1225: Erik Niel, Chef/Owner of Easy Bistro & Bar, Main Street Meats, and Little Coyote

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable #1225 – Erik Niel, Chef/Owner of Easy Bistro & Bar, Main Street Meats, and Little Coyote (Chattanooga, TN) Release Date: October 6, 2025
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Guest: Chef Erik Niel

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Episode Overview

In this in-depth interview, Chef and Restaurateur Erik Niel returns to Restaurant Unstoppable a decade after his first appearance. With 25+ years devoted to Chattanooga’s food scene, Erik shares his remarkable journey growing Easy Bistro & Bar, reimagining Main Street Meats, and most recently launching Little Coyote—all while adapting to massive industry shifts, pandemic disruptions, and evolving local tastes. This episode is a masterclass on restaurant numbers, team chemistry, strategy, pivoting through crisis, and leading with humility.

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Main Theme

Relentless Pursuit of Perfection:
Erik’s driving philosophy is about aiming for an ever-evolving, “never quite attainable” perfection—personally, culinarily, and in business. He describes how constant adaptation, embracing humility, and obsessing over guest experience fuels sustained success.

“It is the ball that you can never catch. …If you’re not diving for the ground ball and relentlessly pursuing the perfection that you’re after, you’re never going to get there.”
— Erik Niel (05:57)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current State of the Business – Three Concepts, Three Different Games

• Easy Bistro & Bar:

  • Downsized from 230 to 135 seats (pandemic move, 2020)
  • Ideal prime cost ~65% (35-36% labor, 29-30% COGS)
  • Rent: 4-5% of revenue
  • Profitable with 8–12% margins

• Main Street Meats:

  • USDA-certified butcher shop, restaurant, bar, 76 seats
  • Blended prime costs hover ~70% due to unique challenges (40% COGS—due to blended butchery/restaurant model—33-34% labor)
  • Profitability: happy with 8–10%, will never hit fast-casual/QSR margins.
  • Catering, Holiday meals, unique retail/dining mix

• Little Coyote:

  • 18 months old, BBQ & tacos, fully gluten free
  • Prime cost target 65% (split: ~32-33% labor, 30-31% COGS)
  • Just breaking into the black—reinforces the need for patience and capital runway.

On realistic profit expectations:

“If you’re in this business purely for the sake of making money… full service is not it.”
— Erik Niel (09:30)

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2. From Louisiana Roots to Restaurant Leadership

• Growing up hunting, fishing, family food traditions in Louisiana – food is community, identity.
• Studied psychology and business at UT Austin, then culinary at Johnson & Wales (Vail).
• Considers psychology studies fundamental to managing people; culinary school valuable because he worked at the same time:

  “If you’re just going to culinary school and not working at the same time, I think you’re leaving way more than 50% of the knowledge on the table.” (20:31)

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3. Evolution Through Mistakes, Market Fit & Scaling Down

• Opened original Easy Bistro in 2005—326 seats, $650K investment (mostly friends, family, SBA loan)
• Early mistakes:
  • Oversized space, high overhead, market not ready for avant-garde dining
  • Unwillingness to adapt the menu fast enough to local tastes
  • Became “special occasion” spot; volume not sufficient for sustainability

Major Lessons:

• Small can be beautiful—downsizing created higher per-square-foot revenue, allowed sectioning off space, better labor controls.
• Menu and concept must track with evolving local diners.

On struggling for relevance and survival:

“…it was just a little bit too far ahead of its time to be really … appreciated in the way I hoped.” (50:58)

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4. Reputation, Community, and Timing

• Importance of local support and slowly “earning” community’s pride
• Changing Chattanooga: mobility, tastes, and transplants led to more adventurous dining; “the market had grown up.”

Tipping Point:

“There was a moment around that 15-16 time frame that the community in Chattanooga really started to embrace Easy… It started to really make more sense.” (53:05)

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5. Culture & Communication: Pre-Shift Rituals & Extreme Team Focus

• Decades-long commitment to robust, daily (45 min) pre-shift meetings:

  • Go over food, bar, tasting, guest stories, open feedback, even personal events or issues.
  • NOT focused primarily on sales $; covers and guest experience matter more.

• Recognizes the difference between stated values and lived culture:

  “It is the values that these restaurants possess with or without me standing there.” (59:06)

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6. Butchery Business Model – What Works and What’s Broken

• Open butchery (Main Street Meats) only works when integrated with restaurant/bar revenue.
• “Romantic” whole-animal butchery is financially brutal: supply/demand problems, costly labor, not enough margin in specialty cuts.
• Shifted to sourcing from a blend of local producers (Bear Creek Farms), plus reputable box beef (Niman Ranch), balancing ethics and customer expectations.

Pandemic Silver Lining:

• Butcher shop deemed essential, quadrupled production overnight; exposed more people to high-quality meat—sales up 40–50% post-pandemic.

“People would come back and look at me and say, like, that was the best fucking steak I’ve ever had. …Nothing—just paid for a really good steak.” (87:45)

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7. Adaptation, Growth, and Leading From the Kitchen to the Office

• Pandemic was crucible for change: forced relocation, retooling, and acceptance that Chef needed to step back from the line to lead the business.
• Created advancement lanes for others; learned to “let go” of chef-centric identity—embracing role as restaurateur, developer of people.
• Investing in management, culture, and systems freed him to open more concepts and grow the brand’s impact.

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8. Little Coyote: Reinventing Tacos, Barbecue, and the Shared Table

• Inspiration: marrying fine-dining attention to detail with approachable, community-friendly food (tacos, smoked meats, all made from scratch, gluten-free).
• Menu engineered for sharing; tortillas freshly made daily; cross-cultural influences (exploring West African, Tex-Mex, global communal eating forms).
• Major focus on re-creating foundational culture and clear communication from launch.

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9. Operations, Systems & Technology

• Has embraced tech: Toast POS, 7shifts (scheduling), Tipmetric (tip pooling transparency), Google Drive for manuals/recipes, Resy for reservations.
• Each restaurant operates as a separate LLC (same manager, unified systems).
• Communication (internal & guest-facing) is the primary value-add of technology.
• Transparent tip pooling system with merit and tenure-based “points” for front and back of house—creates equity, stability, and incentivizes growth (kitchen included in tip pool).

“I have servers and bartenders who have been here for over 10 years. …At the same time, they don’t have to face the highs and lows. … We have turned this into a team sport.” (106:36 – 106:49)

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10. Marketing & Community Awareness

• Majority of marketing spend has shifted to Google AdWords ($12K–$15K/year per restaurant), which consistently drives butts to seats.
• Social media’s effectiveness is increasingly opaque (“algorithm roulette”); stories and video outperform static food shots.
• Leveraging media pub, PR, and podcast features as content/staying top of mind.
• Acknowledges the rising power of “marketplaces” (Google, Yelp, DoorDash, Resy) over direct brand control:

  “Consumers are becoming more loyal to marketplaces than they are to the actual people in the market.” (140:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Relentless Pursuit:

  “We compete with ourselves every day. These restaurants compete with themselves every day to be better versions of who they are.” (06:39)

• On humility and culture:

  “We talk about how the three most beautiful words in the English language are, ‘I fucked up.’ …It immediately disarms whomever you say it to.” (143:35)

• On the centrality of the guest:

  “Guests always want to be taken care of. …If you stay true to that, you can always have a really good business.” (39:40)

• On team and legacy:

  “We all stand on the backs of everybody who’s worked in these places before us. …There are people who work here now that weren’t even alive when this place opened.” (109:07)

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Important Timestamps

• Relentless pursuit of perfection – Definition: 05:49 — 06:39
• Financials/pricing realities (Easy Bistro): 08:01 — 09:02
• Opening story, financing, early mistakes: 33:28 — 36:39
• Value of pre-shift, culture creation: 55:54 — 58:44
• Tip pooling/points system mechanics: 99:41 — 106:23
• Pandemic, moving Easy Bistro, reimagining the menu: 90:35 — 94:48
• Little Coyote origin, process, and concept: 114:24 — 122:23
• Tech stack and operational changes: 124:12 — 127:08, 127:49 — 128:48
• Marketing spend and shift to Google/Marketplace influence: 138:05 — 140:56
• Uncommon value (“I fucked up”): 143:35 — 144:22
• 3 pieces of wisdom: 144:52 — 145:07

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Final Wisdom from Erik Niel

Three Pieces of Wisdom:

1. Enjoy it.
2. Don’t fear, just do.
3. Love as hard as you can.
   (145:01 – 145:07)

Personal transformation:
Through mistakes, humility, and relentless commitment to service, Erik became a better leader—dedicated to “bending toward doing the right thing” for guests, staff, and business.

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In Erik’s Words (On Uncommon Values)

“The three most beautiful words in the English language are, ‘I f****d up.’ …It immediately disarms whomever you say it to.… If you can take that philosophy and that ownership of your mistake, …that pays dividends in the long run.”
— Erik Niel (143:35)

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Connect with Erik Niel

• Easy Bistro & Bar: easybistro.com
• Email: [e-mail]

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A must-listen for anyone thinking about scaling up, scaling down, or pursuing a restaurant or butcher shop hybrid. Erik Niel’s humility, candor, and strategic vision offer a rich playbook for sustainability, culture, and continuous evolution.

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For full show notes, visit RestaurantUnstoppable.com

Transcript

[Jason]

You hear me say it all the time.

[Eric]

Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the industry. We inspire with stories, we empower with.

[Jason]

Knowledge and perspectives and we transform with community.

[Eric]

And that's what's happening over at Restaurant Unstoppable Network.

[Jason]

And the live events are worth showing up for. October is the month to sign up for RU Live. We have so many great things happening.

[Eric]

So we.

[Jason]

You've heard of our workshops. We have the Power Hours. I make myself available, but I also have some of the most badass experts making themselves available, whether that be monthly or quarterly. And here is just an example of.

[Eric]

What we have in store for you. We have a P and L Power.

[Jason]

Hour every other week with the CEO.

[Eric]

Of Restaurant Systems Pro, Fred Langley.

[Jason]

We have a leadership strategy culture Power Hour with the founder of Mick Companies, Rudy Mick. We have a Bar Operations Power Hour with the founder of Bar Metrics, Sean Fincher. We have a front of house and back of house operations optimization Power Hour with former Cornell profess Stephanie Robson. And we have an EOS Power Hour with eos, the entrepreneurial operating system integrator Blake Winters. And we have a profit first, Power Hour with the author of Profit first for restaurants, Casey Anton. I have done the hard work of finding out what it takes to become unstoppable. And guys, the answer is people. It's about relationships, it's about community. And I'm putting together this amazing group of people for you to learn from. The best in the industry. 42 doll a month is all it takes to to surround yourself with these incredible individuals. We'll see you there.

[Eric]

Head over to restaurantstoppable.com live.

[Jason]

Welcome to Restaurant Unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by me. M is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus and nail food execution at scale. We know to scale you need consistency because consistency builds trust with your guests and your staff. We all want to know what the.

[Eric]

Job done right looks like.

[Jason]

And when you have systems, your systems are a picture of perfection of what that job done right is. And that puts us to peace. We are so happy when we know we're doing a good job. Me will be the one source of truth for your entire team. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable. That's www.g e t m e e z.com unstoppable. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you can. It's called Restaurant Systems Pro. And with restaurant, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger, and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve, because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to Restaurant Unstoppable.com RSP where you can schedule your own demo demo. Watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show. That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP. This episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and 20th. This is going to be one you do not want to miss. I'm going to be there. I want you to be. Here's what you got to do. And the clock is ticking, so do not delay. Register now at www.usfoods.com food fanatics2025 or just go to usfoods.com and look for the banner with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest chef, owner of Easy beastrone Bar, Main street, meets in his newest concept.

[Eric]

Little Coyote Chef Eric Neil. My man. Eric, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[Eric Neal]

I feel unstoppable, Absolutely. Thank you.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Stoked to have you here. This isn't your first time on the show. You felt so familiar so far back ago that if I do a Google search, Eric Neal, restaurant Unstoppable, I cannot find it.

[Jason]

And when I was researching you today.

[Eric]

I was like, this guy feels so familiar. And then when we, when we. When I got here, you're like, I've been on the show.

[Jason]

I was like, I thought this felt familiar. So the second time on the show.

[Eric]

The first time you said it was 2015, right?

[Eric Neal]

10. 10 years ago.

[Jason]

10 years ago.

[Eric]

So you're like episode 200 and something.

[Jason]

The show has changed so much since then.

[Eric]

I'm not even gonna have my listeners go back and try to find that first episode because I'm embarrassed at what those sounded like.

[Eric Neal]

We were over the phone. I mean. Yeah, it was a totally different deal. So it's great.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And congratulations.

[Jason]

Thank you, man.

[Eric]

And you've been busy since 2015. You've opened two more concepts, open two more restaurants, and you're killing it. And I can't wait to dive in. Before we do, let's get that motivational, inspirational ball rolling with the success quarter mantra. What do you got for us?

[Eric Neal]

The mantra is, and I call this the cheesy Lexus ad. It is the relentless pursuit of perfection.

[Eric]

Relentless pursuit of perfection. What does that mean to you? Dive into that.

[Eric Neal]

It is the ball that you can never catch. It just keeps getting a little bit further out of your hands, and you keep striving for it, leaping, laying out, jumping, diving, whatever. But if you're not diving for the ground ball and relentlessly pursuing what it is you're after, the perfection that you're after, you're never going to get there.

[Eric]

Yeah, man, 100%. And, like, I think it's that. It's. It's that Simon Sinek talks about. Have you heard his latest book? I think it's his latest book. He might have had a new one release. That guy puts out a book every year. The Infinite Game. Have you heard of it?

[Eric Neal]

I have not.

[Jason]

The whole idea of that book is.

[Eric]

Really just that they don't play, like, play this game that is infinite, that there is no end. And there is no better end like Infinite Game than the game against yourself. Just being a little bit better every.

[Jason]

Day, knowing that you'll never be perfect.

[Eric Neal]

We compete with ourselves every day. These restaurants compete with themselves every day to be better versions of. Of who they are. As I speak about restaurants, like people, because they're. They are an amalgamation of people. And if you're not striving every day to improve, be better, pursue the perfection. What purpose do we have?

[Eric]

I love it, man. Great way to get this thing started before we kind of go back to 2005 or before that.

[Amanda]

Yep.

[Eric]

Because you were doing stuff in the industry before 2005. Where are you today? Big picture. Three locations, all full service.

[Eric Neal]

Big picture. You know, I have. My wife and I currently run three restaurants. Easy Bistro, Main street meets Little Coyote. All the different phases of their lifestyle. We're in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Been cooking professionally here for 25 years. And I Feel like I am at a really great, kind of mature place in my career where I know what I've done, and I kind of know where I'm going. And now I'm working on a different set of thoughts and problems. Is, you know, how do I. How do I finish this? Well, you know.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

So in terms of actual, like, let's start with Easy Beast Real. We'll go in chronic, a lot of chronological order. The. The concept. You've opened how many seats?

[Eric Neal]

Easy Bistro current. So Easy Bistro moved in in 2020 during the pandemic. So we were in a bigger space that had about 230 seats, and we downsized to about 135, which I think is the perfect size for this restaurant. I absolutely love it.

[Eric]

I love that. So in terms of numbers here, with your 135 seats, what are your prime costs? Where are you at with your labor?

[Eric Neal]

Prime costs are, you know, we. We aim for 65%. And so that's blended cogs and labor. If we hit that, we do, you know, we. We can make our marks pretty well. Labor is, I would say 35, 36% of that. Cost of goods on the other side is usually 30 to 29% of that.

[Eric]

Okay. Okay, cool. And in terms of rent, where are you with your percent rent and all that stuff?

[Eric Neal]

Percentage rent. I have to do some math on that one, but I say we're in the 4 to 5% range.

[Eric]

4 to 5. That's good. That's real good.

[Eric Neal]

Awesome.

[Eric]

So the question that everyone wants to know, what's your percent profit?

[Eric Neal]

We can produce between 8 and 12% annually, depending on how the restaurant runs. And I feel great about that. We've certainly done a little bit better than that, and I've definitely done a lot worse than that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Over the years, in its mature phase, Easy Bistro can, you know, can average about 10%, you know, and that's one of the things.

[Eric]

And it's a weird conversation to have, but I think everyone's. You hear it a lot in the media. Like, hey, if you're not doing 20%, like, 20% is possible. Or even 15% possible. It is possible. Those numbers are more achievable with huge volume.

[Eric Neal]

Yes.

[Eric]

And. Or a QSR or fast casual, which is why there's such a trend towards people going in that direction.

[Eric Neal]

If you're in this business purely for the sake of making money and. And, you know, trying to extract from people and put in your wallet the most.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

This is not the ball game. You want to be in full service, is not it?

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So I'm curious when you went from 300 or it was a 230 to 135. Actually, let's, let's, we're going to talk about that. Like that's a teaser. No, I want to know like how that affected your numbers. So that's your first location.

[Eric Neal]

Second location, main street meets.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Tiny butcher shop. You know, so we're USDA inspected. Butcher shop, charcuterie with a full retail counter that's fed by the butcher shop, small bar, dining room and kitchen and patio. So we're about 76 seats there all in.

[Eric]

76 seats. Again, prime cost.

[Eric Neal]

Prime cost there run up towards 70%.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And the reason for that is we blend our cost on the butcher case and the cost of food because it's very hard to separate the two things into two different businesses.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

Because they work back and forth with each other on a moment to moment basis.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

So we're, you know, we're shooting for a 40% food cost there.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

Which sounds outrageous, but you just have to take the, you know, take the good, you know, the good with the bad and the, and take in consideration what we're doing to get those that blended cost.

[Eric]

And then if you're at 7, that would give you a 30% labor cost.

[Eric Neal]

30, 30. Well, once we add in liquor, wine, beer, that kind of stuff, we can bring our cost of goods bit little, a little bit below that 40 mark. So we're usually in the 33, 34 labor cost there.

[Eric]

And is that a profitable concept?

[Eric Neal]

It is a profitable concept. It, it will never produce that 20% that people say that, you know, you can get out of it because of the cost that it, it takes to run both a butcher shop and a restaurant and a bar and a kitchen and a, or and a dining room in the same 2600 square feet.

[Eric]

Got it. So where are you with that in terms of profitability?

[Eric Neal]

If we're at 10, we're real happy.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

So on average like eight, eight to 10. Yeah, got it.

[Eric]

And then last concept is full service. Yes, This I love watching like the, like restaurant tours open restaurants over time.

[Amanda]

Oh yeah.

[Eric]

Because you see that there's an evolution happening, of course. Barbecue and tacos.

[Eric Neal]

Every, every chef wants to have their taco restaurant and barbecue restaurant at some point. And so I just been joking that I've just smashed them both together.

[Eric]

And is that your most profitable concept in terms of like volume and like costs and stuff like that?

[Eric Neal]

It's the new baby that we have. So it's about 18 months old and it's starting to settle itself out. Okay. It's costs mirror easy. A little bit more than Main Street Meats, for sure. You know, we're getting, looking for a 65% prime cost there with, you know, 32 and 32, 33 in labor and trying to be in the 30% mark on food and everything else.

[Eric]

All right, so 65% prime cost. And hit me, hit me with that split one more time.

[Eric Neal]

33, 30. Let's say 33, 34 on the labor and 31 on the cost of goods total across the board.

[Amanda]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

Make that 65.

[Amanda]

Cool.

[Eric]

Sweet, man. So are you guys still operating the.

[Jason]

Red in that one?

[Eric]

Getting it going or isn't it black yet?

[Eric Neal]

It's getting there. It's in the. It's in the black, but barely.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And I think, you know, they say the number one reason why restaurants fail is because they're under capitalized.

[Amanda]

Yes.

[Eric]

You know, so if you're going, if you're, if you have, if you're opening your first restaurant that two years of Runway and you haven't quite hit that two year mark yet. So it takes that. The reality is it takes that time to get the loyalty.

[Eric Neal]

It takes every bit of two years to figure out what you're doing and get your cost of goods and your labor in line while maintaining guest counts. You know, losing them if you make mistakes, getting them back. You know, cost of guest reacquisition is very high.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, your only real asset there is time. It just takes time to get people back in the door. So, you know, they gotta hear from somebody else that they had a really good time in the restaurant that they didn't have a great time in.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, one out of every three services when you open a restaurant that you've never run before is gonna be kind of rough in the beginning. And there's a lot of loss of. Of customer in that one service. That just sucks.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

And okay, we unpackage where you are today at numbers and all this. Let's go back to where it starts making sense to share your story. So where does it make sense to start sharing your story? I know we've already had you on the show, but I feel like we're going to take you through from the very beginning.

[Eric Neal]

It starts in the beginning, growing up in South Louisiana, you know, hunting and fishing, and with my dad and my grandfather and my brother and, you know, figuring out how to, you know, clean and cook what we caught or killed. And then, you know, really, in Louisiana, it's impossible to grow up without some, you know, deep respect and appreciation for food. And in growing up there as a youngster, you know, you don't really take or you do take it for granted. You have no idea that everybody else doesn't live like this.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, in, you know, the spring, not every, you know, neighborhood block is having a crawfish boil at somebody's house every Saturday and Sunday. You know, somebody's not, you know, cooking a cochon delay down the road, down the way, and you just like show up at 5 o' clock and just eat, you know, with all your friends after you've gotten done playing in the creek and catching crawfish and tadpoles and stuff like that.

[Eric]

That sounds fun.

[Eric Neal]

So you, you know, and then there's all these actual food items that you're attached to in, in Louisiana, you know, zaps potato chips become like, you know, you know, just like holy food for us because you take it for granted when they're gone and they're not there in front of you. Like, you know, when we, when we left Louisiana finally and moved to Virginia when I was in middle school. Ish. And not every grocery store had Bark's Root Beer and Zach's potato chips. It was a real eye opening experience, you know.

[Amanda]

Yeah, man.

[Eric]

So. So you got, your family moves in when you're 14 years old.

[Eric Neal]

I was, I was 12.

[Eric]

But you knew, you were, you knew at a young age that you wanted to do food because you went to college, you went to Vail.

[Eric Neal]

Well, I went to high school in Dallas and then I went to college at the University of Texas at Austin.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

So I got, I moved around a little bit and then left Austin and went straight to Johnson and Wales. When it was in Vail, Colorado, I was the very last class that graduated. Okay. From Vail when it was all housed at VA and all their different restaurants, you know, throughout the properties.

[Eric]

Did they have multiple locations at this time or was that the only spot?

[Eric Neal]

The, the mothership was in Providence. Charleston at Charleston before it moved to Providence. Okay. Or no, it was in Providence and then Charleston. Charleston moved to. Oh my God. Charlotte. Charlotte.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Got it. So you, you were the last graduating se year in Vail. And so when did you know that you wanted to, like, was it was the dream to be a chef or to be a chef owner or restaurant or what was the vision, the dream for your. Yourself?

[Eric Neal]

So in school, you know, I I kind of knew that I wanted to. To do something for myself. I wanted to run my own business. And so, you know, I took. I was a psychology major. Took a lot of motivational and industrial psych kind of classes as I get. Get further in my schooling, in my college career, and then minored in business because, you know, I figured that couldn't be a bad thing. And Texas got a great. A great business school and all that, you know, did come to bear later in life and really did help.

[Eric]

I was gonna say there's a. There's a 100% a correlation between people who go to school for psychology and have success in the restaurant industry.

[Eric Neal]

100%.

[Eric]

Not even the business side of things, but the psychology side of things.

[Eric Neal]

It's. It's a lot.

[Eric]

Yeah, man.

[Jason]

100.

[Eric]

So you were in school before going to. To. To Johnson?

[Eric Neal]

Well, I was, so. And, you know, it. Found cooking as a hobby again in. In college because, you know, I knew it growing up and I knew how much I loved it, but that was kind of a. A family thing. Found it in. In college as a way to kind of get together with my friends once. Going to the bars, you know, in your junior senior, gets a little bit tiresome. Not fully tiresome, but a little bit tiresome. You know, cooking at the house and maybe drinking a bottle of wine instead of, you know, a fifth of Jim Beam, you know.

[Eric]

So sophisticated.

[Eric Neal]

I know, man. It was great and really enjoyed it. So I took a couple summer jobs working in restaurants where. Where I could, you know, and this was, you know, washing dishes or working garment stations and that kind of stuff. And I just. I loved it. I loved the action. I loved every bit of it. And it. It turned on a desire for me creatively and culinarily that I really wanted to pursue. And in the back of my mind, as I'm. As I'm moving through my senior year of college, I wanted to find something that. That would lead me into business. And I just thought that cooking and the culinary path could be my muse to get me to where I wanted to go. And in hindsight, looking back, it's exactly what happened.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So you said that cooking opened up this desire for you. What was the desire?

[Eric Neal]

To know more, to explore my palate, to explore, you know, cooking as a. As a passion and to be better at it, to find something that, you know, something that excited me, and I wanted to find a path through it to get, you know, into a career and then stay in a career that involved cooking. Once. Once I really, you Know, once I got to culinary school in Vail and I got a job working in the Village and had, you know, worked at a great restaurant called sweet basil in 1999 through the millennium into 2000, you know, beautiful restaurant, really well run. And, you know, that really set the pace for me in wanting to find, you know, excellence in the restaurant business.

[Amanda]

Yeah, I love that.

[Eric]

So you, you graduate from Vail. Hindsight. I always have to ask this question, hindsight being 20 20, would you have gone to culinary school knowing what you know now?

[Eric Neal]

Yes, absolutely.

[Eric]

For you, why was it worth it?

[Eric Neal]

Well, I was in a unique position that a lot of people aren't. So I have an undergrad degree which I found very useful in my life. And then I went to a culinary program that only accepted people who had undergrad degrees already.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

So it was a, it was a 19 month, ish program, just culinary for an associate's degree in culinary arts. But because I'd already, you know, graduated with a degree from Texas, I got to skip all of the prereq stuff. And that really made it worthwhile for me.

[Eric]

So basically, a year and a half. A little more than a year and a half.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, basically.

[Eric]

And what was the biggest benefit of that year and a half for you?

[Eric Neal]

Well, if you're just going to go to culinary school and not work at the same time, I feel like you're missing 90% of the battle there. So culinary school is great because it exposes you to concepts and ideas in a classroom environment where you have time to sit and kind of absorb them and think critically about them. If you have a great teacher or chef teaching you something and you get the idea in class, but then go that evening and work in a kitchen where you're seeing it applied in a real world situation a little extra sticky, well, it just drills down into your brain. And it's as simple as why we make stocks. Right. And how you make a stock. And so you listen to a chef talk about at school how he makes his stocks, and then you go to a kitchen and you're talking to a sous chef and she's talking about how she makes her stock, and it's like happening in the exact same moment, but then you see the stock go into a dish at times seven dishes across the menu or sauces or whatever, and it all just clicks. But if you're just going to culinary school for the, the fun of it or anything like that and not working at the same time, I think you're leaving way more than 50 of the knowledge on the table.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

Do they cover things like P Ls and cost of goods and all that stuff in culinary school for you?

[Eric Neal]

No, I got that more from the business school at Texas and, you know, was kind of bad at it in the moment because, you know, for most people, money doesn't make any sense, theoretically, until it's actual money that you control or is maybe yours. So that's. That experience for me really helped me in the beginning of my career.

[Eric]

And you, when did you finish the program?

[Eric Neal]

Vale finished in 2000. The fall. Summer of 2000.

[Eric]

Sorry, summer of 2000. And you were in Chattanooga by 2002? Five years cooking.

[Eric Neal]

Moved here in the fall of 2000. I got done with school.

[Eric]

So how do you find yourself in Chattanooga?

[Jason]

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[Eric Neal]

My mom married a guy who lived here, okay, while I was in college.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

My brother and sister, who are both younger, had moved here to Chattanooga while I was away.

[Eric]

So you got to go all over the country. You're in Louisiana, Virginia, Texas, and you found yourself in Chattanooga.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah. So you know the story. The quick story is my brother, who is a little bit younger than me, broke his back playing football his junior year of high school. So I was in Vail. You know, phone calls from the family were very worried about him, and thankfully he was okay. And he ended up healing himself well enough that he could play football his senior year of high school, which was 2000, fall of 2000. So I came back here specifically to watch him play football. That whole. That whole fall, I got a job working in a restaurant in the front of house, actually and in the interview process, I said, look, I need every Friday night off because I'm here to watch my brother play football. And of course, they look at me. Well, they look at me like I got an arm growing out of my face. And I said, look, I'll work the other six days. I get it. I realize it's a weird request, but the only reason I'm in Chattanooga is to do that. And if you don't give me the Friday nights off that football's happening, I'll just go find another job. So we came to an agreement, and I worked a lot, and they gave me Friday nights off, and I watched him play football every single game. That's cool. For his senior year, fall semester, my sister was a cheerleader. It was great, man. It kind of reacquainted me with my family after going and doing college and doing culinary school and coming back. And, you know, funnily enough, they're all gone. I'm still here. You know, I met my wife at the first restaurant I worked at where I got got every Friday night off. And, you know, 25 years later, we've got three restaurants in Chattanooga. And that's the story. You know, I love it, man.

[Eric]

So, I mean, I think there's an underlying, like, message here and lesson is that you as a restaurateur, no one's going to treat your business the way that you're going to treat it. There's going to be things that are more important than your business for sure. For these people that are coming to work for you and trying to figure out how to work with these people. I'll give you six days. I need this one day off. Like, you need to understand that, like, you got to find that balance. And if you think that people are going to sacrifice at the same work as hard for your restaurant as you're.

[Jason]

Willing to work and to sacrifice things.

[Eric]

That are in their life for your.

[Jason]

Restaurant, like you're delusional.

[Eric Neal]

You know, times have changed a lot.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, I think we have existed in this restaurant business and a very interesting part of the evolution from, you know, really concentrated chef owner concepts to the, you know, to now, where it is increasingly hard for an individual to, in a dream to raise enough money, find the capital to even open a small restaurant.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, and. And the way we perceive, you know, our work output, our, you know, the. The either dreaded or important work life balance comment that people throw in there, you know, you have to pay attention to that. And I think, and I want to Say that from the point of view of both the restaurant and the employee, like there is, you know, the balance is important there because as long as there's balance and needs are being met both ways, that's great. But it's when needs are only being met on one side of the balance scale that it gets unbalanced.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And I think a lot of employees and restaurateurs would do good to understand their role in that. It's not just a take, there is a give component of it.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

So, yeah, and I think for the longest time too, when people were like, you know, from like the, the late 90s into the late 2000 teens, that there is this period, this, this 30 year period where there was so much glamour and glitz and ego associated with the industry and people, you could find people that were willing to give you 70, 80 hours a week because that they knew that like their work in your restaurant, if you were successful, would catapult them to the next opportunity.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, for sure.

[Eric]

And they were willing to make those sacrifices. But I think collectively the industry, you know, that, that world, I mean, I think there was a period where we.

[Jason]

Can kind of like kid ourselves that.

[Eric]

You know, like we're the, the trajectory of those types of restaurants today, these full service restaurants that are chasing beard awards and, you know, stars. And that model is very hard to make work financially.

[Eric Neal]

It's, it's fantastic and it's fantastically unhealthy.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And, and I mean that unhealthy financially, unhealthy mentally, mentally, all sorts physically, you name it.

[Eric]

And it's taken 30 years for it to play out, to realize people that.

[Jason]

This, like, what are we doing?

[Eric Neal]

I mean, I, you know, I, I worked in kitchens where people threw things at you in the beginning part of my career. And you don't do that anymore.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

That's a good thing. Right?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Did getting having things thrown at me make me move? Yes, of course. So, you know, we've had to learn how to be better motivators, managers, so on and so forth, you know, better than just throwing spoons at people, which is not a good thing. But you know, sometimes the fiery crucible does, you know, make something out of you. And if you don't submit a little bit to the fiery crucible in your career, especially in a kitchen, it is going to be hard to get out of it, whatever it is that you want to say.

[Eric]

Iron sharpens iron.

[Eric Neal]

Iron sharpens iron. Yeah, Exactly.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So five years, from 2000 to 2005, you're working in Chattanooga?

[Eric Neal]

Yes.

[Eric]

For this restaurant, you become the front of house manager.

[Eric Neal]

I became the front house manager. I worked there for about eight or nine months through football season, and then I really wanted to get back in the kitchen.

[Eric]

Okay, what were you feeling?

[Eric Neal]

I felt I was excited to get to learn that part of the business. You know, in culinary school, you do spend some time in service and, you know, front of house learning. And I knew it was really important to whatever I wanted to do later to have that experience. I just felt like I was losing, you know, a little bit of an edge in cooking on the daily, and I wanted to get it back.

[Eric]

What were the biggest things you learned during this nine month period in doing the management?

[Eric Neal]

I learned that you can, you know, as a front house manager, you can either be very active or very inactive. Inactive maybe is the proper word there. And the front of house employees, in my opinion, responded better to activity, you know, being up with them, doing things, clearing tables, busing, running food, greeting guests, so on and so forth. And the guests responded to that better. And so it really just, you know, reinforced in me that you got to work hard wherever you are to succeed.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

Well, if you're spending time doing those things that you just shared, what about the other responsibilities? When. When do we do that?

[Eric Neal]

It all depends on what kind of position you have. It's like a junior front of house manager. You know, if you're writing the schedule, fine. If you have other, you know, end of night responsibilities, invoicing, things like that, you know, those all can get done, but they need to get done when service is not happening. Because in my mind, and this comes from a culinary background as well, like the only, the most important part of the shift is the service.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Everything is either in, in service of the service or in service getting ready for the next one. Yeah. If we're not working service, then what are we doing?

[Eric]

And think about the amount of, like, costs you can save on labor if you're one more, you know, set of hands on the floor.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, and, and you know, how much money, how much more money servers can make if you, you know, are on the floor and not tipping somebody else out or, you know, and you can get into all the, you know, tip out rules and stuff like that. And we have a, a really cool system we run here.

[Eric]

But, you know, I'd love to get into that note.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

So, okay, so you end up leaving this restaurant and then you spend the next two or three years somewhere else.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, I ended up at a restaurant here called St. John's which ironically, two years ago, just moved right across the street from easy and their 25th year of operation.

[Eric]

Oh, cool.

[Eric Neal]

Great experience. Worked with some. Some amazing people there. I was there for about two years. I left and took a job making ice cream for a local ice cream company called Clumpies. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had.

[Eric]

Why?

[Eric Neal]

Because I always smelled like ice cream.

[Eric]

And I worked at an ice cream shop.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, it was.

[Eric]

It was fun showing up at a party.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

With like all the ice creams that were mistakes.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Like, people like, I didn't order this or I didn't want nuts. Sweet. That's going in the freezer. I'm taking that to the party. I'm going to be everyone's best friend. Ice cream.

[Eric Neal]

It was great for a couple of reasons. One, always smelled like ice cream. And my girlfriend, who's now my wife, always liked it when I came home. Smelled like ice cream. And I worked out a deal with a guy that owned the shop that, you know, I was there specifically to do production of the ice cream. So I asked him if I could do it the way I wanted to do it, not the way it had been being done there by a couple other people. And so I would work, you know, 18, 20 hours straight, do all my production for a week because it was very efficient to do it that way. And I would do it, you know, I would come in later in the afternoon, work overnight into the next day, and as soon people were coming in to work the shift, I'd be leaving. But that way I didn't get interrupted by anybody. So I never messed up. I mean, the machines, I mean, you know, it's in that world, it's, you know, how many consecutive runs can you get through an ice cream machine without having to break the machine and clean it?

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

So I think I got like, I don't know, 22 runs consecutively by doing the putting an order together of production that made sense where you weren't having to break the machine and clean it every time.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

I mean, units work, right?

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And. And in the meantime, I went home, took a nap, and I would work on a business plan. Write and write and write. And then, you know, every now and then go back and make some ice cream.

[Eric]

So when did you say, I'm going to open a restaurant in Chattanooga? When did that pop into your head?

[Eric Neal]

I made ice cream for a little while. It was about a year. And then I took another job as a sue at a restaurant here. That's no longer here, called Bellagio. And I was there for about 18 months. It was a good experience. You know, had a great crew, had a really, you know, intense and, and great chef and owner who ultimately was the last fist up fight I ever got in was with him on the night that he fired me and I quit simultaneously.

[Eric]

What was the fight over?

[Eric Neal]

He was in having dinner and one of my guys had burnt a garlic and a pasta and he hadn't been in in like two weeks. And we were working real hard, we were kind of short staffed, of course. And he threw his plates down on the pass and said, said, you know, you burnt your garlic. And I looked at him, I was like, enough, get the out of here. Like, I don't need your help right now. This is not it. And so we just, we just worry.

[Eric]

In the weeds that you're not out.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, I mean, the kitchen is going down in flames.

[Eric]

And so worst thing you can do when like you're already struggling is to throw a big wrench of anger and negative energy into that. Like you're already stressed out. Whatever little bit of attention you had.

[Eric Neal]

Is totally out, totally gone. And you know, now you're so, oh, full rail. Then I just went completely off, off the end just from there because I, you know, it's the only time I've ever just like grabbed up on my, and walked out, you know, said bye to my guys and that was, that was it. And so I'm, you know, I went to the house and figured, you know, sat there for a little bit and, you know, pulled out the business plans, like, I'm going to do this, like this, you know, I don't, I don't want to have another job unless it's a job where I'm working for myself.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it took me, I think, 17 months from that moment to get the restaurant open.

[Eric]

So a year and almost a year and a half.

[Eric Neal]

Yep.

[Eric]

And you were working on this business plan back when you were at the ice cream?

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, it was a 3ish year project. You know, from writing business plan, you know, having another job, quitting that job, and then, you know, working just specifically on opening a business for 17 months while not making any money at all.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And getting it done.

[Eric]

So during this three year period, what was the biggest challenge for you?

[Eric Neal]

To stay on task to, you know, to, to find the energy and the enthusiasm to consistently go push that rock up the hill one inch at a time every single day. You know, and not knowing how big the rock actually was and not knowing how Tall. The actual. The hill actually was. Was probably the hardest part of it, you know, because you're pushing, or the.

[Eric]

Ignorance is the bliss part of it. Because if you did know, would you keep on pushing?

[Eric Neal]

I'm very stubborn, and my wife would confirm that multiple times over. No is a motivating word to me. So if somebody tells me I can't do something, my initial reaction is to not necessarily say anything, but just go do something to prove that I can.

[Eric]

So how did you stay motivated?

[Eric Neal]

Well, I needed to. I need something to do. I mean, I couldn't just sit there and, you know, watch TV in my underwear for 17 months and not earn any money. So I figured if I was going to spend my savings that I had at that point and, you know, spend the goodwill of my family, who was feeding me on a daily basis.

[Eric]

How much. How much savings did you have?

[Eric Neal]

I bet I probably. 25 grand.

[Eric]

25 grand. How much did you think it was going to have to. What was it going to cost to get open?

[Eric Neal]

I had no idea, man.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

How much did I cost him to.

[Eric Neal]

Open the first easy in 2005? I think our total all in was $650,000.

[Eric]

650,000. So where'd you go to get the money?

[Eric Neal]

Friends, family and fools.

[Eric]

Yeah, you know, so 25,000 of that, was you just living for three years off of that, essentially?

[Eric Neal]

Well, for the 17 months I was working for part. For part of that time.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So. So did you put that 25,000 into the cost of opening?

[Amanda]

Yeah, I did.

[Eric]

So you had to come up with 6,000, 25 or 6. 625,000.

[Amanda]

Sorry.

[Eric Neal]

Yes, 625,000. And it was, you know, small investments from. From family and friends. And then I managed to secure an SBA loan with. With my parents help.

[Eric]

I was going to say. Usually you have to be in business to get the loan for a while or something like that, or. No, you. What are the. The terms? Like, you need to have like a 6:30 credit score or higher.

[Eric Neal]

And it, you know, the SBA is an interesting thing and it is very useful, but, you know, any bank, you know, the basic rule is they'll only. Only lend you money if you have money. So collateral. Collateralizing a new restaurant in any way whatsoever was not an easy task.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, yeah.

[Eric]

So, I mean, three years, just the motivation to keep going, you said, you know, gathering the money, I mean, this is also 25 years ago, right?

[Eric Neal]

22. 2000. 2004. 2000. 3. 4.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Yeah, I think. Has it changed do you think from that time when you went to go do this to now?

[Eric Neal]

I think the, the process is exactly the same, you know. Well, I shouldn't say exactly. There's a couple differences. The problem is that the amount of money is just so much greater.

[Eric]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

It's, it's 3x that.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, I told somebody the other day that was trying to. Because people, you know, offer me restaurant spaces and I'm very grateful that they come and talk to me and, you know, want some feedback on it. And you know, my, my basic math is it's, you know, it's 500 bucks a foot to build out a restaurant. So, you know, 2,000 square foot restaurant's gonna be a million dollars. 2,000 square foot restaurant's not that big.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, 4,000 square foot restaurant, you know, and this is in Chattanooga, like bare minimum, like just, just the bones of a restaurant, no fancy stuff. $2 million for a 4,000 square foot restaurant.

[Eric]

And that's the cost of goods and labor, basically. Right?

[Eric Neal]

Yep. Yeah. To get everything and, and spend all the money it takes to legally set up the corporation, find, you know, tax accountants and blah, you know, have, you know, maybe a publicist, if you, if you have the money to do it, a brand, a branding company to help build a brand for you, a web designer. Like, it's just the list goes on and on and on, you know.

[Eric]

Yeah. I mean, and the thing is, in today's, not only is it three times more expensive, but it's three times more competitive of a market.

[Eric Neal]

It is, you know, one of the big differences, and this is what I was alluding to earlier, is there, there is a lot, there are a lot of spaces in the market that are driven by real estate development where somebody, you know, be it a big corporation or an individual decides that they want to build a building, they're going to have apartments or a hotel on the top floor, and then they get ground floor retail and they need a restaurant to come into that space as kind of an amenity to the space. And this is the difference in the restaurant startup game right now is that there are these spaces that need tenants. But I don't think developers and investors have quite figured out how to make people go into those spaces because the cost of entry is still high there.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And, you know, even if they're offering 100 bucks a foot in ti, you know, on 500 minimum and build out, you know, that's still not, you know, it still doesn't get you there, you know.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

Well, I think the other you bring in determine of developers or people who are owning properties. I think we forget that retail used to be this thing where like, you would go walk down the street and there would be shops with people selling things.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Like, it used to be a thing.

[Eric]

You could go get shoes or a shirt or, you know, like an appliance.

[Eric Neal]

Get your haircut, you know, buy a toaster, you know.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

It's crazy.

[Jason]

Like, you could do this on the streets.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

Before Amazon, you know, like, it's crazy.

[Eric Neal]

And there are precious few places where you can do it. Now when you do find one of those little enclaves, it is magical.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it feels great.

[Eric]

But it was right around 2005, 2003, where all these places started shuttering their doors. 2007, it was like retail was dead.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And now you have all these existing retail spaces on top of the ones that are being built that people are like, what am I going to do with the space? Well, people still need to eat. And anybody that worked for any James Beard or Michelin star chef was getting their own restaurant because developers were like, oh, like, I'll leverage your brand or that person that you work for his brand to give you the money to open a restaurant.

[Eric Neal]

Sure. Those days are kind of behind us now because. Because there's, you know, there's more demand for restaurants and less people to operate them than there ever has been, in my opinion.

[Amanda]

It's.

[Eric]

Yeah, it's a weird time for sure. So. But what, in terms, like, we've clearly identified that in the 25 years that you, you've done this to today, like, the world we're in has changed. But what are the constants that haven't changed in terms of the struggles you had and the advice you have for somebody who's going through that right now?

[Eric Neal]

Well, I think, you know, the greatest constant, and I always try and take it back to the guest, is guests always want to be taken care of. They always want to be entertained. They always want to be felt, you know, made to feel welcome and, and be shown hospitality and in turn show it back to their, their servers and so on and so forth. So if you stay true to that, you know, through all the mess, I think you can, you can always have a really good business. But you got to be guest focused.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, the challenges are always, you know, are always going to be there. Stuff is always going to cost more than it did the day before. There's always going to. Going to be, you know, economic ups and Downs. Although there is a large group of people working in the restaurant business right now that have never actually seen a recession. You know, if you're under 40 years old and working in the restaurant business, you've never worked through a recession. And I think that's a really interesting thing and a very interesting time to have been in this business because, you know, trying to take care of people through a down economy is what kind of made me, you know, working through 08 and, you know, three years in.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah. Helping a restaurant to survive through, through a, you know, not, not just a recession. A recession, you know, a crash.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

It, it made us, you know, and it made that focus on each individual guest just like a laser focused.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So that first year, 2005, like how far, how long did it take you to pay back your investors?

[Eric Neal]

Oh, it took me years, man.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, just, just because I, you know, I made all the mistakes that a dumb 26 year old guy open a restaurant could, you know.

[Eric]

What were those biggest mistakes you made when.

[Eric Neal]

Biggest mistakes were ultimately structural. In that the, the space I was in was bigger than I needed it to be.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

300 seats, 230.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

For the amount of revenue we were capable of doing out of the space. And that ultimately was one of the big factors in moving it 15 years, years later to a smaller space where we have less seats but are doing more revenue and making more money because we have less, Less overhead because of the smaller space.

[Eric]

Yeah, I was really interested in that. I mean, I made notes on that. So you were there from 202005 to 2020. 15 years you were operating in the space that was a little bit too big.

[Eric Neal]

Great space, you know. And then in that 15 years, Chattanooga changed a lot. You know, different areas of town sort of awoken, became popular, and other restaurants opened and people were kind of, you know, pulled away from where we were, which is sort of the downtown center where the aquarium was. And it was kind of.

[Eric]

Yeah. Where are we relative to your old location?

[Eric Neal]

We're about eight, nine blocks away from our old location.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And this isn't downtown.

[Eric Neal]

No, this is downtown. But I mean by that, I mean by the riverfront. We were by the riverfront, which was kind of a more tourist. Touristy destination.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

My only time ever in Chattanooga was the five minutes that it took me to get off the highway into, park my car in front of.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, it's a great place.

[Eric]

I can't wait to get out and walk around a little bit.

[Eric Neal]

It's a great place.

[Eric]

But you know, so, I mean, this is, I mean, again, the other thing that happened since, you know, you opened your place today is that the, the, the downtowns where everybody wanted to be are no longer the places to be.

[Eric Neal]

Well, Chattanooga has a really interesting downtown revital civilization story, okay. In that, you know, in the 90s, nobody was here and there were some, you know, really civic minded benefactors and developers that came in and did a lot of really good work to bring people back into downtown. And as that work spread, you know, in a city of, you know, 150 to 200,000 people, which is what Chattanooga is, you know, our MSA is maybe half a million. There's only so many places that 200,000 people can go to eat. And so once, you know, in our, in our old location, we were not changing fast enough to keep up with what was there. And that was, that was our fault. You know, part of that was my unwillingness to change what we were doing because I really believed in the cuisine and the presentation that we were, we were doing it. And, you know, was acknowledged in that, you know, in a couple of ways, you know, specifically by the Beard foundation, which was really nice. However, it wasn't exactly what needed to happen in that location.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Got it.

[Eric]

So, so two things that we've identified so far as big struggles from opening to today. One was the space was too big to not changing fast enough.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, sure.

[Eric]

So let's unpackage the space real quick. So the, like, the, the like the numbers associated with this. So like 230 seats. Was it the kitchen not big enough? Was there not like too big. Too big. Kitchen was too big.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah. So, and this is too big for the amount of business we were doing. Like you can, there's, you can put a concept in that big a space and do really well. It just didn't need to be chef driven, seasonal kind of what I would say like avant garde food for the time that was pushing boundaries. And there, there was our, you know, big mistake was being in a big enough, too big a space while doing. Having a concept that was a little too push pushing and boundary pushing to, to, to satisfy the amount of people that needed to be there.

[Eric]

So was it a combination of, you know, the logistics associated with doing the food you were trying to do at scale or was it more that the, the market was there wasn't enough people in the market to fill that space that wanted your food?

[Eric Neal]

Well, you know, go. You go back to that recession thing, you know, when you're only doing 20, 30 covers a night and a 230 stories square foot or 230 seat space and you got a giant kitchen. You know, it only requires so many people. The, the problem that we ultimately had was we couldn't scale down our staff because we hadn't have enough people there in case we got busy because we didn't want to get egg on our face.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And it was a big open space where you couldn't really divide anything up and turn off different parts of the dining room or the kitchen. So we ended up with this big crew running, you know, low numbers for a long time. And it just, you know, it just made the numbers suck at the end of the day.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

When, like, when did your, the numbers get to the point where you started thinking like this? This makes sense.

[Eric Neal]

When you get revenue, revenue up to a certain point that your, that your, you know, food costs and your labor costs can sort of like even out into those prime cost goals that you're looking for.

[Eric]

When did that happen for you guys?

[Eric Neal]

You know, it happened at different times and at the old location when we did find some, some real like momentum with our guests. And it really happened once we moved to the new location where 2020. 2020, when we have, where we have a smaller space that's sectionable so we on slower days can turn off parts of the restaurant, not seat them, and, you know, deactivate, you know, a couple of positions in the kitchen so that we can just service, you know, the guests that we have on the books or in the dining room.

[Eric]

Got it?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So you said not changing soon enough. When did you change?

[Eric Neal]

What do you mean by constantly evolving? You know, but I think what I meant by that was not my unwillingness to give up on the chef driven, you know, sort of boundary pushing food that we were, we were doing.

[Eric]

Why was change required?

[Eric Neal]

Oh, you know, there's a formula you, you can follow in the restaurant business to catch a wide audience. You know, if you've got a burger and pizza and chicken fingers, you're going to do a lot more business than, you know, house made pastas and, you know, long braised meats and, you know, and, you know, small plates of super fresh vegetables from local Amish farmers. You know, labor costs. Labor cost. Yeah, labor cost, prime cost.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, freezer to table restaurants work really well. Yeah, I was just not willing to do that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

You know, it's weird. I think I recently in an email said I think scratch kitchens are overrated. I think that there's something to be said about like the the talent in the. The skill that goes into a scratch kitchen. But at the same time, I then, for example, I just had Dean and peeler on the show. Similar to Newman Ranches, where they have super consistent, high quality. Well, like, it's a farm that just has tons of high standards, but they also vertically integrated everything from, like, selecting the semen to feeding.

[Jason]

Birthing. Feeding.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

And butchering or, you know, harvesting. And then they also have a production facility.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

So, like, they can. To the specs, cut the meat. You want it cut. They can work with you to take your marinade, your. Your seasoning, put it in a package and send it to you. I mean, it's your creativity, but you're.

[Jason]

You're gonna have to pay somebody to do that.

[Eric Neal]

The food is gonna. Is gonna take so much money to prep, no matter who's doing it.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You're either paying somebody else to do it, or you're paying yourself to do it.

[Eric]

If you can support a local business.

[Jason]

That instead of taking all that talent in house and help support your community.

[Eric]

Why not do that?

[Amanda]

Like, it.

[Eric Neal]

Because it's hard, because you got to manage people on a daily basis.

[Eric]

Which people? The people you're outsourcing from.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, I'm talking about in. In the kitchen. A scratch kitchen.

[Eric]

Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, if you can find a solution in your local economy to outsource, maybe there's a pasta company. All they do is they make homemade pasta.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Why not?

[Eric Neal]

Fully agree with that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I just. Chattanooga is. Is just a little bit small to have what you need there. I mean, we have. We have a couple great bakeries here, and, you know, without those couple great bakeries, this culinary scene would not exist.

[Eric]

Yeah, you're.

[Eric Neal]

You know, we're. We're. We're one bakery closing away from just utter catastrophe, you know, because you can't have a food scene in a city without a bakery. Like, it doesn't work, you know?

[Eric]

Well, it's interesting, I think what happened over. If you look at, like, the history of, like. Like the evolution of food, when we got to, like, industrializing the food system, you know, I'm not. I would love to go deeper into the subject and learn more about it, but it seems like there was this period where people, you know, would become specialists, and then those specialists would scale. Sure. And then they would scale, and they'd put everybody outside of business.

[Amanda]

Yes.

[Eric]

I think if we were kind of to find a balance back to that idea of balance of, like, how do we Find these specialists, but like keep it local specialists, maintain the quality, have the, the, the, the pasta maker, the bread maker, the, you know, the, the pastry person and like go back to this idea of actually having a community of specialists in, in wholesale.

[Eric Neal]

You know, it's interesting. And I, I have been in that role somewhat with Main Street Meats.

[Eric]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

I was just thinking that because, you know, I've been involved with Main street meats for about 12 years. We've had it, you know, under, direct, under ownership for almost 10 years. And it is a, you know, I've used this line many times. But like, there's a reason that all the old southern butchers went out of business. It's because the business model sucks.

[Eric]

What's.

[Eric Neal]

Yes, there is no money in breaking whole animals and trying to sell pieces out of a case.

[Jason]

Teaser.

[Eric]

Leave it there because that opened in 2015.

[Eric Neal]

Right, right, right.

[Eric]

So we, we're still, you know, we've got some time.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Anything that happened between, you know, you've identified the pain points of the space was too big. You didn't change your approach or you're married to the chef driven concept.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Anything else between, you know, 2000, like this time in 2015, that's worth bringing to the surface?

[Eric Neal]

Well, you know, in, in that unwillingness to change, and I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but it is a benefit of. It is in that time I was establishing and reinforcing my reputation as a chef and a restaurant tour in this community.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Because the food we were producing was great and it was recognized as being great. It just wasn't being utilized enough from a restaurant point of view to make it, you know, profitable at the end of the day.

[Eric]

What do you mean utilized enough?

[Eric Neal]

We weren't being frequented enough, like, you know, we weren't, you know, we weren't busy enough. We weren't doing enough volume.

[Eric]

So what, what was it just like a disconnect with the, the marketplace?

[Eric Neal]

Pretty much?

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, you know, Chattanooga is a small southern town and we were doing, you know, food that did not play specifically to that small southern town at that time. You know, we're doing, we were doing the food we wanted to do and, you know, buying purple hulls and, you know, you know, making great, you know, dishes with local produce that were, you know, very reminiscent of, you know, Appalachian standards. But it was just a little bit too far ahead of its time to, to be really maybe appreciated in the way I hoped it would be.

[Eric]

What about the, like, demographic in terms of like, average income in this area at that time.

[Eric Neal]

At that time, you know, there's, there's plenty of traffic from visitors from out of town, but it was traffic and kids and families that didn't really want to play with the food we were doing.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

The pizza shop next door did great.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And they should have there, you know, it was a great pizza store. And then, you know, locals, there's, there's a, you know, a wide range of incomes from, you know, median all the way to extremely high. And, you know, we were frequented as much as people could frequent us based on their income.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But we became a special occasion only kind of place.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And that kind of sucked, you know.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

So it's still, obviously still in business. We're sitting here today. So eventually. So before 2015, did you guys start to figure it out?

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, yeah, we started to dial in the menu better. And, and most importantly, people started moving here post, you know, 2008 recession. They would bring their out of town, you know, desires and sensibilities about what they wanted out of a dining experience with them, and the dining scene would slowly evolve and we kind of caught up or we kind of caught up with them. They kind of caught up with us, you know, and it started to really, like, make more sense.

[Eric]

Got it. And I think the other thing that happened right after the, during this, the recession, 2007, the iPhone was developed.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

You know, social media, like, like, people are starting to, like, take pictures of food by 2012, 13, you know, like, you don't have to be from New York or Los Angeles or Miami or Chicago to see what people are eating all over the country. And now people from small towns who never go to those big cities still want that food because they know it exists.

[Eric Neal]

They. They get, they get an idea of.

[Amanda]

What it came from.

[Eric Neal]

And then, you know, there was a moment in each one of these restaurants has kind of had that moment. Little Coyote, not so much because it's new, but it's starting to have it where the community starts to embrace what it is you're doing and be prideful in it. And there was a moment around that 15, 16 time frame that the community in Chattanooga really started to embrace Easy. And what I was doing with food and what we were doing with hospitality and beverage and that kind of stuff and care about it like it was their own, your own.

[Eric]

Nice.

[Eric Neal]

And when you can achieve that in a restaurant, I don't know there's any formula to it other than just working as hard as you possibly Can. And being really lucky.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

When you can achieve that, it's awesome.

[Eric]

So in 2015, by that point, before opening your second business, like, what was the. Like, how were you evolving? Like, if the show is about evolution and transformation, how are you and your business evolved and transformed by this point?

[Eric Neal]

Well, you know, by 15, we've been in it 20 for 10 years. You know, we'd done some pretty significant updates to the interior of the restaurant. We were evolving, you know, in losing lunch shifts because they were. They were a drain. Keeping Saturday brunch and Sunday brunch at that time and then driving the menu towards what we thought people wanted out of us to be while still maintaining. Yeah, still. But still maintaining culinary. And growing culinarily in a way that was exciting for. For us.

[Eric]

Okay. Was there a peak at the old location, a period?

[Eric Neal]

I think it, you know, this thing has just always continually gotten better at being, you know, a good restaurant for the customers.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I don't know that it's ever peaked, and I don't know that it ever will, but it goes back to that relentless pursuit of perfection. Like, I'm incredibly happy with this version of it right now, but I know this version of it is going to evolve.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Over time.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

What about you? We talked about how the business evolved. You're, you know, evolving to meet the guests. You're kind of tailoring the customer what the customer wanted. But were you growing as a restaurateur?

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And all of this. And, you know, going back to my experience in the front of house, you know, where I met my wife, I think one of the greatest strengths we always had was my ability to bridge the gap between backhouse, front of house, and. So, you know, lots of places have pre shifts, but we dedicated an inordinate amount of time to pre shifts. At Easy and now Main street and Little Coyote, you know, we spend 45 minutes sitting down at a table just about every day at all these restaurants talking about what we do for a living, talking about food, talking about bar, talking about guests, talking about whatever, and, you know, imparting knowledge back to front, front to back, so that, you know, everybody knows exactly what we're expecting or. And. And, you know, in that way, you develop a vernacular. You know, you. You learn. You. You have knowledge being passed. We're tasting wine, we're tasting spirit. We're tasting cocktails, we're tasting food. Hold on, Yards.

[Eric]

When did you start doing this?

[Eric Neal]

We did it from the beginning.

[Eric]

From the beginning.

[Eric Neal]

From the beginning. Yeah.

[Eric]

So you're growing. But like, how was this? Like, maybe I missed it. Like, what was the difference? What was the evolution?

[Eric Neal]

The evolution was just getting better at doing that. And, and, and, and, you know, instead of being, you know, quite so anxious about it, you know, like you are in the beginning when everything's so tense, finding, you know, a little bit of relaxation as you find a little bit of success and you find a little bit of revenue and you find a little bit of volume. And you know, when, when your worst night is 20 covers becomes 40 covers, becomes 60 covers becomes 80 covers. You know, you, you breathe, you're breathing a little bit. And that, and that's great.

[Eric]

So what does your, what does your 45 minute premium look like? Today?

[Eric Neal]

We do family meal, you know, about 40, 30, 45 minutes before every shift. So everybody can sit down and eat. The kitchens do a great job of putting out, like, what I would say is a delicious family meal that, you know, involves, you know, not just one thing. It's not always chicken and rice, but sometimes chicken and rice, because chicken and rice is delicious.

[Eric]

Not complaining if I need to eat.

[Eric Neal]

Chicken rice every day. Exactly. And then we'll sit down and run through menu changes, anything, any special notes from the kitchen bar changes, any special notes from the bar, and then we just kind of have it open forum. Sometimes we'll have, you know, a wine professional join us. Sometimes I'll lead a wine tasting. Sometimes our wine director will lead a wine tasting. Sometimes our beverage director will lead a cocktail tasting or a spirit tasting. And then we talk about it and, you know, really work on like, you know, establishing a vernacular with people so that they can, you know, smell something and express what they're smelling, you know, give them vocabulary and, you know, and then talk about where that goes in a guest meal, why it exists, you know, what purpose it serves in our environment, so on and so forth.

[Eric]

Got it. Do you guys only talk about the fooders or other things that come to the concert?

[Eric Neal]

Oh, man, we, you know, we'll talk, you know, I'll ask if anybody's got any good jokes, if anybody's done anything fun lately, you know, you know, have you been to, have you had anything happen to you in a restaurant lately that you liked or disliked?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, and when it's never about throwing shade, it's all about learning from it. So to know if you went somewhere, if you just took a trip to Chicago and had a great meal, tell us about your meal. Like, why was it great? You know, what, what did you learn from that? Experience.

[Eric]

What about numbers? Did the numbers ever come to the conversation? Sales.

[Eric Neal]

No. You know, I don't really like to treat sales as. As the important marker for these restaurants. I like to treat covers as the important marker. So it's not about how many. How much we did in sales. It's about how many covers we have on the books or how many covers we're expecting to do with the spread of the COVID Numbers is what we can expect in these moments. If it's going to get really busy, we may need to communicate and hold this tin top for 20 more minutes before we fire it. That kind of stuff.

[Eric]

Got it, Got it. I mean, what you're talking about right now is like, you know. You know, we talk about this a lot within restaurant unstoppable network. When I'm talking to people, they. They ask about how to build a culture, and my culture isn't what you write down. Everyone's so focused on, like, whether, what am I going to write on the paper? Like, what am I going to say? My mission is what am I going to say? My values are like.

[Eric Neal]

It's. I'm almost shocked we got to this point of the conversation without using the word culture.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And I think it's just because I take it for granted.

[Eric]

What do you mean?

[Eric Neal]

Because we've worked so hard to build this culture.

[Eric]

What is your culture today, man?

[Eric Neal]

It's. It is hospitality. It's knowledge. It's, you know, open and honest communication.

[Eric]

Are these core values that you're listening right now?

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Eric Neal]

And it's, you know, I think it is the values that these restaurants possess with or without me standing there. And I mean that by saying, you know, easy, you know, specifically, will be 20 years old next month, which is pretty shocking.

[Amanda]

Wow.

[Eric Neal]

But this restaurant, you know, if I'm not here for a day or two or three or a week or a month, you know, this restaurant still has those values because they've been imbued in everybody who's in it over generations of people to this point where they're just expected.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, the front house expects it, the back house expects it, our guests expect it, so on and so forth, forth.

[Eric]

So you started saying, like, what? I said, what are. What is your culture? You said it's hospitality. It's open communication. I think you said that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Open communication.

[Eric]

What else did you say?

[Eric Neal]

Knowledge, experience, friendliness, you know, all that. I think hospitality just kind of encompasses all of that. It's just. It's a beautiful word, right?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

You know, but you know behind every.

[Jason]

Great restaurant is a great person. The key to being great is to be of service to others. And this holds true for all organizations, not just restaurants. After spending a month in Phoenix, Arizona, being hosted by Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, I got to experience firsthand Fred's desire to serve. It all started when I got there. Fred gave me the keys to his house and to his office building. When Fred leaves work every day, I witnessed him go coach one of his two sons baseball teams. And when Fred's neighbor lost power when they were hosting their son's birthday party, Fred offered to host the party at his house. Eric, why are you sharing this? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And believe me when I say that the desire to serve extends to Fred's restaurant clients. There are no secrets or shortcuts to life or restaurant success. There's only discipline, hard work, and the desire to do the right thing. Fred and his team at Restaurant Systems Pro are here to serve you with the systems and resources to be more disciplined so you can do the hard thing, which nine times out of 10 is the right thing. With Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and the systems to create and implement checklists. On top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro also has their own native general ledger, and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming Serve. And you know what? If you don't want to change your pos, that's absolutely fine because Restaurant Systems Pro integrates with all major POS providers. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RSP and you will find a link to schedule a demo with their sales team, a demo I personally did with.

[Eric]

Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley and.

[Jason]

All 18 of our testimonials that we've.

[Eric]

Recorded since the beginning of restaurant stoppable.

[Jason]

Again, that's restaurant unstoppable.com RSP this episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Man Delay Bay Resort in sunny La Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and the 20th. The theme this year is Every second counts. And that cannot be more true. If you want to be unstoppable, you really got to be intentional with your time. And there's no better way to be intentional with your time than going to this year's event. Because I'm going to be there and there's going to be so much going on. Here's what you can expect. Networking opportunities with 5000 industry peers, live demos, giveaways, games and more. Celebrity chefs and keynote speakers. Billboard musical performance at the Mandalay beach, exclusive Zook nightclub reception. You can also sample the latest on trend dishes in what's an event without expert breakout sessions to learn and get inspired by. They'll be covering marketing, staffing, profitability in the future of food service. I know I'll be attending the training to retain session and there's also a dynamic pricing demystified session that I do.

[Eric]

Not want to miss.

[Jason]

It's time to get inspired, get connected, get fanatic. The clock is ticking. So Register now at www.usfoods.com Food Fanatics 2025 or just head over to usfoods.com and look for the banner. Space is limited. Get on it.

[Eric]

Where I was going with that train, I thought it's not what you put on the paper, it's what's happening every day.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

So don't focus on like trying to communicate like, like, oh, like what is. It's like. No, like, like really reflect. Like what do we do? What are the things that are most important to me? And it's the living of those things every day that.

[Jason]

That's what's happening every day.

[Eric]

That is your culture.

[Jason]

And every culture across the world has rituals.

[Eric]

They have language. Like you're talking about vernacular.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

And, and the things that you say that like you know, sometimes you go into a restaurant and they'll be like, they'll be like these like little rituals and language around just like communicating. Like a plate. They'll have like a nickname for a plate, like one whatever, you know, like that's culture 100.

[Eric Neal]

It's the little unspoken things that are in between every other word, you know.

[Jason]

And, but taking these rituals, the pre.

[Eric]

Meal or the pre shift.

[Amanda]

The, the, the, the.

[Eric]

Everybody calls it different things.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

The pre shift meeting.

[Jason]

That is a ritual.

[Eric Neal]

Oh. Sitting down for 45 minutes with the same people every day.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

It's pretty phenomenal, man. I mean, you know, but I don't, you know, I don't get to spend that time with my much time with my kid every day.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But I, but I love getting to do it when I can with, with everybody that works here.

[Eric]

And this is where you can surface through your values. Hospitality, surfing, service, friendliness, knowledge. You know, like learning is a core value.

[Eric Neal]

Oh yeah. And there's been some tough days, you know, when, when something happens in the world that's, you know, that is bothering, you know, anybody who works for us. We'll talk about it. You know, be it, you know, disasters, you know, political goings on, you know, money, this, that and the other, you know, if, if, you know, if something happens and they want to talk about it, we'll talk about it. I think it's important to kind of let people, you know, have a moment to breathe in that environment and know that they're going to be safe and saying whatever is that they want. Whatever it is that they want to say it.

[Amanda]

Yeah, I love that.

[Eric]

Okay, so 2015, what's going on in your world?

[Eric Neal]

Well, just got in. 2015, we were, we were renovating Main Street Meats into its current configuration. So we took what was an existing butcher shop and then a small butcher counter with a little bit of kitchen in the back and a couple of stools and turned it into, at that time, a 40 seat restaurant with a bar. Made the butcher shop a tiny bit smaller and made the kitchen a little bit more robust so that we could service lunch and dinner on a daily basis.

[Eric]

So the butcher shop was more of a butcher shop when. Before you took over, it was.

[Eric Neal]

Well, it was.

[Eric]

Did you create it?

[Eric Neal]

I did not. It was, it was an existing business that my partner and it still had started.

[Amanda]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And he had asked me to come be involved in it from, in a consulting role.

[Amanda]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And I fell in love with it. I mean, it was challenging. My, you know, I've always been specialized in kind of fish butchery is my thing. And so whole animal butchery was not a skill that I possessed. I'm not going to say it's a skill that I possess to this day because I've always had really great butchers that have worked there, but I understand the process and know what they're doing. So we can talk about it again, that vernacular.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it was just a really unique opportunity to get involved in a business that I thought, you know, kind of like that one bakery, you know, to have that one butcher shop in town would be really, really cool.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, Cool.

[Eric]

But like you mentioned, not the best business model.

[Amanda]

No.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, the economics of buying a whole animal, cutting a whole animal and selling it suck.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And there's a reason that big corporations have gotten involved because unless you're, you know, buying at scale, butchering at scale, selling at scale, you know, the meat business is all about pennies on the dollars. So if you're, you know, if you're only selling 500 pounds of meat and you're making a penny on every pound. That's only five bucks. That doesn't do you really good.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, right.

[Eric Neal]

You got to be selling just massive amounts to make money in that world. And, and you know, on top of the fact that we're trying to source from local growers on both, you know, pork and beef and the pitfalls that happen in that world. Because while a pig may be absolutely, absolutely beautiful, but if it's an old heritage breed pig that, you know, the 500 pound carcass that you paid $5 a pound for yields 250 pounds of lard. That's very expensive lard. Yeah, it's great lard, but man, that's very expensive lard.

[Eric]

Well, I mean, the cool thing that's happening right now mostly like beef tallow or beef tallow, right?

[Eric Neal]

Oh yeah, beef tallow.

[Eric]

Well, like, I think we're, we're starting to realize we up the food system so bad that we're starting to now like the, our choices of how we ate for 50 years is starting to come. It's starting to like manifest in our health.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Like, like it could be the understatement of the year. I mean, we've it up so, so badly.

[Eric]

Yeah, but I think where it took 50 years for it to like manifest and like the, the children that like the, the children of the children, you.

[Eric Neal]

Know, shockingly, you know, super engineered foods and all the stuff that we do to make food more prolific and not more affordable. Affordable or more affordable and more profitable. More profitable has stripped all the nutrients out of it. And we're all eating all this shit that just makes us sick.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

But I'm hopeful, I think that as we're learning more about science, like you know, Moore's Law, that technology improves at an exponential rate. Information is also increasing at an exponential rate. We're learning more and more about the human body and the food systems.

[Jason]

And this information isn't locked behind closed doors anymore.

[Eric Neal]

Anymore. No, but you know, the, the, the raw kind of reality of it is that really good food at this point costs a lot of money. The food that's really good for you, but it.

[Eric]

Does it cost. Does it cost? So this is interesting. There's a book out there called the Food the Town that Food Saved. And it profiles this town of Vermont. And they, they make a point. I think it was like the 1920s or 30s or something like that before we industrialize the food system, like maybe 1940s, right after post World War II, the average household spent about 20% of their income on food. And then most recently, at the peak of the industrial age, it was like 9%.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

So is food getting more expensive or is it going back to the cost associated with real food?

[Eric Neal]

Great point. I mean, I'd say the answer is yes, food is getting more expensive.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And we're not paying enough for it. You know, what is your priority? Right.

[Eric]

Our money's going somewhere, but it's just not towards food.

[Eric Neal]

Exactly. And that's, you know, one of the casualties of. Of development and growth has probably been quality of food.

[Eric]

Maybe a casualty of consumerism.

[Eric Neal]

Sure, sure.

[Jason]

Don't get me started.

[Eric Neal]

No, no. I mean, you can go on that for days.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But, you know, like, the whole beef tallow thing, that's very in vogue of late. Right. There's not enough cows on the planet to create enough beef tallow. And this is just me doing math in my head. To run all the fryers to spoil in the US for one day.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

To support all the chicken and hot chicken concepts.

[Eric Neal]

No chance. Like, I know, you know, we are not going back to a beef tallow fried environment. Like, it's not going to happen. We can have beef tallow in our fryers, but 100% beef tallow does not last in a fryer for very long.

[Eric]

I guess.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

I think the point I was trying to make is that we're starting to realize that there really is no need for any byproduct and that there's use for everything that the animal has if we're willing to have different values.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, of course.

[Eric]

You know, like, there's no reason why I should be throwing away two. What is it, 200 pounds of lard? Like, there's got to be a use for that some way somehow.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, like, we were never throwing away the lard.

[Eric]

Well, I'm just saying we just.

[Eric Neal]

We just lost money.

[Eric]

We weren't making money on it.

[Eric Neal]

We were definitely not making money. Yeah, it was delicious. And man, those pies tasted great. But oh, my God, like, why go.

[Eric]

Towards figuring out that problem? You know what I'm saying? Like, what can you do with that? Like, how can you use it in industrialized. I don't know.

[Eric Neal]

I think, you know, there's.

[Eric]

It's a very complicated.

[Eric Neal]

It's such a loaded question, and I would love to. To be a part of the solution there.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

But until everybody sees that as an issue, it's going to be hard to battle that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Jason]

And I know it's not as simple.

[Eric]

As I make it out. I can be Very naive about this. I know it's a very complicated issue. But to your point, until people start caring about it, and I think that that is starting to happen, you see it more.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, food is. Medicine is one of those things that you talked about more and more. And as a chef and restaurateur and. And somebody that does care about the quality of food we're serving to people, I think it's awesome.

[Eric]

It's not just medicine for the body. It's medicine for the. The soul, the mental health. Like, people like food. The food system gives people so much purpose. I feel like I'm going like, people who listen to the show know where I'm going with this. Like, it's this idea that, like, we. We literally evolved around our relationship with food.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

We are what we are today because of our ability to cook and to.

[Jason]

Find, hunt and gather.

[Eric]

Than eventually agriculture, like in civilization, was born out of our agriculture. Like, literally our entire evolution as a species centers around food. And if you think the future is going to be any different from the past, like, you're delusional.

[Eric Neal]

But to your point earlier, that's. Why do we call it a commodity?

[Jason]

Exactly.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, it is a necessity.

[Eric]

Yeah, I think that was off recording. I mentioned that we call. We call food. It's literally listed as a commodity.

[Eric Neal]

D. Right.

[Eric]

And it was.

[Jason]

The majority of the things we put.

[Eric]

In our body was life.

[Jason]

Was living.

[Amanda]

Yep.

[Jason]

Was life.

[Eric]

And it's. We list it next to coal. Even coal was once life at one point. Technically.

[Eric Neal]

Right, exactly.

[Eric]

Anyway, I digress. Back to your. Your butchery.

[Eric Neal]

Cool.

[Eric]

So your butchery, your butcher shop, the meat house.

[Eric Neal]

Wait, Main Street Meats.

[Eric]

Main Street Meats. Thank you very much. 2015. You entered this operation as a consultant until how much time elapsed? So they. They developed it. You came in, they were struggling. What. What. What was that relationship like?

[Eric Neal]

It was a great relationship because the. The people I was working with are great people, and I wanted it to succeed.

[Eric]

Your partners?

[Eric Neal]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So are they partners to this day?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

One. One person? Just one.

[Eric]

How many people were involved?

[Eric Neal]

There were. There were two people involved. One of them left, you know, maybe eight years ago.

[Eric]

Did you replace that partnership?

[Eric Neal]

No, it's just. It's just me and my relationship. Original partner got it, but everybody wanted it to succeed.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it needed, you know, a lot of attention, a lot of money to get to where it needed to get okay. And what we, you know, when I got there, it was the, you know, idealistic, you know, one cow at A time, one pig at a time. That's what we got in the case. And you know, sales were suffering because we couldn't.

[Eric]

Everybody wants brisket. There's only two briskets in a cow.

[Eric Neal]

Everybody wants tenderloin. I mean, there's only maybe, if you're lucky, five pounds of tenderloin, one cow. And that doesn't. That doesn't pay for the cow.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

So the middle meats were gone and, you know, we were left holding the bag with a whole bunch of ground beef. So what I did over time was move to a supplier of whole animal. That is fantastic because we were messing with a bunch of different small growers, numerous ranch. So our primary box beef provider is Niman Ranch. Okay.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Our whole. Whole animal providers is a farm close to here called Bear Creek Farms.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And they are fantastic. One of the best, most vertically integrated small producers of high quality beef, pork and lamb in the world, in my opinion.

[Eric]

Yeah, I really do think that this is the solution. Part of the solution, not wholly, but understanding vertical integration and putting it at the food production, but like, like taking these massive vertically integrated organizations like the Tysons of the world and shrinking that at a local, helping absorb some of that cost at a local level.

[Eric Neal]

Then you need to talk to Leanne from Bear Creek at some point.

[Eric]

I literally just had a. Are they beef?

[Eric Neal]

Beef, pork and lamb?

[Eric]

Okay. I would love to, you know, like, I want to start talking to more farms because I think that we need to start educating the restaurateur on the. On the options at the farm level.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

You know, I had Dean and Peeler on the show, plus the B roll of the cows. Look, it always does really good on social media. So if that helps, you know.

[Eric Neal]

Totally. But not, you know. And the bigger version of that is Niman that you're talking about.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And the quality. They're the only place where there's not a local or regional producer that produces box beef that meets our quality and, and rigid kind of environmental and agricultural standards. Outside of Diamond Ranch, what are your standards? Hormone antibiotic free. And we want them to have free choice grass and grain. So they're not just feedlot cows, if that makes sense. And to me, that makes the most difference in flavor at the end of the day, you know, when a cow has choice to eat grass while they're being finished on grain, it maintains the grass fed profile of them. Grass fed beef, which I know is a huge thing for a lot of people on the whole, is very hard to sell in a restaurant and butcher Shop environment. It's not because it doesn't look good and it's not because it doesn't taste good. But the problem is if it doesn't have any fat in it, usually, very rarely do you find a full grass fed animal that has developed fat pathways throughout the musculature of it or intramuscular fat.

[Eric]

Does it look as appealing?

[Eric Neal]

It looks great. The problem is if you take it home and cook it anywhere past medium rare, it's going to taste like beef liver. And so what we ran into for a long time is that everybody thought our beef sucked from coming from the restaurant and the case because they would take it home. You know how to cook it, not know how to cook it. It would, it would carry up because there's no fat and it would carry real fast. And next thing you know you got a midwell well done steak that you paid a bunch of money for it. It didn't taste that great.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

So it was, you know, it was a negative reinforcing cycle. We're selling great stuff for a higher cost. But then when you eat it at home because we're not in control of cooking, wasn't proving to be what people wanted.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, I understand the die hard people who just want grass fed beef.

[Eric]

The problem is it's more about the nutritional value than it is about. Does it taste amazing?

[Eric Neal]

Exactly. And at that point we make something over at the shop called Primal Grind where we take 20% organization organ meat and grind it with our normal ground beef.

[Amanda]

Oh cool.

[Eric Neal]

And if you just want the, the, the iron and the cat and the calcium and the richness of that, just eat prima.

[Eric]

That's. What's happening right now is people are eating for the, the nutritional value. I'm one of those people. I 100 I'm. I can't believe I'm saying this. I look at food as medicine more today than ever before. I was also recently diagnosed as pre diabetic. I also have a fatty liver. You know, and it's like, like, like.

[Eric Neal]

I have to like, I mean, garbage in, garbage out, right?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, if you, if you feed yourself badly, you're gonna, you're gonna end up, you know, down the road at some point. It's gonna, it's gonna take a toll.

[Eric]

You know, you try to have a restaurant business podcast for 10 years all over the country. It's very attempting. So, you know, like I have to eat clean now. You know, and I think. And before, and now we're also learning how like screen our Healthcare system is with the, you know, just like every. We're not. We're not curing people, we're just giving them medicine.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

So, like, and it's all about just trying to drum up this huge pharmaceutical industry, you know, and like, once you. I don't want to go on medication out of.

[Jason]

Strictly because I just don't want my.

[Eric]

Money to go towards pharmaceutical companies.

[Jason]

I rather kill myself and not take.

[Eric]

Like, or make myself healthy with food than give. And like, I rather give my money.

[Jason]

To a farm than to a pharmaceutical company.

[Eric Neal]

And therein lies the wrong.

[Eric]

The right farms.

[Eric Neal]

The right farms, you know. Exactly.

[Eric]

Anyway, back to the butcher. So you join. You're. As a. As a consultant and eventually. Why. Why did you become a partner? Like, what happened?

[Eric Neal]

Because the. The shop needed to evolve. And what I mean by that is just the revenue stream of selling a few hamburgers out over the counter and meat out of the cave was never going to work financially.

[Eric]

Do you become a partner in 2015?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Okay. Do you. Were you working with them before 2015?

[Eric Neal]

I was working. I started in 13 or 14.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

As a consultant.

[Eric]

And what advice do you have in terms of, like, going into those types of partnerships? Like, how to, like, put that on.

[Eric Neal]

Paper, choose wisely, you know. You know, align yourself with people who are, you know, have the same shared values as you.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

If you think something's shady, it's shady.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And if you don't, if everything feels good, you know, just ask another question to make sure it's good.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Partnerships are, you know, necessary.

[Eric]

Is this your first partnership?

[Eric Neal]

No. I mean, I have partners in Easy and I have partners in Coyote, but.

[Eric]

Did you have partners back in 2005?

[Eric Neal]

I did. All the friends, family, and fools that would invest in me.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So were they silent partners?

[Eric Neal]

Yes, they were silent partners, but they cared and that helped.

[Eric]

But this is an operating partner now.

[Eric Neal]

No, this is a. Now a silence talent partner with the. The Main street meets.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Okay. So you kind of went over and took over.

[Eric Neal]

Basically. We, My wife and I at that point took over operations of the business. Got it and. And needed to. That. That was the whole point.

[Eric]

And the. It went from more of a focusing on the butcher to more creating a dining experience.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, we. What we quickly realized is that we needed the revenue of a dining room and a bar to help offset the high cost of. Of the butchering. Got it. Now, what makes. Like I said before, the butchery business is hard. It makes no financial sense by itself. The only way it makes sense is if you attach it to something else. So the butcher shop, feeding a kitchen, feeding a guest, makes a lot of sense. You know what it doesn't, where it doesn't work is if you're just taking, you know, 25 to 30 points on, you know, a tenderloin or a steak, you can, you're never going to be able to catch up at that low volume threshold that we were at got in the future.

[Eric]

You mentioned how, you know, you're talking about your cost. I think you said 70 prime cost. 40 of that's food, 30 of that's labor. And then you have an 8% profit with that concept. Is there a way to vertically integrate your butcher shop where you treat that as a separate entity that you sell meat to? Like, why is that too complicated? Like, what's.

[Eric Neal]

It's. It's such a small space. It's only 2, 600 square feet, which is one of the benefits of Main Street Meats. It doesn't have a huge, you know, overhead when it comes to occupancy costs. The butcher shop and the kitchen and the counter are all very close to each other, like geographically. You know, our vaccine is in the butcher shop, so on and so forth. And, you know, in the middle of the shift, if the guys go and get 10 more pounds of ground beef to patty out hamburgers, we would have to note that and sell from the butcher shop to the restaurant every single time. And we just found that to be too much paperwork.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

We were, you know, we, we did it for a second and it just turned into, you know, writing things down and invoicing one invoice entity from the other entity to the detriment of actually getting work done.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

So, you know, butchers are better at butchering than they are at record keeping.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Although they're very good at the USDA record keeping because. Because that is important.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But, you know, I'd rather have them making salami stuffing, you know, sausage, making head cheese pate, you know, forced meats, whatever, than filling out paperwork.

[Eric]

Got it. Yeah. So you guys have your, your counter where you're selling all the things that you're creating, like the retail. Then you have the restaurant where you're, you know, process, like you're processing the food at the butcher, but then you're also giving an outlet through the restaurant, and then you have alcohol sales. Is there any catering associated with this?

[Eric Neal]

There's a little bit of catering. We do, we do a lot of. To go pick up that kind of stuff, catering, and then we do Holiday meals.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

Thanksgiving is a huge time for us. We'll, you know, in that tiny shop, we'll sell maybe 250 birds either raw, brined, and ready roast, or fully, fully brined and smoked.

[Amanda]

Cool.

[Eric Neal]

Along with sides from the kitchen.

[Eric]

Got it. I guess. Like, what is. In terms of the model and how you're, like, using that space to be profitable? Like, what is. Like, if somebody wants to take this approach, like, what are you. What have you learned in the past 10 years?

[Eric Neal]

I've learned that the butchery is a hard part of it, but it is the part that makes it so attractive because, you know, having a band saw and cutting your own Primals and, you know, dry, aging your own meat and so on and so forth is such a unique process. So we can offer at the end of the day, you know, a dry, aged ribeye from a cow that we butchered personally, aged for 48 days, cut on a bandsaw, cleaned up, and put on our own grill for a price that is so much less than if somebody had just bought the Primal and done it themselves.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, because we're buying the whole animal.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And while still maintaining profitability, it's also just cool.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, it's really fun when you're in there and the bandsaw is running and the guys are cutting dry, aged pork chops on it.

[Eric]

I plan on going there today to grab some B roll. I mean, the sh. I don't know, man. I want to get some. Some shots of the charcuterie.

[Eric Neal]

You know, man, that's awesome. You know, having a salami cave where, you know, we have our own salami hanging.

[Eric]

You know, I shouldn't. I shouldn't be so attracted to that statement.

[Eric Neal]

It's awesome. It smells really. Smell. It smells really good in there.

[Eric]

Yeah, man, I can't wait to check it out.

[Eric Neal]

You know, having a smoker that, you know, that we can. We, you know, we make our own bacon and, you know, in the beginning, we were making maybe four or five bellies at a time, and now we're making 20 bellies at a time.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it's, you know, just the max quantity that we put in the smoker, because that's what we need.

[Eric]

Anything else in terms of the. The. That concept that we should unpackage?

[Eric Neal]

I just, you know, I think the definition of a steakhouse is an interesting thing. Like, I would consider Main Street Meats one of the best steaks out steakhouses I've ever been around.

[Eric]

What's the definition of a steakhouse?

[Eric Neal]

Place that Sells steaks. But, you know, when you say steakhouse, you're thinking like leather chairs and white, you know, white tablecloths and, you know, fine china. Operational costs, Operational costs. And, you know, and the other thing when I think about a steakhouse is I think about what I call candy beef, which, going back to that thing we talked about earlier about feedlot beef, where they're finished on grain. You know, if you've got a cow that's finished on 100 days of, you know, nothing but corn, every bit of flavor and it's going to be corn, it's going to be sugar. And to us, after having been around this great high quality, like Niman Ranch beef and then Bear Creek beef for so long, where they do have grain and grass as, or halo, just part of their diet, especially when they're finishing, we get this great flavor along with fat. And when I do taste candy beef now, it's almost off putting because, you know, USDA prime beef beef, it just tastes like sweet, sugary beef.

[Eric]

Well, yeah, we've been conditioned.

[Eric Neal]

We've been conditioned to like that. And sugar, sugar is a brain trigger, man. I like, you know, sugar is the most addictive substance on the planet.

[Eric]

Yeah, tell me about it. Pre diabetic over here.

[Eric Neal]

Right.

[Eric]

Don't remind me, please.

[Eric Neal]

But when we're literally injecting sugar into the beef and that's what people think beef should taste like.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

It's kind of sad in some ways. And I know there's a lot of great producers that do this and I'm. I don't want to get in trouble, but like.

[Eric]

Well, it's with the consumer. It all comes back to the consumer.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, right.

[Eric]

I mean, at the end of the day, the consumer drives everything.

[Amanda]

Yes. And you know.

[Eric]

Really, at the end of the day, I think if things are going to change, it has to come from restaurant owners, not just providing a service to consumers, but really influencing the consumer. Well, and that's. That's controversial.

[Amanda]

It.

[Eric Neal]

Well, let me tell you a little story that I think is kind of interesting here, if you don't mind, please. I mean. Yeah, that's what you're here to do. Exactly. So during the pandemic, you know, it was, it was chaos. Right. We shut down. I think it was March 16, 17, something like that, of 2020, you know, totally shuttered. Easy. Because there was no really chance at a to go program. And on the, on that day, on the 16th, our USDA inspector came to the shop at MSM and said, you know, we just want you to know that you guys are considered essential infrastructure as far as we're concerned in the federal government. We would like for you to remain open. And, you know, our butchery shop manager and butcher at the time, we all kind of looked each other and, like, okay, well, now at least we have a. We have something to do. Right? You know, because we hadn't really figured out what our plan was yet. So we immediately flipped to just running the butcher shop and then running just burgers to go out of the kitchen. You know, took us one day. We're close for one day. And that moment was really kind of, I don't know, monumental for Main Street Meats as a butcher shop. Because if you remember, maybe five, four or five weeks later, you know, all the big butchering facilities, slaughterhouses around the country, it's shut down because of COVID Right? And, you know, about, you know, two weeks into this, we called Leanne at Bear Creek and said, hey, we want to keep buying beef. Is that cool? She said, yeah, but you have to come get it. So we have a refrigerated box truck. We went to go get it. She said, and that's great, because all my restaurants are now closed, and I need to sell beef.

[Amanda]

Like, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

So I need. I need. I need. I need to harvest these animals, and I need somewhere for them to go. And we're like, great. So we basically overnight quadrupled our production in the butcher shop. And there was a moment where we were the only case in town that had steaks and pork cut and ready to sell.

[Amanda]

Oh, wow.

[Eric Neal]

And what used to be exorbitantly high prices in people's minds became acceptable because they had to get it there. And then two days later, they come back in, and they would literally say, I mean, I worked the counter for. For, like, two months straight, because that was my. My mandate at that time. People would come back and look at me and say, like, that was the best fucking steak I've ever had. What did you do to it? It was like, nothing. You just paid for a really good steak.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I said, what do I do to make it better? And I was like, how do I cook it? Just salt. It doesn't need any help. Like, put a little salt on it, grill it. Don't overcook it. It'll be great. And what happened in that moment was that people discovered us for what. What the quality was by accident because we were the only place that they could get meat. And then they took it home and cooked it, and it was awesome. They came back and you know, if you look at the, the, the sales from the case, they shot straight up and then they, you know, over time leveled out. But they leveled out 40, 50% higher. It was a huge amount of increase. That's awesome because people were exposed to it and realized, I mean, I had people come back in and say, I don't want to buy beef anywhere else. And I said, great, we'll always be here.

[Eric]

There are people. I mean, I'm telling if I, I, I am just a normal white dude from New Hampshire, like, you know, middle of the road, like, I will go to a farm and buy my chicken from the farmer and my beef from the farmer. And it's not cheap.

[Eric Neal]

No.

[Eric]

And if I'm doing this, I feel like most people are probably headed in this direction.

[Jason]

Not only does the food taste better.

[Eric]

Not only do you know where it comes from, you're helping your, you're keeping that money in your community.

[Jason]

You feel better buying.

[Eric]

Oh yeah, you, you, it just like it's, it's better for your health and it's better for your community. It's your, your community health.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, the economics of it are hard. You know, we're paying three people to stand in the back and butcher, you know, one to two cows a week versus, you know, 10 people to butcher 200 a day.

[Eric]

But then you take a step back and you're like, how many streaming services do I have? How often do I get a new pair of shoes? How often do I get, like, go shopping for. I just don't eat. How often do I buy something on Amazon that is stupid, Like a blowup, like toy or something like that?

[Eric Neal]

It doesn't work. You don't even return like a g. The hassle, you know.

[Eric]

You know, like something funny, we just spend money in the stupidest ways in consumerism.

[Jason]

It's like where, like the, the one thing you should spend a lot of money on is your food. The one thing that should be expensive.

[Eric Neal]

And thankfully we have people who choose to spend their one thing with us at Main street and at Easy and at Coyote. But it, you know, if you want to really treat yourself and come in and get a dry aged steak, like, it doesn't get much better than that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And I've been fortunate enough to eat all of it, man. Like, I've eaten all the great stuff. I've eaten, you know, the, the dairy cattle from Spain that are 10 years old that are amazing. I've eaten the A5 Wagyu. And I will take our dry aged beef from Bear Creek Farms, 48 days. I'm gonna over all of them every day of the week.

[Eric]

You know, I'm killing myself. I was out yesterday and I was. I was like hankering like, like beef, like, I need a steak, you know, and I went to Publix, I got like a discounted New York strip. And now you're talking about this. And I have like leftover steak. Son of a. I knew I shouldn't have gone. I should have waited a day.

[Eric Neal]

All steak is good steak. I'm just saying. However, you know.

[Eric]

Anyway, so there's still one concept we haven't discussed.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Your latest concept, 2023. Actually, before we talk about that, we have to get into reopening Easy Beast.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

That was 2020. Five years after getting involved in the butcher shop. What was going on? So what happened in 2020? Obviously, we know what happened in 2020, but like.

[Eric Neal]

Well, yeah, we. We signed the lease to move March 1st of 2020.

[Amanda]

Oh, wow.

[Eric Neal]

And, you know, there. We shut down, I think, on the 16th, you know, and, you know, remember when it was like, well, there was one case reported in California, and then. And then eventually it was like two weeks to stop the spread. Remember that one? That was. That was fun. And, you know, maybe at the end of March, I kind of looked at my wife and was like, we're. We're fucked. Like, I don't know what's going to happen to us.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And what ended up happening was maybe the. The greatest sequence of fortunate, unfortunate events ever.

[Eric]

What were they?

[Eric Neal]

Well, PPP happened and that again gave us a purpose. So we were able to rehire some of our management and hourly staff to clean out the old place and begin storing all of our stuff to move to the new place. And then PPP 2 happened again. And then Eidl happened. And, you know, because in that moment, you know, there was. Nobody was going to invest in a. And moving a restaurant, and we, you know, bank loans weren't going to happen to move a restaurant. So we did take full advantage of those moments of stimulus and support to actually do something with it and were able to move the restaurant. And like I said, the most fortunate, unfortunate sequence of events that you could possibly imagine.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

And we don't have to dive into all that because we all know how that played out.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

When were you open?

[Amanda]

Full.

[Eric]

Full.

[Eric Neal]

We opened in September of 2020. And 2020.

[Amanda]

Okay.

[Eric]

Half occupancy.

[Eric Neal]

Half occupancy. Masks. And, you know, we're in the south and, you know, there was a much more Open view in this part of the world. And I think that ultimately played out in our favor because we needed to do revenue.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And I know there are plenty of cities where restaurants were just effectively shut down for two years and it really just strangled everybody, you know, right or wrong, it's what happened. And while it was nerve wracking to put people in other rooms together, we needed to run a business and we needed to support ourselves and our people needed to support themselves. And it worked. Worked.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And I'm really, really happy for it.

[Eric]

So you went from 230 seats to 135 seats.

[Amanda]

Yep.

[Eric]

You talk to us, but like you said, there's a bunch of things you just did wrong with the first concept in terms or the first not concept, the first physical location for the concept.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

What, what were all the things you were going to do right with this space?

[Eric Neal]

Well, restaurants are living, breathing creatures and like I've said before, and sometimes they got to grow up, you know, So I. I have a very vivid memory sitting at this bar when it was a construction zone and I had drafts of menus that I had written and I had the old menu from the old place and was trying to figure out what to integrate from the old place into the new place and how to evolve the concept while having a different kitchen, different kitchen layout, totally different environment. And I finally just said, what if I take all this old shit and just put it over here and don't think about it and wrote a menu based on what I want to do now 15 years later. And that was a truly liberating moment because I got rid of all the old shit. It was great. You know, there are dishes that people still kind of ask for less and less frequently now. But I found in one of my bigger lessons that holding on to the things that I thought people needed and wanted was probably one of my greatest mistakes because it limited our ability to continue to grow towards the guest and with the guest because they always wanted the same freaking thing. So, you know, we had a shrimp and grits dish. Every restaurant in 2010 had a shrimp and grits dish in the South. Right. It was great. You know, I worked on it for a long time. I was very proud of it. And I've told people this, and it's true. Like, I don't have a recipe for that anymore. I let it go. It's not even in my head anymore. I could make something like it, but I'm not even going to try because it lives in my memory the way I Want it to.

[Amanda]

To.

[Eric Neal]

But it allowed us to move forward as a restaurant in a way that we needed to, to let go of all that old shit. And in doing that, it was one of the most unique opportunities in the restaurant business to take a 15 year old restaurant that has, you know, weight and heft, but evolve it at such a rapid pace.

[Eric]

So it sounds like you, you started the way, it's like a pendulum. You started far off in this direction of doing what you wanted to do. The market wasn't ready for you yet.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Right. You were kind of ahead of the market.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

In a, in a marketplace that wasn't quite, you know.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah, west coast, sure.

[Eric]

You know, and then the pendulum swings. You evolve to give the market what.

[Eric Neal]

They want to while still maintaining principles.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric]

And then 2020 happens. New York, Miami, California, all moved to the country.

[Amanda]

Yep.

[Eric]

Pendulum starts to swing back. Now the market can support your creative.

[Eric Neal]

We, the market had grown up enough in those 15 years to allow us to grow into what we needed to be finally.

[Eric]

What you always wanted.

[Eric Neal]

What we always wanted to be. And, and you know, it only took 15 years. Blood, sweat and tears and a whole lot of money.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But it was so gratifying to get there and it was terrifying because it was, you know, I figured if there was ever an opportunity to throw all the old stuff away, this was it. And if I didn't take advantage of would, I would regret it for the rest of my life. And I'm so glad to have taken that leap and then had some really wonderful people come in and do it with me. Culinarily. And, you know, bar wise and hospitality wise, front house wise, like, you know, worked, but man, it was a gamble.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

So it worked. What are you doing better here than you were in the last location? I mean, your, your, your kitchen now meets the, the, the demand in the dining room is a better balance there.

[Eric Neal]

Yep.

[Eric]

What else?

[Eric Neal]

Efficiency. How are you working the general. Less space, you know, more sales.

[Amanda]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

So, you know, if you look at revenue per square foot as a basic rent down, sales up, sales up, you know, and revenue per square foot way up.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And then like I said, the ability to cordon off certain parts of the restaurant. So if we only have a low book, we're not going to turn on our private dining room as everflow seating. We don't have to staff it. We don't have staffing at the back. We can have a really busy night in, you know, our main dining room and our raw bar, which is like 75 seats and that's it.

[Eric]

And how many seats are in this private room we're in right now?

[Eric Neal]

We can seat 42 at tables as overflow seating for the dining room, or we can seat 36. And one big table like this.

[Eric]

And you can record a podcast.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, for sure.

[Eric]

Which is super convenient.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And. And it's, and it's totally private. You know, you're, you know, this, this was an important piece of this business.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Well, one fun fact is that this dining room is the same size as your last or this private dining room is the same size as the private dining room in your last location. I mean, private dining is where the money is in this type of concept.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

So what percentage of your sales?

[Eric Neal]

It is really, really important.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Do not do fine dining unless you have a private dining room.

[Eric Neal]

No. And it needs to be fully private. Yeah. You know, you got to be able to put the screen down. And the pharmaceutical companies need to show blood and guts up there to doctors who are eating nice meal, drinking nice wine.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

I didn't even notice that screen. I was like, oh, where's the screen? It's tucked up nice up there.

[Eric Neal]

It's great.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

There's a projector.

[Eric Neal]

So I'd say this is 15, 20 of our total sales.

[Amanda]

Wow.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, I look at this as kind of different buckets. When the bar and the dining room and the private dining room are all working at the same time. We're gonna have a great night. If you just have two of those working, it's okay. If you just have one of those working, it's, it's, it's not great, but it's at least survivable.

[Eric]

So which is the one that's hardest to get working?

[Eric Neal]

I would say the dining room is the one that's hardest to get working consistently. But once you got it, you got it. Yeah, it's really nice. And that's just, you know, reputation consistently making people happy and having the demand to fill those seats on a consistent basis.

[Eric]

So in the past five years since opening this space to where you are today, like what has been the growth, what has been the struggle for you?

[Eric Neal]

It's always people and finding talented people and, or people who want to commit to learning how to do this full service restaurant thing completely. So, you know, you know, there's plenty of, you know, 22 year old cooks who've been a sous chef at some restaurant that have no idea what they're doing, that come in and apply here. And, you know, we basically tell them you can work our mache and learn, but you're not going to be a sous chef chef here and, or at least not for a while. And some people get their feelings hurt by that and think that because they've been a sous chef, they should be a sous chef. And some people are drawn to the, you know, the challenge of it and, and the, and the amount of, you know, information and technique and talent that they're gonna, that they're gonna acquire while being here. It's just kind of two separate camps. Same thing with, with servers. You know, we, we run a tip pooled house. And you know, it's, it is a, is a point system and it works really, really well. It rewards tenure, it rewards knowledge, it rewards success. If you have a W set, you know, or anything like that, you, you know, you can gain points. There's a maximum amount and a minimum amount W set. So if you've passed a, you know, a wine, wine professional exam. Okay. And are, you know, certified sommelier or something like that.

[Eric]

Start from the top. Like, so what is your, you have a tip out or a tip out protocol? Yeah. What does that look?

[Eric Neal]

We're a tip pooled house.

[Eric]

Tip pooled house.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And is this like a unique to Tennessee situation where you can do this in terms of the laws and stuff?

[Eric Neal]

I think it's, you know, we've, we've made it work the best we can.

[Amanda]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And we do include the back of house in our tip out system.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And by that we, we forego paying all of our front of house employee employees tip minimum wage, which is 213. We have to pay everybody federal minimum wage, which is 750.

[Amanda]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

So everybody in this place makes at least seven federal minimum wage.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And we treat the kitchen as basically a server every night and they have a certain amount of points and they get tipped out at the end of the day based on, you know, however many people are in the kitchen. It's an even split with their amount of points that the kitchen has. And then the servers and the bartenders and the host and the SAS each have their points. And so you basically take the total amount of tips divided by the total number of points on the floor. And each point is worth a certain amount of money.

[Eric]

So what are you calling a point? What do you mean by point?

[Eric Neal]

It's, it's a, it's a mathematical system that we came up with.

[Eric]

So you have a baseline point for the position.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So the, the baseline point for front of house is all the same.

[Eric Neal]

No, it Differs here based on tenure and tests and experience.

[Eric]

Okay, so what is the baseline for all the different positions?

[Eric Neal]

Everybody starts at 8, and you can immediately test into 10 maximum points or 20.

[Eric]

Okay, so everyone starts at 8 points. Front of house and back of house.

[Eric Neal]

Well, the back of house is treated as one entity. So the back of House has 15 points in any, in any shift. So, like, what the average server would make in a shift is given to the back house.

[Eric]

Okay, so. So the back of House splits 15 points.

[Eric Neal]

Yep.

[Eric]

How many people are generally in the back of house?

[Eric Neal]

Anywhere from five to nine, depending on the day.

[Eric]

Okay. But then from there you have basically a, a way to level up and to earn more points, to earn more money. So it's incentivizing people to skill up, stay here.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Take tests, prove their, prove their, you know, it's, it is a, a merit based system. You test into certain points once you've been here for a long enough time. And then if you go outside and work on, you know, additional avenues of improvement, like W set, cma, that kind of stuff, you can, you can earn points that way.

[Eric]

What are those things? W set.

[Eric Neal]

They're tests that you can take, take in as wine professionals.

[Eric]

Got it?

[Amanda]

Yeah, got it.

[Eric]

So how many of these tests. You know, you're making me think of Nick Cirillo from Nick's Pizza. And he did. He hosted a workshop, an episode, where we talked about building tangible lanes or tangible paths of growth within your organization. So if you get hired, you. Okay, here are five paths you can take. Here are the steps along the way to get to the top of each one of those paths.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

Almost like a university. Like, like you're a freshman. Here's how you become a sophomore. Here's how you become a junior, here's how you become a senior. Like, here's the curriculum that you can take to get to all these different places. Like, have you built out curriculum like that? Like, are there clear paths of growth here?

[Eric Neal]

Yes, it's, you know, kitchen is different because that's, that is more the brigade system of old where you, you know, you start somewhere and you learn a station, you move to the next station, move to the next station, and as you go, you, you might make, you know, salary position as chef to parti, sous chef, executive sous chef, so on and so forth. Right. And then there's raises along the way as you learn stations. You know, every time you learn a new station and master it, we give you a 50 cent or a dollar raise, depending on which station is.

[Eric]

So you're getting a monetary race. Plus points.

[Eric Neal]

Plus points.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And then in the front of house, you know, it is about time. But everybody is explained when they start on with us, where they start and where they can finish. So within a year's time, you can achieve, like, I think 90% of the maximum. Maximum points if you put effort into it. Okay, but you got to put effort into it.

[Eric]

What does that look like? What does that path look like?

[Eric Neal]

It means learning the job, taking your test on time, passing the tests. And then if you're going to achieve maximum points, you got to do something outside of here to better yourself in here.

[Eric]

Like what? Give me an example. Like the som.

[Eric Neal]

The sound thing.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

W. Set.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Anything else?

[Eric Neal]

Cicerone. If you want to take a cicerone test, you can do that. Cool it. You know, those. Those are the big examples there.

[Eric]

Got it. I mean, where can we. Where did you go to get this inspiration?

[Eric Neal]

I worked with a. One of our old bar managers had worked a system similar to this in Boston, and he really helped, like, conceptualize it for us.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Do you know where he was working in Boston?

[Eric Neal]

I can't remember. I can find out.

[Eric]

I'm just over the border in New Hampshire. Interesting to go deeper into.

[Eric Neal]

But what it. What it really has accomplished is one, nobody working in the front of the house feels like an independent contractor because they're getting paid a minimum wage. And it's not a huge difference, but it's at the end of the day for a restaurant to pay, you know, more than. Than tip. Minimum wage makes a big difference.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it makes us feel a little bit more indebted to them because we're paying that.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Servers are not throwaway labor anymore. Right. You know, three servers, you know, if you just carried them for another extra three hours and wasted their time, it didn't make a big difference to the restaurant because you're only paying them 213 an hour.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

So I think they appreciate the. The fact that they're treated like employees instead of just independent contractors.

[Amanda]

Yep.

[Eric Neal]

What? It also evens out the highs and lows of a server's life, because if you have, you know, a 500 tab and somebody stiffs you on it, it's not the end of the day.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

It's not your one table that you were going to make money on that night. It doesn't ruin your life because you're.

[Eric]

Less peaks and valleys.

[Eric Neal]

Less peaks and valleys. And really what it does is it raises everybody up to a certain level. And what we've Experienced in the five years of doing this success.

[Eric]

Six.

[Eric Neal]

Well, say six, seven years of doing this now is we've had more servers, front house professionals and back house professionals that work for us, buy houses, buy cars. But they can prove their income. They're not worried about making their rent at the end of the month because they've had a consistent income stream. We're not fighting over private dining room parties because the private dining room server would make $700 one night and the guy who got stuck on the patio on a cold night would make 12. I mean, you know, it really, it really evens out the playing field. Field and, and also creates a camaraderie between the front and the back because the back is now involved in the guests experience monetarily.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

Oh, you have special requests?

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, what can we do to make them happy? Yeah, what can, you know, and opportunity to shine.

[Eric]

Let's do it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And it just, you know, it helps to, you know, write a little bit of the inequity and the wage disparity between.

[Eric]

I was waiting for that to come into it too.

[Eric Neal]

You know, it really helps. So I mean, you know, cook at the end of the day to find 80 to 150 bucks in their envelope at the end of a week. Makes a huge difference.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

I mean, that's a, that's a car payment.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

You know, it could be.

[Eric Neal]

It's, you know, it's several.

[Eric]

Nice car.

[Eric Neal]

But no, but it's several dollars per hour that we're able to provide. And I think everybody, you know, who works in the system really enjoys that.

[Eric]

Is a car payment. That's $400 a week.

[Eric Neal]

$4 a month.

[Amanda]

Yeah. That's a car. Yeah.

[Eric]

You know, it's 50% of your rent.

[Amanda]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Eric]

That's huge. I mean, a lot of the pushback with this I've heard is that you can't attract and keep talent.

[Eric Neal]

I disagree because we've managed to attract, to keep a lot of talent.

[Eric]

Right. So like, what are the other.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, so I have, I have servers and bartenders who have been here for over 10 years. They're at their maximum point structure. They're at 20 points. And so, you know, they're invested in being here because they've achieved that. That income level.

[Eric]

How much? Sorry, go ahead.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, at the same time, they don't have to face the highs and lows. It's not about hunting that table or poaching that guest or only getting put on the big party. You know, if I have a senior server who is incredibly knowledgeable in wine and service, who is on the patio in the example we just gave, where they're, you know, they're going to make $12 in tips that night, but you have a couple of relatively new or interim servers in the back on a bigger party. They're going to be right there with them, helping them.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

There's no animosity. We have turned this into a team sports and they're, you know, everybody is working for everybody and it just makes a huge difference. So we don't have to constantly just put strength with strength on the floor. We can manage the floor better and help raise everybody's, you know, experience up in the dining room because they're seeing multiple people, they're being touched by multiple servers. You know, maybe the server that they really like, cook, wasn't in, you know, wasn't able to take their table when they walked in the door, but 10 minutes later they can walk over and take their drink order because they know what they want and nobody, nobody gets their feelings hurt.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

You know, so when you talk to other restaurateurs about your approach, what, what resistance do they meet you with? Why do they say, I can't do that?

[Eric Neal]

There are, there are some old hat servers that just don't like it because they have to work into it and they think that they should be able to just go to the top of the heap first. And in a team that just doesn't work, you know. You know, just because you scored a bunch of goals last season doesn't mean you get to start at the new, at the new team. You got to earn your way on the team.

[Eric]

So the disadvantage is you maybe are holding yourself from getting some of those like top tier servers because they don't want to go through the process to make the money they can make on their own.

[Eric Neal]

Only top tier servers who have, have been in the business for a while.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Because they have paid their dues elsewhere.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

The problem for them with this system is you have to pay your dues here as well, which could take as.

[Eric]

Long as a year and a half.

[Eric Neal]

Which is not that long.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

But if you're not planning on working here for more than a year, I don't want, I don't want you anyway.

[Eric]

So now you're, you're filtering out the people who are transactional. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Transitional and transactional.

[Eric Neal]

Exactly.

[Eric]

Anything else we haven't discussed in terms of Easy Bistro, Main street, butcher shop that are worth Bringing to the conversation or Main Street Meat. Sorry.

[Amanda]

No.

[Eric Neal]

You know, these two restaurants are. You know, they have defined my career. And, you know, I could not be more grateful for everyone who has ever passed through the doors that worked in them or as a guest, because, you know, really, I wouldn't be able to be here today without the support of all those people. And, you know, everybody who. Who works in the restaurants, you know, has an idea of. Of how important it is that the people came before them. But we all stand on the backs of everybody who's worked right in these places before us. And it is so amazing to be in a restaurant that's about to be 20 years old, knowing that there are people who work here now that we're not even alive when this place opens.

[Eric]

That's crazy. You know, that's wild.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So we haven't talked about Coyote.

[Eric Neal]

No.

[Eric]

Is it Little Coyote?

[Eric Neal]

Little coyote.

[Eric]

Little coyote. 2023. We also haven't talked about one other huge thing that's happened for you in your life is you've kind of transitioned out of the kitchen.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So when did that happen?

[Eric Neal]

Go back to that Covid story. And I realized about. On the. The second day of COVID that as I was trying to get my knives out, for some reason, just out of habit. Right. Put on an apron. I realized that I was. If I continue to try and cook and manage restaurants through that kind of a crisis, I was gonna lose everything. Because me standing there peeling a carrot or, you know, cutting a steak or dicing an onion was just the antithesis of what I needed to be doing as an owner of a restaurant.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

So I packed up my knives and put them away, and I still have them, but they're not in any other restaurants because I. You know, it really, over time, especially through that, you know, the easy moving and the transition with MSM and to go only and, you know, being so busy in the butcher counter and trying to just, you know, keep these things moving in the right direction. It changed my whole outlook about what my job was at that time. And it was forced evolution, but I welcomed it once I got to the other side of it, and I realized that I was doing a better job of managing my businesses than I was when I was trying to cook and manage the businesses. And it just. It was just an awakening at that point. Like, I. I couldn't go back.

[Eric]

When did this. This. This evolution happen for you? Like, 2022, 2023.

[Eric Neal]

This is 2020.

[Eric]

2020.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

That's all happening in the. In the pandemic. Like, I realized, you know, that there was no way I could continue and be the chef and the owner and do it all at the same time.

[Eric]

So what was that challenge like for you?

[Eric Neal]

It's emotional. You know, it's to. To. To have come up as a chef. And everybody in these restaurants still refers to me as chef, and I. And I take that as a, you know, a point of pride, and I think it's a very endearing term to refer to somebody as that. Thank you. I, you know, I will always be that. I hope that in my current role, I am fulfilling my obligations and my goals of restaurateur as well, while, you know, shepherding these concepts into, you know, into the promised land and that. Into that perfection, that pursuit of perfection that we're all talking about while managing people and, you know, creating value for our guests in a way that I am learning more and more every day is also important, other than just creating great food and putting it on a plate. So it's working with other people to do that. So it never leaves me. I'm still a chef at heart, and I know what the people in the back are doing. I know what the people in the front are doing. But my ability to liaise between the back and the front and, you know, communicate with them, help chefs cooks through problems with, you know, ideas, sourcing, you know, schedules, whatever, you know, I am. I have. I have moved into that phase of my career. Doesn't mean I don't think about food. It's just that I'm not doing it on a daily basis.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

I think what it comes down to is if there's one thing I've learned talking to successful restaurateurs, like, your role as a restaurateur is to create opportunity for other people.

[Eric Neal]

People, for sure.

[Eric]

And if you're. If you're taking up a huge spot at the top as the executive chef, like, that's a spot that's being taken that somebody could move into. Like, you need to take yourself out of that position to create upward mobility for somebody else.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, for sure. I mean, the. The benefit of opening Main street meets after easy, after 10 years was that it took me away and created a vacuum so that people could grow and learn and. And move into themselves.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Because if, you know, I found this at that point in time, 10 years into this whole endeavor, that if I was there, they were always going to defer to me.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

For every decision, little, you know, small and big, whatever, it didn't matter. Like, so you Know, not being physically present sometimes is the best way to run your restaurant or your business because it forces other people to make a decision. Now, if they make a decision based on the important things of, you know, is it good right for the guest, is it right for the business, is it right for the employee? If you check all the three of those boxes, it's a great decision.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

And what did this free you up? I mean, you also now have bandwidth to open a third restaurant, right? Would you have had the bandwidth to do that otherwise?

[Eric Neal]

Not a chance.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

If I, if I was cooking every day in one of these restaurants, there's no way.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

So what, what did that process? So you remove yourself from the, the, the chef role. I mean, you're still a chef. You're still, but you're not on the floor working in the business. Every day you're out creating new ideas and flexing that, that creativity and also creating more space for growth within your.

[Eric Neal]

Organization, trying to create opportunity for more people to grow, advance and be better at their jobs.

[Eric]

So how did Little Coyote come onto your radar 2023?

[Eric Neal]

I joke that, you know, every, every chef that starts in like quasi fine dining has this desire to do barbecue and tacos, right? And so I just had this concept, you know, sort of stewing, cooking the back of my brain for 10 years, how to do, how to do fun tacos, you know, how to do them with proper barbecue, like really well prepared meat, not just the average stuff that you get in kind of a regular taco shop and smash them together in a way that makes, makes it fun. And then it evolved into the tortilla and, you know, kind of an obsession with corn tortillas. And, you know, then it evolved into, you know, the way people in different cultures around the world, you know, views bread or use, you know, any sort of, you know, PETA, non, whatever you want to call it, vehicle to move food, vehicle to get food from plate into mouth. Right. And, and then, you know, I, you know, did a couple of things and I realized that one of the biggest problems with making tacos, that you have to put all the stuff into the form and it's just super labor intensive at that point. And then also there is a perception that tacos should be dirt cheap because they've always been kind of dirt cheap. But if you're smoking Niman Ranch brisket and putting it in a taco, you can't just charge $3 for the taco because you're going to lose money on it. So then my obsession with Texas barbecue, because I grew up in Texas, comes back into play, and I love smoking meats because everybody who puts fancy things on plates on the weekend has a smoker at the house, and they want to smoke something because it's. It's the antithesis of what you do in a fine dining restaurant. Right.

[Amanda]

I got.

[Eric]

I finally got a piece. I'm wearing the. The. The.

[Amanda]

The.

[Eric Neal]

The Franklin barbecue.

[Eric]

Barbecue T shirt right now. And I finally got a bite of that. That brisket, man. I only took a little piece. Fell off the scale.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

I was like, you lost a piece? And she handed it to me. I was like, that was all I got. I would have felt bad eating there because they always, always aligned. Like, I'm not gonna, like, don't feed me. Someone's out in the line waiting for hours. Like, I'll just have. I'll take that little bite. It was delicious.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, I digress. You know, my favorite Franklin story is when Obama visited when he was president, and he cut the line, but he bought everybody's meal behind him that he cut in front of. That's pretty awesome.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So, okay, so you're. You're kind of sharing the. The. The culmination of, like, what. What. What the. How the. The brain came to be. So you're. You're piecing all these pieces together, and.

[Eric Neal]

This is just cooking. It's just cooking, like, how do we do this? How do we do this? And, you know, what ultimately came out of it was. Was little coyote. And we, you know, the tagline is smoked meats and fresh tortillas.

[Eric]

So are you making the tortillas in house?

[Eric Neal]

Make tortillas in house every day. So we got a. A machine, a. A roller oven combo from Mexico City, company called Lennon that we brought up. So it was really interesting buying a machine over WhatsApp through. Through international wire transfer. It was like a little bit of hope and prayer. But it's great, man.

[Amanda]

I love that.

[Eric Neal]

It's totally analog. You know, it has. It has electrical circuits and electrical motor and a gas connection.

[Eric]

They're open today, right?

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, they're open today.

[Eric]

I'm gonna have to check that out.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, it's. It's really cool. You know, we. We did some, you know, a bunch of, you know, trialing and. And kitchen work and stuff like that, and then took a great trip to Houston with my culinary director there, a guy named Jonathan Ferguson, and made Nick, you know, nixtamaze corn in a restaurant that he was associated with when he used to work at a place Called cultivari. And we found in Houston that there's only two or three restaurants nixtamazing corn. And two of those are Hugo Ortega's joints. I was like, I don't think we need to nixtamalize corn. Let's just get really great.

[Eric]

What do you say?

[Eric Neal]

Nixtamalize corn?

[Eric]

What is that?

[Eric Neal]

It's when you soak dry hominy and use lye and hot water and thyme to remove the outer case and shell of the corn.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

So that.

[Eric]

What's that called again?

[Eric Neal]

It's called nixtamalization.

[Eric]

Nick stimulize it. Nick stimulization.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Okay, so to make dry masa harina, which is what. What you want to make tortillas with, you have to nixtamalize the corn first because you just grind it, remove the husk. If you don't remove the husk, you're, you know, one, it tastes kind of weird, and two, your body or our bodies are not able to fully absorb the nutrition of the corn.

[Eric]

Got it?

[Eric Neal]

Yeah. Really important process. Great history, like, goes back, you know, to ancient civilizations of Central and South America, so on and so forth.

[Eric]

Oh, it's so cool.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So you figure all this process, figure.

[Eric Neal]

All this out, you know, we. We're going through it, you know, and so we write drafts of menus and have this. Have this whole idea. And we realized, you know, maybe three months before we opened that none of the food that we were doing there had any flour. There was no, you know, wheat flour in the. In the. At all.

[Eric]

Now you have a gluten free.

[Eric Neal]

We were just like, it. Let's just not do it. And the restaurant is actually totally gluten free, even though we don't make a big deal out of it, which is.

[Eric]

Huge today because we up the food system. Now. I know everyone's. I'm one of those people too. Like, I. I barely. I love beer. I'll have a beer, but you won't want to be around me for the next 24 hours.

[Eric Neal]

But we did it out. We did it out of a challenge to kind of keep ourselves honest.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Because flour, I mean, don't be wrong. I'm a massive gluten eater. I love sandwiches. I eat bread, I eat pasta. It's awesome. But it, you know, when used inappropriately, can kind of like hide a bunch of stuff.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And to have almost like the nakedness of a menu without any wheat flour on it anywhere has been kind of liberating.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

In terms, too, if you have any celiac or gluten, like Allergies.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric]

Now you don't have to worry about like cross contamination or anything. Like completely gluten free operation.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric]

That's cool. So are you making tacos? Are you. Is it kind of like what's like. So.

[Eric Neal]

So the, the idea is we, we make bar barbecue and we make fun dishes that are kind of, you know, either inspired by Tex Mex or Caribbean or, you know, African cuisine or whatever. And then we put them all on the table in a shared format with a big pile of tortillas. Oh yeah.

[Eric]

Right now.

[Eric Neal]

Salsa, pickles and.

[Eric]

Yeah, that's cool. That's so cool.

[Eric Neal]

And like, and the mantra is literally like, play with your food, right?

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Like take the fajitas and dip them in the queso and then put them in a tortilla and then put some creme.

[Eric]

That's how it's meant. It. Yeah, that's how it's meant. I think. I mean, I'm not Mexican, but I'm pretty sure that that's the idea. Like you just, it's just like this vehicle, like you make your own. So it's this pile of food in front of you and you kind of put together your own like, little vehicle to put.

[Eric Neal]

Put.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And then if you, you know, people sometimes like, well, how do I get the food from that plate to this plate? And you say, well, pick up a tortilla. Grab it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And then put it in your mouth or on your plate.

[Eric]

What's that? Sorry, did you finish?

[Eric Neal]

That's it.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric]

There's this. I think you're going to see this exploding real soon. There is this African food that is like. I don't know how to explain it. It's like putty almost. You know what I'm talking about? It's like, it's like this like, like root vegetable, like pounded out thing. It's like sticky and like it comes in a big ball and you just like pull a swab out of it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And that's what they do is they kind of use it, they grab it and then they, they use it almost as, like a, As a vehicle. Yeah, yeah, as a vehicle. And I went to this place when I was in Kansas City and they were doing this and I was like, like this is a cool concept. I think it has legs for sure.

[Eric Neal]

But anyway, so coyote has been, you know, it's been a lot of fun. It's reminded me how hard it is to open a restaurant and, and you know, it reminded me how much I'd taken the Culture and easy and MSM for granted and how hard it was to create because we had to then go create it again.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And, you know, I think the. The older part of me thought that it might just kind of like transfer a little bit, but really you got to take every individual person that comes in as part of a new team and spend time with them. So we go back to that lineup and these, you know, conversations that we have about, you know, fundamentals of hospitality, fundamentals of food, you know, why we do what we do, why, you know, why we buy the things that we buy, why Masienda produces our Masa arena and that kind of, you know, and the heirloom beans that we get and so on and so forth. And where we got the smoker from, the kind of wood that. Using the whole nine yards.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So this is the first time you're really opening a restaurant from scratch in 25 years, 22 years. Cuz like you, you kind of like traditionally like you, you know, you kind of relocated your first concept and then you took over a restaurant that was already open. So what was the. What were the unique challenges with. With this, like you said, like, it was fun to reconnect how hard it is to open a restaurant.

[Eric Neal]

It was fun. It was fun and, and challenging and, you know, get a little bit that brain damage that you always get when you do it. Yeah, it was, it was. It's in a different location. So we kind of have a little bit of a neighborhood strategy with these three places where, you know, easy is in a neighborhood we call the West Village. And it's, you know, a little bit more urban. It's kind of the most downtown looking piece of downtown. You know, taller buildings. I'm not gonna say tall buildings, but taller buildings. Right. And then, you know, surrounded by hotels, you know, the Tivoli, which is a fine, fine arts performing center, theater, you know, theater and symphony and music shows. And that kind of stuff is right down the street. And then Main street meets, which is in. Which is on Main street, which is kind of a more upand cominging neighborhood of Chattanooga. And then St. Elmo, which is where Little Coyote is, which is a little bit more. It's five minutes away from here, six minutes away from here, but it's like a little bit of an enclave next to Chattanooga. So I wouldn't say we're suburban by any means, but we do have a parking lot. And so this is the first one that's ever had like grass or parking lot attached to it that we've Ever run. That's been fun and challenging, you know, in all the different ways that it can be fun and challenging and, you know, being in a different neighborhood with a different interpretation of what they wanted us to be and a different clientele and just kind of starting something new and getting to know St. Elmo and trying to be, you know, a part of that neighborhood. Neighborhood as much as we can be.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

So in terms of, like, the evolution, like a restaurant today is in the same restaurant 20 years ago.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

In terms of if it is the same, you're gone.

[Eric]

Right, yeah. So what has that evolution been like for you in terms of, like, restaurant operations? Like, how have you, like, improved your operations? I see you're using. Using Toast. You weren't using that 20 years ago.

[Eric Neal]

Certainly weren't using that. You know, when we started, you know, we literally had manager logbooks that we would write in manually every day. And then, you know, the PM manager would leave notes for the AM manager in there. And, you know, we didn't even really use email, which, I mean, we had email, but we didn't think to use it for five years because, you know, nobody. It wasn't a part of the restaurant culture.

[Eric]

Right, exactly.

[Eric Neal]

So, you know, we've got all these different ways of communicating. And I'd say the communication aspect of technology is what's really changed restaurants for the better in the last 20 years. So, you know, scheduling programs, you know, seven shifts is the one we use for these restaurants where everybody's got, you know, an app that you log into your schedule, gets, you know, posted on the app, and you can trade shifts on the apps and notes on the app, so on and so forth. And, you know, oh, my God, the communication of that is amazing. Compared to nothing from, you know, as a piece of paper posted on a door, if we were lucky.

[Eric]

I mean, that's the beginning, like, if you like it. Next after, like, the pos. If you're going to invest in some type of technology to free up the labor from the manager and just to have that, like, that tool to communicate and to move information is such a, like, hours and hours of labor costs at your most expensive tier.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

You know, so, okay, so your text. So how else have you improved communication?

[Eric Neal]

We have, as far as communicating the tip pool aspect of what we're doing, we have everybody has a login to a program that we use that so they can see.

[Eric]

So what's the name of that software?

[Eric Neal]

It's called tipmetric. Okay. Everybody has a login to it and it's you know, full transparency. Everybody can see how much money came in, where it all went. And you know, that transparent aspect of it is super important when you're running a tip pool like that. So there's no hiding anything as far as, you know, who's getting what, where it goes, anything like that.

[Eric]

And how did you discover this solution? Like why did you go with this one versus other options that are out there?

[Eric Neal]

Honestly, it was the only thing available seven years ago when we started this.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

And everybody knows how to use it and it's subscription based and it works just great, you know. Got it.

[Eric]

Okay. So communication, anything you're doing differently in terms of communication, like what about your operations manual? Like where does that live today?

[Eric Neal]

It lives on a drive. I mean, so we all work on different Google Drives for each place and that is a huge difference where recipes, you know, manuals, text sheets, wine list, cocktail, seasonal cocktail drops, cocktail information, glossaries, wine bibles, cocktail bibles, you know, bar bibles, all live on, on the drive.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And everybody has access to it on their phone.

[Eric]

And those are just recipes and how to execution basically like step by step.

[Eric Neal]

Like yeah, there are recipes and build sheets and then you know, same thing for, you know, back house. You know, we don't costing goes in there as well. But yeah, everybody, every cook has, you know, every recipe that they need from the kitchen at their fingertips so they can look it up on their phone and have it right there. The recipe book of old, you know where it's that old tattered thing that has a piece of paper that had maybe has some weird notes written on it is gone.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So in terms of communication, any other tools you're using to improve communication?

[Eric Neal]

No, I mean, I think that's about it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, you know, as far as communicating with guests, that's where Toast comes into play. You know, the, the, the guest facing side of toast is, is really, really good.

[Eric]

So what do you mean by the online ordering?

[Eric Neal]

Online ordering, you know, the ability to see menus and just the, the, the interactivity that guests can have with the online platform that Toast is.

[Eric]

Are you using any other type of technology?

[Eric Neal]

Today we use Resi at Easy and at Main Street Meats we use, we take reservations at Easy. Resi's been a very reliable platform for us for about the last 10 years.

[Eric]

Why resi versus other options?

[Eric Neal]

We one fee structure is, is appropriate. And then I think, you know, when American Express bought Resi, it brought with it a bunch of cachet from diners that would eat in a place like Easy and, and they started moving to that platform directly. And you know, I don't want to throw shade at like the open tables of the world, but you know, they're. When OpenTables has Google Ads for your restaurant, fighting your Google AdWords so that they can get the restaurant, the reservation to come through their platform and then charge you more for it because it didn't come through your platform, it feels like we're fighting against each other. It doesn't make any sense, you know.

[Eric]

And you know, I, I have heard that OpenTable has kind of woken up a little bit and kind of smelt their own pits.

[Eric Neal]

If they have, good for them. You know, Resi just acquired Talk and I'm thrilled for that too.

[Eric]

Yeah, I was going to ask about that. What are you, what are your thoughts on that?

[Eric Neal]

I've never used Tock outside of just being a customer of other restaurants that are on the platform. I think it's very good and I think it will augment some functionality that Resi doesn't have. And I think it, I think it will be a very good thing for, for all of us.

[Eric]

I was a big fan of Talk. I was actually so close to the landing Talk as a sponsor before Resi had to come and buy him. Thanks a lot. Really screwed me over in that situation. But I love what they do and I love that they. It was, it was built by restaurant owners. It was built to optimize. And I think what Nickonis did think, like, really like being like, why are.

[Jason]

We doing it this way?

[Eric]

Like why are we like the value of that table on a Friday night at 7 o' clock or 7:30 is more valuable then on Tuesday at 4:30. Why are we not charging more money? Like giving the restaurant Tort. The option to put the reservation on a sliding scale to me was just genius. And you shouldn't be apologetic about that.

[Eric Neal]

No, no.

[Eric]

Supply and demand.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, it only really comes into play in a restaurant that's just fully booked.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, right.

[Eric]

It's more experiential based like, like prefixed, like this is a show we're putting.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And we're selling tickets. Tickets.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, if you drop a reservation five minutes before you show up at a prefix restaurant, that really, really hurts.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, it hurts us too. But we can generally on a busier night pick up a walk in and put in that spot.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

Whereas. Whereas at a prefix you're not gonna pick up a walk in a spot.

[Eric]

Or if you're there's another really cool tool out there called Line Leap. Ever heard of Line? So it's if you have a waitlist option that you can pay a premium to skip the line.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, Line Leap. All right.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So, like, I think there's nothing wrong with doing that. Giving somebody, providing a service.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And charging, upselling. You want to skip the line, you can do it.

[Eric Neal]

That's, that's the thing I learned today. I'm gonna look at it now.

[Amanda]

Right.

[Eric]

It's a really cool tool. It's mostly used for, like, music venues and like, clubs.

[Eric Neal]

Ah, makes sense.

[Eric]

Where there's like long lines, people waiting to get in.

[Eric Neal]

Makes perfect sense.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I don't like lines. Lines suck.

[Eric]

I can pay a premium. Skip it.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Amanda]

All right, cool.

[Eric]

All right. So using Top or Toast, what haven't we discussed? We're talking about resi. The only thing that scares me about, like There are now two reservation platforms, OpenTable and Resi. You know, like, and I, I worry about like the POS companies getting too big sometimes too, like now it's really. I mean, I think some of those, like, legacies are starting to make a comeback. They're trying to evolve.

[Eric Neal]

They're trying. I mean, they're obviously very late to the evolution.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, really, you know, Toast is a subscription service, obviously, and you pay for hardware and so on and so forth. Whereas in the beginning you had to find $30,000 for a POS system.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And you know, no, you didn't have continuing costs, but like, man, that was a lot of money up front.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, and now you can budget it out.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

With, with the integrations that Toast, Resi and all these other places have, like all these things we've just been talking about integrate with themselves. Because if they're not integrating with themselves, they're not, they're not growing, you know.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And in doing that, they're creating their own little ecosystem where it's really hard to leave. And we know that. So, you know, when moving to these places or these platforms, we did a lot of research at the time when we made the leap, knowing that leaving them would be hard down the road. You know, if we were to go away from a POS system that we've, we're this deep into, it would be a six month process at the minimum and cost tens of thousands of dollars in labor to do it.

[Eric]

Well, three locations. Now, I'm curious, as you scale, like, are you looking into enterprise solutions that integrate with toast?

[Eric Neal]

No. And it's only because we Treat each of these as an independent llc. They have different ownership structures, but they're managed by common, you know, common people. And we have been able to utilize all these platforms thus far. And, and you know, they're all the same over all three. All over all three places. If we do more, I think that's when we got to get into a different solution.

[Eric]

So when I say enterprise solution, what.

[Eric Neal]

What do you think of a bigger. A bigger, more robust platform to house all of these things under one.

[Eric]

Like a restaurant 365.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Eric]

I mean, I know that like a restaurant 360, 365 and a restaurant assistance pro integrate with most of those tools today. You know, I think the biggest difference between an enterprise solution is the, the connection with the general ledger Y is having. Instead of using QuickBooks like you now you have a general ledger that is tied to your pos and then you also have recipe, costing, inventory, and like all this other stuff. Like so now you can do like actual versus theoretical, you know, costing and stuff like that.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, and I do see the value in that. I have not broken that far into that world yet. And I, you know, maybe I should. You know, the one thing I have that I think most people don't have is I have an amazing bookkeeper.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And we, we have a Todd. And. And if we didn't have a Todd, we'd probably be doing all that stuff. But having him, he's been with us for 12 years. I think maybe longer than that now. You know, he's like, he's the unseen manager of all these restaurants that everybody counts on to be there. And he's always there.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

I love it.

[Eric Neal]

And it makes. If we didn't have that, that solution would be needed.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But because we have that old analog solution, it works great.

[Eric]

We haven't talked a lot about Amanda.

[Eric Neal]

We should.

[Eric]

So business partner.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

What are your lanes?

[Eric Neal]

In the beginning, we were both, you know, I was in the back, she was in the front. She would run shifts and, you know, do whatever was necessary. Her background is in fine dining. We worked in every restaurant in Chattanooga we've ever worked in together. And as we, you know, grew in the restaurant business and grew, got married, had a family, you know, she certainly stepped back from the day to day operations and is now, you know, part of our upper management team. She specifically works on special events, marketing, promotion, publicity, that kind of stuff. She handles all of our social media accounts and does a really good job with that. Got it.

[Eric]

Well, that's the one thing we haven't discussed. And I was gonna ask about marketing, but that sounds like a conversation for Amanda.

[Eric Neal]

It's. Well, it's for her. I mean, I'd say we. We both hide. Hi. Do it. But she's the one actually doing it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, she is the one that has the brand identities in her pocket.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

And she is the. The fierce, like fire that comes down when something is not right. She is the. You know, she is the. The moral compass of all of these places. And it's because she's such a great hospitality professional, and she just wants to take care of people that when something's not going well, she's the first to jump in and say, this is not right. We got to fix it.

[Eric]

So in terms of marketing, what is working for you?

[Eric Neal]

Social media, for the most part, although it becomes harder and. And harder as algorithms change and, you know, amongst the social media platforms and they're trying to drive us to paying more for, you know, exposure to our. To our followers, I guess, so.

[Amanda]

That.

[Eric]

That they, being the social platform, trying to drive. What do you mean? Get into that?

[Eric Neal]

You know, I think depending on the day, you know, what we post may or may not get seen by however many thousands of our followers.

[Amanda]

Like.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, you got 10,000 followers, and only, you know, 20 of them see a post because the algorithm doesn't like you that day. It kind of sucks.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

You know, if you're trying to sell something, sell a dinner, you know, make people aware of a buy the Glass takeover we're doing at the restaurant, so on and so forth. Like, it's hard to kind of break through to everyone in a meaningful way because there's so much information on social media platforms getting pushed by the platform itself.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And determining what it is that it thinks you want to see versus what you may want to see. And, yeah, as soon as you click on, you know, some guy, you know, catching a fish or riding a horse that you're gonna. All you're gonna see is some guy riding a horse or catching a fish for the rest. For the rest of your day.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, right, right.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

You know, it's interesting. So what does work on social media for you?

[Eric Neal]

What, like, stories work. Video works, you know, when we can post it and. And have a conversation with the guest through our video.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Eric Neal]

She worked really hard on. On kind of trying to transition to video, but, you know, long gone are the days of posting a picture of a beautiful plate of food and people being like, I want that. You know.

[Eric]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You Gotta, like, you gotta grab them and, and get them.

[Eric]

It's, it's getting to a point where like, you know, marketing is becoming just as inarguably not. I mean, it's weird. Like, I don't think anything will be as important as the actual experience you're delivering because somebody coming to your restaurant one time. Time isn't enough to keep you in business. They have to come back.

[Eric Neal]

No, we, we need frequency. Like, frequency is the name of this game.

[Eric]

And if it's a shitty experience, they're not going to come back. You can convince them that one time that it's going to be the best time of their life. But if you don't hold up to that experience that you're projecting online. Oh, yeah, then it won't come back.

[Eric Neal]

Well, you know, this, this, these places are all built on that idea of frequency, like, and us trying to define frequency. And part of that is, you know, advertising, social media, so on and so forth. So our ardent followers, when we do say something that's meaningful on social media, we find an uptick almost immediately because it just boosts our brand and their, and their, and their choices for the day, you know.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

You know, we're promoting our 20th anniversary, you know, pretty heavily on, on social media right now. And you know, when we start making announcements about the events we're going to have, inevitably that night or the night after people are here because they've seen something about us and then, you know, they're right. We're right there, you know, at their recall when they decide where to go eat dinner that night.

[Eric]

Got it.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

But marketing is a hard thing. You know, we work with a great publicist and. I'm sorry.

[Amanda]

Yeah, you're good.

[Eric Neal]

We work with a great publicist in Atlanta and, you know, been with her for a long time and you know, being in magazines, you know, having articles written online, like all that stuff provides us with content. Podcasts, like it all, it all plays back to itself.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And then honestly, most of the money we spend on quote, unquote, like advertising and marketing goes to Google.

[Amanda]

Y.

[Eric Neal]

If we're not.

[Eric]

How much are you putting aside? What's your budget?

[Eric Neal]

We have a, a monthly spend that's different for all restaurants, depending on what there's. There is. But we're spending, you know, maybe 12 to $15,000 per restaurant per year on just Google AdWords.

[Amanda]

Wow. Yeah.

[Eric]

Wow. And have you seen the needle move?

[Eric Neal]

Yes.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Eric Neal]

That is the only thing in the past five years that, that we've put money behind that Specifically drives butts to seats.

[Amanda]

Wow.

[Eric]

And that's just buying ads on or driving ad.

[Eric Neal]

Like we have a company that we work with here, a marketing company.

[Eric]

What's it called?

[Eric Neal]

It's called riverworks Marketing that helped us design our websites and you know gear them towards the Google environment. And then we put money behind Google AdWords depending on what we're trying to promote at those you know each month to drive people to make actions that like reservations or come to the restaurant or call the restaurant or something like that.

[Eric]

Got it. Interesting. Do you have any thoughts on that? Generally speaking like this like that. The number one thing you can do to drive business to your your business is to spend it with Google or meta.

[Eric Neal]

Kind of sucks.

[Eric]

I worry about it sometimes. You know I think I feel like.

[Eric Neal]

We'Re controlled by the corporate overlords, you know.

[Eric]

Well I mean when yeah and this is I kind of echo and I'm a very much counter Google.

[Eric Neal]

Don't smite me down. You know.

[Eric]

Well you know like counter culture. A lot of people who are in the space who are teaching like I think we all focus on what you need to do to that works today. But I don't think we're looking at the long. We're all very short sighted.

[Eric Neal]

Sure.

[Eric]

You know we're just so fear based. What. What do I need to do today to survive? We don't. We're not collectively saying like hey what do we we. What are we doing guys? Like one or two companies is collectively responsible for all the world of marketing. Like that in no scenario is a good thing for us.

[Eric Neal]

No. I mean you know at least when we started you could put up a billboard and see some reaction to it. People say I saw that sign and I decided to come in.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And I feel like everybody's so even immune to that now.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

It's. It's hard to to make a mark in this digital world that matters. When it comes to marketing the best thing you can do is try and connect directly with people on some level.

[Eric]

Well I think what's end up what's happening is you're seeing the consumers becoming more loyal to marketplaces than they are to the actual the people in the market.

[Eric Neal]

For sure.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Whether that marketplace be you know Google reviews or Yelp reviews or is door Dash or UberEats. These are all marketplaces.

[Amanda]

Yes.

[Eric]

And those marketplaces are designed to influence and control human behavior or I would.

[Eric Neal]

Say and make money for their. And make money for their benefactor.

[Eric]

Guess what? Beard Foundation Michelin star. These are also marketplaces oh, yeah. And consumers are more loyal to who is being assigned that award every year, you know, so true.

[Eric Neal]

I mean, you know, we, the, the Beard foundation, the Michelin Guide, they're, they're, they're very important influencers in this world.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

They were influenced before there was a term.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, Right.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

I just think we could be mindful of, like, what are we like? When you learn about it, when you learn the game you like, do you. You got to ask yourself, do I want to promote this game or do I want to create awareness about the game?

[Eric Neal]

Well, you know, in the restaurant business, you know, we got to get butts and seats because that's what makes it work. And, you know, to go on a crusade against one or the other other is probably something we don't have time for.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And.

[Eric]

And at the end of the day, you gotta survive.

[Eric Neal]

At the end of the day, you gotta play the game. And if there was another platform or another avenue that we genuinely felt would work, we'd go to it.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric]

I feel like I could be better about going into how to play the game, especially around marketing.

[Eric Neal]

It's tough because we are so controlled by those two entities.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

And, you know, even, you know, so Garden does Gun, does a beautiful article piece on us and a print magazine that has distributed, you know, 400,000 copies or whatever, that's great for a moment, but what you need is the online version of it to live forever. So that when people search you, they find that, but they're not going to find that if you don't promote it, because it's all about money.

[Jonathan Ferguson]

Right, man.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Anything we did not discuss today, anything that you were hoping would come out of today's conversation that did not come out.

[Eric Neal]

You know, I touched a little bit on the teams at all the places and you know, how proud I am of them for being who they are every day, all day long. And I think, you know, it goes without saying, but maybe it doesn't go without saying. Like, you know, none of these places work without the team.

[Eric]

Right.

[Eric Neal]

So rewarding them, acknowledging them is. Is ultimately important. And because none of this works without it, I think people, guess, love a full service environment when it feels full service.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

And therein lies the team. Right. So I'm very proud of. Of everyone who's ever done that for us, you know, and could not do it without the people, without all the people that are doing it right now for us.

[Amanda]

I love it. Yeah.

[Eric]

What's one thing about your business? A value, a process, a system that's truly uncommon. It makes you unstoppable.

[Eric Neal]

We talk about how the three most beautiful words in the English language are, I fucked up. And I think it's a value because it's acknowledgement of a mistake, humility, and. But it immediately disarms whomever you say it to.

[Eric]

Extreme ownership.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

I fucked up is the greatest thing you can say. Like. And I say it to people. You know, people come to the past. I fucked up. I sent this to the wrong table. What do you need right now?

[Amanda]

Yeah. And.

[Eric Neal]

But it immediately just cuts through all the chase of, like, who's right, who's right? You know, maybe I sent this to the wrong table, but they may have taken it up. You know, that, like, I up. Let's fix it. And, you know, if. If you can take that. That philosophy and that ownership of. Of your mistake, somebody else's mistake, anybody's, you know, whatever. I think that pays dividends in the long run for. For. For everyone.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Because it. It, you know, having the humility to accept anything that's not right. Right is one of the most important virtues I think you can have in this business.

[Eric]

It doesn't matter who's right, who's wrong. Let's move forward.

[Eric Neal]

Right.

[Eric]

Like, let's get beyond this.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah. I up. What do we need to do about it right now?

[Eric]

I love that.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

If you got the news, you'd be leaving this world tomorrow. All the memories of you, your work, and your restaurants would be lost with your departure. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom that you can leave behind for the good of humanity and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be?

[Eric Neal]

Oh, man, it's a great question. Enjoy it.

[Eric]

1.

[Eric Neal]

Don't fear, just do.

[Eric]

2.

[Eric Neal]

And love as hard as you can.

[Eric]

3. This has been a lot of fun, and I haven't eaten yet today, which is why I probably totally skipped over one of these questions and just realized it. So I apologize. What is. You know, the mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. And we do that by sharing individual stories of transformation and growth. How do. How are you a better man today than the man you were when you got started in the industry? How. Like, what is your personal transformation?

[Eric Neal]

The. You know, to. To be in the restaurant business is hard. To. To be the leader of a restaurant, I think is even more challenging because it all comes back to you. And in accepting all of the mistakes that I've made and others have made with me over the years, I have become better through experience and through acknowledgement. Because as long as, you know, I feel like I'm bending towards doing the right thing at the right moment for everybody involved, the guest, the business and the employee, I think, I think I'm going to be better at it. And the humility that I've gained over the years of making those mistakes and having the successes and figuring out my way makes me a better restaurant manager, better restaurant tour, better chef.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

This has been so much fun. Eric, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed.

[Eric Neal]

Thank you, Eric. I appreciate that.

[Amanda]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric]

So who do you respect and admire? Who's somebody that if you found out this person was a guest on the show.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Maybe it's locally, maybe it's nationally. Somebody who's doing good work. Something that you would want to hear, what they would have to say, somebody. You think this needs to be made an example of. Who is that for?

[Amanda]

You.

[Eric Neal]

Know, a few people come to mind. Josh Habinger in Nashville is one of my, one of my heroes.

[Eric]

Josh, what's the last name?

[Eric Neal]

Habinger.

[Eric]

Habinger.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

He's with Strategic Hospitality now.

[Eric]

Oh, okay. I just had Max Goldberg on the show.

[Eric Neal]

Oh, yeah. He and, he and Josh work together.

[Eric]

Oh, cool.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric Neal]

Josh is their culinary director.

[Eric]

That's Habinger.

[Amanda]

Yeah.

[Eric]

All right, anybody else?

[Eric Neal]

Bill Briond.

[Eric]

Bill Brion. All right, keep going. The more names you call out, the, the easier my work is.

[Eric Neal]

He is opening a restaurant called Little Bird and Fairhope, Alabama in the next couple weeks.

[Eric]

Little Bird? Yeah, In Fairhope, Alabama.

[Eric Neal]

David Bancroft in Auburn, Alabama is a, is a wonderful human being.

[Eric]

I think I had David on the show.

[Eric Neal]

I'm sure you did.

[Eric]

Yeah, he was pretty cool.

[Eric Neal]

Yeah, he's a great guy.

[Eric]

Thank you. And how can we connect if we enjoyed today's conversation and maybe we want to come work for you, maybe we have follow up questions about something you shared today, like your tip solution. I thought that was really cool. How can we follow up?

[Eric Neal]

Find me at all the restaurants are on, on the Internet. EasyBistro.com is, is the best. And you can just email me [e-mail] all right, beautiful.

[Eric]

This is where I say thank you so much for taking the time to sit. Two and a half hours almost to sit with me and to, to share your story, to share your knowledge, your values, your perspective. Perspective what you're doing. I think the only way we're going to change this industry is if we start sharing the information and, and I can't do it without people like you, man. There is no questioning you are unstoppable.

[Eric Neal]

Thank you buddy. Appreciate it.

[Eric]

Cheers.

[Jason]

If today's episode stirred something in you, if you're feeling a little unstoppable, you're not alone. Join us at Restaurant Unstoppable Network where we are guiding restaurant owners to proven experts, tools and services based on real world success stories. You'll get access to my network of restaurant owning mentors, handpicked experts and organically referred vendors. You'll get access to these individuals through workshops, power hours, mentoring sessions and product demonstrations. Multiple events, live events every week. You'll get access to me twice a month where I'll answer any of your questions. And you get access to all the recordings through RU Network podcast, early access ad free bonus content, all pushed directly to your phone. Plus the Unstoppable our closed source AI tool fed with over 2,400 hours of transcripts from the best in the biz and all future conversations that we have, whether that be bonus content or episodes, all fed to the AI Daily access to our private Facebook group. And I think this is the coolest part, the ability to influence future content. Here at Restaurant Unstoppable, your problems are my priority. Look, you don't have to do it alone. As a matter of fact, you will go further if you go together and you are the average of those you surround yourself with. And at Restaurant Unstoppable Network, you're surrounding yourself with the best. Head over to restaurantunstoppable.com live if you want all this, including the live events. And if all this sounds appealing but you don't really want access to join us live, then just head over to restaurantstoppable.com R U library.