Test of Thyme Episode #19: Friendships vs. Bribes: The Battle for Integrity in the Restaurant World

one hello everybody hi everybody Jamie and Marcus here welcome to test of time love passion and hustle in the restaurant business yeah it wasn't any business really yeah we've kind of added that oh yeah so it's episode number 19. and uh we're having fun doing this we have a lot of fun doing this so been open 20 years in the Hudson Valley as a restaurant as

a restaurant we've struggled struggled struggled and um learned from our mistakes turned things around and we're here to share our perspective and our tips to inspire other people and help people and really make you love your restaurant it's a beautiful business it is once it's dialed in and you have the right tools and techniques and mindset this is an amazing business that is full of relationships

it sure is yeah yeah relationships with um your guest relationships with your vendors your Distributors your importers your producers just everybody you know it's just it's really about building relationships um and you know uh just what you get out of it um what you put in is what you're going to get out is always what I say so that was a little point in my career

was back in the late 90s and I always thought that having a restaurant a good restaurant was about having guests that are so happy and like amazed and and pleasing the guests but a lot of most chefs are like that right let's make sure we're getting good reviews let's make sure everybody's happy but when you turn the tables around in the 90s right in the late

90s you realize that let's make sure that our producers are happy our sales people are happy the companies we're buying from are happy um the farmers let's make sure they're all happy and that's what changed my career absolutely that's what built the foundation for a romance I remember that I remember that a lot yeah so we just recently were on an amazing journey in central Mexico

you want to talk about that we were we uh joined um probably about 50 other Winery owners restaurant owners um business owners importers and we joined them on an amazing adventure as you said um going to different wineries that uh that one of our importers um brings into the states and just experiencing being with other people experiencing what other businesses do and just building relationships you

know I think it was all for us it was all building relationships yeah building relationships relationship building and and uh just enjoying ourselves but finding out why people do the things that they do and how they do them and how we can support each other uh more so in in the wine business I like to have to support each other the theme the theme of every

Winery owner no matter how big or small in Mexico Mexico is chukasa yeah my house my house is your house and it was it was very apparent that you know we're we're invited at any time to go visit them and um they're going to take care of you they're gonna spend time with you talk to you talk about their wines talk about their love talk about

their passion and talk about just the things that are really important to them um in their businesses and you know you could ask any question and they'll answer you um so you know and they're so appreciative so appreciative so appreciative now here was the the cool thing we actually have an offer to go stay at a winery owner's house in Mexico she was like why don't

we do a house swap and we're like we're in New York we're in the snow I've never seen snow I want to be in the snow right we're like really that we had just met them yeah and just we just hit it off it was a great organic Winery that we went to and um it was just it was just really fun to sit there and

talk to them and you know and then for her to be like hey you know let's uh housewife we thought that was pretty cool like all winter I'm like we can get away I said let's let's start with two weeks I was like I want to get away from the snow too and you want the snow this is perfect right but that was that that's when

you're dealing with independent companies that's the Gen the the genuine quality well that's people who care right yeah but it's like that in Italy too it's like that those are small or small producers and I realized this years ago after we got featured for uh serving kelt we got to mention in newspaper Oliver kelt from kelt cognac emailed me and said please come visit you're welcome

here anytime and I'm singing the same time like well Patron doesn't do that oh Cuervo doesn't do that um but cardi doesn't do that so the interesting conversation I was having with somebody on the trip was we were talking about Mezcal and they were talking about a big brand and and he was like I know it's a big brand and we had I'm not sure the

conversation because he goes I know it's a big brand and but I really like where they put their money so now I know this Big Brand we don't support this Big Brand because I don't believe they're they're genuine enough and a big company right so he's like I just love where they put their money and I'm like oh great like like so tell me like where

do they put their money he goes like they have sales reps they come and do promotions they give us money they they give us you know samples they do this they they come to events on this I really like how they where they put their money and I'm like so they rob the producers in Mexico and they keep them barely above poverty this brand um because

they're exploiting the people down there and making all this profit to come to bring this product into the US under a label that everybody knows and and thinks is great and be this big corporate structure with all these profits to just throw away money so there what they're doing is they're robbing the people are producing it they're not paying them enough they're paying them enough they're

throwing money around to restaurants to buy the product which is now taking away from a restaurant owner buying something else that's small and handcrafted where the money is going to the proper place and I was like but this is how most people think give me give me give me and I'll buy your product I want I would agree and for us it's about giving giving giving

and supporting those small guys right so let's just reiterate that real quick and I think that I think that's our passion and I think no matter what business you're in you need to have a passion and you need to stick by that and and constantly continue to what's the word I'm looking for just um follow your your passion and follow your love and find something that

um that that's about giving right yeah um so when I first took the yeah I think that is a quite shocking that he thinks that what the company does is great where they put their money giving money back the people that are they're buying their cars they're bribing they're bribing I'm buying their customers to get their products that they get more customers in and so that

they make more money not that the the producer of the product to begin with let the hard-working people working people that are making the Mescal or the tequila or whatever that they're making more money it's not about that it's about the the end result of what the person who's buying the product is and that is a superficial relationship that's not a real because you're never gonna

they're never gonna new brand manager comes in um new salesperson comes in new campaign comes in um and we're not doing this money anymore or whatever the brand is sold to another company whatever that's all superficial relationships and it's bribery it is but then that but then that bottle is still gonna sit on that restaurant shelf and they're going to continue to buy it and buy

it and buy it so you know something else interesting just real quick probably off of the topic you know we had a very good friend show up last night um and uh you said hey do you like tequila and he said I love tequila right and he started talking to you and he was like you are so knowledgeable about all of these things I want to

learn from you and I think you know when you immerse yourself in in what we are doing in our passion for everything that we do um I think that's where you shine and it shows and people want to support you more and more and I I wish more people were really like the way that we think in terms of passion for bringing in and supporting the

small little guys um you know because there's so many big guys out there and they don't need our money you know the small guys need our money so that they can you know raise their family they're a great product and raise their family and support their family and send their kids to college and whatever it might be that um that they want to do and I

just I think that's really important and I think we a lot of businesses forget that they do um but I think you have to have a mission statement and I think you have to have a mission that you follow all the time and our mission for the last 20 years has been to to to support small Independence right right for the most part in small farms

and I think we've fine-tuned it you know every year we kind of go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper to kind of go down the chain so that the bottom person is making more money than them so part of our mission statement is to have an uncompromisable bar right uncomfortable selection at our barn for me having Cuervo Patron absolute Tito's Jack Daniels Jim

Bean Glenn Levitt those are things on Brands like those are things you can get everywhere like that doesn't set my our bar apart is stocking everything else what sets our bar apart is the stories the people that produce it and the selections of things you can't find other places now we just had a big wine tasting before we left for Mexico our 99 bottles two people

during that tasting said how are you so knowledgeable like you know so much about like because it's my job it's my job to and it's on top of my job it's part of my mission statement is to is to do that but if you're a restaurant owner you need and you need to know what you're serving right you need to know people say what's out on

the bar there I mean we've gone to restaurants it should be yeah instead like this person knows nothing about the the culture of the actual company and the people that are making it they just know that they're coming in and getting paid money to promote a product and I'm going to tell you a lot of companies are like this if you're if you're in the restaurant

industry you know this because you get hit up all the time if you're a consumer watching this we get hit up although I remember we don't anymore we don't need more because we don't deal with those companies but I remember um when I first came back from Colorado to New York out of the country club you know Cisco came in all these companies came in and

they basically gave me a guide like if you buy so many of this brand and this brand get this many points you know you can get a TV you can get you know this and that and I looked at the staff members and I took the catalog and I burned it I've turned the burner on and I burned it I said we're going to be buying

high quality products there we're not going to be buying products that you get kicked back so I get a TV to take home we're not doing that here they're like oh and that's you know the reality of a lot of this stuff is they you go to these buying shows and they give you points and credits and all of a sudden you know you're leaving with

this and leaving without you have Perks and this and that and oh we'll get you Yankee tickets you know if you if you want to give me Yankee tickets give me Yankee tickets because you're my friend and I do business with you not because I hit a certain amount of a level of of buying 100 cases of Heinz Ketchup or whatever give it to me because

we're friends and you're my sales up and you're like yeah right hey we have company tickets the Yankee games yeah here's a few tickets right that's how business should be done should be right we've never done that I don't think you know ever you've never really been that way and when we were in college we were in Colorado buying from buying from all these uh places

um without the points and all that kind of stuff we were giving tickets all the time because people genuinely like this so we were friendly with our sales reps we knew ourselves and I'm still friends with them 22 years later on Facebook we still comment we're still friends and and it's a great feeling to have um just to build the built relationships like that absolutely so

yeah um relationships the new currency yeah I think it is and I think that that was the theme we were away is mi casa es su casa right is you know my house is your house and we feel that way about our restaurant you know this is our this is our house right you're coming into my living room and you're enjoying what we have spent so

much time to curate right exactly it's almost like a museum that we're curating our bar we're curating our food and we're curating our staff and all that stuff to give that experience of all the relationships so I think that's important so um so 19. episode 19. thanks everyone for tuning in thank you we really really appreciate it um we appreciate the support if you have any

questions um head over to 550mestakes.com which will roll into restaurant growth secretsuniversity.com 50 mistakes uh the book is there available for free um our restaurant Aroma time is 90 miles north of New York City in Ellenville so check us out aromatine Bistro and travel with us travel with us VIP Winery vacations do you want to go on some of these amazing trips that we go on

we'd love for you to travel with us and meet our friends and and build those relationships with um not only the other guests that are on the trips with us with us ourselves and also with the places that we go visit our phones are blowing up I know because I just sent out a staff meeting for staff meeting information team information contact so all right everybody

have an amazing day and we hope to catch you on the next episode thank you