 I'm Rusty Kamori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the owner and CEO of Ruby Tuesday Hawaii Restaurants, Gyukaku Barbecue Restaurants, and Rainbow Drive-In in Kalihi. He is Rick Nakashima, and today we are going Beyond Restaurants. Hey, Rick, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Thank you very much, Rusty, and thank you for having me on. Rick, I'm so excited to have you. You've been such a great leader for so many years, but first, I want to ask, we know where Rainbow Drive-In in Kalihi is, but tell me how many restaurants you have of Ruby Tuesday and Gyukaku, and where are they located? We have four Ruby Tuesdays and four Gyukakus and the one Rainbow Drive-In. So we have nine restaurants in all. Our first Ruby's was at Mililani. Now we also have Windward Mall, Kapolei, and Moanalua Shopping Center. Gyukaku, we have Mililani Maoka. The right above Rainbow's in Kalihi is our Kalihi Gyukaku, and then Kapolei Commons, and that makes those four. Windward Mall makes the four. So we're really in nice, diverse neighborhood locations, Rusty. Easy for everyone to get to and appreciate you having me on the show, Rusty, and I want to thank you. I want to let everybody know that you made 200 shows you told me, right? And that's a huge, huge accomplishment. Thank you. Oh, thanks, Rick. Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago. We hit episode 200. It's unbelievable, and one of the most recent huge movies that we've all seen is Tom Cruise's Top Gun Maverick, and is it true that your father was a fighter pilot as well? Absolutely, Rusty. I'm really, really proud of that. We think he was half Japanese, and we think he was the first person of Japanese ancestry to go Mach 1, to break the speed of sound, in an F-86 fighter saber jet, which back then was not easy. The guys out there now in those jets can go Mach going straight up in the air vertically, but he had to dive in his very sharp descent, and my mom said some of his friends, you know, everyone wanted to wanted to go Mach and get your Mach Buster pin, and some of his friends didn't make it and ended up passing away. The hydraulics on the plane would lock up. So yeah, something I'm really proud of. He was also right out of internment camp where he and my mom met. He went into the paratrooper 82nd Airborne back then. I think they were locked up because they thought they could be spies, so a lot of them joined and wanted to prove that they weren't and served the country. So he did that. He jumped in the Battle of the Bulge. Wow, that's absolutely impressive, Rick. I mean, that's very impressive. Rick, can you share what schools you went to and what sports you played? Yeah, sure. I went to New Valley Intermediate, Kaiser High School. Then I went away to Drake University. The goal was to run track up there. It didn't work out. And then back to the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where I finished up, where ironically, I ended up coaching track as a very young student still up there. I was a part-time assistant coach. So I was really lucky, Rusty. I got a lot of good breaks along the way, coaching. At Kaiser, I was hired as a 18-year-old coach and had an unbelievable amount of great talent. So I got the job at UH because of that. Hawaii was a young area, a young developing area, and just an unbelievable amount of talent I had. But back to your last question. I ran a lot of track across country. Love to play basketball. Didn't play on the team at Kaiser, but love that. So those were the sports I played. Well, Rick, and it's impressive too that you have been coaching track for over 40 years. And, Rick, after you graduated college, can you share what various jobs you had before you became a restaurant owner? Yeah, sure. I started actually at King's Village handing out coupons for a portrait studio in the full-on Kitchener hat helmet with the King's Guard outfit. Then after that, I was at Bob's Big Boy along the freeway there in Mapunapuna, washing dishes and busing tables. And then I was doing construction work for a developer downtown. And then I got it and all through this I'm coaching. And then I went to the Hyatt and I was a concierge, which I didn't even know what that was, Rusty, when I was hired. It was kind of funny. The boss told me it would be like, you know, a flight attendant in first class. So that was a great job. I lasted in that for about two and a half, three years. And then I was the recreation manager at the Hyatt. And after that, I went and started my own landscaping business. And I was a contractor for 20 years maybe. And landscape did finish carpentry. Really had a good time with that because it allowed me to be around my kids a lot. My wife Renee was also at the Hyatt. We met at UH and later worked at the Hyatt together as concierge. So she was in that corporate world and it allowed me to, you know, be with the kids and pick them up and be around, free up my schedule to be around them. So after a while, as I was landscaping and doing finished carpentry, my partner Ted Davenport was building his big mansion up on the hill in Hawaii. And I was doing the landscaping and carpentry and he ran into the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in, I want to say in Louisiana and fell in love with it and said, you know, let's partner up. That was probably 2021 years ago. We've been open almost 19 years. And the rest is history. Well, it's absolutely fascinating hearing your path. I mean, how, and then I'm glad that you brought up Ted Davenport because like you said, he's been your longtime business partner. What is it about you guys that makes you such a great team together? Well, I think we have a lot of similarities. Ted's a gambler. If he likes something, he's going to dive in and give it his best shot. I lean that way. I don't think I'm anywhere near as much. And, you know, he's come across some good business opportunities. The first big business we did together, he wanted to, he was the limo driver at the IA. And he wanted to start his own limousine business. And so a few of us partnered up with him. And next thing you know, you know, we had three limousines and it was going really well. After that, this would be the next big business we've done together. So we started, we met each other rusty back in 1971. We were playing flag football together in Waikai. So we go way, way back. Well, Teddy is such an incredible guy. And I had him on my show and everybody loves Teddy. And I want to ask you, Rick, I had dinner with you at Ruby Tuesdays the other week. And just absolutely love the dinner. I mean, your food, it's so hard to choose what I want to order because there's so many things that I want to order. And I'm so happy that you guys have the salad bar, you know, back again. But when you're hiring employees, because I was able to meet some of your team members there. And they're all so professional, so positive. But what do you look for when you're hiring employees? You know, Rusty, my number one goal in a person is seeing what kind of attitude they have. I don't hire, do any of the hiring in the restaurants. You know, once of all, I'll refer someone to our general managers. But our GMs do all the hiring with their, with the operator once of all in fall. I mean, I take care of who's going to operate, which you know, the way our business are formatted, we have operators, GMs, assistant managers, and then the workers in the restaurants, bartenders, servers, dishwashers. So it's always attitude. Rusty, that's the number one thing. Experience, intelligence, all those things don't matter as much to me, because if you have a kid that knows, that really has a good feel about themselves and, and you know, exudes that kind of positive feel, I'll take that all day over all the other attributes. I completely agree with you. I mean, attitude is so huge, and that's so contagious. And, Rick, you know, you're a member of the Hawaii Restaurant Association, and Ryan Tanaka, being the current chairman of the HRA, had, had talked with you about joining, or starting the Broughhood Grines program. And so your restaurants are among the first to start the Broughhood Grines program for the University of Hawaii football. Can you tell me about why you, without hesitation, you wanted to help? You know, I love UH Sports, Rusty. You know, as I said, I coached up there. My whole family has such a connection to the University of Hawaii. My wife, Renee, was the first rainbow dancer on scholarship there. My son is, is a graduate and manages with Rich Sheriff, the Sheriff's Center. My daughter graduated there and ran track five years for University of Hawaii and cross-country. You know, I love, I just, you know, I just love everything about that school and want to do as much as I can to, to move everything forward. And I think in Hawaii, we all know football is what the main populace loves. Unfortunately for a guy, a track guy like me, it's not track. The local, the local population doesn't support track well, but that's all right. You know, I still support Tim Boyce and the, and the UH Wahine track team, but football, and now with Timmy coming in and it following the unfortunately negative circumstances of our last coach, I want to support everything Timmy does. Luckily, I've been around him a number of times. Didn't know him till he got this job and really feel like, you know, he's a real good, honest person that I hope has a ton of success as an end coach. I, I, so when, when this opportunity came on, I thought, well, times aren't really good to do something like this, but you know, let's, let's put the money where our mouth is and really do our, do our best to support the school and support Timmy and Dave Matlin. I think Dave's doing a great job up there. And that, and so it was an easy decision. And I really applaud Ryan for thinking about doing this and put it all together. So it's, it's a good one, Rusty. Well, I love, I love what you said. I mean, yeah, I mean, I was there in that first initial meeting with Ryan and coach Timmy when this all kind of started, but I know that Ryan is so grateful that without hesitation, I mean, you jumped in some of these other restaurants jumped in. I mean, you guys are the first. And I mean, it's so meaningful to see coach Timmy, his assistant coaches and his players be so appreciative of the community. And I really want the community to know about this, to really know, you know, which restaurants are supporting Hawaii athletics so that people, the community can come in and support you as well. Now you touched on it a little earlier about the timing because of, you know, the pandemics. I mean, a lot of businesses, a lot of restaurants didn't survive. Now, how, what kind of effects did the pandemic have on you? You know, it was real interesting, Rusty. It, it was in certain ways one of the worst things I've been through watching and being forced to close the, the restaurant seatings. We were able to stay open for it to go. So initially, you know, it was, it was a big question. What do we do? I have a really good team Rusty here that I didn't speak about yet. My two operators, Sean and man and my, my CFO Brian, we had daily meetings on what, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle this? How do we, how do we go about having a closed dining room? And we came up with, you know, let's be the best to go restaurant we can be. Well, it worked out really well. We did a good job, but certain areas with our type of restaurant, especially Gyukaku, just wouldn't work out that way. And we were reopened and then we shut down again, the dining rooms, and then we were smarter. We said, well, now what do we do? Who do, who do, where do we open? Who stays closed? All of our employees from that closed restaurant were able to go to other restaurants. So there was no harm on, on an employee, which made us feel good. And, and that was one of the hardest things until rescue, the, the idea came where we had to tell people if they were not going to get vaccinated, they weren't going to work with us until, until the safe access program was over. Now there were options that I went over with, with our PEOPRO service, but it came down to us having to tell people, either get vaccinated or don't work with us for now. And, you know, we, we made sure and met with every single person that didn't want to get vaccinated, still wanted to work. And that was the hardest thing I've ever done in the 19 years is sit across a kid that needs the money and has reasons why they don't want to get vaccinated. I'm a, I'm not a vaccinated vaccination kind of guy. Now with COVID, I did get it, but I don't get flu vaccines. So I understand and I sympathize with them. But it was terrible, Rusty. And luckily we made it through that. I, I apologized and told them it's, it's what we had to do business wise. There weren't very many, I think we met with 10 kids. And some of them are back with us now, which just really, really makes me feel good about that. But the pandemic was hard. That was, you know, there were many things that I don't think I've ever been in as many arguments over gray areas of either money or policies as I had in those two years. It, you know, franchise fees and it goes on and on. Leases. How much should we have to pay? It was a tough time, Rusty. But the positive thing about it is when times are hard and you have a good crew around you and everything works out and we got through it, you know, you really know who, who your friends are. They, you know, there's, there's that saying, you don't know how a person is going to react in a, in a war until they get shot at. And yeah, that's going a little too far for this situation. But it's, it's a similarity. We were really in a lightweight war and my guys around me were awesome. So that was a positive. And I feel it's very important, like, you know, where the employees really understand what management is going through and management's understanding what employees are going through. Sometimes employees just, it's one-sided. They don't understand all of the effects that the leadership team's going through. And Rick, you, you have both of my books and I want to ask you if you like the book and what are some things that stood out to you in it? I love the book, Rusty. I only read the first book I got right here. And it's very, very easy reading for those of you that haven't picked it up yet. I really recommend it. I enjoyed it, Rusty. What I, what I like and one thing we think in very common about is owning it. Along with attitude for the attitude for, for an employee, the big thing I always tell my managers, I don't talk to the line employees about this, but I tell them, own what you have done, own it. Every single one of us is going to make mistakes in life. And a lot of our managers are young. And I tell them, please, don't think you're going to go through this job perfectly and not make a mistake. When you make a mistake, the big thing I want to hear or want you to know is if you accept the fact that you made that mistake, learn from it and own it and move on. If someone tells me, yeah, I did this, I did that, sorry, won't do it again. There is absolutely no anger in my world. Now, if someone does something and blames it on somebody else or tries to, tries to lie about it, you know, that just ruins it for me. I can't tell you how much that bothers me. I like that you mentioned about accountability, owning it, because that's so important for not just leadership to do, but for the team members to do it. It's all words and actions. So I feel so great that you like the book. And I'm hoping you're going to like the second book beyond the game. But you're somebody that definitely goes beyond the lines, Rick. And I want to ask you about your annual Ruby Tuesdays track invitational event that you do. Can you tell me about that? Oh, I just love it. Love that event. Rusty, we're in our eighth year, I believe we've done eight of those. We took a, we had a couple got taken away from the pandemic, but it is the first meet where the OIA and ILH and actually we have Outer Islands coming in. Gary Sanchez brings his Baldwin team in, the upper crust kids from Baldwin. We've had teams from Canada, Alaska, LA, and Newport Beach. So we've had some excellent meets and really quality records. And I just like it, Rusty, because it's my sport that I love. I think we do a really good job. We sell t-shirts. I partnered up with a guy from Cal Track. It was Rick Foster and my idea. Walter Thompson, a long time Roosevelt. Now he's at Leysiard Inn. Track coach does all the nuts and bolts with Earl. And it's a really quality meet. So proud of it. And the kids enjoy it. They get nice medals and ribbons. And like I said, first time a lot of the OIA and ILH will meet. So it's a state preview. And it's early in the season. So it's exciting. I think it's a terrific event. I love that you're doing that for so long now, Rick. And Rick, you provide such big time community support. I mean, you're connected with the Aloha United Way, Marcus Mariota's Motivate Foundation. I mean, can you tell me more about some of these organizations that you help? Oh, yeah. Well, you named two of the big ones right there. I just love working with Marcus and Motivate. His parents, Elena and Tor, are very, very involved. I got in. I got in with them quite a few years ago. Edna Shilke is a Kaiser boy with me, and was president of the Foundation. And we have a great partnership together. Our Giving Thanks program every May is where we started the partnership. And we feed all the homeless soup kitchens, the IHS River of Life. All those people rusty every six months out of Thanksgiving was why we call it Giving Thanks. So it's normally the third week of May. And we take food to the Humane Society and the SPCA out in Oahu. We'll take a thousand pounds of dry dog and cat food out to them. It's just an honor working with Motivate. We also work with Anson's. They're our food distributor. They've donated a lot of food and been a big help whenever we do anything charitable. Right when the pandemic hit, Rusty, I got a call from Colonel Tomah, who's our liquor salesman, asking, hey, I know you do a lot of charitable work. What are you guys up to? I told him, Colonel, we're just trying to survive right now. Nothing. And he goes, hey, I got an end with Tito's vodka. He's a real charitable. Tito's is actually a person. His name is not Tito, but Tito's vodka is a person in Austin, Texas. And he has a very charitable wing. And we did, we did, he vetted us. And the money has to go through charitable organizations. So went through Motivate. And we got $10,000, Rusty, right when the pandemic hit. And so many interesting things happened right after that. Out of the blue, I get a call from IHS. They said, hey, you know, normally for Thanksgiving, a big hotel in Waikiki cooks for us, but they're closed. Can you help us? And I said, you know what? Perfect timing. We sure can. With that $10,000, we cooked a bunch of food for the IHS. And a few other charitable's worked out right after that. So we spent the $10,000 pretty quickly. But it was all for really good things. And you know, that leads me to another thing, Rusty. We don't do all these charitable things without the right people with me. And again, talking about my operators, you know, there's a lot of extra work in the GMs. It has to be done. You know, we'll cook a thousand pounds of turkey. And I don't even know how many pounds of stuffing and gravy and corn and mashed potatoes. But I carry the stuff from Guadalupe to the IHS. That's my leg. Every restaurant will cook things. Winter goes to River of Life. Mililani goes to Surf the Nation. So, you know, it's a ton of food, Rusty, or tons of food. And it takes the right attitude from the right people we have to do this. I wouldn't do it if I was, you know, forcing them or I felt the wrong feelings about it. I have a great staff right now. They dive in, and we're able to get these things done. And, you know, I always tell them, you know, I get the credit, you know, like being on this show, Rusty. I get the credit, but I want them to know that goes right back to them. They're the ones doing all the hard physical work. And they're the ones making it happen. So it's really nice, really nice having that culture. Well, Rick, that's what you do. I mean, you've created such a superior culture of excellence. And I want to thank you for taking time to be on the show today. And I want more Rick Nakashimas in the world. So thank you, Rick. Thank you, Rusty. And I appreciate you. I know when we talked up at the party for Timmy, and I told you things could be better. And you said, hey, let me help you. And, you know, for the people out there that don't know you, that's the kind of guy you are. Appreciate it, Rusty. Thank you, Rick. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com, and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Rick and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Also, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.