just to basically
give some relief.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I don't understand that part. Why are we terriffing the
United States on coffee? They don't grow coffee.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Now, but they go through so a lot of coffee
goes through the United States. That's the thing. Because they
do buy a lot of coffee, and we buy coffee
from distributors roasters in the West.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So that's why.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
One of the that I have in the restaurant business
right is I have a dish. You the guests want
the dish to be the same. It always is, both
in flavor and in price, and so I'm having to
either eat the margin, raise the price, or just change
the dishes. You know, there's certain things that I have
to get rid of. There's this cost of consistency that
(06:20):
I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize that
I have to deal with. Do you think that you know,
we're talking about things getting more expensive. Do you think
quality is also going to change? Is that going to
be another problem I'm going to have to deal with
on the other side of the price equation.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Probably. I mean, there's shrinkflation, there's skim flation. You just
mentioned boths without saying the words, but that's basically what's
going on. It's apply happening in food service as well,
so smaller portions and as an operator, some operators attempted
to change ingredients using cheaper ones just because well, you
(06:57):
have to make ends meet. A lot of people think
that restaurants. Operators are making a ton of money. Margins
are incredibly slim, so as soon as you have ingrady
a it goes up in price. It really compromises your
ability to generate a profit. That's the reality. So in
Canada in particular, I mean, things are really really bad
(07:18):
because the economy is not as strong as in the US,
and so people aren't going out as much. We're actually
expecting the number of the net number of restaurants to
go down four thousand this year from eighty seven thousand
to eighty three thousand, and so that's because of the
economic context we're in right now. People don't have any
(07:40):
money and if they do go out. What's peculiar right
now is that there is a bit of a price
war in QSR like McDonald's for example, with the five
dollars value meal. But people actually aren't going to fast
food joints typically when the economy is still down, that's
(08:00):
where people go. They're not going there. They don't want
to pay twenty bucks for a hamburger and fry. They
actually go they go fast, casual, family, even fine dining.
But they won't order that entree, they won't order that
dessert and that expensive bottle of wine. So they're actually
going out getting service, but they won't go out as
(08:21):
much as often.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That four thousand drop in numbers of restaurants was a
Canadian number. As a Canadian number, Yep, it's not correspondingly
the same in the US because there's a lot of
restaurants going out there too.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, and Tanner would know that the economy in the
US is very different. So in Canada right now, about
thirty seven percent of a family's food budget is spent
outside the grocery store, So in a restaurant in the US,
it's actually more like fifty four percent.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I mean, no, it's certainly good news for ten Or
because the restaurant culture in the US, and you just
travel to the US, you can see there's restaurants like everywhere,
like everywhere, and so the restaurant culture is much more
develop and mature in the US and in Canada so
more so. There's about fifty four percent of an average
(09:20):
family in the US will spend their money at a restaurant,
compared to thirty seven percent in Canada.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Now, you said before that you think things will stabilize
in twenty twenty seven. What's going to happen over the
next year that's going to help cure us of this problem.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, so, first of all, beef is going to stabilize.
It doesn't mean that everything else is going to stabilize.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
That's the thing about food. I mean, you got twenty
seven thousand skews and there's twenty seven thousand stories in
a grocery store, so a lot of things can happen
right now. I mean, sugar is helping us a little bit.
The issue of dare in Canada is a little different
than the US because of supply management, but prices are
(10:05):
pretty high in Canada dairy. But we are expecting more stable,
more stable prices in the dairy section right now for
this year, but next year because of shortages. And we
know that in US there's there's a bit of a
a TikTok movement affecting a demand for cottage, cheese and yogurt,
so prices are actually going up on both sides of
(10:27):
the border. So it really there's a lot going on.
But overall, what we're seeing are two stories in North America.
In Canada, we have a food inflation rate of close
to four percent, which is the highest among G seven countries.
And in the US, despite the terrace, despite Iran and
(10:48):
everything else, the food inflation rate is at three point
three percent, which is basically the average among G seven countries.
So it's quite surprising because a year ago I would
have told you, my goodness, with the Trump regime, food
inflation is going to explode. In the US, it's gone up,
(11:09):
not dramatically compared to Canada.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Doctor Sylvan Charlebois, the food professor, is with Dalhousie University,
and we appreciate your input here. Thank you so much,
my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
For the next segment here on Flavor Files, I want
to talk about restaurant profit math. There's been this misconception
for a long time. You see a restaurant, you go
in there, it's eight pm on Saturday night, and you think,
oh my god, these people are making tons of money.
Look at how much money they're making, and they're not
making money. And that's what I wanted to sort of
explain to everybody how it actually works.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Well. There are a lot of headlines right now in
our economy where people are seeing that many restaurants are closing.
They've been having a tough time since COVID. But what
you're talking about, I think, Tanner, is if I go
to a place at eight o'clock on a Saturday night,
I'm seeing the busiest that probably ever going to be.
I'm not there on Tuesday where there are four customers. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
You're also not there on Tuesday morning when there's no
customers in a dinner only place, but there is a
set of staff that's preparing dinner. This is a thing
that a lot of people don't get RYE would open
at five pm, but staff would start showing up at
eight am. There are people whose entire workday happens before
a single person can walk through the door. And the
(12:23):
whole time you're running utilities, you're paying the person rent,
which is a common, you know, scourge of the restaurant business.
You move into a location because you can afford it,
You make the location cool, and your reward is your
rent goes up. It's awesome, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
And some of those people that came in at eight o'clock,
by the time you open for dinner, they say all right,
good luck and they leave. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
There are people, you know, day staff who or maybe
they work lunch, maybe you're a restaurant is open for lunch.
A lot of restaurants open for lunch just to try
to pay for the day staff. We did this for
a long time arrived before we finally just said we
were done bothering with it. Okay, our only hope was
that we'd bring in enough at lunch just to cover
that one person's wage. But it ends up becoming a
(13:10):
big pain. And you know, wages, this is a huge
thing in the restaurant business. It's people love to say,
We've talked about this on the show, right, Well, you're
not paying any of your service staff, right because it's
tips and everything, and I don't want to rehash that,
but if you actually look around a restaurant, there are
so many much higher wage people. You know, depending on
the size of the restaurant, you can have a beverage
(13:32):
manager and you can have a hospitality manager. You're a
maitre d, obviously you're gonna have a general manager. But
a kitchen. If you ever see an open kitchen, next
time you're in one of those restaurants, just count the
number of bodies that are back there, because you're gonna
see line cooks, bussers, dishwashers, food runners, expediters. People think, oh,
the chef, and we've talked about this, right that, oh
(13:53):
the chef. This a chef can be amazing. There are
plenty of amazing chefs, but no chef cooks everything unless
you're at s place with like six or ten seats.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah right, yeah, like a sushi restaurant where the owner
is probably the guy who is cooking for you, and
he's highly specialized, and he might have an assistant.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
That's it, right, But most restaurants aren't going to operate
this way, right. I mean I worked at some much
larger restaurants where we would have fifty cooks on the
schedule every week. You think about fifty cooks, you think
about the average. I mean, the price of cooks has
gone up a lot, and I come from a cooking background.
It's very funny to me and some of the guys
(14:32):
I've grown up with where you're like, I used to
get paid nothing, and I used to get yelled at
every day, and now I have to be nice to
people and pay way more, which is good. It's good.
I'm happy about it, but it's certainly affecting the restaurant
profit math Okay, well.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Let's talk about the margins. What. Look, there are obviously
restaurants that make tremendous amounts of money, and there are
restaurants going out of business, But generally speaking, what is
the margin like in a restaurant. So the sort of.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Average thing you want to go for is is you're
going to try to spend thirty percent on any of
the stuff you're going to resell, Right, So that's going
to be your your food, your alcohol, all of that
stuff you try to keep to thirty percent. Then thirty
percent is what you're going to spend on all of
the people that are in the building. And then ten
percent you're hoping to keep for yourself so that you
(15:20):
can make money. And by the way, most people, if
they're profitable, are more in the like two to four
range these days, which is what creates some of these problems, right,
is if you're only making two to four percent, unless
you're a very big organization, that's not very much money.
At the end of the day, you're going to probably
spend ten percent on rent. You know, if you google it,
(15:41):
people will tell you to only spend six to eight
percent on your rent. But I know a lot of
restaurants these days that are paying more like twelve or
fifteen percent. But in theory, you make ten, so you
have thirty percent left for everything else. And the everything
else sounds so simple until you think about when you
sit down at a restaurant. You know why restaurants got
rid of tablecloths because they were expensive and no one
(16:04):
really cared. You know why we got rid of free
bread everywhere because they're expensive and no one really cared.
Do you know how many glasses my staff breaks. It's
like they're having a contest to see you can make
me the most mad, the quickest, I thought giving me
the bread for free, so to speak, and quotation marks
ahead of time. You're running a buffet type thing because
(16:25):
you want to fill people up. Sure, but I don't
want to fill you up with the thing you didn't
pay for. I want to fill you up with the
thing you pay for. But this is a problem, you know.
You see a lot of restaurants now credit card fees.
It's amazing to me how many more restaurants are adding
credit card fees all the time. How much do you
think that I spend on credit cards every month?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I thought it was like two percent or something.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, you see two percent get marketed all the time.
It ends up coming out to more like three and
a half percent. And all those people with an AMEX card.
Every time I see an AMEX, I just think about
how expense if you are as a guest, Amex is
very expensive. When you go to a restaurant and they
say we don't take AMEX, I get it. That's fair.
We'll talk about this in a later segment. But there's
(17:10):
a reason places are cash only because it's so expensive.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Let's talk about one bad week.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Okay, so let's talk about a restaurant, not huge, two
million dollars a year, forty thousand dollars weeks. This is
not a crazy business by any means. If you're doing
a forty thousand dollars week and you come up and
we're saying, hey, you're only making you know, four percent
there you're talking sixteen hundred bucks is what you're is
what you're making. Potentially, Do you know how much a
(17:39):
cost to call a plumber or a refrigerator repair guy
or pretty much anybody you're always going to need to
be calling because this is costing one hundred dollars, you
know you'd be amazed. It is never under one thousand dollars.
It's never under one thousand dollars. Yeah, and so this
is a thing. I've got a fridge, it's down right now.
I've got a guy who's a he's a good works cheap.
(18:01):
I love Jesse. Shout out to Jesse. He he's gonna
show up and he's gonna fix this refrigerator and it's
gonna cost me probably eight hundred dollars on the good end.
So you think about this. If I have a week
where I'm slow, there's lots of rain because people in
Dallas are terrified of going out in the rain, or
you know, people are just out of town or it's
too hot. If I have a week where I only
(18:23):
bring in one thousand bucks and my AC goes out
and I get a twelve hundred dollars repair bill, well,
everything I did that week was for free. Basically, all
I did was keep myself going. And this is a
reality that you see at more and more restaurants all
the time. You know, it's sort of this classic thing
when when a restaurant that's not good or not busy
(18:45):
or something closes. Of course people make those comments on
Instagram but it's so popular. You go, that place is
always busy, that place is always great. How could they close?
They closed because someone like me was just tired of
dealing with it. Because here's if I'm in my restaurant
every day working, I'm not making two hundred and granet
a year. That's not how that's working. And if I'm
(19:08):
making somewhere, you know, if I'm a five figure person,
slave in a way, all the hours every day, hoping
every week to not have a piece of equipment break.
Because again, we're manufacturing, sales and customer service all under
one roof. People don't think about it that way, but
we're a manufacturing facility. And if you're doing all of
(19:29):
that again, if I was making a quarter of a
million dollars a year, I'll put up with some of
the bs, But after a while you start to think,
you know, I could get a different job. And that's
why so many people who become we sort of joke
that you either die a restaurant person, or you become
a liquor rep or you become a real estate agent.
(19:51):
Those are the only three places you can go. There's
a saying that most restaurants aren't trying to get rich.
They're just trying to stay open. Of course, they're just
trying to stay open. You know, there's this thing where,
you know, working hard and not caring about the money
is like glorified. There was a great article that ran
out of a New York publication that said, why is
it bad for restaurants to admit they want to make money?
(20:12):
Because you're supposed to be artistic. You're not supposed to
care about that, but you know what, and no shade
on other artistic pursuits, obviously, but you can paint a
painting and that painting's done forever, and maybe no one
appreciates it, and maybe people don't see it, and maybe
it's gonna take twenty years of you painting in your
dingy apartment for people to recognize your art and you
to make money. But for those twenty years, I can't
(20:35):
put my food on a shelf and hope I'm appreciated.
Someday I watch it rot. And that's why, for the
first year of RYE, that's the only food I ever ate,
just before it spoiled.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So we're going to talk then coming up about meanwhile,
this is kind of ironic. How to kind of take
advantage of a restaurant and have the best deal for
you as a customer.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
You know, taking advantage of the restauranct, you're maximizing your experience.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Tanner, who is a restaurant tour a bartender and chef,
is going to tell us how to eat really well
without overspending seems counterproductive. You want people to spend as
much as possible.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Of course, I want you to spend as much as possible,
and I want you to have a great time doing it.
But anytime you're doing something, I mean, there's a way
to maximize it. And this is really going to start.
That's what happy hour is all about, right, It's sort
of this give and take between the restaurant and the person.
You aren't eating dinner yet, so it's hard for me
to convince you to buy something really expensive.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What I'm trying to get you to do is have
a drink while you wait for traffic to die down,
or you wait for the subway to not be as busy.
So you're trying to get a deal. I'm trying to
get people in my place. I know this isn't groundbreaking
work to say happy hour is a good place to
get a deal. But part of the reason, and this
is something kind of goes back to our last segment
with restaurant profit math. A lot of places, my place included,
(21:57):
we have an aggressive happy hour. Not because I may
money on it, I'm not, but because it's putting people
in my business. It's making the bar feel busy. It's
making sure that people are establishing a habit of coming
to my bar. They're tipping their staff, They're going to
know their staff, putting tips in the pool, so the
staff is making money and it really helps a great
(22:17):
happy hour. One of the things it does is make
sure that when the people who show up for dinner
at six point thirty seven on a Wednesday night walk
into a place that's already going where that energy is there.
Because I'm sure you've had this experience you walk into
a place at seven pm and you think are they open?
Because you're the first people there, and this helps kind
of protect that energy. But how do we make it
(22:38):
about you? Obviously that's what the segment's about. So happy
hour is great, but there's also a lot of really
good value in the appetizer section of the menu. Obviously,
appetizers are cheaper than entrace that's not, you know, groundbreaking,
But what also happens is a lot of restaurants sometimes
will have appetizers where they say, these are a little
(22:59):
bit more, and we're going to have to cut the
margin down. We know it's going to be hard for
us to sell appetizers if they cost too much. Right
when you go to a restaurants, you're going to get
entres so we have to reduce the price. So appetizers
can typically be a better return on what you're spending. Meanwhile,
appetizers are actually where a lot more of the time
(23:21):
chefs have the ability to cook what they want to cook,
not what ownership or management is telling them they have
to cook. Because many times I know a million restaurants
like this where the chef is told you have to
have a chicken entrade, and you have to have a salmon,
and you have to have a pork chop, and you
have to have a steak, and they're mandated to carry
six of their seven entrees. So the appetizer sections where
(23:44):
they really get to do something, really get to express well,
maybe you're not getting as much dollars worth and however
you want to measure that you're getting more from the chef.
There are plenty of restaurants that Grace and I have
gone to where we take just appetizers. We end up
ordering like seven or eight appetizers and that's our dinner,
which is also, of course just fun because sharing lots
(24:08):
of different things. I mean, I've talked about sharing. I'm
a huge fan of sharing. If you've got six friends
who are all good with sharing, that's an amazing way
to get to take advantage of a restaurant and get
your money's worth. Look, I love food. I love to eat,
but eating twelve ounces of a steak, it tastes the
same if I had a two ounce portion, but I
had to pay for all twelve. And so I love
(24:30):
going with big groups because I can have two ounces
of this, and two ounces of that and two ounces
of this. There's nothing more fun than will take the
menu please.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
You and I and I think your mom and Grace.
Maybe there were someone else. I remember going to a
restaurant in Dallas and that's for brunch, and that's pretty
much what we did.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Of course, it's a blast try everything.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Strategy versus where to save versus where to spend one thing.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I always think of when i'm ordering. You obviously order
what you want. But if you're between a couple things,
I always think, what is either something where A the
quality of the ingredients is going to be super obvious. Right,
great olive oil, you can tell, seafood you can really
tell right places where if there's ingredients you know you like,
great scallops are great. Bad scallops are terrible. So if
(25:22):
you know this restaurant, you know, you could think banded
scalops are kind of expensive. Yeah, but at least you're paying.
You're getting the value out of something you're going to
really like, Especially true when it's things that are labor intensive.
So obviously I can cook, I don't cook a ton
at home, and what I definitely don't cook are things
that are exhausting to cook. So like duck confee, I
got to cure the legs and then I got to
(25:44):
cook them in their own fat, and then I gotta
let them cool, and then I have to see them.
Making duck confee is like a multi day process. If
you're going to do it the right way, I'm never
ever gonna do that at home. So if I'm in
a cute French bestro, of course I'm going to order
the thing that's a pain in the end. That's my
favorite thing to order. Yeah, because somebody else made it. Actually,
(26:06):
one time, you were coming home around dinner time and
I looked online and I found this chicken recipe and
I went to the store and I got everything and
I made the meal. And this happens to people all
the time. It's a little intimidating to cook for a chef.
And even if you are my son, and you came
home and we were eating the chicken, and you weren't
saying anything.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So finally I said, what are you thinking. You said
it's great, And I said really, because I didn't think
you know. You said, yeah, I didn't cook it, right,
that was basically your criteria. Well, you're talking about labor
intensive dishes, things you can't replicate at home. That's one
of the reasons to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Of course, a lot of people think about a restaurant
as just a place you go get food. But if
you're a person who loves food, and I don't know
why you're listening to the show if you're not, you know,
that's one of the things, is what's something that's difficult
to make you know, we've talked in previous episodes about
restaurants kind of making their own shark couterie meats, making
their own cheeses, things like this. That's something that's really cool.
(27:04):
It's a thing that wouldn't exist anywhere else, a thing
you can't make at home. Those are my favorite things
to get out. Anybody can boil a box of dry
pasta and pour a jar of sauce on there. But
when you have hand rolled pasta that's fresh, there's a
different flavor profile. Obviously, how can you recognize flavor? I
just went out to someplace in Los Angeles and this
(27:27):
was crazy to me. So they're so committed to the
quality of pasta that they have a team of chefs
in Bologna in Italy and they make the pasta and
then they overnight it to Los Angeles because they said,
the technique of the people there, the water there, the
flour there, the eggs there, everything that we use to
(27:48):
make our pasta, we just can't replicate in Los Angeles.
And they've got like six locations now, so clearly the
public agrees.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I'm not going to go to.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Bologna and buy pasta today, so I might as well, well,
go to Ovo and I could just have it there.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
All right, let's talk about the experience versus the food.
Do you, as a person who is a chef and
so into food and fine dining, et cetera, ever go
to a restaurant because you just love the ambiance more
than the food.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I'm not going to name anyone specifically, but a couple
of my friends have restaurants like that, and that's exactly
why I go there. I like to see them, I
like to drink with them, I like to support them,
even if at the end of the day, you know,
it's only okay when the first thing in a restaurants,
you know, bio is on the twenty seventh floor of
(28:39):
the Biltmore Hotel, right yeah, yeah, or towering above the city.
You know that what you're paying for is that. And
it's sort of funny when you talk about, you know,
restaurant math, how do you make the margins work? Everybody
knows you go to the high up restaurant and you
overpay exactly because they're spending so much on rent that
they have to get it back on the food. And
(29:00):
then you just have to decide if that's worth it
to you. Is it worth it to me when I'm
watching sunset on the beach in a cabana. Yes, two
hours later when it's black and I can't see anything.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
No, all right, Well, a decent local restaurant can be
that kind of thing. I just like to hang out
at my local restaurant and I know the owner a
little bit, and you know that kind of thing. What
about what you might call luxury traps, things you shouldn't
actually be paying extra for.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, so gold leaf is sort of like the most
famous example. What does gold leaf taste like? Do you know? No, No,
neither does anyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I'm assuming it doesn't have a taste.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It doesn't really taste like anything. It looks cool, it's nice,
but it's one of those things like we'll throw it
on stuff from time to time. I mean, it can
be fun, but it's not one of those like upgrades
where you're like, man, this was really worth it, you know,
whereas like dry aging, like this dry age for two
hundred days and the texture and the flavor is going
to be really different, that's a place where you're getting it.
(29:59):
But there's so mu many things where just sort of
overdone right. Caviar bumps, are fun, but make sure that
you're getting actual caviar, that they're not just selling you trash.
Same thing with like getting a bottle of bubbles. Of course,
it's fun to pop champagne, but are you popping champagne?
Because sometimes people will tell you, oh, we have free
champagne on arrival, and it's like cheap prosecco. You can
(30:22):
see it on the bottle that it says protecto on there.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Stakes. Do you go high low? How do you choose?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
I think you either go to a cheap stake place
or you go all out on the most expensive cheap
on the most expensive place. Because the place that's mid tier,
you could probably just make that yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
At home before we go any further. And I should
have done this at the beginning of the show. Tanner,
you talk about Grace fairly often here on the show.
She's your partner. As of this show, she's your fiance.
That's true. We just got back from vacation and we
are officially engaged. That's Grace is actually upstairs right now,
so if she can hear me recording. Congratulations, honey, Well,
(30:59):
congratulations to you. Let's talk about restaurants that won't take
credit cards and restaurants and bars that only take credit cards.
Why those differences? So the cashless place is just more
and more popular. I was actually really annoyed and when
I was at a cashless restaurant, which is how this
kind of segment kind of got put together. There's a
(31:21):
lot of reasons to be cashless, and I can go
into them, but none of the reasons include just being
so annoying.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
About it all the time. They'll be like, we're cashless,
like that is if they've solved something or they've cured
us of the scores of cash. It just really annoys
me the attitudes some of these people take about it,
especially when it's something that's cheap. Right, I should be
able to buy a fro yo with cash. It's a
six dollars item. If you're cashless at a place that's
(31:49):
two hundred dollars a person, it's fine. I don't I'll
be okay. Why do restaurants go cashless? Well, the real
reason is because managing cash is super annoying. We have
to count the cash every day, you have to track
where it's going, you have to make change, which is
a constant annoyance for me. Because apothecarry opens at five pm,
and the bank closes at exactly five pm, so I
(32:09):
have to get in early as they normally do, and
then remember to check if we need change, and then
go to the bank and go get the change. But
if we were cashless, I would never have to think
about it. It's also fairly open to theft. I've had
to fire people before because they've stolen money, either money
that people paid or just straight up out of the
drawer as if we don't count it and have a
(32:30):
camera that points exactly at the cash register.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I see.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Part of what pushes cashless is, yes, it's easier for me,
it's less open to theft, but banks actually want you
to be cashless. This is not something people think about.
But okay, if you take one hundred dollars and you
bring it to a pothecarry and you buy cocktails, and
you give me one hundred dollars, and then I take
that hundred dollars and I then go buy ice cream
for myself, and then the ice cream store gives one
(32:57):
hundred dollars in cash to the dairy. That hundred dollars
stays one hundred dollars at all of those people. But
like I just said, if you pay with a credit card,
I lose. I don't get one hundred dollars, I get
ninety seven dollars, right, and then I have to transfer
it to whoever I'm paying off, and the bank's going
to get a fee of that, and the bank's going
(33:17):
to get a fee of this. So if you think
cashless is getting pushed by the restaurant industry, it's not.
It's getting pushed by big banking behind your back so
that they can take their little tiny piece off of everything.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Now, there are a lot of people, you know, in
the world that i'm normally and in talk radio I
hear from a lot of people whose conspiracy is that
it's the government that's pushing it, because once they go
cash lists, the government's got you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
I guess they can track your money. But trust me,
they're already tracking money. If you think that's not happening.
There's actually one of the banks I work with for
one of my restaurants. They're really big in East Texas,
and I was joking the other day with them because
they said, you wouldn't believe the kind of money that
comes in here. I said, what do you mean? He said,
we get like clearly under the couch for twenty years.
(34:01):
Money brought in here from people who don't trust the bank,
and they're like making they want us to hand count
it because they don't trust the machine to count the money.
So I told you I started. I wanted to do
this segment because I was annoyed at this place so
they didn't take cash. I mean, I always have a
credit card on me. It's not really a big deal.
I just happened to say, how come, like, how come
you guys decided to go only cash? And she said
(34:23):
they are cashless because they wanted to save trees. Oh,
which doesn't make any sense because Canadian money is made
out of polymers and American money is made out of cloth. Yes,
so there's no trees. No trees were hurt in the
making of this money.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
You know, she probably asked the boss, the owner whoever,
and he just said that and she bought it. But
I mean, I understand why there are places that don't
want to take a credit card because they don't want
to pay that fee. Wouldn't that be the primary reason
that places are cash only.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, you don't really want to pay the fee. You know,
some people also cash takes time. Right, People will say
that it can speed up that being cash lists can
kind of speed up service, although I'm sure you've had
the experience I've had where you go to someplace and
you tap to pay, but then you get a tip screen,
and then you get a signature screen, and then you
get a loyalty point screen, and then you get a
(35:16):
survey screen. So I'm not sure who's time's being saved.
But the biggest thing that cash does is save money.
I spend thousands of dollars a month just on processing
your credit card. The convenience of you using a credit
card instead of cash cost me thousands of dollars a month.
So here's my dream bar okay someday. This is the
(35:37):
kind of place I want to open. It is a
cash only bar okay, and there is an ATM in
the corner, and I charge a fee on that. By
the way, it's three dollars to use my cash atm,
all right, And then there's a mandatory twenty percent gratuity
on all of your cash transactions. And then it's on
a beach someplace like a Aruba where we got engaged,
and there it's perfect because you'll be mad of my
(36:00):
cash only fee to use my cash register or my ATM,
and mandatory duty. But it won't matter because how often
are you going to be in Aruba? Like never again.
So that's my perfect bar environment. I will absolutely print money.
I won't have to do flavor files anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Let's talk about what's more important than that, is anyone
listening right now? What's better for them?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
What's better for you is to be allowed to pay
how you want. This is the thing that sort of
makes me mad. Some people have jobs that are sort
of cash heavy, especially if you're a tipped person and
you have cash, and it's annoying not to be able
to use a cash and if you want to swipe
a credit card, you should be allowed to swipe a
credit card. I think a hospitality business is designed to
(36:42):
be hospitable, and part of being hospitable is allowing you
to give me money. I've had staff before it be like,
are we going to keep doing cash? And like the number?
If somebody says here's money, your job is to take it.
The taking of the money, right. We talk all about
serving people, knowing the menu and providing good service, But
if you talk to the staff about this, because it's
(37:04):
happened before that. People walk tabs, and you guys understand
that the taking of the money is sort of a
core function. Making them happy is important, but the taking
of the money is actually more important.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, that's what we're here for. And so do you
do both? You'd allow me to pay cash or credit card,
whichever I prefer. Oh, well, I.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Would prefer you pay cash. But it's only really dive bars.
I can still get away with it these days, and
I'm proud of them every time I see it.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, what I find interesting is there are people on
the other side who when they go into a place
that is cashless, they get very irritated because, as far
as they're concerned, cash is what the government has said
is our monetary exchange, and they don't think it should
be legal to say we won't take cash.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Money is money. You should be able to pay with it.
But it's a private business.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
That's sort of a funny thing about it, is am
I gonna make you handle money? I mean, to be honest, money,
he's kind of gross. You have no idea where it
came from. It's on your hands. Everybody's had that, especially
in Canada, where you know, so many of the dollars
are actually coins. Have you ever like had money hands
where you can just like smell money on you, or
(38:15):
especially if you're in high end environments in Dallas where
you like get a bill and you have to brush
a little cocaine off.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I think that that's the case a lot of places.
What do you think would happen in a restaurant if
let's say I came in the restaurant, I spent fifty
dollars and I'm going to give a twenty percent tip
it's sixty bucks, and I'm hauling twenties out of my
wallet and the waiter says, I'm sorry, sir, we're cashless,
and I'm going to take three twenties and lay it
on the table and say that's sixty bucks a twenty
(38:45):
percent tip up to you, and I get up and
walk out.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Well, for the record, I don't think you would actually
do this in real life. That's not how he behaves
at restaurants. Just so we're all clear, okay, But oh,
I have seen people get trapped and be like, oh,
I didn't realize what can I do? And in that scenario,
when I have actually seen servers do right, because a
server's incentivized to take your money. I have seen a
server tap and pay off their own phone and take
(39:12):
a customer's cash before. What are you going to do?
The sales over? You already ate the food. What am
I supposed to do now? Ask you to throw it
up for me?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Sorry, so you're gonna have to give that food back
you had on your notes here, And I'm just so
super curious to hear what this is about. Some guy
on a first date asked you for a Q tip. Yeah,
this just happened yesterday. I just put him here as
a little joke if we ran out of time. He
comes on a first date. He's clearly very nervous. It
was a ten thirty am brunch date, was his first date.
(39:41):
Part Way through the spield, you know, you're telling people
about the restaurant everything, the guy says, I'm sorry, my
ears are clogged. I need a Q tip, Sir, we
don't have Q tips here. And then he said, and
this is true, are you sure? Can you check in
the back well, at least to end this up. It's
(40:03):
a daily adventure doing what you do. And thanks for
spending time with us here on flavor files. It's p
h i l e s. You can find all of
our episodes at flavor files dot com.
Welcome to Flavor Files. This is an episode called Show
Me the Money. Tenner is going to talk about why
is everything getting so expensive? In fact, we'll get some
expertise on that coming up restaurant profit math. We'll talk
about restaurants and bars that won't take cash, some that
won't take credit cards, and how you can maximize your
dollar at a restaurant or bar. But first of all, Tenner,
(00:21):
as always, what's your amuse booze for today?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Are amuse booze? If you're feeling everything's expensive and you're
looking for a good value at the bar. This is
just a shot of well Muskull. Well is what they
call it the house spirits. It's the well is a
rail that sits like right in front of the ice,
between the bartender and the ice, so it's really fast
to grab. Generally, well spirits are always priced the same thing,
(00:45):
so it's easier, you know, nine dollars, ten dollars, whatever
it's going to be. Vodka is the cheapest for the bar,
so they make the most money on it. Maskull is
the most expensive for the bar, so they make the
least money on it. And that's how you keep that
money in your pocket.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So that's it. Just order the house mescal. That's your advice.
House mescal.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Also tequila and muscall's generally good brands have less intervention.
So some people say that agave spirits give better hangovers.
So if you're going to be doing well shots until
you get a hangover, well muscal would be the way
I would go.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Good advice. So why is everything getting so expensive? Well,
we ask that in our regular life, and it certainly
is something that is of major concern to restaurants. We
hear about restaurants closing down, and in some cases it's
simply because they can't afford the cost of the food
and the running of the restaurant and they can't pass
that effectively along. But we've got an expert joining us
(01:43):
on this. Doctor Sylvan Charlebois is known in Canada as
the food Professor. He's with Sylvey or with who's going
to name the University of Sylvan University. I'm not there yet.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He's with Tellhousie University. Thanks for doing that, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Can you answer the question that all me and my
chef friends are asking about, which is why is everything
so damn expensive? For US now, I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
It, Well, it depends what you're serving, right, I'd say
meat is a big issue right now. It's been an
issue for a while, especially beef. I'm sure you've noticed
that beef prices are really oh just in Texas. Yeah,
we've noticed, Yeah, because you guys eat a lot of
beef and you enjoy beef, and I mean demand is
actually still robust despite despite prices. But the reality is
(02:33):
that the herd size in the US is the same
as it was back in nineteen fifty one, and in
Canada is the same herd size as nineteen eighty nine.
So there's just no inventory and a lot of producers
are exiting the industry. They're cashing out, they're not coming back.
So the rebuild has been incredibly slow. So we're starting
(02:54):
to see more higher numbers, but it's going to take
a while. We're not expecting prices to stabilize before twenty
twenty seven, so that's that's a big one. The other
components of the meat trifecta, both pork and chicken, both
are actually more expensive in Canada. I mean, whole chicken
(03:17):
prices are up thirty percent, which is incredible. Produce is
a big deal. Also, we're predicting that prices will actually
increase by five to seven percent. That's also noticeable in
both in both countries right now in Canada and particular
because there was some pivoting going on moving away from
(03:38):
American goods. So we're getting fruits and vegetables from Peru,
South Africa, Egypt, Latin America, South America. It takes longer
to get to Canada, but it also costs more money
as well, and we're paying We're paying for that at
the tail, at the teller.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So do you think these are going to be more
temporary price increases or is this going to be something
we just need to settle in for, because you know,
I feel like I never ever see the prices go
back down. Sometimes if I have something like the lobster
population blooms, my price goes down. Sometimes lines get insane
and then they come back, But generally I feel like
it only ever ticks up on me.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
You're absolutely right, Tanner. I mean, demand for food is
inherently elastic, so it doesn't matter what price you're gonna buy,
and frankly when and this is why I hate I
hate politicians When all sudden they play around with taxes
and and and implementing measure that actually impacts prices all
of a sudden, because we have this this tendency to
(04:45):
get to get programmed to accept higher prices over time.
And so if say the price of beef is up,
well I don't expect prices to drop. That's why I
actually use the word stay price stabilization, because it's very
rare that prices will drop.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Coffee is a good example.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
In Canada. We had counter terraff on coffee last year,
counter terrace on coffee coming from the United States to
show Donald Trump, to show him that we're tough. But
the problem is that he made coffee more expensive. We're
not expecting coffee prices to drop. Even though counter terrafs
are gone now Privacy Carney actually eliminated them. But coffee
(05:30):
prices will won't drop. However, we are expecting some deals
here and there once in a while, just to basically
give some relief.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I don't understand that part. Why are we terriffing the
United States on coffee? They don't grow coffee.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Now, but they go through so a lot of coffee
goes through the United States. That's the thing. Because they
do buy a lot of coffee, and we buy coffee
from distributors roasters in the West.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So that's why.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
One of the that I have in the restaurant business
right is I have a dish. You the guests want
the dish to be the same. It always is, both
in flavor and in price, and so I'm having to
either eat the margin, raise the price, or just change
the dishes. You know, there's certain things that I have
to get rid of. There's this cost of consistency that
(06:20):
I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize that
I have to deal with. Do you think that you know,
we're talking about things getting more expensive. Do you think
quality is also going to change? Is that going to
be another problem I'm going to have to deal with
on the other side of the price equation.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Probably. I mean, there's shrinkflation, there's skim flation. You just
mentioned boths without saying the words, but that's basically what's
going on. It's apply happening in food service as well,
so smaller portions and as an operator, some operators attempted
to change ingredients using cheaper ones just because well, you
(06:57):
have to make ends meet. A lot of people think
that restaurants. Operators are making a ton of money. Margins
are incredibly slim, so as soon as you have ingrady
a it goes up in price. It really compromises your
ability to generate a profit. That's the reality. So in
Canada in particular, I mean, things are really really bad
(07:18):
because the economy is not as strong as in the US,
and so people aren't going out as much. We're actually
expecting the number of the net number of restaurants to
go down four thousand this year from eighty seven thousand
to eighty three thousand, and so that's because of the
economic context we're in right now. People don't have any
(07:40):
money and if they do go out. What's peculiar right
now is that there is a bit of a price
war in QSR like McDonald's for example, with the five
dollars value meal. But people actually aren't going to fast
food joints typically when the economy is still down, that's
(08:00):
where people go. They're not going there. They don't want
to pay twenty bucks for a hamburger and fry. They
actually go they go fast, casual, family, even fine dining.
But they won't order that entree, they won't order that
dessert and that expensive bottle of wine. So they're actually
going out getting service, but they won't go out as
(08:21):
much as often.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That four thousand drop in numbers of restaurants was a
Canadian number. As a Canadian number, Yep, it's not correspondingly
the same in the US because there's a lot of
restaurants going out there too.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, and Tanner would know that the economy in the
US is very different. So in Canada right now, about
thirty seven percent of a family's food budget is spent
outside the grocery store, So in a restaurant in the US,
it's actually more like fifty four percent.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I mean, no, it's certainly good news for ten Or
because the restaurant culture in the US, and you just
travel to the US, you can see there's restaurants like everywhere,
like everywhere, and so the restaurant culture is much more
develop and mature in the US and in Canada so
more so. There's about fifty four percent of an average
(09:20):
family in the US will spend their money at a restaurant,
compared to thirty seven percent in Canada.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Now, you said before that you think things will stabilize
in twenty twenty seven. What's going to happen over the
next year that's going to help cure us of this problem.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, so, first of all, beef is going to stabilize.
It doesn't mean that everything else is going to stabilize.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
That's the thing about food. I mean, you got twenty
seven thousand skews and there's twenty seven thousand stories in
a grocery store, so a lot of things can happen
right now. I mean, sugar is helping us a little bit.
The issue of dare in Canada is a little different
than the US because of supply management, but prices are
(10:05):
pretty high in Canada dairy. But we are expecting more stable,
more stable prices in the dairy section right now for
this year, but next year because of shortages. And we
know that in US there's there's a bit of a
a TikTok movement affecting a demand for cottage, cheese and yogurt,
so prices are actually going up on both sides of
(10:27):
the border. So it really there's a lot going on.
But overall, what we're seeing are two stories in North America.
In Canada, we have a food inflation rate of close
to four percent, which is the highest among G seven countries.
And in the US, despite the terrace, despite Iran and
(10:48):
everything else, the food inflation rate is at three point
three percent, which is basically the average among G seven countries.
So it's quite surprising because a year ago I would
have told you, my goodness, with the Trump regime, food
inflation is going to explode. In the US, it's gone up,
(11:09):
not dramatically compared to Canada.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Doctor Sylvan Charlebois, the food professor, is with Dalhousie University,
and we appreciate your input here. Thank you so much,
my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
For the next segment here on Flavor Files, I want
to talk about restaurant profit math. There's been this misconception
for a long time. You see a restaurant, you go
in there, it's eight pm on Saturday night, and you think,
oh my god, these people are making tons of money.
Look at how much money they're making, and they're not
making money. And that's what I wanted to sort of
explain to everybody how it actually works.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Well. There are a lot of headlines right now in
our economy where people are seeing that many restaurants are closing.
They've been having a tough time since COVID. But what
you're talking about, I think, Tanner, is if I go
to a place at eight o'clock on a Saturday night,
I'm seeing the busiest that probably ever going to be.
I'm not there on Tuesday where there are four customers. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
You're also not there on Tuesday morning when there's no
customers in a dinner only place, but there is a
set of staff that's preparing dinner. This is a thing
that a lot of people don't get RYE would open
at five pm, but staff would start showing up at
eight am. There are people whose entire workday happens before
a single person can walk through the door. And the
(12:23):
whole time you're running utilities, you're paying the person rent,
which is a common, you know, scourge of the restaurant business.
You move into a location because you can afford it,
You make the location cool, and your reward is your
rent goes up. It's awesome, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
And some of those people that came in at eight o'clock,
by the time you open for dinner, they say all right,
good luck and they leave. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
There are people, you know, day staff who or maybe
they work lunch, maybe you're a restaurant is open for lunch.
A lot of restaurants open for lunch just to try
to pay for the day staff. We did this for
a long time arrived before we finally just said we
were done bothering with it. Okay, our only hope was
that we'd bring in enough at lunch just to cover
that one person's wage. But it ends up becoming a
(13:10):
big pain. And you know, wages, this is a huge
thing in the restaurant business. It's people love to say,
We've talked about this on the show, right, Well, you're
not paying any of your service staff, right because it's
tips and everything, and I don't want to rehash that,
but if you actually look around a restaurant, there are
so many much higher wage people. You know, depending on
the size of the restaurant, you can have a beverage
(13:32):
manager and you can have a hospitality manager. You're a
maitre d, obviously you're gonna have a general manager. But
a kitchen. If you ever see an open kitchen, next
time you're in one of those restaurants, just count the
number of bodies that are back there, because you're gonna
see line cooks, bussers, dishwashers, food runners, expediters. People think, oh,
the chef, and we've talked about this, right that, oh
(13:53):
the chef. This a chef can be amazing. There are
plenty of amazing chefs, but no chef cooks everything unless
you're at s place with like six or ten seats.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah right, yeah, like a sushi restaurant where the owner
is probably the guy who is cooking for you, and
he's highly specialized, and he might have an assistant.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
That's it, right, But most restaurants aren't going to operate
this way, right. I mean I worked at some much
larger restaurants where we would have fifty cooks on the
schedule every week. You think about fifty cooks, you think
about the average. I mean, the price of cooks has
gone up a lot, and I come from a cooking background.
It's very funny to me and some of the guys
(14:32):
I've grown up with where you're like, I used to
get paid nothing, and I used to get yelled at
every day, and now I have to be nice to
people and pay way more, which is good. It's good.
I'm happy about it, but it's certainly affecting the restaurant
profit math Okay, well.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Let's talk about the margins. What. Look, there are obviously
restaurants that make tremendous amounts of money, and there are
restaurants going out of business, But generally speaking, what is
the margin like in a restaurant. So the sort of.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Average thing you want to go for is is you're
going to try to spend thirty percent on any of
the stuff you're going to resell, Right, So that's going
to be your your food, your alcohol, all of that
stuff you try to keep to thirty percent. Then thirty
percent is what you're going to spend on all of
the people that are in the building. And then ten
percent you're hoping to keep for yourself so that you
(15:20):
can make money. And by the way, most people, if
they're profitable, are more in the like two to four
range these days, which is what creates some of these problems, right,
is if you're only making two to four percent, unless
you're a very big organization, that's not very much money.
At the end of the day, you're going to probably
spend ten percent on rent. You know, if you google it,
(15:41):
people will tell you to only spend six to eight
percent on your rent. But I know a lot of
restaurants these days that are paying more like twelve or
fifteen percent. But in theory, you make ten, so you
have thirty percent left for everything else. And the everything
else sounds so simple until you think about when you
sit down at a restaurant. You know why restaurants got
rid of tablecloths because they were expensive and no one
(16:04):
really cared. You know why we got rid of free
bread everywhere because they're expensive and no one really cared.
Do you know how many glasses my staff breaks. It's
like they're having a contest to see you can make
me the most mad, the quickest, I thought giving me
the bread for free, so to speak, and quotation marks
ahead of time. You're running a buffet type thing because
(16:25):
you want to fill people up. Sure, but I don't
want to fill you up with the thing you didn't
pay for. I want to fill you up with the
thing you pay for. But this is a problem, you know.
You see a lot of restaurants now credit card fees.
It's amazing to me how many more restaurants are adding
credit card fees all the time. How much do you
think that I spend on credit cards every month?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I thought it was like two percent or something.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, you see two percent get marketed all the time.
It ends up coming out to more like three and
a half percent. And all those people with an AMEX card.
Every time I see an AMEX, I just think about
how expense if you are as a guest, Amex is
very expensive. When you go to a restaurant and they
say we don't take AMEX, I get it. That's fair.
We'll talk about this in a later segment. But there's
(17:10):
a reason places are cash only because it's so expensive.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Let's talk about one bad week.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Okay, so let's talk about a restaurant, not huge, two
million dollars a year, forty thousand dollars weeks. This is
not a crazy business by any means. If you're doing
a forty thousand dollars week and you come up and
we're saying, hey, you're only making you know, four percent
there you're talking sixteen hundred bucks is what you're is
what you're making. Potentially, Do you know how much a
(17:39):
cost to call a plumber or a refrigerator repair guy
or pretty much anybody you're always going to need to
be calling because this is costing one hundred dollars, you
know you'd be amazed. It is never under one thousand dollars.
It's never under one thousand dollars. Yeah, and so this
is a thing. I've got a fridge, it's down right now.
I've got a guy who's a he's a good works cheap.
(18:01):
I love Jesse. Shout out to Jesse. He he's gonna
show up and he's gonna fix this refrigerator and it's
gonna cost me probably eight hundred dollars on the good end.
So you think about this. If I have a week
where I'm slow, there's lots of rain because people in
Dallas are terrified of going out in the rain, or
you know, people are just out of town or it's
too hot. If I have a week where I only
(18:23):
bring in one thousand bucks and my AC goes out
and I get a twelve hundred dollars repair bill, well,
everything I did that week was for free. Basically, all
I did was keep myself going. And this is a
reality that you see at more and more restaurants all
the time. You know, it's sort of this classic thing
when when a restaurant that's not good or not busy
(18:45):
or something closes. Of course people make those comments on
Instagram but it's so popular. You go, that place is
always busy, that place is always great. How could they close?
They closed because someone like me was just tired of
dealing with it. Because here's if I'm in my restaurant
every day working, I'm not making two hundred and granet
a year. That's not how that's working. And if I'm
(19:08):
making somewhere, you know, if I'm a five figure person,
slave in a way, all the hours every day, hoping
every week to not have a piece of equipment break.
Because again, we're manufacturing, sales and customer service all under
one roof. People don't think about it that way, but
we're a manufacturing facility. And if you're doing all of
(19:29):
that again, if I was making a quarter of a
million dollars a year, I'll put up with some of
the bs, But after a while you start to think,
you know, I could get a different job. And that's
why so many people who become we sort of joke
that you either die a restaurant person, or you become
a liquor rep or you become a real estate agent.
(19:51):
Those are the only three places you can go. There's
a saying that most restaurants aren't trying to get rich.
They're just trying to stay open. Of course, they're just
trying to stay open. You know, there's this thing where,
you know, working hard and not caring about the money
is like glorified. There was a great article that ran
out of a New York publication that said, why is
it bad for restaurants to admit they want to make money?
(20:12):
Because you're supposed to be artistic. You're not supposed to
care about that, but you know what, and no shade
on other artistic pursuits, obviously, but you can paint a
painting and that painting's done forever, and maybe no one
appreciates it, and maybe people don't see it, and maybe
it's gonna take twenty years of you painting in your
dingy apartment for people to recognize your art and you
to make money. But for those twenty years, I can't
(20:35):
put my food on a shelf and hope I'm appreciated.
Someday I watch it rot. And that's why, for the
first year of RYE, that's the only food I ever ate,
just before it spoiled.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So we're going to talk then coming up about meanwhile,
this is kind of ironic. How to kind of take
advantage of a restaurant and have the best deal for
you as a customer.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
You know, taking advantage of the restauranct, you're maximizing your experience.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Tanner, who is a restaurant tour a bartender and chef,
is going to tell us how to eat really well
without overspending seems counterproductive. You want people to spend as
much as possible.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Of course, I want you to spend as much as possible,
and I want you to have a great time doing it.
But anytime you're doing something, I mean, there's a way
to maximize it. And this is really going to start.
That's what happy hour is all about, right, It's sort
of this give and take between the restaurant and the person.
You aren't eating dinner yet, so it's hard for me
to convince you to buy something really expensive.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What I'm trying to get you to do is have
a drink while you wait for traffic to die down,
or you wait for the subway to not be as busy.
So you're trying to get a deal. I'm trying to
get people in my place. I know this isn't groundbreaking
work to say happy hour is a good place to
get a deal. But part of the reason, and this
is something kind of goes back to our last segment
with restaurant profit math. A lot of places, my place included,
(21:57):
we have an aggressive happy hour. Not because I may
money on it, I'm not, but because it's putting people
in my business. It's making the bar feel busy. It's
making sure that people are establishing a habit of coming
to my bar. They're tipping their staff, They're going to
know their staff, putting tips in the pool, so the
staff is making money and it really helps a great
(22:17):
happy hour. One of the things it does is make
sure that when the people who show up for dinner
at six point thirty seven on a Wednesday night walk
into a place that's already going where that energy is there.
Because I'm sure you've had this experience you walk into
a place at seven pm and you think are they open?
Because you're the first people there, and this helps kind
of protect that energy. But how do we make it
(22:38):
about you? Obviously that's what the segment's about. So happy
hour is great, but there's also a lot of really
good value in the appetizer section of the menu. Obviously,
appetizers are cheaper than entrace that's not, you know, groundbreaking,
But what also happens is a lot of restaurants sometimes
will have appetizers where they say, these are a little
(22:59):
bit more, and we're going to have to cut the
margin down. We know it's going to be hard for
us to sell appetizers if they cost too much. Right
when you go to a restaurants, you're going to get
entres so we have to reduce the price. So appetizers
can typically be a better return on what you're spending. Meanwhile,
appetizers are actually where a lot more of the time
(23:21):
chefs have the ability to cook what they want to cook,
not what ownership or management is telling them they have
to cook. Because many times I know a million restaurants
like this where the chef is told you have to
have a chicken entrade, and you have to have a salmon,
and you have to have a pork chop, and you
have to have a steak, and they're mandated to carry
six of their seven entrees. So the appetizer sections where
(23:44):
they really get to do something, really get to express well,
maybe you're not getting as much dollars worth and however
you want to measure that you're getting more from the chef.
There are plenty of restaurants that Grace and I have
gone to where we take just appetizers. We end up
ordering like seven or eight appetizers and that's our dinner,
which is also, of course just fun because sharing lots
(24:08):
of different things. I mean, I've talked about sharing. I'm
a huge fan of sharing. If you've got six friends
who are all good with sharing, that's an amazing way
to get to take advantage of a restaurant and get
your money's worth. Look, I love food. I love to eat,
but eating twelve ounces of a steak, it tastes the
same if I had a two ounce portion, but I
had to pay for all twelve. And so I love
(24:30):
going with big groups because I can have two ounces
of this, and two ounces of that and two ounces
of this. There's nothing more fun than will take the
menu please.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
You and I and I think your mom and Grace.
Maybe there were someone else. I remember going to a
restaurant in Dallas and that's for brunch, and that's pretty
much what we did.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Of course, it's a blast try everything.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Strategy versus where to save versus where to spend one thing.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I always think of when i'm ordering. You obviously order
what you want. But if you're between a couple things,
I always think, what is either something where A the
quality of the ingredients is going to be super obvious. Right,
great olive oil, you can tell, seafood you can really
tell right places where if there's ingredients you know you like,
great scallops are great. Bad scallops are terrible. So if
(25:22):
you know this restaurant, you know, you could think banded
scalops are kind of expensive. Yeah, but at least you're paying.
You're getting the value out of something you're going to
really like, Especially true when it's things that are labor intensive.
So obviously I can cook, I don't cook a ton
at home, and what I definitely don't cook are things
that are exhausting to cook. So like duck confee, I
got to cure the legs and then I got to
(25:44):
cook them in their own fat, and then I gotta
let them cool, and then I have to see them.
Making duck confee is like a multi day process. If
you're going to do it the right way, I'm never
ever gonna do that at home. So if I'm in
a cute French bestro, of course I'm going to order
the thing that's a pain in the end. That's my
favorite thing to order. Yeah, because somebody else made it. Actually,
(26:06):
one time, you were coming home around dinner time and
I looked online and I found this chicken recipe and
I went to the store and I got everything and
I made the meal. And this happens to people all
the time. It's a little intimidating to cook for a chef.
And even if you are my son, and you came
home and we were eating the chicken, and you weren't
saying anything.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So finally I said, what are you thinking. You said
it's great, And I said really, because I didn't think
you know. You said, yeah, I didn't cook it, right,
that was basically your criteria. Well, you're talking about labor
intensive dishes, things you can't replicate at home. That's one
of the reasons to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Of course, a lot of people think about a restaurant
as just a place you go get food. But if
you're a person who loves food, and I don't know
why you're listening to the show if you're not, you know,
that's one of the things, is what's something that's difficult
to make you know, we've talked in previous episodes about
restaurants kind of making their own shark couterie meats, making
their own cheeses, things like this. That's something that's really cool.
(27:04):
It's a thing that wouldn't exist anywhere else, a thing
you can't make at home. Those are my favorite things
to get out. Anybody can boil a box of dry
pasta and pour a jar of sauce on there. But
when you have hand rolled pasta that's fresh, there's a
different flavor profile. Obviously, how can you recognize flavor? I
just went out to someplace in Los Angeles and this
(27:27):
was crazy to me. So they're so committed to the
quality of pasta that they have a team of chefs
in Bologna in Italy and they make the pasta and
then they overnight it to Los Angeles because they said,
the technique of the people there, the water there, the
flour there, the eggs there, everything that we use to
(27:48):
make our pasta, we just can't replicate in Los Angeles.
And they've got like six locations now, so clearly the
public agrees.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I'm not going to go to.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Bologna and buy pasta today, so I might as well, well,
go to Ovo and I could just have it there.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
All right, let's talk about the experience versus the food.
Do you, as a person who is a chef and
so into food and fine dining, et cetera, ever go
to a restaurant because you just love the ambiance more
than the food.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I'm not going to name anyone specifically, but a couple
of my friends have restaurants like that, and that's exactly
why I go there. I like to see them, I
like to drink with them, I like to support them,
even if at the end of the day, you know,
it's only okay when the first thing in a restaurants,
you know, bio is on the twenty seventh floor of
(28:39):
the Biltmore Hotel, right yeah, yeah, or towering above the city.
You know that what you're paying for is that. And
it's sort of funny when you talk about, you know,
restaurant math, how do you make the margins work? Everybody
knows you go to the high up restaurant and you
overpay exactly because they're spending so much on rent that
they have to get it back on the food. And
(29:00):
then you just have to decide if that's worth it
to you. Is it worth it to me when I'm
watching sunset on the beach in a cabana. Yes, two
hours later when it's black and I can't see anything.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
No, all right, Well, a decent local restaurant can be
that kind of thing. I just like to hang out
at my local restaurant and I know the owner a
little bit, and you know that kind of thing. What
about what you might call luxury traps, things you shouldn't
actually be paying extra for.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, so gold leaf is sort of like the most
famous example. What does gold leaf taste like? Do you know? No, No,
neither does anyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I'm assuming it doesn't have a taste.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It doesn't really taste like anything. It looks cool, it's nice,
but it's one of those things like we'll throw it
on stuff from time to time. I mean, it can
be fun, but it's not one of those like upgrades
where you're like, man, this was really worth it, you know,
whereas like dry aging, like this dry age for two
hundred days and the texture and the flavor is going
to be really different, that's a place where you're getting it.
(29:59):
But there's so mu many things where just sort of
overdone right. Caviar bumps, are fun, but make sure that
you're getting actual caviar, that they're not just selling you trash.
Same thing with like getting a bottle of bubbles. Of course,
it's fun to pop champagne, but are you popping champagne?
Because sometimes people will tell you, oh, we have free
champagne on arrival, and it's like cheap prosecco. You can
(30:22):
see it on the bottle that it says protecto on there.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Stakes. Do you go high low? How do you choose?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
I think you either go to a cheap stake place
or you go all out on the most expensive cheap
on the most expensive place. Because the place that's mid tier,
you could probably just make that yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
At home before we go any further. And I should
have done this at the beginning of the show. Tanner,
you talk about Grace fairly often here on the show.
She's your partner. As of this show, she's your fiance.
That's true. We just got back from vacation and we
are officially engaged. That's Grace is actually upstairs right now,
so if she can hear me recording. Congratulations, honey, Well,
(30:59):
congratulations to you. Let's talk about restaurants that won't take
credit cards and restaurants and bars that only take credit cards.
Why those differences? So the cashless place is just more
and more popular. I was actually really annoyed and when
I was at a cashless restaurant, which is how this
kind of segment kind of got put together. There's a
(31:21):
lot of reasons to be cashless, and I can go
into them, but none of the reasons include just being
so annoying.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
About it all the time. They'll be like, we're cashless,
like that is if they've solved something or they've cured
us of the scores of cash. It just really annoys
me the attitudes some of these people take about it,
especially when it's something that's cheap. Right, I should be
able to buy a fro yo with cash. It's a
six dollars item. If you're cashless at a place that's
(31:49):
two hundred dollars a person, it's fine. I don't I'll
be okay. Why do restaurants go cashless? Well, the real
reason is because managing cash is super annoying. We have
to count the cash every day, you have to track
where it's going, you have to make change, which is
a constant annoyance for me. Because apothecarry opens at five pm,
and the bank closes at exactly five pm, so I
(32:09):
have to get in early as they normally do, and
then remember to check if we need change, and then
go to the bank and go get the change. But
if we were cashless, I would never have to think
about it. It's also fairly open to theft. I've had
to fire people before because they've stolen money, either money
that people paid or just straight up out of the
drawer as if we don't count it and have a
(32:30):
camera that points exactly at the cash register.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I see.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Part of what pushes cashless is, yes, it's easier for me,
it's less open to theft, but banks actually want you
to be cashless. This is not something people think about.
But okay, if you take one hundred dollars and you
bring it to a pothecarry and you buy cocktails, and
you give me one hundred dollars, and then I take
that hundred dollars and I then go buy ice cream
for myself, and then the ice cream store gives one
(32:57):
hundred dollars in cash to the dairy. That hundred dollars
stays one hundred dollars at all of those people. But
like I just said, if you pay with a credit card,
I lose. I don't get one hundred dollars, I get
ninety seven dollars, right, and then I have to transfer
it to whoever I'm paying off, and the bank's going
to get a fee of that, and the bank's going
(33:17):
to get a fee of this. So if you think
cashless is getting pushed by the restaurant industry, it's not.
It's getting pushed by big banking behind your back so
that they can take their little tiny piece off of everything.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Now, there are a lot of people, you know, in
the world that i'm normally and in talk radio I
hear from a lot of people whose conspiracy is that
it's the government that's pushing it, because once they go
cash lists, the government's got you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
I guess they can track your money. But trust me,
they're already tracking money. If you think that's not happening.
There's actually one of the banks I work with for
one of my restaurants. They're really big in East Texas,
and I was joking the other day with them because
they said, you wouldn't believe the kind of money that
comes in here. I said, what do you mean? He said,
we get like clearly under the couch for twenty years.
(34:01):
Money brought in here from people who don't trust the bank,
and they're like making they want us to hand count
it because they don't trust the machine to count the money.
So I told you I started. I wanted to do
this segment because I was annoyed at this place so
they didn't take cash. I mean, I always have a
credit card on me. It's not really a big deal.
I just happened to say, how come, like, how come
you guys decided to go only cash? And she said
(34:23):
they are cashless because they wanted to save trees. Oh,
which doesn't make any sense because Canadian money is made
out of polymers and American money is made out of cloth. Yes,
so there's no trees. No trees were hurt in the
making of this money.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
You know, she probably asked the boss, the owner whoever,
and he just said that and she bought it. But
I mean, I understand why there are places that don't
want to take a credit card because they don't want
to pay that fee. Wouldn't that be the primary reason
that places are cash only.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, you don't really want to pay the fee. You know,
some people also cash takes time. Right, People will say
that it can speed up that being cash lists can
kind of speed up service, although I'm sure you've had
the experience I've had where you go to someplace and
you tap to pay, but then you get a tip screen,
and then you get a signature screen, and then you
get a loyalty point screen, and then you get a
(35:16):
survey screen. So I'm not sure who's time's being saved.
But the biggest thing that cash does is save money.
I spend thousands of dollars a month just on processing
your credit card. The convenience of you using a credit
card instead of cash cost me thousands of dollars a month.
So here's my dream bar okay someday. This is the
(35:37):
kind of place I want to open. It is a
cash only bar okay, and there is an ATM in
the corner, and I charge a fee on that. By
the way, it's three dollars to use my cash atm,
all right, And then there's a mandatory twenty percent gratuity
on all of your cash transactions. And then it's on
a beach someplace like a Aruba where we got engaged,
and there it's perfect because you'll be mad of my
(36:00):
cash only fee to use my cash register or my ATM,
and mandatory duty. But it won't matter because how often
are you going to be in Aruba? Like never again.
So that's my perfect bar environment. I will absolutely print money.
I won't have to do flavor files anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Let's talk about what's more important than that, is anyone
listening right now? What's better for them?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
What's better for you is to be allowed to pay
how you want. This is the thing that sort of
makes me mad. Some people have jobs that are sort
of cash heavy, especially if you're a tipped person and
you have cash, and it's annoying not to be able
to use a cash and if you want to swipe
a credit card, you should be allowed to swipe a
credit card. I think a hospitality business is designed to
(36:42):
be hospitable, and part of being hospitable is allowing you
to give me money. I've had staff before it be like,
are we going to keep doing cash? And like the number?
If somebody says here's money, your job is to take it.
The taking of the money, right. We talk all about
serving people, knowing the menu and providing good service, But
if you talk to the staff about this, because it's
(37:04):
happened before that. People walk tabs, and you guys understand
that the taking of the money is sort of a
core function. Making them happy is important, but the taking
of the money is actually more important.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, that's what we're here for. And so do you
do both? You'd allow me to pay cash or credit card,
whichever I prefer. Oh, well, I.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Would prefer you pay cash. But it's only really dive bars.
I can still get away with it these days, and
I'm proud of them every time I see it.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, what I find interesting is there are people on
the other side who when they go into a place
that is cashless, they get very irritated because, as far
as they're concerned, cash is what the government has said
is our monetary exchange, and they don't think it should
be legal to say we won't take cash.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Money is money. You should be able to pay with it.
But it's a private business.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
That's sort of a funny thing about it, is am
I gonna make you handle money? I mean, to be honest, money,
he's kind of gross. You have no idea where it
came from. It's on your hands. Everybody's had that, especially
in Canada, where you know, so many of the dollars
are actually coins. Have you ever like had money hands
where you can just like smell money on you, or
(38:15):
especially if you're in high end environments in Dallas where
you like get a bill and you have to brush
a little cocaine off.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I think that that's the case a lot of places.
What do you think would happen in a restaurant if
let's say I came in the restaurant, I spent fifty
dollars and I'm going to give a twenty percent tip
it's sixty bucks, and I'm hauling twenties out of my
wallet and the waiter says, I'm sorry, sir, we're cashless,
and I'm going to take three twenties and lay it
on the table and say that's sixty bucks a twenty
(38:45):
percent tip up to you, and I get up and
walk out.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Well, for the record, I don't think you would actually
do this in real life. That's not how he behaves
at restaurants. Just so we're all clear, okay, But oh,
I have seen people get trapped and be like, oh,
I didn't realize what can I do? And in that scenario,
when I have actually seen servers do right, because a
server's incentivized to take your money. I have seen a
server tap and pay off their own phone and take
(39:12):
a customer's cash before. What are you going to do?
The sales over? You already ate the food. What am
I supposed to do now? Ask you to throw it
up for me?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Sorry, so you're gonna have to give that food back
you had on your notes here, And I'm just so
super curious to hear what this is about. Some guy
on a first date asked you for a Q tip. Yeah,
this just happened yesterday. I just put him here as
a little joke if we ran out of time. He
comes on a first date. He's clearly very nervous. It
was a ten thirty am brunch date, was his first date.
(39:41):
Part Way through the spield, you know, you're telling people
about the restaurant everything, the guy says, I'm sorry, my
ears are clogged. I need a Q tip, Sir, we
don't have Q tips here. And then he said, and
this is true, are you sure? Can you check in
the back well, at least to end this up. It's
(40:03):
a daily adventure doing what you do. And thanks for
spending time with us here on flavor files. It's p
h i l e s. You can find all of
our episodes at flavor files dot com.
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