Josh Sharkey (07:35.054)Hehehehe.
Matthew (07:58.155)and
Keith Benjamin (08:03.547)we would go set up and we would have no less than 500 to 750 people come from our kind of Greek life circles, lacrosse, soccer, intercollegiate athletics, all the athletes that weren't playing kind of in the fall season would come to our tailgates. And I then became the tailgates are in the social chair. And I moved to the lacrosse house, which was affectionately known as the Beagle. And that's a story for
another day, you know, we would throw these these huge parties and when I graduated Penn State, there was a piece of me with a degree in broadcast journalism.
I said to myself, I have two choices here. One is to move to South Dakota to pursue my love for being on television and holding the microphone. And perhaps I have to report on college sports in the middle of nowhere and then find my way back to the East Coast and be someone relevant in the sports world and the sports broadcasting world. But that really wasn't for me.
Another option was actually going to coach College of Crosse. Michael and I had a coach which we loved, Lars Tiffany, and I had talked to who's now the head coach at University of Virginia and has won two national championships. And I had spoken to him about coaching La Crosse, but that was, you know, a GA position making $15,000 a year plus room and board in Providence, Rhode Island when he was coaching Brown. That wasn't for me. And kind of the next thing was like, you know, why don't I start bartending in New York?
and see kind of where that leads me. And, you know, I had some family friends that were in the business who were running bars at the time and still run the same bars to this day, known very familiarly as Off the Wagon, Down the Hatch, 13th Step.
Matthew (09:42.998)Hahaha!
Josh Sharkey (09:59.939)yeah.
Keith Benjamin (10:03.017)which opened in 2010, this would have been 2006, but the Stumble In, Gin Mill, Jake's Dilemma, Hair of the Dog, so on and so forth. So true New York City watering holes, institutions.
Matthew (10:16.14)So you had three choices, but you only had one really good choice. And that was bartending, baby. Love it, love it.
Keith Benjamin (10:19.673)Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And at the same time, I took a job working for the aforementioned Lonnie Sweet, who we all know fairly well on this call. I don't know if Michael knows him, but Lonnie was working for a sports marketing agency called MSL. And they were doing a bunch of things, but one of the things was throwing huge
MJ (10:19.911)the
Keith Benjamin (10:42.459)attempting to throw huge large scale events around spring football games, which really kind of spoke to me. And I jumped on board with Lonnie to work on those events. Those events never actually came to fruition. And the company that we were working for folded in 2008 during the economic crisis. So I went to my buddy who was running off the wagon where I was part-time bar backing, part-time bartending. I said, listen,
you know, my real job no longer exists. And I'm making some good cash on McDougal Street in the heart of the village. Is there anything that might be a little bit more permanent for me right now? And he said, there's not at off the wagon, we're in the process of turning Moe's Caribbean on the corner of 76th Street and Second Avenue. I love the smile there, Josh.
Josh Sharkey (11:35.053)Yeah.
Keith Benjamin (11:39.593)which opened in 1991, fast forward to 2008, we're in the process of turning Moe's Caribbean into the Stumble Inn. And we would love for you to be a part of that opening team as a bartender and you can kind of make ends meet until you figure out what your next step is in the real world. And I said, sure, whatever, that works for me.
So I took that opportunity and I was making, I mean, listen, we know the term golden handcuffs and what that can mean in our industry. I started making $2,000 cash a week in 2008 as a 24, 25 year old. The majority of my friends were all in finance, unemployed. There were no real, true, great.
know, corporate sports marketing jobs to be had at the time. And like most of us do, kind of.
No pun intended, but we stumble into this vocation and we fall in love with it for one reason or another. But all of a sudden I found myself back in the heart of the party. Right. There was, there was all of this energy at the time in 2008 in these bars that were really affordable and have always been really affordable. Because if you looked around Manhattan and you looked around the landscape at the time when, so many people were unemployed and not able to really pay their bills, you know, there was one constant and that was
that was the local watering hole, right? The affordable watering hole. And so a place like the Stumble Inn or off the wagon, you know, we had lines around the block where perhaps the more upscale establishments were really struggling. And...
Matthew (13:20.374)Very interesting, very interesting.
Keith Benjamin (13:22.503)Yeah, yeah, it was wild. It was a wild time and it really kind of, it didn't make sense and it made sense all at the same time. And so I had my now business partners approached me and said, hey, do you want to manage the StumbleIn? And I had never been in the industry up until this point and I certainly had never managed a restaurant or a bar.
you know, we all know that the folks in our industry that make money are not the folks that are managing restaurants, right? Or managing bars, they're behind the bar. And so I needed to make sure that I was gonna not take a pay cut by doing that. And there was some sort of a hybrid role between working behind the bar and working on the floor. But more kind of, you know, critical than that was the way my parents felt about it.
You know, here I am working three days a week on the Upper East Side, you know, crushing it, making money hand over fist. Like I said, a whole lot of cash. And I told my parents that these guys asked me to manage the bar. And they said, well, you know, Keith, we didn't send you to Penn State to manage a bar. That's not what we were looking for here. And my parents didn't agree on much, as Michael knows, he knew them well. They passed.
with both of them within the past six years, but they didn't agree on much. They were divorced, but they did agree on one thing at that time. And that was that they did not want me, they did not want me bartending for a living. And so they said, Keith, if you want to do this, we will support you under one condition and one condition only. And that's that there's a real future here. That if you,
MJ (14:50.311)You
Matthew (14:52.258)Smart parents.
Keith Benjamin (15:05.929)bartend and then manage that there needs to be another step that you would take to either own or operate or both, you your own establishments. And I made sure through lots of conversations with the leadership, with the partners at the time, that that would be an opportunity afforded to me. And fast forward to 2011, I'm gonna kind of speed this story up a little bit.
bought in a very small percentage owner at the Stumble Inn. I bought 2 % of the business at the time. We then signed a lease for what is now known as Hair of the Dog a year later. I went down there as the operating partner to open Hair of the Dog. We came out of the gates rip roaring. We opened three weeks before Hurricane Sandy.
know, closed for a week and then, you know, haven't looked back since. We certainly had some headwinds that we faced kind of around the pandemic. But that's many restaurants and bars all around the world, you know, certainly in New York City and the Lower East Side, which has now rebounded quite well in the last year or so. And then, you know, shortly after that, I would say two, three years after I got bored, guys. I was like, you know,
Hair the dog's crushing, but I'm sitting in an office that looks like this in the basement of a bar on the Lower East Side and I'm 33 years old and my marriage, my first marriage isn't going so hot and I'm like, gosh.
Matthew (16:36.66)Let's move to an even more boring place and do the same thing.
Keith Benjamin (16:39.241)What am I going to do next? And how am I really gonna blow the roof off this thing, right? At the time I was operating a bar and making good money, but under an umbrella, which is known as Eat, Drink, Be Merry, which had started in 1991.
by Mitch Banchik and Michael Ashe. They have done quite well over the years, but this was their dream. New York was their dream. And I needed to chart a path of my own. And I had been married in Charleston. My first wedding where Michael was the officiant was in Charleston. Destination wedding, knew nothing about it, came down here, fell in love with the town.
kind of bar hopped a little bit here and there and was like, man, there's some openings here. There's some gaps in the market in terms of nightlife. And the first call that I made in 2015 was to the one and only Michael Jacobar. And as my best friend, confidant, brother, I wanted to pick his brain as to what he thought might be in the cards for me in South Carolina.
And not only did Michael fully support the idea of taking this massive leap of faith by coming down here and opening my own place, but he said that he would partner with me if the guys that I was currently partnered with in New York were not interested. So he said, why don't you have that conversation with them? if they're not interested, I'm in, let's go take a trip.
So I pitched Mitch and Michael, said, listen, this is what I wanna do, this is why I wanna do it, this is the research that I've done. And they didn't hesitate, they were like, this is fucking brilliant. This is brilliant, why not? Let's go take a look. And over the course of a year, we had conversations and we went down in spring of 2016. Matt knows the weather quite well in April in Charleston, it's as pristine as it gets.
Keith Benjamin (18:51.913)We got off a plane, it was a bluebird day. And we said, you know, we said, not here? This is where we belong. We then.
Matthew (19:01.013)So did you sell, eventually sell your partnerships in New York or are you still involved in those businesses?
Keith Benjamin (19:06.695)No, I'm still passively invested in four of our locations in New York City.
Matthew (19:12.217)So you never severed ties there, you just started something new but it has nothing to do with them here. That is a little bit of confusion that I've heard around people who know your past is like, is he still involved up there? So that's an interesting note. You are still involved, you just don't work there, you're just a silent investor.
Keith Benjamin (19:17.395)correct.
Keith Benjamin (19:22.93)Yes.
Yes.
Keith Benjamin (19:29.769)Correct, and I guide and assist a little bit with marketing, branding, social media stuff, but that is one of my strengths, but really, Charlson's my focus.
Matthew (19:41.943)And then your first location here was Uptown Social.
Keith Benjamin (19:44.647)Yeah, so we signed the lease for Uptown Social. Funny enough, when we came down, we're like, we're looking for a place that's about the size of Hare the Dog, which is 2,500 square feet, huge basement on the Lower East Side, lots of storage, and downstairs. What we realized, which Matt knows quite well, Charleston doesn't have basements. So we're in a major, major flood zone, which is why it's known as the Low Country.
Matthew (20:05.497)floods.
Keith Benjamin (20:13.929)quickly realized that 2,500 square feet wouldn't cut it, and so we needed a lot more space. There wasn't really kind of this 5,000 square foot option, so we said, well, shit, let's just go big. And it was kind of my cards kind of on the table, chips in the middle of the table moment. I said, I'm all in. And it was a $5 million build in 2016, 2017. opened.
Matthew (20:38.873)Fuck. That hurts. That hurts to hear.
Keith Benjamin (20:43.613)We, well, it hurt then. It doesn't hurt so much now because the place has been an absolute behemoth. It is what I would call in our industry, a unicorn. It has crushed, crushed. Every single button we push there is the right button.
Matthew (20:45.933)Mwahaha!
MJ (21:06.042)You
Keith Benjamin (21:12.935)We were actually one of the very few beneficiaries of the pandemic here in Charleston. Matt moved here at that time, but you know, Charleston was wide open and people were coming from all parts of the United States to party here in Charleston, South Carolina, because it was open for business. And so what that meant for us was that, you know, the biggest party bar in town would really would thrive and do quite well. So what, what
Uptown Social led to was then a pop-up called Bodega, which was inspired from my time in New York City, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, which Mike has helped us quite a bit on kind of building out that brand and that concept. And we opened Bodega and Sharehouse in the same building, which is I'm currently sitting in right now, 23 Anne Street. It's a long railroad, old, long railroad building. It's an old
depot dating back to 1849. And when you, when you talk about just the crazy history of the South, this, this was a train depot where slaves would come into, to the port. They would jump on the train here in the very building I'm sitting in and they would make their way up North. I mean, it's, it's just, it's, it's wild. the, the, the conservation of the, the, the buildings and the architecture here in Charleston.
has really kind of allowed for guys like Matt and I to take old buildings and turn them into something very new and something different, right? And I know Tipling House, I don't know what it was before Tipling House, but I would imagine people lived there at some point. They still do, right. It's a really neat building that Matt.
Matthew (22:55.341)They still do, above us.
Matthew (23:00.331)And I think a lot of people, maybe not from around the country, but maybe, but definitely like in Charleston would know the share house bodega space as the space that...
The chef from New York, Damon Wise, came down to open a multi-concept business that was very short-lived here. But that little railroad train area, people knew of that space because it's a little bit awkward. And Keith has turned it into something that's pretty fucking dope, given what it is. It's like repurposing something in a very cool way.
Keith Benjamin (23:41.385)I appreciate that, Matt, thank you. So yeah, we opened Sharehouse and Bodega in 2022. We opened a second Bodega location in Mount Pleasant, which is certainly more suburban in 2024. We then opened a very cool kind of neighborhood tavern called By The Way, which is a block from from Tipling House in late 2024 as well.
And that's a really cool kind of, we joke that if you graduate from Uptown Social and Sharehouse, you're gonna make your way over to By the Way. It's just a place where a handful of 40-somethings like us would go on our own or take our wives, get a nice, feel comfortable, get a nice cocktail, a really simple but tasty bite to eat and not feel like it's more than it is.
Matthew (24:15.257)Huh.
Matthew (24:23.331)Feel comfortable.
Matthew (24:33.133)When I didn't have glasses and I had more hair, I felt much more comfortable at Uptown Social and now I'm more of a by the way guy.
Keith Benjamin (24:41.171)There we go. That's what we're going for.
Matthew (24:44.129)I think there's some topics that we're gonna wanna jump into, but I do wanna say that I think to shorten everything that you just said, like from my vantage point, I don't know you as well as Mike does. Obviously you guys go way back. You and Josh have a relationship. From my vantage point of being here, you're a hustler. Whether it's hustling beers back in college, Natty ice locked in cages all the way through to, again, having the idea to open a...
New York style bagel breakfast spot. Like you're a hustler. You see an opportunity, whether it's, you know, a demographic and age group, a style of food, and you want to pounce on it. And maybe not everything's been the fire of burning money that Uptown Social is, but very few things are. And you know that better than anybody. But at the end of the day, you're always willing to take a shot and see where that falls. You've gotten into some catering. So basically, sure, you kind of become the nightlife goon.
of Charleston, but you also have some breakfast space, party space, some other things.
Josh Sharkey (25:50.168)Yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious. By the way, do I?
Keith Benjamin (25:52.957)then we opened a wedding and event venue last May called the Waverly, which is, you know, a gorgeous, refined, was an old pizza brew pub that we turned into a wedding event space. So it's, you know, we, I wear far, far more hats than I ever did. I'm not sure it was, it was the brightest, but certainly we've certainly hustled to get there,
Josh Sharkey (26:15.034)Do you remember, I always think about entrepreneurs, I actually wasn't this way as a kid, but so many of them were. we're all, I think all of us are probably serial entrepreneurs, we just keep building things. But as a kid, did you do that? Were you selling lemonade and shit like that?
Matthew (26:15.098)Sure.
Keith Benjamin (26:34.247)Yeah, mean, I had a, Mike knows my brother Tyler. My brother Tyler and I were just laughing the other day because we were reminiscing on when I bought a piece of felt and had a blackjack table. And I don't know if that's entrepreneurial or not, but I had a blackjack table in my junior and senior year of high school where we would have basement parties just like we all did. And I would break out the felt and I would steal cards. I was never up or down more than a couple hundred bucks.
But you know, listen, I'm an ADD kid and you know, Mike knows me back to those days. I was one of the first ever diagnosed Ritalin or ADD kids, one of the first ever prescribed Ritalin kids in 1991, 1992. And I took meds straight through actually until Mike and I were playing lacrosse at Penn State. I actually, I don't even know if you know this Mike, but I...
I'm digressing a bit here, but I was on Adderall at the time when I got into college and I felt like my decision making on the field was affected by my taking Adderall. And so I stopped, I stopped taking, literally cold turkey, I'd been on it for 15 years, 18 years, I don't even know, no, 15, whatever. I stopped cold turkey in college because I felt like it was affecting me as an athlete.
MJ (27:56.263)I didn't know that.
Keith Benjamin (27:59.145)And I haven't taken it since, but I've done a lot of work on myself over the years. I still to this day, actually earlier today, spoke with my therapist and we've done a lot of work on ADD and ADHD people being some of the most kind of entrepreneurial minded people in the world. And if you want to get something done or you want to design something new, it's like give it to someone with ADD because they will stop at nothing to get it done. Now it might take them
you know, a little while to get there. You know, they kind of ping pong back and forth. But there's this idea of really kind of wanting to beat to our own drum. And I certainly kind of, I've lived that life.
Matthew (28:39.738)you
Josh Sharkey (28:44.89)Yeah, it's funny. I talked to my therapist about this a lot as well because I'm always like why do I keep fucking doing this? I keep trying to build new things and doing things that are just like Way, you know super challenging and I'm always like, just you know, want to I want to I want to be better I want to do more but it's a compulsion, know There's definitely something there that that's like a compulsion where you just can't stop thinking and like your brain just never stops whether it's like, okay I got to go now solve another problem or
MJ (28:49.671)Thank
Josh Sharkey (29:13.88)you know, at night you're just like, okay, yeah, you know what, we should do that. And why am I doing it this way? I'm gonna, I gotta tell my team tonight, I'm gonna send them this thing. And it's like a constant all day, every day thing. It's, it's, it, I think it's a good thing. And also we probably, as we get older, realize like, you also have to figure out a turnoff button at some point. If you've got kids and things like that, that's at least for me.
Keith Benjamin (29:31.591)Totally. I mean, and my therapist has said that, like no one to say when.
Josh Sharkey (29:37.454)Yeah, yeah, by the Mike, don't know if it's you or Matt, there's some noise there.
MJ (29:43.495)think it's Mr. Conway.
Josh Sharkey (29:47.524)Let me see. Yep, it's you, Matt. It's probably just something outside, but you got some fuzz there. Well, anyways, yeah, we brought up some topics. I totally disagree with Matt last week about some beer conversations we were having. I want to jump into that first.
Matthew (30:10.01)So let me just set that right there. But we'll ask the question really simply because it's all how it started and we can go from there. I wanted to have someone with lots of beer sales as a guest, as we were thinking through our ideas. Because last two weeks ago when I was in New York for a day, I was looking for a place to just rest, change my shirt before I was getting in my car back to LaGuardia. I went into a bar on
second at First Avenue that I'd never heard of before in the middle of the daytime. I asked him if he had any beer. He said he had Guinness on draft. I said, do you have anything by the can? And he said, yes, Modelo. And I said, oh, cool, I'll take a can of Modelo. Changed my shirt in the bathroom, came back out, crushed the Modelo, called the car, asked for the check, and it was $8.97 on a little handheld pre-tip.
So my first reaction was, let me just text a few buddies that buy beer in New York to see how much a can of Modelo costs because maybe it's gone up crazy. And I got two answers, but they're both a dollar, a dollar seven and a dollar 13. And I find that...
Matthew (31:28.482)reprehensible for people who wanna build drinking culture and I found out later this is kind of a fancy cocktail bar by night. so, you maybe they just, but like, even if you're selling fancy cocktails to not give somebody a speed bump. okay, no, no, no. I'll just, go ahead.
Keith Benjamin (31:38.259)Thank you.
Josh Sharkey (31:42.938)All right, hold on, Matt, you're leading the witness here. Hold on. You're leading it like, because you're sharing your, so the question here, Keith, is, is it okay to charge $8 for a beer that costs you a dollar? Matt thinks no. I think it's a, you know, like that's, it's a free market. You can choose to charge eight. You can choose to charge four. Whatever experience providing will mean that like, that's what people will pay. If they don't want to pay, it'll go somewhere else. And it's not.
MJ (31:45.371)Yeah, yeah.
Matthew (32:08.287)Nobody here is gonna argue that it's not a free market. all know that. So that doesn't, let's just let him answer the question. We're all aware that you can charge whatever you want from Adela. The question is how Keith feels about it.
Josh Sharkey (32:12.962)Yes, what I mean is that it's reprehensible, I think is... Okay.
MJ (32:21.159)Can I, well, before he answers that question, I, mean, Keith got very, from what I recall from a few years ago, you became like a real beer connoisseur. Are you still into the category as much as you were, call it five, six years ago, or has it sort of waned a little bit?
Josh Sharkey (32:21.497)Let's start there.
Keith Benjamin (32:43.145)That's a good question. These are all great questions. The answer to that, Mike, is I've not as much of a... I've never been a connoisseur. I've been a fan. I'm a fan of beer. I like to drink beer. I enjoy beer. And in fact, I've had a lot of conversations with friends recently just about drinking in general, right? And this is a whole different discussion, right?
My dad was an alcoholic, he was sober 26 years before he passed away. It's always something I've paid close attention to. I've had several friends in my orbit who have stopped drinking cold turkey, whether they've had a problem with it or just for health and wellness. And I've had some introspective discussions with myself and with friends like Mike where I'm like, why do I continue to drink? And it's, don't drink crazy amounts, but I like to drink. And the answer I always come back to is because I really enjoy it.
Right? I just, I just, don't have a real problem with it, but I really enjoy it. The way Mike, sorry, the way Matt enjoys drinking wine and loves wine and loves learning about wine and loves living wine. I don't know that much about beer or anything for that matter. You're, you're an expert in wine. Maybe I'm an expert nightlife, but I just like beer. I like beer. I like, I love drinking a Guinness. I've loved drinking Guinness for 15 years. I don't want to stop drinking Guinness. I love drinking IPAs.
Now I can't drink too many, because then you start to get real fucking fat, real fast. But IPAs are delicious. Now IPAs, yeah, they had their moment. I think that craft beer moment has certainly kind of come and gone a little bit, but I still love it. To answer your question, Josh.
Matthew (34:10.26)Fat and fucked up.
Matthew (34:22.959)How do you feel when you get hit with the $9 beer? How does that, a Modelo, not a craft beer, a Modelo. How does that make you feel?
Keith Benjamin (34:29.897)We all need to charge what we need to charge in order to not only thrive, but survive as owners and operators, right? So who are you, Matt, or me, or Josh, or Mike to say what the P &L looks like at that?
restaurant bar nightclub lounge, right? We have no clue. We don't know what their cost of goods sold is. We don't know if they're a little bit more food heavy. We don't know if they have to pay their staff, you know, instead of 15 an hour, they're paying 22 an hour. We don't know what their kitchen looks like. We don't know what fucking insurance looks like, which Matt and I, you know, Mike knows quite well. I've talked to him and Matt, Matt and I know that the insurance landscape in the state of South Carolina is the worst in the country. And so you need to make those margins up
somewhere, somehow, right? That Modelo, you know, it's far less about the cost of goods sold or what you're buying that Modelo for. It's far more what the full package looks like and what the needs are as the operator, as the owner of that restaurant, bar, nightclub, wine spot, et cetera. So I think that that person is well within their right to charge $8 for the Modelo plus tax. think that, or I know that if you went to Uptown Social,
you would probably have a somewhat similar experience. know, the cost of doing business now in 2026 has had me think twice about doing this altogether because it's just so darn difficult to earn a living doing what we do now.
Matthew (36:07.611)Do you charge $9 for a Modelo 12 ounce can?
Josh Sharkey (36:07.748)So.
Keith Benjamin (36:11.923)Go buy a beer later today.
Josh Sharkey (36:13.572)So I think it's more than just knowing the p- like even if you knew the entire P &L
Keith Benjamin (36:17.481)Matt, answer is yes. If you go to By the Way, By the Way.
Matthew (36:21.115)Do you charge, do you have a beer on the menu that's significantly less than that for college kids?
Keith Benjamin (36:27.145)Well, we're never properly, you know, we get this kind of rep as, you know, catering to college kids. We're late night spots in the top tourist destination in the country, which also has an 11,500 student campus right in the middle of town. The College of Charleston is right here now. Of those students, let's say a third of those are 21.
But our bread and butter is not the college. Our bread and butter are the locals, kind of the Gen Z slash kind of millennials in their mid 30s to tourists. And there's 8 million tourists a year that come through the Charleston airport. They're getting off an airplane with just like we all do, right? If you're coming to Charleston,
The idea is that it's a luxury destination. When you get off an airplane in Charleston, you're willing to spend what it costs to have a good time. Now, I book seven figures in entertainment a year at Uptown Social and Sharehouse. Seven figures, and that's my cost, right? And-
Matthew (37:41.903)Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the question is, and maybe you don't know off the top of your head, which is fine, do you have a $4 PBR or a $3 Miller High Life? Everything's nine bucks.
Keith Benjamin (37:50.697)No, I do know about 650 is my least expensive beer and it's a Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light.
Josh Sharkey (37:57.804)But Matt, my argument here is that charging whatever you charge is so that you can do whatever you're trying to accomplish. Keith has a number of very successful restaurants. It costs money to run those, and you need to do certain things to make sure it's consistent. You've to do all kinds of stuff to take care of your team. And you have to be sustainable enough that you can actually continue to grow and invest. And people can choose whatever they want to charge and
At the end of the day, it's either going to work or not. don't, my point is more that nothing is reprehensible in terms of what you charge. You could charge a thousand dollars for a Miller Highlife at a restaurant where you come in and Giselle Bunshin is there to sit down at the table with you and you just get to have a conversation with her and all you're doing is get that and you can charge whatever you want for whatever you're going to choose and people can just come or not come.
Keith Benjamin (38:49.811)But Josh, the market dictates that, right? So if you go...
Josh Sharkey (38:52.504)Yeah, exactly. People will either go or not go.
Matthew (38:53.819)Sure, and there's a lot of things that I can't get away with with wine. There's a lot of things that I can't get away with with-
Josh Sharkey (38:57.796)That was a terrible reference by the way.
MJ (38:59.367)I thought it was great. I thought you were going another direction, but I...
Josh Sharkey (39:04.191)My mind was like don't say something that will cancel me. What's a
Keith Benjamin (39:06.909)Hahaha!
Matthew (39:09.189)There's a lot of things that I can't get away with with wine sales, for instance, that you could get away with, with like.
If I put a wine on my buy the glass list, that was something that's well known to general consumers, which I don't, but let's say that I did, and I charge normal buy the glass markups for that, it would offend people at their core because they know how much they pay for that retail. And they say things like, I buy this bottle at Harris Teeter for 10.99 and you're charging $14 a glass. That doesn't seem right. But in the beer context, people know that they can get a Modelo at a dive bar for four bucks and that they're maybe paying for it
because they're, they wanna have the nightlife and the experience and the live music or the vibe of uptown social. I get that. More importantly, like the whole argument y'all made last week of it's capitalist, it's a free market. Like I'm not fucking stupid. Like I understand that. The value of my point is.
Beer is something that, like how many more shots could you sell if you had a beer that you could chase it down with? That's not $9. Therefore, how many more beers would you sell? By the mathematics of any restaurant operation, whether it's fast casual, nightlife, whatever, everybody has a scale of what their bigger markups are on so that they can end up meeting the bottom lines that they need to make to be successful or at least break even. My point is,
is the $9 Modelo is the most egregious eyesore of that. That it's, that's the most obvious, you're fucking me just to fuck me. Why can't I just have a $3 Paps? Like I'm trying to make my way through my night.
MJ (40:45.511)Well, let's...
Josh Sharkey (40:45.636)But again, think there's a difference between reprehensible and a decision because it might be that, know what? Like you can go get a Highlife anywhere. If you want it here, it's going to be $15. But I have this insane wine that you can't get anywhere or maybe you can, but I'm only going to mark it up to this because that's a decision. have the same, by the way, I might have the same margin.
Matthew (41:05.008)but I'm trying to get more people into the sphere of drinking. And last week you guys said, fuck them, go to a bodega. And earlier in Keith's intro, he talked about building bars based off of a time where people didn't have money and they wanted to come out and drink. And last week you guys argued that the fact that the cost of drinking out is so expensive isn't a major reason why drinking consumption is down. And I pulled stats all week long, which I'm not gonna bore our viewers with, that that's just.
It is a major factor. The price of going out.
Josh Sharkey (41:36.024)Yeah, but I also think Matt, like the...
MJ (41:37.415)It's about it's about getting bodies in the door, right? So that's ultimately what you're you're arguing you're saying If I if I have a cheaper beer, right if I have a cheaper sort of initial offering I'm going to attract people into my door where I can then have the opportunity to sell that Whatever what whatever you want to call it whatever you want to call it
Matthew (41:54.459)It's not cheaper, it's priced properly. There's a difference.
Josh Sharkey (41:57.882)But Matt, think there's also an argument, there's also an argument that like, I don't think it's, we don't want people to just consume alcohol to consume alcohol. There's a difference between enjoying a Guinness or a, know, a Chave Saint Joseph versus a Miller Highlife. And yeah, you could say, yep, I enjoy Miller Highlife, I like that, but you're like, you're kind of down like for those. And like, you're not like thinking about like the, like who made this and why it's special. It's like, I'm just crushing a Miller Highlife. That's okay, by the way, but like.
Matthew (42:27.854)but what I was talking about last week that I think is important when you're getting on a boat, when I'm going from lunch to a wine event and everybody's gathering together and you want to crush a beer, which may be my own small little 1 % of drinkers life, but like you grab yourself four four to cut days at a bar on your way to the next stop and it's $57 before tip. And you're like, wait, I just ordered four to cut days. That to me seems wrong.
Josh Sharkey (42:27.874)If you're saying, want people to drink more.
MJ (42:54.098)Yeah, you just you just went to the wrong bar. You went to the wrong bar. That's all I'll say. You I think you I think you walked into the wrong bar and you got turned off by being at the by having a different expectation of what you were what you thought you were getting. And then when you got your check, let me ask Keith a pointed question here, which is just generally around pricing. How do Keith, how when you think about your establishments and you have like
Matthew (42:58.798)In New York City, are not, again.
MJ (43:23.543)We have a lot of different establishments at this point. How do you think about pricing when it comes to your lower end products, your Bud Light, your Miller Light, your mid tier products, your food? What is the pricing philosophy around either optimizing for profitability or simultaneously getting people in the door? You're clearly able to get people in the door at pretty much all of your establishments. Obviously, uptown.
You know, you're doing it through entertainment, right? You're doing it through live entertainment. You're doing it through a critical mass of like just people showing up and feeling really good being around other people, which just brings up the entire vibe. Like people want to be around that. So once you. Yeah. Let me just ask you, like, what is the pricing philosophy on profitability as well as as well as just getting general traffic in?
Keith Benjamin (44:20.201)Sure, it's kind of a multifaceted approach and every concept slightly different. mean, Uptown and Sherri House are most similar, but.
MJ (44:26.183)Yeah.
Keith Benjamin (44:36.157)But Sharehouse is off King Street, so it doesn't have the location, location, If Uptown's an A-plus location, Sharehouse as a nightlife venue is a C-plus location. It's tucked away off King Street, even a half a block, to Matt's point, it's a weird layout, it's a weird location, so we have to be cognizant of that. We certainly try to keep a certain liquor cost in mind.
you know, at Uptown, our super, you know, bar heavy spots like an Uptown Social, you know, we like to be at about 10 to 11 % liquor cost, which sounds crazy to most traditional restaurant operators and having, you know, now opening bodegas, which is not as obviously very little booze, Bloody Marys and Moses.
Matthew (45:16.349)Yeah, it sounds crazy
Keith Benjamin (45:31.591)by the way is far more food than percentage wise than Uptown and Sharehouse. So I know what a realistic liquor cost is, know, 18, 19, 20%.
So for our volume spots, that's where we need to stay. the price often, you guys know, it's math, right? It's math. It's volume and it's cost of goods sold. And then you look at obviously labor that it takes to sell that, look at entertainment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we now have eight years of data at Uptown Social. And as you guys are experts in this industry, you look year over year.
see where your costs lie. see, know, competition's important. It's very important. So Uptown and Sharehouse are the two biggest nightlife venues in Charleston, but we also have to pay attention to the spots that are fairly busy around us. We have to look at places that do well during the day with sports, what our costs look like compared to those guys.
And this is more of a concern for our locals because once again, when the tourists get off the airplane, they're willing to pay what it costs. That doesn't mean I can charge 20 bucks for Modelo. You still need to be, I believe that you still need to be at a reasonable and you might disagree, Matt, you do disagree. You think $8 for Modelo is unreasonable. I would say if you went around Charleston to a few different bars and let's keep out like the real dives, you're probably
Matthew (46:44.667)Sure.
Keith Benjamin (47:06.506)going to be between seven and eight for Modelo at this point. But once again, the market has to dictate that at a place like, by the way, there's competition in that space all over town. And you look at Felix, you look at La Cove, you look at Seahorse, which is a phenomenal cocktail bar by the Chubbyfish guys.
You look at Madison Maison, but these are just like, you know, nicer kind of not super fine dining spots, but nicer cocktail spots with good food. And you gotta be right in the same ballpark as those guys.
Josh Sharkey (47:45.848)Yeah, Keith, how often are you actually thinking about price updates? And also, how do you do this competitive analysis? Are you literally just going to these places often?
Keith Benjamin (47:57.179)Yeah, I mean, mostly it's just going out.
you know, Matt and I run into each other a good bit, but I like to, have three kids and I still try to get out. My wife and I, you know, there's this stigma when you live in Mount Pleasant, which is over the bridge. you don't go downtown. It's too busy. mean, my wife and I, we only come downtown. This is where we want to spend our time and our money. I love supporting, you know, fellow restaurateurs and nightlife folks and wine folks. know, Matt and I don't own the same places, but we run in the same circles. His wife is the event
Matthew (48:10.865)Hahaha!
Matthew (48:20.007)Me too.
Keith Benjamin (48:29.755)planner for, you know, my favorite restaurant in town, Leon's, Little Jackson Melfi's, but Leon's is their their primo event space. We're you know, it's a small town. So yes, it's just getting out and experience it, experience it, experiencing it for myself. And then I'm on a bar chat with 20 bar guys in town. And we'll just say, what does everybody charge? I mean, it's like, you know, I'm either going to walk in and order a Modelo or I'm just going to ask you,
Matthew (48:46.429)Peace.
Keith Benjamin (48:59.595)what you charge for your Modela. But we're all.
Matthew (49:01.645)So when I first bring in Leon's, when I first got here, my buddy used to take me to Leon's all the time and they do buckets of High Life Ponies where you get six ponies and a little wine bucket with ice. And it was five bucks for the six ponies when we first got here. I think it's up to 14 and that's in five years. And yeah, they're looking.
Keith Benjamin (49:19.441)And I will say, Matt, look.
Matthew (49:21.533)They're looking at their bottom line year over year and they're increasing that margin and everybody has to survive. I can leave the point here because I've beaten it to death because everybody has disagreeing opinions. It's not that I think the Modelo has to be $5.
It's not a Modelo specific thing. My thought process is that you should be able to have a beer on your menu that one, I don't care whether it's Modelo or what beer it is that resonates with you. At Mark Forgione, we had highlives of beer for $5 throughout our entire Michelin starred fine dining experience and called listed it as the champagne of beer. And it was the only beer that we had that was less than $10 because every cook.
that works a 12 hour shift should be able to go to your bar and have something that can actually afford to drink. And it doesn't have to be something you show a lot. And nobody can sit here and argue to me having run as many restaurants I have and drinking out as much as I have. To Mike's point, you said, maybe you just don't know what bars you're going into. I probably drink out of bars more than anybody on this stage here. I know where I'm going and I know what I'm paying. What I'm saying is you have to, giving that opportunity for that one person, whether it's the cook that worked a 12 hour shift or the sommelier that's between whatever, or the guy that just
want to blow his bank or somebody who wants a back with their shot that's going to be expensive. My wife wants a $20 shot of tequila she's not taking it without a beer. I don't want to spend $12 on a beer. Giving them one option will never ruin anybody's P &L and you can never argue me that otherwise. It's just showing to me it shows an inability to understand
being approachable and that if we want people to be drinkers and we want them to feel like they can participate, sometimes that's giving them one option, which is what happy hour is. And I bet everybody engages in some form of happy hour because you're trying to give somebody something at a discount to make it approachable to them. You can do that all day long by having one beer on your list, even if it's a small format like a pony, three bucks for a pony, still make your margins. You're not gonna sell that many that it's gonna skew your bottom line when you're
Matthew (51:24.767)in the type of liquor that he's born. Like it seems like a silly argument to be like, whoa, capitalism, take it or leave it. Just do the right thing. Give the cook a beer. I'll die on the hill.
Josh Sharkey (51:34.906)Again, think that the... You're not wrong. It's just that it's one opinion. I think it's not a right or wrong thing. You could also just...
Matthew (51:44.307)And I like to share it vocally because the more people that I share it with, the more people say, yeah, like to Keith's point, there's two chefs that'll leave remain nameless that saw my social media post last year and called me and said, I just got out of a meeting with my beverage team telling them that we should have a $5 beer on the menu. And I've gone back to those places and they have. part of being a public alcohol figure and expert in your field is sharing this on platforms like this, even if other people disagree with me. So somebody might go to their beverage team today. And if everybody has one $5 beer on their
Josh Sharkey (51:48.73)Yeah, and that's your prerogative, I don't think it's wrong.
Matthew (52:14.24)or 10 more restaurants have that today, then I'm doing good with my platform.
Josh Sharkey (52:19.246)Yeah, I mean, I also think there's other ways to accomplish that. could, mean, Ben Leventhal is Blackbird. You know, can have like these options where like if you are part of the industry, you get special deals. I remember things when we had, you know, Bark in NYU, there was a very special deal just if you came in with your NYU card where you got, you you got a different deal as well and you got beers for cheaper. I think there's ways to accomplish it to still service that. So I don't think you're wrong. just...
It's your opinion and I just think there's lots of ways to... Okay, are a couple... Yeah, so Keith, you're here. So we got a couple other things on the docket we can pull up. One is, I thought this was an interesting... This woman, Christine Barone, just won this... I don't remember what the word is called. Some sort of like restaurant leader of the year. What I thought was more interesting was this concept is like...
Matthew (52:50.694)Let's move on to the next topic. This one's, this one's, got Keith's opinion and I appreciate it.
Josh Sharkey (53:16.794)what they're calling a beverage first playbook. It's literally just like beverages. It's called Dutch Bros. Thousand locations, 1.64 billion in revenue last year, 20 % year over year increase. 85 % increase in net growth. There EBITDA was 303 million last year. Only beverages. So it's like, I don't know if you guys know this concept, Dutch Bros. It's like, I think it's like coffees and like energy things and.
MJ (53:43.173)Yeah, it's Dutch Roast Coffee. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (53:46.33)But literally the mark I don't know enough about you the margins of this type of business But I thought it was super interesting that they're doing massive revenue scaling very quickly it must be I'm sure like it's easier to scale that or nothing's easy to scale but The scaling that well, so that's one direction We could talk about that and so these beverage first concepts and then Matt you teed up something with sweet green that you know happy to chat about as well They're not Matt Mike you did right? Did you put that in there Mike?
MJ (54:14.971)Yeah, yeah, Yeah, let's start with Dutch Bros.
Josh Sharkey (54:22.436)So I'm curious, mean, Keith is here. He's another beverage expert, and so is Matt. What do you think about, like, not, I don't know if beverage focused, where like literally the entire concept is beverage, is obviously, there's only so many, I don't think they any alcohol, right?
Keith Benjamin (54:39.365)No alcohol?
MJ (54:42.245)No, I'm sorry. Dutch Bros, think of it as like Starbucks or Dunkin. It's a drive-through coffee concept. And a lot of these drive-through coffee concepts have expanded to capture more day parts. So they offer caffeinated energy drinks.
Keith Benjamin (54:48.051)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (55:03.256)There's like shakes, there's like, yeah, energy drinks, protein.
Keith Benjamin (55:06.062)What I'll say is this, is like I said, we're in the worst state in the union for liquor liability insurance, and this is a conversation for another day. But I've had detailed conversations with Mike about endeavors that significantly reduce my exposure from a liability standpoint. Right? And so here I am saying that Uptown Social is a unicorn.
or share house does well, it's a high volume, but it doesn't come without a massive amount of risk. And that risk is legal. I mean, it's actual significant liability. With that said, the beverage space, we could say liquor cost or beverage cost. One in the same similar category, but one's liquor, one's not.
Matthew (55:46.632)Yeah.
Matthew (55:58.559)you
Keith Benjamin (56:04.745)or one's alcohol, one's not. The labor that a food forward establishment requires, you're all experts in your own field here, in our field, it's asinine. No matter whether you're in New York City, Charleston, or Columbus, Ohio, it's the labor required to run a restaurant in 2025. And once again,
I want to hammer home the fact that South Carolina follows the federal minimum wage, which means that we can pay $2.13 an hour for a tipped employee and $7.50 for a minimum wage. With that said, no fucking way does that pass the sniff test. None of us are paying our cooks $7.50. We're all paying whatever anyone's paying in any other part of the country. It's Charleston.
There's very little labor. We're paying between 20 and 25 an hour for a line cook and we're paying 19 to 20 for a dishwasher. Right? So, so when you, when you add this significant food component in, and I think Matt does it really well, I kudos to you, Matt. You know, the, the, the, the press is simple. doesn't take, I I I obviously don't see your P and L, but it's simple. You and I have talked about potentially scaling.
Matthew (57:32.2)Just ask Mike, he'll send it over for you.
Keith Benjamin (57:34.631)Great, nobody's better at it than Mike. But it's minimal, right? What you need to spend to put out this phenomenal product, which is one burrito with three different proteins, is stupid, simple, and takes minimal labor. And then your dinner menu is, correct me if I'm wrong, eight items, six items, five items, I don't know.
Matthew (58:02.215)more but yeah.
Keith Benjamin (58:03.301)All I ever see is the cheeseburger, which is very well known around Charleston. My point being that if you told me that I could go into the beverage space and eliminate all of this labor that comes with the kitchen, and I had a viable business plan, sign me up. Sign me
Matthew (58:23.354)Sure, think my problem here is, you know, just flat out easy numbers from 24 to 25, my overall P &L from both businesses went up 40%, four zero. It was a breakout year for us. was a year, and we did fine before. So this was like, at the end of 25, when I, this.
Josh Sharkey (58:23.802)I
Matthew (58:48.049)Last two weeks ago, when I sat down with my accountant to do the year end, beef prices doubled. So that quesa burrito steak for the burrito was $140 on average, and it's up to 215 all year last year. My insurance, every insurance that I have went up, cost of tortillas went up, delivery fees hit in.
Every insurance I have, I have like nine different insurances, general liability, liquor liability, everything. They canceled the policy because of a roof that was broken that isn't even attached to my building and then wouldn't re-submit the policy so I had to go to someone else and it was up 30%. So off the 40%, like you should be like, whoa, banner year, we're going to fucking Bahamas for having this crush year. I didn't see any of that in my bottom line. I did so much more revenue, so much more business, so much more labor, so much more work, and I had nothing.
Nothing, 3 % to show for that.
Josh Sharkey (59:44.322)wild. Yeah.
Matthew (59:45.607)So yeah, if you wanna tell me that I can just sell juice and have low labor and people want that, I would sign a sitemap.
Josh Sharkey (59:48.77)Well, I think the interesting with these bet this beverage concept I think what's interesting about it I mean, it seems like it's also really good margins because they're like, you know You're adding protein energy things like that where you there's probably a good mark up there But also and Matt we were talking about this like two episodes ago the frequency like they're not going to your bar every night Just can't right but they might go get this juice this energy drink every day
Keith Benjamin (01:00:10.439)Josh, you just hit on something, right? Specific to by the way, we were talking about getting these return visitors all the time, locals, right? The tourists, the eight million tourists, they're in, they're out, they're never, maybe come back in five years. But the locals were like, we gotta get them back. We gotta get these regulars. We gotta get people to come in and get the burger every day, or not every day, every week, or whatever. And I said, guys, to my partners, I said, shut the fuck up. You're idiots.
Nobody, I love Matt's place. I go twice a year. I got three kids when we come downtown, we try to mix it up a little bit. I go twice a year. I love it. Tippling House is great. It's great. I love the fucking press. I go once a month. It's around the corner from one of my places. The notion of having this amazing product, amazing concept.
Matthew (01:00:49.694)Yeah.
Matthew (01:00:54.003)Yeah.
Keith Benjamin (01:01:03.899)and getting regulars to just come in weekly, it doesn't happen. It's not real life. It's just not real life. Yeah, of course. Yes, of course there's the person that lives around the corner and loves to get a glass of wine with you every Friday, but it's rare.
Matthew (01:01:12.037)It does, but it's such a small percentage of our industry, right? Like there's such a small percentage of people that have this, yeah.
I mean, we do have a ton of weekly regulars, but then to your point, I think that weekly is not that much if you live around the corner and you're into wine, right? It's like, should, coffee?
Josh Sharkey (01:01:22.233)Yeah
Keith Benjamin (01:01:29.821)You know what I do every single day, five days a week? Five days a week, every single day, every day. And this is a very expensive habit I have. I go to the gym, I go to Ethos, which is the biggest gym in Charleston. And they've got a cafe called Just Fit Kitchen in the gym. I get a smoothie and a protein ball. I get a smoothie.
MJ (01:01:32.913)Get coffee.
Matthew (01:01:53.533)Dang, $17.
Keith Benjamin (01:01:56.521)I get a smoothie and a protein ball and I tip 25 % and it's 20 bucks a day. And it's 20 bucks a day and I get it every day, Monday through Friday.
Matthew (01:02:00.594)20 bucks, fuck.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:01.774)Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:07.406)Yeah, I mean, the frequency thing is, I, know, I, repr...
Keith Benjamin (01:02:09.361)I don't do anything else every day, but workout and a smoothie.
Matthew (01:02:11.421)I don't even share a bank account with my wife and if she found that out, I would be in huge trouble.
Keith Benjamin (01:02:16.881)Yeah. Well, my wife and I started using a, I'm sure you guys are very familiar with Monarch.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:17.581)You
Josh Sharkey (01:02:24.526)Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tried that with my wife. didn't work.
Keith Benjamin (01:02:27.591)Yeah, I wouldn't say it works all that well, but one of the first things she flagged was my smoothie.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:33.882)Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get into that because you got, there's an Amazon package every single day at our house. I'm not the culprit there. The frequency thing, there's just no way around it. Like, yeah, you're to have a juice protein every day and you can't, I mean, in restaurants, if you get, if you get like, you know, if you get once a week, by the way, that's really good. There's this stat, you know, like for the first, if you come to a restaurant once, it's like a 40 % chance you'll come back if it's good. If you come the second time, it's like 44 % chance, like basically the same.
Matthew (01:02:35.935)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:02.606)The third time it's like 74 % likelihood that you come back again if you keep having a good experience.
MJ (01:03:06.024)Did you watch that John Taffer thing? Oh my God, he just... No, actually it might have been the Barstool interview. Yeah, he talks about how he successfully markets a restaurant. It's all around those, Josh, it's all around those three numbers.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:09.785)No.
Keith Benjamin (01:03:13.981)Was it the bar school interview, Mike?
This is a bar school this week. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:24.122)Oh, yeah, I think that's a pretty like I think it's a pretty known stat but um, I didn't see the John taffer thing but but um Even then like even if you do that, let's just say yeah, you it's good come back good How often you gonna come back to restaurant like how often I mean I got two kids I barely get to go out like once a month I'm like, you know, we live you live in different place like we're not in the city of charleston, but but um like how often you go back even if it's like you love it and that's your spot like
MJ (01:03:38.961)How often? Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:53.85)twice a month.
Keith Benjamin (01:03:56.037)I think, by the way, it's one of the best hangouts. mean, I'm partial, obviously, but I think it's one of the best hangouts in town. And whenever my wife and I come downtown, I try to get there. Just, I mean, when I'm not working, I try to get there just because I like to get a drink there and get a snack. But it's still, guys, it's still no more than once a month, and I fucking own the place.
Matthew (01:04:16.222)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:04:16.492)If Matt had St. Joseph on, if you had St. Joseph by the glass, I'd come there every day.
Keith Benjamin (01:04:16.539)It's just hard. It's hard. It's hard to get back.
Matthew (01:04:23.552)I probably go, I mean, can figure it. I mean, there's a small group of places.
locally that I frequent quite a bit compared to most because I know that I'm going to get what I want for my money, which Charleston is New York prices for a small town, hence the beer prices. I go to graft a lot because there's not many wine options that are comparable to Tipling House, like quality of wine, chill environment. Like they make it really easy to go in there and feel like you're at a beer bar or a town social type place, but they've got wines that I want to drink, you know? So it's like, that's kind of
shoot me as a fish in a barrel for them. But I do frequent a lot of the other places that I go to a lot, Chubbyfish, Verns, the places that do really high quality stuff.
Keith Benjamin (01:05:10.343)But there's also, Matt, for you and I, there's, and this is the kind of really nice benefit to being in a small town like Charleston with arguably one of the best hospitality scenes in the country, is that we seek out the places. Yes, Chubby's amazing. Vern's is amazing. Grafft is amazing. But all three of those places, aside from being Michelin star, two of the three.
Matthew (01:05:31.264)Hard to get into.
Matthew (01:05:39.454)Yeah.
Keith Benjamin (01:05:40.265)the hospitality is a fucking 10. It's a 10. And so what we are, we live this life. This is all we do. This is all we consume is this industry. And so there's such a bar for where we wanna spend our time and our money that.
Matthew (01:05:43.486)Yeah, of course.
Keith Benjamin (01:06:00.669)We aren't going to visit a place. Yes, it's nice to get a free glass of wine or a comped appetizer, but at the end of the day, I just want to feel looked after and taken care of the right way. That's it. That's it.
Matthew (01:06:12.544)Agreed. And that is what we sell at Tipling House. And so many people don't care about wine that I have ingrained in the staff that I, before this one and the one that I have now, like making people feel good and making them feel valued and making them feel like we'll go the extra mile saying hello and goodbye, really appreciating them because in end of the day, they are the ones who were responsible for that 40 % growth year over year. But I don't think that they were coming back more because the wine got any better or because I'm getting any better.
Keith Benjamin (01:06:16.275)Yep.
Keith Benjamin (01:06:41.288)No.
Matthew (01:06:42.498)are looking, they're coming back because over time they've started a sense that their money matters, that when they come, even though it might be more than they would spend on a glass of wine at another bar in the neighborhood, they're getting something of value by the way they're treated with that glass of wine. So it's something that yeah, I live on as a hospitality professional and I seek in the places that I wanna go spend my money. And I think, you know, I'd be remiss to not put.
ordinary and fig on that list of places that I go on a regular basis. Definitely the ordinary more than most. Also because like I can show up there at 10.15 on a Saturday night when they close at 10.30 and be like, we have all our food ready to go. We know exactly what we want. they're like, relax, take your time. What would you like to drink? They don't push, they give hospitality in a way that like, yeah, I seek, but we're probably not normal people. But my point was even when I go to all of those places the way that I do, I'd still probably go to Vern's like what, four or five times a year, chubby fish a little bit.
than that maybe once a month. So to your point even though they're my favorite place and this is a pretty small town I still don't get there like twice a month or even weekly for anybody.
Keith Benjamin (01:07:46.641)and you're spending a lot of money when you go. Yeah.
Matthew (01:07:48.425)Of course.
Josh Sharkey (01:07:49.274)Yeah, yeah, frequency is a tough one. Matt, let me ask you a question just to circle back for a minute. You have, there's a ceiling to your top line at Sippling House, right? You only have so many seats, you can have so many people. At some point, there's only so much revenue you can do. And you really love taking care of your team, which I love about you. Let's say you hit that ceiling, right? And like there's no more top line you can do out of that space, but you want to keep taking care of your team. And then you want to give them a raise again. And the only way to do that.
is to raise the price of your, of like a couple of the drinks. Do you do it?
Matthew (01:08:26.848)Bad model, sorry. just, our beverage, overall beverage costs runs in the low 40s. Think about what labor costs. Like I'm not, I'm already, I buy world-class wine and sell it whether people care about that or not. Again, there was a point in time in this world where journalists would fight to write about what we're doing.
MJ (01:08:38.405)Your beverage cost is in the low 40s.
Matthew (01:08:55.104)by the quality of product that we're delivering every night by the glass, the, every bottle is available by the half bottle. And our markup on that is 2.5. So we're well below industry in New York. Everybody's starting at four now. So you can get a half bottle. Ray Isle came in from Food and Wine Magazine, whatever a year and a half ago. We've been buddies for 20 years. He can't brought in a friend. He sat down and said, so you mean to tell me I can get all of these still wines on this list for a half bottle and you're charged me half the bottle price? And I said, yeah.
He said, so you have a bottle of Berlotto Barbera for $50 on your wine list and you'll sell me a half bottle, 13 ounces for $25. I said, yes. He said, we don't even want another drink. I want to make you prove it. And I walked over the fridge, came out of a cellar temperature, 54 degrees, popped it, poured it into decanter, poured them both a taste and a nice glass, dropped their check for $25.
And he told me I was at Four Horsemen in New York and drank the same bottle of wine for $147 last week. In some world, people would be saying, whoa, fuck, if you wanna drink wine, you go to the Mecca of wine and drink for pennies on the dollar at Tipling House. people like shiny objects now, right? They're much more attracted to a band or nightlife or things that whatever. People don't care about wine the way they used to. But yes, we run in the low 40s. So when you add in our beverage cost and our labor cost,
more room and that's what I'm saying. Our beer sales are less than 1%. Modelo is our by far best selling beer, but you can do the math on less than 1 % of our beverage sales is total beer and we have six of them. If one of them is Modelo, I could jack that to 40 bucks at Modelo and even if people were still bought it at the same rate, it would do nothing to allow me to pay Nicole Race.
Josh Sharkey (01:10:42.553)I guess, let me, let me rephrase the question. Just is not about the modello. What I mean is cause your point was, Hey, things cost a certain amount and you should charge a certain amount. And let's just say that like you hit a, you hit a ceiling and your top line. And now the only way to keep like taking care of your team more is because every year you want them to have a little bit more. Like you, you, got to raise the price of something, right? You can't, there's no other way around it. Right. so at some point.
MJ (01:11:00.485)taking price. Do take price.
Matthew (01:11:09.013)I mean, there is other ways around it, that's a whole, that's a conversation we can get into if you want, but there are ways around that in theory, but the reality is.
Josh Sharkey (01:11:16.633)Well, you just said that you had a 40 % increase in revenue and you only have 3 % appreciation of, of on your, in your EBITDA from it. And I guess the point I'm making is at some point, you know, you're going to, you want to grow. And at some point your team, if you're to have them stay with you, you know, you want to pay them in five years, your chef is making, you know, a lot more than he's making today. And, and maybe not, maybe that's the point is that it's not, but I am curious. So like at some point, do you decide.
No, this is not right to charge more for my burger than this because this is what a burger should cost or do you just say you know what I gotta charge more and people keep coming and I'm taking care of my team and this is what I want to charge.
Matthew (01:11:52.834)There are things that I'd be willing to bend on, but like our daily list right now, and since we've opened, no wine on the daily list is over $99. We've had discussions. Should that have to jump up? Is 125 the new 99?
Right? Cause the sweet spot on that list, because everything is capped at 99 is like 60 to 70. But if we bump that to 125, would that sweet spot now become 80 to 90 and allow us a little bit more room to round up than rather than round down from our normal markups, which would have a significant impact in the end of the year. Are there ways that I can work with credit card processing fees? Yes. Our burger's $18. I think it's one of the best burgers in Charleston and it comes with French fries. A lot of people start in the
20s for things that don't even come with more than a bag of chips. There are other areas where I could look to reduce my overall costs insurance. Like I called Keith or text him right away and said, I want to go to the Capitol and fight. Like there we're getting completely killed here. There's ways that I can fight for my little small business without having to say, I'm going to charge something. Like I sent you guys the screenshot of
to chat GPT's idea of what a beer should cost between one and if you pay a dollar for it, it's in between four and six. That's been the normal forever. And you can say, people can do whatever they want. Yeah, they can, but.
If you pay a dollar for a beer, six has been the high end at any restaurant ever until COVID. And to Mike's point about, well, you're at the wrong bar. I haven't found the right bar. You can go to Irish pubs. And that was Keith's point. You can literally, except for maybe the diviest of the diviest of the dives, you just go to an Irish pub and they're $7 for a modello can. So it's not choosing the wrong bars. Our scale has swung so much that it almost becomes impossible unless, but then where does that stop, Josh? Everybody's gonna have a point where they need
Matthew (01:13:50.531)to squeeze more out of the sponge, where does that stop? Does it ever stop? Would you pay $30 for a burger? $12 for a medillo?
Keith Benjamin (01:13:54.973)Listen, think our whole industry is at a tipping point right now. It doesn't matter where you are doing business.
Matthew (01:14:00.482)Correct.
MJ (01:14:02.993)Can you explain that a little bit more?
Keith Benjamin (01:14:06.225)Yeah, I I spoke about it kind of earlier when we were talking about the this the six dollar modello and whether you can you know, Or eight dollar modello whether you can do it or not do it and and I said it it just has so little all of this now has so little to do with cost of goods sold and So much to do with the macro 30 000 foot picture view bird's eye view of what it costs to do business And it's too fucking expensive
Matthew (01:14:35.361)crazy.
Keith Benjamin (01:14:35.451)And at some point, the consumer, the guest is gonna say, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. I'm not coming to this bar or that wine spot. I love Matt's burrito, but it's gonna be up to Matt. It's gonna be up to Matt. Can he charge 16 for it or not? And once again.
Matthew (01:14:53.249)14 bucks is too much.
Keith Benjamin (01:15:00.231)the market will dictate that, because he's going to go to 16 at some point, maybe, maybe not, but let's say he does for the sake of the argument, and that 20 person line that wraps around his building for two hours, three hours every day during lunch, all of sudden, maybe there's no line, but maybe there is.
Maybe that line continues because the demand is there and there's nothing else like it. The competition, that's what's crazy. The industry is at a tipping point yet there's more and more and more and more and more more and more and more more places that continue to open, right?
Matthew (01:15:19.787)Sure.
Matthew (01:15:33.237)And to Sharkey's long time point here, we're the only industry where we take such low margins for the actual volume of physical labor that we're doing. Like the Sharkey's argument since we've started this has been, you're crazy mad that the stake at the place you went is $125 for a Tomahawk ribeye. But the real cost of that in any other business model should probably be like 250. Like you're already getting it at margins that are so fucking slim, yet a $10 increase
Keith Benjamin (01:15:40.979)Totally, yes!
Matthew (01:16:03.14)and that seems crazy because our industry's allowed us to try to survive on these thin margins forever. And with the cost of taxes and insurance and all of these other things that have nothing to do with your food costs, your labor costs, the controllables that you have inside. I can't control that they charged my insurance. I can't control that the county city tax, county tax, all these things have like gone up at 30, 40 % over the past year and a half. I can't control that. Those aren't controllable costs. So eventually it's gonna have to be passed
on and that's the tipping point.
Keith Benjamin (01:16:33.873)Yep. Right. Wednesday nights, I charge, we do half-price steak frites night at, by the way, and people are like, I mean, I've heard, the steak was really good. The steak's great. It's a great steak. It's a great steak. I put it up against most steaks in town. It's a really well-prepared steak. The frites are hot. It's great. We sell on a slow Wednesday night. And so that's a steak frites for 20 bucks.
Matthew (01:17:03.682)Dang.
Keith Benjamin (01:17:03.721)And on a, it's an eight ounce filet. And on a slow Wednesday, I'm 65. And on a busy Wednesday, I'm selling 130. I'm not making any money. doesn't matter what I sell. I don't make any money on it. What I make money on.
Matthew (01:17:07.458)Bye.
Matthew (01:17:16.578)and the cost of that should be 65 bucks. Yeah.
MJ (01:17:20.123)Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Benjamin (01:17:23.657)is if I'm selling 130, I'm selling a lot more wine, I'm selling a lot more apps, I'm selling a lot more hot honey margaritas, sprinkling a few beers there, and those are.
Matthew (01:17:34.339)It's kind of like the old John George, I don't know if you guys remember that era, but he used to do the $36 lunch and you could get any three courses, savory or sweet for $12 and you could add on any, you could do five for 60, you could do the thing. And I went in there.
Josh Sharkey (01:17:38.265)Yeah, the new cozy room, the $20 tasting.
Matthew (01:17:51.331)20 times and never walked out without spending $185 a person before tip. And I'm like, I came in here to spend $36 on this great deal. How the fuck is it 200 bucks every time I come in here? Because once you get there, you're at John George, baby. They've got all this shit smelling good, all these supplements. I gotta go for the nice glass of wine. Next thing you know, it's 200 bucks. And it's like, that's kind of what my point was earlier, a little bit about the $5 beer. The what?
Keith Benjamin (01:17:54.673)Yeah, of course.
Keith Benjamin (01:18:01.853)Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:18:13.785)I remember when they launched that $20 tasting menu. That was killer. When they launched it, I think it was in 2000 when they launched the $20 tasting. It was like 20 bucks for the tasting menu.
Matthew (01:18:23.126)Yeah. And I went hard on that for a long time because I worked at Cafe Grey across the street, as you know. So I was like the place that we could go get an affordable lunch and feel a part of something, which I still think is important, whether it's food or whatever, to keep people engaged in the industry is that the people who are cooking the food, which I think, Keith, you said earlier, Charleston is this, you know, arguably one of the best hospitality.
Josh Sharkey (01:18:29.049)Yeah.
Matthew (01:18:47.522)towns in America. What I really struggle with here is that the people who are actually delivering the hospitality, whether it's front of the back of the house, based on what I think are generous wages compared to other markets, especially high hospitality markets, I'm not going to compare to like San Francisco or Chicago or like big cities. I think they're compensated very well to your point. Paying a line cook 20 to $25 an hour, think is a lot for small towns, but it's still not enough for them to go out and experience what it feels like to go to
to Verne's or Chubby or these places and really feel a part of it.
Keith Benjamin (01:19:22.311)Well, there's also not, there's not enough of them, right? They don't, like I said, the tip, tipping point, right? There's more and more restaurants that open. There's fewer, fewer and fewer employees. Listen, the Cooper Hotel is a perfect example. It is a five-star state-of-the-art hotel that's opening right on the battery, right on the water in Charleston. It is, is, it is going to be stunning. It's been done. It's ready. It is ready. It's been ready for months.
Matthew (01:19:25.536)Yeah, but how do you learn if you're not doing it?
MJ (01:19:50.801)Can't snap it.
Keith Benjamin (01:19:52.285)They don't have employees. You can't staff it. They can't help it.
MJ (01:19:53.415)can't staff it, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:19:54.327)Yeah, I mean I've got a hard stop, you know around 1230, but I think The highlight here though is I think everybody needs to yourself in the back This is this is an incredibly complicated thing to do to run a business like this, right? There's so much variability you have perishability. You got weather you got
staff, whether they come in or not. every, every day they have to execute and produce. You're like a manufacturer and you're retail at the same time and you have to have enough inventory, but not too much. And there's a million different people doing the same thing. And you know, like you go to a clothing shop and it's like, you could have two people running that shop all day long. And it doesn't matter if it's hot or cold, the thing's not going to go bad. Your inventory is there and it's, it's a known known. The markup is better in the restaurant. You have so many things that you have to get right.
and do well and execute at a high level to do it right. I mean, it's pretty incredible what restaurant operators are able to do given all of these constraints and still provide incredible experiences for people.
Keith Benjamin (01:21:03.945)You know, the toughest part of that, is that the general public, the consumer, doesn't get it. They don't care. It's not even on their radar. They think that Matt sits in his office daily and sips on a beautiful bottle of wine, and that I'm in my office ripping shots of tequila and eating chicken wings, and that it's all, that it's
Josh Sharkey (01:21:11.927)No. No.
MJ (01:21:20.783)and counts as cash.
Josh Sharkey (01:21:22.521)Yeah.
Matthew (01:21:25.583)Hahaha
Josh Sharkey (01:21:25.847)Yeah, but maybe that can change maybe maybe this maybe this helps I remember when like we open bark and like we're in New York Times then we open a second one and and People were like, you're a millionaire. You know, why don't you get I'm like, are you kidding me? Dude, we charge four dollars for a hot dog
Matthew (01:21:38.945)Yeah, perception is, yeah perception is, when we had the taquitaria, we opened one in the basement of Macy's and I had a sales rep for me that was taking me out to lunch and they would all, I bought $100,000 worth of wine from her a year. Their job is to buy me lunch when she asks me to go to lunch with her. And she said, you can pick up the check because you're so rich from your taquitarias. I said, let me be very clear, the only thing I've ever been paid for from taquitaria is a taquito.
I've never been taking a dime from that place and she thought I was so rich I should pick up the check. like, people's perception is crazy. But I will leave you with this. I have a lunch meeting and then I have my three o'clock staff meeting with my crew at Tipling, which I do every Wednesday. And then I've got some shit I gotta do there. It should be about five. I'll hope that Krista can join me, but whether or not I'm gonna walk home from Tipling to my house, which is about a 10 minute walk. And I'll promise to stop at four.
family-owned businesses on the walk and try to order their least expensive beer option. One of them might be somebody on this screen's place and then I'll report via text what the prices were for the four beers just to see what's out there. And they'll be all no corporate, family-owned, because there's at least, I think I have four beers in me, maybe five.
Josh Sharkey (01:22:49.411)Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:22:54.041)Thank you for taking one for the team. I appreciate that.
Josh Sharkey (01:22:59.971)I haven't had a beer in 15 years.
Matthew (01:23:03.181)So I'll drink two for you, one for Mike, one for Keith. Pardon me?
Keith Benjamin (01:23:04.796)Any beer, any alcohol.
Josh Sharkey (01:23:06.797)No, I couldn't drink beer or wine for like 15 years and like live yeast was an issue. I used to, my restaurant had like a beer made for us by Six Point and I loved beer. But now, I mean, I can drink wine again. I probably can drink beer, but I can't drink a lot. So I'm just sticking to wine, but I need to drink some beer again. Had a Shav Saint-Joseph last night. was amazing.
Keith Benjamin (01:23:12.176)interesting.
Matthew (01:23:25.239)He's back drinking fancy St. Joseph.
Matthew (01:23:31.745)Living the dream, baby. Keith, it was such a pleasure.
Keith Benjamin (01:23:34.821)Always guys, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Josh Sharkey (01:23:35.469)Keith, you gotta stay on by the way. Sorry to interrupt, you gotta, we gotta like upload. I'll tell you afterwards, but yeah. Thanks so much, Keith. It was awesome having you on and clearly like, you know, we needed some real like, you know, horsepower here and you gave it to us. So appreciate it.
Matthew (01:23:41.718)It takes a few seconds.
Keith Benjamin (01:23:51.762)Anytime.
Matthew (01:23:52.621)from Natty Ice to Uptown Social.
Josh Sharkey (01:23:55.31)Hehehehe.
‍
