[00:05:31]
We're in Wynwood, which is our kind of like Williamsburg, if you will. It's our,
[00:05:37] Josh Sharkey:
It's funny when I, this is my first time in Miami, so I have some questions about Miami, by the way, when I got to Wynwood, I was like, this feels like, Williamsburg 20 years ago, I mean, nicer, but the, you know, the, the vibe and the, you know, the buildings, all the art,
[00:05:50] Brad Kilgore:
Right, all these buildings are, are newer rehab, not just like from the twenties or, or even older.
[00:05:55]
Right. Yeah. So I've had businesses in Wynwood now, almost 10 years, uh, going back, I had a restaurant called Altar here. That was my flagship for a long time. Now I have a brasserie called Marygold's, so he kind of wanted to be that flower bursting out of the concrete jungle, which is Wynwood, which is, you know, city life.
[00:06:14]
And, and it's, uh, sort of a modern take on a brasserie. I try to tell people the food is recognizable, but still new.
[00:06:25] Josh Sharkey: I have a couple of questions about Miami.
Just one to start. What's up with the chickens?
[00:06:27] Brad Kilgore:
Oh, the chickens and the roosters. Um, it's a Cuban thing. So Cubans in general, maybe it's also Dominican.
[00:06:35]
I'm not going to get into exactly who it is, but it's known to be sort of coming out of Little Havana, which is right over the river here and people, you know, they have a chicken coop and I think sometimes one gets away and then like these little gangs start and there's like a big rooster and I mean, they're, you don't try to pet them.
[00:06:55]
Yeah, for sure. Don't, don't worry about eating them. Just, uh, come by for dinner. I got you. Do you find the eggs around? I don't know. I, uh, I just drive by maybe a little bit faster. Um, yeah, it's a thing though. It really is.
[00:07:07] Brad Kilgore:
I mean, they're everywhere. They're like wild, you know. They're, they're feral chickens.
[00:07:14] Brad Kilgore:
I've gotten a lot of questions over the years, never about the chickens, I like that. Yeah,
[00:07:17] Josh Sharkey:
I mean, you know, it's my first time here. Right. I'm 43, you know. Never seen a bunch of wild chickens running around? I mean, not in this country. Yeah.
[00:07:24] Brad Kilgore:
This is, uh, the capital of Latin America, right? Yeah. You know, North America starts at Broward County line.
[00:07:29] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah, I love it though. It's a whole other world.
[00:07:32] Brad Kilgore:
Yeah. It's, uh. Which is, I think, highly attractive. Like it's, it's its own, like, has its own community, has its own way of doing things, saying things, ethos, like, and it's growing rapidly. Yeah.
[00:07:46] Josh Sharkey:
You know, I'm curious, like, how you think about the area that you're in, in this case, Miami, and how it, how that affects how you like grow as a, as a chef, as an artist, as an artisan, like, do you feel like you are growing in a certain direction in a certain way?
[00:08:02]
Because of the environment, you know, that you're in here. Because it's obviously, there's a certain scene, certain chefs. Like, would you be a different chef today if you didn't move to Miami and you stayed in Chicago?
[00:08:11] Brad Kilgore:
Very simply, yes. Absolutely. I think in general, you need to kind of adapt to your surroundings. But, you know, in New York, it's, you know, Say in New York or even back in Chicago, you have such a like grounded sort of fine dining based and there's so many people and so many people where food is part of life and culture that you can kind of do your style and you, and there'll be people there that are attracted to it.
[00:08:36]
Miami, you know, it's on, it's come up, it's maybe
mid come up right now. Um, A lot of people gave me a lot of credit for this most recent, um, kind of turn towards fine dining. I was doing the only tasting menu, only restaurant in the city at one point for years, actually, and, and kind of put. a little bit of respect to the up and coming next wave of chefs from Miami at that time, but there's a lot of flavors and things that I got into it like Peruvian food wasn't part of my repertoire till I came down here and I'm not, I'm not a Peruvian chef, but the ingredients are fantastic, you know, and it can be inspiring.
[00:09:12]
So, uh, and that same time you kind of have to, people were used to maybe like chimichurri and skirt steak. And that was like on almost every single menu and ceviche and different things. And, and you might have to do that a little bit, but you could start giving it your own little twist and introducing in different ways.
[00:09:30]
And also people like when you go to a destination, cause Miami used to be more of a destination. Now it's its own culture. You have certain expectations. Like when you go to the Caribbean, you want to eat Caribbean food. Right. So you had that connotation with, with food in Miami as well. Now, luckily we've grown out of that and we're growing out of it rapidly.
[00:09:46]
You know, Michelin is here, but I have, you know, put on my best new chefs, you know, knocking on the door of James Beard as well. So we're like an adolescent teenager breaking out and like, you know, going to university. That's how I see it.
[00:09:59] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. And it does sort of dictate like a different type of food when you're a destination.
[00:10:04]
You have to sort of. Like wow all the time whereas it's kind of flashier. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, when it's a community restaurant, like people don't always want no, you just want good food. Yeah You just want something good. That's so accurate and we're definitely right in the middle of that you know, we ate I took my leadership team to Marygold’s on uh, on sunday.
[00:10:21]
I think it was awesome Thank you. The thing that I actually like the most, which I wouldn't have assumed because there's so many cool dishes on the menu is, was the tortellini. I've been cooking a long time. What's double brown butter? Never heard of double.
[00:10:35] Brad Kilgore:
Oh, the agnolotti. Yeah, agnolotti, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So double brown butter. So what browns in butter is the milk solids. Um, so you add dried milk solids to it while it's browning. And then you have to do it after you cooked out most of the moisture. If you do it before you can, but it's a major pain. To it before all of the the milk, the moisture that's in the butter will actually soak up and you'll get this thick paste.
[00:10:58]
It's very annoying. You probably burn the bottom before it breaks and you want it to break. So what do you want to do is you want it to break, separate, cook out the liquid, then add your dry milk solids, brown them all together, whisking the entire time. And then I put it into a Vita prep. Blender right afterwards, blend it super smooth because you can still can get a little chalky then pass through a chinois.
[00:11:17] Josh Sharkey:
So the actual dried milk powder also starts to caramelize?
[00:11:21] Brad Kilgore:
Absolutely, yeah.
[00:11:21] Josh Sharkey:
Nice, is it, is it equal parts actual brown butter?
[00:11:23] Brad Kilgore:
No, no, um, by weight because the dried milk solids are so light. I think it's, uh, like less than 10 percent by weight. And then we infuse ours with sumac and, um, Aleppo chili pepper and sumac because it is, uh, The spice and as oil, it can infuse, but also it's astringent.
[00:11:40]
So it's almost like adding acid, like a vinaigrette, if you will.
[00:11:42] Josh Sharkey:
Nice. It was really, really good. Thanks. The waiter was like, Oh, you should get the agnolotti. He was like, I don't want agnolotti today. We'll get it. And it was really fun.
[00:11:50] Brad Kilgore:
Awesome. Thank you.
[00:11:51] Josh Sharkey:
So on the way over here, we were at Marygold's. We were going to record there.
[00:11:55]
We ended up over here because you had an event today. We were talking about your kids. Yeah, congrats by the way. How old is your second kid?
[00:12:00] Brad Kilgore:
My son Liam is 20, 21 months and my daughter Gaia was born about 11 weeks ago. Oh my gosh, everybody's got a daughter named Gaia. It's
[00:12:08] Josh Sharkey:
It’s changed your world. Yeah, obviously.
[00:12:09]
How do you think it's changed? And maybe you're still like in the fucking weeds of it. So it's tough to you know, step back, but Have you seen how being a parent has changed the way that you lead your team, the way that you cook, the way that you think, you know?
[00:12:22] Brad Kilgore:
I think you start being a little bit more patient.
[00:12:26]
But the tough part is in our industry, the clients aren't patient. So there really isn't too much time to balance that. And I know you hear people say that. At the same time, we're kind of in the world of where people expect chefs and restaurants to be a little more accommodating and patient with their, their team members, which I naturally have always been a little bit more of that direction, but the customers and the clientele are more educated and their expectations are higher than ever.
[00:12:54]
So it's like. imbalance and the way, and I hope this answer your question. The way I approach that is I try to teach why if you teach someone, why you asked them to do like this very annoying nuanced technique, then they'll go, Oh, that's why I have to do that thing. It takes me like 30%, 50% longer because that's the end result.
[00:13:16]
So I take the extra time in the front. To teach them where my mind is. When I created that I was doing it right before this, this meeting, I was cutting chickens. I mean, it's 25 years and I'm still teaching people how to cut chickens. You know, I don't think it'll ever end, you know, cause I have a particular way of doing it.
[00:13:31]
And this guy has been cooking for 15 years. His eyes just open like this and now he's excited to do that.
[00:13:38] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Do you find that you get more patience now because you have the kids?
[00:13:46] Brad Kilgore:
With my kids. with your staff to carry over to the staff. I think I'm too early into it because they're just now hitting toddler.
[00:13:51]
Like they've just been babies. Like, of course, you're babies to the cutest thing in the world. I already feel they have all my patience
[00:13:58] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, no, that's true.
[00:13:59] Brad Kilgore:
I guess that maybe I'm just not. Very yet to where, yeah, my son's on the age of like right now, he'll pull things off the shelf and it's still cute though, you know?
[00:14:09] Josh Sharkey:
No, yeah, yeah. You're, you're still a little early, maybe, but that's probably the biggest thing other than what was your experience with that? I mean, yeah, the biggest thing is just, you realize that adults or kids, like everybody is just like has the right intent and they're, you know, that 99.9 percent of people in the world are good and just do dumb things.
[00:14:29]
Your kids start to do really dumb things and you don't, you know, you're not.
[00:14:31] Brad Kilgore:
And dumb for our society, not necessarily in their head, right? No, they're just exploring and they're just testing things out.
[00:14:39] Josh Sharkey:
But like, it's so easy to get mad and say, But you don't, you're like, Oh my, you know, you know, and then you realize like, Oh, wait a second, you know, especially because they don't even know how to express their emotions, which by the way, now that we, most of the time, that's why we go to therapy and figure out how we can say, you know, what we're thinking.
[00:14:58]
And I started to realize that everybody, when they're upset or they're doing something that bothers me or, or, or that I was, you know, that is a mistake. I'm like, Hmm, I wonder what's going on with him right now. You know, and I didn't, I didn't used to think that. You know, cause like, it was just very binary.
[00:15:14]
It's like, okay, you, you screwed up. What the fuck? And now I'm like, hmm, are you, did you have a bad day today? Like, did, did something happen with your, with your wife or your boyfriend or girlfriend? Or, you know.
[00:15:24] Brad Kilgore:
Now you're looking for the root. Yeah. Right?
[00:15:26] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:27] Brad Kilgore:
It kind of goes back to what I was saying, the why.
[00:15:28]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What is the roots of the situation? Yeah, same for problem solving as it is for food prep. It's going back to how did this series of decisions get made in order for us to, you know, come to, you know, This intersection of, you know, an issue in the restaurant, you know, whether it be food prep or operations to me before I get upset, I absolutely go down that like investigative route because I want to solve it.
[00:15:57]
So it doesn't happen again. If somebody is, you know, purposefully, you know, doing things to bother someone else or hurt someone else or hurt the operation. That's where I'll get upset. But in general, it's, there's usually just a mistake being made because humans make mistakes. We all do. I do. And finding that route is more important.
[00:16:17] Josh Sharkey:
You know, I say it so much, but I still screw up all the time. Where like, you know, someone makes a mistake and I'm just right into the, like, you know, what the hell. And there's always a reason behind it. Anyways, we're, so we're in Miami right now and I, we just missed the South Beach, you did an event for the Food and Wine Festival.
[00:16:33]
What are your thoughts on that festival? I imagine you've been doing it for a while. What do you think, like, what's the purpose of it? What's the goal? What do you get out of it?
[00:16:41] Brad Kilgore:
Yeah, South Beach Food and Wine, or Wine and Food Festival, I think is the official name. It's been going on a lot longer than I've ever been down in Miami, so I've participated in almost every year for the last three years.
[00:16:52]
12, 13 years. This year I hosted Marcus Glocker. I'm a big fan, but we've been just kind of, you know, social media fans of each other, buddies, cross paths, a few events here and there, never had the chance to work together professionally or at an event, and You know, he was my first invite and he said, yes, came down.
[00:17:11]
And I haven't been to his new spot Koloman and then New York, but it sounds amazing. Looks fantastic. According to the food, I just ate it. It's awesome.
[00:17:18] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:17:19] Brad Kilgore:
He cooked the Marygold’s. It was delicious. Probably the best Gougère I've ever had in my life. Looked like a cupcake. I wanted to eat a lot of them.
[00:17:26]
Helped myself to one. That was great. So for me, my number one thing is for South Beach is to host a chef that like I appreciate or, you know, I don't get to connect with and invite them over. And I always ask him, like, don't come here and rewrite your book. Come here and bring your signatures because then, you know, our local guys, they'll be like, can try what your restaurants like, you know, it's transporting them because I know a lot of times when chefs do collaborations, you want to like, you know, put your best foot forward and probably what's on your menu is your best foot forward because like you've been cooking your whole life and this is what you're putting out to the world.
[00:17:56]
And so I make sure my guest chefs like don't get all wrapped up and like, Hey, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Bring your wheel with you. You know, I want to try it that way too.
[00:18:04] Josh Sharkey:
So do you get like get business from, from doing the event? Like are there like, you know, every time we do these events, You know, I've done a
bunch of them.
[00:18:10] Josh Sharkey:
I was like, who are the, who's the eating hero?
[00:18:13] Brad Kilgore:
Okay. Great question. I don't know if there's any traceable revenue that comes from any event I've ever done recently. I've been trying to, we have like, you know, cards come get a free, this cocktail discount or something like, you know, marketing. Putting different colored dots on them to see if we can track where they come from and every market, especially in booming ones like Miami, it's just highly competitive and it's not necessarily competitive on quality of products.
[00:18:39]
It's placement. It's recognition. It's marketing and social media. It's well beyond is the food good on the plate. It's so far beyond that these days. So Oise, I opened up this restaurant. I texted 120 people. That's it. That's how we opened it. And then we opened a couple of days later and within 10 or less services.
[00:18:58]
I didn't know anyone in the dining room. And that just shows you the power of like, you know, non traditional marketing. I'm not that great at it. This is my first jab at that, but I thought that was pretty cool.
[00:19:09] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, it is cool.
[00:19:10]
Well, you probably need a lot more now that you started this other company that I just learned about recently.
[00:19:15]
This pizza freak. Yeah. What is it? You know, how did it come to be? And also, let's just talk about frozen pizza in general. Correct.
[00:19:24] Brad Kilgore:
Yeah, we can go on and on. So this is a several year old. Side project kind of post mid late pandemic project, whatever you want to label it in general, my good friend and now business partner, Matt McKinney, based out of Philadelphia.
[00:19:39]
He's an equipment guy. That's how we know him. He reps like high end chef equipment, you know, foodie sciency stuff, stuff I'd nerd out on like circulators, circulators, Kravac machines, blast chillers, combi ovens, you know, dry agers. He's like, do you want to like. I have a bunch of equipment in a kitchen in Drexel University in Philadelphia that's just sitting there because the school's closed, COVID, let's make something.
[00:20:04]
What do you want to make? Frozen pizza. Okay, that sounds amazing. Everybody wants frozen pizza. I'm like, I wish I had better frozen pizza. And so we sat down. We went on this mission. So I was emailing recipes based on percentages and my knowledge and, and, you know, Google sheets and sharing, getting feedback, getting shipped pies and blanks and breads, 900 miles down to Miami.
[00:20:26]
Does it last, does it make it, I've had some in the freezer for months and different things and it started working and that was good and it's, you know, it's kind of grandma style Detroit, if you will, as in it's rectangular and And it's not Neapolitan, but it's called Pizza Freak Co., if you say it quickly, Pizza Frico.
[00:20:47]
Frico is that crispy, cheesy edge around the outside. Well, we brought on Chef Brad Daniels, amazing chef. He has Tresini, just an ambler outside of Philly, a veteran guy for like 10, 15 years. And he was helping us produce the recipes. Money's crazy, talented, and we all just got along great. We're partners.
[00:21:05]
All of all three of us are just partners now in this. I haven't even done like a real campaigning post or anything. We're in six grocery stores outside Philadelphia. We've got a couple really big contracts, and this is what I think is cool. It's great for your audience is that. It's a restaurant quality product and it has zero labor, 0 percent labor.
[00:21:25]
You pull it out of the freezer, you put it in the oven, you have a cheese pizza that you can sell for $30. So with everyone's costs being high right now, labor and it's, it's, but then the client doesn't really want to spend any more money or kind of like riding this margin edge. Here comes meez right.
[00:21:40]
Helping you find that margin, right? The reaction we're getting from operators, it's like well beyond sort of the household product thing, right? So
[00:21:52] Josh Sharkey:
I also heard it's really fucking good. It's really good, but you can order at pizzafreakco.com. You know, what is it about most frozen pizza? You know, usually you get a frozen pizza.
[00:22:00]
I haven't thought about this, but okay. It's either kind of. Not like doughy and dry, but also chewy or the cheese is like dried out or I mean, there's a lot of reasons why it goes wrong, but what has already
[00:22:15] Brad Kilgore:
We’ve studied this immensely and okay, so there's a couple different types of frozen pizzas when you're doing mass production pizza or bread dough, you needed to go through a machine to get stretched out and and stamped out and you get your perfect stamp circle square, whatever it may be, That's basically a cracker dough that's like a dry dough that you might throw some chemical based yeast in it and try to get a little puff out of it.
[00:22:33]
That's dry. That's crap. You know, then we've all had those pizzas plenty of times. Then you go the other route where there's a famous pizza starts with a “D. It's not delivery…” So what they try to do is it rises in the oven. If you've ever made bread, it takes like all fucking day and you definitely can't make it in 20 minutes from frozen while they're trying to chemically 11 that through the heating process of the oven.
[00:22:57]
You're gonna get that gooey, gross, heavy dough. Yeah, it rose, but it's not good, right? So those are kind of the drastic ends of both. Ours is a yeah. Super high hydration dough. It's very hard to work with. There's only a couple machines that do it. We do it by hand. Still, the machine that we want is 3 million dollars
[00:23:15] Brad Kilgore:
pizzafreakco.com. No, but pizza dot com. No, but it's very wet and machines don't work well with wet dough. It's going to stick to the slicer, whatever the cutter thing and only Italian does get that wet and whatever. So we've gone down, we've been to Italy, we've looked at machines like
[00:23:30] Josh Sharkey:
80 percent hydration wet or
[00:23:32] Brad Kilgore:
A little higher.Yeah.
[00:23:33] Josh Sharkey:
Wow.
[00:23:33] Brad Kilgore:
Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. You get, how do you even work? Well, and that's what gives us 72 hour cold fermentation. That's what gives us our, our loft. And that same time we designed patent pending, what we call the freak frame and basically exposes parts of the pizza. So when you bake it on directly on your rack, it's crispy and from the top to get the cheesy Frico, crispy re crisping it from the bottom because it was crispy when we baked it.
[00:23:57]
Yeah. And then the tagline that I've kind of come up with over having these questions and talking to people is, it's not a frozen pizza, it's a pizza that's frozen. Yeah. Because frozen pizza is like a, it's like a bad word.
[00:24:11] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. So. $3,000,000 piece of equipment is the only one that will handle this hydration. What milestone do you need to hit to go buy that?
[00:24:17] Brad Kilgore:
Right. Great questions. We're, those are all our conversations right now. Our current goal, and we're not that far off, it's kind of actually scary, is we want to do a thousand pizzas a week. Based on where we're at, I've got an entire pallet on its way to Miami right now because we're launching it at higher ground and all over the Arlo Hotel where Marygold's is and higher ground is our indoor outdoor lounge and event space.
[00:24:44]
And we also have already have it at the pool deck rooftop and the response. We haven't even publicly gone with it. Just a response from the hotel guests. It's moving faster than we expected. So it's a quality product and, and people are like, when, when you have something that's solid, your team will sell it because they're confident.
[00:25:02]
And then they can go and tell the customer, like, listen, skip the pizza. It's great. You know, where does it ship? Where does it ship? Yeah, like, can you buy it anywhere in the country? Basically, right now, east of the Mississippi is, we've shipped it to Seattle, LA, West Texas and those customers were willing to pay the shipping extra.
[00:25:20]
It's not us. We don't make another dime. We want our pizza to be 18 to 22, but FedEx is not cheap. Right? So, so it's basically like Gold Belly. People are buying gold belly by the droves. We've eaten most of those pizzas and, uh, we know, we know where, yeah, it's very expensive. We know where we stand quality wise.
[00:25:38]
And that was our comp set where it's like, Hey, people are paying 40, 50 bucks for these famous pizzerias. So you go to the website and you can just
[00:25:45] Josh Sharkey:
order it from the website. That would also, by the way, restaurants would be a dope. Staff meal, just
[00:25:52] Brad Kilgore:
pizza from Pizza Freak Co, here's to have one of my, two of my private is actually, I have, uh, two other private clubs that I oversee.
[00:25:57]
One of them is called The Concours Club. Amazing. Um, boys with toys. So basically it's a two mile racetrack with a super high end dining, uh, F&B program, and we, we use the pizzas there as, as family meal. It's a great treat for the team, you know, bringing in 15 pizzas, break them off. So awesome. Well, I'm going to get some,
[00:26:14] Josh Sharkey:
Awesome. Well, I'm going to get some, So moving on, this is a obligatory question I ask. Just whatever, cuz of meez. But also I am always curious. And you're doing more projects now. So you're not, I mean, you're not at the restaurant right now. You're not going to be at any restaurants.
[00:26:25] Brad Kilgore:
Not at the same one every day.
[00:26:26] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. So how do you, and I, you know, the first time I, I met you, now I'm recalling more.
[00:26:31]
We were on that panel about, I forget what the panel was, but I remember hearing you talk about systems. I was like, Oh, this, this guy definitely understands systems. So what do you do to maintain consistency? Like when you're not in the restaurant.
[00:26:44] Brad Kilgore:
Not perfect. Always, I think we'll be seeking out the perfect answer or strategy to that because in the end, we're a human business and, and humans do things unlike robots.
[00:26:55]
They do things naturally. So in order to avoid that, I try to eliminate human error with systems. Systems are a series of checks and balances like my, my prep sheets have a par set by the head chef. An inventory written down by the person who's on that station. You take the difference between that par and the inventory and you have the quantity needed to be prepped for the next day.
[00:27:18]
And then that's handed to the chef. Chef then takes it and color codes it green, yellow, and red color codes. It hangs it on your station the next day when you come in and. Because, you know, some seven day operation, lunch and dinner, the different people work in that station the next day, you know, you might not even have a outside relationship, you know, texting with that guy, what have you.
[00:27:37]
Red means do it first, yellow means do it second, and green means do it third. The color coding kind of gives people, uh, You know, there's a lot of language differences, right? So it's like a, you know, I have to read in the same language for that to like communicate over. Red is like intense, like I need to knock off all those reds.
[00:27:54]
It's almost like a mental state. Yellow is a little bit more calming by the time you get to the green, which is like cutting your chives. You're like, okay, I'm cool. You know, everyone recognizes those colors. And so that helps with communication of the team. And you can walk around and look at the, all the clipboards and know where your team is at one way or another.
[00:28:12]
And if you're the sous chef, you can say, man, he's got a lot of reds today. I'm going to bang on a few of his projects before he comes in or she comes in. What have you. That's, that's the prep side.
[00:28:23] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:29:33]
So as it relates to, let's just take the double brown butter, for example, right? We all know if you make brun noisette, it's got to be the right amount of time pulled off before it's burning. And it's going to carry over a little bit and you've got to add the milk solid when you do that. How do you make sure somebody does that right every time you're out there?
[00:29:49] Brad Kilgore:
We refire it all the time. They don't, I can't control it. It's just, it's, That's such a great example, because that's like out of two or three of the places. That's one I could tell you is kind of a little bit different almost every time, or at least one guy. He'll get really good at it, and it's time for him to, you know, advance on to more different mise en place, and then he's handing it off the next day, and I'm walking it in checking the line, and I'm like, we open in 15 minutes.
[00:30:16] Brad Kilgore:
We got to make this again, you know, and it. It's the smell, right? And also it's the carryover, it's the carryover, right? It's going to go brun noisette, hopefully only one, but maybe two or three shades past where you're at when you're done cooking it. So that, although it's grammed out. You can't sous vide, or you can't put a thermometer in and a timer on brown butter.
[00:30:38]
You know, that's, that's not an easy one. That's a great example.
You’re gonna have that.
[00:30:43] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, there's, there's definitely some where it's just real tough. I mean, I guess there's, and you have to get some pretty good, like, video or imagery. I bet there's probably a way, if you have like a temperature controlled induction.
[00:30:54] Brad Kilgore:
You have to stir it the whole time, though. And you have to stir it so you're scraping the, stir in the middle, then on the outside, in the middle, and then outside. You can't, now they have some, a couple of machines doing that. They might melt. They're like plastic. I,
[00:31:06] Josh Sharkey:
The problem with these, with these, these conversations, right, is that the cost to use that machinery and to innovate the type of machinery has to be relative to the value of the, the, uh.
[00:31:16]
Of the thing that the product you're going to deliver.
[00:31:17] Brad Kilgore:
And then the customer like, why is the onion low? The like 75. Yeah, exactly. Well, I had a robot make it, you know?
[00:31:24] Josh Sharkey:
And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's a conundrum we have, you know, for sure in the food industry. Like I truly believe like the innovation bell curve or the, the arc, right.
[00:31:32]
Of like how much we can innovate is directly correlated to how much people will pay for food. Correct. Because we could be, you know, in order of magnitude farther along, but if it costs Yeah. This much more and this many more people to do it and this much more R&D. We're just sort of relegated to how much, you know, well, speaking of R&D, I'm curious.
[00:31:53]
I mean, you've done a bunch of projects, won a ton of awards. Clearly you have, you know, a way in which you go about creating new dishes. So I'm always fascinated with this. Like, what's your process? How do you involve the team? How do you synthesize feedback from customers or employees? If, if you do, and when does something feel done?
[00:32:10] J
You know, like the menu is like done. That's a lot of questions.
[00:32:13] Brad Kilgore:
It is a lot of questions, but no, no, it's great. Great question. These days, because I do have multiple projects and, and I travel and I, you know, have things going on outside of this Miami, I, I do schedule, literally schedule my cooking, you know, I, I need it, I, I'll email, I need XYZ products, you know, available on this day, what have you just like literally today and I still make, and I say 99.9%
[00:32:36]
of every recipe that goes on any of my operations because that's what I do, people are coming to eat my food, it doesn't mean that I don't collaborate with my sous chefs on, um, execution. We don't taste it again together. Absolutely all the time. But in the end, it's my vision is my recipe is my food.
[00:32:52]
And that's not a selfish standpoint. It's currently what my customers are expecting, right? So behind the scenes, it doesn't ever end. I came here Oise last week and was kind of a different timing of the night is later in the day. And I sat down. I had a couple dishes and every single thing we do here is kidded where it's 90 grams of this, 80 grams of this, 12 grams of this, and, and it's timers and process, and, and there were still errors.
[00:33:19]
And I sat down with my chef for quite some time to figure out where something went wrong, and one of the things was literally how they cut a tomato. Caused it to eat differently in the end. So we dug back all the way to, you know, the beginning of the process and what went wrong. So I don't think it ever ends, which is super scary and super stressful and that you can put as many systems and gram scales as you want.
[00:33:41]
And it's almost shocking. Like I almost walked away from that tasting, like what could have possibly gone wrong for this to be so far off from a week ago when I created these dishes and then you find out, Oh, you blended it too long. One sauce was. It kind of killed the grain because it was blended too long, which killed the bright herb flavor, which caused it to eat differently.
[00:34:00]
You know, it's just, it's also kind of fun, right? Cause it's like a constant evolution. Yeah. Otherwise you're kind of like dead, you know, you just, you want it to be.
[00:34:07] Josh Sharkey:
You know, what's funny is like, and you're very systems driven. I'm the same, but I, I feel like as chefs, we create a lot of systems for, you know, Making things more efficient for like making sure everybody does things the same way.
[00:34:21]
But there's not a lot of systems of how to process and synthesize feedback externally after the dish is out. Right. So like now we know this is executed exactly the way that we want, but then over time, like what if, what if. 40 percent of customers are leaving that tomato on the side of the plate or left that little strip of, you know, or, you know, or asking for, you know, a lot more, whatever the thing is.
[00:34:47]:
And it's like, Oh, actually this dish, like, you know, we have cognitive biases. We also just have our own subjective tastes, but maybe collectively, you know, the, the, the broader taste is a little bit different. Do you, do you think about like, How to capture their feedback and then do it and take action on it.
[00:35:03] Brad Kilgore:
I mean, I know I, I need it and I haven't thought about how to capture it. There there's a dish at another restaurant that every time I eat it, it's exactly how I designed it's fantastic. I had one of my old proteges come in who. earned a Michelin star last year, he pulled me aside, said how much you like this dish and thought he knew how I made it.
[00:35:20]
And he did it, which was also fun. And then a couple of weeks before that, I was having consistent reports of we sold 20 of these, but one, you know, did not like, and that's a pretty rare when you get a did not like, or, or at least a consistent one, right? What's going on? Um, a couple of days a week, they changed the cook on that station and they just did not hand off.
[00:35:40]
Proper. He was just going with his own natural motion. And it's, you know, I think when you're cooking delicately, it's absolute layers that go into it. So I had to go basically figure out what was going on, then figure out who trained him and then figure out why they didn't get handed over. And, you know, we're still actually in the middle of the process.
[00:35:58]
And yeah, if there was a better system to alert and find out, you know, consistent, you know, positive and negative feedback or constructive feedback, that'd be great. Difficult. I think thing is. For our industry, unlike let's say like an AT&T, AT&T probably has like a really bad customer score. You know, like you call 1 800 AT&T, you're going to pay it in and we have to operate within between like an 88 and a 97 in order to like survive.
[00:36:25]
And there's like hardly any businesses that operate that much.
[00:36:29] Josh Sharkey:
You know, it's, it reminds me of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with this really great chef named Caroline Glover. And we were talking about perception of the cost of food. And I was thinking, it's crazy that, you know, So a buddy of mine had this review.
[00:36:41]
He has a incredible restaurant in New York. And a review came out about the prawn dish being like really expensive. So that's how much it costs. And the thing is, is like. When you come and buy food at a restaurant, you can't associate it with how much would it cost if you could buy that in the store, which a lot of times you couldn't buy it anyways, but what would be the cost if at your house you were able to source that prawn and you had a butler and you had a maid and you had someone that cleaned up the whole like, you know, dining room afterwards. It's unbelievable.
[00:37:14] Brad Kilgore:
It's almost like sometimes these writers are like offended if the business literally tries to survive. It's unbelievable. It's, and I see that so much you're writing about the expense of the cost, but one don't order the expensive prawn. I'm sorry. It's just like, it's always going to be expensive.
[00:37:31]
This has been something that's irked me for years and people's perspective of the value of food is completely skewed. And I could go a whole nother podcast on that, but it goes back to World War II.
[00:37:41] Josh Sharkey:
But you're also, you're not just buying the food, you're buying like, you know, we went to Marygold's, right?
[00:37:49]
Beautiful open space. Right. And you can see the kitchen and it's very clean and you know, it's very pristine. And you know, the benches that we sat, that we sat on were very thoughtful. Like all that stuff was thought through. There's a server that's coming to grab your water and there's another server that's, that's like replacing the, you know, your cocktail and there's someone else that's explaining, you know, the wine.
[00:38:09]
That's not just the price of the prawn that is on your, on your dish. You know, there's the, there's this whole big space that you get to come into. That's not your house that has the right lighting and the right music. Yeah. And that's, there's a price to all of that. If you go to, you know, a spa without paying for a massage.
[00:38:26]
Right. Just to go to the spa is a hundred bucks. Yeah. Massages are several hundred dollars and a good. And that's extra. That's if you wanted them, if you want the massage, that's extra. Right. Just. For the privilege of being in this place that we made for you, you're paying money.
[00:38:41] Brad Kilgore:
And you want to be at a restaurant probably twice
as long as that.
[00:38:42] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah. And you get to bring your friends. And you get to sit down and people get to wait on you. And it's, it isn't the, the food is just one of the many. Maybe we should start doing like shoulder massages?
[00:38:50] Brad Kilgore:
I don't know, like bring a traveling masseuse. Yeah, it's like a poker table and they got, you know, the masseuse behind you. There's other places too.
[00:38:58] Josh Sharkey:
All right. I'm going to get a little bit, Deeper here and you don't have to, you can go as you can go however you want with this. I talked to a lot of founders and CEOs and, and I think about this so much myself. I've like tried to, this battle of separating myself personally from my business successes or failures.
[00:39:14]
And, and that's not just like the macro success or failure, but every day, you know, the micro. Successes and failures and trying my best not to associate that that's who that's me as a person and you know, with restaurants, it's tough because, you know, when you start a restaurant, if it closes, for example, it's very tough to like disassociate that with who you are as a person and that's an everyday thing.
[00:39:41]
It's just not just when the restaurant closes that you have a different review or if you have to, you know, I'm curious if you ever think about like how you personally. Like maintain mental health around businesses that you've had that close or don't close and, or, or ones that are successful, cause it's kind of both sides, right?
[00:40:01]
It's like a business closes, you can immediately think I'm a failure, the opposite, a business that's great. And you think I'm great, you know, and it's, it's, I'm always fascinated how others think about this, you know, that are like creating things.
[00:40:16] Brad Kilgore:
I've had a lot of those thoughts in the last four years going through post COVID myself.
[00:40:22]
My companies, my friends, our conversations, and, you know, I don't think they're in general, I kind of mentioned earlier when it comes to food and beverage restaurants, there's this like X factor that isn't always about the quality or quality How good your product is. Sometimes places just happen to nail it.
[00:40:45]
Maybe the right crowd gets attracted to it and it just kind of trickles and continues to grow and keeps going. And you might go there and you, you work your tail off your whole career and you're like, how does that place. So successful. And you're like, I want everything to get the same place right now.
[00:41:02]
No, it's just, and I'm, I'm a consumer. I'm very open minded to other people being very good at what they do and putting out great products. Cause I, when I'm off work, I want to go spend money and have a great time. Like, that's what I want. So, and then sometimes you go to a place and you just cannot believe that.
[00:41:18]
That place is just crushes it so hard. Um, when, you know, you have a lot of friends that we do fine, or, you know, they're a little struggling or, you know, they have a pop and then it dies off. And you don't, none of that stuff can really be, you know, put your thumb on it. You know, why you're hot now, why you're not.
[00:41:35]
Later, some places get hot later in their, their lives. So I don't know if there's a particular answer to it. And these days there's so much nuance with social media and, you know, just being exposed in different ways to different crowds of people that I think. It's beyond the strategies of the traditional restauranteur any longer.
[00:41:53]
And you have to be able to be open minded. So how do I deal with it? I think I continue to continue trying to meet and understand that there's other nuances and people and talents that I don't have that can either expand my mind or my operations mind and, or add value to my operations itself. And actually, I think Oise is a great example of that.
[00:42:20]
Me personally, allowing myself to do things very differently and, um, seeing its, its success and its young life is a testament to, to that. Yeah, it's a tough one, man. You have to be aware. You have to be willing. And, you know, there's a whole generation of TikTok that I don't, Know who those people are. They don't know who I am, but that might be the biggest thing in the world.
[00:42:45]
And I'm the one not on that train. Right. So I use that as a saying, but it also is inspiring me to explore new things.
[00:42:56] Josh Sharkey
So how does it personally affect you when you close a restaurant?
[42:59]: Brad Kilgore
The closures I had were due to COVID and then we've sold the company. So it was devastating. Um, even though, you know, there was some financial positive with the negative, You know, I'd spent my whole career getting to a certain point, working to a certain point to now sort of restart.
[00:43:14]
And so, I mean, I personally basically created like a very thick leather skin and I probably wasn't outwardly emotional for quite some time. I think I was dealing with it internally. Um, also at the same time, I was using it very strategically to be where I am now in a very short amount of time. I had stayed true to myself, but I
[00:43:39]
told myself the saying deja vu is seeing the same thing from the same perspective, but vuja day is seeing the same thing from a new perspective. I wasn't going to change my career is going to change the way I looked at it. And I did. And it's prospering better than ever.
[00:43:53] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I love that, man. I mean, I will say, you know, I've, I've had to close some restaurants, just admittedly, there's a, there's a period of time where I'm just like, I'm a failure and I get over it and I'm like, okay, that was stupid.
[00:44:05]
That's stupid. Obviously. Like everybody has businesses.
[00:44:09] Brad Kilgore:
I did them all March 13th, 2020, all four at the same time.
[00:44:11] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well that, you know, I think like, you know, ripping the bandaid at once, especially during, you know, at that time is, is probably the best way to do it. Cause you just kind of get it, get it out of the way.
[00:44:20]
Yeah. But even like. If we're getting like closing a business, you know, if you get a bad review or a customer like, yeah, so if a customer like comes in and says something, it's like, it's so tough for us because in any, in any industry where you're putting yourself out there, you're not an accountant. You know, I mean, no, no offensive accountants.
[00:44:35]
I love them, but there's, You're putting yourself out there, right? It's like your food is, is it, is a representation of you, your business, the representation of everything in the same way that if you're putting music out there, are you putting art, whether you like it or not? Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough to, you have to, by the way, you have to separate
[00:44:51] Brad Kilgore:
And you're not doing anything right. If, if you're not getting a little bit of hate too, I mean, they say that, and that's a hard pill to swallow, but at the same time, I'm for sure have listened to music and said, What is this crap? I hate this. And then there's literally 5 million people that own that person's album and that love it. Right. So, you know, there's just different flavors.
[00:45:11] Josh Sharkey:
It's just part of the course of, of doing, you know, anything like that, especially, especially running a restaurant.
[00:45:16] Brad Kilgore:
But I recently thought about a concept that like online, Basically, lunch, brunch and dinner, completely different brand name that where you'd like pull down a wallpaper, change the lighting, change the music and then so you could have it running because it's so hard to make money these days in restaurants, you basically are having revenue almost 24 hours a day.
[00:45:35]
But since people don't want to go to the same place ever again, there's always so many options. You could be new at least three times more within the same space. I don't know if I have literally the life energy for it, but I think anyone take it. Let me know how it goes. I'd love to come eat lunch, brunch and dinner there.
[00:45:52] Josh Sharkey:
You got 11 week old. You got a little, yeah, get some more stuff in your hand. All right. So then I'll say and ask, uh, what makes you really, really angry? Like blood boil angry?
[00:46:02] Brad Kilgore:
When somebody just like straight up lies. Like look, you and I and just straight up lies that I'm talking about in the kitchen and, and, and, you know, making food.
[00:46:10]
And when someone just thinks that little of. Maybe myself, the restaurant, our environment to just look at you in the eyes and be untruthful and it'll take me a minute to figure out, you know, I had an executive chef once that I saw a sauce from 20 feet away, I trained him on how to do it. It was on a new dish.
[00:46:34]
I came from another restaurant. I could tell by the color. We use canned piquillo peppers from Spain, or bagged, they're beautiful, high quality. And I knew that he had screwed up, forgot to order them, went to the grocery store, got bell peppers, burnt them on the stove burner, and then peeled them and made this sauce, which is so far from what I was looking for, that was one of the last straws.
[00:46:59]
I wasn't there less than a week. Why do you think he lied? That's, I don't, that's on him. Cause he's weak.
[00:47:07] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's a tough one. I struggle with this sometimes, too. And honestly, not lately. I have a very different company now. But When you have cooks and they oftentimes it's out of fear, right? It's like they're scared that you're, that you are, they know they did it wrong.
[00:47:22] Brad Kilgore:
It's gonna be way worse if I find out you lie. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:24] Josh Sharkey: Yeah. I mean,
[00:47:26] Brad Kilgore:
I think my parents said that same exact line when we were kids. I mean, that, that, the, the relationships. Very similar, but don't lie to me. It's going to be worse if you lie to me. It's that same thing.
[00:47:37] Josh Sharkey:
I will say, my babysitter once, I think when I was like six or seven, it was like, who took that from from the basket?
[00:47:45]
And nobody wanted to say anything. And she's like, if you tell me the truth, you won't get in trouble. Oh, well that's like, all right, it was me. And she's like, put me in timeout. I was like, what the fuck? Right, right,
[00:47:55] Brad Kilgore:
Right. Yeah. Well that's, you know, you want the kids to fall for that one.
[00:47:59] Josh Sharkey:
Well, on a lighter note, when you're not cooking, I'm going to guess now when you're not cooking, you're just with kids, but what else do you do when you're not cooking?
[00:48:05] Brad Kilgore:
I like to just in general, explore new things. And I think that's a silly answer. Like travel of course. But because I, I do have. So many things going on professionally that it takes up a major, major majority of my time, you know, sometimes weeks straight, you know, someone in a building growth pattern always have been, I do like to escape when it is time to be away from work.
[00:48:28]
And so that would hopefully some sort of traveling, I'd love driving like road trips. So now that I have kids and my family, we have a dog. Like, I literally daydream about road trips. There's a lot of stuff to see in Florida, but it's, it's one thing. I was like, I want to see so much and like road trip wise and drive around the United States.
[00:48:47]
And I like to daydream while I'm driving. It'll take me, it's like 600 miles just to get out of Florida, you know, before I start seeing different things. So it's the next road trip for you. We've been talking about going to like Asheville, driving. Oh yeah. Yeah. Beautiful there. Yeah. It looks gorgeous.
[00:49:01]
Restaurants are supposed to be amazing. Great, like tranquil city town, getting something in the mountains, you know, for a few days and letting the kids run around. And when you road trip, are you saying like RV type road trip? Are you saying just hop in the car? Right. We have a, you know, a family Tahoe now.
[00:49:16]
So I think we can do that for a little bit. We fill it up. We fill it up all the way for sure. I think I'm, uh, hopefully sometime away from an RV. It sounds fun. Yeah.
[00:49:28] Brad Kilgore:
My wife and I like it. Dream about like just getting an rv, taking the kids and doing a cross country trip. Correct. Like, like, I wish I had like a bunch of land and I could park an RV and park a boat and park a, you know, bunch of toys and Could you rent, you can rent an rv.
[00:49:40]
Totally. I'm sure it's like five or 10 grand a week. I'm sure it's Yeah. Egregious. Yeah. That'd be worth it. Yeah. First class tickets to Paris or RV to Arizona.
[00:49:50] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. RV in a, in a trapped in an RV for a week with you. Right. Exactly. Is there anything that we didn't talk about you think, or I didn't ask you that you think we should?
[00:49:59] Brad Kilgore:
I think we lost a little bit of our, our drive as, uh, an industry from COVID. I think we lost some great minds. I think we lost some energy, uh, used to be kind of in it for the game. It's a little transactional now. So in general, I'm holding on, I'm staying true to, you know, the guiding light that got me here, that got me interested, it got me passionate.
[00:50:20]
I just hope others do as well. The industry is always going to transition, but like, I think we need to get some of our passion back. And, you know, I think that comes with education and whether that means like passing the torch, you know, yeah, it's, we're in the middle of this transition. I think we will get through the hump.
[00:50:38]
So, you know, stick with us out there guys.
[00:50:41] Josh Sharkey:
To wrap up that thought, I think what was cool is for a very long time, it was, it shipped, it was more towards the art side and the commerce would come and the commerce will come now. I think it's to your point, it's sort of like gone the other way and it's a pendulum, it switches back and forth.
[00:50:54]
It's a tough, it is really tough to balance, man. Like you can't be straight in the middle. That just doesn't work. You kind of have to be. You know, either deciding to be more transactional. So you're like, you know, more commerce and that's like a, whatever. I mean, it's still good, but that's like a Chipotle or like, you know, that kind of stuff, cool, transactional, fast, still good, but like, you know, like, and then the other side is just tougher and to be like more on the pendulum of art and still, you know, You know, to have a sustainable business, it's tougher, but yeah, to your point, it's the only way we keep getting better is that there's more of that.
[00:51:28] Brad Kilgore:
I know, I know. I think we're, we're in the middle of a bubble of transition, a change of times, and I think it's going to be worth sticking it out. Yeah. Well, I appreciate folks like you keeping it going. Thanks, man. Anyways, man.
[00:51:41] Josh Sharkey:
Cheers. Great talk. Yep. Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily.
[00:51:53] Josh Sharkey: For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M double E Z dot com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros, and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know.
[00:52:17]
See you next time.
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