Joshua Sharkey (15:14.872)wouldn't.
Michael Jacober (15:21.678)At the top end, right? if you're Thomas Keller and you have, you know, really specific relationships with farms that you buy directly from. Correct. Through a GP. But look, Thomas Keller, I'm sure buys certain stock items. sure, sure.
Joshua Sharkey (15:31.426)You're probably not gonna go.
Matthew Conway (15:41.986)for the
Michael Jacober (15:44.97)Quality yeah
Joshua Sharkey (15:46.082)Can you, is there optionality there? Let me, let me be clear guys. So obviously we don't sell any product whatsoever. We don't, we don't ship a case of anything where we're not a distributor, obviously. Right. But to your point, Matt, you know, whether you have very high level specific needs on the right come quad or the specific micro green or a specific type of a seed seed oil free tortilla chip. Okay. Something like that.
Matthew Conway (15:47.662)got another idea of why somebody might not
Joshua Sharkey (16:15.796)whether that may be any of those things, you continue to buy those things as you would from whoever you buy those from. So this is just a matter of connecting the different items, whether it's called indirect spend, tailspend, whatever it may be. There could be $20,000, $30,000 a year in items that are normal items, right? Someone's buying mayonnaise, someone's buying oil, someone's buying produce, flour, someone's buying all these different things.
aside from the specialty thing that the high level executive chef would be purchasing. Now, again, we're just focused on the GPO, but like one of our other programs is our fresh produce management solutions program, where we have direct partnerships with the growers, whether it be Yuma, Arizona, or whether it be California down in Florida, North Carolina for yams, any of those types of things. So we have another program.
which is our fresh concepts program. That's our sister company. And I'm to keep this simple and basic and slow, but that company has. I've done this before. get it. get it. that company has direct costs with the growers and provides transparency for the multi-unit operator when purchasing produce. So for example, if you're buying a case of yams,
Matthew Conway (17:25.038)No, she don't cry.
Joshua Sharkey (17:44.812)The average operator is just taking the lowest price of yams that they're getting from their two or three different produce distributors. So with this program, this gives the ability to provide some transparency. And if you've got the volume to be part of the Fresh Concepts program, which is usually somewhere around a million dollars in produce spend annually, you're going to have a direct cost availability for XYZ items, whatever they are.
plus the freight into the distributor plus the fee per case or the margin of the distributor, meaning the produce distributor. And you're going to have all that laid out for you on a dashboard provided by Fresh Concepts. And in those instances, I mean, we've seen savings anywhere between five and 12%, which is very high on produce because I mean, let's call it what it is guys, unless you're an excellent high level 30 year veteran in procurement.
Most people have a very hard time and a very challenging time monitoring their produce and what the pricing is on produce because produce prices change every week, every day, and sometimes several times a day. So, you know, unless you're a produce guru, you're just accepting whatever price the produce distributor is, is selling it to you at. And if it's lower than the other one, great. You feel like you're getting a great deal or a better price. But
It really provides the transparency and the clarity from the source of the farm to your invoice and what that price is.
Michael Jacober (19:20.418)So I'm a partner in a produce business in Texas. We are looking to expand our, you know, customer base consistently trying to, to kind of grow the business. We've never looked at participating in a program like this. What are the, obviously we talked about the potential benefits. What is like literally step one, if we want to participate, do we have to be of a certain size and scale? Do we have to have a specific reach?
How do we even start to engage in a program like this?
Joshua Sharkey (19:52.77)Sure. So what I would do is I would schedule a call with yourself and myself and our, the head of our fresh concepts division. And he would go through with you to have a better feeling for what this company is, how you engage with produce, what you're doing with it, what volumes you're using, what items you're using, what pack sizes you're using, because there's a lot of skew optimization. There's a lot of skew optimization that can happen.
you can buy a six, two, two count of Romaine hearts, or you can buy a four, three count of Romaine hearts. And one's going to yield you a better price. there can be different species of different items. So they go through all of that with you. So for someone like yourself, who's, who's a partner in this produce type, you'll have to go into more detail with me later, but this produce type company, if you're buying a significant amount of produce and you don't currently.
Whether it's you Matt, or it's someone else, you don't currently have contracted costs on that produce. There's a lot of money that's being left on the table. And I see this time and time again. I just, you know, I just did an analysis, you know, I can't say who it's with exactly, but I will say that I just did analysis with a concept that had 80, I think 80 to 90 units here in the United States, a bunch of new units in New York city as well, Florida, Las Vegas, all of that.
and we were able to save them over $200,000 in produce. Crazy. These are big numbers. Obviously there's a lot of units, but whether it's 10,000, you know, if someone came to you and said, I'm going to, I'm going to give you a check for 10 grand because we were able to hone in your produce purchases. I'm sure you'd take that $10,000.
Matthew Conway (21:37.87)I would take it. I also asked why you chose 14th Street and 6th Avenue for us to meet.
Joshua Sharkey (21:42.804)That's where the path train is, man. That's where I get out. That's where I pop out.
Matthew Conway (21:46.186)I lived in New York for almost 20 years and I bought sunglasses from the guy on that corner for years.
Joshua Sharkey (21:52.044)Yeah, the yellow sign with the the guy.
Matthew Conway (21:54.688)Yeah, he would, you know, I got him down to three for five at one point when he was selling one for ten. That was my New York hustle there, you know, for four, four, two dollar pairs of sunglasses. So you can just lose them everywhere.
Joshua Sharkey (22:06.808)You know what else used to be on that corner, Matt? It used to be a pink berry. Remember pink berry? There used to be a pink berry on that corner.
Matthew Conway (22:10.617)Of course he did.
Michael Jacober (22:13.582)There's a Five Guys right there too. There's a Five on south side of street.
Joshua Sharkey (22:17.134)By the way, I feel like everybody should just buy cheap sunglasses because you lose them so often, least most people do. And there's not that much of a, you know, how often do you wear them? Unless you're going to the Met Gala or something, just buy the knockoff for $3. I you're going lose them. I bought Toms. Every time I go to LA, I would buy a new pair of the Toms sunglasses because I really liked the Toms sunglasses. And they had a cool case. Three times I
Matthew Conway (22:43.806)shit and my wife's mad at me and then it's it's in the match. 14th and 6th.
Joshua Sharkey (22:46.67)Yeah, I just buy it. If you think about it, when's the last time someone came up to you and said, where'd you get those sunglasses from? Are they the right brand or where'd you get those jeans from? No one ever asked about jeans or sunglasses, right? I don't leave my house, so I don't get any these. All right, Rich, we've been talking about, that's why Matt brought up AIs, like how AIs changing, making more things efficient, cost savings, things like that. And there's an argument.
that we were having about will those savings pass down to the restaurant? And for context, know, as for example, farming gets more predictive analytics and they're able to sort of farm more effectively and have less loss and yield and better understanding of the weather and things like that. And then better distribution models with the manufacturers and food distributors to make it more cost effective to distribute the product and to store the product and AI is helping with all these things.
Theoretically, the cost of cogs should go down downstream from the restaurant. Matt's point is no matter how much those cost savings go down, that invoice I get from my distributor is always going to stay or go up. Can you help us either steel man this argument or
Michael Jacober (24:06.176)a second question to that, obviously part one. Part two is how much is the price of crude oil per barrel indicative to what the end product that we're going to receive at a restaurant? Even with all these savings that could potentially come from improvements to produce manufacture or any type of manufacturing of any good that we're going to consume at a restaurant, how much of that
Cost is also tied to the energy cost of getting it to you.
Joshua Sharkey (24:38.754)Yeah. So listen, after 25 years in distribution, it's very clear to me. I'll tell you guys, distributors are big stakeholder between the manufacturer and the end user. And they are, their role is a relationship role. Their role is to transport cases from their distribution center to your restaurants. And they use trucks to do that. Right. So there's fuel.
That is a very large piece of this. There's electricity that they use to fuel, of course, their distribution centers. There's all of that. So they've got contracts, I'm sure, oil, diesel, out long-term. And that's piece of the puzzle. It really depends upon whether you are a multi-unit operator, you are an independent restaurant.
what your volume is that you're purchasing from said distributor, whether it's a produce distributor or a broad line distributor or specialty distributor, right? Whatever that may be. Those are pieces of the puzzle that as long as you can control and get the cost of the product as low as you possibly can from the manufacturer, those other pieces of the puzzle, the freight, logistics, the fee per case or the margin that said distributor is
putting on it for their services, which by the way, they have every right to do that. They're in business to make a profit just like we all are, a reasonable profit, just like we all are. So those pieces of the puzzle are going to always be there, kind of like layers on a cake. But as long as we do our part as multi-unit operators to get the cost structure down, which is why it's so important, you take a concept like sweet green, right? Why is it so important?
to have Sweetgreen make sure that their costs, have as many direct contracts in place with manufacturers as possible because their role is to control the cost of the product through the distributor as much as possible. And then of course, whether they're on a fee-per-case or a margin, whatever it may be, that's a piece of it. This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, Meas. Meas helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world
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Joshua Sharkey (27:00.12)build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then Meas is just for you. And you can transform all those old Google Docs and Word Docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic, actionable recipes in Meas in lightning speed. Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices because Meas will digitize all your purchases automatically.
And there's a built-in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit and measure conversions for every ingredient, which means you're gonna get laser-accurate food costs in a fraction of the time. Visit www.getmees.com. That's G-E-T-M-E-E-Z.com to learn more. And check out the show notes moving forward because we're gonna be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant Mees Podcast listeners get a sweet deal on Mees. I think the question is,
A lot of those things that you said the distributor has as those are costs they have, right? The warehousing, the distribution. think Matt's point is let's assume there is this margin of loss in the warehouse because you have to store avocados and all these things and some percent of them just go to waste because you you're storing too much or you know, you're storing too little and you have to get more quickly and things like that. And that so let's just say that let's just pretend that there's 10 percent waste.
on the billion dollars that you warehouse from a distributor, right? So there's a hundred million dollars. That would be high. Very. Yeah, okay, fine. like for clarity sake, let's just say that like there's a, like an aggregate of distributors is a hundred million dollars in savings that happened over the next five years from that going down to like almost zero. From the warehousing optimizations and let's say some distribution optimizations.
Michael Jacober (28:32.246)right there
Joshua Sharkey (28:54.028)And so let's just say that that marginal cost goes down to zero. Matt's question is, does the restaurant appreciate the benefit of that or does the distributor just continue with the margin that they have? Right. So if now the cost of delivering that avocado in aggregate is not $100 million. two separate things and I don't think that the restaurant would directly benefit from that.
Matthew Conway (29:16.674)Thank you. And Sharkey, the direct question was, that's not the direct question. The very simple question would be, if we pulled every skew available today and compared it to the price five years ago in March of 2021, what percentage of those prices would be equal or lesser than what they were five years ago?
Joshua Sharkey (29:42.86)The price to the distributor or to you, the restaurant?
Matthew Conway (29:45.474)The restaurant. And at the end of the day, the advances in AI technology in the past five years in the restaurant sphere, we talked about it all the time. They've been extraordinary. They've created all types of new lanes and opportunities and what Rich is on here talking about right now, GPOs, all these things that they're influencing. Yet the invoice that I'm getting five years ago from the height of the supply chain issues during and post COVID are the same or worse.
So I don't need to ask the question. know the answer. It's in my, it's every day when I place an order, I receive an invoice that's higher than it was five years ago at the peak of price inflations due to supply chain issues and labor issues and other sources due to COVID. So it's not a question. I know the answer.
Michael Jacober (30:31.628)Well, bye.
Joshua Sharkey (30:32.387)And Matt, to be fair, actually, what he just said does also pay off what you were saying, right? Is like, let's just say that that cost did go down significantly, that your price doesn't go down.
Michael Jacober (30:44.15)Actually, I have a slight challenge there. So in a vacuum, of course, it doesn't go down, right? Like the distributor is going to realize those profits and redistribute those profits to whoever is the ownership of said distribution business. Now it becomes a potential pass through or potential decrease in costs to the restaurant. If on a level playing field, everyone now has access to this technology and
If a distributor wants to trade margin for volume, they'll decrease price. They will reduce their price to increase their top line sales to in theory have just more overall gross dollar profit. That creates a pricing.
Matthew Conway (31:29.718)It's possibility, there's always a theory, but it's not happening. It's not part of the model that we're looking at right now. There's always outside possibilities, but the reality is what you said to start with, which is that distribution partner or whoever is above them in the chain is distributing that newfound profit margin somewhere else. And maybe it's because of higher costs of their business, so they can't afford to pass it down.
Joshua Sharkey (31:55.928)Can I just, just for a moment, you guys are, you bringing up a lot of, a lot of good pieces of the puzzle here. I just want to clarify something. There's aren't always just raising prices. Okay. I will say that, you know, if there are, they get price reductions from the manufacturers on different items, you know, when I was at the distributor that I was at, we had 16,000 different items, 16,000 different price items of prices of items didn't go up every single week. Okay.
Matthew Conway (32:05.71)You should
Joshua Sharkey (32:25.58)It doesn't work that way. So there's items that, that lowered as well, whether they was monthly or quarterly or whatever it may be. So that's a piece of this puzzle as well. So I don't want, I don't want you guys to think, or anyone listening to this eventually will think that distributors just rate, doesn't work that way. Well, I think what Matt is saying is that not necessarily that they raise prices, but that once the price is raised and there's this new bar.
Matthew Conway (32:55.414)It's never going back down.
Michael Jacober (32:56.814)I don't agree though. So, so we buy a case of broccoli. Let's just say we buy a case of broccoli for 30 bucks. Okay. We have a fixed percent margin that we need to charge on top of that $30. That's our gross profit on a case of broccoli. Okay. If that case of broccoli all of a sudden costs us $24. Okay. We're going to maintain that same fixed margin. We're not going to continue to maintain that fixed gross dollar.
Because if we continue to take that fixed gross dollar amount, our competitor is just going to charge a fixed percentage and the customer will end up getting it for less.
Joshua Sharkey (33:36.11)The problem with that competitor piece is that, and Matt, now I'm gonna fight your side a bit here, is that you don't switch to like who's switching purveyors every two weeks?
Matthew Conway (33:46.942)Nobody, tell me this, that $30 piece of broccoli that you're paying for today probably cost $22 in five years ago in 2021. So whether it went up or down over time in little increments, the end product is more expensive today after all of the technology that somebody on this podcast has been saying is going to save the end buyer money, but it hasn't actually happened.
Michael Jacober (34:13.078)So are you complaining about just inflation in general? So you're calling out the fact that inflation exists?
Matthew Conway (34:17.031)I'm saying that-
Matthew Conway (34:21.294)I'm calling out the idea that Sharkey says with the influx of new technology, especially AI, GPOs, all of these things, that savings, eventually the cost of cogs is going to go down. I'm not complaining. That's just not reality.
Joshua Sharkey (34:37.654)The items that you're talking about are produce items and those items change so much all the time. But if you're talking about it.
Matthew Conway (34:44.654)Let's take oil. mean everything is gone up man every
Joshua Sharkey (34:47.661)Yeah, of course. Of course. All of those things have gone up. The chicken market, the steak, right? All of it has gone up, right? That hasn't gone down. But if you're talking about tortilla strips, or if you're talking about quinoa, or you're talking about French fry trays, we haven't even delved into the whole paper world, right? And a lot of that paper world is very steady. And a lot of dry items are very steady, right? You think a company like Noor Basis, that pricing is very steady. When I say that pricing, I mean,
cost into the distributors, whether it's a special distributor or a company like Cisco, whoever it may be, those costs are very steady. But when you're talking about, to Matt's point, produce, dairy, proteins, any of those things, that's guys, you know, that's a roller coaster. Yeah, I think again, and Matt, I did make the point and I believe this, I hope that this can happen, that these prices can go down. To argue Matt's side,
I get the volatility piece, right? I think what Matt's saying is like, we see is up. And, you know, his cost of beef for his burrito has more than doubled year over year. I don't know if the cost of your burrito wrap, like the paper, the foil, whatever it is, went up as well, but that would sort of negate the other piece of it. that even though there's volatility, you know, when you normalize the curve of the price, it just steadily has been going up and up and up. And even if the price can go back down,
the new norm keeps becoming the new norm is Matt, that's basically what you're saying. And this is why it's so important guys, for someone who's got a lot of volume attached to them to have a really put together procurement department, right? Because just like in any business, someone needs to be in charge of all these different products, all the different distributors, the different programs that you have in place, whether it's with a GPO like mine.
Michael Jacober (36:20.264)That's what yeah, that's
Joshua Sharkey (36:45.24)for a direct deal with a manufacturer on tortilla strips or quinoa or whatever it may be. But you know, that person is the gatekeeper. Yeah, Richard, seems like this is actually the way to best mitigate this would be what you're saying is just like working directly with the manufacturer if you can the GPO like like the thought of concepts so that you're not actually dealing with the volatility of the last mile and you're actually like locking in this price. is why there's master distribution agreements, right?
So whether you're, mean, listen, we work with Jersey Mike's, we work with Red Robin, like concepts like this, they have procurement teams. They also have direct contracts with manufacturers. They use us for everything else, whether it be our portion of the GPO, whether it be fresh produce procurement. We also have our tech stack, which is SAS, SAS tools, which is a whole other conversation. I want to confuse.
I don't want to confuse anyone on this call anymore. So I'm not even going to that. We see mostly the larger group with me is that's a lot of our customers, but there's, there's tons of these SMBs. think. How does Matt appreciate the benefit of getting, you know, these manufacturer Matt can appreciate it just like anyone else can. And if Matt owns, you know, Matt's bar and grill, right. And it's a single unit one that just sets up shop on 14th street and six Avenue in New York city. My favorite spot. Okay. Um, you know,
We have another division within our GPO that focuses specifically on independent restaurants, which is called Dining Alliance. And that GPO that you know, Dining Alliance labeled GPO, that one does the same thing as all the rest of them. So you would send me your data for a 30 day period of what you're currently buying. Let's say you buy from two or three different distributors, whoever it may be, and your produce purchases. And you could join in in the party as well, even though you may not have the volume.
that Jersey Mike's or Sweet Green or Joe and the Juice or any of those may have, you can join in in the party. you know, there could be some significant savings there through the GPO side, through working with fresh produce procurement, because maybe, maybe you're a, a highly produce focused concept, right? And, and we all know that produce is the new center of the plate, chicken and steak and beef and all of that have always been center of the plate, but produce, I mean, look at just salad and sweet green and chopped and
Joshua Sharkey (39:09.682)salad sensations down in Louisiana area. All of these concepts, they're making their bread and butter off of produce. So Matt, please come be part of the party, man. The rich, if, and Matt, if I, since I made this connect to Matt, Matt, if you get like, referral, let's just say that you get. Referral. I don't know, 10 grand. Well, do I get a case of St. Joseph or a six, a six bottle?
Michael Jacober (39:35.47)Matt, talk about passing on, passing on the profit, right? What's my take here, you're gonna yield more profit from Josh's introduction, are you gonna share some of that?
Matthew Conway (39:45.582)Absolutely not. I'm gonna be like everybody else in the chain and hold on to everything I possibly can
Rich Kemp (39:51.726)I know.
Matthew Conway (39:53.058)In all seriousness, Rich, I appreciate your insight here. It's something we've gone round and round about a little bit, and I think you brought some good inside baseball for us.
Joshua Sharkey (40:03.33)My absolute pleasure. Listen, it's not something easy to understand. And there was a period of time early in my career where I didn't even understand it either, but I've worked with these different programs through, through distributors, by the way, before I even was employed by buyer's edge platform, I worked through, you know, running multi-unit departments of distributors and I worked in partner with Consolidated Concepts. So I've got a leg up in some time up, of course, you know, on you guys in the sense of, you know, it was my world, but my role now is to
help people understand this world and help reduce their cogs. My role is so simple. I need to leverage my past 25 years in distribution to be able to help multi-unit operators reduce their cogs in a variety of different ways. That's my job. Love it, man. Well, Rich, really glad you came on. I mean, I'm bummed that you kind of, you know, proved Matt's point a little bit, but otherwise, you know, this was really great.
I thank you very much for the time guys. It was very nice meeting you. And if either of you guys or Josh have any other further questions, Josh has my cell number hit me up. More than happy to talk. Thanks for having us. All right guys. All right. So Matt, mean, think for now, at least you're kind of right.
Michael Jacober (41:14.286)Thanks so much.
Matthew Conway (41:14.862)Thanks so much.
Matthew Conway (41:21.184)It seems to be a theme here. Everybody tells me I'm argumentative and then my arguments turn-
Joshua Sharkey (41:25.736)No, first of all, that's... No, it's just you have so many arguments that obviously like because you argue...
Matthew Conway (41:31.704)So you're gonna win one
Michael Jacober (41:33.066)Even a blind squirrel finds nuts, everyone.
Joshua Sharkey (41:35.212)in a while. yeah, exactly.
Matthew Conway (41:38.142)my goodness.
Joshua Sharkey (41:39.83)Alright, well I'm glad we brought him on. Look, maybe he's right. Maybe in the short term they all just go to the bottom line of the distributor what they do with it. Mike, I don't understand what you meant by the distributor's gonna get more profits and then somehow restaurants benefit from that.
Michael Jacober (41:53.806)think about it if every single distributor is Getting efficiencies and becoming more profitable, right? So let's say their profit margin went from
Joshua Sharkey (42:02.414)We about broadliners because there's really only like four public publicly traded. It's like Cisco, US Foods.
Michael Jacober (42:08.174)Yeah, but then there's thousands of independent distributors. I own, I'm an owner of one. There's obviously there's the big massive conglomerates, then there's, you know, especially if you have an entire industry that's getting, that's just becoming more profitable, there becomes an opportunity for any of these participants within this, within this sector to say, you know what, our profitability, our sales have slowed.
Joshua Sharkey (42:19.916)profitable and then what
Michael Jacober (42:37.932)Our top line is solid. We're running up against competition. Let's go try to get these a hundred new customers by offering a lower price. Okay. So it's no different than any other business where if I offer a cheaper price, maybe I can get more customers. And if people start doing that in order to keep my customers, if I'm the incumbent in order to keep those customers, I have to match.
Matthew Conway (43:05.166)Again, where I take exception with that is that that's actually not happening. And when I said, got into an episode where I said, the man, and you guys got ruffled by the man. The reality is, is when all of these companies, know, Sharkey introduced him by saying, they're acquiring all these other companies and that's great. And it's like, ultimately, I think what would be better for our industry is what you're actually talking about, which is people like you selling to people. But the more that these companies get acquired over
Michael Jacober (43:33.006)The more it's consolidated.
Matthew Conway (43:35.17)There's a man at the top that has a public line that you have to feed. There's profit margins and those profits are never going to go back to depress the little guy.
Joshua Sharkey (43:43.71)I don't buy the man argument because it's like a depersonalize things, but I do think that all the small distributors talking about well, what do
Matthew Conway (43:50.324)I with what the Maynard-
Joshua Sharkey (43:52.578)Well, I just think that it just it makes it like there's just like this thing behind the scenes that is this total power. You just told me that like when you save $20,000, you're not going to buy me a bottle of wine. like it's the same premise. was joking. maybe you're not and I wouldn't blame you because like you have small margins.
Matthew Conway (43:58.658)Being publicly traded
Matthew Conway (44:06.158)What I'm saying is
Matthew Conway (44:11.886)companies and you get more public scrutiny you have more investors that need money back and you're not going to be able to explain kicking back a little bit to the small guy because you have more mouths to feed at the top of the chain
Joshua Sharkey (44:14.913)That's that.
Joshua Sharkey (44:24.472)That's what I mean. like it's not necessarily this idea of the man is just like this is just like what happens you start a business and you have things to you like no one's Crushing in profit and all of this sort of secondary and tertiary distributors with the ace endigo's with the Wocos or the or the Riviera's and you know, like they they they're not you know, like these publicly traded they like if they have more profits coming in first It'll be a long time before they appreciate the benefit of like this AI optimization
Matthew Conway (44:48.504)of full-on businesses. think Cisco's struggling right now? You don't think their profit margins are sound?
Michael Jacober (44:58.158)Check their laugh
Matthew Conway (45:01.006)And that's why they're not passing that down because they have to answer to the shareholders, which is who I was calling the man.
Joshua Sharkey (45:09.11)No, I am saying that what I'm saying is like it's not like I take issue with the word the man because it depersonalizes things and it makes into this like thing that's just like people have obligations.
Matthew Conway (45:18.478)It's just a general term for the person, but what if cool person or people entity?
Joshua Sharkey (45:23.79)Last last conversation we have with Keith, right? He sort of I asked him like well, how do you find what the common price of all the beers are like? He's like I go to the bar. There's a go. Well, we just hop on a call and all of us talk about what we're charging By the way, if all the distributors do that same thing, which I'm sure like this in some ways these things happen Then you have price locking and it's like, okay if the if everybody's margins keep going up in distribution But everything okay now what we charge for broccoli is X
Matthew Conway (45:29.218)He
Joshua Sharkey (45:53.068)The same thing is gonna happen. So it's just human nature these things just happen. My issue is more like saying the man or saying that this is like some nefarious thing. It's just by nature, you like you start a business and your goal is...
Matthew Conway (46:03.982)I said two ago, or two, two episodes, three episodes ago, I think that you both lean on the side of the man. I'll happily represent the little guy in these conversations. It's, always taking the idea of like, well, maybe we can't cook, pay cooks because of whatever, but we can pay cooks. Right. There's the arguing, the semantics of the man versus just the idea of a Mike owned produce company from Texas versus going through a major conglomerate like the U S foods.
I mean, those are just words. There's nothing to take exception with the man unless you're on the man's side.
Joshua Sharkey (46:39.982)Yeah, I mean like I think we'll agree to disagree which by the way was one idea I had for podcasting It's already it's already taken, but it is great
Michael Jacober (46:44.814)I actually kind of like
That's a really good one. Josh, you have a hard stop at 1230?
Joshua Sharkey (46:51.51)Yes. Yeah. Do you want to do Noma now?
Michael Jacober (46:54.424)Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah.
Matthew Conway (46:56.844)I think
Joshua Sharkey (46:57.4)minutes is enough. It isn't enough. But why don't we start because we can always follow on. Well, I already shared my view, but I'll recap mine. Yeah, please recap his.
Michael Jacober (47:02.158)can pick back up.
Matthew Conway (47:07.726)The listeners weren't on, so let's start with what the text track was so we can all be on the same page.
Joshua Sharkey (47:12.91)I think we're all having a lot of us in industry are having these textiles I have tons of them going on right now of obviously NOMO was in the New York Times and Rene because a lot of cooks have come out with a bunch of very very disturbing stories about things that have happened being punched being like belittled being forced to say suck my dick things like this that like Have obviously created a whole bunch of outrage AMEX and Rezzy who we talked about three episodes ago with Eli pulled their sponsorship of
of the Noma pop-up and in general there's obviously like there's one guy named Mike Ro something vibes on Instagram who I think sparked a lot of this by coming out. He's like a think a fermentation. Yeah. It's interesting or something like that. And so now there's a bunch of people speaking out about Noma and it's you know it's it's it's not good. Obviously like all these things that happened are are really really really no bueno. The text thread that we had is very similar. I'm going to.
I'll summarize ours, which is basically the same thread I'm having with a bunch of other people, which is there's basically like four camps, I think three or four camps. There's one camp that's like, this has been happening forever with every type of restaurant. Why is this just about Noma? That's one camp. Then there's the camp of this is absolutely unacceptable. my God, cancel Noma today. What the heck? Then there's sort of like the in-between camp of this is really bad.
And Noma needs to like account for this, but we also need to account for everybody else as well. And then like a little bit of gray in between.
Matthew Conway (48:44.408)and you find yourself in the third camp.
Joshua Sharkey (48:47.296)My camp is those stories that came out are reprehensible, right? Those things are just reprehensible. Being punched, being like forced to say those kinds of things is just reprehensible. There's just no way that that's okay. I lived this for a very long time and I was treated that way and I was told, you know, why do I wake up in the morning? I was throwing plates at me and things like that. And so I've seen this from myself and lots of people I know have dealt with this all over the world.
And at the highest level, it was just happening a lot. And my point is more that, yes, Renee and Noma, course, this is like, you know, they need to account for this. But the story to me is far more than just Renee and Noma. just, for me, feels like it's very easy to point to the number one restaurant in the world and the most famous chef in the world. And that becomes the story. And there's a lot more work that that could be done to end, by the way, without much effort.
to find a hundred more of these stories in an hour and even more and more and more. And why didn't we do this? You know, why, why, why, why now when we already knew these things a while ago, long while ago and we've known them for quite a while. Why now? Is it now I'm not making any accusations of the timing and things here. Is this opportunistic? I do think there is a camp of people that think that in some ways it's opportunistic to like write this story now while
You know, Noah's doing this thing.
Matthew Conway (50:16.992)The facts are true.
Joshua Sharkey (50:19.566)Well, they're different things. I'm just asking a simple question. No, it doesn't matter.
Matthew Conway (50:25.16)What camp are you in? One, two, or three?
Michael Jacober (50:28.238)I think I, I think I've leaned towards three. So my immediate reaction to reading the article was similar to, I'm sure both of you guys, which is like, this is, this is really bad. This is, this is what everyone says this industry is all about. I experienced very similar things when I was coming up in this business. I.
think that the industry on a whole has tamed substantially. Like this stuff back when there was, you know, basically a toll booth of, you know, restaurants that you had to work at in order to really move up in your culinary career. These chefs like could get away with anything because, you know, you had to go through these, these restaurants in order to gain the experience. I would imagine.
Joshua Sharkey (51:00.91)Yeah, I agree.
Michael Jacober (51:25.65)Renee developed some type of psyche that he was like, if you want to elevate in and say that you've worked for me, I can treat you however the hell I want because what's your alternative to leave? I can blacklist you, which clearly this article, this article states. So I think honestly, my immediate reaction was like, man, if this was sexual, right? If this was like a Mario Batali situation, this would have come out so many years ago.
But the fact that it is, it was relatively normalized behavior. think it allowed this story to really stay under the radar for, for many years. So I think my, my ultimate thought here is, is this is really bad, but this is kind of people sucked it up for years and this is nothing new. and I think things have calmed down substantially over the past
decade or so in terms of, you know, kitchen abuse. But I don't see anything in this story that's like, nothing blew my mind. Nothing was like, my God, like how could that have happened? None of it's a big surprise.
Matthew Conway (52:39.232)I think like maybe next episode, a good conversation, you know, starter, and maybe we bring on a guest that fits the thing would be talking about how it's tamed and how that's affected our industry. think that's a really healthy conversation to have. I think where I disagree on the tech thread and here, I know that there's this idea of like, because I went through it, I have some type of connection to the feeling of what that feels like and how it feels.
I saw some crazy shit. I've been through some crazy shit. I've never seen a chef strike a cook intentionally in the ribs in front of a group full of people. I'm not saying that you guys haven't seen it. I'm not saying other people haven't seen it. I've never seen something that dramatic. The idea that the world's number one chef currently or formerly, who cares, came out and spoke about his abusive behavior in 2015.
Michael Jacober (53:22.871)I
Matthew Conway (53:34.626)continued it till 2017 after he wrote about it in Lucky Strike. And again, you mentioned Batali and his indiscretions. He was never charged with a crime. He was never actually charged ever, or he might've been charged when the charges were dropped. He was never convicted of any wrongdoing for any sexual misconduct. And yet he's been out of the industry since it was exposed. And that's probably for the better. I'm not defending Batali. What I'm saying is...
He had to leave the industry for not even being charged with a crime. This guy admitted that he accidentally bumped into people in 2015, continued doing it through at least two years after that. And it's not until he wants to run around the world opening pop-ups that are the most expensive pop-ups in the world and continue as brands that this guy says, you know what, enough's enough. And while I understand there will be people who say that's an opportunist thing to do, if the facts are that he was
pulling people outside and saying, say you suck DJ. And again, he's not even dressing this guy down because he cut the vegetable the wrong way. It's because he was listening to techno. And we're talking about full on psychological and physical abuse to the level of a chef.
Joshua Sharkey (54:45.043)Matt, Matt, I don't disagree with you with that.
Matthew Conway (54:48.398)Let me just finish my thoughts and you can go. So if Batali has to step away, we've now allowed this monster to not only just exist, but exist at the top. And if we're not willing to actually call out our top because it's happened in the past. And one of your things was I just wish that we talked about it 10 years ago. it's like, Anthony Bourdain became famous for talking about this in the late nineties and early two thousand. It's literally what catapulted his career. And you said, well, where did all the people get taken down then? And my question to you would be.
How many abusers have you called out? This type of article makes it okay for people like you and other people who are victims to come together around somebody that was a major abuser at the top of our industry and say, well, if he can say it, so can I. And you made it seem like this was gonna discourage or that it was distracting from other people's stories when in fact, I think it's shining a huge spotlight on the industry that if it can happen at Noma, it can happen at La'al and-
Bourdain was talked about in the 90s and just because you haven't spoken up or many other chefs chose not to doesn't mean that people didn't air.
Joshua Sharkey (55:52.13)Yeah, no, Matt, I understand what you're saying and I do appreciate that. think, first of all, I do think we've been talking about this for a very long time in the restaurant industry, the cook industry. It's not new and we have spoken up. It just was the norm. There's two things I'll say. One is that the fact that he came out and said that and then was able to continue doing this for 10 years. And by the way, I just want to say that I have no idea how much of this is true, embellished. I have no idea. There's no denying that this guy is like an insane talent.
Humans are complicated. There's no black and white. There's 20 movie directors that are incredible, whose movies we love, who are not canceled, who have done horrible things. I know some of the actors that have worked for them, they've done horrible things worse than this. Like, this happens everywhere. For me, one thing that has to change is how does that, you can't get away with that for this long, right? Like, if that was the case, and then for another 10 years it happened. This is a very well-known restaurant with lots of people. I just had the CMO of Anoma on two weeks ago, like,
Lots of people are involved with this. The environment of like how this can happen and perpetuate for so long, that has to change. The other piece though is when I started my career in fine dining, I remember vividly, like I won this contest, I got the flight to Norway. I was with Eric Repair and Rick Moonen. And I saw this dichotomy of how you can behave as a chef, where there's chefs that scream. And then you have an Eric Repair who, I'm chopping the chives the wrong way.
And he just walks up right to my shoulder and he says, I don't remember his exact words, but basically like, I don't think you should do it that way again. And this is not the way that we need to cut chives. And it was very, very calm, collective, no anger in a way that like crushed my soul more because it was just so calm and collective. so the problem is that like there's, we haven't professionalized leadership either. You know, you, don't train these things. You go work for El Bulli, like the same stuff.
was happening there and that's where Rene came from. I'm not justifying him, but mean like a bigger thing has to change and that's my point is so many people have been affected by this that when we see this, when I see this story, I'm like I would, I came up in this and like there was so many times I wanted to quit not because the work was hard, but because I would, I knew I had to endure this like abuse. I'm I just assumed that's just the norm.
Matthew Conway (58:11.744)So I think that the, the criticizing the idea that it's opportunists, and I'm not saying you specifically did this, but anybody out there doing that, or the idea that Amex or Blackbird would cancel. And again, I don't really even cancel culture, but I do believe that if all of these people that are involved in this multinational number one restaurant company were aware of a lot of this behavior and the article clearly states silence was the chosen option.
And while you say, I'm not sure exactly what's true and what's not, there's now 38 people who've attached their name, gone through interview processes and have their stories cross verified. So while there may be gray area here and there may be whatever, there's a long tenured history of abuse that was highlighted first in 2015 by the chef himself. But instead of saying that he took people out and punched them in the ribs, he says, may have bumped into them and we allowed that person to go. So my answer, my question is.
If we're going to actually like, like soothe the bigger issue, I don't think it is the Renaise. I think that when you have chefs that are chasing accolades that don't really have a tangible way to get like, how do you get to the number one restaurant in the world? There's a lot of luck. There's a lot of PR. There's a lot of who you know, there's a lot of things, right? Like there's sure shot number one restaurants.
And I think that that vacuum creates a lot of insecurity and creates a lot of problems with fear and the things that perpetuate this type of behavior. And those are the things. like we're, we're kind of possibly talked about like beard awards and things on previous episodes. think these number one in the world type awards actually do way more harm to our industry. And that might be a bigger.
conversation piece or story than the fact that we know that there's a bunch of shitty chefs out there, where there's a bunch of people who, you know, lied about how bad their abuse was. And we've all seen it. Like, we could go on. I just don't know if the New York Times in today's world should be out there spending their time digging up paths for other people who don't want to come forward themselves.
Michael Jacober (01:00:22.52)Well, let let me ask, let me ask a question to both of you guys. Does this article cancel Renee or is he gonna.
Joshua Sharkey (01:00:24.43)Christmas.
Joshua Sharkey (01:00:35.726)It depends on how he reacts to it and again like
Michael Jacober (01:00:40.814)Let's say he doesn't react at all. Let's say there's no reaction.
Matthew Conway (01:00:44.407)We put out a statement,
Joshua Sharkey (01:00:46.195)But Matt, or Mike, the market speaks, right? Exactly.
Michael Jacober (01:00:49.908)is how do you think the market will respond
Joshua Sharkey (01:00:53.464)Well, no one can predict the market. know, I saw there's obviously like a bunch of Jen or Geno, Jen, the LA writers, think boycotting Noma. think that you'll see a lot of this, but there's also a lot of chefs that are like also, you know, fighting for him. So I think it'll be a wild.
Matthew Conway (01:01:11.598)And I think that you're going to see the same type of situation where after I sent the article from 1999 from Bourdain, yesterday in the text thread, I went back and read it. And the thing, because it's been probably 10 years since I've read it and it's such a fucking amazing, amazing piece in the New Yorker. The thing that struck me the most is how not any of the people who are weighing in on these people who are being reported that they were abused.
would even bother to read that New Yorker article because it would take too much time out of their day. They're gonna have a strong opinion about whether or not Rene is right or wrong, or whether people should get canceled or not, or whether this guy was an opportunist or not, and they wouldn't even take the 10 minutes it takes to read a full piece in the New Yorker these days because nobody has the time to do that. I actually was getting to the end of the New Yorker piece by Bourdain and was a little bored, not because it wasn't so great. I haven't read something that long and forever because every piece you read is a three-minute read time, so...
I think there were people talking about it, but I think that more people would rather just say, I think there's fatigue. I think there's a lot of people in the industry that just see that and say, yeah, we knew this all along. Which is kind of how this texture started with Eli. was like, yeah, didn't we know this all along? And the answer is when you look at the actual details of this, no, we didn't. It isn't until this guy, whether you believe him or not, or the 38 people came up with actual names attached and specific examples with corroborative witnesses that this becomes
more than what he admitted to in 15 and 22 in those two articles. So it is a new story, but whether people care because they were abused by their chef or not is up to them. I think the answer is he'll get a pass.
Michael Jacober (01:02:52.078)I think, I just don't think anyone's going to care. People are going not care. In a few years, like no one's going to care.
Matthew Conway (01:03:00.15)Do you think that Batali should still be on the outskirts?
Michael Jacober (01:03:04.524)I think society speaks differently when it comes to sexual deviance.
Matthew Conway (01:03:09.666)I think... Even when you're not convicted of a crime?
Matthew Conway (01:03:17.132)I'm just asking a question. you? Yeah. I mean, I would feel terrible if one of my friends got accused verbally or in writing of something and then the charges were dropped and they had to change their whole life over a charge. If there's such solid evidence, why is there not a charge? Again, I don't know enough about the exact details.
Michael Jacober (01:03:39.023)Isn't there a statutory of limitations and-
Matthew Conway (01:03:42.03)He was charged and then dropped and then he left New York and then he's never come back and I am part of its probably choice I've I'm just saying like is there a second chance right and again I don't believe in I don't know whether but Holly raped somebody or not, but he was accused of doing so but he was never
Michael Jacober (01:03:57.198)There was some video evidence of him doing some pretty gnarly stuff at the spotted pig.
Matthew Conway (01:04:03.825)I don't know all of the details to get I'm saying I think it's easier to your point to for Rene to rebound from this than it was for a chef of Like you said sexual deviance rape abuse on that level Yeah But I still think that pulling somebody outside and punching him in the ribs and telling everybody sucks a DJ's dick should be pretty
Michael Jacober (01:04:22.67)Yeah, it's messed up, I think ultimately people romanticize it. People romanticize this idea of coming from the culinary world and this type of behavior is part of the romanticism.
Matthew Conway (01:04:41.718)I don't believe there is part of the romanticism and while I don't believe in cancel culture I do applaud MX and Blackbird and the other people because if we can't hold the person at the top I think Can't the person at the top accountable and again, this guy isn't sitting in Copenhagen on a farm. She's riding out his days He's traveling the world trying to attract attention charging the most expensive tickets for for current dinners He's actually out there trying to monetize his abuse
Michael Jacober (01:04:50.777)Yeah, they made their I think they made the right call
Matthew Conway (01:05:08.854)And he's doing it in major markets like Mexico, Japan, Los Angeles. And if Amics and Blackbird and society aren't willing to stand up for the victims or the, and I'm not even talking about his specific victims. I'm talking about all of us, the people who've gone through this and say, no, no, no, we're not just going to turn a blind out of that. Maybe the public will, but I think the right decision was, even though I don't believe in cancer culture, was to say, we're not going to support this endeavor now.
Joshua Sharkey (01:05:34.478)Yeah, I think there's a difference between cancel culture and choosing to support a business or not. And that's really, you know, that's where people can decide. I just believe people are very, you know, complicated and complex and the more complex your brain is and oftentimes the more like, you know, there's genius. also these wild other parts.
Michael Jacober (01:05:53.294)See you time.
Matthew Conway (01:05:53.727)But you think that makes it okay?
Joshua Sharkey (01:05:55.758)No, of course not. like, this is also something that's, you know, like look at David O. Russell. I love his movies, but he's a terrorist to us. know? But there's a bunch of them, know, Michael Bay, you know, there's a bunch of these, I mean, not that little Michael Bay movies, but like James Cameron.
Matthew Conway (01:06:04.248)Sure, yeah. I told Jackson, I mean, we got a million people.
Matthew Conway (01:06:13.784)But you also pointed out that there's a lot of chefs that have been very influential in both American and French culture that have been at the very, very top and have never had anybody say even the slightest criticism of their professionalism, whether that's Thomas Keller or Eric Repair. It doesn't take a psychopath.
Joshua Sharkey (01:06:35.34)Yes, that's what I mean. I could say here there's an argument of like, well, no one knows what it's like to be the number one restaurant in the world and to be at that level and the stress that it has. And that's true. None of us know that and the amount of pressure. But at the same time, there are plenty of examples of of not operating that way. So it is possible.
Matthew Conway (01:06:56.428)And most of those chefs came up in those environments. So they were also subjected to the same type of abusive behaviors and they chose to teach and craft their restaurants in a different way. So there still is a choice. I don't know, Rene never met him, don't know where he comes from. Honestly, what I would hope is that he would use this as an opportunity to give back to our industry and the people. Again, he can't take back the abuse, right? He can't.
But what he could do is use this as an opportunity to speak out for people who have been afflicted by this type of behavior, especially in kitchens, give them a place to open their doors. And maybe he could use this as a rehabilitation opportunity to do good in our industry, which is what my point to shark UVA text was, like, Hey, this could open doors for more people to be heard for more safety measures, for more companies to start looking in their chefs. HR folder, know, and so.
Joshua Sharkey (01:07:53.678)I think it is going to be how he reacts to it because you got to like fully own up say there's no there's no excuse for this and I screwed up this and this happened and I understand if you don't come yeah and I'm now going to take my platform and and do what I can to to your point Matt you're right to say it's not okay to just say well Charlie Trotter did that yeah he put his hands around Graham Elliot and this chef did that those are all true but
We're here. We're now. is is a happened. And so like he does have this platform. He does have this opportunity and, know, he can respond by doing nothing. He could respond by saying, I'm not sure what you mean there. I kind of remember some of it. Or he can be like, I totally screwed up and this was wrong and there's nothing I can say. And I understand if you like don't come to my restaurant, but I'm going to use the platform and do something great. and.
Matthew Conway (01:08:40.206)We'll see. mean, his first response and the response from Noma is out that came out two days ago. They seem pretty generic to me, probably because they're waiting to see how strong the waves are. would have. Yeah. So we'll see in the next month or so how this goes, but there's, there's no doubt among anybody on this panel or anybody in the industry that there aren't many people in that organization that were very well aware of the.
Michael Jacober (01:08:51.022)They're still fake.
Matthew Conway (01:09:06.473)accusations, if not, in fact, seeing this type of abuse with their own eyes. So this isn't just a chef problem. This is an organizational problem from the top down of people who are aware that they were employing and promoting a person who was accused of, if not, they'd seen it with their own eyes, unthinkable things well after a lot of the other movements have come along that have changed our industry. So I think that's kind of the unforgivable part.
But think next episode, coming on with a guest that has some insight into how kitchen culture has changed.
Joshua Sharkey (01:09:41.678)Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you liked this episode or any other ones, you can actually check out more of this at GetMees.com slash Josh. That's G-E-T-M-E-E-Z slash J-O-S-H. I have my podcast there, The Mees Podcast, plus some other shows and interviews. Starting to write some stories and blog posts, some recipes, recaps, things like that. So I think you'll enjoy it. Again, it's GetMees.com slash Josh. G-E-T-M-E-Z.
Thank you very much. Very grateful for all of you.
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