Matthew (00:56.235)
Thanks.
Eli Feldman (00:58.724)
Get your checkbook out.
Matthew (01:00.023)
Yeah, baby. John Louis Chav is 17th generation consecutively.
Josh Sharkey (01:05.978)
You were there, right? You were there last week, right?
Matthew (01:07.597)
Yeah, he's been his family's been farming in the Northern Rome since 1461 consecutively. So it's a little history with the domain. Not this visit, but like two visits ago, right before the French elections, he was like, Oh yeah, last week when I was in Paris talking to Macron.
Josh Sharkey (01:14.726)
That's wild.
Eli Feldman (01:18.638)
crazy.
Matthew (01:26.445)
And I was like, did you just casually drop talking to the president of France? And he's like, I mean, I've been going there since I was a little tight, pouring wine for the president. It's just family to us. And I was like,
MJ (01:30.296)
Hahaha.
Josh Sharkey (01:39.494)
But it is, that's what I'm getting a case of. It's insane.
Matthew (01:40.311)
Cool.
Eli Feldman (01:41.946)
awesome.
Matthew (01:45.421)
Yeah, so that's 100 % Sarra. And he's rebuilt all the vineyards from his family's original estate in Bashasan in the north over 25 years. And the fruit from that bottling came from vineyards that he's restored over the past 25 years. Pretty impressive project. Special wine.
Josh Sharkey (02:03.91)
Yeah. I haven't had the coat or tee yet, so we haven't opened that one. I don't remember which one you sent me, but...
Matthew (02:11.533)
So you sent some notes about today's talk and I didn't understand the first five things so you're gonna have to fill us in here. Yeah, let's get into it.
Josh Sharkey (02:16.908)
All well, let's get into that. Okay, I'll stop talking about wine. Okay. First of all, welcome. We have a, we have a fourth wheel today. Eli, nobody here has met Eli yet, right? You're, you're good. We're going to get along. We'll be fast friends. But Eli is the minute I like met Eli, I was like, yeah, I want to hang out with this guy every day. Restaurant, restaurant owner operator, but also like has just built this entire sort of AI.
Eli Feldman (02:26.295)
Hey guys.
MJ (02:28.355)
now.
Josh Sharkey (02:44.11)
infrastructure into his business, writes a newsletter that is followed by many, many, many, people in the industry about food and tech and other things about the industry, mostly just about the industry, but there's probably other things as well. And he's in Boston, so we won't, you know, discredit him for that, but otherwise, you know.
Matthew (03:01.933)
You
MJ (03:03.246)
of Austin.
Eli Feldman (03:04.843)
Originally from Maryland, not native. Don't knock me yet, but.
MJ (03:07.944)
okay.
Matthew (03:10.594)
you
Josh Sharkey (03:11.375)
Alright, I'm gonna-
MJ (03:11.662)
Well, I'm from Rhode Island, so I got really excited to have a fellow New Englander on the.
Eli Feldman (03:14.803)
yeah, see? I mean, I'm 25 years here, so I think I'm honorary.
Josh Sharkey (03:17.904)
You
MJ (03:21.07)
You're a New Englander. You're an asshole. Yeah.
Eli Feldman (03:23.927)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Josh Sharkey (03:25.958)
I'll be in Boston in February. When the kids are out of school, we're spending a week, or like four or five days in Farmingdale, where my sister is. And then we'll just go around town. So I'll come say hello.
MJ (03:35.382)
cool.
Eli Feldman (03:36.217)
All right.
Eli Feldman (03:40.151)
And also April, I hope, is still on your radar. All right.
Josh Sharkey (03:42.105)
And April, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I don't have the date of the yet yet, but but but April 10th. Okay. All right. yeah, it's like it's a AI Summit or something for at a college At BU gotcha cool. Love it All right. Well, we are a little bit pressed on time today because matt has a stressful meeting to go to after this and Here's the here's what our options are
Matthew (03:45.129)
you
Eli Feldman (03:46.517)
April 10th, I'll send it your way. Yeah.
Matthew (03:50.196)
you
Eli Feldman (03:55.598)
Yeah, BU, BU School of Hospitality, AI conference.
Matthew (04:03.341)
you
Josh Sharkey (04:11.876)
So, Matt, some, for some reason you didn't understand the very clear like topics that I put in our docket and I had context in there as well, but you know, whatever, you know, maybe you didn't read everything. So I'll explain it a little bit more. so the first two are because Eli's here. So I thought we could jump into how Eli is using AI in his business, which I'd love to chat about as well as, a use case for meta glasses, especially in the kitchen, but there's other other things. I put the fiber boom.
Matthew (04:18.072)
you
Matthew (04:24.813)
Please.
MJ (04:37.634)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (04:43.241)
because apparently fiber is like the new protein. I don't know if we've heard this, but the new, yes, the new, like all of a sudden it's not about how much protein you have, but how much fiber you have. We can get us some details of that. There's this thing I heard about called no nostalgia, which is also called grandma core. If I'm saying that right, which is basically like a reversion to
MJ (04:47.598)
Really?
Matthew (05:00.525)
you
Josh Sharkey (05:11.214)
Restaurants doing like very very very simple what your grandma made type food And we can there's I got some notes on that the Noma pop-up in LA. What does that mean for pop-ups? I feel like pop-ups like should be a lot more than they are but we could talk about that Is a kayas in New York, which is very specific in New York. So we might not go there real estate lawsuits Given what Matt might be jumping into and some fun that I've had there
Matthew (05:11.565)
you
MJ (05:15.406)
Yeah.
Matthew (05:33.493)
you
Josh Sharkey (05:38.822)
I'm sure Eli and Mike probably have as well. Let's, let's, so those are like, those are, so that's what we got. Like, and if I could narrow down and I'm going to drag this up, we got real estate lawsuits, no more pop-up, no nostalgia, fiber boom, meta glasses, AI. And I'm going to let Eli, who's our special guest pick the first one.
MJ (05:39.749)
yeah, I've got a couple ones there, yeah.
Eli Feldman (05:42.393)
That sounds great.
Matthew (05:44.781)
you
Matthew (05:58.701)
you
Eli Feldman (06:01.465)
I'm gonna let, I think we should start with the Noma pop-up. I re- Yes. Yes. Brought to you by Rezzy, Blackbird, et cetera.
Josh Sharkey (06:05.318)
Okay, it's $1,500 a head,
That's no joke.
Matthew (06:15.937)
you
Josh Sharkey (06:16.1)
What does that mean by the way? When they say brought, when it's like brought to you by Rezzy, what is that? Like, are they getting a piece of the pie? Like, what does that, what does that actually mean?
Eli Feldman (06:24.077)
I think they're funding the whole thing for the most part. yeah, Amex is funding the whole thing. It's all part of the exclusivity. Take out your platinum card.
Josh Sharkey (06:26.789)
What?
Matthew (06:28.237)
you
Matthew (06:32.077)
You
Josh Sharkey (06:35.12)
So do they appreciate the profits as well or is it just like marketing for them? Wow.
Eli Feldman (06:35.852)
situation.
Just marketing, I believe. Yeah, they've been, like, if you look at a lot of these sort of international and like the New York London or New York LA pop-up scene is mostly all Rezzy stuff. Yeah, like the Penny and Claude guys when they went out there for something, it was, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (06:52.752)
I had no idea. So that's what a cakewalk that is.
Josh Sharkey (07:01.136)
That's amazing. Wish that would... Matt, we need Rezzy to fund a Tippling House pop-up in LA.
MJ (07:09.102)
Thanks
Matthew (07:09.133)
Do you not have an A-Max?
Josh Sharkey (07:11.864)
Me? Yeah, I do. have a business MX.
Matthew (07:14.123)
Yeah, you can go on there and there's a list of all types of global activities that you can engage in that they're just aligning themselves with for branding purposes.
They're just underwriting the costs so that their members have access to things and the business, whether it's a concert or a restaurant, is the one who's taking the profits and by aligning with a prestigious brand like Noma, it brings more clout to their name for you to want to be an Amex holder versus one of their competitors. They do it with everything.
Josh Sharkey (07:45.286)
And do you have to have an AMEX to go to the pop-up?
Eli Feldman (07:45.614)
Yeah, one.
Matthew (07:48.141)
Yeah, not only that, but oftentimes it's specific styles of Amex. For instance, Chubbyfish did an event last month and you had to have a specific type of Marriott Bonvoy Amex or whatever it was. There's several tiers and it was only two of the four tiers that could gain you access. So they're driving you towards specific types of credit cards to be able to have access to certain functions.
Josh Sharkey (08:18.406)
That makes sense. I'm sure they make money in the long run from this.
Matthew (08:19.565)
marketing. I don't think Amex is struggling for cash.
Eli Feldman (08:27.553)
No, mean, think last year was the first year that restaurant spend crossed $100 billion for Amex. And I think they know where their bread is buttered and they're leaning in.
Matthew (08:32.055)
Yeah, I saw that.
Matthew (08:40.055)
But do you really give a shit about a normal pop-up in LA?
Josh Sharkey (08:45.028)
I mean, it's better than flying to Mexico or Japan. It's easier to, you know.
Matthew (08:49.709)
Do you think the food's even remotely similar?
Josh Sharkey (08:54.886)
I think it will be. I I regret that when Evan asked me to go to Mexico for the Noma pop-up, I didn't go. was when my wife was pregnant, I think with the first or second kid. And for what I heard, was just as good, if not better. I think it would still be really good.
MJ (09:13.25)
Mm.
Matthew (09:15.935)
Isn't the whole, I mean, I have not been, but isn't the whole concept of Noma that you're eating the bounty from the garden, like how do you recreate that in Mexico or LA or Asia? Different garden?
Josh Sharkey (09:31.258)
Well, you get the bounty from LA or the bounty from Mexico.
Matthew (09:35.063)
Doesn't that change it from being them?
Josh Sharkey (09:37.254)
No, I think that the concept is to leverage everything that you have around you and, you know, a different, like, a new paradigm of how to think about, like, how to use those ingredients. And I don't think it's specific to Copenhagen. think that that's just...
Eli Feldman (09:51.386)
This is why I wanted to start with this one. think it's just kind of like Noma. Noma is no longer a place, Matthew. It's a state of mind. And that's what you're paying 15, you're paying.
Matthew (10:00.769)
Sure, yeah, I heard. And that's kind of what I was asking. Is it a thing or is it a place of mind? Speaking of this, I got to eat out with the greatest eater out of all time last week in Paris and that chef was a noma.
MJ (10:00.942)
you
Josh Sharkey (10:12.301)
I saw that in Paris.
Matthew (10:18.477)
Evan definitely expressed a little bit of whether he should have been flattered or embarrassed by the conversation. I let him know that it was definitely a flattering comment for him to be such a prolific diner outer.
Josh Sharkey (10:30.213)
I sent him that clip. did not say anything.
Matthew (10:34.113)
Yeah, I know. But I think more importantly that we haven't discussed is that I am fully in aligned with Chef Calicchio. That's...
Josh Sharkey (10:45.637)
Alright, no, we're not getting into sharing, we're not doing that again. Let the internet speak for itself, but like, you're like 1 % of the population. Eli, I don't know if you heard this, and I don't want to go through a rabbit hole, but Matt doesn't share at restaurants, he doesn't like it.
MJ (10:46.007)
You are.
Matthew (10:56.525)
I'm in good company.
Eli Feldman (11:04.927)
yeah, I listened. I heard that one out and I don't, I think it, to each their own and I think different meals, different approaches, but I think being I only share or I never share seems like an odd extreme to run to.
Josh Sharkey (11:22.654)
yeah. Yeah. would- that's a good way look at it too.
Eli Feldman (11:24.365)
General.
Matthew (11:25.762)
I mean, I definitely don't. There are as a time and place for sharing, but I just, share chef Calicchio's sentiment about why are we whacking up bites, but we've already done that. just thought it was interesting that I. Sharkey. Are you guys getting that feedback?
Josh Sharkey (11:41.252)
Yeah, I am. What is that? It's not you actually. I just muted you to try to see. It's not you. Mike, it might be you. Hold on. I'll mute. It's not Eli. It's Mike. Do you Mike? It's like, I think it might be your phone or your microphone or the metal plate in your head or is it?
MJ (11:56.728)
So what are you getting?
MJ (12:07.16)
You said feedback or you're getting a hiss?
Matthew (12:09.613)
Peace.
Josh Sharkey (12:09.933)
Yeah, it's like, and it's loud. It's real loud. something just happened.
Eli Feldman (12:10.093)
Yeah, it's like a fuzz.
Matthew (12:15.691)
He's moved away. He's moved the metal plate away from the microphone. So we're agreeing that Noma is a state of mind. It's it's become bigger than the restaurant. Does it matter who's cooking the food?
Josh Sharkey (12:18.103)
yes the metal plate
Josh Sharkey (12:24.387)
I mean, I don't... I actually think it's... I think that Noma is a concept and I think it it lends itself to not just being one place and going to other places because at some point you can only do so much with the ingredients in Copenhagen and then they start to go to other places. I actually think that it's just a natural progression of how the concept evolves.
Matthew (12:51.383)
So then does the chef have to be involved for it to be valid? Like does the chef from NOAA have to be a part of the pop-up or can you just send his crew to execute and you're just fine with that as well at 50?
Josh Sharkey (13:01.997)
Well, I think that's inherent in anything. The chef is the curator, if René wasn't there one day, I think it would still happen just as well. But he was the one that designed the concept.
Matthew (13:16.781)
Yeah, I mean, do you think EMP is in the realm of idealism as normal?
Josh Sharkey (13:24.293)
I think it's a little, I mean, I haven't been to EMP since Will left, so I don't know if it's the same thing. I think that that, at that time, when you have that experience and they bring the old, you know, encyclopedia with the Waldorf-Restoria recipe and they make it in front of you and it's, you all those kinds of things, like that's something that is a concept that lends itself to going to other places. I think just creating food that, you know, is delicious and innovative in its own is maybe not something that...
makes sense to go travel the world with. I think when a concept is truly unique and tangibly its own thing, I think it can lend itself to travel. Unless the whole point of the concept is New York pizza and that's it.
Matthew (14:09.357)
Sure. Well, Daniel opened a pop-up here in Charleston for a year. I don't know how much time he's spent in the restaurant. And so it begs the question, does the pop-up matter if the person behind the concept isn't actually executing the concept? Does it make sense to spend $1,500 to purchase somebody else's name?
even if the name isn't a part of, and again, I don't know how much Chef is actually here or not. I'm just surmising of the idea. Do you wanna go spend $1,500 on a pop-up for a chef to send his sous chefs to go execute food that's not from the food they're used to be working with? It seems a little forced for me.
MJ (14:50.638)
How is that different than any other chef who owns multiple restaurants who doesn't cook every night?
Josh Sharkey (14:50.949)
Yeah, I think I I totally disagree. Yeah like
Yeah, exactly. But still, he designed a concept and an approach and he's trained people to do it and he has a whole ecosystem around of people that are part of it now that...
Matthew (14:58.765)
$1,500 price tag.
Matthew (15:09.293)
So then I guess you're making the argument that you believe that all restaurants that are licensed by chefs are as good as the restaurant that they're actually working in. I think that's a pretty intense take.
Josh Sharkey (15:20.101)
I think that if they're doing it right, then yes, absolutely.
Matthew (15:24.779)
Name that list. I'd love to hear it. You think eating it.
Josh Sharkey (15:27.311)
I mean, anybody that scales, that understands how to scale a restaurant, if it only works if the chef is there, then it doesn't work. Like what happens when the chef gets sick or the chef has you know, has a, mean, the difference would be like a Giro or something, where it's his whole life and it's just him and he goes in there every day. And the point of it is that, but there's not many of those. And I think most restaurants are intended, I mean, if it's a single...
Eli Feldman (15:39.843)
Well, I don't.
Matthew (15:48.045)
Hahaha
Agreed.
Josh Sharkey (15:56.862)
and that's all you're going to do, fine. But that's also very constricting for a chef. The beauty is when you can actually take your vision and then help marshal a whole team to do it the way that you envision and then scale that thing. I think there's something beautiful about that, but if the expectation is if they're not there, it's not the same, then actually I don't think they their job, if they have restaurants at scale.
Matthew (16:20.201)
I mean, I think that you're accurate with your assessments, but I also think that chefs, most chefs strengths aren't usually in scaling and training. Therefore, which is why their creativity, like if you take a great Koon's restaurant in Singapore that he wasn't involved in versus the one that he was coming to every five days a week to.
conflate that they might be even close to the same restaurants, I think is bizarre, but.
MJ (16:51.042)
But is it operated by his team or is it just licensed? Is he licensed the IP? Those are two very different things.
Matthew (16:56.365)
We can.
I think a restaurant like Noma only has so much calvary to be sending their team out there. So eventually they're, they're outsourcing in Charleston here with, with, he's definitely relying on local talent to produce food to caliber that he serves in New York city. And there's definitely been struggles trying to get.
MJ (17:18.894)
Is there someone from his management team overseeing the execution? Okay, so then.
Matthew (17:22.795)
course but if you don't have the team to get that you don't have the team that has the skills to get the recipes executed properly it doesn't matter how many generals you have watching that's the whole point it's a it takes a team it takes talent it takes I can say from my experience in restaurants I don't ever believe that the restaurant that I worked in with my chef was as good when he was away
Josh Sharkey (17:24.149)
But even if there isn't...
Josh Sharkey (17:48.709)
I don't think that's... I'm gonna let Eli chime in here because he has a... I'd like to hear what he thinks.
Matthew (17:51.117)
But they scaled it. They did recipes. Please.
Eli Feldman (17:55.158)
Yeah, I mean, a couple of things on this. I think of it a little more as like I got the chance to go see Hamilton in 2015 and Lin-Man Mo or Miranda wasn't performing that night. His understudy was. I had 10 seconds of like slight disappointment.
And then I was like, no, you're still swept up in like what someone created. think there's maybe an element of that that's relevant. I think the reason I wanted to start here though was like when I look over like the list of topics you put out, Josh, I think it speaks to like the tension in restaurants that's so wonderful. Like you've got the crazy exclusivity of the Noma pop-up directly underneath the rise of no nostalgia, which is kind of the opposite of a Noma pop-up in a lot of ways.
Then you've got exclusivity versus walk-ins. You've got the grandiosity of restaurants versus the approachability of an isekaiya. Like, I think there's just something really fascinating about, and this has always been true with restaurants. Like, if you go back to like the 70s, had, at the same time, you had FedEx launching in the early 70s and the Chez Panisse movement. So get food from anywhere in the world in 24 hours.
Plus, don't get anything from more than 10 miles away. Like, this tension, I think, is a really cool part of the industry. It didn't strike me until you actually started listing them, just like how diametrically opposed actually some of these themes are to one another. To me.
Matthew (19:32.567)
There's a lot of people who like to eat out for a lot of different reasons. So there's always gonna be a faction of people that want to order something in from a long ways away. there's somebody's gonna be wanna support somebody who's only picking something out of their own backyard.
Josh Sharkey (19:45.842)
I think it's also like any art has sort of like the high and the low. You think about fashion and there's haute couture, but that haute couture then downstream, know, you watch Devil Wears Prada, you hear this, right? That color and that pattern was thought of with this, the utmost of intention and intentionality for what that should be and the fabric and the size and the look.
Eli Feldman (19:46.135)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (20:13.798)
for this thing that probably costs thousands of dollars that a hundred people will wear. But then fast forward three years later and it's in Target, know, with a very similar pattern and everybody in the world has it. And you kind of have to have both, right? One informs the other. And I think what's interesting is now it actually is a lot more circular than it was before where there are things that like, that are happening at sweet green or something that...
Matthew (20:23.689)
you
Eli Feldman (20:34.179)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (20:40.986)
we're learning, yeah, that's interesting to do at scale. What if we did that with, or I think about like Gladys or Park Hard Dogs or Taquitos. You're like, here's a simple thing that works really well that everybody loves. What if we elevated it? And.
Eli Feldman (20:55.597)
Yeah, think Starbucks sous vide egg bites always struck me as like the downstream of Thomas Keller. Like, would you have had one without the other? Like.
Josh Sharkey (21:02.491)
Yeah.
MJ (21:07.128)
Hmm.
Josh Sharkey (21:08.134)
I don't know who came up with the name No Nostalgia or Gramacore, but really? Like really? Like it's just simple food. Isn't that always a thing? Like Red Sash joints have existed forever. Like this seems like... There was an article, I think Yahoo put it out, and it was just like ranking, you know, all the restaurants and it chose...
MJ (21:15.342)
You
Matthew (21:24.717)
You
Ahem.
Josh Sharkey (21:35.689)
uh... gc almost everything i say that right by the way that you see a
Eli Feldman (21:40.607)
Technically, yes.
Josh Sharkey (21:41.37)
Somebody correct me, they're customers. But, you know, which is not necessarily like, you know, simple, obviously they do it in like, know, pretty incredible food, but is this really a thing, Grammacore? Or is this like another term that we're coming up with for things that have been happening forever?
Josh Sharkey (22:00.23)
Apparently no one's heard of it before, so maybe we'll move on. Okay, well, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Eli Feldman (22:04.437)
everything's a core. Now, everything's either a core or a max. Your fiber maxing or your nona-coring.
MJ (22:06.286)
you
Josh Sharkey (22:12.74)
So you've heard this fiber thing, because I saw that fiber maxing is like a thing, where you max out on fiber. But by the way, how do you do that? Are you taking fiber pills?
Matthew (22:21.837)
You have a little delay here on my end, Sharkey.
Josh Sharkey (22:25.515)
you know what? Hold on one sec. I do see here, I might need to like reconnect. Is everybody hearing that by the way?
Same delay.
Matthew (22:35.297)
Yeah, there's a delay.
Josh Sharkey (22:37.446)
Yeah, I think it is. I might need a direct connect. Give me one minute.
Josh Sharkey (22:59.578)
Is that better?
MJ (23:01.87)
Think so.
Josh Sharkey (23:04.326)
Is that better, Matt? Okay, all right. I turned off the wifi. All right, let's move on. Eli.
Matthew (23:05.613)
For me, yes.
MJ (23:06.796)
Yeah, for me too.
Matthew (23:14.221)
You gotta get me more riled up than this.
Josh Sharkey (23:17.99)
Eli, want to hear about, I know Matt wants to hear about, first of all, not Matt, Mike, but Matt, we don't need to always rally you up. We can just talk about things. You know, we don't have to always be in an argument, I want to, so the last time I spoke with, yeah, I know you want to have an argument about things that you even, you know, that you agree with.
Eli Feldman (23:19.224)
Yes.
Matthew (23:32.237)
Hi, my name's Matthew Conway. Have we met before? I thought that's what we're here for.
MJ (23:39.23)
Hehehehehe
Eli Feldman (23:40.513)
I want to get in a fight about some of yous. That's why I came.
Josh Sharkey (23:42.758)
okay well i we can
Matthew (23:44.275)
my goodness, this is a fight I've been, yes, yes.
Josh Sharkey (23:47.654)
Okay, did you hear, I don't know if you heard when like we were trying to compliment Matt on like the hospitality approach to some some of these and he just kept, you know, getting offended that like people know just as much about wine because of AI. It's like, dude, just just chill out for a minute, you know, and okay.
Matthew (24:01.367)
Hahaha!
No, they were trying to tell me that we're replaceable by a fucking robot. That's what they were trying to say. Unforgivable.
Josh Sharkey (24:10.274)
No, I- nobody said that. Nobody said that. Mike, can you please back me up here? Nobody said-
Matthew (24:15.479)
We haven't, we haven't.
MJ (24:15.854)
I think what we were stating is the knowledge, just the actual, like the knowledge could be potentially replaced, not the entirety of the person and the experience. The knowledge is actually a commodity, yeah. And becoming more of a commodity.
Josh Sharkey (24:25.411)
just that the knowledge is a commodity piece. You know, you have to...
Eli Feldman (24:32.857)
Well, I wasn't actually, I wasn't gonna get in a fight with Matthew about this. think my fight was sort of with the whole group that I think, I think that the rest of the world needs to start learning from sommeliers, because that's actually the skill set that's gonna be valuable in the future, which is how do you contextualize something? How do you read a room?
Josh Sharkey (24:33.158)
All right.
Josh Sharkey (24:54.598)
Please... I just don't like that we're buttering up Matt right now. I agree with you a little bit, but like...
MJ (24:59.608)
Hahaha
Matthew (24:59.883)
Ha ha Listen, I got Eli. I got Calicchio. I'm like stacking chips over here. You guys need to come with some serious games
Eli Feldman (25:01.671)
I'm not intending to butter up.
Josh Sharkey (25:06.918)
Eli, double click on that. What do mean?
Eli Feldman (25:11.159)
I mean, if you think about, so yes, it is true, going back to the days of Google, I could look up a wine and find the knowledge about, or the information about it. Like, I could learn that Jean-Louis Chavre is a 17th generation continuous producer just by going to chat GPT, but.
I think part of what I loved about that conversation, but I think you need to extrapolate it to everyone needs to start to extrapolate sort of what Assam does to other fields where it's like the knowledge is the commodity. How you make people feel in engaging the knowledge is ultimately where the product is and where the work is. like whether that's doctors or
Matthew (25:52.141)
you
Eli Feldman (25:56.236)
lawyers, like it's how you contextualize the knowledge and make someone get the most from the knowledge or feel like they got the most from it that I think is a really unique skill that so like, you know, sort of the somification of everything, I guess is sort of the headline of this. I don't necessarily, I don't.
Josh Sharkey (26:12.695)
Isn't that just sales though?
Matthew (26:16.511)
Somification, I love that.
MJ (26:19.672)
Yes.
Josh Sharkey (26:19.781)
I don't like that we're complimenting Matt right now.
Matthew (26:21.709)
I love the fact that you brought this guy on. Somification? all right.
Eli Feldman (26:26.605)
This isn't me. Actually, there's a guy, Sengit Paul Chaudhuri, he wrote a really cool book called Reshuffle about the skills that are gonna matter over the next 50 years. And he actually has a really cool paragraph about sommeliers. And he has a, reshuffle, yeah. And he touches on food stuff every once in a while through the book, but just as sort of like a means to an end.
MJ (26:43.278)
It's called reshuffle.
Eli Feldman (26:55.213)
He doesn't actually go very deep on it, but it got me thinking a lot about like, you know, right, Matt, cover your ears because your ego clearly probably can't handle this, but like, or we all like, maybe we all need to be Psalms in our areas of expertise because our expertise in and of itself doesn't really matter that much anymore. It's how other people experience it.
Josh Sharkey (27:17.645)
Yeah, that's fair. By the way, I think Matt might be frozen, which thank gosh that he is. Yeah. Well, while he's getting back online, I want to talk about, I do want to talk about real estate lawsuits because I think it sounds like we all have some horror stories there. But since Matt is and he's heading to one soon, why don't we talk, Eli, it would be.
MJ (27:22.35)
Yeah, I don't think Ezequiel could have handled that.
Josh Sharkey (27:43.587)
It would be interesting for Mike to hear, know, but could you share a little bit about like what you guys are doing with the meta glasses in the restaurant?
Eli Feldman (27:53.323)
Yeah, so.
Matthew (27:53.432)
Sh-Sharky cut me off because I was starting to get compliments.
MJ (27:56.856)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (27:57.038)
Yeah, yeah. First of all, I didn't do anything. was karma, like cutting your internet because you didn't need it anymore.
Eli Feldman (28:06.464)
Yeah, so I mean, we're not doing anything like, it's a one-off thing from a couple people that have bought them and have found cool uses for them. like one of our chefs, it is a really great tool for recipe development, interestingly, and training. So like if you think about, you you're sitting there with gloves on, you need to take notes about whether something needs 80 grams or 90 grams.
Matthew (28:29.912)
you
Eli Feldman (28:34.825)
and you want to take a picture of what you're doing so that you can put it into Meeze. No plug needed there, like, that's how he's been using it. I think in some really cool ways. Hands-free content creation, and like, you know, you see...
MJ (28:38.327)
Yeah.
MJ (28:45.634)
just like in terms of just hands-free content creation.
Eli Feldman (28:52.585)
what's his name, Kenji Lopez, whatever, with a big camera strapped to the top of his head in videos. But it was interesting to see how he was doing that and then sort of recapping and narrating recipe development and then just having it sent to him as an email.
MJ (28:59.672)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (29:09.285)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (29:11.671)
You know, I think some of the stuff around translation that's happening with meta glasses and AirPods is going to be pretty revolutionary for this industry. Once it gets a little more real time, the delay on it is really just challenging right now. But I think that'll close that gap will close fast. But yeah, it's all kind of part of an overarching. I'm a big believer. Josh knows this. think if.
Matthew (29:36.898)
you
Eli Feldman (29:41.389)
We're going to plug every aspect of the restaurant into AI in some form or another to the best of our ability. Because I just think the economic pressures of
Josh Sharkey (29:50.438)
What is the highest impact thing happening for you right now that you are plugging into an AI or I don't know you use Claude a lot but what's the highest impact thing happening right now for you?
Eli Feldman (30:02.201)
I mean, throughout our history, the highest-impact thing was definitely the reorganization of the line in Fenway, at our Fenway location, to decrease ticket times. That was gigantic. We were able to sort 75 % reduction in ticket times through...
Josh Sharkey (30:11.101)
yeah.
Matthew (30:17.389)
Wow.
Josh Sharkey (30:19.033)
Yeah, so I'll, yeah, tell, tell, like, you could TLDR, like, what you did, because it was really, I mean, it was wild when I heard this. like, this is brilliant.
MJ (30:19.756)
How did you do it?
Matthew (30:20.365)
75%.
Eli Feldman (30:28.769)
Yeah, so was just we were having a terrible service. We were running 40 minute ticket times before a Red Sox game, comping a ton of food and just went back on the line and started taking photos, taking videos and then put KDS data, ordered data, images and video into Claude and basically prompted it with what the fuck happened and it...
After a little bit of back and forth and some conversation with the line cooks, it was sort of like the cooks are crossing way too much. You need to figure out how to stage tortilla wraps for breakfast wraps better. Why, given that this is such a low item on your product mix, why is it so easily reachable by a cook, given they only have to make it three times in an entire brunch service? Like, it was just, and literally.
MJ (31:20.472)
Did it suggest actual placements? Did it create a DWG file? How did it actually, what were the outputs?
Eli Feldman (31:20.803)
from a set. yeah.
It just conversation, this was June or July, so like I think actually some of this stuff is moving so fast that I think what it would do now is different than what it did in June. This was a conversation, yeah, but you know, gave it like, I think I did give it a picture of the sandwich top and then I think it may have ended up creating an artifact. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think it ended up creating an artifact of.
MJ (31:35.438)
So this just was basically a conversation that it spit out.
Eli Feldman (31:54.362)
nine pans and six pans and third pans, or what it interpreted to be them. But now it's much more at sort of the senior leadership level of like synthesizing information across the restaurants, meeting notes, one-on-one notes when appropriate. All of this is...
It's really sort of in the spirit of we have these two acronyms at the restaurant. One is bite, bring it to everything. And the other one is fails, effing around is learning stuff. And that's how we think about AI in the restaurants is like our team, especially at the managerial and senior managerial level is just really has embraced bringing these tools to everything. It's fun. It's a lot of fun.
Josh Sharkey (32:46.521)
Yeah, it really does need to be top down too. Like it has to happen. Like people need to see it happening up top and then it sort of trickles down. Do you think, I have a question by the way. So you have like four locations, is that right? Three locations. And Matt, know, has a, a, has a, has a killer wine, wine bar restaurant in Charleston. Do you think that Matt can have the same, like similar high impact things?
Eli Feldman (32:58.915)
Three locations of shybird, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (33:14.873)
given with with if he deploys some of this into his restaurant and if so what do think would be
Eli Feldman (33:22.147)
I mean, my knee-jerk reaction is yes, simply because if you put the most powerful machine ever built in a restaurant, I think it can have impact if the people running it are open to it. I don't know enough about Matt's spot to know, guessing by the amount of wine that he has behind him, that it's a fairly wine-centric restaurant.
Matthew (33:48.824)
Good guess.
Eli Feldman (33:50.202)
You know, I'm really fascinated within our restaurants, which are really like pretty casual spots, like how we use AI with a young staff that is so digitally native, how do we get them excited about wine and cocktails? They're digitally native and they consume less. So how do we start to get them interested in these things?
MJ (33:50.518)
You
Matthew (34:05.133)
you
MJ (34:17.73)
You're talking from the consumer, not the employee, correct? You're talking about the employee, OK.
Eli Feldman (34:20.429)
I'm talking about the employee. Yeah, because I think the consumer ends up being a little bit downstream from that a lot of the time. But figuring out, you when I think when any of us were coming up in this industry, it was like product, product, product, and then people camaraderie energy of working in restaurants. And I think it's just a little something different that's connecting with people now. And we haven't quite figured out what that is.
Matthew (34:37.389)
you
Eli Feldman (34:46.697)
and as an industry and I think there's a role for AI in that. We use AI for wine education across a lot of different fronts.
MJ (34:57.24)
Would you say learning and development is sort of your primary use for it right now and engagement? OK.
Eli Feldman (35:04.637)
No, it's financial analyst. I mean, I would say my current sort of take on a lot of this stuff is like, how would this industry change if every restaurant could have a software engineer, a data analyst, a data scientist, and a financial analyst for under 200 bucks a month? And I think actually if you frame it that way,
Matthew (35:18.381)
you
MJ (35:24.782)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (35:30.679)
and you actually go down that rabbit hole, you end up in some pretty cool new places. Ask a really good engineer what they would do if every customer of Mee's had a software engineer in their restaurant.
How would your engineering team interact differently with that restaurant, Josh?
Josh Sharkey (35:54.118)
Yeah, it's funny because you inspired me to start, and I talked to my engineering team about this, thinking about a plugin ecosystem for what we're building because of, you know, if more people are doing this. Matt is cringing right now because I think he needs to he needs to disagree with something. And I know he also has a hard stop soon and I don't think he's using AI to solve legal problems.
MJ (36:12.364)
Hahaha!
Josh Sharkey (36:20.409)
But do we want to get into some legal discussions here or is it too early too soon?
Josh Sharkey (36:29.485)
Okay, so let's let's let's do some some war stories here of the worst legal battles we've been in And we can focus on restaurants if we want I i'm not going to go first. I could but I won't so Chime in anybody because matt's matt's jumping into one soon
MJ (36:53.006)
I'm happy to take lead on this and I'll try to deliver it as quickly as possible.
Josh Sharkey (36:58.381)
Our statute of limitations up for anybody that's gonna, because I think mine is, we had a 10 year statute. Are you good there? Okay. I couldn't talk for a while.
MJ (37:06.24)
settlement.
MJ (37:09.838)
Mine was my first, so I owned a handful of restaurants and I started getting more interested in real estate. I had learned that my landlord at the first restaurant that I owned had refied like four and a half million dollars tax free out of the property that like I put my blood, sweat, and tears into and worked at seven days a week and
I got more curious about that business. And so I started hunting for buildings to potentially put a new restaurant in, fell in and out of a handful of letters of intent, and then ended up in contract to buy two properties that were just next to one or other corner in a neighborhood called Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn. I raised money. It was my first experience of raising capital.
Yeah, put together like a whole development model. I found a co-living company to become our master tenant in our apartments above and was developing the restaurant below. It's just like a really, maybe about 10 years ago, it like my first really big, meaningful, investable project. And worked really hard on it. I thought I had every single, you know,
rock over, I had overturned every rock. I had done all the diligence I needed to do, hired a general contractor, bought all the appropriate insurances that we would have needed to develop, to make sure that we were covered. And yeah, I was,
showing off the property to family friends. lived not too far away, showing off the property to some family friends. And we were going through the restaurant and them what it was going to look like. And then we started touring the apartments above. And I noticed this little blob, of, or spot of blood in the stairwell of one of the properties. And then just kept following it. And the spots of blood.
MJ (39:31.03)
started getting more pronounced as I followed them more and more. Left one of the buildings and started going to the other building. The blood droplets just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And again, I was touring with the property family friends. We eventually get to the top floor and there was blood all over the walls. Like it was right next to and right near a table saw. So it was very clear like something
happened with the table saw and there was blood in a lot of places. And this was on like a weekend day. So I called the contractor. I was like, what the fuck happened? Like, what's going on? And he told me that someone injured their hand. They were fine. No big deal. A few months later, we were served a lawsuit. And I got to learn all about how
You know, slip and fall attorneys can evade the nuances of insurance. And it turns out that our contractor was working under another contractor's license. That contractor had great insurance. But because of some loophole, they were also able to sue the property owner. Ended up in a really, really horrible legal battle that like ultimately settled for really not much money at all.
But it damaged several relationships that I had developed over many years. And it caused a really big, really big headache and heartache in my real estate slash development career. So tough, tough, tough stuff. But glad it's over.
Josh Sharkey (41:23.957)
I thought you were going a different direction with that, yeah, that's I Know Yeah Mine'll be but I'll go I'm gonna go very fast just because I want to I want to hear Matt and Eli's but like I I had a restaurant
MJ (41:29.07)
The de- Yeah, thank God.
Josh Sharkey (41:39.398)
a second location of a restaurant, third location of restaurant that was waiting on TI, what is what TI is, tenant improvements, and the landlord, it was like a development company, was slated to do like half a million bucks in TI for us. The building was one of the oldest bars in New York City on Bleaker Street, and we had to basically gut the whole thing, and it was way more build up than we would have ever done for the restaurant. And a year later, they still had not done any of work, and we had already signed the lease.
MJ (41:44.588)
Yeah. God, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (42:08.869)
I, dumb mistake, I said, okay, I'm just gonna have my GC start doing all this work and you're gonna pay us back. And they said, okay. And then we opened and they just didn't. And then Sudas said, well, we know that like you really can't.
MJ (42:27.96)
then they sued you.
Josh Sharkey (42:32.101)
You can't afford to to court, so I'm just going to sue you. I was like, just going to leave this lease. It doesn't make any sense. And we got sued for them not paying us, and we had to settle. That's it.
Eli Feldman (42:51.545)
Thank
Josh Sharkey (42:53.847)
Matt, where you going? What are you doing? What's yeah, that's you were a little bit cryptic. Well, tell us what's going on
MJ (42:54.552)
Matt, I'm curious to hear about what's going on.
Josh Sharkey (43:02.467)
We are yoga.
Eli Feldman (43:02.873)
I don't have a lot on this front. have to say, I've had generally pretty good relationships with our landlords. My legal troubles that I've had in this industry tend to be more, I'll be candid about it, yeah, it's employee employer. Yeah, and it's, there's always, you learn a lot from it.
Josh Sharkey (43:20.517)
employee.
MJ (43:22.254)
Employee employer, yeah.
Josh Sharkey (43:23.673)
Yeah, I've had those too, yeah.
Eli Feldman (43:32.321)
Nothing, never sort of approaching any of this as a bad actor on our side, but that doesn't mean that intent, what we intend and what people infer is not always gonna be the same thing. And you learn, you live and you learn.
Josh Sharkey (43:45.582)
Yeah, dude, I had an employee once first day on the job. We had like a wine bar thing on the rooftop of a Brooklyn Bridge Park and first day on the job, they were like a counter service person. just, they drank like three or four. We had that wine on tap from, I forgot the name of the company, what's the G and they had, they just drank like three glasses of wine and then walked off, walked off. That was like within the first hour.
and then applied for unemployment and got it. I tried to sort of fight it, say, no, what do you mean? Clearly, you're not gonna get unemployment. Here's what happened, and they still got it.
MJ (44:27.906)
they want.
Josh Sharkey (44:31.695)
Matt.
Eli Feldman (44:32.141)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (44:37.443)
Well, I the former, don't know if you want to to that one too if you want, but maybe the current one to start.
MJ (44:37.838)
current this the thing that you're
Josh Sharkey (44:51.459)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (46:42.735)
Cheers.
Josh Sharkey (46:49.743)
So you're going to try to fight that now.
MJ (46:51.79)
you
Josh Sharkey (46:53.445)
You're going to fight it now? today?
Josh Sharkey (47:32.005)
Do you want to talk about the other one?
MJ (48:17.486)
Was there a, obviously we don't need to talk about who it is, but was there a, what was the misunderstanding that, were you required to do certain things that you didn't do? Were they required to do certain things that they didn't do? Were you not allowed to leave? What was the sort of premise of this breakup?
MJ (48:54.467)
Hmm.
MJ (49:02.604)
And so there was a new formation and you were not considered part of that new formation.
MJ (49:34.486)
it never dig, got it, okay. Yeah, it's fine, yeah.
MJ (50:14.402)
tough. It's more, yeah obviously there's a financial component to it but it sounds like you're more torn up by the you know the emotional work that you did over the 14 years and how that's how those relationships are just
Josh Sharkey (50:14.405)
It's hard,
MJ (50:45.325)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (53:10.585)
Yeah, it's... Go ahead, Ilja.
Eli Feldman (53:11.417)
I think a lot of it, no, sorry. I just think so many things can be traced back to like the precariousness of just COVID aside, but like the precariousness of the business model in general. Like that doesn't excuse that type of behavior and at all. just, there are so many things that ended up happening downstream, even with good intent that when we open a new restaurant, you're going to get this, so you're going to get that.
Like, it's just until we can actually make this a model that works better, I worry that that stuff's never gonna go away.
Josh Sharkey (56:42.639)
Yeah, first off, mean, it's it's that had to be what I know it was because we spoke about a lot. It was an incredibly difficult thing for you to have to go through. you know, not just the legal piece and the the and the financial piece, but just the personal piece of that was, mean, that was so much of your life for so long. If I steal man it for a minute, I think that the the the the restaurant industry has
such low margins that there's just not, there aren't even like the, there isn't even like the infrastructure that they can have to consider it, to consider doing this. Like for example, these types of like contracts and having legal like build these contracts costs money that like restaurants usually, and by the way, this has nothing to do with your scenario, but like most often they don't have the dollars to do it. mean, they're, know, they're, they're EBITDAs just,
Is is the percentage is so small. They just don't have the dollars to do it That's one that's one piece that I feel like I always I'm always sensitive to is like, know people my team like people on my team that aren't restaurants like I can't believe they wouldn't pay $99 a month to save that I'm like, Well when you're worried about hitting payroll next week You know that in your back against is against the wall. There's you know, it's a lot harder to make those decisions but the other piece of it that you and I talked about too is like to To change to have a wholesale
Shift and how labor works in the restaurant industry it actually can't happen one by one You'd have you have to rip the entire org out and restart because if you want to start paying benefits to some And other people aren't then you have to change everybody but then the economics don't work for that because what the benefit is and and I think you've proved that it works is You can have a you can potentially have a much more reliable workforce that
has a much higher retention rate. yeah, of course. Yeah. But it's a risk that like, know, in aggregate, like it seems much riskier to go that route because everybody is already used to this other world. And unless you start from the very beginning that way and you give salary benefits, all those things, an actual like salary where it's like, hey, if you're overtime, that doesn't count. Then like starting from zero to one is kind of the only way to do it. Otherwise you have to just
Josh Sharkey (59:09.677)
Start completely, yeah, you have to rip it all out.
MJ (01:01:17.24)
But isn't that just capitalism? Isn't that just like a small microcosm of what our entire economic system is built on? Where that underpaid cook or underpaid front of house team member is looking up to that lifestyle and has supposedly the opportunity to earn that lifestyle for themselves.
different, like what you're saying, like none of it seems different than like what's happening in every industry in every corner of a.
Josh Sharkey (01:02:42.755)
What I think, although what he's saying about capitalism though is that the market always decides what works or what doesn't. So if you have two identical restaurants and one of them treats their employees this way and the other one decides to treat them that way, then the employees might decide, I don't want to work here anymore. I want to work here because the market will sort of derive where the value is for the employee and you can choose to do it this way or choose to do it that way.
MJ (01:03:00.426)
in theory exactly.
Josh Sharkey (01:03:11.749)
Mike that's what I'm like that's what I'm know inferring from what you're saying, but
MJ (01:03:13.486)
Yeah, think you're, yeah, yeah, that's correct.
Eli Feldman (01:03:16.577)
Yeah, I do think we're in a fundamental change though that I think isn't talked about enough, which is we're an industry that generally employs younger people, generally speaking. Like when you look at the breakdown of restaurant employment, I think something like 60 % are under the age of 35. And then when you look at what's happening with youth unemployment,
MJ (01:03:29.933)
Yeah.
MJ (01:03:38.659)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:03:43.66)
and post-college unemployment. what? This never worked. But now we're going to be, you know, I'm writing something about this now. I was standing in the dining room of our South Boston location and there were three women, yeah, there were three women sitting at a table. They all had tech company logo stickers on their laptops.
MJ (01:03:46.412)
Massive.
Eli Feldman (01:04:06.193)
And I walked over and I said hello and I knew the company that they all had stickers for and they were all on LinkedIn. And they were all on LinkedIn because they all just got laid off. And they were all early 20 something young women, one of whom towards the end of the conversation asked if we were hiring servers. We are about to have a wave of people coming into this industry.
MJ (01:04:13.996)
Mm-hmm.
MJ (01:04:26.134)
I love that.
Eli Feldman (01:04:34.185)
out of necessity, I believe, unlike anything we've seen at least since the Great Recession, probably even more than prior to that. And those jobs aren't coming back. And so the existential need to solve this problem, I think, is actually much more acute than it ever has been.
Josh Sharkey (01:04:47.203)
Yeah, yeah. Even if you just look at the mag...
MJ (01:04:57.144)
But shouldn't the market solve it for itself if there is now going, if there's an under supply of restaurant labor and there's about to be an over supply of unemployment, shouldn't those two things meet at some point?
Eli Feldman (01:05:15.053)
I think that they might, but I think that the casualty, and we didn't get to this one, the rise of the grandiose restaurants, the casualty will be the middle. You will end up with nothing but, like, I don't think, the way that the market will solve for this, at least as I perceive it from a capitalism standpoint, is that it will be the homogenization of restaurants. You will just have a massive amount of private equity backed.
MJ (01:05:22.284)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:05:43.586)
or publicly traded restaurants and everything in the middle. And then you will have major food group, which I think is essentially private equity backed, if not literally. You're just gonna end up with this barbell with literally nothing in the center. And so I don't actually think the market will solve for this.
in a remotely healthy way, it will solve for it, absolutely, but it will solve for it through L.Catterton and...
MJ (01:06:15.832)
Well, so how will it def, one thing that's great about the restaurant industry, still to this day, is that anyone can start a restaurant, and that's for better or for worse. It's why the old adage of what is it, 90 % of restaurants go out of business in the first five years, most of those restaurants are started by people who never opened a restaurant before. So to say that there's gonna be a glut of
professionally managed professional capital behind them, I think it's overlooking the fact that anybody can still start a restaurant. And if you.
Eli Feldman (01:06:56.119)
I don't believe that that's actually, I take your initial premise. I argue with your initial premise because I'm fighting for the same real estate as Adam Newman and Ron Shake and Cava and Tate and Pura Vida. And they're gonna pay 125 a square foot for a location in Harvard Square and not demand any TI because they're burning, they're operating off a burn rate and I'm operating off a cash flow.
MJ (01:07:17.25)
Yeah, and they're, yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:07:26.419)
And so I don't think anyone can open a restaurant anymore. think.
Josh Sharkey (01:07:26.853)
It's a good point.
MJ (01:07:31.202)
But that's class A. That's class A retail. So those are like the most desired.
Josh Sharkey (01:07:37.369)
That's also where if you want to do volume in restaurants, need that, typically you need that, unless you're opening a destination spot, which is very expensive to open anyways, and probably the people that are like anybody opening a restaurant are not that anyways.
Eli Feldman (01:07:50.358)
And this shit is so complicated because what you're now arguing for or what you're now saying is something that is absolutely true about restaurants. But then you get to the gentrification conversation like and you're then pushing people out of neighborhoods because like we've been chasing cheap real estate in this industry for a long time. like, you know, Bushwick didn't become Bushwick. It became Bush Bushwick.
MJ (01:07:53.635)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:08:18.669)
because someone went out looking for the cheapest possible real estate they could find to run a shitty economic business.
Josh Sharkey (01:08:25.753)
You know, I think there is a world in which the deployment of this kind of like private equity type capital not only goes towards these very massive, you know, scaled restaurants, but, you're already seeing it happen where they're deploying it towards the smaller, like, you know, the smaller guys because, you know, there's something unique there and they do have a way to like,
build efficiencies so that the person that's gonna open one, two, three will still have a profitable restaurant. And they're just doing that en masse and looking for, who are the 50 to 70 really, really talented folks that we're gonna go fund to build these restaurants so that we can have economy scale and things like that. So I do think that there's an opportunity for that.
Eli Feldman (01:09:17.913)
I am wildly optimistic about our industry right now. Don't don't don't mistake what I'm saying. I'm wildly optimistic about it because I think we occupy. We're in aggregate, we occupy so much of gross domestic product, so much of real estate, one in five leases in 2023 was a food use in urban areas. One in 10 people works in the industry, and I think we're going to get to like 15, almost 14 percent of GDP.
MJ (01:09:33.006)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Feldman (01:09:47.268)
through the restaurant footprint. like restaurant sales plus employment dollars plus supply chain plus real estate, like when you actually put the multiplier in and that's second only to healthcare. individually.
Josh Sharkey (01:11:03.407)
So I mean, to push back on that.
MJ (01:11:04.558)
I think he was talking about the scale of the industry. I don't think he was comparing it as the economic model.
Eli Feldman (01:11:08.631)
I wasn't looking at it as the model. Yeah, I was just talking about.
Josh Sharkey (01:11:08.739)
Yeah. But, but even, but, even, even that we started this conversation with AMEX is funding 100 % of, of Noma to do a pop-up and the, the, you know, and Noma is really the, the tip of the iceberg. You know, like there, if there's a, if it, if it works both ways where, know, private equity sees that there is, know, they're able to underwrite funding 70, 80 of these, like a hundred of these really talented people, because now they know they have that reliability of that.
MJ (01:11:19.683)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:11:38.565)
of that quality and then they can do that at scale, then it works both ways. They're getting value from the shaft or the operator in the same way. So I think that there's a world where it can be.
Eli Feldman (01:12:10.563)
Well, I think we're actually more in agreement with one another than maybe I'm articulating, which is like, I just think that there's an existential need to address these problems as the impact of the industry gets to a point where, oddly enough, by being so fractured and so small in aggregate, we're becoming too big to fail.
And it's just a matter of how we don't fail. Is it because we don't fail because of private equity and homogenization of the restaurant industry? Or is it we don't fail because we can actually have a healthy spectrum of across, not a barbell, a healthy spectrum of restaurants in a healthy way? That was, think we're actually largely in agreement with each other,
Josh Sharkey (01:13:04.131)
I thought what you were talking about was when we started this was the like how much more labor there is now in the workforce available. mean, cause there's, if you, if you look at like the mag seven in, in, aggregate of all of those of, you know, Amazon, know, Facebook or Meta, Microsoft, they, they grew there in $2 billion in increased revenue.
200 sorry, I think it's 200 billion in in the last year of 200 billion in in in in additional revenue over the last year of of additional revenue, right about a 36 % increase in revenue year-over-year Their employee count increased by 1.6 percent Microsoft has grown 36 billion dollars in revenue year-over-year zero increase in employee count, right? So the efficiencies because like which is great for them writes the billion-dollar efficiency with AI which means that
There's a ton of labor that to your point are sitting on their computers looking at LinkedIn that are looking to work in restaurants because there's not as many jobs in the tech space anymore.
Eli Feldman (01:14:12.003)
Well, that is what I'm saying. think that there will be access to a much broader pool of talent, but there also has to be a sustainable living within it. And I don't think the market solves for that on its own. I don't know exactly how we solve for that, but I believe we're heading towards a world where, you know, restaurants...
and the hospitality industry probably is 15 to 20 % of overall employment in this country. that's just a radically different, the way we have to think about these jobs as we look to receive all of these people, I think is just gonna be really, really different. I think it's a lot more akin to like the armed services, what that used to be.
MJ (01:14:57.464)
So it's.
MJ (01:15:01.204)
Is your concern that there's going to be a glut of labor that comes into this industry, just isn't able to, they're not able to be paid a living wage? Is that ultimately what you're saying?
Eli Feldman (01:15:16.951)
Yeah, my concern is that the weight of employment that we're going to have to carry in this industry as other industries get displaced cannot be reconciled with the lack of profitability and the margins of the industry. And how do we solve that? This doesn't sound like the voice of someone who's wildly optimistic, but.
MJ (01:15:35.148)
Well, the
Josh Sharkey (01:15:35.727)
Matt Matt Matt Matt's gotta start charging more for his wine, man
MJ (01:15:38.766)
It's going to be through taking price, right, or subsidies.
Josh Sharkey (01:17:00.325)
You know, Matt, Matt, think, but I think what needs to happen is that there's a lot of people like you that have been burned, right? Where you saw what the, what, what it looks like when it's, when it doesn't work well, when it the employee. There are a lot of people that are doing this, right? You know, Stucky's one, you know, you got a lunch. You got, I mean, our job and Tracy are doing, everybody's trying to do this, right? But you need more scale, right? Like our job and Tracy need 50 restaurants so that they can have an impact. You know, I think.
One of the things that I believe, you know, and I've seen this just as a chef, restaurant owner, and then now doing this, is like, there has always been this sort of reticence of, well, we don't want to, you a couple is okay, but like, if you start getting too big, then it's too corporate. But it's hard to do it well, to scale and also maintain your vision and the attention and things like that. But if we want to have impact, you need 50 more places, because what you're doing is great for your team.
Can you do that for more of Charleston? Can you do that for more of the state? You know what mean? Because more people like you need to do it. And how do you get way more of those? Way more locations so that you can actually have an impact on more of your team.
Eli Feldman (01:18:19.432)
Hahaha
MJ (01:18:20.558)
.
Josh Sharkey (01:18:24.357)
All right. Matt.
Eli Feldman (01:18:24.397)
There you go. He went the subsidies route.
Josh Sharkey (01:18:30.917)
We'll see you Matt. Matt, keep your computer on if you can so that you know the drill. All right, we'll see ya. Yep, bye.
MJ (01:18:39.096)
See you Matt.
Eli Feldman (01:18:41.005)
Mike, I don't know if we're still continuing, but I do think that there are alternatives to just subsidies or price. think those are going to maybe part of the equation, but I mean, I'm trying to run restaurants in Boston and the regulatory environment. I live in Massachusetts. I'm a blue person. I belong here.
That being said, the regulatory environment and the costs that it imposes is a big part of the equation. like the, you know.
the rising cost of electricity as we sort of start to build data centers like they're going out of style or try to like that's going to impact restaurants. Is there something from a regulatory standpoint in the other direction that could say that could subsidize? I think that there's we need to have more creative conversations about how to address this, in my opinion, than just raising price, because that is the barbell.
MJ (01:19:27.203)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:19:50.426)
You're just making restaurants inaccessible to the wide array of people and you end up in sort of a sci-fi dystopia at some point.
MJ (01:20:01.1)
Yeah, I understand. I look at this in maybe two different lenses. one is the, know, Sharkey and I talked about the first time we did a podcast, you know, the corner between a restaurant truly is like sitting on the corner of art and commerce, right? And so much of a restaurant is innovation and creative process. And it's a self-expression of someone, you know, of a chef or a
an owner operator who's trying to develop an experience. That's like one part of a restaurant or what the restaurant business holds. The other part is just pure commerce. And if we think about, you know, as a private equity firm backs a 12 unit group to become a 30 unit, to become a 50 unit group, you know, in theory, each time a new unit opens, it's
taking of a professionally backed or professional capital behind it. It takes away the smaller kind of mom and pop trying to fight. But ultimately, I go back to, isn't that just capitalism? Isn't that just part of the unfortunate reality of our economic system? And in order to protect the smaller guy, there actually would need to be
regulation that comes in and helps a smaller mom and pop industry perform and provide for its employees. just, I don't understand.
Eli Feldman (01:21:40.345)
I agree, I do believe that this is just a downstream impact of capitalism. think the thing that changes to me a little bit here is we have a lot of models around the world of what happens when you have rampant youth unemployment.
MJ (01:21:44.557)
Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:21:55.896)
like the Middle East being one place in particular, but there's plenty of places that have had rampant youth unemployment and nothing good comes of that. And so there is, we are in a fundamentally different place where the nature of work is changing. So at some level,
I know it's a big, probably a big empty statement to say, but like the nature of capitalism probably needs to change a little bit too or else I think you're, you're, you're in for a world of hurt because young people can't become as disillusioned as they're likely to become when you read what's happening on the other end of this, these youth unemployment, like.
MJ (01:22:38.026)
Yeah, I don't disagree. think that there's just like, there's two conversations there. There's the youth unemployment and then there's the restaurant problem. And I'm not quite sure, you know, small mom and pop businesses going, not being able to perform or not being able to survive feeds the youth unemployment problem. think youth unemployment can still, you know, new restaurants are still opening, which
provide opportunities for people to work at. It's just like maybe not the ideal makeup of restaurant.
Eli Feldman (01:23:11.801)
Yeah, and to me the connective tissue there is that these are durable jobs, generally speaking, whereas other jobs, the lower rungs or the low rungs of the white collar workforce are what's getting completely hollowed out. They're getting completely hollowed out. Whereas restaurant jobs, similar to home healthcare and things like that, that are really physical embodied work are very durable jobs. And so, just...
MJ (01:23:16.994)
Mm-hmm.
MJ (01:23:24.558)
They're going, they're going away. They're going away. Yeah.
MJ (01:23:35.0)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:23:42.007)
You know, you've got a deficit in one place and a glut in another. So, can we end on a higher note?
Josh Sharkey (01:23:47.267)
Yeah. Well.
MJ (01:23:51.434)
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:23:53.064)
Eli Feldman (01:23:53.921)
Anybody have a suggestion on what that should be? Back to no nostalgia.
MJ (01:23:56.014)
Ha ha ha ha ha!
MJ (01:24:01.838)
Back to no nostalgia. is it no nostalgia? Isn't it just part of this cycle where you've got a period of time that is really celebrating? It's not a thing, right? Yeah.
Josh Sharkey (01:24:12.759)
It's not a thing. It's been here forever. I think the high note is that I'm stoked that Eli came on and you just got to come on again because this was fun and this... We didn't touch on 12 more topics that we should, but this was awesome.
Eli Feldman (01:24:32.121)
Well, thank you for having me on. It's always a fun conversation.
Josh Sharkey (01:24:35.813)
Yeah, I'll probably see you in February, and then I'll see you again in April.
Eli Feldman (01:24:42.583)
Yeah, and you text me when you're in town.
Josh Sharkey (01:24:44.549)
Yeah, oh by the way, this is a plug by the way. I'd love if you guys could check out, I launched this thing called Scaling Up and it is a newsletter but it's also a blog. I'm writing some more and the podcast is on there. Some recipes and things like that. I'd love if you could check it out and I'll add you to the newsletter. I think we're launching our first one next week and you will all be on it as well as we talk about things like this. We pull things from...
MJ (01:25:02.744)
Hell yeah.
Eli Feldman (01:25:03.577)
All right, scaling up.
Josh Sharkey (01:25:12.489)
the shows we're having as well for like excerpts and things but I'm excited about it so I'd love you to check it out if it's even one one hundredth of as good as the things that Eli are writing then I will be a happy man.
MJ (01:25:25.102)
Eli, it was great to meet you. Yeah, I've heard a lot about you, and it's nice to finally connect.
Eli Feldman (01:25:27.083)
Nice to meet you as well. All right.
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks guys. Not leaving.
Josh Sharkey (01:25:34.031)
Thanks guys, don't leave.
MJ (01:25:35.534)
We're not leaving.
