Michael Jacober (06:17.09)I know, I know. I'm glad you mentioned something. It's definitely, he brought, and I'm sure he'll come back as a guest periodically. But yeah, he brings such a friction to each conversation that it's almost like we did our first, it was our first episode without him last week. It almost felt like a little bit, it felt odd. It felt like we were missing, there was a space that feels like it needed to be filled.
Joshua Sharkey (06:45.666)He has an organic, argumentative quality to him that sometimes I feel like by default goes to that, is just interesting as well. But it was really fun. I'm sure we'll certainly have him on again. But more importantly, I think we're constantly testing and trying new things. And we have some really cool guests coming on soon as well. Sterling is going to come on soon, who you know from Childhood. coming next week to talk about his new AI podcast. And we'll just obviously just...
chat a bunch with him as well. Todd Duplichan, who I don't know if you know or not. Todd is married to Jess and I actually met Jess before Todd. Jess and I worked at Boulay together and while Todd was next door at Danube and then we worked at Cafe Grey together and Todd was at Tabla just after me. They're great, love them both and they both came on the show a couple years ago and they have a restaurant in Lenoir and they have a new project now as well. He's also just a world of knowledge on food history and loves it so.
Michael Jacober (07:19.362)Noted.
Joshua Sharkey (07:44.266)I want to have him back on, so he's going come back on. And then X from, you know, from Orizi will be on. So we have a bunch of good folks coming on. And then I have some individual ones. I'm doing one with the chef of Nobu, when I'm down in Miami and some other folks. So it's, know, we'll try out different formats, but I love, obviously I love this format with you because you have so many different tentacles into the food business and other business that, you know, it's just fun to have these conversations with you.
Michael Jacober (08:10.732)I feel the same way.
Joshua Sharkey (08:12.142)Well, here's what we got for today. First of all, Fast Company put out their most innovative companies in every space. One was, there was like two food spaces. There was one that was like most innovative in the restaurant tech space. And there was most innovative in food. There was two different ones. Of there's Holly, great journalist, also has podcast. Brandon Barton wrote this article and one of the companies was Chili's. Yeah. As one of the most innovative companies.
thought that was interesting. So Chili's was there, DoorDash, Quick Trip, Toast, Opus, Vocal, Sunday, a bunch, Fudini. So Chili's is apparently on a comeback. So there's some interesting stuff there. There's this premise of the K-shaped economy. Have you heard of this before?
Michael Jacober (08:58.966)Yeah, and it's becoming even more pronounced, not just in the food world, but in other industries and categories as well. We should talk just about what the K-shape actually is and why it's important.
Joshua Sharkey (09:10.798)Let's start there because I want you to tell me more about it. There's some other stuff that's on the docket we could talk about. Crash of egg prices, winter like 42%.
Michael Jacober (09:18.03)When I read that I hadn't been following the, the crash of egg price, although I probably should, I haven't seen any, I haven't seen it in our food distribution business, but I'm sure it's there.
Joshua Sharkey (09:29.578)This, this week Cisco acquired restaurant depot.
Michael Jacober (09:32.238)That's a one. should definitely make some time to talk about that.
Joshua Sharkey (09:35.912)Unilever and McCormick had a merger. That was pretty, that's pretty significant. Yep. There was an article about, in Forbes, about ghost kitchens getting ghosted, that essentially ghost kitchens are dying. See if that's a thing. And we got a bunch of other ones we could talk about. But why don't we start with the K-shaped restaurant economy and just generally what that means, because I don't know. And if you could, like when you're in...
high school and you make math or science fun. What's that? If you could explain it to me and make it fun while you do so.
Michael Jacober (10:07.006)The scene from, have you seen the movie Margin Call? Yeah. So when Jeremy Arndt is like, now when you're explaining this, explain it to me as though you would explain to a small child or a golden retriever. So let's just talk about the K shape, right? It's like the letter K and the letter K has, you know, an angle going up and an angle going down. And if we think about, you know, the economy, you have,
the wealthiest Americans, right? The top, call it one, two, 3 % of Americans are driving a substantial amount of growth within the economy. So the richer get richer, spending more money while lower income ends of the economy are getting softer and softer and spending less and less money. can, you know, prophesize or think about dive into why that is. think maybe we could skip that unless you want to.
Joshua Sharkey (11:04.416)What's your 50,000 foot? Why do you think that's happening?
Michael Jacober (11:07.51)Why is that happening? I think we live in a world where, in a country where if you're wealthy, you have access to more capital, have access to more opportunities. You can leverage that capital and leverage those opportunities much more so than someone who doesn't have access to capital or opportunities does. So it almost becomes a flywheel. And the more you have, the more you can get ahead. And we see it, we see it everywhere. So.
That's kind of my, yeah, my, 50,000th of a view.
Joshua Sharkey (11:39.822)It's also just a parallel to, you know, when you're starting a business. Now, unless you, you you can go really slow, bootstrap, and, you know, and then it may work, but it will be a lot more time. And then your ROI and the time might be depending on how much you value time could be, could be a lot longer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. But oftentimes, you know, especially in restaurants, you want to raise work capital than you need because it allows you to do more. If your goal is to open up a multi-unit
you know, restaurant group, get your first one, make sure that it works and people love it. But you know, you're not going to have incredible due to economics if you're trying to have something that's going to be, you know, at scale. I mean, you might, but oftentimes you don't until you get to some sort of scale. So you need enough capital where if you're going to raise to grow, oftentimes I think it's helpful if you have enough capital to open up three more stores, not the second, you know.
Michael Jacober (12:37.112)I have mixed feelings about that. So I think that no matter how deep the entrepreneurial spirit burns in a person, think if you have capital, you tend to throw money at problems as opposed to be more innovative. And when we talk about unit economics, unit economics or unit economics, whether you have four, 10, $20 million of cash in the bank, if you have a store that costs a million bucks to build and it spits out,
300K in four-wall EBITDA, that's unit economics, right? Maybe you have a training team and you have an HR program and you have all this, you know, infrastructure that you can start investing in to help you scale to those next several stores. But the unit economics are the unit economics. And my philosophy, you know, around being ready to deploy capital to start raising capital to grow a business, you really want to have the strongest unit economics as possible.
And I think that if you're spoiled with a ton of cash to throw money at to solve problems, it can really starve your unit economics as you're not being forced to be innovative. So that's more of a philosophical thing, I think less so like a macroeconomic trend.
Joshua Sharkey (13:52.728)I don't disagree by any means, know, because it's sort of like Parkinson's law, you know, if you give somebody, you know,
Michael Jacober (13:58.336)Which I didn't learn about until like two or three years ago. Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (14:01.038)Yeah. Yeah. It is similar, but, and I agree. Yeah. The default to throwing money problems as opposed to being innovative. think that's definitely really, really important. And there are times when the right decision is to do something that requires a little bit more spending. Sure. And in the, you know, it's the right long-term decision for the business. And if you don't have that capital, then you can't like, if...
the size of the space, so the number of seats that you have. But like the business model might need, you know, 80 seats, not 60. And you just need a bigger space to make the business model work. I'm just making things up. But generally speaking, you know what I mean? There are times when the right decision is actually spending a little bit more and if can't, then it does make it more difficult with the right piece of equipment that, you know, might cost 4X, but over the course of two years is gonna, you know, have a 20X return.
you know, that spend might be something you can't actually spend, but if did, it would have a huge impact on the long tail of your labor model, let's say.
Michael Jacober (15:07.106)That's a really good point that you just made in terms of, you know, we'll call it OPEX and CAPEX, not being afraid to spend money on equipment, right? That could yield higher unit economics as opposed to, as opposed to you'd be spending more money on people. I usually find that if you're raising money to spend more money on people, that can be problematic, right? That can be sort of like the lazy approach to growth. The more people you hire, you know, generally like the more inefficient you can become.
If people are spending more time in meetings than they are actually doing work and you know, that's a whole different conversation. But I think, yeah, if you have the opportunity to play capital in equipment and automation and tools that are going to help you increase your economics, that's an advantage for sure.
Joshua Sharkey (15:54.222)Well, I think the genesis of this K-shaped restaurant economy article was actually more about that there's this polarization happening. And again, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but this is what the article is saying, that there's this polarization happening where restaurants, and this article's from Fortune, where restaurants are having to choose between either value or premium, right? So it's either you're going, know, the example was McDonald's is launching this $3 menu.
because of traffic decline and things like that. And, and really there's no more middle ground. It's either you are really, really, you know, a good value, like you're very inexpensive for what you're doing, or you're really, really premium and you're able to sell that well. You're very culinary driven and that same dichotomy of like people either there are people that are just trying to spend a lot less. And then there are some other side of the economy that will spend whatever they want, but they want to make sure that it's really good. It's becoming.
sort of binary in the restaurant space where it's either you need to be like great value or super premium. I want to ask more people about this, but it is interesting. know, like I am seeing like, you know, the great restaurants can and, you know, and do charge more and more and more and more. And then experience becomes part of that as well. And then the other side of the coin is like, how low can you go to make sure that people can afford it?
Michael Jacober (17:12.032)If we zoom out, I would love to get data on just how many, how many net new restaurants have opened over the past, call it decade. And I mean, I'm sure that's an easy stat for us to look up, but I wonder is there, is there something around the market has just been like blooded with, and I don't want to say the word mediocre because I imagine the term mediocre has negative connotations to it, but
If you're a chef that worked for a really well-known chef and you decide to go out on your own and you open up a restaurant and you don't have access to a tremendous amount of capital, you're going to open a restaurant on a budget. You're going to really put a lot of effort into the food. Dining room will probably lack. You're going to save money on, we'll call it the quote unquote experience. And you're going to try to exercise your skills.
I wonder if the market has just been flooded with like those types of experiences to where in order to really stand out and appeal as like the true high-end restaurant, you needed to just spend more money upfront to open up a more, you know, luxurious experience to where now where you have a little bit of a moat. Now you can really drive price. That would be on the upwards K in terms of the downwards K.
Yeah, mean, how much value can you provide in terms of quality for price? And I don't know. according to last year, it seems like all these value brands were down. Everyone was down. And it seems like the outlook this year is a little bit different. What are your thoughts on?
Joshua Sharkey (19:03.598)It's, I mean, it's, logically makes sense, but there's so many countries to do. We just had Arjav on the, on the show a couple, a couple of weeks ago and, and, um, they're certainly in the middle, right? They're not like super high end charging crazy well prices and they're not like super value driven and they're doing great and already pay back to investors. And I don't know how many examples are of that, but there's, there's a lot. So I don't know. I think these things tend to get.
It might just be that it's a better story for it to sound like that things are polarized more than they are. I think ultimately my take is that good is good. And if you create a good experience, whether that's a super inexpensive one or a super expensive one or something in between, as long as, you know, people actually resonate with it and the quality is good and it's consistent, you're going to be okay. You know, I don't think that this, you know, like there's this, like if you don't have
super high end or super low end that it's not going to work. So I think this is probably just like a way to write an article that sounds, that sounds interesting, but I don't know if it's necessarily true. And by the way, I checked the stats. have to sort of extrapolate here because there's roughly 50,000 new restaurants that open each year and seven out of 10 of them are independent. That's about 35,000 independent restaurants opening each year. That's a lot. That's 350,000 over the last 10 years.
But that's and that's primarily almost 10 % of that is in New York and then almost 10 % of that is L.A. and Miami combined. And then another like, you know, 6 % of that is Chicago, Houston. Yeah, yeah. Well. Let's move on. I get it. I don't I don't know if I necessarily buy by the the the premise that this K shaped economy is happening. There's just too many examples of restaurants that are really good.
Michael Jacober (20:43.82)Major Metro. Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (20:58.478)that are not super expensive and not super low priced that I think are still doing a great job and are still doing well. I don't know, for me this sounds more like an academic.
Michael Jacober (21:08.738)Little click bait. Now that we're talking about value, we're talking about the K shape. mean, we could pivot into Chili's story, which is.
Joshua Sharkey (21:10.232)Yeah, like
Joshua Sharkey (21:18.84)So I don't know enough about this. I'm gonna let you lead this. I remember going to Chili's as a kid. I remember getting, my God, what did we order when we went there? I don't even remember now. But I remember going there as a kid. We definitely have it in our shopping center.
Michael Jacober (21:32.578)You got baby back ribs, you got fajitas.
Joshua Sharkey (21:34.766)Wait, is chilies the... want my baby back. Oh yeah. want my baby back. Chiii-
Michael Jacober (21:40.728)Please, baby back ribs.
Joshua Sharkey (21:43.259)Barbecue salt. man, what a great man. That alone, that alone they win on that.
Michael Jacober (21:51.658)We, my family ate there, I would say once every two weeks. And that was from the times, the time that I was probably as far as, know, from seven until we, I graduated high school. And then when I went to college, there was a really popular Chili's just off campus that I think I went maybe once a week. so I have a huge affinity for that brand. you know, you sit down, they give you the, the hot chips and salsa. They had the, the molten.
chocolate lava cake at the end of the meal. had giant margaritas. It was just a fun family restaurant. I didn't, obviously I stopped eating at Chili's at some point in like my, maybe just after college, I don't think I stepped into a Chili's until maybe last year when I started going with my kids again. Um, so in 2020, three, I was working on a,
Rosen food business called Ipsa. And we recruited a board member, guy named Josh Halpern to help kind of steer the company and get us out of some trouble. And he had mentioned, he's the one that brought this to my attention. was like, yeah, like Chili's, they're back on the map. Like Chili's dining rooms are now filling up again. And I had no idea. He was like, yeah, they really focused on, they looked at QSR, they look at the price point of QSR. And they were like, let's just, let's create
a know, an offering that can start to chip away at some of that, you know, a similar customer that's going to, you know, a fast casual restaurant and pricing a you know, a burger, a drink and fries at a relatively neutral price point to take out.
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And check out the show notes moving forward because we're be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant Mee's podcast listeners get a sweet deal on Mee's. I mean, you know what's wild? Like, I'm looking at their menu now. You know, they have a big QP burger for 14 bucks, 13.99. Shake Shack burgers cost that. Oh, yeah. You know, if you just get like a, don't remember the last time I said Shake Shack, I think it was like two months ago. I was there on Monday. like 14 bucks for a burger.
Michael Jacober (24:48.738)Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Jacober (24:57.848)Yeah, me and my kid and his friend, we got out of there, it was 50 bucks for three burgers, two fries and two drinks, it 50 bucks. So they looked at the market. I think they said, let's look at making a price neutral offering. The CEO did a ton of process engineering within the kitchen. He looked at how they were seasoning fries. He looked at how they were.
he looked at skew rationalization, he shrunk the menu down substantially. So the menus, the kitchens just became a lot more efficient. Food was now coming out hot. They decided to have a much more narrow menu. The last time I went to a Chili's, you know, way back when the menu had gotten so big.
Joshua Sharkey (25:41.398)It's interesting as I'm looking at this menu now, though, it's making me hungry It's you know, there's the look at the appetizers. For example, they're doing a good job of like cross utilizing So they have like yeah chips and a bunch of these things So it's all the same chips and then they have like a dip trio then you can buy or you can just buy the salsa or the guac Or the queso those are the three dips and Then but they have a beef queso, which I imagine is that queso plus some seasoned beef totally then you got like three versions of fried mozzarella stick like fried mozzarella
hunting Chipotle mozzarella sticks, Nashville hot mozzarella sticks. By the way, Nashville hot mozzarella sticks sounds really good. yeah, so they really only have like, they probably have like 10 menu items here and then they have a bunch of iterations of those menu items. So their skews are probably like way lower now. You know, they got like this steak, they have a ton of burgers, which are probably, you know, it's all the same burger.
Michael Jacober (26:32.123)It's just variations of the same.
Joshua Sharkey (26:34.478)burger. They have these crispy chicken crispers, look, they're breaded pretty nicely, but it's all the same thing. It's the same, same premise, plain honey chipotle, Nashville hot. So yeah, I can see that that makes a ton of sense that they're
Michael Jacober (26:48.418)With a more simple skew set, it became easier to staff these restaurants because it wasn't as complex for the cooks. They weren't pulling their hair out. The food is coming out faster. The food was coming out hotter. And obviously when you do something like that, your risk is, you limit skews, your risk is, right, well, now we don't have something for everyone. But look, they're selling.
They're selling American fare. So I think the stripped down of skews that they, that they decided on was still enough to draw an audience. And so, you know, think the customer, the customer spoke, we'd rather have less options. We'd rather have food come out faster, hotter. Same thing with their staff. became, from my understanding, it's become easier to staff these restaurants. Retention has gone up. It's just a freaking wild success story all around. Uh, and it came from, you know,
This guy, the hell's his name? Chuck. sorry, sorry, Kevin Hockman, Kevin Hockman, who probably, could now get a signing bonus to leave and take over any branch.
Joshua Sharkey (27:58.424)Yeah. Well, it's really smart. know, just looking at the website, first of it's a simple website. Clearly they redid this and it's very clear to see that there's a ton across utilization. There's probably very few SKUs going on here, which means they get better pricing on the SKUs because of higher volume, which means more consistent, easier to manage the inventory. By the way, everyone, I think this is smart for anybody to do. always like when I'm talking to people through menu engineering, I'm like, okay, tell me
Like, let's look at the recipes you have and you have a salsa verde and you have a chimichurri. Can we make a base? then you then you're just adding to that. And you know, got 12 different oils, right? Like, don't we pick a few, pick finishing. That's one thing. But there's also like, even just when you think of the menu items, way you can create new dishes just from a base is there's a ton you can do there, especially if you have a really good foundation of things. know, like if they have a really good
steak that they know how to cook well, that's a good cut, they get a good supply chain on it. And they know that that's going to be the same every single time. And then, you have three different marinades, right? And maybe there's the same marinades that are those dipping sauces. It's really smart. And I love to see how that the downstream effect of like simplifying your menu. Yeah. Oh yeah. It makes it easier for the cooks, right? It makes it easier for finance. makes it easier for everybody when you simplify.
the menu, makes it easier to understand. You don't have as much like decision fatigue when you go there, like what to order. And you still kind of have something for everybody because you have like the different variations of each burger. I think it's really smart.
Michael Jacober (29:34.51)Well, the proof is in the pudding here. and, you know, one last thing in terms of the kitchen complexity, I'm just looking at a lot of skews. like, it seems like half the skews hit the fryer, right? And putting something in a fryer later is substantially less complex than, know, in the pan, all of a new cooking. These, uh, the chicken crispers, which by the way, whenever I have gone twice with my kids in the last year, I get the Nashville hot chicken crispers and they're great.
Joshua Sharkey (30:03.917)Yeah.
Michael Jacober (30:04.367)So good. Yeah, there's just, it's a much simpler operation to run. And as you just said, yeah, the downstream effects eventually hit the customer.
Joshua Sharkey (30:13.934)Well, speaking of good food when you don't expect it, I was in Fort Myers this past week. The kids were out of school for spring break. First of all, two weeks of spring break. Come on. We just had winter break. Two weeks for spring break? It's a long time. We went on my wife's sister's husband's boat and went out on the river and then went into the bay or the Gulf, And we went to Cabbage Key, which is where Jimmy Buffett wrote
Michael Jacober (30:30.838)It's long time. We.
Joshua Sharkey (30:44.014)Apparently wrote Cheeseburger in Paradise.
Michael Jacober (30:45.336)So you went to the keys, you were down.
Joshua Sharkey (30:47.79)This is not the Keys, although, I maybe this was close to, I mean, I don't know the geography really well. I'd never been to Fort Monaco before, but we went out on the river and then into the Gulf, and then, I think into the Gulf, and then anyways, we ended up in Cabbage Key. I could be totally wrong on the geography, but we were into this place called Cabbage Key, which is apparently where Jimmy Buffett wrote Cheeseburger in Paradise. Side note, I did go through Jimmy Buffett phase one with the Nantucket. I loved that album. Anyways.
Michael Jacober (31:05.579)where you were. yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (31:17.262)The food could have been total shit. There's no reason for it to be good. Typically a place, you know, it's like right, it's like little island, it's right in the water. You know, there's like a bunch of outdoors, a bunch of indoors, all the, you know, there's like a giant bar, all this stuff, know, like ice cream, things like that. Typically these places are not great food. And they had, by the they had, you could buy drinks by the gallon. Shut up. Yeah. So they had like $125 like margarita.
Gallons or half gallons where like these massive
Michael Jacober (31:49.308)I will say this place is this a place with the dollar bills hanging everywhere?
Joshua Sharkey (31:52.75)I don't know. I don't see any dollar bills.
Michael Jacober (31:56.514)looking at Cabbage Key Inn and restaurant right now. mean, looks awesome. So it looks so fun.
Joshua Sharkey (31:58.744)Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (32:03.342)It was a lot. was ton of fun. And the kids loved it. There's great ice cream there. We all ordered fish. We went there and my sister's family was like, definitely get fish. Okay. But you know, you go to these places that are right on the water, but they still are buying frozen fish from...
Michael Jacober (32:19.278)Totally. They're getting tilapia or yeah. They're not, they're not using grouper or, or snapper.
Joshua Sharkey (32:21.847)Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Sharkey (32:26.55)You can tell right away, yeah, had like mahi mahi was the, was the, the fish they have in general. that's like the mahi mahi and the Gulf shrimp were like what, what was on the menu. And then, and then they have a catch of the day and they had triple tail, which I've always called blackfish, they call it a triple tail. Great fish, incredible fish. And, man, they did such a good job. It was so good. They made rice and beans, like really good rice and beans.
some good hot sauce and this like really well cooked triple tail that they had just caught. And I was so impressed. was like, man, you didn't, this doesn't have to be good. And it, and it really is.
Michael Jacober (33:06.254)uh... how did they do the triple tell just out of curiosity
Joshua Sharkey (33:08.462)I think they just like on a sizzle tray Maybe you seared in a pan and then finished in the oven. There was a little sear on it There's just like a little you know, like a little square square filet either um, you know boiled or like seared in a pan and then finished the oven but it was really good it's funny because I was just we just released that episode where I was I mean, let's be honest. I was just totally dogging Great Wolf Lodge Where I so pissed because again the food they
Michael Jacober (33:18.392)Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (33:37.806)Yeah, the food can always be in those places. They can decide I'm going to make really great food just because or I'm not. either way, it kind of doesn't matter because you're there. a place like this where it's like gorgeous and you're on the water and there's turtles running around, coconut trees. But it was really good. So shout out to Cabbage Key. They did a really good job.
Michael Jacober (33:58.958)Yeah, it does zoom out quite a bit. thought I was in, I'm on Google maps right now. I thought I was in California, but you're on the West coast of Florida. You're just off of Fort Myers, but you're pretty far South. It looks awesome.
Joshua Sharkey (34:09.292)Yeah, I'm going on the map now. Cabbage Key, Florida. We went out from... We took our boat, yeah. Hannah's sister's husband has a really awesome boat. They spent half the time in Cudd's Island up in Ohio. And then I'm trying to see where where's Fort Myers from here? yeah, it's quite a, it was quite a trip. It was like an hour. you know what else I saw, which was awesome? Saw manatee in the water. Yeah. There was...
Michael Jacober (34:15.074)get there.
Michael Jacober (34:36.844)away.
Joshua Sharkey (34:39.214)Like there's this thing called miserable mile where like there's a mile where all the boats have to go like very, very slow. I don't remember how slow, but like very slow. And, yeah. So you got to go out through the, I'm see it now. We had to go out through what is this river called? Calooscahatchee river. That's what it was. Yeah. You got to the Calooscahatchee and then, and then you're, you know, going to the Gulf. But yeah, I saw manatee. was awesome. They look like giant platypus. How big? They're big.
Michael Jacober (34:56.874)sketchy.
Michael Jacober (35:06.744)How big are-
Joshua Sharkey (35:08.014)And his sister was like, oh, yeah, it's like a sea cow. What? And then I saw it's like, well, yes, was a big animal. Yeah, it was good. It was good. And also, didn't realize Brad Kilgore opened up a location of Oisey there. Shout out to Brad. It's like a Italian, Japanese spot. I didn't realize he had one there, but it's a town. All right. Moving on. We have the Cisco restaurant depot.
Michael Jacober (35:14.446)They're really cool.
Michael Jacober (35:36.014)Let's brush on that just because I don't know if you have any stories or affinity to restaurant, deeper, or JETRA. I used to go there a lot.
Joshua Sharkey (35:45.57)Wait, what a JETRO? Is JETRO a restaurant depot?
Michael Jacober (35:51.064)Yeah. Yeah. It's same business. It's the same company. Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (35:53.646)Yeah, I did not go there a lot, the way, but I remember like once or twice if we like ran out of something. Yeah. There's one, you know, there's one in Brooklyn, like, you know, when you're going towards Red Hook.
Michael Jacober (36:03.842)That's, yeah. I, so my first business was a food truck. You know, you'd pick up last minute, we needed oil. needed, you know, kosher salt. We needed, you know, pantry goods. They have everything, everything. They have cooking equipment. It would always shock me just how busy that business was. You'd go there any day of the week, any time of day. And it was jam packed. And it really, it seems like it's a business that caters to.
A lot of independent restaurant owners, you know, the term cash and carry, like a lot of these guys are literally coming in and using cash. Right. So.
Joshua Sharkey (36:42.702)So is the reason to, I've always tried to understand this, we've had, know, you know, lot of our self-serve customers, we see that they're using restaurant depots, things like that. Is the reason to use restaurant depot as opposed to broadliners or distributors like a Cisco, a Gordon food service, you know, a PFG or like Balador or things like that. Is the reason credit? I mean, because it's more work. You got to drive to this place. I can't imagine it's much cheaper than buying from a broadliner.
What's the reason behind going to?
Michael Jacober (37:12.782)So there's two reasons. One, there's definitely, there's definitely some price advantages. Um, if you're, if you're not, if you're a small independent and, uh, you keep super tight inventory, you know, I haven't ordered from Cisco in a lot. I shouldn't say that we do for Jersey Mike's, but that's a different story. Um, minimums like order minimums and, know, delivery fees, distribution fees.
Those are all get, those all get baked into the price of good. Uh, so there's, there's just more, there's more complexity that an operator needs to think about. Like, Oh, I, I, it's a lot easier to run a business. I'm like, this is what I need today. This is what I need today and tomorrow. Uh, especially when you're only working with like one to two delivery days from a distributor. So, uh, it's, it's, I know what I need. I need it now. Right. Those are kind of the two critical things. And I think I'm going to save a little money, obviously.
Now I need to go drive to this place. We're not, you know, contemplating our time, but, know, generally smaller scale mom and pop owners aren't necessarily thinking entirely that way. They're not thinking, you know, all right, well, now if I go drive here that I'm giving up the opportunity to, you know, be doing something else. It's, true. Like what's the value I'm getting on saving for the ingredients that I'm acquiring from a restaurant. The other is I'm, I'm bringing a cash with me. My customers pay cash.
I'm not reporting that cash. I'm going to now take this cash and I go buy ingredients with this cash. And now I'm like totally, you know, flying in the, in the dark here in terms of reporting income and reporting expenses. So I think there's probably a slew of other reasons, but those are kind of the two ones that I would see firsthand.
Joshua Sharkey (39:04.054)Yeah. mean, obviously it's better margins for the distributor because you, you know, all those logistics and deliveries of all the trucks on the road and the logistics of like where the trucks grow, when, how often, all that's very expensive to manage. Whereas these cash and carry like a restaurant depots, that's all at the window, right? So whether the prices are, are the same or not, there's, there's a huge advantage there.
Michael Jacober (39:24.695)Absolutely. Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (39:32.59)Gordon food service also has a, own version of this, which I thought was really interesting. They just had their own stores. It's funny. Cause my wife was like, we, we, we obviously like we're connected with Gordon food and my wife was like, Oh, Gordon. Yeah. I know them. We're like, really? How do you know that? You know, food distributor from Ohio. It's like, Oh, we go to the store all the time. And, they have stores that they have a lot of them. think so. So restaurant Depot has 170, 166 total stores, but then about 16 billion revenue.
Gordon has
Michael Jacober (40:06.382)100 of these stores. they have a, that's a sizable, a really sizable part of their business then.
Joshua Sharkey (40:10.638)Well, I'm reading this right here. So I'll fact check that, but it's a really great model too, because the other thing that you're seeing more of with these food distributors is dropship because they can't go everywhere. like, know, do you know how Instacart is now selling to restaurants? has a big spike in restaurant sales because last minute orders and things like that. You dropship it's a easier. It's also just delivery, but dropship is actually growing a lot as well. And that's an interesting model because if you're in a random part of
of, know, state or something. You can get drop ship and there's a lot more like SKUs available now. So it's interesting. I think it's a good play for Cisco. I don't know if there is there a, is there another competitor to restaurant Depot? I don't think there is. Like just Gordon Gordon stores is probably the only comp.
Michael Jacober (40:57.583)I don't know off the top of my head, all I can think of right now is...
Does Schatz warehouse have, do they have any locations?
Joshua Sharkey (41:08.001)Numbers
All their warehouses for Gordon food not there. Oh yeah. I mean, there's 93 of them and she got, well, yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. You're 175. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. think that's, I think that's the only other comment is a restaurant depot was Gordon foods.
Michael Jacober (41:23.256)Yeah. I think the smart move for Cisco, it's a creative, you know, they're adding, obviously they're adding a ton of profit to their business. And, you know, the word is that they're not cannibalizing their customer. It's, it's, it's, is a new customer set.
Joshua Sharkey (41:40.462)Well, it's a lot more SMB obviously. Which, yeah, think for sure they're getting a lot of the, know, the small businesses.
Michael Jacober (41:47.01)The stock didn't perform well in this news. don't know if you follow performance. Yeah, it definitely, market didn't like it.
Joshua Sharkey (41:50.497)I did not know.
Yeah. Well, yeah, think it makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised there are not more of those, I also, I don't know. mean, how many restaurants do you think are actually not accounting for their cash?
Michael Jacober (42:09.71)That's a good question. On a percentage basis? Not at scale. You can't. No. But you own one or two restaurants. If you're a single store mom and pop operator and you take cash, I would say a very high percentage are siphoning off cash and not reporting it. Yeah. Let's move on.
Joshua Sharkey (42:12.35)It's certainly not happening at scale.
Joshua Sharkey (42:28.558)Okay. All right. In our newsletter this week that goes every, you know, we send out a newsletter every Thursday and I wrote an article about sausage is a much better burger meat. So hear me out. So thinking about this for a while and I don't know why more people don't do it, but I mean, look, obviously a rare medium rare burger is awesome.
Michael Jacober (42:45.87)Alright.
Joshua Sharkey (42:57.262)and the smash burger is awesome. But I don't know you remember at bark, we had like the crispy pork sandwich. I loved it.
Michael Jacober (43:03.374)That was my favorite thing at park. I got it every time I went.
Joshua Sharkey (43:05.986)Yeah, and it's literally just sausage that's breaded and fried. And then I took that same sausage and whipped in, not whipped in, actually folded in giant chunks of grafting cheddar and smoked cheddar and then seared it on a griddle and then served it, you know, squeeze some lime on there and this super spicy habanero slaw. And it was like a pork burger. And it looked, felt like a pork burger. It was actually like a juicy Lucy, you know? But it was pork sausage, pork shoulder, pork belly.
salt, sugar, like Riesling wine and cheese and some insecure and black pepper. And that was it. But it was like, you know, mixed like a sausage. So like a balsified. So it gets like that really, you know, smooth texture. You were never worried about did I season it right? Because it's either seasoning is as a percentage of the meat. like you never had to worry about is the cook seasoning it well. You never had to worry about is it cooked completely because we had a timer.
And then we actually towards the end, we ended up like steaming them really gently. And so they would set. Or no, no, we would steam them and chill them. And on the picket, you sear it off. And actually that ended up working better because you could gently steam it. When I say steam, it's really just like cooking with a ton of moisture. And they said the cheese didn't really run out and then you could just sear them. And then we did the same thing with chicken sausage. Right. was, you know, just a chicken thigh and
Michael Jacober (44:09.07)And would you pothole them?
And then you're on the
Joshua Sharkey (44:32.654)This like, I still use it with bouillé, like roasted apples, or not sort of roasted, like, pureeing, like roasted apples with brie sling and rosemary. And then just folding that into the chicken meat, salt, you know, same thing with salt sugar. And made a chicken burger with that. Did the same thing with like folding in sriracha to make a spicy one. But the point was like, all these sort of burger patties, right, perfectly seasoned every time.
Right. Because you know, the exact percentage of salt, percentage of sugar, percentage of black pepper, whatever the seasonings that you're using. Right. And you don't have to worry about like someone like not cooking it to perfect medium rare. You need much less reliance on like toppings because the thing is seasoned so well. make at home now with these Vietnamese ones that are just like, you know, like shallot, garlic, jalapenos, cafe or lime, lemongrass, fish sauce, things like that.
Michael Jacober (45:12.419)Yeah.
Michael Jacober (45:28.248)Are you forming them, by the way? you?
Joshua Sharkey (45:29.966)So that was part of what I wrote about too. The only pain is actually forming them because they're sticky.
Michael Jacober (45:39.657)Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (45:41.708)So what we did was like an ice cream scoop. So we used like a three and a half ounce ice cream scoop.
Michael Jacober (45:47.51)And then did you use a mold?
Joshua Sharkey (45:50.094)No, no, no. So you would do you would do an ice cream scoop and then well, there's two ways we went about it. Ice cream scoop with a little oil or water. Well, so we started that way. So we started with like scoop onto the flat top and then you have the burger press that also needs to be, you know, oil or something so that doesn't stick to that. Just kind of pain. But you can use like the scraper. It was kind of a pain. That's why we ended up steaming them. The forming of them was a was a bit of a pain.
Michael Jacober (45:58.573)Flat top.
Joshua Sharkey (46:18.018)We had someone that would just like foreign them with the ice cream scoop and then use like a wax paper and press them down and then they would just be patties that were set like that. That worked fine. But it ended up like the steaming actually was that was was the best. But then they're like, you know, these perfectly seasoned patties that you can have any flavor profile you want. You can make them Southeast Asian. You can make pork sausage, chicken sausage, duck sausage, know, no casing, no casing. They're not, you know, there is some insecure there because I like to use that no matter what, just because it's
It helps with the texture and color and things. They're not like dry curing sauce. It's not like putting a bratwurst on a burger, like it's seasoned really well and you emulsify it so it's like the right texture. Cause you know, the burger, can't overwork it. know, otherwise it's going to be tough. And I think it's just a much better burger.
Michael Jacober (47:06.84)mean, just hearing you talk for the last five minutes, I think I'm gonna do that this weekend.
Joshua Sharkey (47:12.558)I'll send you my recipe right now actually for the Vietnamese one. So I do it at home and I just do it in a, I usually go to H Mart and I'll get some pork belly and shoulder because you can buy small bits of it. And then I'll freeze them and cut them into pieces. And I literally just use the, at home I just use the rubber coop. And then yeah, the seasonings, know, it's like shallot, garlic, know, capture lime, lemongrass.
Michael Jacober (47:31.598)Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (47:41.336)fish sauce, sugar, know, which a jalapeno or Thai bird and cilantro. Just blend all that together and you form into patties. I form them into patties and then I freeze them and then I have a whole bunch of these pork patties for my, whatever I want them. And then they're just great. I usually just put them on a bun with some mayo and some crispy onions and some cilantro and cucumber. Delicious.
Michael Jacober (48:04.866)look, I think it's a different product, right? It's a different product than a cheeseburger. Right? Like how do your kids, how do your kids feel about these pork patties? Like that would be my one kind of knock on them is like, are they going to be as appreciated by the kids as opposed to family smash burger night where, you know, everyone is just like racing to get to the, to the plate to try to.
pick up as many as they can. That would be my only...
Joshua Sharkey (48:36.61)I mean, it's not really like, you know, I my kids don't would never eat this.
Michael Jacober (48:41.336)Kids would not touch this.
Joshua Sharkey (48:43.31)Yeah. mean, they, but that's just because they, that flavor profile in general. Um, but I mean, they might eat the pork one. I don't know. I'd have to try with kids. It's a good point, but I just think I'm thinking more just like restaurants, you know, at scale, you know, burgers are, you know, getting a really good meat. Once you form them, they don't last that long. You can't have a burger meat for like six days in the, you can't freeze it. It's not great to freeze the, you know, to freeze them.
because the moisture comes out, but you can freeze the sausage, you know, for sure. And you don't worry about moisture coming out. You can steam them and freeze them too, which is even better. The one actually, the Austrian recipes, I use pork belly and shrimp, and then it's just like shallot, garlic, kaffir lime, so on.
Michael Jacober (49:28.086)I mean, it's almost like, it's like the, interior of a dumpling, right? It's the same, it's the same farce.
Joshua Sharkey (49:35.246)Again, like all you really need is that some mayo, lime. But it's not like it's not the same thing as a beef burger, but you know, you veggie burgers. They're basically the same thing. It's it's a, you know, a lentil sausage. And I don't love veggie burgers that way. I just think like the, I'll eat one of the, what's it, what's it called? The better. I think there's, that one's pretty good. I think and hope that we see more burgers like this because I would order it every time on a menu.
Michael Jacober (49:49.282)Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Jacober (49:55.8)Beyond.
Joshua Sharkey (50:05.358)especially it was made well, know, like pork and cheddar or something, you know, like any of these things, I would order that every time. It's also hard to trust a good burger because, you know, it's just not, not everybody has a good burger.
Michael Jacober (50:19.512)think there's probably more bad burgers than good burgers. Yeah. I'm telling you, whenever I went to bark, I, I ordered that crispy pork sandwich a hundred percent of the time. I think I might've had a hot dog like once or twice. I think if you did not have a beef burger, correct? You didn't. I wouldn't have known cause I never ordered one. I ordered that, I ordered that, that pork burger every single time.
Joshua Sharkey (50:31.758)Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (50:42.902)And by the way, so much more work for the beef burger. I mean, we got whole cows, so we would get like a whole cow from Righteous Organic and Jake Dixon would get like the ribeye. And I think just the ribeye, maybe that's it. And the tenderloin, everything else we would get and use the whole cow to make the burger meat. It was a pain in the ass. was a pain in the to make. like we could also just get, I think towards the end we actually did have somebody make those for us. But it was a lot of work, you know, and this was
Michael Jacober (50:52.792)Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (51:13.078)making the crispy pork was for the effort was not nearly as as much far more ROI on the effort because it's unique. know, get everywhere and it's like really, really good. That was branded by the way. The crispy pork was all brand. I think he got that from his time at Franny's of like a test. You guys better had like a fried test, a sandwich or something.
Michael Jacober (51:31.414)When I was there, I never saw a sandwich on the menu.
Joshua Sharkey (51:33.838)I don't think it was a sandwich. I think there was like a fried tester, like a fried head cheese kind of thing.
Michael Jacober (51:37.528)Yeah, so they probably took the, when they would make the head cheese, like inevitably towards the end of it, it would fall apart. And my guess is they would do something with, with the scraps. I didn't, I didn't ever see that though. That was before my time.
Joshua Sharkey (51:51.534)Well, I want you to try this weekend. Let me know what you think.
Michael Jacober (51:54.478)I'm going to. Yeah. Yeah. have a, we have a Italian pork store about 15 minutes from our house where we get great products. So your suggestion is belly.
Joshua Sharkey (52:06.218)I mean, I always like belly and shoulder for a sausage. If I'm using shrimp and pork, then I'll do just pork belly and shrimp. know, you get all the fat from the belly and the shrimp is, you know, doesn't have a lot of fat. I'm a big fan of shrimp and pork, or like sausage.
Michael Jacober (52:18.187)Yeah, yeah.
I'll report back next week.
Joshua Sharkey (52:24.238)The other thing that's nice to do for those is I use like galangal and ginger in there too. Galangal's like in the same family as ginger. It's a little bit more pungent than ginger. It looks and feels a lot like ginger. And you can use just ginger, but I use both and I burn them in a cast iron pan or over a fire. I have the, it hasn't been in my new place, but we have a yakitori grill in the kitchen. we have like a sick, have, there's eight.
Fireplaces now so well, there's one fireplace in the kitchen. That's like more of like a cooking cooking over over fire Put the cornrow grill in there. And so I'll just like and be and below is all of the pinch of time charcoal So like, you know, we go to throw some bitch ton in there and it's great for like that too It's like burning so like I'll like basically like burn the ginger and the galangal and and even like the cilantro roots You almost burn them in the shallot, too
Michael Jacober (52:59.117)Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (53:21.134)And it gives a really nice complexity. That's how I make the Khao Soi as well. Just like, you really like burning. And works really well, but it's great for the song. It gives it like a really nice, you know, like a pretty cool flavor. Yeah, I'll send it to you, but well, this was fun.
Michael Jacober (53:32.654)Yeah. Sweet. This good. I'm glad we had it on a cooking rant.
Joshua Sharkey (53:39.564)Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. I mean, by the way, is there any update on Gladys?
Michael Jacober (53:44.568)There is, we are, this is going to happen. It looks like it's very much going to happen. As of right now, we're looking for the right operating partner. And we've kind of made the decision to outsource the operations as opposed to, you know, doing all the hiring and staffing, obviously ourselves. I think, you know, me not being in Brooklyn or in the city anymore.
It just, I think it would be too hard. So we're just, currently in like sort of like the interview stage of finding the right, the right operating partner. But what's great is, the original chef wants to come back and run the kitchen. So it sort of eliminates that whole side from the operating partner, you know, stepping in. So I.
It's it. It'll be so fun if we can make this happen. Yeah, I can't. That restaurant was such a great restaurant and I think it it should be it should come back. It should have.
Joshua Sharkey (54:43.446)Yeah, I agree. Well, I'm excited for that. Yeah. Alright, Holmes.
Michael Jacober (54:47.598)Alright dude.
Joshua Sharkey (54:49.208)Good chatting with you again.
Michael Jacober (54:52.78)Likewise.
Joshua Sharkey (54:54.978)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 getmes.com slash Josh. That's G-E-T-M double E-Z slash J-O-S-H. I have my podcast there, The Mese 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 getmes.com slash Josh. G-E-T-M.
Thank you very much. Very grateful for all of you.
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