Chris Mangless - The Travelling Chef, 335, Excellence, and the CELLAR - Ep. #43

0:00 What's up friends, welcome back to Rooted Wisconsin. Thank you for clicking another episode link. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being you. We appreciate you. Today's episode is with Chris Manglis, restaurant owner, chef, entrepreneur, all around dynamic individual. I had a chance to check out a few concert series shows at 335 in Green Bay recently and I had to have Chris on. I had to know the story. He's dynamic, he's passionate, he's obsessed with a hospitality experience and he's unbelievable at what he does. We talk about that in our episode today. We talk about how to provide a hospitality experience, how he's cut from a different cloth of almost every other human in the world. We talk about an impactful K12 teacher that opened the door for him and did some things we hope all of our K12 teachers do and and supporting him on the way to his dreams. We talk about culinary school in Denver, him traveling around the country and then getting that impactful call from a parent that many of us have had throughout the years that alters our life direction the way only a parent can. And coming back to Green Bay and becoming what what I would call the chef for the stars.

1:15 It's amazing the people who have been through 335 and especially that special seller downstairs and he shares the roots of that. The beginning of where that started with Bon Jovi and probably not having the budget for Chris at the time, but Chris opening the door. And as I get to know Chris, that's what he does. He opens doors, he creates opportunities, he creates experiences. And then by chance, feeding The Lumineers when they had like I think he said, $76 in their pockets before they were The Lumineers that we know today and creating a relationship that built from that. And even preceding all that, how we became the traveling chef. Fascinating conversation and I'm excited to share it with you. And of course, lastly, a shout out to our sponsors, Riverside Pizzeria in Green Bay and forward beverage of Wausau, 2 fantastic Wisconsin businesses.

2:13 And if you like what you hear, support them. They keep us going, they keep us moving. Exciting things with forward right now they get a bunch of awesome new flavors and we've got a discount code to share. So visit their website, use the code Rooted Wisco 15 Rooted Wisco 1/5 for 15% off your online order for the next like 2 weeks. So if you haven't tried it, perfect opportunity to. If you haven't tried one of their new flavors yet, perfect opportunity to. The Orange Crush is fantastic. Without further ado, enjoy the episode. Here it is with Chris Manglas. So have the ways we try to lift our neighbors.

3:02 Where did the love go? Where did the talk? And we need some help to make this better again. I had a great time the other night. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me. I want to we'll get to the place where we turn back the clock a lot and I I want to see what makes you you. But first, I'm super into, I like leadership. I like thinking about like what how how leadership translates into practice. And I got to know, man, like seeing you operate personally is I, I think I text you this, but it's a it's a master class in, in providing an experience.

3:43 How do you translate that to to your people? Every single person here that night was on point and you told me some stories before we jumped on Mike here. How do you how do you keep that vibe? Well, first, thank you the the team that we've built and, and sort of, I mean, you know, what exists here is certainly has my hand on most parts of it on a daily basis. But without the team, obviously, you know, as you experienced that, that's kind of, you know, the, the service and the hospitality portion of what makes 335 and the travelling chef without the service. It it you know, you can, you can have really amazing food at A at a any form of hospitality, at a bar, at a pop up, at a food truck, at a supper club.

4:40 But if you don't have the service, quite frankly, I don't think the food really matters. You can have the best cocktails, you can have the best wine program, you can have the best space. You can have the best black walnut tables that were made with local wood. But without the service, again, you have nothing and the food can be pretty good and the space can be pretty good. And if the service is really good, turns out it's easy to have a really good time. You know, it's easy to have a really good date. It's easy to have a really good dinner or business experience or whatever that might be. And so from my point of view, it's always been, you know, first and foremost service, hospitality.

5:22 How do you make people feel and, and how do you create an experience, a memorable moment for each and every person that comes through the door? That includes our vendors. That includes the people that bring us produce. That includes the guy who washes the windows. That includes, you know, the people that make coffee down the street. That includes the bakers at the bake house across the street. If you can make all of those people feel special and taken care of, then it's a lot easier to make really good food and provide a really good experience. Yeah, that probably ends. It probably impacts the the final product in their eyes too, right? Like it makes the food taste a. 100 percent, 100%. And and the croissants that you get from Voyagers will taste better and they'll look better.

6:09 And if the food's good and the service is good, and the space is good, and the lighting's good and the smell is good and the music's good, and the guy that greets you at the door is good, and the guy that opens the door when you leave is good, what can be better right now? You're now, you're executing. Every moment of interaction long before you show up for the concert is attention to detail and thoughtful and with purpose. And so if you're a 14 or 15 or 16 year old kid that comes to work here for the first time they've ever worked a job in their life, it might seem a little crazy. Is it intense? Sure. Is it hard? Yeah.

6:49 Is it hard to catch on? Is it hard to know that, you know, tonight's a concert and there's no host of this event and tomorrow night is an intimate dinner for four. And you need to make sure that the guy at C2, his mind is blown and he's not the host. C1 is the host and C3 is the host. But they're only coming to make sure that C2 has a memorable experience, has a great time out. And so, you know, through that process, as a 15 year old kid who's now working his third day, he's ever worked, well, the third day is different than the first two, right? But after a few weeks, you go, wow, OK, everything I do matters and everything needs to have thought. And when I wipe the tables, I wipe them in the same direction as the grain of the wood on the table so that when it dries, you don't notice that it dried.

7:41 You don't notice that it was wiped, right? The way you clean the windows, the way you clean the car, the way you sweep the patio out front. You know, you can walk all over downtown. I promise you, my sidewalk is always the cleanest sidewalk in the neighborhood because we clean it every day. And it's not our sidewalk. It's a city sidewalk. But we represent the city. We're part of the city, and we want to do it to the best of our ability. And when you clean the street or the sidewalk or the curb or the parking lot, the way that you prepare food and the way that you order lettuce and the way that you make a drink. Now people like yourself can notice a difference. And you don't maybe don't always know why or you don't always care about the sound or the, or the smell or the layout of the room or the name of the drink on the menu.

8:32 But you're going to notice that it was special. You're going to notice that you were well taken care of. You're going to notice that it was thoughtful. And that, that's our goal with everything that we do. Yeah, man. And it shines through. I couldn't wait to ask that question because, you know, of course it stems from, you know, like, like I said, watching you operate and you see it happen, you see it in real life and and you think about that. And it was funny for my first hour here or so, I talked with a friend of yours. He told me he's a friend from Istanbul. And, you know, we talked about you a little bit. And the the part that sticks out of my mind is when we walked into the concert from from where we're eating, he said, because I was like, he said something about where, where are you sitting or whatever. And I said I didn't, They told me the table number, but they didn't say what seat.

9:22 And he said, well, it's probably a seat. Like it's probably a one that you're supposed to grab. And then he said, Chris is meticulous, but man, talk about an awesome conversation with that guy, too. He was super cool. But yeah, man, you know, representing that or, or the proof being in the pudding with you doing that I'm sure makes a ton of difference. But man, still, it has to be a just an A constantly moving or constantly evolving target to keep people on that same page because day-to-day normal life does not operate like you do for 99% of people. So I was excited to kind of talk about that and see, because that you spoke about exactly what I was thinking, that 15 year old kid on his third day of work.

10:13 And there may have been some people here that day that were like that. But even if, even if there was some semblance or hint of that, I think they they were in a confident place because if they turn around, I mean, they see you and unbelievable, man. So we had to. We had to start there. Yeah, even even, you know, the, the, when you have a young kid, that obviously is, you know, like you said, day one, day 2, day three, we one of the first things I tell anybody that comes in is, is when somebody asks you how long you've been working here, the simple responses, I've been here for a while now, right? Because if it's your first day, nobody really wants to be served by somebody that's their first day.

10:57 Nobody wants to have the server at a restaurant that's training because the service isn't going to be quite as great and they're probably going to interrupt a little too much and all of these different things, right. And, and from my point of view, if you can in that first interaction, right, if they sense that, wow, you seem really young. You're, you look like you're 10, right? You might be 15, that sort of thing. But with that response, where I go, I don't want to lie to anyone, but if you've been here a while now, you've been here an hour and a half, that's a while. You've worked here for three weeks, that's a while. You've worked here for four years. That's a while too, right? But if I can, if I can as a consumer, as somebody experiencing this maybe for the 100th time or for the first time, now I can go, wow, that kid seems really young.

11:40 But he had a great smile and he welcomed and he opened the door and he offered to take my coat and he walked me to the bar and he got me a drink menu. And you're like, OK, we're off to a good start, right? Where am I? The amount of times we get. I've walked past this building. I do business downtown. I've lived in Green Bay forever. I would have never guessed this was in here. And we're like, yeah, we know. We're aware. You should do a better job. You need a bigger sign. You should tell them, no, we're good. We're we're we got our own little highway. And you're everyone's welcome to be a. Part of it. But you know, if you find us and figure it out, great. If you don't, just keep doing what we do. Absolutely, Yeah. The the you should do a better job ends at the door, man, if that, if it even exists. That ends at the door.

12:22 All right, let's turn back the clock a little bit. Where does food start for you, man? I got a little glimpse of it earlier. You told me it was back to high school days. But where does being a chef, where does the interest start for you? Interest started. I mean, this is like I, I hate to listen to other chefs on podcasts and interviews and stories and. And you'll get, you often get either, you know, I fell into this by accident when I was 19 years old. And it was a it was just a job, and I started as a cook or a dishwasher. Or you get the other side of it, which was I was inspired since the day I was born. You know, I was dreaming recipes when I was 2 and I don't, I don't want it to be either of those things or sound like it's a made-up thing, but. My the, the, the interest in food certainly came started with watching my dad cook.

13:15 When I was young, my grandfather owned the first bakery that was ever in Green Bay, the original first bakery, which is called Widow Jones. And I up until I was, this is kind of wild, but up until I was like mid to late 20s, I had thought that I knew my grandpa and I'd met my grandpa And one day I, I was like going through a drawer and found his obituary card. And I was like, shit, he died 2 years before I was born. And I always thought like nobody lied to me. It's not like my parents told me I knew my grandpa, but I knew so much about the bakery that my aunts and uncles and my dad grew up working in when they were in middle school, high school, they worked there on the weekends.

14:00 There was like very much a family operation. And so eating these things that my dad would make that were recipes of my grandpa's from the bakery and seeing pictures and hearing the stories, I just felt like I knew it all. And so when I found out that I never met my grandpa, I was like, this is wild. I'm also my middle name is, is named after my grandfather. And so, but as a kid, you know, at, at I, I remember quite distinctly, I think I was 6 1/2 years old, my neighborhood friend, my best friend Johnny growing up, we decided, I decided one weekend after church, my dad would always make, he would say, now looking back on it, I know it had nothing to do with us doing our chores and being good kids during the week, but he would say if, if we did what we're supposed to during the week, he would make something for the bakery on Sunday.

14:56 And so I remember learning how to make the doughnuts that that my grandpa would make at the bakery and my dad would, my dad would cook them in a pot of oil on the stove and flip them with the back of the handle of a wooden spoon. And, and the whole process was something that making with my dad, not using measuring cups, making from scratch. You know, it needs a little bit more of this. This is how you're going to know it needs that. And it's 6 1/2 years old going, Hey, dad, I think I can make this next weekend on my own. And so I'm going to have Johnny over. We're going to make the Donuts. And my dad was like, all right, you know, sounds good. You know, a few days later, I was like, OK, Dad, we don't, there's just one rule. And I don't want anyone in the kitchen. Like, I just want it to be we're going to do it on our own. And my dad's like, you think, you know how to do it on your own.

15:47 He's like. We'll get you. If we need you, but otherwise we're going to do it. I think sometime over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, my mom got wind that we were going to be standing on chairs deep frying and in a pot of hot oil. And my mom thought my dad had lost his shit, but but we ended up doing brunch. We we, my mom had a typewriter and I asked her to type up the menu. So I sort of read out what the menu was going to be, which was cinnamon sugar doughnuts, homemade Turkey sausage with sage, fresh sage that my dad had taught me, Peaches and cream. I'm diabetic. So as a kid, I, I always had to find desserts that that were a little healthier or had natural sugar sort of thing.

16:34 And so Peaches and cream was always my favorite dessert because it didn't mess with my blood sugars and I could and it was delicious. And then orange juice fresh, you know, fresh squeezed orange juice was that was the menu. And so my mom typed up the menu on the typewriter. And then and then I remember like the last line of the menu, I was like, OK, go down to spaces dollar sign. It was 35 bucks. And this is in this is I don't know what year this is like, you know, early, very early 90s, late 80s. And she's like 35 bucks. She's like. Who's paying you 35 bucks? And I and my response, I think she thought maybe my dad agreed to pay me 35 bucks to make brunch or something.

17:16 I was like, no, everyone's paying 35 bucks. It's 35 bucks for brunch. It's. Amazing dude. And so so Johnny came down, helped me do brunch. We invited his family, his siblings, all of my siblings were there. So I remember it was like somewhere around 400 bucks. We, we did in sales for brunch and, and mom and dad had to cover the, you know, all the grocery costs. So it was 100% profit business, which was, you know, a good way to a good way to start. I think we did that three weeks in a row and then my my parents were like, yeah, I think we're going to take take a couple weeks off, you know, now I got Chris's got 1000 bucks in the bank. Johnny's got a couple 100 because I paid him as well.

17:57 He was a good he was a good sous chef, you know, And then when we got shut down, I said, hey, John, let's I want to ask your mom if, if Missus Noss, Julie Noss, I said, do you think she'll host brunch this weekend since since we're getting shut down at at my operation and sure thing she she felt guilty, I think, because my parents had hosted brunch for the last three weeks. So she said, yeah, you can do it down here. So I said, hey, mom, dad, we're doing brunch at Johnny's house this week. And so we kept the the business kept rolling. So I. You know, at the time I had, I didn't, I didn't have any sort of thought about that being a business or being interested as a job. It was just something that was fun and something I like doing.

18:40 And then, then you Fast forward to, to high school, my marketing teacher, honestly, I think there's two teachers that I remember from, from all of my schooling, 2 teachers that I remember that that sort of caught me from, from the right place. You know, like didn't, it didn't feel like school when I was around those two teachers. And one of them, Mr. Meyer at, at West High school was my marketing teacher. And, and my goal was to do the Co-op program where you go to school half a day and then you go to work half a day. And I said, I want to, I want to cook, I want to be a chef, I think.

19:25 And the, the trouble was, is all the relationships that they had with businesses in town were all marketing and, and a bank and a, you know, office job sort of thing. And I was like, no, I want to go to a restaurant. And they're like, well, we've never had anyone go to a restaurant. So John starts asking around, you know, do do we know anybody that we can get him into a nice restaurant where he's going to have the things that we want him to have to stay on track with, with the school side of things? And that we're now maybe, let's say, two or three weeks in the junior year and, and I was like kind of going to class.

20:05 They didn't really know where to put me, what to do with me. And, and John said we're going to open a school store. So the room was the school source space was right off of the classroom. And I somehow arranged my schedule that, you know, I think three of three of my four classes were were with Mr. Meyer. Somehow I had one other class that I don't remember what that was, but he decided, you know, in the meantime, before you start cooking, before we get you play somewhere, you're going to start working on the store. And I was like, what, what do you mean? What is that? He's like, well, we need a name, we need a design.

20:46 We need to know where the counters are going to go. We need to know what the logos are. What what's the merch? Are we selling Pepsi? Are we selling Coke? What bank are we using? Where's the money going? Who's working? What are the hours? How's this going to work? He need to figure that out. Wow. You know, I, I didn't, I didn't know any of that. I'd never done any of that. But clearly he, there was something that he saw on me that he thought he's probably capable of this. And so that's what I did. Ended up lasting the entire first semester and created a store, went to, went to Class A couple hours a day. And then, you know, went and met with soda vendors and went to meet with bankers and went to Sam's Club and saw what product we could afford to sell and, and did a competition in the school to design the logo. So anybody could submit a logo for the store and a name for the store.

21:40 And if you, if you won, we'd put your stuff on merch, you'd get some free merch and you'd get a $200.00 gift certificate for the school store. So now, you know, now we're going through 50 different designs and decide what we want to call it. And, and that was, you know, at the time it, it, I don't think I saw it as a learning opportunity at all, but I saw it as an opportunity to not be in class in a traditional setting. I saw an opportunity to leave school whenever I wanted to leave school, which felt great because I didn't really want to be there. And in turn, you know, there's things I learned then that I still use in my Business Today. So I think that that was sort of, you know, kind of when the the spark hit and then I sort of, you know, sort of version 2 of of brunch at mom and dad's house started then. And that's that's when some of the best type of learning happens.

22:40 A lot of the best type of learning happens is when you're learning without it feeling like work. And John was good. He's good, one of the best. Yeah, he's good at that. Man, what a what a story. The you know, that at that time, we all probably can put ourselves in that shoes ourselves in that shoes at one point or another, those shoes like something that became ended up becoming a passion that at the time, it's just like, well, this is OK right now, this is good. And you know, the, the value of that, the, the value of seeing the whole human and, and you'd mentioned in there like seeing something and you were connecting to something.

23:21 Everybody has it. We just got to just got to find it, find what's making that light happen. I love the the 6 1/2 year old like creating the menu and stuff. I think so I have a three-year old right now. And the while, while you were explaining that the other day, there was this moment where it was terrifying as a, as a dad, like he loves cooking with me too. I, I cook in our house. He loves cooking with me and I have a pot of boiling water and a pan frying things that need cheese both on the stove. And he comes trucking up with his little chair, man. He comes flying across the kitchen. Can I put in the cheese? Just hollering.

24:02 And like in that moment, everything in me wanted to say no. Everything in me wanted to say nobody. This is too hot, dude. Like this, this ain't going to work. And I, I'm sure I don't do this all the time, but in that moment I thought, yeah, man, you can put in the cheese. So he gets up there and we talk about it beforehand. Like, don't you hear these horror stories about dumping a pot of boiling water on you and stuff? And I'm like, dude, just don't touch anything but the cheese. Step up here, sprinkle the cheese in how you would. And the key part is that for me, I didn't tell him how to put in the cheese. Like he's three, you know, I think he's just gonna throw stuff in. He takes this handful of cheese dude and sprinkles.

24:44 In it. Evenly and I'm like wait. He's been watching me this whole time. Absolutely. Exactly what I was getting at. It's wild. Yeah. Right where the cheese should have went. And I, you know, think about that piece of it. Yeah, I mean he that's, yeah. What's wild is, is very likely that he's watched you put cheese or ingredients into a pan so many times. And when he's putting cheese in his own pan when he's off to College in 20 years is going to be thinking about that same thing, you know, And so man, the connection with food and and you know, it's a sort of everything in life. Everybody has a connection, whether it's, you know, some people aren't fortunate to have those moments of cooking with their parents in the kitchen.

25:34 But, but I feel like every everyone, every adult that I ever meet that I talk to about food, it has some connection from somewhere. And maybe that was when they were 20 and they discovered that food could be good or food could be homemade or whatever that might be, right? Whether that's a professional setting or with mom and dad or out of necessity because you live by yourself now and you got to figure it out. But, you know, food is such a such a connection to the soul and connects people in ways that nothing else really does. You know, pretty cool. That's one. So that's actually a part I wanted to get to today. So let's dive in a little deeper. You think so, like, you have those experiences, you had people around you cooking.

26:20 But as you move through life then and it has to be more as a chef because I experienced it just as a, you know, person who likes to barbecue and cook, you know, cream sauces with Roux. Like I'm not a professional, but I can. Cook some food. And I experienced it. So it has to be different for you about you can that's how a lot of people share themselves in a way with you is a food. So I guess my question is 2 sided 1. Do you still feel that way or does it become at some point like anything else in life, even though if you do, even if you do it at the top pristine ability, does it become somewhat mechanical or do you still feel that?

27:01 And two, do people flip that script with you a lot and be like, you have to try this thing and then you end up seeing a part of them that you wouldn't have expected? Both yes and yes, I think you know, in, in certainly on the level of of what our business is and doing events and doing things here and traveling around the country. There's certain moments for sure that that, you know, that I'm tired or that we have three days in a row with events that are challenging 20 hour days, You know, like I don't want my team to work 20 hour days. I don't want them to work 15 hour days, but sometimes that's the only way the thing gets done right. And so, but what, you know, certainly me and, and what I try to relay to the team, which is I think sometimes maybe a little harder for them to understand or a little harder for them to get to that headspace.

28:04 But, you know, at the end of of a hard stretch or a lot of work or, or an event that doesn't go exactly as we had planned, or the produce doesn't show up or the fish isn't caught or all of these things that can sort of compound to make a a beautiful setting on a beach in California and now be. You know, like, wait, there's still a beach out there. I didn't notice because because of these other things, right? If you can, if you can find a way to go. You know my my saying sort of in real time is things maybe are getting stressful or challenging. There's two things that I kind of always relay to these younger team is like, you know, at 2:00 AM, this is over either way, days over at 2:00 AM. So either we're going to be in this and we can enjoy it and try to make sure that the people that we're providing for have just as good of an experience as we've ever provided. Or we can go, this is tough, this is really hard. I'm tired.

29:03 Shouldn't have drank that whiskey last night. What's wrong with the seafood guy? But either way, we're getting to 2:00 AM. And so we can go this way, day's still gonna go till 2:00 AM. Or we can go this way and there's still a chance that we don't need to have the customer, the consumer, the guest. They don't need to know any of the things that we know. Turns out it doesn't matter. We can still provide an amazing experience. We can still make sure the candles are just right. We can still greet them at the door with a great smile. And, and we don't have the seafood that you said you wanted on your menu. You wanted, you know, the sea urchin from Santa Barbara and we're in Santa Barbara and we're doing a dinner and you wanted that. Guess what?

29:46 I bet by the end of the night, he's going to forget that we didn't even have urchin, right? It didn't matter really. He just wanted to have a great experience. And so if you can provide again, an experience, a thoughtful, memorable, high quality service and food and food that maybe wasn't part of the plan or drink that wasn't part of the plan and you can get back to here at the end of the day and that person walks away, that guest walks away and says isn't one of the most memorable experiences. That service was so thoughtful. The music was amazing that whatever P fritter you made me as the appetizer was my favorite bite of the night. Turns out it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how we got there, right, As long as we got there and we can do it again, you know, then then you look at the other side of it and you go, OK, novice home cook that maybe owns a business or maybe works at a bank or whatever they do right?

30:45 And they go, if you ever done this, if you ever what's your favorite way to cook chicken? Or you know, I'm really good at making ribs, but my, my, like people always say, oh, I'm nervous to cook for a chef. I'd love to have you over, but I don't want to cook for a chef. I'm like, I promise you, like I said, everybody straight right away I go, I don't care what chef you're cooking for. One of the best chefs in the world, down to the guy that works at the fast food place in town. If you're cooking and. You do the dishes and you pick what's on the menu. You can make a hot dog, you can make a Turkey sandwich, you can make a BLT. You can make a a salad with greens from your garden with a little lemon and some olive oil. That's going to be the best meal that that person has had in a long time or in a week or in a year, or it's going to remind them of something that their mother used to make before she passed away or whatever. That is right?

31:38 But to to eat someone else's food, that's not a professional make me whatever you're making, I promise you it's going to. Be great and. I'll bring a really nice bottle of wine. And even if the food's like, OK, if the conversation's good and it's in your backyard and you live on the river and we have a bonfire and we drink some really good white Burgundy, it's going to be one of the best nights of my life, of my year. And that's the only reason why you're bringing me over is because you want to return the favor somehow. And so to see people cook and then you know. Last night, for instance, I'm at somebody's house, a client's house, and they're cooking and I bring the drinks and I'm going to sort of cooking class we're going to, we're going to help them sort of fine tune these recipes and. For me, I didn't have to do anything that was like for normal people, I think they'd make that was definitely a day of work for me.

32:32 It was like, you kidding me? It was like vacation. I had no responsibility. I have like this is this is a night off, 100% a night off. And then I can provide a little, you know, a little feedback in terms of I wouldn't put the butter in there yet or I would let your pan get a little hotter a little quicker or I would not put the asparagus on the grill yet. Right. Those little things where then they go, well, why I would add a little olive oil at the end. I would maybe don't season it with salt and pepper until after. You sear it. Just little things right that are really the difference between home cooks, often amazing home cooks, and a chef that has done it 5000 times.

33:13 You learn, right? You learn from other chefs, you learn from experience and so. To be able to eat food at your house and you cook the food. And when we walk away a month later, a year later, you go. I still remember how you told me to not season until after I sear it. And man, it's so much better. I, my, my friends love it. My wife loves it right that one moment. And for me, it's not what I got out of it. I got something completely different out of it and I'm probably not going to remember that I told you to not season at first, but I'm going to remember that I had the most amazing night, hung out with your kids, hung out by the fire, drank some great wine. That's what I remember, right?

33:54 But we both got equally valuable experience out of that. We both got something that we're. Never going to forget. You both got what you were looking. For yeah, yeah. So that food like through food and drink. I mean, what else could you ask for? You know, it's pretty, pretty easy. Yeah, it's, it's this weird spoken and unspoken communication form that that comes out, man. So a couple things about wine in there. We have to talk about wine in here. What like what, what's the, what's the seller? What, what is wine to you? You know where? How does that weave into your life?

34:36 The seller is, you know, the my reaction is eyes like, you know, everyone has a has a different some version of the same thing as sort of. Everybody's reaction if they if they somehow experience this space and it's it's always kind of like man that the one of the most common is like. You just come down here on a day off and just sit here and drink a glass of wine and just go, man, look what I've created. I go, Nope, never done that. Never done that ever in my life. Sounds like a sexy thing to do, but Nope, not interested. But over, you know, over the past 20 years, slowly building this thing that now is now I'm sort of, I joke, but I'm, I'm always feeling it, but I'm, I'm trying.

35:25 To. Remove wine, I'm trying to sell wine, drink wine, serve wine faster than I feel it. As you can tell, I'm not very good at that. But but you know, fast rewind to rewind to maybe we opened in 2010 here. So I would say 2012, 1314. I had a mentor of mine and and you know, through many conversations. Kind of trying to figure out how can I, what can I do better? Like where can I refine the process? And in that one of the things was wine service. I want to learn more about wine.

36:09 I want to be an expert in wine. I want to be able to provide sort of a heightened experience that I, that I thought at the time we were providing through food and service. Maybe we're missing on wine a little bit. Some of these people that we're cooking for have amazing sellers, have been to 100 different vineyards, have been to France and, and gone through Burgundy and spent a lot of time in Napa and no wine. And we're coming to provide an experience. We should know wine on the same level or more than anybody that we're serving. So how do we, where does that start for a guy that at the time didn't really drink a lot of wine, didn't really drink a lot at all. And so that process of wine started the other, the other component that we looked at at the same time was coffee service.

37:02 How do we up our game on coffee service? We don't have an espresso machine at the time, but what can we do to provide right? The the moment they hit that front door and they eat the caviar and they get their first couple of hors d'oeuvres and they go upstairs to the club and they come back down and they have an 8 course dinner with beverage pairings. How do we match that at the end of the meal with coffee? Even though there's maybe only going to serve 3 cups of coffee to the 24 guests, that 3 cups of coffee should be the best coffee we could possibly figure out how to serve. How do we get there? Well, you start drinking coffee, surrounding yourself with people that are good at coffee. Look for people.

37:42 Our goal is always local, right? So look for local coffee roasters. Does that mean Green Bay? Maybe. Does that mean Milwaukee? Maybe. Does that mean the best coffee we can find locally is is in the middle of nowhere? Wisconsin? OK, that's what we're doing. We're going to get our coffee from there. We're going to go meet him. He's not going to know who we are. We don't care if he knows who we are. We're just going to let him know. We want to be serious about the coffee. How can you help us be serious about the coffee? How can we do the same with wine? Right. Well, it turns out sounds like you know a guy who loves wine. Excuse to drink more wine but reality is you got to drink wine you can't you know you're making the food you're pairing the wine you have to drink wine to know what you're drinking to know what what Riesling from 2017 Finger Lake region tastes like and what does that pair pair with and what are those characteristics and you know when you have a.

38:39 Client that comes in that says we have a $30,000 budget for dinner tonight, but we have a $50,000 budget for wine. Oh shit, we don't have that wine. So how do you learn? You go to people that have that wine, you go to people that have worked at those wineries, have made wine, have interned with these people have. And you just surround yourself with people that know more than you. The people that are professionals, people that are passionate and try to learn from them. Because if they've done it and they're the best in their game, turns out they probably have something to share. If you can figure out how to get it out of them. That means drink more wine, drink more wine, buy more wine, spend more money on wine, pair wine with food, see what works, see what doesn't. And all of a sudden you have a 10,000 bottle cellar and you're like, OK, well now all right, on to the next thing you know.

39:25 Well, that comes back to the experience man, the other night when I was here, but I don't know, I caught the in mid conversation. So I I can't remember if it was whiskey or wine, but both. Maybe it could have been, it could have been both. There was a there was a person in the cellar and they were ready for another drink or something. And you noticed that before they even knew which it's part of the thing, right? That's what you do. But not only did you notice you said, do you want that again or do you want something a little better? And immediately that person felt seen, heard, appreciated and just that, just that like who knows, man, I don't know. I don't know a damn thing about wine or whatever it was like, you know, maybe you brought them an equivalent wine and they would have would have known or whatever. But like that extra step of you want something a little better and better goes back to that conversation of relative, right? Like I've been here for a while.

40:25 Well, better to who? Better to what? But. Just you saying that perks that piques that person's interest and I think is some of what delivers that experience. Yeah. And just something. Not a wine drinker, but I noticed. And that exponentially as it grows is what you do man. Yeah, and even, you know like that. I know exactly who you're talking about. I remember what seat they were sitting in and I could tell you everything about him, but but for me, I knew what he was drinking the whole night. And the most important about that particular guest in that moment was that he bought something that was the seller sessions experience, which is a high ticket.

41:06 Price, he didn't do nothing about it, but he said, what do you think I should do? And I said, I think you should do this. And he's like, well, that's a lot more than just going to the concert. I said it is, but it's worth every penny. And he said, OK, I'm going to come. I'm going to buy 2 tickets. I'm going to do the seller sessions experience. And I said, OK, I'm going to make sure that guy in particular, and there's plenty of other people the same night getting the same service. But their version of what they need to have the best experience of their life, to have the best experience of the week to to change their week because they found out their mom had cancer that week or to change their week because they just got divorced two weeks ago. Well, what can I do?

41:46 I can do a lot of things that don't require a lot from my, from my personal standpoint or from changing the evening of, of, of what we have to do in, in terms of workload, right? But I can pay attention to when I see you walking up on the back patio and I know that you just found out that your mom has cancer. I can make sure that the person that walks you to the bar says, we're so sorry, here's a little champagne from us. It's not on the menu tonight. We're thinking about you and your mom. OK, That just made. If we can maintain that pace the rest of the evening, you're never going to forget that ever, ever. And this is a restaurant.

42:30 I'm not a doctor. I'm not saving lives. I'm not doing anything too serious. But through food and hospitality and drink and experience, you can really change people's lives. And if I'm gonna do this, if I'm gonna work 20 hour days, if I'm gonna have the stress level and all the things that go along with being in the restaurant business, well, I might as well make it so I feel good about myself so I can make others feel good, You know, if I'm gonna put the effort in, look at what you can get out of it if you approach it from that sort of point of view, right? And so for that gentleman, that individual, I knew what he was drinking the whole night and he started with the wine that was at the bar, which is fine.

43:15 And it's a, you know, it's a $15 bottle of California Cabernet and that's what he's drinking. And then then I was like, hey, we should drink a little nicer cab because I know he's going to be here for three hours. He's going to watch the show. So I kind of surveyed the room and I was like, there's a few other people that support us on the regular basis, so I'm going to pour them a little bit of the cab. So now all of a sudden, and the musician the night before said he loved cab and I know he's probably not going to drink cab before the show, but I can pour 4 glasses of cab right now. I'm going to make four people's night go here instead of here, and I'm going to save 2 glasses for the musician at the end of the night. And nobody's going to get charged for this. But this is, let's just pretend everybody already paid for it in some way, right?

43:59 How simple was that in the heat of the moment, right in the moment of 50 people being in the room, Me also telling the wait staff, we need more plates on station 2 and we need more oysters brought out and can we pass the caviar again? Because the guy at Table 3, his wife wants more caviar. If we keep that going, right? And then by the time he gets down in the cellar, I'm like, dude's been drinking now his face is going to fall off if he drinks any more Napa cat. But I want him to be alert. I want him to enjoy the experience. I don't want him to get wasted and I don't want to put a halt on things. But what if I say, hey, you want to try something different? Some maybe a little better? Why is it better? Well, it turns out I opened a really nice bottle of sparkling wine. But that's 'cause I wanted to have a drink for the first time in the night.

44:42 I wanted Jeffrey to have a glass of sparkling wine for the first time in the night. And I thought, if I can restart his night right now and sort of like politely whack him in the face and go be alert. You're about to experience something in the basement with seven other people and two of the most amazing musicians on earth. I want you to I want you to wake up. Start over right now. Don't forget what just happened. But we're starting over right now. And he grabbed a glass and he goes, you know it. Literally everything I was thinking it was that. And he's like, oh, shit, this is really good. Let me start over. And when he sent me a note the next morning saying he's been here, we we cooked for his wedding. I bet he's been here to the restaurant in the last 15 years at least.

45:28 I wouldn't even know 1000 times. And he says this is one of the best nights he's ever had here in coming to 335 since 2010. I'm like, OK, that was simple. That's what we do. Thoughtful. You make it. Look simple. You make it look simple. Why am I not surprised that you remember here? Here I am thinking out I picked this little nugget out of the night and you remember it detailed. Do you remember? Do you remember what you asked me when we in the upstairs room before the concert even started? When you walked up to the table. I said, do you drink? Yeah. Do you like that in that moment? That's my moment. And that we live in Wisconsin, dude. And I don't drink alcohol and I'm not. You're the weirdo.

46:11 I'm not you. Know and I never ever get acid. It's do you need a beer? Do you need a wine? Do you need a whiskey? Here's our drink list. What do you want? Literally you walked up to the table and the first thing you said was do you drink like like you make it look easy, but that's not man, and that's coming from someone you know, we all get we all get a little inflated in things that we think we're good at sometimes and I think I'm a pretty good communicator that that took it to a new level than me considering that. And so it's not easy, man. It's it's really hard, I think. It's, I mean, yeah, it's, I don't know.

46:55 I guess it's for me. It's it's easy. Is it work? Yeah. Does it require thought and, you know, attention to detail and? I mean, yeah, you got to be on. You got to be on all the time to be able to execute like that. But to me, that that energizes me. That that is my passion. That's, that's you know, I've gone to some of the best Michelin star restaurants and cocktail bars and dining, food, hospitality hotels. And the ones that are the truly the best are the ones that pay attention to all the details.

47:36 It's not about like, yes, I've had some really amazing meals, but I will never mark that as one of the best experiences in my life because they missed on the service or they missed at the door or the management missed or the volume level or the mirrors in the wrong places or the light at the wrong tone or the kitchen noise versus the speakers versus. The whatever, right? All of those things matter just as much as the other thing, right? You can. And it doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be 5 stars. I mean, it can be a hole in the wall pizza place. And if they welcome you and they make you feel warm and comfortable and special somehow, remembering that Chris likes a little extra Parmesan on his Caesar salad and they bring that out, I'm like, I'm tipping the server 40% and I'm coming back once a month even though I shouldn't be eating that pizza because that's what everybody wants that in whatever experience, right?

48:36 You go to a bank or you go to any form of business really, right? Like I always to my team and people around me, I always mention U Line and I go call U Line right now. I've done it in front of people, in front of CEOs where I'm like, if you could figure out how to run your business the way U Line handles. When you call U Line right now, they're going to answer and they're going to, they're going to say, is this Chris? Because they have my number and they're going to say, are you shipping to the same address? And we don't have to go over the address. You shipping to the same address that you normally ship to. OK, what do you need? Have you gotten this before? I can order $10,000 worth of stuff in 2 minutes. And they make me feel good to spend 10 grand, right, If I go to a bank or to a a cafe or to an electronic store or to a car wash and.

49:27 If you can figure out how to deliver a a hospitality experience, be hospitable, you'd be the most successful bank in all the banks. You'd be the most successful car wash. You could clean the cars 75% as clean as the other place if you provide service and make people feel good. And an experience is as weird as that sounds at the car wash you would be successful. Like everyone will want to go to your car wash. You know, that boils down to something as simple as like regulars at a Wisconsin bar, that the bartender knows their drink and they have it at the table.

50:09 Yeah, man. Why do you always go to that bar and you're like, well, because the service, I feel good. It feels good. Yeah, it's awesome, man. I had a a student, a student of mine. It's weird to say student because I was a student of his in a lot of ways too, but returning learner had been in the military for a long time and a lot of different things. I saw a LinkedIn post he made the other day about two banks that he uses and it was exactly what you're saying. And I looked at it as just like, man, OK, that that moves past the level of marketing that we talked about. And you get it, man. Like, like you get it. The one knew his mother-in-law had passed away or gotten sick or something and talked about that.

50:50 It's everything you're saying. And he ended up with saying, you know, it's tongue in cheek, like which one's going to get more of my business and which one is not? I think that's obvious. But yeah, man, I think a lot of people try that. A lot of people try it and I think a lot of people understand that. I think in execution is is a little bit different story and that's where you blow it out of the water. I. Mean it takes it. It takes effort for sure. Yeah, so in there though, you said I thought about this all all night. I shouldn't say speak in absolutes, but I thought about this a lot of times when I was here the other day. You said that it energizes you to make sure other people are having a, a good experience. Like do you have you thought about why? Do you know why?

51:37 Why do you like foreign into other people's cups, man? Because that it's clear that you do. It's it's I could tell it energized you. You in, in not in like a not in like a high or a rush way, but in like a satisfaction way. Like you, you not only took pride in it, but you enjoyed it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where it, I don't know exactly where that comes from or came from, but it, it definitely it, it's not something that doesn't ever feel like work to me. Even if I'm on day off or even if I'm at somebody else's business or I mean, I, it's just me.

52:23 It's just what I do that sometimes I guess. I, I don't know, I think people around me, friends maybe once in awhile are like, dude, can you turn that off? Can you do you have to clear that table just because there's not a table available? I'm like, well, yeah, like it's not your cafe. I'm like, I know. But the guy who owns the cafe or the guy who runs the cafe, the guy who's trying to make a business that will go on forever and be profitable and be successful and make their customers happy, that guy doesn't see that table. Not being cleared right now. And I'm standing here waiting for a coffee. Why wouldn't I clear it? I don't know. I can't. I can't turn it off. Good or bad.

53:05 I don't know. Turns out if you're on the receiving any of that, then I think it's good. But it certainly doesn't. I mean, it doesn't feel like work. It doesn't feel. It doesn't take. It doesn't drain. Me, it energizes me. So to take care of people, you know, it's, it's another thing I always say to my team, if you take care of people, people will take care of you, right? Take care of the people around you. What does that mean? I don't know what that means that my being homeless person walking down the street drops a bag. Pick the bag up if you can, right? And that's what I teach and and sort of try to reinforce with the 15 and 20 and 25 year old kids that make up most of my team is just take care of people. They're walking to the bathroom.

53:58 It doesn't have to be a rule that you have to walk into the bathroom. But if you sense that they don't know where the bathroom is, you're going to make maybe what is for them an uncomfortable question because it seems busy, or because it seems like everyone else here knows what's going on. And they were like, should I ask where the bathroom is? Should I try to figure it out? If you simply see them guess that that might be the problem. And if it's not, that's OK. But you simply open the door and say, can I show you to the restroom? They might say, I'm not going to the restroom, I'm going to the patio. That's OK. There's no harm, no foul. But if you say if you eliminate the need for them to ask a question that might be uncomfortable and now you can show them to the bathroom, all nerves are down. They feel comfortable and relaxed. And what what it took for them to feel comfortable and relax and at home was different than what it took for every other guest here.

54:48 But if you can be alert to that and try to accommodate as many of those needs as possible, and then open the door and then see when you open the door that the last person splashed a lot of water on the counter. And now I can spend 3 seconds, take a piece of paper towel, wipe the counter down, dim the light or raise the light so that the lights at maybe the same level as the rest of the restaurant. How could you feel more special? I didn't have to buy you a drink. I didn't have to remember your middle name. I don't have to remember the last time you were here. I'm just a 15 year old kid. I don't even know who you are, but they just had their part in making your experience here amazing. And now Cat behind the bar will have her her way to make your experience amazing. And now if every person you touch, including the guy Bernardo, who's just here to Polish glasses and clean the floor and move things around, he can make your night the most amazing night.

55:41 And if you have 20 people here working and all 20 people somehow have a touch on you, you're going to leave and you're going to go. This is one of the most amazing nights I've ever had. That's what we're doing. Prime example of this man, when I was leaving the other day I couldn't figure out how to open the back door. Like I couldn't get it open and I was just really confused and it was late by that by the time the seller session was done. So I like. Went you weren't even drinking. You didn't even have that excuse. I know. Yeah. And I couldn't get out. So I went what I felt like was creeping around the restaurant looking for somebody. And I found someone and she did exactly what you're saying, man. As we went back, she mentioned something just, I can't remember verbatim what it was, but it was something like, I haven't seen you before. Is it your first time or something like that? And just something to ease an uncomfortable situation. Like she doesn't know, like I lean into stuff like that. If I look like a weirdo, I don't really care. But she doesn't know that.

56:39 Like most people are going to feel super uncomfortable in that scenario, not being able to open a door. And I couldn't figure out how it was funny, but she'd immediately her first inclination was how do I make this? Soften the situation and then and then open the door. Yeah, and she opened the door for me. I probably still couldn't do it. I don't know what I did, but yeah, that was funny. So brought me right back into that moment with it, with that. And I think it's great that that theme's coming out because the first question I asked you was how do you curate that or how do you share that with your team and that like this is how like you, you're doing it repeatedly It's. Awesome man. Do it in everything you do, right?

57:20 Yeah, make it. You. You. When we cut the tape to label containers that you're never gonna see, you cut the tape with the scissors, right? Why? If you tear a piece of tape, or you use a rag that has holes in it, or you don't put the garbage can straight at the end of the table, or you don't clean the carrots the same way you handle the caviar, where does it start and where does it stop? So if it starts the minute you walk in the door. If you're walking in the door and there's a chance that there's guests here, guess what? You're going in a different door than you normally go in. You're going to be 100% in your uniform that you're going to be wearing for the evening. You're not. I'm not going to see your water bottle. I'm not going to see your cell phone. Now, do you care if you see a server that has a water bottle or phone?

58:05 No, you're probably not going to notice, right? But when you leave, you're going to go. I don't know what it was about that place. And, and maybe your wife notices the lights and the smell and the thing and you noticed the music and the bar and the thing and your two guests noticed this and this and this. Cumulatively, you're all in cahoots. You're all like, this is one of the craziest nights of my life. Turns out for it to be the most memorable experience, the most hospitable experience. Everybody needs something different, but everybody kind of needs the same. So now as as a team member, every moment is a chance to be the best. What's the best you can be?

58:49 Turns out your experience at 3 through 5 is never going to be better because you know that she has a Stanley water bottle with a cool sticker on it that says where she went to high school. It's not going to ruin your experience, but it's not going to heighten your experience. So now every moment from the minute you get here till the minute you get home, how can you be the best? You can cut the tape with the scissors. You can organize. You can clean a table top the same way. You do everything right. If you're going to walk Brad to the bathroom, you're going to walk at a comfortable pace. You're going to keep them two paces behind you. If you need to open the door, you're going to go 3 paces ahead so you can open the door and and Brad can still keep walking at the same pace. You're going to get to the bathroom door a pace ahead of Brad so that by the time you realize you have to wipe the counter off and dim the lights down, now you're 2 paces ahead and you can still comfortably go into the bathroom at the same pace you were going the whole time from the second you got up at the dinner table.

59:43 And now another guest that didn't catch you to go through the door is pushing your chair back in, bringing a new linen napkin, and making sure that the candle's still lit at your table. That's the detail, that's the how. If you don't do it with everything, you're everyone else. And everyone else has good food, or a great chef or the coolest bar or the right location or the special drink that nobody else has. But if that's all you have, now you're just one of everyone. And if you have attention to all of those things in detail, to all those things, and you go, if we're going to serve a lemonade, how do we make this lemonade, the best lemonade? Well, frankly, most people are just like, oh, it's lemonade. It doesn't matter. We don't make money on the lemonade anyways.

1:00:24 And I'm saying, well, that might be the guy that hosts the company party or hosts his daughter's wedding and all he cares about is lemonade. We don't know that ahead of time. But if all you care about is the lemonade and now you're going to tell your friends, man, they got the best lemonade and your friends don't care. Your friends care about the whiskey or the wine or the caviar. But if you're so passionate and you have a great experience simply because of lemonade, that's what we're doing. That's why we're doing what we do. That's our next customer. That's our next event. That's the next guy that's going to come to a concert or is going to tell his friend who happens to be an XYZ band that would never come to Green Bay. The guy that you serve lemonade to might be how that band came to Green Bay to play at the restaurant.

1:01:09 And three years later, people were like, how did you get that artist to come play here? It's like started with a glass of lemonade. People are like, no way. It's like way like that's that's how life works. Yeah, how how I was going to ask that how'd the how'd the music get intertwined here? Is it, is it personal? Are you music fans? So you brought it in or How does music fit 335 and. So started with personal passion for music, love of music. When I moved back to town and and decided to open 335, my sort of personal, my personal goal was to to have a life that I enjoyed living, even if I was in Green Bay that I recognized lacked certain things, one of which was music, great food, great dining, great drinks, all of these things that I said, OK, well, if it's if it's minimal or not available where I live, I got two options.

1:02:13 Either I can go live somewhere else or I can try to create it for myself. And turns out that's why I'm creating it turns out that's maybe why it works. And if other people enjoy it and want to support it, great. And if they don't? I'm just gonna do it for myself. And the music thing sort of started. And so I said I didn't know anything about the music business. Right. I just listened to music, like music went to shows like most people on earth. And all of a sudden one day I'm like, let me, let me start offering free meals, right? I didn't go. Let me learn how the music business works. Let me see how venues book artists, let me reach out to agencies.

1:02:58 And no, it's just like. Free dinner. Who doesn't like free dinner? So any artist that was playing anywhere in Wisconsin that I knew of, I would reach out, e-mail management, however I could find some sort of contact realizing that, you know, maybe 80% of that's never getting. To the end goal of the drummer who loves food, never never is going to even know that I invited him to the restaurant. But that's where it started. I got a lot of Nos, got a lot of thank you's, got a lot of maybes, got a lot of it's not going to work this tour, but maybe next time. And I'm. And meanwhile, I'm reaching out to artists that are like playing in Milwaukee, Madison, like there's no real. Way.

1:03:40 But if they say yes, I'm going to I'm, I'm literally going to spend my money. Put food in a car, bring my staff, drive to Madison, drive to Milwaukee, figure out a way to serve food. Why? Simple. I can make food. This is my form of art. I want to share that with other people and they have their own form of art that I appreciate and that I love. So in return, I'm going. You give. So much to me, and you don't know who I am. You don't know that you give anything to me. But your music does. Your form of art does something for me when times are hard, when times are good, when I'm cooking, when I'm making a great playlist for a dinner party in your backyard, all of those things. So any of those artists that I was into. I wonder if I can cook for them.

1:04:30 Turns out it was hard. Like nobody. Nobody really, really bit, you know. Again, probably not getting a hold of the right people. Turns out I I've now learned. That they get a lot of offers, right? And, and there's people on all these teams that are there to get rid of the weirdos and the things that might be dangerous and the things that aren't going to be worth it are going to, you know, it's just not going to work out, which all makes sense, right? But as a young kid that's just trying to figure out, I just want to cook for some cool artists and I didn't have this is going to be my business or this is, I want to make money on this. I was literally just like one artist. I'll start with one artist. See who? See who I can cook for, right? And then all of a sudden we we got we could for a few artists outside of the restaurant. And one of the first, one of the first artists was Bon Jovi. And we were trying to convince them, hey, you should really come here.

1:05:27 You know you're playing in Wisconsin. You should come here. You should experience this, right? But again, reverse engineer. And I'm like, yeah, of course they didn't come here. But but I I was convinced that if you come here, I promise you I don't care how big of an artist you are. I don't care what you've experienced, I don't care where you've been. I promise you, I'm going to provide you an experience that's going to make you at least pay attention, right? And so we, we went out and cooked for them at a venue and their budget was terrible. And I was just like, let's just do it. Let's see what happens. It'll be fun. Halfway through the night, somebody from his team is like, you know, you guys got to go set up the food, do the thing. And I was like, I'm I'm going to finish this food.

1:06:07 Like I'm not, I'm not dropping off chafing dishes of food that was cooked three hours ago and feeding it to Bon Jovi. Actually, I'm not feeding it to you. I'm not feeding it to anybody. That's not what I'm doing. If I'm going to spend the time to make the food, I don't care what the parameters are, I'm going to make that food the best meal that it can possibly be given the circumstances, given the location, giving the kitchen set up, whatever we have. And I know that the best version is not by putting it in a chafing dish and leaving because security wants me out before the band shows up, because this is how we do it every night. I'm like, I don't give a shit. So you got two options. Either I leave with my food right now or I stay here and I serve the best food when the band shows up. And in that sort of interaction back and forth, I understand she's just doing her job. I'm also just doing my job.

1:06:52 It turns out I don't have a boss, which, you know, the end result is usually OK, but the the in between is not necessarily always the best because I don't have anybody to report to them. So I'm either going to do what I want or do nothing. Take your pick, right? Turns out ban shows up a little early. Ban comes in. They're like totally interested in the food, totally interested in what we're doing. An hour and a half later, hanging out, talking to the band, feeding them dinner, they're like, this is one of the best, like backstage meals we've ever had. And they have, you know, the venues providing catering for the 200. People that are doing their tour and we're cooking for eight people, but they're like, this is incredible. And their main, the, the main guy on tour with them kind of walks by and, and I'd met him briefly like. Half hour ago.

1:07:43 And he had some ties to Wisconsin. He was originally from lacrosse and, and now he's touring the world with these major musicians and he comes by and now he's got he's, he kind of uses it to his advantage to be like, oh, you met my friend Chef Chris. They don't know that we've met 15 minutes ago, but he's happy that they're both from Wisconsin, right? And so we we feed him this meal and, and Bon Jovi's like, hey, why don't some version of like, why don't we eat like this? Every night on tour and they're like, oh, we could you know, they're they're all kind of all these people that are the handlers on their team are kind of bouncing some excuses or reasons or options and I point.

1:08:26 Blank. You know, again, I don't have a boss, so I'm just going to fire on all cylinders all the time. I'm like, I'll tell you why you don't eat like this every night because you don't have the budget to eat like this every night. And he's like, what do you mean we don't have the budget? I was like, well, you didn't have it tonight. Well, that started a whole new conversation and at the end of the conversation, he's like, I want you to come, I want you to come do our end of year or end of tour event. Like can you come do food in Nashville for the end of the tour event? Right. And all of that is from a simple dinner for six. That very well could have been a shaping dish dinner and they would have cut me my check and I would have went home and that would have been the end of the night. Or it was no, I'm going to, I'm going to figure out a way to create an experience and I'm going to make sure somehow Chris Manglas knows without saying this out loud or saying this to my team there that's helping me.

1:09:18 I'm going to figure out a way to get some sort of FaceTime with someone the the manager, the tour manager, the label guy, the guitar tech, whoever I can figure out is the right person to be like. This ain't about anything. I don't, I don't need to meet Bon Jovi. I don't need an autograph. I don't need to get paid more. I'm creating an experience. You guys are artists. I want you to experience my art, my form of service and hospitality, the way that I want it to be, which is the way you want it to be. You just don't know that yet. And that was the first sort of music thing. And then we had Lumineers came here and had dinner and didn't play a show, but couldn't afford to eat at the time they showed up. I remember they're here for 15 minutes. They go upstairs into the club, they're playing pool. The tour manager comes down, he's like, hey, what time does this place open?

1:10:21 And I'm like, we don't open. And he's like, what do you mean? I thought you're in a restaurant. I was like, well, yeah, sometimes, but not today. And he's like, well, are we going to be able to eat? I was like, well, yeah, you're you're eating. We're doing dinner for you. And he's like, oh, just us. You can kind of like little excitement, little panic. He's like, OK, cool, yeah, all right. And he's like, what's in this drink Quickly changes the subject. Half hour later he comes, he's like, hey, dinner's just starting. They sit down. We, I think we did like a 15 course dinner or something. And it's like 2 courses in and the same guy comes back. I barely know him, right? And he's like, hey, chef, he was just wondering, I, I don't want to be rude, but how much is this dinner going to cost us?

1:11:07 And I was like, you know, don't worry about it. Just sit down and enjoy dinner, please. And at the end of dinner, he's like, hey, we, we, they, they like, we're volunteering to wash dishes. They were like, we've never been treated like this. This is the most amazing meal we've ever had. Majority of the band was working in hospitality in Denver at that time, touring as a band, trying to figure out if they can figure out how to make it. And between the entire band and tour manager, there's only six people there. They had 76 bucks total between all of their pockets. And they're like, we have like 10 people waiting on us. Like we like, we're going to give everybody like 6 bucks or something, you know, like this doesn't this thing going to add up? And, and I was like, you know, don't worry about it. I'm going to tip the staff.

1:11:51 Everybody's good and they're like, and, and, and don't think that I'm coming from a place of like, I'm a wealthy restauranteur that's just buying dinner. I'm like, I don't have any more money than you guys do, but I invited you to my house. Somebody else is paying for these ingredients. Then we're going to use stuff tomorrow. We used stuff yesterday. But most importantly, I want you guys to experience my form of art, my form of of hospitality, my form of taking care of people again, because your music means something to me. You know, three months later, we're cooking for him in Colorado. Six months later, we're cooking for him at Red Rocks. They're now making money and they're like, hey, we want to return the favor.

1:12:32 And for me. I was like, I need the money, we'll take the money, we'll do the gig. But more importantly, can you introduce me to that band that opened up for you? Can you connect me with Nathaniel Rateliff? That was the opener on New Year's Eve And ate all the new skis, ham and beef and and poked two holes through a slice of smoked ham and put it on his face and took a picture with me. And can you connect me with him 'cause I want to host him and I want to host him? I don't care if they play. I would love to have them play. I'm not even thinking about having them play at the time. I'm just saying I want to feed you. Turns out none of these people are coming to Green Bay. So now I'm like, shit, I got to. In order to get them to come to your Bay, they got to have a show.

1:13:13 They need to make money. There are touring artists that are trying to make money. All right, I guess we're going to host shows only so that I can feed them, only so that I can take care of them, only so that I can put them up, let them stay, feed them, drink them, take them to a Packer game, take them fishing. If they want to go fishing, take them jet skiing. If they want to go jet skiing, I want them to stop in their tracks of tour and go, wow, this is the first time in a week or a month or in our life of being on tour and being taken care of. Because all they're doing is providing. They're cooking every night they're going on stage, they're cooking for 100 people or 1000 people. They're not getting paid shit.

1:13:53 They're barely able to survive. They can't afford a nice hotel room. They certainly can't afford to go eat at 335. Well, I can afford, not financially speaking, but I can afford my space and my team and my knowledge and my interests to provide an. Experience to provide a meal for them. OK, that's what I want to do. Let's do that. And in order to get them to come to Green Bay, we're going to have to host a show. Wow. OK, sure. We're hosting shows. And then people around me are like, are you a concert promoter now? And I'm like, I guess by default, you know, and now, you know, this year we're what?

1:14:36 It's April. So four months in, I think we've hosted maybe 20 shows this year, which is like more than we've ever hosted in four months. The, the goal was always one show a month. And, and now we're just, you know, every, every manager and drummer and, and agent is, is connected to the next drummer, agent, band manager and. It's been fun. It's, it's, it's still sort of like, you know, regardless of, of the venue size that these bands are playing or, or how much money they're making in a year or not making in a year doesn't, doesn't change the experience we provide, right. And it also doesn't change the the experience they receive. The people that are well off musicians that are playing arenas, that are making a lot of money doing their art versus the guy that's getting paid 250 bucks a show and spending 325 a day to be on tour.

1:15:40 I'm going to blow both their minds the same way and I'm going to provide them with the same experience. We're going to open the same champagne. One of these artists might make us a little bit of money to pay for the staff and pay for a show and create something. The next artist is going to cost us money. Sounds like I have rich parents that are paying for everything. I don't very much not so but I go OK we made a little money on on the board dinner on Thursday. I can choose if I want to spend a little bit of the money we made to host an artist and there's nothing I would rather do then cook for people. Chefs, wine makers, musicians, painters, I'd.

1:16:20 Rather cook for people that are artists, people that are providing. I also have to cook for the people that are on the other end of the of, of the, you know, spectrum. But but they're both fun and I can blow both minds. I can, you know, the idea of a billionaire coming here to have dinner. The first time we had a billionaire here come for dinner, I was mind blown, right? I'm a chef from Green Bay. I grew up with no money. I created this thing with tiny budget and now I'm cooking for a billionaire who who at the end of the night says this is one of the best experience of my life. And they live in New York or they live in Australia, or it's their first time in Wisconsin. We got them, you know, and then it's on to the next day. Who you cooking for the next day. Now you're cooking for a guy that doesn't have any money. I don't, I don't care what you have. There's nothing to do with it.

1:17:17 I don't care if you're a musician. I don't care if you're famous. I don't care if you're rich. You come here, we're going to provide everyone with the same experience. It's such an awesome story, man, such an awesome story. And when he the the show the other night, I was thinking about the contrast of Lou Hazel had said he had just got off sleeping in his van for a month. And then I was thinking about the contrast of that compared to coming very little different, very little span of a difference bigger than that in life, right? Like sleeping in your van for a month compared to coming to 335 for the, the, the experience that you provide. But man, that's, it's, I don't know it. It screams at everything you do.

1:18:04 And when you think about like afterwards, not only have did I tell everybody about it, like, you know, everybody does. Like when I think about what I wrote in the Instagram post, like it's exactly what you're saying. Like your art is cooking and that's what's driving you to share it with the artists who give in to you. Man, unbelievable story. That's crazy. So what, what like personally, what's your, what's your music taste? Is it eclectic? Like what? What do you? What do you listen to when you're not feeding them? Good music. Yeah. It's like, I wish I had a better answer, but it's it's there's there's no sort of style that I'm sort of honed in on.

1:18:48 There's there's definitely like a presence of or a heavy, heavy presence in, in the shows we're putting on our you know, they definitely lean towards singer-songwriter sort of alternative music, but we're hosting country artists. We've had rap artists here before. We, you know, good music, good art, right? Like good food. I don't I can have just as good of an experience listening to country music, eating some sort of sausage or burger in a shitty bar that turns out it's one of the best places on earth because that's that's what's happening, because that's because that bar is hospitable in their in their form of service, right in their experience.

1:19:36 Music. I love good music, any music. I don't care what genre you are. I don't care if it's music my dad used to listen to or music that I found out about from some kid working at the restaurant. I'm like. Man I'm really getting old. I I'm finding out about music like I'm the music guy. I'm the one that finds the music and now some 15 year old found music before me. Oh shit, I've been I've been cooking too long, but I. Don't think we can outrun that man. That happened to me all the. Time. I know I thought I was invincible to getting old, but apparently not. Yeah, yeah, I have a Tom Petty lyric tattooed on my arm. And now I'm getting to the point where like I think sometimes with the some of my students or whatever crowd I'm in, like I can say it and they're like, who, what, what? Damn.

1:20:25 Yeah, that's wild. And it's always something where you're like, you think it's like a very safe thing to throw out there, right? You're like, it's Tom Petty. I can throw this. Everyone knows Tom Petty. And also like, what? And you're like, oh, man, imagine all the other things I could have said out loud that they definitely wouldn't know. And they're like, I, I am old if people don't know who Tom Petty is. And you're like, but then you look in the mirror, you're like, but I still look pretty good. I still like, you know, I like sports. I, you know, I'm pretty cool. I listen to music. You're like, no, bro, you're old. You're just, you're definitely just old. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, I've come to terms and I've just leaned right into it. Turns out can't get away from it. Might as well embrace it.

1:21:05 Yeah, yeah, those the clock hands don't stop for anybody, man. Yeah, man. I appreciate you taking the time. It's what an awesome conversation. What do you do when you're not cooking? That's a good question. I love to, I love to experience, you know, other people's art, whatever that is. I think food and wine and travel is definitely, definitely a, a big part of my free time hours, music, live music. And then, you know, going up north in Wisconsin and chilling on a lake and, and drinking a beer, you know, that's definitely one of my favorite things to do, even though it doesn't happen often enough. But just, you know, I try to, I find like the most relaxing things to me are to, to really like experience new things And, and, you know, I, I guess I'm not good at being bored. So I want to go to a new spot.

1:22:18 I want to keep moving. I want to meet a new chef, try a new restaurant, drink a new drink, see a new view. And you know, I typically do so with with a. Couple bottles of white Burgundy in hand and some caviar and some oysters. So, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I try to always be a good guest wherever I'm a guest at, even, even when nothing is expected. I, I, I, you know. I try to show up wherever I am on vacation or not in style. That's the I want to go home and never be the guest that stayed too long and never be the guest that somebody doesn't want back, you know? Yeah, that's one thing we didn't even get to today. What is the traveling chef?

1:23:05 What? What is that moniker? What is? That Yeah. So that's man, this is. This is Part 2, the traveling chef side of things. I started that in high school. During I guess I left that part out, but it was during that same sort of Co-op job time period and I did a dinner party at my parents house, wanted to cook 1st dinner party somebody that was a guest at the dinner said you could do this. This is incredible, like an in home dinner with wine and eight course dinner and staff and wow, she's like, you could call yourself the traveling chef. And I kind of laughed and chuckled and was like, well, OK, cool.

1:23:57 I think 3 or 4 days later, somebody that was at that dinner party that my parents hosted said, hey, can you do a dinner party next weekend at her house? We're going to entertain some people. And I said, yeah, I can do that. So I called my my cousin and said, hey, can you? He was, he was doing graphic design for Harley-Davidson at the time. And I said, Hey, can you design me some sort of business card brochure, Not even a website. I was like, I'm going to do a dinner party at somebody's house. I have to have something to like be legit, right? And two days later he's like, here's here, I've made you a card logo, get it printed right? And then I quickly somehow, I don't know, I don't know how I got it done so quick, but I I got 2 chef.

1:24:43 Coats made for me and my sous chef at the time. That's a traveling chef. Like got that turned around in three days. We showed up at the house, did a dinner party, brought all the China, the glassware, the pots, the pans, the food, some flowers, napkins, linens. 7 course dinner, pack it up. Went home, booked another gig. Somebody at that dinner was like hey in a month can you come do a dinner at my house? Booked another gig. Hey, can you come to our office, do a dinner on Friday night for 30 people? Booked another gig traveling chef just like that. Then when I graduated from high school, I went to culinary school in Denver, didn't still had traveling chef kind of stuff.

1:25:29 I did a few traveling chef dinners in Denver and then over the course of the next four or five years I just traveled around the country working for the best chefs I could work for. And when I returned to town, I was broke. School loans were kicking in, wasn't, you know, I was working for the best chefs in the country but not making very much money, if any money. And so when I moved back to town, it was kind of like a call from my old man saying, you know, you got $300,000 worth of school debt and you're making the equivalent of like, 6 bucks an hour, and you're living in Miami. Like this doesn't work.

1:26:13 And so I came home, no real plan or intention. I think I was going to move back to Denver. And so I sent an e-mail or a yeah, I think it was an e-mail, text to anyone that had done a dinner party when I was in high school, which was maybe, I don't know, let's just say a few 100 people, 1000, not even 1000, maybe 300 people saying I'm in town for three months. I'm back from culinary school. If you want to have a dinner party, I'll be here for three months. And I think four days later I had my first dinner party. Three months later, I had dinners booked out another nine months and I was like, still still for a year, year and a half.

1:26:59 Any meet a girl, I'd meet somebody at a dinner. I'd be hanging out with a buddy. I'd be like, yeah, I'm leaving in three months. It was still three months. It was so fast and just kept doing dinner parties, traveling, chef, go to somebody's house, go to somebody's business. All of a sudden we're like in that first six or eight months, we're now we're in Minneapolis, we're in Chicago, we're doing a dinner party in Michigan. And it's sort of just right, because every dinner party, sure, most of the people were from Milwaukee, if it was in Milwaukee, or most people are from Green Bay, if it's in Green Bay. But then all of a sudden, you know, somebody's hosting a dinner in Green Bay. And one of their friends from college is the CEO of U.S. bank and lives in Minneapolis.

1:27:43 And he goes, hey, will you come do a dinner for us? So now you go to Minneapolis. Well, guess what? Most of the guests are from Minneapolis, but one is from Chicago. And then most of the guests are from Chicago, One's from Detroit, Most of the guests are from right. And are there chefs in all the cities that do great food? And, and there's definitely less expensive options, right? If you're paying for me and my team to come to Napa or to New York or to Spain, there's cheaper options. So 100% cheaper options. There's great options in all of those cities, generally speaking, right? There's Michelin star chefs in some of those places. And that's kind of how we, even to this day now, 20 years later, still approach it from the same point of view. Like what are you trying to do?

1:28:30 And why are you talking to us like we're, we're actually like trying to talk you out of hiring us. Because you're going to spend a lot of money on airfare and, and travel and hotels and staff and all of the things that it takes to put it together. But when it comes down to it, they go, we've experienced that thing that you've done somewhere, right? You're not hiring me to come to Chicago and do a dinner party unless you've experienced it. You don't even know I exist for that matter. But if you've experienced it and you go wow. The they put their own toilet paper in the bathrooms at the house that I was at a dinner party at with their travelling chef stickers on it because they noticed that the toilet paper at the house that they were at was like not great quality toilet paper. And they put candles in the bathroom and they changed the rug at the front door because the rug was white and whatever, whatever, whatever.

1:29:23 And. You leave that and you go, wow, that was the most amazing night. Well, why was it amazing? Sure, the house on the lake was amazing, right? The couple that we went to dinner with was amazing. The one couple we sat next to maybe wasn't, but like overall this is a great experience. What made it a great experience? And then they'll call you because you hosted the dinner and they'll be like, that was just amazing. And the way you had, you know, the, we just thought everything was perfect and the drinks outside on the patio and you go, well, actually I, I told Chris I really wanted the drinks to be inside at the bar like 5 times. But the chef insisted that we did it outside of the patio because of the way that the room would flow and how the thing would go. And, and all of a sudden you're like, Oh no, that was all him.

1:30:04 And did you see that he put candles in the bathroom? And did you also see that he, you know, cleaned your car off because there was snow on your windshield And, and he had his dishwasher go outside and start all the cars and clean the snow off the car and shovel the path to each car door. That's like, you know, and my team will be like, you hired him as a bartender and my bartender will be like, you really want me to go shovel? It's like, dude, I don't care how good your drinks are. It's the attention to detail. It's a full experience, right? Your drinks are going to be so much better if the moment they show up till the moment they leave, they feel taken care of. Your drinks are going to be better. They're going to hire you when you have your own bartending company in two years to do their daughter's wedding and they're going to pay you $30,000 for drinks because you shovelled the path to the car.

1:30:48 That's why they're going to remember it. That's why we're doing dinner parties in Napa. That's why the travelling chef is still a thing, which is crazy, but it's a thing. And if you're having a party, you know that whether you experience that here, you experience it at your house or you experience it on a beach in Napa in California, you know that if you hire us and my team's a part of it, you got nothing to worry about. We can plan the most crazy event of your life, the most important life of, you know, your daughter's wedding or your anniversary or your engagement or whatever that might be. Or you're trying to sell your company for $100 million to Amazon. You know that if we're involved, we can have a conversation for 15 minutes and we're going to execute every detail as best as we possibly can.

1:31:38 That's why you're going to spend a little more money. But turns out it's worth it if you're the one hosting. The wedding, the anniversary, the sale of your business, right? Yeah, perfect man, perfect. So we, I want to wrap it up with we've done a great job, I think painting the picture of the experience. I want to leave with some imagery of the food at 335 because it blew my mind the other day. And I mean, to put it in perspective, that was the the the caviar you handed me on the plate was the first caviar I've eaten in my life. So put that in perspective. But there was one particular thing.

1:32:20 And when you think about the whole experience, part of it was probably back to the beginning. We were talking about my new found friend from Istanbul. You were coming with one specific thing. He said this is special. So he had had he had been here several times, unsurprisingly, right. And he said this one's special. So you came by and I kind of buffoonedly, I don't know if that's a word, but I like a buffoon, described it earlier as that tuna thing. That's all I need to say. What's the tuna thing, man? What, what was that like in that moment? You tell us all and so eloquently what all of these things are. And I'm thinking this is the first time I'm eating caviar, all of this stuff. But that tuna thing was unbelievable. It was.

1:33:07 Spicy tuna, crispy sushi rice. Just so just tuna on. Yeah, OK. OK, make it sound so. Easy dude, but. So it's not created by me. I didn't invent it. Classic sort of like I I would probably say I don't know this to be factual, but I'm pretty sure like the first chef for experience to do. Maybe he invented it. Might have been Nobu, but spicy tuna, crispy sushi rice, spicy. Fish crispy sushi rice is a common Japanese bite now. I had one version of that let's say 1015 years ago at a very expensive restaurant where I paid 20 bucks a bite and we ordered 8 of them.

1:33:53 So do the math, it's very expensive. Little snack and I went. Wow, the flavors were great, texture was great. I think it could be better. Then I like thought about that one bite for a while because it was delicious and it sort of maybe was new to me. Maybe it was the first time I had it. And then I started playing around with it going OK, if right, a lot of our menus and dinners and creations are based on a style of service or format for the evening, right? So if we're doing a dinner that's going to be on a beach versus a dinner that's going to be in the woods and we're going to be cooking a wood fire versus a dinner that's going to be at a Art Museum with no kitchen and no fire and no live gas, we're going to build a menu so that you can have the best possible meal given the circumstances. Now, can we bring in a kitchen or build a kitchen? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

1:34:53 Sometimes there's a budget, sometimes there isn't. How can I make you have the best meal given the timing? Everybody's wearing white. Your menu's going to change. If everybody's wearing white and there is no kitchen and we're on a beach and you're going to be there for an hour, that's a very different meal. Then everyone's going to be here for the night. They're staying the night. They're not wearing white. We do have a kitchen. We're going to cook over live wood fire on the back patio and the and the guests want to be. A part of that well now that's a different meal, right? And so to get back to the spicy tuna crispy rice, I go. This could. This could have a place in a hors d'oeuvre meal cocktail party setting. How can we make it better?

1:35:38 It wasn't it wasn't 100 to me. The one that I had was maybe a 70 and I was like 70. Like if I'm thinking about something that I ate a week later, I'm thinking for a reason. I'm not. I don't think about every bite of food I eat. And I went all right, the rice. Their rice right now I sort of backtrack and try to figure out how did they do their thing and look at the pictures that I took and I go, OK, they deep fried their rice. The problem with deep fried rice is now don't get me wrong, I like all forms of rice. I love deep fried rice. I love fried. Rice. I love soft rice. I love soft rice. I love rice. But the deep fried version was more like a crunchy sort of everything that's a deep fried snack and all kind of tastes the same. It was good, wasn't great.

1:36:25 OK, what if I don't deep fry that rice? And what if I take ordinary sushi rice and I add a little bit of ginger and. I steep roasted shallots in the rice vinegar that I then season the rice with so I get a little bit of that, sort of. Background hints of flavor of that roasted shallot, but it's sweet and it's nutty and it's caramelized and it's got a little sort of hint of onion, but it's, but if you don't like onion, you're not even going to know it's there actually. And some ginger, but it's not overpowering with the ginger. And then can we cook it in a way and form it in a way that the goal is it's going to be 1 bite and you're going to get crispy rice, but you're also going to get like the most amazing piece of nigiri rice that's soft and creamy. And every piece of sushi that you've ever had nigiri or a roll where you wished every piece of rice that you've ever had a sushi was that consistency.

1:37:19 Well, how can we do both? Can we do it both in one bite? OK, now we're going to add some spicy fish component. There's other things that we've put on top of crispy rice before, as have a lot of other chefs in the world. But if I put a raw scallop on top of crispy rice, I now know that I wrote a menu for you, the host of the 100 people at my restaurant. But I would be foolish to think that the 100 people eating at your party all love what you love or all love what I love. And my goal is that as the host of this event, as the provider of hospitality and experience, my goal is that every single person that comes to that party has the best experience they've ever had.

1:38:01 And I know that for that to happen, everyone has to have their own experience. And if they just have the experience that I created for you, it doesn't mean it ruined the night. It doesn't mean they're not going to say they had a great time. It doesn't mean that everybody's not going to have fun. But I want everybody to see you at the grocery store or see you at a game, or see you at a party in a year or see you at the barbecue in six months ago. That was one of the most special nights of my life. And I want that to be the 8 year old girl that is now 10 or 12. And I want that to be Uncle Joe, who's 75, who only drinks Miller High Life and wants to sit up on the couch, be antisocial, stay in the club, watch a game on TV. Guess what, somebody brought him caviar and he had it for the first time ever in his life. We had to be a little pushy with it, but he tried it and he goes, oh, it's pretty good.

1:38:44 It goes good with my beard, right? But Uncle Joe leaves and he goes, that was one of the most special events I've ever been to. Now for you as a host, as an entertainer, as the guy who got married to the guy who's hosting this thing, when Uncle Joe and the 8 year old girl and everybody in between goes, that was one of the craziest nights of my life. It's one of the best experience of my life. Well, where are you going to host your parties? There's nobody else doing that, and I don't care where you're hosting your parties. 00. So now we put the tuna on top because I go, OK, if we're going to serve raw fish, there's one raw fish that 95% of people in the world have had or might like or might be willing to try. OK, tuna, let's add a little spice. Let's not make it too spicy because my mom thinks ketchup is spicy.

1:39:27 So I'm like, we got to think about her. And if we put the spice on it, I want them to be able to take the spice off. So now when I hit a group of eight people standing around drinking a cocktail and I say, would you like to try the spicy tuna crispy sushi rice? Actually, I take that back because I would kill my weight stuff. If they said that you're not allowed to say would you like to try? We're just going to describe the dish. We're not going to say anything else. We're not going to say, excuse me, We're just going to politely interrupt and say spicy tuna crispy sushi rice. You can continue your conversation or we can engage about what that bite is that you're eating, right? But spicy tuna? Crispy sushi rice? Everybody in the group except for one says, oh, I can't do spicy. Well, if you take the chili off the top, it won't be spicy. OK, She takes a bite.

1:40:09 She got to experience it. You all grab 1-2 people in the group, go, I don't know, 25 minutes later when we go around with the spicy tuna again, the four people in the group or the two people in your group that said, I don't know, they're like, oh, ah, me. Why? Because everybody else in the group goes, It's one of the best bites I've ever had. Now, the woman that goes, well, I've had sushi. I don't love sushi. I don't usually eat it. Well, I don't know, it's Green Bay. Like I eat sushi in Chicago or New York, but I don't eat sushi and gourmet. It's like, no, you should try it. Now she has it, she goes, oh, wow, it was really good. What was that? It's crunchy, it's warm, it's soft, it's spicy. It's creamy. This is an. Amazing bite of food. Spicy tuna, crispy sushi, guys. Long story about one bite, but that's that's the thought. That's how.

1:40:53 Again, same thing. How do you cut the tape? How do you shovel the sidewalk? How do you clean the table? Same way you make the tuna bite. We're not just making food because we need to figure out how to serve you food. We're making food because we want you to have an experience. We want you to try something new. We want you to be mind blowing. We want you to be nourished. We want you to feel good. It's unbelievable, man. It's unbelievable. And I am that person. So generally I don't like sushi. I've tried to let my wife love sushi. So I've I've tried sushi. I want to like it for her and I and I just don't but. That you like that version of sushi? Like it it's exactly what you just said, man, it's one of the best bites of food I've ever had in my entire life.

1:41:35 The like, thank you. Yeah, it was unbelievable. And you know, after talking with you, I, I'm, I'm just, I'm not surprised how many text messages and after how many conversations I had after having the experience because nobody is doing that. And that is so hard to do, man. It's so hard to get somebody to intentionally share something. And it's all I felt like doing for a week. So I love that. I appreciate that. You're unbelievable at what you do, man. And I, I appreciate you giving us whatever we're at. Probably longer than you could have. You were. Supposed to go. But I appreciate you giving us the time to into a glimpse of why. Yeah, it's great to have you.

1:42:18 Nice to chat with you. Appreciate you man. Cheers.