1272: Mike Gallagher, Co-Founder and Owner of Brick Store Pub Restaurant Group

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable, Ep. 1272

Featuring Mike Gallagher – Co-Founder & Owner, Brick Store Pub Restaurant Group

Host: Eric Cacciatore
Date: May 11, 2026
Location: Atlanta, GA

---

Episode Overview

In this engaging and deeply reflective episode, host Eric Cacciatore sits down with Mike Gallagher, co-founder and owner of the Brick Store Pub Restaurant Group in Decatur, Georgia. Gallagher shares the story of how he and his partners have built a 30-year legacy of hospitality-driven, people-first establishments. The wide-ranging conversation explores adaptability, the power and pitfalls of partnerships, fostering culture, conscious hospitality, and strategic growth. Gallagher delivers candid wisdom and actionable lessons, as well as memorable stories from his entrepreneurial journey.

---

Table of Contents

1. Opening Inspiration & Core Philosophy (04:21–07:24)
2. The Brick Store Pub Group: Concepts, Scale & Metrics (07:41–13:55)
3. Mike’s Restaurant Origin Story (14:27–24:22)
4. Building with Partners: Visioning & Alignment (24:22–41:25)
5. Growth Strategy: Depth over Breadth (41:25–57:08)
6. Roles, Strengths, and People-First Culture (57:08–65:12)
7. The Power of Partnerships: Challenges and Lessons (65:12–86:44)
8. Reflections, Mistakes, and Advice to Young Self (86:44–95:37)
9. Partnership Structure & Practical Tips (101:18–120:23)
10. Team Building, Meetings, and Operations (120:23–124:17)
11. Technology & Recent Innovations (121:49–125:16)
12. Rapid Fire Final Three (125:16–127:38)
13. Recommended Guest & Contact Info (127:38–129:11)

---

<a name="inspiration"></a>

1. Opening Inspiration & Core Philosophy

• Motivational Mantra (05:11):

  “Flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from.”
  — Mike Gallagher, citing Seth Godin

• Gallagher discusses how being adaptable—not revolutionary but evolutionary—has allowed their team to remain relevant for nearly 30 years.
• The group survived and grew through adversity, particularly the Covid era, by focusing on learning and resilience.
• The importance of not wasting adversity (citing Will Godara):

  “All of our best lessons, as awful as things like Covid were, what we carry forward is why we’re better, why we’re still here...” (06:31)

---

<a name="concepts"></a>

2. The Brick Store Pub Group: Concepts, Scale & Metrics

• Current Concepts:

  • Brick Store Pub (since 1997): 145 seats inside, additional outdoor seating.
    • Voted as one of the best beer bars in the world.
  • Leon's Full Service: Gastropub, ~120 seats inside, patio seating for 42, and a deck for 36 more.
  • Good Word Brewing & Public House: Brewpub north of Atlanta, 8,000 sq ft, 152 seats inside, patio for 45.
  • The Ram Spec: Private event space adjacent to BSP, integrated with Brick Store’s look and feel.

• Financial Philosophy:

  • “We are a people-first company, and financially informed.” (09:31)
  • Profitability is essential:

    “Profit is the fuel that funds our care and the engine.” (11:22)

  • Leon’s and Good Word have higher profit margins than BSP due to cost controls and menu pricing.
  • “Reality is undefeated. The financials are a reality that comes to life regardless of how you feel about how you’ve been doing.” (09:08)

---

<a name="origin"></a>

3. Mike’s Restaurant Origin Story

• Grew up in an Irish Catholic family, third of six siblings—role as a “moderator” and people-pleaser.
• Introduced to restaurants by older brothers; began kitchen prepping at age 13, progressing through all positions.
• Found early mentorship within his own family and in the culture of the local country club.
• Formative Lesson:

  “If you want to be doing the exact same job you're doing today in 10 years, follow [lazy] advice. ... You come to work and you work hard and it’s more fun and more fulfilling.” (17:43)

• Moved south for university, found his partners, and co-founded Brick Store Pub at age 25.

---

<a name="partners"></a>

4. Building with Partners: Visioning & Alignment

• Met partners Tom and Dave in Athens, GA; shared management experience and mutual “dreaming sessions.”
• Inspiration from Ari Weinzweig (Zingerman’s) and the concept of visioning.
• On Alignment:

  “That’s why the visioning process is so powerful… Because you can say, ‘This is where we’re going.’” (35:36)

• Early commitment: No TVs, neon, or macro beer—defining a clear, shared purpose (“the anti-sports bar”).
• Navigating partner fit: hands-on operators vs. advisory partners, lessons from Mike Small.

---

<a name="growth"></a>

5. Growth Strategy: Depth over Breadth

• Taking over additional pub space (the Belgian bar) after leading efforts to change Georgia’s beer laws (raised legal ABV cap, 2004).
• Key Quote on Growth:

  “Reinvent yourself within who you are.” (51:31)

• On expansion: Instead of growing outward (new locations), deepened the current concept through offerings, team, and space.
• “Growth” is measured by team education, internal promotions, and optimizing existing sites before adding new concepts.
• Strategic Insight:

  “The way you get bigger is by putting your energy in… It’s about depth, going deeper, doing what you’re already doing better.” (56:05)

---

<a name="culture"></a>

6. Roles, Strengths, and People-First Culture

• Early hiring for experience shifted to hiring for potential, now for “the inevitability of your success in that position” (58:45).
• Mike’s Lane: Team-building, hospitality, culture—hiring, nurturing, and refusing to let people fail.
• Culture Mantra:

  “You can substitute the word team for culture… The best strategy doesn’t exist in culture, the best strategy exists in humans.” (60:19)

• Staging (trial shifts) for all positions; after, both candidate and team reflect and mutually decide fit.

---

<a name="partnerships"></a>

7. The Power of Partnerships: Challenges and Lessons

• The group grew by involving key employees in ownership (multi-partner structures).
• Built “restaurants by people, not brands”: each concept tied to key people’s talents and passions.
• On Partnership Myths:

  “I can tell you 100% without Dave and Tom and without having partners, there is no way I’m as happy, fulfilled, successful and have as meaningful a life as I do now.” (68:43)

• It’s about knowing yourself—good partnerships depend on self-awareness and conscious leadership.
• Conscious Hospitality:

  “If you know yourself so well, you can be in better service of connecting with others.” (70:21)

• Root of hospitality: “Am I welcome? Do I belong?”—creating warmth, community, and dignity is fundamental.
• Success in partnership: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (103:21)

---

<a name="advice"></a>

8. Reflections, Mistakes, and Advice to Young Self

• Younger Mike’s leadership: “I’m going to know more than you and outwork you.” Insecurity → ego.
• Biggest Regret:

  “The moment we started to step back, they started to step up. … Recognize talents on your team… create opportunities. The only way you can do it is to remove your ego.” (88:47)

• The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
• Sacrifice is part of the journey, but eventually you need to reflect and ensure it begins to pay off.
• “Mood follows action”—sometimes you just have to do the thing you’re resisting. (96:26)

---

<a name="structure"></a>

9. Partnership Structure & Practical Tips

• Structure:
  • Have written job descriptions for all partners, clarify areas of responsibility.
  • Create partnership (“prenup”) and buy-sell agreements upfront—define entry, exit, and equity rules.
  • Make sure partners are aligned on values, roles, and vision for the future (3, 5 years out).
• Org charts: Useful to clarify operator vs. investor roles as multiple businesses/concepts evolve.
• On buy-in: Get skin in the game. Even for valued internal promotions to owner, require some form of financial investment.
• Use attorneys (e.g., Carter Allen) familiar with multi-unit hospitality groups for structuring.
• *“If you want to go partner, be real clear about what you want. Put it on paper. … Roles, responsibilities, buy-sell agreement, and job descriptions." (104:47)

---

<a name="ops"></a>

10. Team Building, Meetings, and Operations

• Weekly ops meetings with all department heads to discuss finances, events, team/culture, products, and projects.
• Culture Concepts:
  • “Our culture is the way you feel, and the way our employees behave when I’m not there.”
  • “Culture is the worst behavior we’re willing to accept.”
  • Check culture with a 90-day review: “Did we lie to you?”
  • Culture = values + behaviors × consistency (from Simon Sinek/Gary Ridge).

---

<a name="tech"></a>

11. Technology & Recent Innovations

• Recent innovation: Implemented Resi for reservations at Leon’s Full Service (121:49).
  • Why Resi? — More closely aligned with their regional market and guest base than OpenTable.
  • Results: Brought lapsed guests back, improved flow, and captured higher-spending, reservations-minded clientele.
• Post-COVID: Focused on intentionally turning up the “valve” and maximizing capacity.

---

<a name="rapidfire"></a>

12. Rapid Fire Final Three

• One uncommon system: "The Loop System" – all servers are empowered to service any guest, spend ~35% of time outside their section to ensure fast, seamless, collective hospitality (125:27).
• Personal transformation since 1997:

  “As a father, husband, and leader, I listen to understand first, seek to understand, then seek to be understood.” (126:20)

• Three pieces of wisdom:
  1. “Happiness is not a game of addition; it's a game of subtraction.”
  2. “The two keys to happiness are having something to look forward to, and earned success.”
  3. “If you want to be great at something, you have to be willing to not be good at it for a long time.” (126:57)

---

<a name="wrap"></a>

13. Recommended Guest & Contact Info

• Recommended next guest:
  Terry Koval (Deer and Dove, Fawn, B-side, Decatur, GA)
  James Beard Award-winning chef, community pillar, and hospitality leader with a heart for giving back. (127:50)

• Connect with Mike Gallagher:
  Email: [e-mail]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from.” (05:11)
• “Adversity is a terrible thing to waste.” (06:31)
• “Reality is undefeated. The financials are a reality that comes to life regardless of how you feel.” (09:08)
• “We are a people-first company, and financially informed.” (09:31)
• “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (103:21)
• “Conscious hospitality: If you know yourself so well, you can be of better service connecting with others.” (70:21)
• “The best strategy exists in humans.” (60:19)
• “The truth is, the magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.” (89:28)
• “You can only serve from a full vessel—take care of yourself to care for others.” (92:33)
• “The worst behavior you’re willing to accept is your culture.” (93:48)

---

Summary Takeaways

• Adaptability and Evolution: Embrace change and adversity, using it as a springboard for strategic reinvention and growth—internally and externally.
• People-First, Financially Informed: True hospitality businesses put people before profits, but always keep the numbers in focus as “the fuel” for meaningful impact.
• Partnerships are Powerful: The right partners amplify potential; misalignment can be costly. Codify roles, responsibilities, and vision.
• Culture is Reality: What you do, especially when no one’s looking, defines your team. Regularly check your culture against your written values.
• Hospitality is Human: The essence of the restaurant business is “Am I welcome? Do I belong?”—giving dignity and building community is the purest work of the restaurateur.
• Growth is Depth, Not Always Breadth: Go deeper—improve your existing community, offerings, and culture before expanding.
• Invest in People: Grow the next generation of operators by giving opportunities for ownership, learning, and wealth-building.

---

For more, reach Mike at [e-mail] or visit Brick Store Pub next time you’re in Decatur, GA.

---

Transcript

[A]

What up Unstoppables? Quick favor to ask before we hit play on today's episode and that is please follow and subscribe to this podcast. Nearly 70% of the people that listen to the show or view it do not subscribe or follow. And you owe it to yourself to do just that. Because if you do, when we get an amazing guest on the show that gets a lot of likes, a lot of shares, a lot of views, the algorithm is paying attention and it will push that episode to your feed so you'll get our best content. Not to mention it is absolutely free to you and it is the most impactful thing you can do to support this mission. Mission to inspire, empower and to transform the industry. And I can't do it alone. I need your support. Thank you in advance. 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 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 guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. What up Unstoppables? Maybe you remember episode 1260 when Albert Sanchez told us how he has shaved nearly $500 off his tech stack costs. That's because today restaurant operations looks like ste stacks of software services. Translation, it looks like stacks of monthly expenses. But tomorrow restaurant operations will look like the reverse engineering of your own custom software specifically for your unique operation. Mark your calendars because on May 19th at 11am Eastern, past guest Albert Sanchez will be kicking off a vibe coding restaurant software 101 class. This is an eight part series. Head over to restaurantunstoppable.com vibe coding to claim your seat. And we're only letting 15 people into this course, so. So don't hesitate if you want to learn how to create your own solutions and lower your operational costs. This is the future. Again, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com vibecoding that's V I B E C O D I N G and when you sign up, we'll send you the step by step syllabus of exactly how to do this. This episode is made possible by US Foods. Running a successful restaurant takes more than just great food. With US Foods, you can expect more high quality products, advanced tools and flexible deliveries to grow their industry. Leading moxy platform also does more than just place your US Foods order. It uses AI to help you take control, save time and increase profitability. Visit usfoods.com expectmore to learn how to become a US Foods customer one more time. That is usfoods.com expect more restaurant owners are you still using ADP paychecks or indeed, 35,000 plus restaurants have already switched to Workstream. The all in one payroll, hiring and HR platform actually built four restaurants. 46 of the top 50 restaurant brands rely on Workstream to hire faster, stay compliant and run payroll in minutes across all their locations. Visit workstream us/unstoppable for three months free payroll. That's work stream us Unstoppable this episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant technologies services over 45,000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI hyphen inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest co founder and owner of Brickstore Pub Restaurant Group, Mike Gallagher. My man, Mike, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[B]

I'm feeling pretty close to unstoppable. Pretty close to unstoppable one espresso away.

[A]

Well, I'm stoked to be here, man. It's not every day I get to kind of hang out with my guests a little before sitting down across the table sharing their story. I met you about four or five days ago Sunday at the the Heidi's Team Heidi Giving Kitchen event.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And we had fun even today just talking to you and doing the research and hearing what people have to say about you. It was Ryan Turner who put you in touch with me. Amazing dude. Everyone he's connecting me with has been amazing. The work that you and he and so many others are doing with Giving Kitchen is amazing. I'm so stoked to be sitting here making an example of you today. But before we dive into who you are and where you are today, how you got here, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. I think the one that comes to mind for me right now and today is flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from.

[A]

Flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from why does that resonate with you? Dive deeper into that.

[B]

Yeah. And I'll give credit to the quote for Seth Godin. So we, you know, we're almost 30 years in business and there's so many different chapters of what we focused on, what we learned, what we felt we knew. But if we didn't reinvent ourselves within who we were, we would no longer be present, we would no longer be, we would no longer matter. It just we, you have to evolve, you know, as partners were, I don't think revolutionary in some of the things that we've created, but we've been very open to being evolutionary in it. Yeah.

[A]

A few things comes to mind as I hear you say that. Adaptability, embracing the suck. Because change isn't easy.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, and it's that, that willingness to do the shitty hard thing over and over and over again. And it's only going to get harder because things are going to change faster. The time it takes you to adapt and roll out a new way to do something, there's already going to be a better way to do it, you know, for sure.

[B]

Yeah. I think. And embrace the suck for me as a posture, not a mantra. Right. Like, I don't want our folks thinking that they need to grind until it gets better. Like, life starts today is I think, a great posture to have, but you need to be willing to go through the difficult times. And yeah, you know, another quote that comes to mind is that adversity is a terrible thing to waste. And that's our friend Will Godara from his father. And yeah, I just, I know that all of our best lessons, as awful as things like Covid, were, what we carry forward, why we're better, why we're still here, why we can still offer great dining experiences and employ, you know, over 150 people, is because we learned from those hard moments which create growth.

[A]

Awesome. Great way to get this thing started. So before we dive into where you are today, give us a snapshot. Big picture. I like to say we're starting with the end in mind, where you are now. So just list off the, the concepts that you have that are a part of the Brickstore Pub restaurant group.

[B]

Yeah, great. Yeah. So we opened up brickstore pub in 1997. We think of it, you know, as a public house. It's also known as a beer bar, which, you know, we embrace on some level, but we're usually voted, you know, one of the best beer bars in the world. And then we have a place called Leon's Full service Which Brick Store is a pub? Leon's. Full service, more gastropub, more cocktail focused, and food's more involved. We have a brew pub. So all the different versions of pubs called Good Word Brewing and Public House, and that's north of the city about 18 miles and then adjacent to Brickstore Pub. About a year and a half ago, we opened up a private event space that is primarily for people to hire us to host events, but it really feels more like an extension of Brickstore Pub. It doesn't look like an event space, you know, it looks like a restaurant. And that's called the Ram Spec. And that is all the places we currently have.

[A]

Got it. Uh, cool. So running through this real quick, Brickstore Pub, how many seats?

[B]

Brickstore Pub is so inside you're looking at about 1:45.

[A]

Got it. And can you give us an idea of, like, the type of revenue you guys are or at least I like to get percent profit. If you're willing to share that, you don't have to share revenue. I know it's kind of a weird thing to share, but what kind of numbers are you hitting?

[B]

Yeah, you know, and I don't even mind talking about the revenue. I don't think, you know, for sort of full transparency, Eric, and for your listeners. I am not the financial savvy guy, but I do know that it's. I'll just share a phrase that I love is reality is undefeated. And the financials are a reality that comes to life regardless of how you feel about how you've been doing.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I think for us, you know, and we are a people first company and financially informed. Right. And I had. I came up with that language through a series of really difficult conversations with managers, leaders, and team members during COVID Because people first sounds great, but you have to pay your bills. Right. And so what I realized is for us to be people first, finance second, which is what I used to say worked well for us as founders, as owners, and as a company, because as entrepreneurs, as, you know, people that just put it together, opened it up, and then we pay ourselves with. With what's left. Right. So People First Finance Informed, I felt like, was a shift to say that this could work for us and for our team members. And the hard conversations were, well, now transportation is way more expensive to what if our team members can't afford to buy a car and they have to take an Uber to work every day and then the cost of groceries is more expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah, down the line. And I don't say blah, blah, blah to undermine that. But I just say it for an economy of words to say, we had to figure out a way to have language that made sense to meet our people where they were for them to trust, which is really hard. That if you create great guest experiences, measure what matters and. And then the money will flow 100%.

[A]

Rudy Mick shared a term with me that I echo all the time, and that is fiscal responsibility. And when I started this podcast, I was kind of like anti profit, anti money, like very naive. And then the more I learned, like, money isn't bad, profit isn't bad. What you choose to do with it can be amazing. And you need it to do stuff with it. Right.

[B]

Profit is the fuel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That funds our care and the engine.

[A]

Right. The fuel that funds. That drives the engine 100%. And so along that note, Leon's full service. Where are you guys there? How many seats?

[B]

So Leon's and you know, so I say brick store is about 145. Interior, we have a beer garden in the back and then we have some tables outside so you can, you can sort of build on top of that.

[A]

Helps to be in Atlanta too.

[B]

You get like great weather. Yes. We have eight or nine months, you know, and it's tricky. It's like, do you cover it? Don't you cover it? And I'm sure you know a lot

[A]

of get into all that stuff.

[B]

Yeah, a lot of young restaurant tours talk about that. But when you shift over to Leon's, it's actually much more of outdoor dining. So interior, we're about 120, and we're going to be renovating post World cup here in Atlanta and that'll probably shrink a touch. And then exterior, we have a patio that's covered that has an additional 42 seats and then a deck that can seat an additional 36. Got it.

[A]

And I think the only one that you're currently still operating is the good word brewing in Public House, correct?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So where are we there? Same. Same idea.

[B]

So good word is huge. It's a brew pub we took on just shy of 8, 000 square feet interior seating. There is a. It's got a really big bar, but it's about. That's right around 152. And then we have a patio there that could see probably about 45.

[A]

Okay, cool. Did you share the numbers associated with Leon's full service in terms of.

[B]

No. So in terms, Leon's is interesting. We don't do as high top line numbers, but our profit there can bump over 10% quicker than Brickstore. We run a little bit tighter on cost of goods and labor at goodword Brewing. We've had cost closer to that at Leon's for a long time, but we've just now seen in the last year and a half the sort of. I forget the name of it, but there's this sort of hockey stick graph idea that. And it doesn't exist much in the restaurant business, but we had something close to it at Good Word. The first five years we were open, half of that was in a pandemic. And so Good Word now in year eight has finally popped. So neither one of those is doing the top line sales. But the profit margins are. Are just a shade a little bit higher because our. Our cost. Excuse me, our prices at Brickstore are lower too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Better in terms of.

[A]

Better on paper model profitability.

[B]

For which one cost?

[A]

Both. You said Leon's and.

[B]

Yes, better on. Better on paper at Good Word and at Leon's by a few percentage points.

[A]

And I'll be honest, man, you said you weren't the numbers guy. Neither am I. Like, it's weird. I'm outside of my comfort zone talking about this. It isn't until the most recent, like 100 episodes, 200 episodes. I started pushing myself.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They asked the questions and in full transparency was because I was afraid to show my ignorance with the numbers. You know, I'm not a numbers person and I think. But I think it's important to at least you don't have to be that guy. But you have to understand it.

[B]

It.

[A]

You know, you have to be able to understand what the words mean and how that relates. And that's the short point of this. So thank you for getting into that. So now that we know where you are today, where does it make sense to start sharing your story?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I'll kind of. I'll go towards a little bit about my upbringing. So I'm one of six kids. Oh, damn. Yep. So six children, Irish Catholic family. And I'm the number three. And so growing up, you know, of course. So number three, I love to, you know, make people laughing and be the center of attention, but then also realize I was a people pleaser. I was a moderator. Right. I wanted to kind of make everybody sort of be happy. And so that played into it. And then my two older brothers got jobs in the restaurant business and, you know, I looked up to them and so I followed them. So I started when I was 13, prepping in a restaurant not far away. It's Funny, I look back at that time, and I remember when I left, someone accidentally let me know what the valet parking guys were making. And I was like, oh, gosh, I should have been a valet parker. But so. And then that led to, you know, job, bus and tables, and then, you know, becoming a bar back, and then a server and then a bartender and all these types of things. So it's all I ever really did, with a few exceptions, through high school, through college, and then we opened our first spot, Brickstore Publishing. I moved. So I transferred schools to the University of Georgia, which is how I ended up in the South.

[A]

Where are you from?

[B]

I'm from Philadelphia originally. Yeah, so from Philly Gilbert and. Yeah. And so one of six kids. And, you know, you really just had to kind of fight for everything. And my parents were great, and they focused a lot on us and definitely were great caregivers for us and great modelers of working hard and of integrity, doing the right thing, even when no one's looking. And so kind of that amalgamation. But my dad was a. So my mom stayed with us because how else could you have a tribe that big and not. And then, you know, my dad worked several jobs when he. When they had the first kid, he was going. He was working two jobs and going to night school in addition. So definitely workers. And. But we. So shift forward. There was a period where me and all three of my brothers. So I'm one of six kids, four boys, two girls, in that order, and me and my three brothers. So 1, 2, 3, and 4, all worked at the same country club outside of Philadelphia. And it was just, you know, for me, like a lot of restaurants, we talk about being families, and I think that there's some truth in that for sure. But for me, it was, like, literal. Like, three of my co workers were brothers. And I remember a pivotal moment. I was going to jump forward to Brickstore, but I think this is important. Um, I remember my brother Matt pulling me aside after I talked. So I was probably 19 at this time, 18 or 19 in college. And there was a guy that worked there was about 10 years older than me, and he basically pulled me aside and was like, hey, listen, here's the way to never have to work hard in this job and still make the same amount of money. And fortunately for me, my brother Matt overheard that and he pulled me aside and he said, if you want to be doing the exact same job you're doing today in 10 years, follow his advice.

[A]

What was that advice?

[B]

The advice. Which one? The one my brother gave me, the one that the guy gave me. Do you over.

[A]

What was the, the advice you overheard?

[B]

The, the advice that the guy that was 10 years older than me gave me was telling me. Like, listen, when we're rolling out all the tables just kind of go real slow. And when we're stepping into service, you don't want to be the guy that's like running around and like racing to get the room set up. If you lay back, everyone else will do more of the work than you. And he was like trying to like, tell me, here's how you can do this job for 10 years and not burn out. And what my brother said is, listen, here's how you can do this job and crush it. To advance in life, advance in your career and, and feel good about it at the end of the day.

[A]

I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that this guy had like ground shattering work that was going to be like the.

[B]

Sorry, I didn't introduce it.

[A]

Well, so what was the advice your brother gave you?

[B]

Yeah, that's what he said. He said, listen, don't listen to him at all. He's like, you know, much like yourself, you know, because before that he knew I'd bus tables. And he's like, I started out busting tables. I started. Then I went to waiting tables. Now I'm bartending. And he's like, you don't. This doesn't have to be how you make your living. You know, at the time he didn't. We didn't really have all the words for thinking about someday maybe one of us would own a restaurant. But he was real particular in that you come to work and you work hard and it's more fun and it's more fulfilling.

[A]

100. I'm happy that you shared that story. So 1997 is when you opened your first pub.

[B]

Yeah. So we opened Brickstone in 97.

[A]

How old are you today?

[B]

I am 54.

[A]

So you're 24 years old?

[B]

I was. I just turned 25.

[A]

25 years old. You moved to Atlanta?

[B]

I moved to Atlanta. Really? I moved to Athens. So I transferred schools to the University of Georgia. That's where I met my two business partners. We all successively GM the same restaurant in downtown Athens. Okay. Tom and then Dave and myself. And those two were. Are right around the time of the Olympics. They, they had already moved out of Athens at that point. And I never worked with Tom. I worked with Dave, but Dave knew Tom Rowell and he knew me real well. And they'd already quit their jobs and they were Ready to do something. But this guy, Mike Small, who had a chain of sports bars at the time that was very successful, hired them to run an Irish pub in Decatur, Georgia during the 1996 Olympics. And he created a festival like every sort of city had hosted a country for the Olympics coming to Atlanta. And so Decatur was the Irish. And so he opened a pub and these guys ran the pub and worked at 30 days in a row. And that was where the idea of opening a pub indicator sort of germinated.

[A]

So you worked in an Irish pub indicator and you opened a pub indicator. It was, was it not the same location?

[B]

And, and to be clear, Dave and Tom ran that Irish pub indicator. I was still in Athens. Yeah. Sort of part time student, mostly working restaurant business. So I was still in Athens. I like to joke that I'm way younger than them. I'm just a few years younger than them.

[A]

Yeah, just like a. You know, it's funny when you're in college, high school, like someone is four years older than you, you're like, they're so.

[B]

Yeah. So they're just a couple.

[A]

Relative to your life, they're like 20% older than you. Yeah.

[B]

The difference between 20 and 20 and 25 is a lot different than 50 and 55.

[A]

Yeah. This episode is made possible by US Foods. It takes more than great food to run a kitchen these days. With US Foods, more means consistently high quality products, industry leading tools and flexible deliveries that let you grow your business on your schedule. Whatever your goals, US Foods helps you turn them into reality. As a US Foods customer, you'll gain access to their industry leading Moxi platform, which doesn't just make it easy to place your US Foods order, but it uses AI powered technology to help you take more control of your business and increase profitability. You can also explore the latest issues of Food Fanatics magazine from US Foods. In each issue you'll find real world success stories, bold culinary inspiration and practical profit boosting ideas you can put to work immediately. Visit usfoods.com expect more to learn how to become a US Foods customer again. That's usfoods.com expect more so basically you guys were just kind of filtering through like you're the three generations of the last people that worked at this place. And like that's how you guys kind of knew each other. Yeah. So what did you go to school for?

[B]

Business marketing focus. But international businesses where got it. And that was my way to tell my parents. I was like, no, it's international business, but we're opening a pub we're have beers from all around the world.

[A]

So you knew from a young age, I mean, you share the story of how you got into the industry. You loved being the moderator. You love making people feel seen and safe. And yeah, you love the hustle. You kind of. That came out of your story, too, to work hard to progress. When did you know you were going to open a restaurant? Like, when was that in your head?

[B]

Honestly, it really. That's a great question. And I think it's something that's kind of important to talk about at that time. So in 1997. Right. We're going back almost 30 years. It was not considered work that you aspired to or noble work to work in the restaurant business in the United States. At that time, Food Network really hadn't bubbled up yet. And so the idea that that would be how you create your living and that you could tell people about it and it would be on par with, I'm an attorney, I'm a doctor, you know, all these other fields that were maybe held in a little higher regard. It wasn't. And so I started showing up, and I remember there was a server who was older than me, and I was, you know, the GM at the time. And I started showing up, you know, with the notepads and. And I had my notes and how we were going to prove things, how we're going to change them. And she was like, what's wrong with you? You know, and I was like, I'm just excited. I love this. This makes me happy. And so I think it was around that time where I subconsciously had made the choice to say, this is something that makes me happy. And then really, when Dave and Tom, my two still, almost 30 years later, business partners, had that idea. And Dave came to me and said, hey, were wanting to open up a pub similar to a place in Athens that we loved, not the place we worked at, a place that we went and drank beers together and talked about life and business. Right. You know, beer's that thing that you meet when you do those things. Excuse me. Beer is the. The thing that you meet, you know, for. Right. Like, hey, let's go get beers. And. And that's when it clicked. And I thought, oh, yeah, like, yeah, I do want to do that. Like, you know, like it became a reality.

[A]

Yeah. So you find yourself talking to your, I guess, your predecessors. Or is Predecessor the one that comes before or the one that was ahead of you? Predecessor. Right.

[B]

Before.

[A]

No, before. What's. What's the one that's ahead of you. There's a word for it.

[B]

You're. That's ahead of you, like. Like for the people in your life. Like a mentor.

[A]

Yeah. Was that the. When you. When you move somebody who's a. I can't think of it. It's going to kill me, though. So Tom. Tom did. So they're. They're already kind of putting things into motion. You graduate, they're already working on stuff. And did they reach out to you and say, do you want to be a part of this? Or did you say, can I be a part of this?

[B]

Yeah. Great question. No, I did not ask them. Dave. I believe how it went down is Dave and Tom were running that thing. It was called Lucky's Irish Pub, and it was a pub. And so you asked if we were the same location just to tie up that lo. So the Lucky's Irish Pub that they ran, there's an alleyway in between our current spot and where Lucky's. Where they ran it was. And it's the oldest existing alleyway in Decatur. It's called Katie's Alley. And we'll come full circle on what we just did with that alley. But so the spot where it was adjacent to it. And so they kind of saw it. They saw that. That Dave has a real good vision for spaces and, and real strong appreciation for architecture. His brother's an architect. He's the architect that helped us design and build Brickstore Pub, his brother, Rick Blanchard. So Dave kind of spotted it, I assume first he and Tom were both there, and he reached out to me and said, hey, we're thinking about opening. You know, we. I can't imagine most people don't do this, but we would get done our shift and we would sit down and pour some beers at. At three in the morning and just dream.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And just talk about what. Right. And it was like such a beautiful time in our lives.

[A]

This is visioning. And it's. It's like the most organic form of visioning is dreaming. Finding people that share your passion. Get sitting around just. And just like, oh, wouldn't this be so cool? Capture that. Yeah. You know, if you can. If. When you, if you can recognize that it's happening, just casually just hit record on a phone, put it on the table. Like, don't overthink it. Smart or, or, but just like reflect back what those conversations were when you're having them. And that is your vision. That is the dream.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that, like, we, we restaurant consultants encourage you to do that, like five, 10 years into the process. Right. But if you can connect that source.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, the original dream and visions can change over time, but that organic visioning process, that dreaming is so powerful.

[B]

I agree. Yeah. We didn't know we were doing at the time. We didn't have the language for it. But I think you're 100, right. At some point in time, pretty early on in our career, we became aware of Ari Weinswig and his group, Zingerman's. Yeah. And actually, Ari was just in town doing a book signing, but it happened to be on St. Patrick's Day, so I couldn't go. He reached out to me, which I knew.

[A]

I've had him on the show four times now. I love that guy.

[B]

He's incredible. Yeah, he just is. And so he would be the mentor in the way of visioning and really utilizing that as a tool to make dreams come. Come to life and to really think about it. So that's exactly what we did a

[A]

whole workshop on the podcast of the power of visioning and how to do that.

[B]

I love that. Yeah, Yeah, I need to listen to it. Yeah, I would love that. Yeah. He, you know, he's just such a great guy and comes from such a great place, but. And has been a mentor to so many of us, but. Yeah.

[A]

So, Tom, David, you guys, you're sitting around, you're dreaming your visioning. They're kind of like your mentors. They're a little older than you look up to them. You said earlier, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think in some ways I would say we were prob. I think there was a little bit of that. I think for sure that they, you know, had probably been exposed to a little bit more at that time, but I think in a lot of ways, you know, I don't know if you would consider it a true mentor type relationship. More of like in similar spots and how do we grow? How do we go from here, you know? Yeah, Pierre. Exactly. Thank you. Maybe that's the word we were looking for earlier. And. Yeah, so we just started dreaming about it, and Dave reached out and buzzed me and said, hey, you know, we're actually going to try and do this thing. And their original idea, because we learned it in a college town, because you kind of tend to follow what it is that, you know, they were thinking, oh, we'll open up one in a college town, and then we'll keep opening them in college towns. But because of the gig during the Olympics, they discovered Decatur, saw this old building and thought maybe we should do it.

[A]

Here was Bill Upset that you guys were opening a pub in his. In his turf.

[B]

Who's that?

[A]

Was it Bill was the. The guy that was the owner of the pub that Tom and Dave were working.

[B]

His name is Mike.

[A]

Oh, Mike. I don't know where I got Bill from.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

No, no problem at all. Well, that's another piece of the puzzle. You and I are gonna need like four episodes. But he, Mike Small, hired them to run Lucky Zirash pub. And, and the pub did great. But like a lot of things during the Olympics when people dream big, his hometown to the world festival indicator. Didn't it end up losing a lot of money because it pulled everybody to

[A]

the other side of town?

[B]

I think just that knowing that something like the World cup or the Olympics are coming, a lot of people really take shots and swing for the fences, but you don't really know how it's going to play out until it does. And it's a short period of time, so it just. I don't know all the details, to be honest with you, Eric, but it just didn't play out as big as he thought it would. And he was a dreamer. He was an entrepreneur. He was a dreamer. He thought big. He had already made a commitment to do a Southwestern restaurant franchise in that same location where Lucky's Irish pub was. So he did not have the bandwidth or the funding to do the pub. He wanted to partner with Dave and Tom to do the pub. And I think they had the presence of mind. I don't know if we fully have talked about this much over the years, but I think that might have been around the time where Dave reached out to me and was like, hey, maybe this other Mike, who's our age, who is. Does want to work hard, who's super, you know, hospitality centered kind of guy. We all enjoyed each other very much. You know, I. I knew Tom more through just having beers and eating wings because we didn't work together. And I think that that probably was a pedal pivotal moment, which we haven't talked about much, but, you know, because I think Mike would have been a partner on paper, but he wouldn't have been a working partner.

[A]

Right?

[B]

He would have been. And he was. He was a business. He definitely was helpful to us. Like, I don't want to paint this picture, like he was predating on Dave and Tom and their efforts. He was helpful to us. He was a mentor. He was a guy that had done it and done it a bunch, but I think we. And I guess maybe that's part of that entrepreneurial spirit and certainly part of the restaurant deal. We wanted to do it ourselves.

[A]

You wanted operating partners, not advisory partners.

[B]

Exactly. That's exactly right.

[A]

Yeah. And, I mean, I think there's something.

[B]

Again, we didn't have that language at the time. Yeah. But, yes, in.

[A]

You've done this. What Mike was gonna do for Dave and Tom time and time again for other people, in the sense of, like, you've had success and you bring people up, and that's what Mike number one was doing. But what Tom and Dave were looking for were in. In the trenches partner. And. And they had Mike number two, you on deck, that was ready to get in it and be on the ground, and they wanted somebody. And it sounded like Mike number one had other ideas, and maybe they're thinking that our thing isn't going to be a priority and, like, we didn't want to share Mike's attention.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, maybe. You know, I. It's funny, I. Again, we haven't dove into it a whole lot. I don't know if we've ever, ever truly reflected on that. But I think that that's absolutely. I think knowing your language of saying that they wanted someone else in the trenches with them, I think is probably a big part of it. And, you know, and we kind of all talked the same language at that time. We fell in love with this idea of service. We fell in love with this idea of craft beer, and we fell in love with this idea of being a part of a community. You know, like, we really had this. And when I say community, like, in all of its facets of. We had our rest. We had our community of people we worked with at the pub we worked at. We had our community of restaurant people. Right? You go and visit all your friends and you hang out and, you know, if. If it's a busy night, they slip you in the back door through the kitchen kind of Goodfellow style. And then we had, you know, the college town, a larger community. And I think one of the things that worked out great for us is in a bedroom community like Decatur at that time, they had the excitement of the Olympics. They had put in some infrastructure. They had made some changes to make the. This city that was a little bit more like a village, this walkable, bikeable.

[A]

Was the Olympics in Decatur.

[B]

It was in Atlanta and. And Athens. For that.

[A]

How far? Like, I don't. For people who don't know this, for the flip, the. The footprint of Atlanta. Atlanta's center. Right. Downtown Atlanta.

[B]

Downtown Atlanta.

[A]

Center Decatur is east.

[B]

Six miles east. Yeah, six miles east.

[A]

And where was the Olympics held?

[B]

So all over, multiple different areas and different facets. But you would. They had an Olympic village in downtown Atlanta. I think I'm saying the name right. There's a. Like an Olympic park that's still there. And they sold bricks and engraved and all this kind of stuff. But the, the nucleus of it, I guess I would say, was downtown Atlanta. And then there was multiple different, you know, depending on the sports. Like for instance, in Athens, I got to see the women's soccer team win the gold medal. And that stadium happened to be in Athens. So it was kind of Atlanta centered, but all around.

[A]

So like track and field, those were like the biggest stadium that they built was like.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, but the, you know, there's probably a tennis court someplace and a swimming pool. Pool someplace else. Got it.

[B]

And so. And then, yeah, after that excitement, all that stuff happens. You now have this infrastructure in place. Right. And so they've put all these things in place. They built all these wonderful things. Like the part of the Olympic village became the dorms for Georgia Tech. Right. And so we were on the outskirts of that a little bit, but there was an excitement around it and Decatur, you know, it was sort of. There was three women that worked indicator at the time that were like the head of the marketing and the development. And I forget what the other facet was, but they had been working on this since the early 80s. Right. And they were like the drivers of the city. And I think it was, you know, if I look back now with these eyes, 30 some years later, they were, I think, really excited at three guys in their young twenties wanted to come to their town and do this. I'm certain there's plenty of people that thought, there's no way these guys are going to pull this off. Our genius idea at that time was no TVs, no neon signs, and no macro brewed or light beer. And that sounded like the kiss of death. And that might have been another reason for why not to partner. This story's never been told this way before, but why not to partner with Mike? Number one is he had made his name and he had made his. His bones and his fortune in sports bars. We were the anti sports bar. Yeah, we just. We were, we were. We didn't have any of those things.

[A]

Just there wasn't alignment and there's nothing wrong with that.

[B]

Sure, right.

[A]

But having the three of you, or at least Tom and Dave having that foresight to say, maybe, you know, like, we don't want the same things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I think that's what gets a lot of people in trouble, is they don't find the right partner. Like, and that's what the. That's why the visioning process is so powerful.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Because you can say, this is where we're going. We're all in agreements. This is where we want to be. And that's why we have missions and visions and, you know, core values and purpose statements. Because drift happens, and then you have to come back to like, we all agreed on this.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. There's. There's an interview with Francis Ford Coppola. I think that really opened my eyes to that. We. P.S. when we opened in 97, we had zero of the things you just talked about. We didn't have any of them.

[A]

Right. But you guys, you were already friends. So, like, you. And you were dreaming. You were having the conversations and you. You were. You birds of the same feather flock together. You had the same values. Right. The values aren't what you say you are, it's what you are.

[B]

That's right. Yeah. I think it's a good way to put it. We in conversation, our connection, our willingness to collaborate together and create something bigger than the individual, than Mike, bigger than Dave, bigger than Tom, was this collection of us and the people that we bring into it. And you're right, it just existed. We didn't need to paper it up because we were working 89 days a week and we were just there. But, yeah, the interview I. Which kind of opened my ideas to actually being more sort of maybe papered up about it, was with Franco Copeland. He said the idea for the Godfather, when he created it, the one word he wrote down was succession. And so if it didn't point to succession, it wasn't germane to the mission. It didn't go in the movie. And I think that that's something that, you know, is real powerful for young first time restaurateurs. I mean, shoot. Second, third time restaurant tours open up your second. Third place is editing to say, here's who we are. And in the words of one of my heroes, Seth Godin. But it's. I'll say, who is this for? Yeah, who is this for? And if it's not for that purpose, you know, I think it's how in a lot of ways, we opened up our second. Our. Actually second thing that we did was a coffee shop called Java Monkey. But we had sold that off. And by Leon's full Service. By the time we did that, it was all the things that I was trying to put into Brickstore Pub and driving my partners crazy with, you know, and they might view it a little bit differently because there was certainly some of their influence going to Leon's. But I wanted to do craft cocktails. I wanted to do more involved food. I wanted to buy more from farmers. And they were like, okay, cool. Well, we'll. We'll do that over here.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that's another great piece of advice that you intuited or your partners intuited is like, I think people try to be everything in one place. And you were smart to keep Brick street, sorry, one thing, craft beer and, you know, all the other things that it was. But, like, you stayed focused on that, and you can do that other stuff, but that's not going on the same menu. That's going on a totally different menu in a different concept. And it's going to be one word. Yeah. Craft, Craft, you know, like, whatever.

[B]

Like. So, like, yeah, when we celebrated 25 years, it was craft culture and community.

[A]

I think you should almost look at different restaurants today as different sections of the menu instead of having another section of the menu create a whole nother concept around it.

[B]

Yeah, well, and that's easier said than done, too, right? But, yeah, no, I think one important lesson is don't try to be something you're not within. Like, and there's a line between that too. Like, our chefs and our drink creators know that we. We call it feature cards. I worked for a restaurant group in town where they were very deliberate that we don't have specials. We just have features. Like, because all the things on our menu are special, and at a young age, it resonated with me. And so we still do it, but if it's on the feature card, our chefs, our drink creators, go nuts. Thai influence, Japanese influence, Ethiopian, whatever you want to do, have at it. But we do have a point of view for the menu within reason. And, you know, it kind of puts you in a box, right? Like, if. Especially if you have super creative people forcing them to say, I can only work within these, you know, three or four or five ingredients for this dish, or shrinking the cupboard or all the different, you know, spirits that you choose from to make a cocktail. I think the subtraction creates more creativity than the addition 100.

[A]

And you mentioned something. You don't say specialist. You say features. How do you feel about the word limited time offer or the lto approach?

[B]

You know, I'm a Big fan of. And we've had to do this. Right. We're 20 in year 29 at Brickstore. We just hit 17. We're near 18 at Leon's full service. You have to create tension at some point to get people to revisit you, especially if you've done something different.

[A]

It's like. It's like.

[B]

So we don't call them. Yeah, that's fomo, Right. We don't call them limited time offers. But I think one of the successes of Brickstore. So coming out of COVID we were all trying to figure out what's our next move, how do we do this. Right. And the hardest thing to do is rebuild a team.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So we can talk about people a lot. But we also had this unique, awesome opportunity to rethink a lot of other things, too, that we never would have had. We not had that awful, really hard time. And some of that was really redefining our menus, our look, our. Our. Some things that have been on the menu forever.

[A]

That had been 20 years at that point.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The world around you had changed.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You have to be willing to. What was. How do we. What's the quote we started with?

[B]

Flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from. And adversity is a terrible thing to waste.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's something to be said about holding on to some nostalgia, but there's a balance to be met, too. You can keep the main thing. The main thing, but you have to be able to evolve. I'm sure your technology has changed, Right? Like, maybe you have new paint or something. Like, I don't know. One thing I am curious about.

[B]

No, I think all those things, they all change. And technology is something we should certainly talk about, but we'll.

[A]

We'll save that for the end. Because it's changing so fast that the snapshot of what technology.

[B]

By the time we're done, it's different. Exactly.

[A]

But one thing we haven't touched on. We know what you know, I like to talk about money, like, where you are in terms of, like, prime costs and all this other stuff. But, like, also, how'd you get it to get started? You got three kids, 25, 26, 27 years old.

[B]

Exactly what we were. 26, 27.

[A]

You weren't swimming in it.

[B]

We were not swimming in it. So we, you know, the sort of short answers. We got an SBA loan, Eric. And so for those that aren't intimate with the Small Business Administration, it's a wonderful program. It's incredible. They partner with banks. So a typically a portion of the money will come from the government, federal government and a portion of the money will come from the bank and they sort of work out amortization and all this kind of stuff to not make it too messy. A ton of paperwork. There is no way we would have gotten the money otherwise. We, we knocked on a bunch of banks doors. One guy had known us from just kind of the community and we came in in suits and he, he like literally laughed at us. He's like what do you idiots do it? But we, you know, we had other banks that kind of confused us with you know like really didn't quite understand the restaurant business. But we were able to get an SBA loan. Dave's family, his uncle was a C level member of Dupont up north and a really smart, really savvy guy. But he sent and I didn't know at the time what this, what this meant but with older eyes I do. He sent his son in law and Dave, Dave just calls him cousin Bob. Cousin Bob came down to meet with Dave, Tom and Mike. And I know now that what he was doing was he was vetting Mike and Tom relative to the DuPont stock that his uncle is going to pledge. But he pledged some stock. So we had a little bit of family help. My dad helped out a little bit, mom and dad helped out a little bit. I want to say even Dave's mom threw something in the mix. We say this jokingly, but it was serious. Between the three of us, the thing that we had of most value, you know, they have you fill out your financial, you know. Exactly. And including our cars, the most valuable thing we had was Dave's baseball car collection because we were driving junkers and just didn't have anything. But we would have done anything at the time, you know. And I think that's also, I think a bank.

[A]

If they're smart, they're looking at that. And they're also saying you have zero liabilities.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Like you're not. You don't have a new house. You don't have fancy like you, like you are lean and mean. You're young and you have endurance. I think it's another thing to consider.

[B]

I think you're tapping into maybe what the guy that entered. So we knocked on all these bank stores and we knocked on. It was South Trust bank at that time and the gentleman that ran it just. And I'm for some reason break on his name right now will come to me. But he like he was the first guy that, like, took a moment, he, like, put on his suit coat and he was like, show me the space. We're like, what? He said, come on, let's go walk over and see it. You know, everyone else was just trying to get us out of their office. And he walked over with us and we showed him the space. And he was indicator already as a banker. And he said, listen, I. You guys seem gung ho, like what you're saying. I don't think anyone else had any interest in, to be honest, Eric, that we were three gung ho guys that were just going to do whatever it took. Hungry, hungry, hungry, right? You got to be hungry. You got to be humble. You got to be smart. We were so hungry, we signed. I want to say the percentage rate was maybe 8%, right. Which in today's climate doesn't sound awful, but every year since then, 8% would have been dreadful.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And. But we got it. Yeah, we got it. And we signed a. So we attached it to our lease. Our lease was a seven plus five plus five, which I think somebody given us advice on. But the first seven years, they attached the loan payoff to that. So we signed a seven year. And it would have ballooned after that. And from a financial standpoint, had we had a controller or CFO at the time, like my business partner, Tom was that guy. But we were all young, right. And Tom's really very cash flow restaurant savvy, which is so important. Right. And I. It would be important for me. I would be remiss if I didn't touch on this now. At that time, Dave and I were dreamers, and Tom was a realist. And it was super important to have the dreamers dreaming and getting after it. Not that Tom didn't dream. He certainly did, but he also grounded us. Right. He was the brain behind the business plan. He was the guy that attached spreadsheets to the dream to make it become legitimate. And so we signed this deal. We had seven years to pay it off. We paid it off in two.

[A]

Wow. So what's the 755? What can you spell? Seven, five.

[B]

Yeah. So we had a seven, seven year lease. Yeah. And then we had two five year options. And the rates at those five year options were negotiated when we signed it. So we already knew what the percentage increase year over year would be at day one.

[A]

Okay, so seven year lease. Yeah. Seven years of pay off the loan and a year.

[B]

And they. And that's why they attached the payment amortization schedule to the seven years of the Lease. Because essentially, in seven years, if we didn't exercise that option, we would no longer exist. So they wanted the loan at zero by the time we were.

[A]

Was it a loan to open the business, to get the money to open or rebuy in the building?

[B]

Great question. Zero opportunity for us knuckleheads at that age to buy a building.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But we have bought it since.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

I mean, I do think it's harder to get an SBA loan today than it was 20, 30 years ago. I have heard they're like. It's. It's. They're really kind of cracking down on that.

[B]

You might know better than I do. We use that. I don't know the answer to that, Eric. So you're probably more intimate. We did, for the second time in our career, got a small business loan. Great segue. To purchase the building that the Brickstore Pub is in and the adjacent space next to it, which is where we opened the Ram Spec, and we went through a small business loan again, because it was such a. What year was this purchase? That was three years ago. Yeah.

[A]

But you also are established and you have. You're clearly proven you're. At this point, you're a good bet.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like the sba, they're taking all that into consideration, and you have assets against it to put down.

[B]

Yeah, I think it would probably be valuable, especially so if I'm, you know, if here we are meeting, you and I are chatting.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You've been doing this 13 years, which is awesome. I've got 28 years in business of failures and successes. The reason we were able to get a loan to do the coffee shop and do the build out. The reason we were able to get a loan to open up Leon's full service and do the build out was based entirely on the cash flow of Brickstore Pub. Meaning if Leon's full service never opened, they looked at our numbers and said, can they still afford to pay this? And the answer was yes.

[A]

Yeah. So how long did it take you guys to get traction at Brickstar Pup?

[B]

Love the word traction. It's a great one. Um, you know, in our young eyes, day one, we're like, oh, my God, we're rich. We made a couple hundred dollars.

[A]

We're in the black.

[B]

We're making it. But legitimately, from a business perspective, anyone reasonable outside in looking in, probably around 01. I'd say it was climbing up, you know, and I'm so. I'm going to, like, put my two business partners on either side of me and kind of think for them, their answer to. And I think what Tom would definitely point out in this moment, which I would agree with him on, is that. And we started to see this uptick a little bit, you know, around 2000, 2001, three, four years in. But the big bump for us was a gamble in so many ways. Right. And the phrase that I love and one of my mentors in business and in. As the company and what they do is Sierra Nevada. And I think Sierra's done a great job of doing this. And this is what I look back on with our career, and when I think of the great decisions we made and how they played out is reinvent yourself within who you are. So we reinvented ourselves within who we are, but we really doubled down on beer. So in 2004, we were part of working with a lot of local state senators, working with a couple of different organizations too. There was Georgians for Better Beer. So there's some people doing the Lord's work on this to try and help get it passed. But we were a part of that. And we got a law passed in 04 to raise the percentage of beer available in Georgia from 6% to 14%. And in conjunction with that, we. So the guy that we rented the original brick store from, he owned the whole building. It's actually two spaces and the space next to it, he had his place called Sweet Melissa's in there. But the upstairs of his place, Sweet Melissa's, was kind of a mezzanine. He just didn't use it that much. He did in the beginning. He didn't.

[A]

And.

[B]

And he asked us in like, year one or two, like, hey, why don't you guys rent this from us? And we're like, we would never. It would change things. It would mess it up, but screw it up. But we had this unique opportunity for all this beer coming in. So we opened up what we called the Belgian bar. The majority of the beers we were interested in, in that 6% to 14% gap, were from Belgium. And we were stoked.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so we opened up this Belgian bar, and it struggled. To be very honest with you, Eric. We were paying cash to the people that bartended and served up there. Because when you walk in the brick store and you'll see it tonight, you see the pub in all of its iteration. The bar is a horseshoe shaped bar in the middle of the room, the tables. It's just all right there for the taking. We did have a little mezzanine, but you could see that too. The Belgian Bar was up and to the left, so it was hidden. So the thing that kept it from being successful in the beginning became what made it so successful down the line. And that it was this little area. It had no clocks, no drywall up there. We used all these, like, old doors. We wanted the stuff really old world, interesting feel, exposed brick, super cool. But when it popped, it popped.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it changed everything for us as three young men trying to make a living. It allowed us to actually continue to have families and be married and. And whereas the original bricks were. Would have been hard to do had we not made that addition.

[A]

Yeah. He's talking about reinventing yourself, but you're. Is that those the words you use? Reinventing?

[B]

Reinvent yourself within who you are.

[A]

Within who you are. So it's already doing what you're doing. Doing. You're just going deeper.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You're not, you know, recreating yourself complete, but within who you are. You. You were able to change the laws to go deeper into who you are. And that was. That opened up a whole new spectrum of the beer world for you that you could then own. Right. And it's almost like a speakeasy. It's like one of those, like, if, you know, you know, like they have like the good stuff here, but the real good stuff is out back. And if, you know, you know. Yeah. One of my thoughts when you were sharing that, is it almost like if it. If it almost isolated people or separated people. So maybe you want the good stuff, meaning high alcohol or like whatever that. That's your flavor, but you didn't want it. But you don't want to be pulled away from the party.

[B]

I think that you're tapping into some. Some things that we were grappling with and trying to figure out at the moment. Number one is the good stuff at that point, quote, unquote, was just the new stuff.

[A]

Stuff.

[B]

Yeah, it was just the new stuff. These were things. So on our first year anniversary, we sold a beer called the Trap, which wasn't legal at the time, forgive us. And it was a Belgian beer. And we. So when we first opened, we had 20 ounce Imperial pints and they were $3.75. And we, the La Trappe, because it was a low, higher gravity, and we always kind of tried to do things in the. In the glassware that was designed for the specific beer by the, you know, the brewer or that style of people that were brewing that beer. And we still do that today. So the La Trappe beer was going to come in like a 10 ounce glass and we're gonna have to charge 5 bucks. And we were like, no one in their right mind is going to pay $5 for 10 ounces of beer. We sold that keg that night that.

[A]

Wow. So.

[B]

So the new stuff was what was exciting.

[A]

So we say the new stuff, it's the high ABV stuff.

[B]

It was high ABV for sure, Eric. But some of it came in at just like right above 6 and that were things like Cezannes and, you know, Belgium.

[A]

Even a lot of IPAs are like high ABV, you know, it's not like when I think. I'm thinking like the. The 10, 9 ABV beers that are like, almost like. Like they're like the sippers, right?

[B]

Yeah. The one for us at that time that we still, I believe, still sell more than anyone in the United States is Saint Bernardus is the brewery. And the beer is called Apt 12, which is kind of a nod to the. To the alcohol percentage of the beer. It really comes in it, you know, more like, I want to say app 12 comes in at like maybe eight and a half. But yeah, it's absolutely. It's like, you know, you pour it in what looks a little bit like a chalice and it probably would be a Belgian sipper. And to be fair, at that time, people were crushing them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and I mean, nobody got out of hand. All the things everyone was worried about. All the things everyone was worried about existed the first night we did it because we were stoked. But after that it was just like, right, you learned your limits. But yeah, the beer, you know, kind of had that, you know, the. So a lot of Trappist stuff. Most of the Trappist breweries in the world, almost all of them, save maybe one or two, are in Belgium. And so, right. They. They don't brew any more beer than they have to, to sort of exist to live. And then also when they fast. Right, that's their bread. So that was the idea. Right. You drink the beer instead of. Instead of eating. And so there is sort of, you know, some level of sustenance to it. But it really was just. We were so excited to have all these different styles of beer. Some of the beer from other places in the world, you know, a lot of the stuff from Germany, a lot of stuff from England, really not much of it is over 6%. But we were having fun. And then you mentioned another thing that sort of took you away from it. I do think that there was a piece of connection. We were worried about the beautiful thing to this and this may be worthwhile, especially for someone who's opened up a first time spot, may want to expand or, you know, add on whether it's indoor or outdoor. When you walked into our pub and I think this was critical, even though we had this area upstairs and to the left, when you came in, it didn't look bigger, it didn't look cavernous, it didn't look like a, a cafeteria. It still looked like a small, intimate pub. If there's 15 people in the downstairs area, Brickstore, which, you know, seats about 90, it looks full, it looks busy, it looks warm, it looks intimate. Had we broke open the wall and doubled the size, the footprint of it, I think it would have been so hard to recover from. Yeah, it just wouldn't have felt right.

[A]

One thing I'm getting from you, I think is a really great lesson is this idea. I think when people think growth, they think lateral. We have to put our energy out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's how we get bigger, we go out. But the truth is I believe that the way you get bigger is by putting your energy in. It's about depth, going deeper, doing what you're already doing better. And, and that's kind of what I'm hearing from you, like, and also not opening a new location, but expanding your footprint at the current location.

[B]

That's exactly right. And you can measure that so many different ways. And again, we're people first Finance inform. So we're going to make sure that we have a great culture in place that people feel welcome and cared for. We're going to make sure that they're super educated on what it is that we're often that they buy in to who we are and why we do things the way we do it. Right. And there's so much growth that can come from that. And that's really the growth. There's been some additional things that we've added to Brick Store to reinvent ourselves within who we are. But a lot of it has come from the fact that, fact that we lost almost all of our team. Fortunately we hired a large percentage back. I mean our turnover was like 30% pre pandemic, so and now it's like, you know, it's much more nomadic and

[A]

I want to, I want to get into the evolution. I think it's hard to believe we're already in an hour of recording time. You know, it goes by so fast and we have not even gotten into your second location yet. So I really want to make sure we take talk about your evolution one Thing I want to highlight because I was curious about this and it came out organically. Three partners to start. Tom, Dave, and yourself, Mike. Tom, you said he was the cfo, the grounded, the realist. If I like sometimes using. If you're a fan of Traction, the book Traction. Are you Jenna Wickman?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I've read it. We don't strictly follow eos, but we're aware of it.

[A]

You can pull tons of principles from that. Yeah. But in he. He. There's another book that they have in that library of books called Rocket Fuel and they talk about the visionary integrator relationship. Yeah. And it sounds like Tom was the kind of like the grounded integrator. Operations, Numbers. Dave was visionary. Space architecture. What was your lane? You haven't really said what your lane was. Like how. Like, what did you bring to the table?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So apparently I was raised, right. Yeah, no, I mean, that's a great question. In the early part of it, we all were in love with beer, but yeah, Tom gravitated towards all the things you said and that evolved into food and hospitality. Dave really stuck with beer for a very long time. I sort of moved on to wine and spirits and cocktails.

[A]

That's the. That's the what? The product.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But what. What talents?

[B]

Yeah, you know, I'm sorry. And I was building to it in a very Irish, long winded way, but really for me, it's. It's the people in the hospitality aspect of it. And so early on, what do you

[A]

mean by people establishing the culture you're hiring or what does that mean?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I think putting more effort into. So if we're going to talk about hiring. In the early days, we hired for experience because we were young and we didn't know any better. And then we started to say we should hire for potential. And now our language is this. We hire the person that we're going to hire for the position, whether it's a cook, dishwasher, GM or, you know, everything in between. Bartender. We're only going to hire you if we see the inevitability of your success in that position, and then we're going to refuse to let you fail. And it doesn't mean. It doesn't always. But with that approach, like, imagine you joined our team at 26 when you were trying to figure out the podcast and not being a pilot, and, and imagine we spoke to you that way and we said, eric, we don't want you to take this job if it's not going to make you happy. Bring you Fulfillment and financial success. So we do a thing called staging. Right. So you're going to come in, you're going to stage, which is typical of just kitchens. We do it for everything.

[A]

I love that.

[B]

And at the end of it, you sit down, you get a meal on us, you know, pay a little bit for your time and then we just talk about what, how did it go, what was it like? And we also ask our team. So for me, I think it was the way you. I really did a great job. I think you described it beautifully, that growth for us is, you know, because my through line, what I want to do is to build great people, to build great teams, to build great community. Right. And you can substitute the word team for culture. Right. However you want to play it. But the best strategy doesn't exist in culture. The best strategy exists in humans.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It exists in people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the culture becomes this, this amalgamation of that. So for me, I think the thing that perhaps that I've continued to just grow with and develop roots. Right, right. The tree can't become bigger and more healthy if it doesn't have deeper roots is the, the hospitality, human connection piece. We just point it at food, drinking, atmosphere.

[A]

Yeah. Restaurant owners, are you still juggling six tools to hire, schedule and pay your team? Workstream replaces all of them with one platform for hiring, scheduling, payroll and compliance. Built specifically for restaurants trusted by 46 of the top 50 restaurant brands, including McDonald's, Starbucks, Crumble and more. With Work Stream, 35,000 operators have cut their interview no show rates by 55%, saved 20% on payroll and saved a 30,000 a year on software alone. If you're done duct taping your HR stack together, visit Workstream Us Unstoppable and see what an all in one restaurant grade platform actually feels like. That's Work Stream US unstoppable for three months free payroll. I repeat, that's Workstream us slash Unstoppable for three months of free payroll. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Unstoppable Restaurant owners know which services to keep in house and which services to outsource. And oil management is one of those things you should outsource. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Create a more efficient food service operation and ensure consistent food quality with a safer, smarter and sustainable cooking oil solution. Restaurant technology services over 45,000 customers nationwide. Including countless past guests on the show. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. I love this, and this is, you know, one of the things. I'm just going to bring it to the conversation now because I want to make sure it comes out. So I'm going to get in the airplane. We're zooming in 30,000ft. We're going to cruise now. You open your second location in 2001, right around this time. You say that you're. You're figuring it out, you're getting traction, and you do Java Monkey from there. I think you end up closing that. I'm not sure how long it was open. What year did you close out?

[B]

They'll give me any details in a worries. Opened it in 2000, sold it in 2008, I believe.

[A]

2008. And then right after that, Leon's full Service opened in 2009. You have one additional partner in that. Ryan Gallagher. Is that your brother?

[B]

Yeah. So Ryan has been bought out. Yeah, he's no longer our partner.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you went from three partners to four partners.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And then 2013, I see these names. So it was still Tom, Dave, and yourself, but you also have a Brian Miles, a Matt and a Jesse.

[B]

That's exactly right. Yeah.

[A]

So are they all. They are all equity partners.

[B]

Yeah. So I'll try and do this real quick, but, yeah, Ryan was a partner in Leon. Season bought out, but huge part of the success of us developing and building that Leon's. And we say that one more time.

[A]

Matt, you bought up.

[B]

Oh, Ryan. Ryan. So Ryan was the only additional. He was the operating partner at Leon's. Okay, got it. And then we had four guys that had worked with us, you know, and we talked about Ari already, but we. We had Ari Weinswig of Zingerman's, you know, and they call it their. Zingerman's Community of businesses.

[A]

I love that term.

[B]

And I. I think we were kind of heading that direction. And rather than just us saying here's and this is for another podcast, probably, but we don't ever talk about building a brand. We don't talk about opening concepts. We talk about humans, and we talk about what are these humans great at? We talk about, is there a need to be filled and how can we do that? Right. And so for better or worse, that's how we approach it. And so these four guys who had worked for us for years fell in love with beer Fell in love with, I think, our hospitality, human centered approach. And originally they were going to do a place that was beer focused with just like sausages, like real kind of simple food. And what it ended up being was a full blown sort of steakhouse, oyster house cocktail bar called Kimball House. So we partnered with those guys and that opened up in 2014, I want to say. And then in 2020.

[A]

So those were these guys you partnered with, were they former employees of yours or current employees or different?

[B]

All four of them. So they were okay, yeah. So all four of them worked for us. The only one that at the time didn't, wasn't on. On the payroll was Jesse. Matt and Brian still worked at Brickstore Pub and Miles was the opening bar manager and really helped create what the cocktail program was there at Leon's full service.

[A]

So you started with three partners. The second location had four partners.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you went to seven partners with the third location.

[B]

At one point in time I had

[A]

10 business partners in all across all locations.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And the only thing I couldn't find any information on was good word brewing. Are there multiple partners there as well?

[B]

There are, yeah.

[A]

The same original two or three.

[B]

So yeah. Dave Time and myself, two guys in our employee at the time in our care at Brickstore Pub. Todd Di Mateo, who worked with us for 10 years at Brickstore. Almost seven of them move as our GM, and another guy named Ryan Skinner. They started scheming on, wanting to do their own thing. We talked about it with them, which we love doing. You know, we really try to approach it that if you're in the family, if you're on the team, it doesn't matter whether you're on the payroll. Right. We're here for you. We're going to help you out. We're going to help you to be successful as a human in life and in business. And so they started really dreaming on this thing. And we went and looked and found Duluth. We were kind of thinking pub at the time. And Todd, Duluth being the.

[A]

The city.

[B]

Yeah, Duluth, yeah. Duluth, Georgia. There's a Duluth, Minnesota too. But this is Duluth, Georgia. It's 18 miles north of the city. And and so we ended up doing a brew pub there. They. Before we fully came on board. Right. Because we're trying to figure that out. How is this going to work? Are they going to be a part of our umbrella? Are we going to work with them to achieve their dream? They brought in another guy, great guy. He is a CPA named Andrew Case. And Andrew was an additional partner too. And you know, there's a lot of lessons in here for your listeners, but partnerships are. I think you said something earlier about kind of picking a partner, but absolutely. Like, you know, there's my mom, my dad, my siblings, my beautiful wife, my daughter. And then beyond that, the most meaningful, deep, long lasting relationship I have is with my two business partners.

[A]

It is a life partnership. It's a marriage.

[B]

It's a marriage for all of the good and all of the challenging.

[A]

Here's what a couple things are coming into my mind. You hear it all the time. Don't go into business with friends. Don't have partners.

[B]

I would say.

[A]

Have you heard that before? Am I making that up?

[B]

Yeah. You know, and Eric, here's the beauty about getting a little bit older, right. I've got a lot of gray in the beard these days. Is whatever worked for you is the advice you're going to give someone else that should work for them. And if I'm going to give great advice, if I'm going to be, you know, hopefully a good leader and working towards. I know you spent a little bit of time with Chris Goss and Chris talks a lot about being a modern elder. If I'm going to make that shift, right, to be a modern elder, I'm not going to give you the advice that works for me. I'm going to ask you enough questions and listen so deeply and intently that I can give you advice that might work for you. So I partner with two friends. And what was the second one?

[A]

Never do ever go into business. Don't have partners.

[B]

Don't have partners.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I can tell you 100% without Dave and Tom and without having partners, there is no way I'm as happy, fulfilled, successful and have as meaningful a life as I do now. If I didn't do those two things right.

[A]

I mean, a lot of people will have a partner. Don't make your partner a friend. But you've had up to 1.10 partners, right? So it's, it's weird because it's funny,

[B]

the way you said that made it sound like I had 1.10 partners. Well, it's, it's 10 partners.

[A]

So I think the other things I've heard before in terms of good business advice is what was the other one? It's I, it's more of like a sentence of thought. Not really like a word, but like I will do like in, in life, friends and family, I will give the shirt off my back. You know, I'll do anything. But in business, it's it's anybody's. It's cutthroat. And, like, I will be a ruthless bastard in business. And I'm like, what the. Like, why is that a thing? And the other thing, too, I think, and I guess the other thought I had is if you, if you want to scale, if you want to, like, if you don't, if you don't have good relationship skills, if you're not good with relationships, if you're not a good partner, then, yeah, don't have partners.

[B]

Okay. So, like, yeah, you're tapping into something super important right there. And there's so many different. The. The idea of the philosophy and hospitality that I want to approach to my life, to my family, to all the teams that I'm on in our business is conscious hospitality. Yes. And the idea of conscious hospitality is that if you know yourself so well, you can be in better service of connecting with others.

[A]

I mean, I hear conscious hospitality, that kind of reminds me of enlightened hospitality.

[B]

It is absolutely built on the shoulders of enlightened hospitality. Danny Meyer. It's absolutely built on the shoulders of unreasonable hospitality. Will Godara. And I know a friend that you and I now have in common, Awakened hospitality. Chris Goss. And it's. It's this. I. All of them, of course, first and foremost, are centered on genuine, authentic, feel good, human connection for the person giving and for the person receiving.

[A]

Yeah. So conscious hospitality, you said it. You have to know who you are. You have to know yourself that. I hear that right.

[B]

You have to know yourself so well that you're actually able to connect, more meaningful with others.

[A]

Yeah. So I hear consciousness. I hear, you know, words that are associated with consciousness. Enlightenment. Right. Self awareness, emotional intelligence, mindfulness. Mindfulness. And they say that the peak of emotional intelligence is self awareness.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So you have to know yourself before you can know how you fit into the social network.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You said it beautifully. We, and you know, in the line of work that we do, one of the most important things for us to remember is to provide a level of dignity to let our teams know that the work we do matters, that they matter, and that the work we do is important. So when we were preparing for this this morning, my wife and I were talking about it, and, you know, she shared something really beautiful with me at the time. She was bartending at Leon's Full Service, and there were two regulars that came in, you know, and she said Patricia. And I immediately said Bob, because it was just always Bob, Patricia, Patricia, Bob and Patricia. Was trying to develop a cure with her team for tuberculosis. And Bob was an architect. Builder. At least a builder, maybe, was an architect. But building, you know, these beautiful structures to create better community was. Was kind of the idea, as I remember. And, you know, Melissa was like, a lot of us in the restaurant business, not necessarily consciously by choice, but by default. I love this. It's enjoyable. I can make some money. And she was like, oh, my God, you guys, that's crazy. Like, I'm just so humbled. You're out there changing the world, and here I am just serving food and drinks. And they, like, you probably could hear the sound of the brakes, and they're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. We. This is the part of our day we look forward to. You're the fuel. You're the reason that I get up the next day happy and realize that what I'm doing matters. And then as a human, I matter because when we come in, you smile. You know, we're Bob and Patricia, you know, our drinks. You listen, you hear us out, and you provide a level of warm hospitality that makes us able to do the work we do and be happy and fulfilled. And for her, she said, that was the moment where she realized, oh, wow, what I do actually matters.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's huge. And it's. It's the closest thing, I think, hospitality, that word hospitality, is the closest word to what it means to be human. Because I don't think if you look at the root of what hospice is, it's a relationship. It's a. It's. I think. I can't. I should probably look this up. I heard. I think it was maybe Ryan Turner who put it in his manifesto. Did you read his manifesto? Did he talk about the root of the word hospitality?

[B]

He didn't, actually. He and I share a friend and a coach. That probably is where this started with. With.

[A]

Who's that coach?

[B]

Jerome lba. Oh, Jerome. And Jerome wrote a book, the Brain, about the brain enneagram. And so the.

[A]

He has those images in his medicine.

[B]

Yeah. And. Yeah. And obviously, Ryan's incredible, and he's astute and a dear friend. So the root word for hospitality is hospital.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. Or sorry. Or. No, it's okay. Hospital, hospice. But there's two versions of that. Right. So in a hospital, you can graciously lead someone to a. To death, or you can be the place where they go to be cured, to be healed, to be a better version of themselves. Right. From a health standpoint and to move on and have. And have life. And so our version is that version of hospitality. The hospital is the place you go to be a better version of yourself. You go to be listened to to figure out what's wrong with you so that you can be cured. And that's were the caregivers. Right. Where the caregivers were the people that, you know, maybe were your. Like you and I shared some conversation before we went on air about, about pubs, about public houses and your affinity for them and how much you love them. And those are the places you want to spend time to because those are the. The hubs of the community. Those are the places where people gather and you gather when life is great. You got a promotion, you just got married, your child just had a baby. You had a baby. That's where you go. But also in loss.

[A]

Right. Right.

[B]

You're going to come and you're going to gather around because it's a place you trust, you know, you're welcomed. You know that they're going to make you feel warm and that they're also going to be. They're going. Hopefully we're doing it in a manner for our teams and for our guests to offer dignity. And that is something that you'll talk a lot more about with Ryan and what he's working on. But, you know, the word dignity and the beautiful words Ryan Turner has put around it to share with our teams, to let them know that they matter, that this work matters and that there's nobility in it is something that he and I have shared over years and he has put it into his manifesto in such a beautiful.

[A]

He's a wordsmith for sure.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

And you know, talking about dignity real quick because you're. But I want to go back to that route of hospice talking about dignity. It's important to think that it's not something that you earn, it's something that you're entitled to and that you have to claim it. Right. I think that was. It's really important. We all deserve dignity and you have to take it. And I think that he. He. I don't know. His manifesto isn't public, so I hope he doesn't mind us talking about it. But this is a great teaser.

[B]

No, I think what you're touching on this. These are the words I'll put around it. Then you and Ryan can go deeper into the rabbit hole. There is. So here's my current philosophy on hospital hospitality as I see it and as we teach it in our. And it's very. I think it's Important that it's simple, right, everyone? When? So later on you'll. Well, you walk through my home, it doesn't get more.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you for welcoming me into your home, by the way.

[B]

Of course. You said it out loud, yet you're very welcome. And so you came into our home today. You met my wife, Melissa. You met our dog, Lefty. You didn't meet my daughter Finley, but if it were early in the day, you might have same thing at Brick Store Pub or Leanne's. Full service. And hopefully we'll be there tonight together. When you walk through the door, subconsciously, every human asks themselves two questions, Eric. Am I welcome? And do I belong? And if someone smiles and says hello,

[A]

that is the root of, you know, the psychographics right there. Is that right? Yeah, well, psychographics, like the. I don't. I didn't mean to go into a whole.

[B]

No, no, you're probably. You're probably going to put some. Some data, finish your train of thought. Of course. Yeah. No, I hope that you do build on it because I'm. I'm sure that this is built on something, something that I sort of got privy to somewhere, listening, reading, as we all do, to learn. But if you walk in, you ask yourself two questions as a human. Am I welcome? And do I belong? And if someone smiles and says welcome, hello, whatever it is, with a smile, the answer is yes. And if they don't, the answer is no.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we will spend the rest of that experience chasing that to try and make sure that you feel welcoming, cared for, but that every human deserves that. And in my estimation, in the world that I believe is the reality of what we're existing in. Everything else is earned. Yeah, everything else is earned. And there's two probably many different ways to put this, but one of the keys to happiness is earned success. Right. It's why the person that gets the ribbon or the trophy or the medal for last place, they know that that's bs. It doesn't make them feel good. And it also takes away from the person that did earn the first place. There's a. You know, it's not that I don't want everyone to feel welcome and cared for, and they should, but beyond that, we have to earn it. Otherwise it doesn't bring us fulfillment, it doesn't bring up self worth, and it doesn't bring us joy.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, when I hear, am I welcome? Am I seen? That is at the core of hospitality, seeing people and do I belong? That's what made me think of Psychographics. And it's a marketing term. Basically. It's the. The identity of people. Like people will go to your restaurant because they want to be seen, but they also want to be seen there by others. If your restaurant identifies with who they think they are. And this is why it's so important to make your core values public, to make your purpose statement public. Because if your purpose resonates, if you have a mission to support local farms, right. If you share that value, you're seen there. That's a public facing value. People know that. That's your value too. Do I belong? Right, and back to. I want to get this thought out. Hospice, right? We're talking about hospice. So the word hospice or hospitality comes from the Latin roots hospice, which also is where the word hospital. Hospital comes from. But that word hospice means guest or host or guest and host. So in that word hospitality, it's the most human thing because we as humans are social creatures. We are pack animals. We are not complete unless there is some other. Like, we are not solo creatures. Like, we have to. We is. We will go crazy. We don't have somebody to talk to. We literally need it. Right? We need. So back to this idea of. It's like this. What is hospitality? It's the dance between hosting guest. It's the dance. It's. You are not complete alone. You can only be complete, like from a human perspective, if you're part of something else.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

So. And I've been using this, this language, I've been kind of beating the out of it. Sorry for my listeners. Or like every episode he brings this up. But it's. It's repetition. This word Holland that I discovered from Ken Wilber, who wrote the Brief History of Everything, I think is the title of the book. But he starts the book off the most simple thing. Everything in the universe is a hole in H O L O N. And a holon is something that's defined as complete on its own and also a part of something else. So everything in the universe is complete on its own, but also a part of something else.

[B]

In a matter of speaking. That defines conscious leadership or conscious hospitality.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We have to be whole first in order to be. In order to be fully in relationship with someone else.

[A]

So if you think about hospitality hospice, we are. I am Eric Cacciatore alone, but I am also a part of the Cacciatore family. My family is a part of East Kingston, N.H. which is a part of New Hampshire.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is a part of the United States. Your Restaurant, the Brick Port. Sorry, Street. Sorry. So many restaurants go through my head all the time. Brick. What is it?

[B]

Bricks.

[A]

My notes are in of front. Brickstore Pub is whole on its own, but it's made up of a kitchen, a front of house owners, chefs, cooks, you know, and it's. And so it is on its own. But the whole point I'm trying to make is that there's like this. There's this dance, like we need we. You can't be a restaurant owner without a team. Right. And like there has to be that equal exchange.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Melissa and I were talking about this morning too. You know, she. Because identity can be so tied up. And this is just sort of building on what you said. And I agree with it. But. And I'll kind of get to it. For me, all of the work I've done, all of the meaningful work I've done, and what I love to do is work on teams. It's just what I love. It's. It's what I'm good at. I think it's part of. Because I'm one of six children. I think it's part of. Because probably I've recognized that there's so much that I just don't know and I'm not good at. And I have these two partners that are good in other areas. Right. And a successful marriage. Right. Is so much of that collaboration and co creation. But you know, we. As an artist, for Melissa, most of the work she'll do will be on her own, and she thrives in that. Like in the COVID she's an introvert masquerading as an extrovert, which ironically, is exactly how my father showed up on a Myers Briggs. Right. You know, and so. But for me, not at all. Right. So if I created this beautiful piece of art, I wouldn't feel fulfilled unless I could teach, coach, and mentor to our teams such that they also felt it was a beautiful piece.

[A]

Yeah. It's creation. That's creation. Right.

[B]

Well, hers is creation, mine's co creation

[A]

or.

[B]

Or at least collaborating. Right, right. To collaborate.

[A]

Creating something together. Right. But I think the cool thing is creation manifests in so many different forms. It can be in painting a picture or writing a song. It can also be envisioning a community where your restaurant's at the center of that. Right. And that community is your guests, the people you work with. And you are a creator in the sense that. Look at your. Your partners. Tom is a. Is a creator in the sense that he can create solutions to the money Problems. Dave is a creator and he can figure out the vision, the cosmetic of what it's going to look and feel. And you're a creator in the culture, the way you're going to make people feel who are part of your team, those are all creations. And that's what we are as humans is also creators. If you're religious, you. We are made in God's image and God is a creator. We are creators.

[B]

You know, now I think it's important too, especially, you know, we've got a, a 15 year old in the house and like, creativity isn't just pen to paper, brush to paper. It's not just the Craftsman building cabinets. Those are all creative and those are wonderful and those are all pursuits I'm terrible at. Right. But you can be creative in your thinking. You can be creative in how you build teams. So, you know, the, the intentionality of that. But like, if you go deep with that, right. It's so taps in to, you know, and creativity is that flexibility. Right. We started out with flexibility in the face change, where resilience comes from. You know, there's a certain amount of. If you want to share that creativity, it has to at some point have some sustainability to it and it has to have some sense of sturdiness, of resilience to it. So it's very different. I never accepted the fact that I was at all creative in many. Like, as a kid, I drew and I painted and I did all those things, but. Right. Like sort of life, you know, so my wife runs the art clinic and like they're all, all little kids are creative. They just are. But, you know, Curious. Yeah, they're curious. Oh, it's so good, too. Curious is something that is a huge part of hospitality. Absolutely. And so if we're talking about conscious leadership, conscious hospitality, you have to know yourself so well so that you can connect more deeply with others, but knowing yourself really well. Right. Not, of course, know the products, know the things that we're offering. Right. Because if a guest asks us, we don't want to fake it till we make it. We want to actually give you an answer. But if you know yourself really well, you can be confident. If you can be confident, you can relax. If you can relax, you can be the most fully realized, best version of yourself.

[A]

Present.

[B]

Yeah, you can be present. And if I'm present, there you go. That's the gift, right? Is the attention and the presence that you and I are giving each other. The attention and the presence that your listeners give to your podcast. Because hopefully what we're saying creates better hospitality. Sure. Creates a better restaurant. Sure. But does it create a better community?

[A]

Yeah. This is a lofty as conversation right now. I'm loving it, man. I really am.

[B]

But I have.

[A]

I have to keep it grounded. I have to. There's some. I love this kind of stuff. Like, it lights me up. But there's some things I want to make sure come out of today's conversation. We have about 35 minutes left together. So anything that has happened in your journey, scaling, going from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, what are the big aha moments? The thing that if you could get in a time machine and go back to your 2001 self right after getting traction and starting to scale, what is that 2000? Like, what is that advice that you wish you knew then that you know now that you could go back in time and tell yourself, relative to business.

[B]

Yeah, relative to the business.

[A]

In other words, what are the mistakes you made that you wish you didn't make? Me.

[B]

Yeah, of course. Right. That's how we learn. I think the first one that comes to mind is, you know, because we were young, right? And I think in a lot of ways, my early. And I say this jokingly, but I think there's some truth to it. My early leadership style was, I'm going to know more than you and outwork you. Right? Because I was young, I was insecure, I had imposter complex. But if I were to go back now, I would say that a young age, tap into those collaborations, tap into that co creation, tap into the people that know that know the things that you know you're not great at, Right. And be willing to put your ego aside to not. Number one, do not take credit for someone else's work. Do not. It's crazy how many chefs are still taking credit for all these hardworking sous chefs and. And CDCs, right? You know, like, blah, blah, blah. They're in the magazine, they're on the thing. But. But the second one is, is to. To be able to just let go and to say, you know, that the sum of all the things that we're working on. And I think me and my partners figured this out pretty good, but we. What we didn't realize at one point, and I'll just throw in this quote to drive it home. My partner said, I just don't understand. We wanted to do this for a living. We wanted to give everything we had and do it. Why don't we have more people than do it? And the reason is we didn't create space for it, Eric. We were doing it all. And the moment we got married or had kids or something, started to step back. Amazingly, they were different and they started to step up. They were never different. They were the same. So recognizing the talents on your team, right? You know, I love this idea of the skills or something you can develop, but recognizing what is it that makes someone fall in love with hospitality, fall in love with restaurants, Want to create great food and great drinks and make people happy. What is it that you have in your company that's special and unique, but what are those people that want to step into that and do it? And man, if we could have done that, we had so many incredible people that left our company. And we still do. But when I look back now, I'm like, if we would have just noticed that sooner, if we would just created more opportunities. And the only way you can do it is to remove your ego.

[A]

Yeah, I know I asked you to go back in time and give your former self a piece of advice, but I feel like you're going and giving me direct advice right now. And it really, I don't know if you saw me close my eyes when you talk like, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And it's just like you were talking about outworking people and then that was like. And it was because you're insecure, your ego or something like that.

[B]

And yeah, I didn't. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of.

[A]

I've never opened a restaurant and I host a restaurant business podcast that I like. You know, you talk about imposter syndrome, and I, I find myself sometimes working hard because I'm afraid of doing the things I need to do to go to the next level.

[B]

That would be the second piece of advice I would give someone is the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding.

[A]

Right. And I, and I think if I. What do I mean by that? I, I travel the country, spend three months, four months at times, away from friends and family and loved ones, trying to record two on site interviews. Well, I'm actually recording up to eight or ten on site interviews a week to get that Runway because I'm. My ego of. I'm just gonna outwork everybody. I'm gonna, I'm going to do all in person on site interviews. I'm going to use word of mouth to find these people. I'm going to have more integrity than anybody else, and that's pride. But I'm starting to realize this is also ego. And that the thing that makes me. That I think separates me, the willingness to do the hard thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is also what's holding me back.

[B]

That's beautiful. Yeah. That what got you here won't get you there.

[A]

Because.

[B]

Right. You're not. You're not the same person you were when you started Restaurant Unstoppable.

[A]

Because I can only do that. And I can't do. Because that consumes me wholly, that I can't do all the things I need to do to move the industry forward, like slowing down. Like, what did I actually fucking learn after 13 years and 1300 interviews? What are the biggest lessons? It's slowing down. Ironically, the name of the podcast is Restaurant Unstoppable. And I'm so bad at slowing down and stopping. I. I'm so bad at being still and doing the hard thing for me, which is reflecting and committing to what have I actually learned? What if I have to give somebody advice? What is that advice? What is the thing that I've. Because the more I learn, the more confused I get, the more I realize I don't know anything. So I'm afraid to commit to what is the right way to move forward.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. We all want to prove that we're worthy of being in the rooms we're in.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we, you know, it's. It's beautiful that you're working that hard and that you want. Right. Your mission statement to. To improve our industry, to improve the lives of the people in the industry. And I think it's great. And so if you were to speak to younger Erica or speak to younger Mike, we would not only say, what is it you want? We would say, what are you willing to sacrifice?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. What are you willing to sacrifice? Because you're nomadic, you're on the road. Right. There were years, my sister Katie, I'm pretty certain her 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th birthday were at Brickstore Pub, because otherwise I couldn't be a part of it. Right. Yeah. So what do you.

[A]

I think sacrifice is also necessary, too. Right. There's a pure period of sacrifice that has to happen. You have to get that flywheel spinning. Right. And that takes sacrifice and a dedication, consistency. But at some time, there's a balance of when that sacrifice has to start paying off.

[B]

Yeah, I think that that's true. And. And, you know, knowing, you know, I'm a believer that the. The learning exists at the edges. And. And it's funny, you know, so much of this is paradoxical, right. Because the restaurant business is kind of known for grinding. Right. And Doing that and being able to

[A]

do badge of honor.

[B]

It's a badge of honor. It's exactly right. And yet you can't serve from an empty vessel. Right? Right, I can't. And those are the people I want to be around. Right. Like you and I, that's what we're doing today. Right. We're spilling, we're dumping, reporting into each other's cup. And so we can't do it from empty vessels. So if you don't, you know. And we know. Right. The idea of putting on your oxygen mask first is so important, but it's a huge, huge piece of our business to. Because one of the beauties of hospitality. And maybe you were just sort of realizing that if you're going to serve the restaurant business, that you need to emulate the restaurant business. Maybe that's why it's restaurant unstoppable. Because we, we kind of have to be. But I don't have to be individually as Mike Gallagher. I don't have to be non stop to be successful. So I define, and we define culture three ways. Number one, our culture is what our. The. Our culture is the way you feel and the way our employees behave in our establishments when I'm not there.

[A]

Yeah. It's reality.

[B]

It's reality. And reality is undefeated. Number two is our culture is the worst behavior we're willing to accept. Right.

[A]

How you, what you do every day is your culture.

[B]

That's the culture. It doesn't matter. Right. Like you talk about. Right. Yeah. The, the purpose, the philosophy, the values are very important, but are they just words on a wall?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Right. So at 90 days. And this is a piece I picked up from Gary RIDGE, the former CEO of WD40. I always want to say WD50 because that was Wiley defresh in New York, but W40 is the 90 day check in. Right. Did we lie to you? Is the culture, is the job? Is the feeling that you have today? What I said it would be in the interview. That's the litmus test. Right. And so. And he kind of picked us up from Simon Sinek, but because the. So in the military, culture equals values plus behaviors. And then he just added times consistency. Yeah. So our culture is our values plus our behaviors. The reality of it times consistency. And that's another thing too, that I think is just so challenging. Right. You've been doing this 13 years. Has every day been easy, Eric?

[A]

No.

[B]

Has every day been fulfilling and fun and joyful? No. Right. Because they can't be. So what is it that carries you forward But I think that's the reason that we put. And why it is important, right. For a young entrepreneur, a young restaurant or. No one gave me this advice. We didn't know it. We were so committed to it and worked so hard and spent so much time in the restaurants. We overcame this deficiency. But if you have it on paper, you know that when you're drifting, you can look back and say, this doesn't support that.

[A]

And that's why we write it down, because that. That what we write down is the center line. It's like putting a line in the center of the road. Am I on the center of the road? You know, like. Or it's more of a Runway, because if you're in the center of the road driving, you're an get over to one side, but if you're landing an airplane, you want to be on the center. You want to be in that center line. And that's what the. The vision, core values, mission, purpose statement are. Is like, am I. Have I drifted it?

[B]

Yeah, it becomes a bullseye. Yeah, yeah. And the. You know, and the other thing, too, I think, you know, when you're talking about grind, and of course, I'm just gonna end up talking about you for a minute, because I can't help it, but is, you know, at some point, like, we do need to take the time to reflect. And. And for us, it's the anniversaries, right. And it's the milestones and it's the moments. You know, whether it's our children or whether it's our other children, our restaurants, and our team members. But I'm also a big fan, too, of on the hard days. Mood follows action. And that. That is the unstoppable thing for all of us as humans. If I don't want to do the thing, and I just go do it. Whether it's a crucial conversation, a hard conversation with a team member, riding my bicycle outdoors or sitting with my daughter and doing math homework, mood follows action. I always feel better. Yeah. So we have to take the time to reflect, but sometimes you just got to get up and got to go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, let's go is a real powerful slogan.

[A]

I love it. And the. The other thing that you shared, that 2001 version advice that you'd give yourself, you didn't really start to figure things out until you started to realize that you could do it with other people, you could create opportunity for other people. And I think that's exactly where I am in my life right now, where, like, I, in the Past three months, I have added C for the longest time. For like two years, three years, it was just me. And then the first step was getting an editor. And then for the past 10 years it's been me and an editor. And now it is me, an editor, a coo, a marketing intern, a community manager, and someone to sell ad space.

[B]

And let me ask you this. Do, when you say all that, do you feel more than or less than?

[A]

More than. And the thing I'm realizing is like, I need to do what Eric Cacciatore loves to do. And I do love to, to do this, don't get me wrong. And, and I, I lean into this. The thing I love that most people don't love or can't do, which is go live on the road and take. Live in chaos and literally not know who I'm talking to this week until my current guest refers them to me. You know, I love that. But I need to surround myself with the people who are good in the details. You know, the people that are the, the managers, the, the strategists, the, the marketers. I also, I don't know how to use cameras and I have two of them here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, like, how better could this be? If I handed these. Literally, I think there's $20,000 on each one of these tripods right now. So that, you know, like, so, like, if I can hand that to somebody who do, who does love the camera, like, how much better could this be?

[B]

A phrase comes to mind and I think this is great for, especially if some of your listeners are just starting out, you know, maybe they want to open a restaurant or they have one restaurant or they're trying to figure out, you know, you know, how do I, how do I scale this thing or how do I, like you said, what are the aha moments? And this is another one that we realized, and I certainly did, is your drudgery is someone else's opportunity. Right. So 26 year old Eric maybe loved all that and then figured out, but this is what I really love. This is what really makes me happy. At some point in time, if there's something in the restaurants, right. If there's a, like, let's say you did the schedule and you did the ordering and you did the inventory. Well, at some point in time, probably one of those three you're not going to have time for anymore, you're not great at, or you don't love, and there's someone on your team dying to learn it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And that's the shift.

[A]

And so we're using the analogy right now of my podcast, but it's cross referent. Like, it's cross. What's the word I'm looking for? It applies to cross pollinated. And, you know, what is that one thing in you, for you in your business? And how can. How, like, we should all be trying to do the. The 10% of things that we are. We love and that we're better at everybody else.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And delegate the rest.

[B]

Well, I think everything you just said builds up to this moment. Right. If I love it, if it brings me joy and I want to share it, it's because I care more about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so we know that in our business, and, you know, this is not originality on my part, but it's something I have picked up along the way. We truly believe that a big part of our success is that we care more. And one of the things that we've been fortunate enough to get the feedback from a lot of our former employees is they loved our time with us. Some of them even come back. Right. We have boomerangheimers because they felt that we actually cared about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They felt that we. You know, and the only way I can really care for all the individuals is if we care to make the restaurant successful. Right. Which is what we started talking about. Like, I. You and I both share. We're not finance guys, but that's such an important part.

[A]

You don't have to be. As long as somebody is.

[B]

Somebody's got to be. And somebody's got to be looking for it. But it's not, you know, the P. L. Right. You see it four, five, six months later. The term. I heard, and I think it was from Ryan Turner early on is. You know that's the autopsy. Right. The body could be dead by then. So. Yeah, you got to look at it more often than that. You got to open up the books. You got to have the hard talks. Every single one of our partnership meetings that we meet weekly on every single one of them, first line on the agenda is finances.

[A]

Yeah. Scorecard.

[B]

So, you know, and if we were more and truthfully by the time we get to that, we do what you and I are doing right now, we connect as humans first.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How's the. How's your wife? How's the kids?

[A]

I start every interesting things. What's. What's one. Not interview. Every meeting that I host or when. You know, what is one. Personal good news and professional good news. Yeah. Sorry if I. What was your train of thought?

[B]

No, you didn't cut me off at all. I just think it was the same line of thinking that if the finances aren't looking great that week, maybe we should start with another thought before we shift. But let's not ignore the reality of our current state of finance.

[A]

Right. We have 20 minutes left together.

[B]

Hit me.

[A]

One thing I really want to make sure comes out of this because I see you living what I believe is this power of the future. If you want to be the best, you need partners.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there's so many things that a good restaurant needs to be good at today. It's no longer the. The. It's so much more complex than it was, I would say, 30 years ago because of the additional layers of expectation. You can't just be present on the. In the four walls. You have to be present, present digitally. The. The cost of goods are going up, labor is going up. You have to be more on your numbers than ever before. And you. And if you are. Unless you are a freak of nature and they exist, the people that are good at everything. Right. Most of us aren't. So you. You need to do what we're talking about. You need to focus on the one thing you're good at, and you need to find those partners who complement you and you will go further together. So as somebody who has had 10 partners and four businesses.

[B]

Right.

[A]

one point, how do we go into partnerships? Give us some granular advice, details. How do you structure your partnerships? How do you bring on new partners? How do you know whether somebody should be a partner?

[B]

Yeah, those are great. And I. We have made every one of those mistakes, so I feel worthy of sharing.

[A]

I think so many people avoid partnerships because they're afraid too.

[B]

Sure. Like, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, that's it. Right.

[A]

You.

[B]

We can only truly know love if we've fallen in and out of it. If. Right. To the truest expression of really applied to so many things. But like, did I appreciate my parents before I became a father? Sure. Was it a greater appreciation of being a father when I became one of being a parent? 100 and so, you know, the. The partnership piece is tricky. But you said something reminded me you almost said the exact words. One of my favorite proverbs is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you want to go deeper, you know, deeper. And so I think it really is. We touched on this a little bit. But know yourself, whether that's deep, meaningful conversations with a friend, with a sibling, with a partner, with a parent, with A therapist, whatever, whatever is that works for you. Have those deep, critical, meaningful conversations and, and here's a piece that even us as seasoned, right? Like, I, I don't like to think of this as old. We're like cast iron pans, Eric. Right? To stay on, on program here, we're just seasoned. We got more years under, right. Who doesn't want a seasoned cast iron pan? But have that vision statement, super important. Write down what is. I mean, if I were going to go deeper on it today, I would say what is it that you're great at that you love? What is it that you're great at that you no longer want to do? And what you know, where do you want your learning and growth to be? Where do you want to flex on your strengths and where do you want to just. I'm not going to do this. Right. Like if you don't ever want to spend time in a P and L, let's be real clear about that up front and put that on paper. But then let's be real clear about what you're going to do. I actually almost stepped into a different partnership and I asked the question and I said, I'm not sure I understand your role in this partnership. So if we don't understand our roles, what's our areas of responsibility even as owners have a job description, have a job description, sit down on paper and let's see where the Venn diagram overlaps and let's see where maybe we just don't agree.

[A]

Do you guys have hierarchies, like written out org charts?

[B]

We did. So one of the early coaches we worked with, and I wouldn't say we played this out entirely and fully, but he got real clear with us. Rico Pena is his name on the org chart. And also because we had multiple different partnerships and multiple different relationships in those partnerships, he helped us to get real clear. Do you guys want to be restaurant operators in all three or four of these or do you want to be restaurant operators in 1 and 2 and investors in 3? And you haven't been clear enough with that. So yes, we have that and I will say it's important to put that on paper early on. We have buy sell agreements. Everything's negotiated up front. Right. There's a reason you do the prenup prenuptial. Right. You can't do it afterwards. Do it when you're in love, do it when your friends. Do it when things are cordial. And also what we learned coming into Covet is you don't make great decisions in times of fear and emotion.

[A]

Anything with emotions.

[B]

Exactly. Right. And so another coach, Jerome, anger, anxiety, Jerome taught us fear goes up, cognition goes down. Right. And so we have all that stuff on paper. But I also know this. If we're in a meeting and the meeting drives hard into the graphs and the charts and the numbers and we're no longer even talking about what we, what we are doing, fear is in the room. So know your finances, but do it in the calm moments because when you get into the tough ones, there is not a chart, a flowchart, a graph that I found that can save a restaurant that's failing.

[A]

So what I'm hearing from you is right. You know, write down roles and responsibilities. Have no question on who's responsible for what. For accountability.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Prenup or a partnership agreement.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And all a prenuptial agreement. Like if you're getting married, it's just like, let's. Before we get married, what belongs to me, what belongs to you? And if we go our own way, who gets what?

[B]

That's it. And. And yeah, is. Is anything going to be co. Mingled or not in a marriage? And then in the restaurant, it's the buy sell agreement. Right. So we have an operator's agreement. Here's what we agreed that we're going to do. Responsibilities show up for responsibilities. And then here's a buy sell agreement. It if we want another, if we want to allow an investor or partner to buy in, here's the rules. And if we want to sell our shares in this, here's the rules.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And be real clear about it.

[A]

Who do you go to to help you with this?

[B]

Great. We have an attorney and there's multiple attorneys that can do this. I would recommend getting one through someone that has like if you want to be a multi restaurant store operator, get someone that you get a recommendation from for that. There's a guy we work with, Carter Allen, that also the Unsuccess group works with. We worked with some different CPAs and attorneys prior to that. His is sort of modular and he can kind of put together a menu, as he puts it. There's different sort of dials and levers and buttons that you can press. You know, it's not just dollars and cents, right, Eric? It's more about the actual inner workings of it. What does it look like? Is there any metrics that kick in for additional shares? Right. Like we have a partner in Good Word Brewing who's the operating partner. And we just awarded him more shares because he earned Them. Right. So we had to go back and change all these agreements. And it wasn't easy, but. But it was important. And so, yeah, you're gonna. The two. If you don't have an attorney or CPA in your group or on your team, you're going to need to go hire one. Yep.

[A]

So there's a restaurant group, Uptown Hospitality, that I reference a lot on the podcast. And Benjamin Ben. What the heck is his last name? Escaping me. Anyway, what they do at Uptown Hospitality, they. If, if you want to be a partner, they, they have so many partners in the business. But I think the rules that I can remember, you have to be with a company for at least five years. You have to. That's the first step. And then like you, the, the, the other partners have to agree that you are of partner quality, meaning you, you are one of us. You share you. You. You are a culture carrier. You embody who we are, you're dependable, all those things. And then you have to put up cash to buy in. And it can be as little as, I think, like 1%. So like, if you are going to have equity, you need to pay for that equity.

[B]

Yeah. Skin.

[A]

Skin in the game. And I think people just show up differently and obviously there's. I don't know the details of their agreements or partnership agreements.

[B]

I like that, I like those rules and I like that last piece for this because it'd be easy, especially if it's someone who's already been on your team. Right. Let's. And, and we. We have them. Right. Like our partner. Good word. Who's the managing partner and the brewer partner. And he's super talented and he, you know, he's got a lot of things he's worked on. He's great at brewing beer, but he's also good at the front of the house operations and building culture and building teams and holding people accountable. Right. You got to be able to support and challenge folks. But the last piece of. Is important because even if someone doesn't have that cash, if they go get real creative about how they're going to get that cash, you've now got someone that says, I want this so bad. I'm willing to put my name on a piece of paper that says I'm indebted somewhere in order to be a partner in this.

[A]

Well, not indebted, but invested. It is debt and investment is that. But Right.

[B]

No, I think that's a good way to parse it out because if it's just an expense to you, it's not Worthwhile if you view it as an investment, it is.

[A]

Right, right. Did I cut your train thought off?

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

So what do you guys do in terms of like, what does that look like? What are the filters you have to make somebody a partner? And I mean, what advice do you have for somebody who maybe has had an employee for five years? You want to go, maybe they're talking about their dream restaurant and you know, you can either be a part of their dream or, you know, let them go and leave you to find a replacement. Like, or you can invest in their dream. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you see yourself now as an investor or an operating partner still?

[B]

Operating partner for sure. You know, I think maybe the long term plan is moving towards that. And Goodwood was kind of the place where we need to make that decision where we investors or where we operate partners, we weren't. You know, I love the group that you referenced there, so maybe make sure I repeat them out loud because I think they were good. But number one, is this someone that is aligned with our, you know, our values and our principles and our culture? Number two, do all partners feel that this is someone that they want to be in partnership? And then number three, skin in the game, financial investment. So I think the last one was the one we were missing. And it's kind of let's get real or let's not play.

[A]

Right. But the cool thing about, you know, it's. Yeah, I think, but it's, it's 1%. Say like, can you come up with 1%, the, the EBITDA, you know, if it, what's the value of this restaurant? Okay, it's valued at 2, $2 million. If we were to sell it today, we get $2 million for this restaurant. Can you come up with $20,000? You might like what's easier for you to come up with $20,000 and be a part of what we're doing and over time put that profit, that 1% profit or 1% of the, whatever you're getting of profit. I don't know how you would split it up. But are you putting that into high yield savings account so you can take more money and put that into 2% or when we go and open another restaurant, you can, you can have your own restaurant where your role is whatever. Maybe you're a chef, maybe you're a cfo, maybe you're in operations, maybe you're marketing, whatever your thing is, you can then, you know, you're building wealth. You're teaching people how to build wealth. And I think part of the issue with the restaurant industry is we don't create. We. It's like if you look at the National Restaurant association, they're all about creating more jobs. They want to create more employees. They want to get kids in early. So you have more employees. We don't have enough employees. Well, no. Why not? Because there's no reason to go work for somebody when you could have skin. When you have security skin in the. Like we need. And I said this to Ryan Turner, and I think he misunderstood me when I first said it. I said, we need. We don't need more employees. We need more owners in the restaurant industry. And that's a. People get scared. When I say that, he's like, no, no, no. I think what he thought I meant was we need more restaurants. We actually think we need fewer restaurants and more owners. Yeah, but what are your thoughts when I say that?

[B]

No, I hear. What you're saying is. And if we truly believe, which I know, myself, my business partners, and our friends, like. Like Ryan Turner and Chris Goss and some of the other folks you'll speak to, if we truly believe this is a. No. A business that is noble, and if we believe that it is worthy of the time and investment in ourselves and in service of others, then hopefully the game is to raise people up right? And so dishwasher or line cook or busser becomes server, becomes bartender, becomes bar manager. And, you know, and in our industry, coming out of, you know, I feel like there was like sort of three enormous things happen at once. We had Covid, we had Black Lives Matter, and we had the hashtag me too. And of all those things, let's make sure we do better work to welcome people in, to build diversity. Are we raising up people of color? Are we raising up women within our companies as well? Which we are. And when we're doing so, are we doing it again? For that piece that I said earlier is for the inevitable, inevitable success of them in that position. And if we do that, whether they have phantom shares, true equity, or just profit sharing program as a chef or gm, and we've done every single thing I just said with different people in different ways, and there's no right or wrong. But who are we? Why do we do what we do and who's it for exists on our team and for our guests and so on your team, how is it that you want to work? You know, is it the idea. And you touched on this. Are we helping fund someone else's dreams as investors, or are we restaurant operational guys that are Developing, cultivating this dream with other people and investing in them underneath the umbrella of our company. And we've done all of them. Yeah. And they're all wonderful or painful. And the difference is whether or not you are clear up front.

[A]

Yeah. I'm curious. With Kimble House, you started off as partners. There were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Seven, including yourself. Was that a scenario where you started off as investing and basically. Well, I mean, I guess if you become a partner in a new restaurant concept with, say, your sous chef, who becomes an executive chef and partner in that next restaurant, you make it possible. You. You put the money down. It's. You invest, but they have equity because they are their operating partner. Was it a situation where you basically, over time, they were able to pay you out and own it entirely? Is that kind of what happened? Or like, how did you guys get to that point where.

[B]

Yeah, I think that that's a great example of being clear on the way in. I think even myself and my two partners had different ideas of how that would play out and how deep the partnership would be and how operationally or investor focused we would be. And so it got to be, you know, in the basic sense, too many chiefs. Right. And I think that for them, very ambitious, really good operators, first time doing it, I think it was either we were all going to continue to grow and open up other restaurants together, or they were going to buy us out and go do it on their own. And that's where it landed.

[A]

But even that is a phenomenal outcome, right? Where you're elevating somebody to your point, there's. There can be too many chiefs, too many chefs in the kitchen, literally. Right. And you. You have to have your own lanes. And if there's overlap in those lanes in that scenario, I don't know if you. I'm assuming, just because this is usually how it works, is you are the elders, right? You had reputation, you had relationships with banks. You probably had money saved. You could. You could be the ones that the banks were banking on. You get, you help get the money, or maybe you put up the money. I don't know what the situation was, but ultimately, you became how those partners were able to go on and do their own thing. And I'm sure that you profited out of the selling of this year. So, like, that's still a really great outcome.

[B]

It was. And, you know, and I'll be honest, it was. Was a lot of fun. Super proud of the work we did, and the parting was painful, and it was only Painful because we weren't clear up from what did you learn?

[A]

How. How would you be more clear going forward?

[B]

Yeah, it's a great question, you know, like, who's going to do what? What's your job description? What's your heirs responsibility, and in this case, for how long? And then is the intention, right, like, what's our intention here? What are we building here? Are we. Are we in partnership till death do us part? Are we in partnership till we hit a certain, you know, you reference ebitda, a certain EBITDA and top line number. And is our intention to open up multiple stores beyond this? Like, we just didn't look far enough out in the future, you know. And again, really talented guys, super passionate guys, really passionate about food and drink. You know, like, I'm. You and I connected on the fact that we really love pubs. And I do, and I also dabble around a little bit in the fanciful cocktail and food world, which is what these guys were doing. And so I really connected in that way with it. And, you know, my other partner is probably a little bit more still, you know, really enjoying the pub and the pub fair and the beer, which I enjoy too. You know, I'm fortunate enough to have all of it. So. But I think just where are we today? But then also, what does it look like in three years? What does it look like in. In five years would have been a real helpful discussion. You know, unfortunately, we've been able to keep the relationships cordial and friendly and still friends. You know, I was in two of their weddings. They're great guys, they're really good operators. And I would say we all had some things to learn about business and being a business person and being, you know, a little more intentional about the longer term, you know, because there's problems of failure and there's problems of success.

[A]

Yeah. Anything we haven't discussed up to this point before I start to wrap it up?

[B]

Yeah, such a great question. You know, I mean, there's just so many different threads we could pull on and I'm really enjoying the conversation. But I, I think the partnership piece we touched on, I think, you know, we probably didn't talk a lot about the team building and, and the, and what that's like, but I do think it's super important. A couple of things that I can tell you that we have put in place later in our career that have been pivotal. Number one is a weekly ops meeting. Everyone who's directly overseeing departments and responsible for the care of other humans within that should meet Weekly. You should talk about money, you should talk about events, you should talk about culture, products, whatever it is. And then the second piece is. Yeah, for the partnerships, when you sit down and Talk, if the 20% difficult things, whether that, for that partnership is culture, whether it's finance, whether it's investment, be real clear with each other is this is where we're at with our money. This is where we're at with our teams. This is where we're at in our lives. Right. Because my two partners are empty nesters. I still have a teenager in high school. We're at different places in life. This is where in our lives and this is where we're going. And are we going to rebuild the patio or not? And if we are, where are we borrowing that money from? What's the budget? Who owns it and how is it taken care of and all of those things?

[A]

Who owns it? Who owns the project?

[B]

Who owns the project? Yeah, yeah. And you know, for us, the. And this, I'll just say this and I'll let you wrap up, but I've sort of realized that within the facets of it, of these buckets of things that we do, because the restaurant business wears so many different hats, right? There's people, there's projects, there's products and there's processes. Right. And so the processes, I used to say people, projects, products and finance, but let's just keep it peas. Our coach, Jerome, I think helped me with that last one. But that's HR and finance. Right. And at some point in time, you're going to be in a department, in an area, in a facet of the business that's more focused. And let's make sure we have. And this plays in a little bit to the traction in the US system. Do you have the right people? Wonderful. Do you have the right people in the right seat?

[A]

Right. Do they get it, want it and have the capacity to do it? I think is the language they use there.

[B]

It's good language.

[A]

This has been a lot of fun. I do like to be really transparent. My interviews are my research. I'm always looking for, for referrals. So I just want to rip through these questions real fast. You did say that I could stay here after you left in your home to break down and leave. So I'm going have to take you up on that offer. We were cutting it close. But what is one thing you've done in the past year that's really moved the needle, whether that be top line or bottom line? Was it a technology, a system? You Invested in you outsourced to anybody.

[B]

So a couple of those pieces. I'll start with the easy. The technology. We at Leon's Full Service just. Just went in partnership with Resi to take reservations. And we can already see that that's changing the game for us a little bit there.

[A]

Why Resi not Open Table?

[B]

You know, we researched them both. They are. There's restaurant wars going on. I'm sure you've seen it. They're doing their thing. They're buying each other out. The people in the Atlanta market on Resi more aligned with the type of place that we are and want to be than opentable and not that.

[A]

So it's market based.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And when I say that, and I want to be real clear about this, because I am a host, hospitality driven, human, it has nothing to do with cool, better, awesome, different. It's just that I think that the price point that we're at, quite frankly, aligns a little bit more with Resi than it does with Open Table. And those are both shifting and changing. But, yeah, that was kind of the ultimate thing. After looking through both of them, you know, I think there's some other things that we've put in place. But really, Eric, I'll be honest, I think it really was doubling back down on being real clear about some of the stuff you touched on, which we haven't. We. We don't. Up until then, we hadn't led meetings with, you know, what are our values, what's our philosophy, what's our purpose? And we're starting to step into being a little bit more intentional with that and really doubling down on culture. The right person in the right seat, you know, and so I think it is some of that stuff, and that's easy to overlook when you're growing. And you talked about this earlier, the growing. Right. The way a chef, Sam Hernandez explained to me one times, there's baking powder and baking soda, and baking powder is your. Is your grow up. And baking soda as you grow out. Right now we are absolutely in a. Growing up in our current businesses and not expanding new ones.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I love that you said that Resi helped. You said it. Really. You've seen it, like, move the needle. In what way did it move the needle? Is it just more top line revenue coming, more people coming in?

[B]

You know, and it's a little tricky because we're not opening the whole restaurant up to be available for reservation. And I think we've made a few decisions recently that have helped with that. We were kind of Coming out of COVID actually holding our door a little too much. We're being too conservative with allowing the kitchen and the bar and these types of things. So we were not allowing enough people into the space.

[A]

Turning up the valve.

[B]

We're talking. Turn up the valve a little bit. But I think. And I don't. We've only been with him a few months. We just did it in the beginning of the year. Eric. But. And so this isn't hard line data. This is more Mike Gallagher's philosophy and feeling on it. I think we're having some people come back and visit us again. Number one, it's sort of that this place is so busy, no one goes there anymore. I'm not saying it was like that, but there were plenty of people who would tell me, like, hey, I would come if you guys took reservations. Yeah. And these were the people in their

[A]

20 minute drive to go find out. You don't want to wait 30 minutes.

[B]

That's exactly right. And part of our experience was always like, hey, come hang out in the bar and have a drink. And that still exists and we're working on it. But I think that's a little bit of what Covid beat down some number one. And then number two, I think our customer base, because we're at 17 years at Leon's, our price point's gone up a little bit. I think the quality of our food and drink have always been great, but I think it's at the highest it's ever been, and we're charging accordingly. And so I think the people that want to spend that money have that kind of experience want to know that they got a seat waiting for them.

[A]

We got six minutes to get through the rest of these questions, so you got one sentence to answer these. Are you ready? What's one thing about your business? A value, a process, A system that's uncommon and makes you unstoppable.

[B]

We do something called the loop system, and the loop system is our action plan for teamwork. The servers in the front of the house are constantly looping and taking snapshots. They can run each other's credit cards. They can take cash from each other's tables. They can take orders on each other's tables. They spend 65% of their time in their own section and 35% of their time somewhere else, running food, running drinks. And it doesn't matter because every guest in the building is all of our guests.

[A]

And are you sharing tips?

[B]

We do it differently at different stores.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And on different services. But the short Answer is not entirely no.

[A]

Got it. The mission statement is to change the world through inspiring, empowering, and transforming the restaurant industry. I think that if we can transform one owner at a time, we can transform communities and change the world. But how have you personally transformed? How are you a better man than you were, than you were in 1997 when he first got started?

[B]

That's a great question. As a father, husband and leader, I listen to understand first seek to understand,

[A]

then seek to be understood. I love that. One of the seven habits of highly effective people. If you got the news you'd be leaving this world tomorrow, all the memories of you, your work in your restaurants would be lost with your departure. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom that you could leave behind for the good of humanity and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be?

[B]

Question. The first one that comes to mind is happiness is not a game of addition, it's the game of subtraction.

[A]

One. I'm sorry, that's one.

[B]

That's one. Yeah. And I say that because. And I say that from a materialistic standpoint, from what we put on our plate, standpoint, from an amount of number of people that report to you and that you report to standpoint subtraction, not addition. Number two. I would say that the two keys to happiness are having something to look forward to and earn success. And the third one, and this is something we talk a lot about in our house that I want to offer to my 15 year old. If you want to be great at something, you have to be willing to go, not be good at it for a long time.

[A]

Yeah. This has been so much fun. Mike, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed today's conversation.

[B]

Me too.

[A]

We wrap up every conversation, but having my current guests lead me to my next guest. So who do you respect and admire in this industry? Somebody that they want a guest on this show. You'd be like, oh, I gotta hear what they have to say.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I have so many friends and so many, you know, great thinkers and great creators of culture and restaurants in the industry. And you've, we've named a few of them today. But I would name my buddy Terry Koval, who owns the Deer and the Dove, Fawn and B side indicator. And Terry is a James Beard award winning chef. He also just received the Bill Brewster award at Team Heidi for the person that makes the biggest impact by giving back in our, in our industry. But I think he would be a great guy. To Terry's Story is awesome. Terry's heart is awesome. And Terry for me. And there's several other chefs that fit this bill. Hector Santiago, So many of them. But Terry and one of our chefs on our team, Chef Chris Morrison. You know, I'm just thinking of so many different guys, but Terry talks about being a chef in a restaurateur through the eyes of the chef in the exact same way for care of humans and hospitality as I do without being a chef. And I think that that's important.

[A]

And if we enjoyed today's conversation and we want to follow you, connect with you, maybe come work for you, what's the best way to connect?

[B]

Yeah. Great. So my email is Michael M I [e-mail].

[A]

beautiful. Michael, I cannot do what I do without people like you making time. Two hours plus hours. I'm gonna make you late for your next meeting. I'm so sorry. Being generous through your knowledge, being transparent, being vulnerable, There is no questioning. My man. You are unstoppable. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks for the time.

[A]

There's another episode wrapped up here at Restaurant Unstoppable. Special thanks to our guest today, Mike Gallagher, and to just Atlanta. This last string of guests I had on the show is like the standard I want to set going forward. You know, something came out of the conversation with Mike Gallagher after our official recording. He and I were sitting at his bar and just this idea of looking to the future and pulling topics that are leading edge of all society, leading edge of all industry. You know, what's happening in the world, the world of technology, specifically AI, robotics. What does that mean for the restaurant industry? How do we move into the future intentionally? What information is out there so that I can use to educate my, my listeners so we can make the, the, the right decisions going forward for our business. Not just for our businesses, but for society and our communities. And I think the restaurant industry is going to be the change makers in these communities. We're the most purpose driven organizations out there. We, we have more heart than any other industry. Maybe, maybe not. Some people might not agree with that, but I just don't think that there is a more human industry out there than the restaurant industry. And I think we're gonna have a lot of influence moving into the future. And the way we, we make sure that's true is by educating you and giving you access to the thought leaders, the people making the difference, challenging the status quo. That's what I'm excited about. When I think about content for the future. So also speaking of the challenging the status quo, we are going to be launching a AI, basically Vibe Coding restaurant software course, seven part course with Albert Sanchez. So if you're interested in leveraging AI, a lot of people are using AI to like rewrite their manuals and to, you know, look things up. But really where I'm excited with AI is I think we can throw a wrench in the machine, a wrench in the system, by teaching restaurant owners how to develop their own software, giving independence back to the industry. I don't think the independent restaurant industry is going to be truly independent until we can have freedom from the technology overlords and really start engineering, sharing resources, developing our own solutions and getting those solutions out to each other. Now I think the evolution of operations is starting to bleed over into building your own software. And it's easier than ever with Vibe coding. So if that's a subject you're interested in, if you want to eliminate up to 500amonth of reoccurring expenses by developing your own technologies, your own solutions, then join us live. Head over to restaurantunstoppable.com vibecoding we're gonna have a seven part series course, live events starting, I think we landed on May 19th, so we're only gonna be let 15 people into this course. So again, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com vibecoding and we'll get you your seat saved. And looking forward to that. Also, I don't know if I mentioned it, Mike Gallagher, he's gonna be live again. If I already did mention it, I. I'm sorry, but it'll be coffee with Eric on. I think we have him down for June 8th at 11am so come join the conversation. A lot of people just listen to the show. Very few take the next step. Enjoying the conversation. I highly encourage you to do that. You are the average of those you surround yourself with and I'm giving you access to the best. All right, that's it for today. Until next time. Peace out.