 Hospitality is that depth of giving and in being there but I don't care about it unless the technical aspects of service have been complete. You know over the years watching people that sort of like get down with two guests while you know the other sides of the ship are like sinking. But at the end of it if they don't have water and they're waiting for drinks I don't care that that table is happy with you. Right I mean that's not a win for me. There's a system everybody needs to have just basic technical service. This is Startup the Storefront. Today's guest is Devin Adams, founder of the Townsend, a modern American restaurant in the town of Quincy, Massachusetts. Quincy is rich with American historical sites and the Townsend sits directly across the street from the burial ground where President John Adams and his son President John Quincy Adams are laid to rest. And even though there's no relation Devin is certainly adding to the Adams legacy in Quincy. Now I want to give all of you a little backstory to this interview. By the time Diego and I arrived at the Townsend we had already taped two podcasts that day and had been driving all over the Boston area. This taping was scheduled for when the restaurant closed at midnight. We were tired, cold, and wondering if we'd even have enough energy to make it into the early morning. Our worries were erased as soon as Devin sat down with us. He is a consummate host and his restaurant is an extension of his hospitable nature. Though, if I'm being honest, it didn't hurt that he uncorked a bottle of wine that entered the world the same year that I did. So listen in as we cover everything from how he shunned the snooty and primed ways of more traditional high-end dining establishments, why training service to be aware of their surroundings is a crucial step in being hospitable, and why you shouldn't rely on lawyers for business advice. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. We're joining you from Quincy, Massachusetts, with the great-grandchild of one of the presidents, Devin Adams, is in the building. I think the great-grandchild would probably be dead as well. We can go down a couple more tiers. Great, great, great. We're here at the Townsend, which is a restaurant here. It is. Devin's been in the game for a long time in food and beverage here in Boston, kind of a staple, frankly. Tell me about your, well, let's talk about your journey first. So where did you first get into food and beverage? Sure. So my buddy Justin was a bar back at a new restaurant in town called Kingfish Hall, which was at the time master chef, grand chef, Todd English, who was famous from olives. Todd English. So he had just opened that up. What were you doing there? So I started, I got in there as a bar back, kind of covered my buddies like college break, and I went from a bar back sort of at that point, probably is where my eyes really lit up with the industry. They had the sommelier, I think his name was Glenn Tanner, the psalm, ended up going to Japan. And then there was this hole where this big wine list was just kind of like nobody was dealing with it. The bar manager had left and I just sort of kind of worked my way up where it was like, okay, I can get orders in, I can do this. And had no one really to mentor or even just get feedback from because the company was just exploding and it was just really getting thin. So I sort of, through frustration and obviously just wanting to have a better understanding, I started put myself through school for wine. I went to the international sommelier guild, which no longer exists. But I put myself through the wine classes and just started basically ended up taking over the beverage program. Did you become a psalm or what was the? I went through the third series of it. So I did four years. And then I didn't, I didn't pass the last, I was never a student. It was good for me to sort of- But you learned enough, I guess, for what you needed to do. Really what I took out of it was more of the kind of analytical process that I never thought about before. Okay. I think when you start really getting into wine and breaking it down and you're in the restaurant business, it immediately translates into all the food that you're eating, especially with wine pairing and everything else. So you really just start to look at all beverage, all things. And then it goes as far as like, well, how is the table set? How should it be? And really breaking those things down if you're going to be really concise about it. But I always knew I was just never really of that mindset to really go that distance and be that bookworm about it. It was always to me about being comfortable in the restaurant, making people comfortable and not just spewing out a bunch of technical facts. So there from Kingfish, I went and took over the beverage program at Luca in the North End, which was another sort of big Italian American wine list, like five to six hundred different bottles on the list, back vintage stuff. Where'd you go after Luca? So Luca, I went to Island Creek. So when you got to Island Creek, what was your role there? So at that point, I had probably been managing bars for eight years. And the whole point there was to step back. There was always this kind of feeling that like some people just naturally understand hospitality, like you might walk into someone's house and they just naturally are like, Hey, I made these cookies and, you know, here's some tea and you might walk into someone else's house and it's like a fucking disaster. And they're, you know, it's like they're, they don't even know they don't even care that you're there kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And like how that transitions into how you welcome people into your home is also just like as a waiter or waitress or a bartender. Some people just naturally have that. And you're like, Oh, wow, they're a great bartender. You know, it's always sort of about like seizing opportunities, but it really was this like scientific breakdown of hospitality, which sort of sounds like, well, how are you making something that should occur naturally and be giving into this like science of opportunities? I never really had to think about that because I just always wanted to make sure the guests in front of me was just like they had everything they needed and I was ahead of them as far as they're thinking. So you sort of have that. But then you get into the point where it's like, Oh, I think the famous one I still use was them talking about like, Oh, you have a couple at your bar at your table that you know that they've got a babysitter and they've only got an hour and a half. And they're like, you know what, we got to get back to the sitter, we're going to have to skip out on dessert. And it's like, you can fire two cookies to go from up there and on their way out, be like, Hey guys, you know, and it's like, Holy shit, that's an awareness though. Like how are you teaching that awareness? How are you baking that you're teaching people to be aware of that fact? We would do these role playing exercises. We would, you know, it was just over and over again. This happens all the time. Like I remember I'll be meeting with people in any capacity. And I always notice if their glass is empty. But what I'm paying attention to is time, right? My thing is like their glass is empty. Do they need to leave? And so as soon as they're getting low, I'm like, Hey, do you have a hard stop? Or like, can we have another one? Right? Right before they're done and they're just staring at me and their mouth is getting dry. But like that, that's an awareness. And not everybody has that I've managed sales teams and I've tried to make people aware of that. Like this guy's been fidgeting with his watch for 30 minutes and you just stare at him and continue to lecture. Like what the fuck? Did you not get that? Are you not watching the same movie? Yeah. And they're like, I had no idea. Yep. And I'm like, how do we, how do you, how do you teach that? Yeah, the whole suite of like nonverbal, you know, that it's everything, it's, it's, it's insane. And it's just so much to it that it's just you, you know, in finding that it's like, Hey, this happened with this guest. And it's a mistake. And it's a problem. What are the steps to write it? Instead of really before it would just kind of be like, eh, their days ruined, you know, right? Instead of literally like, you know, and you hear it over and again, it's the Danny Myers, it's the guy at Harker, but it's just like, that's a no, that's an opportunity. Something went wrong. That means we have an opportunity to fix it and correct it. And what I talk about here with the staff as well is, is understanding, you know, hospitality is that sort of like that depth of giving and, and being there. But I don't care about it, unless the technical aspects of service have been complete. I've, you know, over the years watching people that sort of like, get down with two guests while, you know, the other sides of the ship are like sinking. Yeah. And it's like, how much that drives me crazy to be like, because in the end of it, like we want to go out, we're going to go have dinner. I just want to get everything that I need. You know, if it's bonus time and, you know, my bartender is just awesome and he's on it. It's like, and we get to make a connection. That's great. But at the end of it, if you're not, if they don't have water and they're waiting for drinks, it's just for me, I don't care that that table is happy with you. Right. I mean, that's not a win for me. There's a system. Everybody needs to have just basic technical service. Everyone needs to have water. It takes the pressure off too. So as you've been explaining this, if you have the technical skills in place, you don't have to be the nicest guy. Yeah. Because you're not relying on your niceness and your, let's call them your natural abilities to win them over. You're relying on the system. And you are consistent. And that's what everyone wants to say. And everyone else on your team is in the same boat. Yep. I show up on time. I'm 15 minutes early. My clothes are ironed. You know, it just all, so much of it starts way before your shift, you know, it's just, and you just kind of, you can see it like, oh, that guy didn't want to iron his shirt today. It's like, you know, what happened? But it's just one of those things. And that's part like, I talked to old timers in the business that are like, you know, they used to do the finger tip test before they started their shift. Your nails are dirty. Beat it. Yeah. You know, when I worked at, when we were working at Kingfish RGM, you know, it was like, if your uniform was black socks, if you had white socks on, get the fuck out of here. You know, you do that today, if people are like, can't believe you treat me like that. It's in your handbook. It's what you're supposed to, it's what your uniform is. Right. You could say that it seems like it's miss you, but it's, it's, it's an act that ripples across. And then it's like, oh, well, you know, last week she didn't, she had white socks on. So I figured I had, you know, I don't have to shave anymore. You know, and it's just like, you're like, what? But that's just kind of like, that's how these things start to happen. And I think, you know, you see, you see the structure that they put in place. And I think. So that was like the thing you learned. That was your takeaway there. And then as well as I, probably making amazing cocktails. Yeah. I mean, like the cocktails, the culture, you know, I think especially like being in the North End and, and, uh, Fanuel Hall, which are, were very, you know, again transient. I definitely had a great culture on the bar at Luca because the North End still has a lot of, you know, everyone still lives there. It's almost, I was living in at the time, it was probably a little too, almost incestuous. It was just, you knew everyone and you walked down the street any time of day you're seeing them. It was kind of that thing. It's a hundred feet from work. So it was actually a nice relief to be like, all right, I'm across the city now. But yeah, I think, you know, the, the cocktails for sure. I mean, I had never even heard about like proportion theory and like how. What does that mean? What is proportion theory? The idea of like, uh, call like a classic sour drink, New York sour, Dacri, whatever. Yeah. There's a idea that like, you know, I think Jackson would work off like one and a one and a half, three quarter, three quarter, every drinks based on three ounces, primarily not all of them, but these cocktails are based off of three ounces. This is how you impact the flavor profile. If you change the syrup, if you change the citrus. So it was, it was a language. It was a culture. And you know, you just start to pick these things up. You start to figure, you know, I'm jiggering, you know, how to all these things make sense within all of that structure. And I mean, you know, at the time, you know, Tom and Jackson and that they were just so gung ho and ruthless for a good reason because they knew that they had to have that Eastern stand. Like we couldn't, we couldn't just be like, Oh, Eastern standards, you know, it's a shitty thing. Right. Yeah. They have oysters, whatever. Yeah. That was big for me. I think that was, you know, one of those points where it was like, okay, and I did it and I did it well. Yeah. Hell yeah, you did. Best naked and famous around. That's my drink. So delicious. And then you went to drink. And then I went to drink. Yeah. What made you want to go to drink and learn something new again? Or so is it another step back? And I had gotten so the little blip there is I had gotten close. I was, I moved back to selfie. So probably throughout this whole time, I lived in the North end for a couple of years, but I primarily lived in South Boston. And South Boston just started to go crazy. In terms of real estate values. Real estate. Yeah. Just blowing up. And I knew like when I was living there in Fanuel Hall, like, when I first moved to South Boston, I was paying like 425 a month in rent for a room. A steal. And if there was a blizzard or if like, I could walk home. And I just started to realize that like, oh, I can walk from Fanuel Hall and get into selfie in like 40 minutes, which sounds like a lot, but it's really not, you know, you're walking through the city. It's nice. But I just started to realize like the red line is there. This is here. Seaport through the years. It sort of like started off where it was like, oh, there's just the music venue down there. And you'd go see a show every year. And then all of a sudden, there's a new hotel. There's another hotel still not much down there, but every year I could see this. And always in my mind was like, they need like a Franklin cafe or something here. There's all this bunch of industry people, they need something that's just like, not one of these kind of like shitty Irish taverns or what they had where these like kind of like family run sort of like 99 ish type things. And it was it was just all off. Yeah, it's like all these Russian pizza places that just didn't make any sense. So it was always on my mind, like, you know, I got to get something in the selfie, like it's happening. Yeah, everybody's looking for like, we need a late night food spot, we need a place that's just not a bunch of, you know, not to say that it was all a bunch of animals, but it was just like, it was just a boozing culture that was like, okay, this is all we got. So I had, while I was at Island Creek started dipping my toe, we found a spot. We got a lease in front of us. I went to the city and went through the process of figuring out what a what a beer and wine license was, we were going to do like a little small play type place just beer and wine wasn't going to be a Jamo Guinness spot type of thing, we're going to switch up a little bit. Okay. And we started doing the community meetings, the outreach meeting with all the local reps. And unfortunately, the system was basically like, okay, we really like you actually, we like what you have to say. We're going to push this through for you. But it typically takes six to nine months. Right. And you know, we were at the time, my buddy, Vanique and his dad, we were sort of putting together a business plan and trying to figure it out. And it, you know, the end of it was as we put in a shit ton of work, we met with every government agency, we met with the community twice, you know, meeting with the community was like super stressful. But it was also like, they, you know, the only people that show up to community meetings are people that have been there for 100 years that have nothing else to do. Totally. And it taught us to reach out to our friends that live there, have them show up to the meetings for the second one, because the first one, we were just badgered by everyone. Yeah. How much others, how much is the state going to be? And what are you going to charge for a bud? And it's like, I don't even think I'm going to sell a bud. You know, it's just like that type of stuff where the community that was there, you really had to argue to be like, Hey, no, we're here, like we want to, we want to give great service. We want to take care of people. We just don't think that it needs to be, you know, families don't need to come in here while a bunch of guys are again, drinking Jamo and Guinness. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. But there can be another suitable area for these people like myself that live here that are going to probably start a family here to be able feel comfortable and let it's not there just eating at a bar. And, you know, you go back to your landlord and you're like, yeah, looks like it's all going to work out, but it could take up to nine months. And it was like, oh, you know, I can help you guys a little. But to be honest, I got a Froyo guy that's going to be here tomorrow. So I think that's the best way to go. Yeah. And then, you know, you start, you backtrack, there's not a lot of real estate coming up at the time that fits what we would have needed. And then basically at that point, I knew that, okay, I've got my business plan. I've got my specs out. You know, I've had the discussions. I'm going to continue to look there. And Island Creek, you know, God bless them, but they, you know, they want all of you. Right. And you kind of have to give all of it to them. But I had been long enough and kind of figured it out. I worked, you know, I was working on the hard of station and kind of, you know, I just knew, I knew how to do it. But when you start, you know, been married, married and starting to think about having a family and it's like, are they still going to make me work Saturday and a double Sunday? Are they still, you know what I mean? And you just, you just get to that point where it's like, I, I know now where I'm going. Right. And, you know, you guys aren't going to allow me to step back and they wanted me to take a position as a leadership role there. And I just didn't feel comfortable committing it. Yeah. Knowing that you wanted to do something. You know, at that point they're, it is all in. I like that they knew that too. I mean, for both parties, right? It's like you're both doing yourself a disservice. If you're thinking about starting your own thing and for the excellence that they require, it's smart of them to know that they need you all. And that's, and if you're not, I mean, it's, it's one of those places that it's like stressful to take a vacation because you know, you're going to come back and so many things have changed and you're just out, you know, and it takes you that few days just to kind of like, okay, I'm back in it. I mean, Island Creek. Interesting. The menu is different every day. Right. They printed the menu every day. You know, and the wine list was, you know, fairly esoteric because they were trying to push people into these boundaries of different things, which was great because for them that's developing culture. It's something I talk about here where, you know, this market's different, but the sort of nobody sees bone marrow on the south shore, say something like that. You know what I mean? And those are just specific markers or maybe someone's never had, I don't know, something. Do you think a lot about culture? Yeah, it's, it's, I think about it all the time because people are either in and they're out. You know, they either, but in terms of like the, the, the culture that faces the public. And so when it comes to your menu, when you think about culture, you think about it like you're taking everything that you discovered, all of your own training from Boston, working in the city. You're bringing it out here and you're, you're introducing it, right? You're a part of you's introducing culture to the people here. Yeah. And the first time that we did that, people told us that we weren't going to make it, you know, sort of like you bring the drink program cocktails down where it's again, it's three ounces. You're still, there's still just as much booze in it, but it's actually balanced, you know, oh, it's a two half, half build. So I go back to the proportion theory thing, one and a half, three quarter thwar and then maybe then drink was more of a stronger build, a two half, half. But people would see this beautiful antique glass and then it's like, you're not going to make it. No, this doesn't work down here. And you just, you just kind of like, all right, well, the next ones on us are there's no check and you just kind of have to ingratiate yourself. But I think, you know, you, we've made so many changes being in Quincy as the market is just to sort of figure that out. And in honestly, like going back to Island Creek, we opened going into baseball season with no butter but light. I think Eastern Standard had button bud light. They didn't put on their menu, but they had it. Okay. So you know, you learn all these things, you get to this sort of high tier, right? And you're like, and I think that's the best thing that you can do is, is try to get as far as you can, even though it's not you, just so you have an understanding of like, you know, I might come down a little bit, but here's, here's, here's a standard that I'll, I'll live by that I can deal with on a daily basis because I, I was never going to be the person that's going to go in and, you know, be it like a Montan where I'm in a suit and right, right. I think the first time we went there, I always laugh about it because it was like the only thing the server said to me was, it's my pleasure only. And like, I've probably heard that like four different times when he was like, I was just like, that's all I'm going to get out of this guy tonight. And you know, it's just kind of crazy. And I haven't been there actually, it's like one place I've never been. There's, I'm a t-shirt and jean guy. And that's it, right? And so like, I mean, I had a bow tie thing for a little while, but I would, I would just, I just don't like, I don't like the stuffiness. No, it's not my thing. And that's why they've all dropped off. I mean, Montan's changed. Right. Les Bordiers closed, Azure's we closed, you know, all of that, all of that kind of classic French stuffiness, all of that. You know, we talk about it all the time, which is, I'm sorry, I'm way off course here, but culturally, I feel like we've, we've always been entranced with that like, and it makes sense that sort of French culture where it's like, oh, and then the next dish comes down. And the rest of the friggin universe is like, put all the food on the table and let's share it. And it's just like, it's now kind of getting here. And it makes so much sense. But I look at different generations where it's like, yeah, you guys should just get a bunch of these food and just all share it. And it's like, this is my appetizer. This is my, yeah, you can have a little piece of it, you know, and it's like, get the food on, like just order a bunch of food, put it on the table. It's how everybody wants to eat and just go from there. And it's just a, it's, it's in, it's changing. But it's just an interesting thing that we've all in, I think that's why you're seeing, you know, all those places closed down, because people just aren't, it's like, yeah, three hours of like, here's a plate, here's a plate. Like, I used to think it was interesting that like, you'd go to a place like that and they'd make you sit with your drink for like 10 minutes. And you'd almost start to think like it's service. That happened to me. It was like, did they forget about our food? So now what another drink? They just pace you out. Yeah. And it's like, oh, and then it's like, it's almost like you don't even really start relaxing and having a good time until like you're getting towards like your dessert course, because you finally have had a couple glasses. We didn't even make it there. We got to like course four. And I was like, please send me the rest to go. Give it to me in the bag. All that stuff comes through. All that stuff where it's like, oh, they do this table side or they do this that. And it's like, I don't know, man. I get it. I see it. Thank you. What are we, what are you drinking right now? What is this? This is 1987. I thought, yeah, I thought I might hit your birthday, but I didn't. I failed you again. I'm a 97 baby for people listening. 87 Gurgach Cabernet. So older California cab. Can you put some more in there? I can put plenty of it in there for you. So roughly a 32 year old cab saw. 32 year old cab. As I was going to say earlier, it's, these are fun because they made them more towards like a Bordeaux style. So the alcohol is a little bit lower. They are meant to age. You do find that the older California cab and stuff, they drink really well. This one's more subtle now. This sip. Yeah. Ooh. So you go start seeing the texture because the tannins have dissipated. The tannins, which you don't taste everybody. You can't taste tannins, according to Devin. He corrected me earlier. You can't smell them. You can't smell them. You can't smell them. You only taste them. You can taste them. Shit. Maybe some people can. I think so when you were first thinking about opening this place up, were you always set on Quincy? I was set on the fact that I knew I wasn't going to have a budget to open in Boston. Yeah. And after being. Where you want to be versus what your dollars allow. Yeah. And after being a drink and obviously just after realizing that like you're going to make money on alcohol. Yeah. And having an understanding of like why drink was just a cash cow, you know, the margins that they can run there and what they get away with. Not what they get away with. I mean. Wow. Easy. What they do there very well. You just start to realize that you got to sell, you get to sell alcohol. Totally. Beer and wine will do okay for you, but you know, you make your margin on booze. Alcohol pencils. Yeah. And so you knew that that was going to be part of the restaurant. It had to be. I mean, I drink was just such a, and I think going from Island Creek in a drink where, you know, I was always like a really highly structured bartender and just restaurant person in general drink was kind of much more kind of organic and just it's like, Hey, it's at your own pace. You know, you're, everyone's going to start as a food runner, bar back, then you, you know, you sort of have your apprentice, then your bartender, then your lead and blah, blah, blah. Right. But how long you stay in each role is completely dependent on your progression. Exactly. Right. And I think going from like we're at Island Creek, I was always on this like little dining bar, which was a poorly designed station that was like, Oh, you're the service bartender for the big half of the dining room and you have 10 seats that are like high touch dining, where it should kind of be the opposite where it's like, Oh, there's some people cocktailing and I've got this service bar. Right. So it was always just a, it was a, it was a crazy station to work. And you had, you just, you had to get in and get it in a rhythm. And otherwise your night could just get fucked. And that's just the worst feeling, you know, that you, when I, when I talk with like some people that talk about like server dreams and stuff like that. And you're like, you wake up in the middle of the night, you're like, I fucking forgot that drink on C2. And you know, it's just, you would have those kinds of nightmares. I remember having a nightmare where like I was, I woke up and my bed was in that dining bar area and it was just like sinking. People were yelling at me for stuff and it was just like, it was like, brutal. So going to drink was kind of a, it was the, the sort of switch in maturity level that I needed also just to kind of get out of just being kind of like a machine and getting into like, Hey, this is who I am. This is my voice. This is what I like. And really when I look at drink, what I fell in love with was that the challenge of not necessarily being challenged that someone's going to come in and be like, Oh, I like, you know, whatever, like, whatever the one we used to talk about, like dreams and unicorns or whatever. And you just be like, Yeah, okay. Yeah. But it was sort of the engagement that I could pursue there that was more part of my personality of being like, Yeah, so what do you like to drink? Oh, I don't know. Well, how old are you? Well, I'm 32 years old and you don't know what you like to drink. We should get on that right away. You know, and just sort of like just slyly death. He's really good at that. He was really good at making you feel good despite all the shade he was throwing you at the same time. And they but they got in they understood it, you know, and I think as long as you're you're showing genuine hospitality and you know, if you're it's not as if I was ever trying to make people feel bad, but it was like, Hey, let's realize that we're both here. Like the worst guess is a great bar across the street. You look like you'd be a big fan. Yeah. And that's that's an issue with like some of like the people that really push this crazy hospitality is that like, you know, I've had the conversation where it's like, right, that's stuck here. Right. Like you walk through the door and you sat at the table and you're not happy or whatever it is. Like you're not stuck here. I'm not I haven't told you that you're trapped and that you have to spend $29 on a steak that you're not comfortable doing. Right. So don't worry about it, you know, but like don't don't throw attitude at my server or make anybody here feel bad about it, you know, because at any moment you can get up and walk away. Right. Sometimes that's the conversation that people need to realize is like, Hey, you vote with your dollars if you don't like it. Exactly. And that's where I'm always at. I vote with my dollars. I'm not going to go and yell. I'm not going to do any of that. It's just like, Hey, that place isn't for me. Right. You should be, you know, at an age when you're going out, you're over 21 where you can sort of like figure out like, Oh, no, that's that's not for me. You figured out pretty quick. Yeah. Experiment a little bit. And then you sort of like, Okay, now I'm not really into waiting in lines. I don't wait the lines anymore. Like people start making that and then it just sort of continues. But I think the, you know, that's the thing about drink is that a, you know, it always had a line. Right. And you didn't feel that pressure of like, we've got to, you know, we've got to get people in here. We've got to do this. And it just allowed the fact that people wanted to be there so badly. Also allowed you to have that freedom. And I think that's just where that breakdown with John, that was just very organic about, Hey, it's not necessarily always about just like how many different whiskey sours I can make. Sometimes it's about just the whiskey that you're using in that, that same sour, really just kind of breaking those things down and looking at it. And that sort of brought me back to that kind of wine process of being really analytical about, all right, what is the spirit? And, you know, if if our old fashioned was always old overholt, and then it was like, Hey, man, I made an old fashioned with that Elijah Craig Bauer proof of the day that was like gold, you have that conversation with someone who's having that and then you give it to them and then they're like, Oh, I didn't even realize that that part of the drink made a difference, right? And then you really just you start looking into those things and you're like, Oh, you know, you just had that sort of experimental thing going on and you have fun. It's sort of, it's almost like you went from art to science. Back to art, a little bit of it. And then you kind of found the found the balance of both. And I think like Jackson used to bust my balls. He's like, you know, you got it all going on. You just need to, you know, you probably need like some tattoos and maybe like shave a lightning bolt on your face or something like that. You know, I mean, like I just needed to pick up that like attitude. But I was just always just super focused, like I can't pull off attitude if I'm not giving everyone what they need. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas drink, it was just sort of, you know, it just pushed you in that direction of, All right, this is this is how it's going to go. This is how I'm going to do it. I get to direct these people. I get to put pressure back on these people. I love that. Right. You know, and no other place allows you to do that when you're putting menus in front of them. They're basically being like this now, please. Right. Instead of this like, okay, the dialogue. Yeah. So that was, that was sort of, that was beyond like learning all the drinks and doing all that. That was just something that was really interesting to, to work on psychologically just to kind of be like, where can we push people? How should we be pushing people? And I think now leading into from there, transitioning into the towns and it was sort of like coming down here, you know, where basically both Jackson and John in that, that whole, you know, guild was in the end, but you could probably say they were, they, they realized they needed to follow the quality of the kitchen, right? Like, why am I buying frozen lime juice when the kitchen's doing their ceviche and they're squeezing like, why is this not aligned? You know, that's so smart. And just following like, Hey, you know, it makes a difference in the cocktail. That's so significant. And you can literally look across the planet at a quality of a bar. And if they're doing fresh juice every day, they're a quality bar, right? Like that's pretty much like, if you just had to set one standard, they squeeze fresh juice every day. That's one thing that you could look at and be like, Oh, they didn't, they're not doing that by mistake, because it's more expensive and it's time consuming. But it's just one of those things I've always looked at is like, do they squeeze use fresh every day? How do you feel about well drinks? Well, drinks when they pre-make them and they call them batch drinks, batch drinks as you call them. I mean, they make sense for the trigger me complex, Tiki drinks. Margarita. You see it. I mean, listen, if you're, if I had a business and I was selling fucking 2000 margaritas every day and making a shit ton of money, like, yeah, get them out the door. I mean, I, I think, I think you just have to keep the quality though. If you're selling them all and you're not letting it sit for three days. I mean, that's the thing, right? So I think a lot of the batching started, people would be doing it with Tiki drinks because it's like, Oh, there's 13 ingredients. Like I can't process this fast enough. And you have so much sugar and stability that when you add it to those, it's like, okay, well, we've got this for the day. What was your first step in wanting to open this up? So I think like I said, 25, I started thinking about it, wanted to be in Boston, just thought that like we could change the rules of what was going on. There was certain things that I just saw within management and style with the corporate stuff that I was like, ah, we could do something cooler. Put your own spin on it. Yeah, put your own spin on it. It was definitely more of like, it was always kind of thinking about like the Franklin cafe where it was like late night, really good quality food with like a really fun wine list that wasn't overpriced. That was just sort of where my head was at where it was like, we don't need to screw everybody on wine. Like we can make it an accessible fun thing. We can do late night food and it's not, you know, trying to get to a McDonald's or something like that, you know, like, you should be able to go to the Franklin, get a beautiful bottle of, you know, cab for 50 bucks in a bone in filet at 12, 30 in the morning. After you get off your shift, it was like, this is gold. And there was nothing else like it. And it was at the time, the only Franklin was in, it was in the south end and it was like, it was a nightmare to get to. There's nothing around there. Cabbies didn't even drive by. So it was like, you kind of stranded in this like weird area because that it just, nothing was really happening around there at that time. And that was sort of where we were at. But then you were like, Oh, to walk through the door, I've got to spend 400,000 to 500,000 liquor license. So you start sitting there being like, Oh, well, I only really want to have like a 60 or 70 seat restaurant because I keep my eyes on it. Super expensive. It's like you're going to spend a million dollars. You start running your numbers out and you're like, that doesn't make any sense. Right. You know, so then like you said, you can partition, went through the whole selfie thing with a couple different properties and basically the same thing happened. It was like, all right, I'm done here. So if my budget is half a million dollars, where is it best spent? And basically, it went from looking at the demographics of selfie. And Quincy just kind of, I forget how it popped up. Craigslist ad placed on the street for sale, 300 grand, you know, Asian restaurant going out. And at the time they were doing a huge development backed by Fidelity multi-billion dollar downtown investment here and it fell through. Oh, wow. But it hadn't completely fallen through when it came down to look at the business that was here. I did my due diligence. I met one of the realtors down here and was like, hey, I'm looking at this place. You're the broker on it. But like, tell me what's happening here. Like, am I going to go into this place and it's going to be a construction zone for the next 10 years? Because the way that this is going to happen is nobody really knows. Right. And he sort of put that was like, yeah, he's like, you're probably, you know, if you're going to be up there, you're probably going to need it. And this is, if you go further up Hancock Street, that's where all of it was supposed to happen. Okay. And it is happening. It's just basically they've made it easier to pull the permits in there. It's just basically getting done by separate developers instead of one giant one. Totally. Yeah. But this is. But it was fully entitled. This is what we're talking six or seven years ago at this point. Yeah. So we said, well, yeah, if you're up there, like, you're going to have to worry at a point that your only business is going to be like construction workers. Not bad. Awful. I mean, awful just in the fact that, you know, it's not what I wanted to do. Right. No. And when I looked at the market down here, it's, it's, you know, the restaurants, it's probably 70% Asian restaurants. It's huge, strong Asian community. A huge Indian community. It probably one of the most diverse cities in New England, if you really look through it. But you just couldn't really get an idea on. You knew the real estate was starting to bump 15% every year. You know, and we, I basically got, I was going to open houses just to kind of see what things were going for, what the quality was. I realized that part of the pull for South Boston was that it's one of the only places in the city that has beach access and parks. Quincy has the same thing. So I saw a lot of these like mirrored qualities in real estate. You get three red line tea stops. And I just sort of kind of had this feeling like, okay, well, if I can go buy a fully operational restaurant down there, that's in decent shape with a full liquor license for $300,000. I'm in the right price range. I know that the demographics are pushing down here because I had already had neighbors that were moving to single families here from selfie after they had a kid. So you could just kind of see a lot of the pull towards Boston is also kids like me who watch their parents commute shittily for 30 years and would refuse to be like, I know I'm going to work in Boston, but I am not going to drive an hour and in two hours out every day. So you could just tell that that gentrification was going to happen, that you're going to have these young families and a very basic way to me, it was like, I want to go down there and I want to offer an old fashioned and a daiquiri and a decent beer list that people were just coming down here would be really comfortable knowing that it's there. You know, a lot of pull to a neighborhood is just like, I know that my local will give me, I'm not going to get looked at like I'm crazy for asking for a Negroni. And that's really where just the foundation was is like, let's stick with some classic cocktails that people recognize and let's do some food that's, you know, comfort and elevated at the same time. And let's just bring that idea of hospitality that we've learned, you know, sort of textbook style in town is the South Shore. And I think a lot of markets, once you get out of the cities, it's sort of like for a long time, it was just superstar chef moves out of the city, opens up his own spot. Food's great. Beverage program's a disaster. Right. Got some liquor rep that comes in and writes it for them. Right. Bartenders don't know what they're doing. Yes. And it's sort of like, that's a bummer because basically every wine that's there is something that you start retail stacked 10 cases high. And it's like, it's just nothing fun about that. It goes back to your juice example. Right. It's like, if you're doing one thing that's indicative of everything else, it's a win. You can sense it. But most places, it's like one or the other. It's so terrible. I hate to see that. I see it all over LA. I mean, the other part of his reality, like my mom was a waitress when we were young and she worked at, you know, has been in any down the South Shore. But, you know, that's, that's the beautiful thing about this business as well as like you can make your own hours, you can support your family work in two or three days a week. So the tough part about that is that is when you have someone who has a family and a lot of responsibilities who only works two days a week, you're not getting that full commitment, you know, and it's really tough. So I knew I didn't want to go past Quincy because I knew I could still draw from Boston from, you know, the friends that I had in the, in that culture and be like, Hey, you know, a lot of you guys are moving down to Dorchester because you can't afford to live in the city anymore. Right. You know, you bought a condo in Weymouth, you've got to drive in town and pay $400 a month to park and now the commute, which used to be 25 minutes is an hour, you know, it's sort of like old band problems, but it started to happen in the people when they're, you know, in their 20s that are like, this commute sucks. I kept falling asleep when I was doing the commute. Yeah, because I'm like stopping go every stop. I'm like falling asleep, Oh God. You're gonna get that Tesla, right? Take care of it. Needed the autopilot. Yeah. When you first came here, what was, what was the lease that you had to, did you sign a multi-year lease here? So I did. Yeah, I ended up, how did this process go down? I looked, I looked at a space there, I looked at this space. Like I said, I had a big dining room. We negotiated to have a chop in half. I didn't really have any great connections. So we hired a lawyer, we reviewed the lease. It was a five with two five-year options with a small percentage increase on each option. Yeah. A riser. So once we hit like 1.2 million, they would start taking 5%. Everything beyond that, which of revenue. So there's a revenue share with them. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And again, I was completely inexperienced. Yeah. And I think the word to the wise there is, is like, lawyers are lawyers. They're not business people. You have to realize like, you can hand a lawyer a lease and they're going to say, yeah, it's legal. They're not going to say, they're not going to give you advice. By the way, take your base rent, multiply it by, you know, 0.5. That's what you're really paying. Plus this, this, you know what I mean? So you go in just sort of like, you run those numbers. But they're in the end, they're not ones that are sort of being like, hey, by the way, they're just, this, it's like, yeah, it's a legal document. You're good. They're not business people. That's so true. And it's that's that's how many people get that wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Even when you're setting up your company, so many people just mess that up and they're like, but my lawyer, I'm like, your lawyer doesn't know anything about your business. Yeah. He has no idea about how to structure your business, doesn't know how you're fundraising. Yep. And so frankly, yeah, they're doing their job. You just asked the wrong questions. Yeah. And I mean, I was, I was the kid too that was like doing like, you know, like score meetings and like, I started meeting up at UMass Boston with one of their, I forget it's not score, but it's, it's some other business. And even that was just like, it's hard. I mean, it's like some old retired business guy that's just telling you like, you're fucked no matter what. And it's like, okay, great. So I just spent an hour talking to you just to tell me that like, yeah, it's not going to happen. It seems like there's a lot of restaurants around here. Yeah. And they just, you know, it's, it's, it's this sort of like downfeed of you're just like, okay, so you're just going to tell me everything that's awful. And nobody really wants to talk about it. So you wouldn't do that again. You wouldn't do the rap share again. No, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't, I mean, you have to, sort of what we were talking about earlier. It's not uncommon. I'll just say that much. You shouldn't feel now it's, now it's, I think I would have negotiated differently. So I didn't know that I could, I didn't even know what tenant improvement was. Okay. So when I signed that lease, you know, they did some work, they divided the building, but I, in the end of it, to me, I don't fucking care. That's what you were doing to get me in the space that you weren't contributing to me. I could have just found another space. Right. Was there a kitchen here? The kitchen was here. Yep. Okay. So that's helpful. It's not because I didn't understand how to fully depreciate things. I didn't go into that kitchen and say, Oh, I said, Oh, yeah, you know, this two door works, like if I bought this new, it's like eight grand, not realizing that it's 20 years old, and then in six months is going to be shit in the bed, you know? So, you know, really understanding like, and these are things that I've learned where it's like, okay. That's a good lesson. Another good lesson. This equipment. Oh, I've, you know, I've got, I think when we were going through the SBA loan, it was like, I put that there was like $40,000 worth of equipment in there. And it's like, in the end of it, there was literally probably $3,000. Right. You know, and the more that I've learned going, you know, checking out auction, you're saying because of depreciation, because it's basically worthless. Yeah, it's already over the point. The only, I could have never sold any of it. Right. I could have, everything that happened, it got scrapped. I was lucky that someone picked it up for free. That was the value that I got out of it. I didn't have to pay to remove it, you know? Yeah. What do you get? Those things are pretty big. That's not terrible. But, you know, you just don't, you know, you're naive, you, you know, you think everyone has the best intentions and, but it's also, they don't know. Like sometimes you're just dealing with other people who have no idea, especially landlords. I mean, if they're not running restaurants, I mean, landlords, bankers, I mean, when I was going through the SBA loan was a, was a total nightmare, but you know, at the end of it, it helped secure a lot of equity for me. Yeah. You know, I just was able to leverage and that that's probably the best thing I ever did. The 10% down SBA or what? Yeah. I think it was the business loan, the business loan. Yeah. 10%, 10 years. It's an expensive loan, but again, is it? Yeah. Yeah. For your closing costs and everything else like that. Yeah. I think it probably was like an extra, I want to say they said it was like maybe like an extra five to $7,000. Okay. Yeah. Which, when you're only really, you know, I was able to leverage that we had bought the condo in Southie, which went way up. So, you know, we made the right decisions prior to getting into the business to be able to keep as much equity as we had. Yeah. But, you know, they put a, they put a lien on your house. If you sell it, you know, there's just a lot of things that just come attached with it. Personal guarantees. Yeah. And people get into the, well, you know, if you just get a whole bunch of private investors, everybody just gets to walk away if it goes the wrong way. If you get the bank loan, you're sort of handcuffed to it. And at the time, I didn't have the outreach to fund it, you know? Yeah. And I also was, I was just so scared to ask for people for money. I was scared to just, not that I was scared. I just didn't want to ask. I don't like asking for things. I don't like getting favors. It just was never part of me. It was always just hustle, make it your own and earn it. Which now I look back and it's like, that's backwards. Like, you know, people believe in you and they want to invest in you. You should throw it out there and, you know, make it happen. Yeah. People buy into what you're trying to build. Yeah. They buy into the concepts. But it's hard to get over it because then you also have to get into that self-marketing and, you know, it's, for me, it was always like, it's not, yeah, it's just was always kind of like, so it was like, I wanted to bring in the minimal stuff. I wanted people that I knew and cared about to be a part of the process. What other lessons learned did you have here? Lots of them. They continue. I think definitely, like I said, the original lease that I signed, I should have known about tenant improvement. I probably would have been at the same numbers and had an extra $100,000 to finish it. Instead, we, you know, we finished in the whole, I probably was 40 or 50 grand over budget. And then you're, you know, you're getting up and operating and you're just, it's just gone. There's nothing, there's no stabilization, there's nothing. And, you know, you do have that sort of like first six months of energy where you're doing numbers and, but we, we weren't, it wasn't done. It wasn't a finished product. Yeah. You know, we, we came in, we fired the designer almost immediately. Why? And then she, she, um, she just wasn't actively participating. And it was sort of like, and again, being naive, like I've never worked with a designer before, you know, ever. Yeah. So you start going through the process, they get recommended, you do the reach out, you sit down, okay, you seem cool. These are some projects that you've done, but you never really know, you know, where people are at in their life. And I think, like, she had just had a kid and she started just kind of coming in and being like, oh, okay, well, here's this website. Go on that and find some lighting that you like. Pick out like three and then print them up and bring them in and we'll discuss it. And here's a, here's some paint swabs. Pick out some and the next time I'm here, I'll tell you which walls we should put them on. And I, and I was just sort of like, and I started talking to my contractor and he was like, what the fuck is going on here, you know? And it just got to the point. It was like, okay, this is ridiculous. I'll just say this much. One thing I've learned that there's a lot of designers and then there's architects and like the designers, there's so many of them. And I'll just be blunt. They're all shit. They all suck. They all think they're somebody. They all think they know design. Very few of them went to design school. Very few of them know like design principles. They were just fortunate to have this one project and then fortunate to have someone recommend them, but they don't know anything and they don't care about your business. They're not trying to figure out like, what's the total feel? What's the menu? They're not trying to fit into your concept. They're just trying to get their paycheck and get the fuck out. Absolutely. And it's just so reckless to me. It's like just care a little bit. Yep. Now with our new project, we were able to get the cats who've done like kind of barbers projects and, you know, the price is significantly more. Yes. But we're getting like the professionalism, the onsite, the, you know, here's three of these, here's three of these, here's three of these, let's put this together and just even just the communication. It's like, it's one thing I think as, as I was thinking and again, like the mistakes that I made was like, you know, your designer is almost because if you don't realize it, you're not looking at the value that they can bring. And you're like, that's where I cut corners. Where can I get a cheap architect? Where can I get a cheap designer? You know, because in some cases you just look at designers as like, well, they know how to get things that I can't, you know, that that is kind of part of their curriculum where it's like, oh, I know how to source items that you won't know how to, and I can show you these things and then you can pick them out. Or it's like, you know, actually having people put it together, be onsite, meet with, you know, meet with your, your, your contractor and get it done. Yeah. So it's, it's those things where it's like spending the money on the lawyer or spending the money, the things that you don't really want to do, but you should probably be like doubling or tripling your budget on that when you first, because those are the lines you want to pinch, you know, like, oh, well, you know, opening costs off, opening this, like, there's all these law firms we work with. And sometimes like some are double the other ones. Yeah. In terms of cost. And some people will ask me like, well, why would you ever work with them? And I always tell people because they can make a phone call to a very important person that makes my project move forward or not. And when you start talking about, and that's real, like by the time that phone call needs to be made, I'm all in, this isn't the world series of poker. Yep. Like I'm there. My best friend yells at me all the time. He's like, just get a firm. He's a lawyer. And I always call him like, you know, he's our HR director. Like shit goes down. It's like, Hey, Justin, what's going on? Yeah. And he's always just been like, hire a firm because you always go to cut costs and you hire a single lawyer. And that's not to say that they're all bad, but it depends on the use, right? Yeah. So if you want like an LLC set up, yeah, sure, go cheap. Yep. Yeah. But if you want some like your partnership agreements, all those things, you're going to get them in half the time is not going to be as much back and forth. Right. And yeah, you spent double, but in the end of it, like you got to start looking at the returns on being open two weeks earlier. Yes. And actually having a revenue stream, then just like, Oh no, it's fine. He's going to be ready in three weeks. And it's like, what else are we doing here? We can't move forward without a partnership agreement. Like what is going on? So yeah, I mean, though it's just, it's tough because you just, you're always, you know, the first one, I think you're just, you're so in tune with every detail and just trying to make sure that, you know, you're squeezing to get it done. Yeah. You just need to get it off the ground. Yeah. And we did, but this place was like, I look back at them. We have some old pictures of like the front and in here and I'm always just like, Oh God, like it would have been nice to have a finished product and still not even finished. I mean, we still got lights to install up there. And yeah, we've done what we can do with the space, but that all, like I said, that leads to the original negotiation of, you know, what was going on at the time. And the building had just been purchased by related Beal. I don't think they really wanted to invest too much money into it because Quincy was still kind of, you know, they were unsure. Yeah. This was their first step down here. And again, they're a giant real estate holding company. Did they vet you pretty hard at all? They did. I mean, they were psyched because it, you know, again, Barbara Lynch, all of that, they hear that stuff and it's like, that's what we want in our building. Yeah. Devon's a G. Let's get them in. You know, there, and there's risk in that for them as well, but I also didn't really vet what was in the building. Like I didn't realize that, you know, I love the college that's here, but it's not, you know, it's not like being in Island Creek with BU across the street, bunch of kids with though and professors making bank, you know, it's, it's a city college. It's a, it's a community college. I, you know, our, right, right. If I'm charging 12 bucks for a burger at lunch, it's like, no way too expensive. Yeah. So that's half the building. And then you talked about making your portions bigger too, right? Because the people here expect a certain size portion. Yeah. I mean, again, it's just, it's been such an interesting thing to think about. It's like portions matter. They do. They got to fit the community because people like to feel like they got a bang for their buck. Yeah. If you're paying $12 for a burger and you're a poor college kid, like you want that burger to be like a half pound. Better be leftovers. Give me the box of leftovers. And again, you can race towards the bottom and give people that, but I think that was our whole point here was no, we're going to hold a line of quality. And the people that recognize that quality are the people that I want here. Yeah. I think one of the definitely some of the things that you learn about what product you put out is what people come to you. And if you don't like the fact that like there's bar fights and like, a bunch of horrible shit happening in your restaurant, like you're probably not putting out the right product that you want to be dealing with. You can look around at the bars I had worked at before where it was like, maybe they were considered high-end. I never really looked at drink as being like a high-end thing, but it was curated and people are either attracted to that or they're kind of not. And the people that are, it was some of the most stimulating guests that I would ever have. Yeah. And I think here it was like holding that line of quality, the riffraff kind of bailed, right? Like, oh, you're not going to make it. You guys suck. This drink's too small. It's like, okay, thank you. You know, like have a nice life. We don't have to deal with you ever again. It's not for you. Yeah. Yeah. It almost makes it simple. What was opening day like here for you once you got everything in line? Oh, opening day. Everything break? What happened? So here's the story. Opening day, we were recommended, this is our opening day friends and family. Okay. So you're soft opening? Soft opening. Yeah. We've got Bobby Sisson, my, like all of our families are coming this day. And I didn't get the invite, by the way. I just case you're wondering. You were gone. You abandoned me. You didn't know. You're neither a friend nor a family. I was outside. I was driving by and there it was like open but closed. It was weird. So we got this recommendation for this server and we needed to fill a hole and she came in and we're like, okay, she seems like she gets it. She'd work in town and we did Josh and I did a quick interview. We're like, okay, great. Tomorrow we've got some training. We'll do a mock service training. So opening day, we're all here at probably, you know, I've been forever, but staff gets her on noon. We're getting set up. We're going through the menu and I think around like two o'clock, I should say no. Around like 3.30, we realized like she's gone. What? And I'm like, oh, that's weird. I'm like, maybe she just got nervous, you know, because we're, you know, it was a lot of pressure where we had a very small menu. But that was our expectations. Like, hey, this is like, we've got 10 wines. We've got like 12 food items. You guys got to, you got to nail this. Like we're doing this easy and that's what we wanted it to be. You know, just know your shit about what's here. There's not a lot of it. So and for, I think a lot of people that weren't used to the culture of just like learning on the fly and being able to do it, they got nervous. So we were just like, oh, you know, maybe we lost her. So chef's family comes in right at, I want to say we probably started at like four. And everyone's the first, we're doing one full turn at basically five o'clock. It's like, okay, come in like 430 to 530. We'll have all of our family grandparents, everyone. And Bobby's family comes in, they sit over here and his mom gets up and she goes into the women's room, which the rest of the staff was guy. So we hadn't even been in there. And this girl is passed out unconscious in the frigging stall. And it just immediately is like, people are starting to show up. She's unresponsive. You know, in the stalls locked. So you can kind of see his legs. So Bobby's mom comes out and she's like, you know, just, just hands up and, you know, just, so there's a fucking body in the bathroom, Devin. Yeah. So you killed someone calling the ambulance. Oh my God. They are here fast. She, I don't, I don't really know what the hell she did, but she, she either like drank too much or who knows what the hell happened. Yeah. Dehydration. Who knows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely not that. So I'm sitting there. I have everyone making phone calls to all family members and I'm like calling my brother and my parents like, just pull over the side of the road. Well, what do you mean? Just, just pull over the side of the road. Don't come here right now. Don't come here right now. Because they, you know, I think it was probably, they only ended up being probably a dozen people, but she's getting wheeled out through the middle of down here in a stretcher. So are you serious? Not the opening image you pictured. It was unbelievable. I literally poured myself like four ounces of rum as she was getting wheeled up the door. And it was just like, boom. I don't mean to laugh, but that's fucking great. Oh, and it was like, all right, let's go. Oh, that's, it was. Unfortunate. What, was she okay? She ended up being fine. I think she, I think she probably had an alcohol problem or I have no idea. She just disappeared and it was like, who knows? I didn't even. You didn't check. No, we checked back because we knew the person who had recommended them to us. So we were sort of like, hey, we made the calls and yeah, we did our due diligence to make sure that she ended up fine, all that. But it was just like one of those like, this is how it begins. You know, like, what the fuck is happening? A potty in the restroom. It was crazy. Yeah, I literally, I. So she was drunk. You're saying she was. I think she, yeah, she might have been. She just passed out. I don't know. I still don't know. I never, it was just like, I didn't even, I haven't even thought about that until you asked me what the first day was like. I buried it so far. Like, get rid of this. Oh my God, you can't make that up. No, it was crazy. So. So then what happened? We went into a good night. You know, we just, we. You gave her a promotion. She's now the general manager. Yeah. Yeah. She came back strong. Oh, that poor soul. It's a. That's brutal. That stuff happens though, you know, especially if there's a lot of stress in the restaurant business, there's, you know, there's obviously a lot of abuse of drugs and everything else like that. So I don't know about, you know, 2 30 in the afternoon. I'm a grand opening. What's going on? But hey, I guess. How was your grand opening then? So that was your soft opening. He was good. Pick up. No, no bodies. No ODS. No bodies, no ODS. Yeah. We escaped. We escaped the next week. We did good numbers. I remember outstanding. It was sort of like we, I think it was like, oh, we did, you know, 3,500 on Friday and nobody even knows we exist. We didn't have a sign. We didn't have anything, you know, and it was just sort of like a little bit of local press. Yeah, I saw some press about you. You were getting some press. Yeah. Yeah. I think based on the team, right, the team was getting a lot of high praise. Drink coming down, you know, and again, you'll hear that said all the time, but you know, the pinnacle restaurants in town, like if you work for them, you get a little bit of that, you know, esteem behind and be like, oh, wow. Yeah. They're coming here. And I think it was, we got a little bit more pressed too, because we weren't necessarily going like, oh, this is all about great food. We were going the route of, you know, It's a great both. We're going to have three kids that were just on drink bar coming down to Quincy. Yeah. What the fuck are they doing, you know, and that was, that was just kind of part of it where we were like, hey, listen, we just want to, we just want to bring good quality products down here and make sure that people are happy and really just try to fill in the void culturally and also just fill in the void of like product that for people that are coming down this way. So it's so smart. I mean, so being in real estate development, one of the things that I'm always thinking about is just because something's in a city center doesn't mean it doesn't belong or the people outside of the city center don't want it, right? And it's really, but for some reason people think it's, it's almost genius or like novel that all you did was bring it to them. Yeah. When it's like they wanted it the whole time, they've been driving there the whole time, right? They're either working there anyway. Yep. And so everyone wants it. All you're doing is moving it a little bit closer to them and maybe putting your own spin on it so that feels like it's theirs. Yep. But it's the same people. Like there's plenty of people in Quincy. There's plenty of people that work in Boston that come here. And so it's like, it's almost easy. You know what I mean when you look at like the numbers, it's easy in the sense of the demand is already there and the big cities have kind of validated it, right? Clearly it works in the big city, not everyone's living there. And so it takes, it takes like, it's a risk, but for the entrepreneur, the restaurateur, someone like you who picks up on that, it's like they already want it. It's a market that's already there. You just have to bring it to them in the right way. And I think, yeah, on top of that point too is, there's still such a lack of that kind of culture coming down into the south shore that like I start to think and then I'm like, oh, we're still really far ahead of the game. We still have so much more market share to grasp. We still have so much more to teach people. And I think- In terms of what? Which direction? In terms of food, cocktails? Yeah, I mean all of it really. But I think for the most part, the thing that pushes us forward is the cocktails. Okay. Like I said, I think, you know, having some steak tartar and a bone marrow and like really well executed food like that, you know, there's an attraction to that because it's not, you don't see as much of it around here. And I think just the clean execution of the quality ingredients that we use, you know, I can go and get chicken on risotto really anywhere. The further south you go, it's probably like a pound of risotto that's not necessarily cooked that well and a giant, you know, mass produced statler chicken thing on it that's just like, you know, that you could tell that that chicken couldn't walk kind of deal, you know. Right. And you put out- It was on the bathroom floor for a few hours. Yeah, its legs are broken. But you bring in like the genome chicken and you're not really spouting it out there, but you'll get the people that are just like, that's like the best chicken I've ever had. Right. And it's like, well, yeah, these birds are, they're treated really well. They're not nine pound chickens that are, you know, that you just have to cook so long and so far. And when we do them under the brick, you know, that sort of like dark meat fat goes up in the white. And it's just, it's a great piece of chicken. It literally comes under the brick, by the way. It does. Yeah, they serve it with the brick. You get through the brick first, but people recognize it. And they don't know why they recognize it. And that's, you know, I always go back like when we, when we opened with Chef Bobby, so many guests that would come in here had never had roasted beets. It only had them out of a can. And you'd hear, my move was like, I would hear them at a table and be like, oh no, I don't, I hate beets. Never liked them. Right. And I would send out these like beautiful baby, you know, red and yellow, candy stripe roasted beets on some whip ricotta with honey. Like as simple as it gets, you know what I mean? Delicious. Yeah. So simple. Carrots too. There it is. Right. And then they'd be like, oh, you know, and kind of, and then all of a sudden they're like, I don't even, I don't even realize, you know, and those are the moments that you kind of have, you can't take for granted because you can in Boston, but you realize like the demographics, which is so fast. Yeah. That for so many people, it's important still for them to realize like, you know, this is where a mark of quality goes. As we were saying before, like a lot of restaurants just shop towards the bottom to keep prices down. Right. And we were never really going to do that. We were running out super high food costs because we wanted people to understand what chefs in town were using. Right. And just get that switch of them mentally to be like, this isn't like a salad that has like some, you know, we see these salads with like, you know, like your chopped cabbage and then they put like four mixed greens on top of it to make like it was full with some like carrot sticks, you know, that's the house salad you want the dressing on the side kind of thing. You know, and that's not, that's not a kick against anybody, but sometimes that's just all people have experienced it. But I feel like that's also an education that after the first time they have it, they'll never forget it. It only takes once. And then they're going to remember the beets dish and the chicken under the brick. Yeah. That sticks with you. And you create, what we get to do is create expectations. Right. Right. Like they come in here, they get an old fashion that's on a hand cut piece of ice. Right. That doesn't have an orange in there and a cherry and isn't completely fucked. And you get to tell them, not only do I get to tell them why we like it, but I get to start, you know, if I want to and it seems like their receptive to be like, Hey, well, you know, in 1809, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and regurgitate some drink knowledge on them. And they're like, I had no idea. And this is the best old fashion I've ever had. And it's like, great, because when you go out to, you know, I don't really, no one's really a competitor, but like when you're down the street and you want that old fashioned, you're not going to get it. Yeah. And you're going to understand why. And it's not. It's going to have a red cherry in it. Yeah. And that's, that's part of like, okay, that's my sting towards my competition is that like, if I know that's where I'm better, I'm going to, I'm going to let you know, you know, there's a reason why we do this. There's a reason why we have that block of ice. There's a reason why this is there. There's a reason why those beats are good. There's, you know what I mean? They're not canned, they're not processed. And you create the expectation for them high enough that they don't want to fall back. Yeah. And then they go out and they start, they start being analytical about what they're eating because they get it and they're like, oh, why wasn't it as good? And, you know, people don't, they do now more than ever, but people don't necessarily always think about, I think when we were just talking about, there is a direct line between quantity and quality. And I've thought about it so often being in this market. It's so tricky because again, you've got these super loyal blue collar families that have been here for generations. You know, they're loyal to what's around them. They're, sorry, that's your birthday too. Devon just poured us some wine and Nick got nothing. Nick got screwed. Nick got screwed. Sorry. He found them in the bathroom. I'll be alright. I'm just gonna go smell the tins. There's more. You can taste them, you can taste them. But I think you, you know, you still have like a direct correlation to like depression era. Like my grandfather used to like crack chicken bones. You know what I mean? It's like you have people that went without and quantity culture is sort of answer to them. And that's that's through even the boomer generation where it's like they, you know, it persists and there's still a piece of that. Even if you look at like your sweet green stuff like that where it's like, yeah, that was 13 bucks, but I need half now and then I'll have half later. So there's value in it, right? People still find value in quantity. You know, a $15 salad is kind of absurd if you think about going through those lines and doing it. But for the most part, they're going to be like, they're just down as simple as why. There is a point where it's going to go in the fridge at work and they're going to have it for dinner or they're going to have for lunch the next day. So there's people still have that sight line of like, okay, you know, it's not all kind of like the like tiny persnickety like, oh, look at how that was made. And that was a $20 bite. Like that's right. That's a different level, you know, to be doing that. Whereas the quantity quality is like, you have to get them. So they're happy with what they got. They left full, but they didn't leave bagging up half the food. Right. And just sort of like, oh, this is great. I get to eat it tomorrow. And when we, you know, market research, but when we moved out of selfie, we wanted to keep our condo. So we moved in with my wife's in-laws and Whitman while we were searching for a house around here. Okay. And while we were down there and Whitman, which is about Whitman's probably 30 miles south of the city, that's where I grew up, we go to the restaurants around there. And we just learned that you could, if we were both getting an entree, you did not order an appetizer. Just one. Because if you did, it was way too much. Yeah. And we were used to just like, you eat the food that comes out. Yeah. And it would be like, I can't, like we're done. Like we just ate, we had a piece of bread and we had this giant, you know, you eat balls or like a softball. It comes out like, what is this? You know, who does this? Yeah. But that's just part of like, again, that's them getting that clientele. That's, that's going. That's used to that. And there's, there's nothing. I don't think there's anything wrong with that either. Like I said, if I had a business that I just knew, I've got buses of older retirees coming every day. Right. You would cater that. And when they're gone, I'm going to close my business up and retire. Like, then that's fine. You know? Right. But there, there just is that correlation where we, in, in this area, I've always had to kind of figure out. And then it's like, we have the 3a where there's like money and cohasit and hang them in that area that comes up and thinks that we're, they're a little like south end bistro and it's, it's great business. You know, so we, and they're the ones that'll come in and have a $200 bottle of wine. Like, yeah, you're kind of like the border crossing of these markets. So it's always been such a interesting thing for us to be like getting, we get Dorchester coming down. You know, you've, you've got people that meet, that live in Boston that are meeting their friends from the Cape. Yeah. And we, we have to, we have to find, oh, we're always positioning for that balance to be like, okay, how are we making sure that each market is happy and that there's enough food, but there's also enough refinement and quality without either having a ridiculous food and labor cost and just find it, you know? How does this all translate to your next location? So you're, you're, you're going to open something new. Second thing here in Quincy. Yep. What is, what can you tell us about it? Pearl and Lime. Obviously right now, the Boston market's exploding. Pearl and Lime. Pearl and Lime. That's what it's called? Yep. Okay. Latin, Latin kitchen. Latina. Sure. Whatever you want it to be. Latinx. Latinx, yeah. Um, there's, there's an explosion of, of Taco Latin restaurants opening in Boston. It's probably been about 20 in the past three years. Yeah. You look at it. Wow. Obviously the quality of the ingredients that people were putting out tacos and stuff within the past was always just sort of like, oh, dump out a can of chopped tomatoes. And we just never really had good like West Coast Latin style tacos and stuff. And now you're starting to see people, like, they're really figuring it out. For me, looking in this market, there's a 20 year old Latin spot that's been dead for 15 years. That's just like, here's a shitty quesadilla. Here's, you know, again, your tomatoes are getting pulled out of a jar. It needs to go. Right. But it's the, you know, it's not just about, it doesn't always have to just be like, well, this is what I'm super passionate about. We looked at it and it was like, this makes sense here because the demographic calls for it. And there's nothing doing it. If we wanted to do an Asian restaurant, there's already 90 of them. You know, if you're doing this new American, well, four of them have opened since we've opened. You know, so it's part of culture now. I mean, that food is part of culture. And what you're doing is just making it more, you're adding the freshness. You're bringing the care that it kind of deserves and it's been neglected here in the market. That's sort of business in a bubble right there anyways, right? It's like something's been fine. Right. You know, and then someone comes in and says, well, you know, I think we can make the adjustment and push these guys out or do what needs to be done. And that's just what we looked at around here was like, all right, well, we've got a lot of 30-year-old Mexican restaurants and... It's time to go. They don't squeeze fresh juice. You know, it's like that type of thing. What are you going to do after this one? After this one? So you're going to have two coming here soon. When's the grand opening roughly of the next one? It'll be probably mid-February. Okay, so pretty soon. If you need me to go and get drunk and pass out in your bathroom, I'm available. I like that. Especially for the software. Hired. Yeah. Hired and fired. It's already been a fun project. It's one of those things where... So on that one, you got a TI allowance, some lessons learned. We did. You got a nice TI allowance. So... What kind of lease did you sign there? We definitely did, you know, we earned it here, you know, and again, the town seems like this whole area was a war zone. The first three years were like literally just kind of like sinking your nails into the wall and just making sure you were holding on. It's a visual. Yeah, it was brutal. It really was. It was just sort of like, okay, I won't pay myself the next month. And then you just kind of figured out, you know, you really get deep into it. It's like, where's our labor fluctuations? Where, you know, in things that, you know, if we're in the right location at the right time and you're fully in a saturated area, and it's like you're just busy right off the bat, which you can have in town. Yeah. But you also need the funding and everything else to get there. So it's always, it's always a sort of tough back and forth to figure out like, well, I didn't have a million dollars. So this is where we started. So we scrapped and, you know, so far we're winning. And basically what happened down there was one of the old drink regulars bumped into Palmer and he was a real estate guy that was part of the managing group of this new West at Chestnut project. And he had basically said, well, the burger place that's in there is going out of business. They didn't understand the clientele that was above them. Sure. And they didn't cater to it. Sure. They didn't recognize people that lived in the building. They didn't dim their lights at night. They didn't have the music on properly. They just, they just couldn't really get it together. And they didn't even make two years. So when we went in, they, like I said, they, the building management and them were, were very frank with us. And we're like, well, we know what you guys can do. And they're, you have to imagine that. So this was four years after we opened here. Their base rent was the same as here. We did a 10 year straight lease. Yeah. I believe with a five year option afterwards, small, small, I think it's a 2% increase. But we also got 50. Yeah, we got 50 dollars a square foot and 10 improvement. Probably could have gotten more. But then like, even just through a mistake, it was like, they asked us how much free rent we would need. And we're like, well, you know, four months to build it out. And like, okay. But it was already a sign that they were giving us three months to start. So we ended up getting seven months free rent. That's perfect. And it was just like, this is, you know, wild. And then with this, we got the right people. We get pretty much everyone that is invested has been irregular at the bar, knows what we're doing, felt secure about what they were doing, that we were still here, that we made it in this market, that we made it through, they went here. And we were able to fully fund the thing. And I think like six weeks. That's great. So going into it, the confidence of like, not being locked down with a crazy lease, having the tenant improvement, having the free rent, and really not having the bill from the bank every month. Right. You know, like these guys are going to get paid back. But they're going to get paid back when we say that we're ready to pay them back. Right. You know, we're not going to strangle ourselves in the interim. So it's nice just to be like, well, we don't have that three to $5,000 bill from the bank every month that if we don't pay, we're fucked. It's like, all right, great. First quarter we did this. We're going to expect this in the second quarter. If we want to shoot out some dividends, we'll shoot out dividends. That's just a nice feeling. Totally. You're in control as we roll into 2020 here. So for me, it's always a time to like reflect and think in decades. Right. It's like you're kind of your refresh. Yeah. What is it for you? What are you? Who is Devin in 2030? What are you guys? What's the vision? You got two spots that'll be open here soon. Right. And so you'll close the decade. I guess open the decade with two locations. Yeah. We'll have two here. I'll be interested in another project. Obviously, ideally, give ProLime the year or two that it needs. The kind of cool thing about Quincy in the market is that nothing really fully exists. There's no French bistro. There's so much of the market that as it moves, that's available to it. So there's a lot of creative that's still, like that's kind of what drives me in these deals and finding the deals and going through is kind of being like, you know, like what is the thing that we can do here? What makes this place better than the other? You know, what can we bring here that's new and different and exciting? Yeah. But in the end of it, in reality, looking at 2020 to 2030, I want to own my own property. I want to be, you know, I do want to get to the point. You want to own your building. Yeah. I want a building. I've seen the restaurant tours that bought their building, ran their business for 15 years, and then they sell their business in their landlord and they're making more money than they were. While running their business. Than they ever had the business. Yeah. And I just, I think as we discussed before, like I'm, you know, put it out there where like, I'm not looking to get rich. I'm looking to sort of find that independence and the things that can pay me to be what I want to do when I want to do it. So I think that's, that's where I want to be. That's where I see myself. And I think I love that. I don't, I like real estate. I like that I can walk on top of it and that it's there. And I think that I'm very sort of bullish on this market. I think Boston's been undervalued for a very long time. And I think that I think so. I think if you look at compared to some of the other markets, like San Fran, you know, and used to still have this building biotech and financial and education and just the hospitals in general, it's, it's insane. Yeah. And it's insane that you could, 10 years ago, you could be buying, you know, a condo three blocks from Kenmore for 250 grand. And now that condo is $750,000. Yeah. You know, so it's still rolling. And, you know, I just, I'm always interested in real estate. But I, in the end of it, it's, I want to, you know, I know I think if you're in the restaurant business, you have to realize that you can't do it forever. Right. In the same capacity. You can be a part of it. And, you know, and I've seen and known many great restaurateurs into their 60s and early 70s. But there's, you have to have enough insurances behind you that are something else to just kind of be able to wander through and, you know, shake hands and do that type of thing. I realize that, you know, this business also can eat you alive. So you need to, you need to make sure that while you're doing it and while you have the ability to make that money and you have all that, you know, charisma and all these things you want to do that, you're looking down the line to be like, I already know now, I've got a six and a four year old. You know the last chapter. And it's, it's one of those things where you do have to realize that you have to step back, which is probably one of the hardest parts. But I remember, I always remember the story that was on like NPR about this guy who had won a Nobel Peace Prize for something. And the gist of it was basically like, yeah, I'm the very best in the world at this right now. But I haven't seen my kid in six months. Yeah. You know, and it's sort of like. The perspective is real. Yeah. I'm not that good of a dad. I'm not the best dad in the world. So I think it's, you know, you have to find that balance because if you don't, it's really easy to be passionate about food and wine and all these things and find the next venture and go. But you, you do have to. They say you can have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want. Exactly. And there's a balance in that. Yeah. Where can people find you? Tell people where they can find you. Obviously the town's in here in Quincy. Come hang out. Come have a cocktail. Come eat some good food. Pearl Line down the line. Townsend Quincy. So we are on the red line, which is the major line for Boston when it works. We're right across the street from the Quincy Center. And they get a new beautiful common outside. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of long here. It's fun to see the growth. Fun fact. The, the Adams family is buried across the street. My crew, your crew. Not the TV show. Couple presidents. Yep. John Hancock was born about. An Abigail. 900 yards from here. The Adams is, this was part of their farm. You got one of the largest revolutionary war cemeteries. You got two presidents in tune next to each other, which is nowhere else I think in the country. Never mind that they were. Literally across the street. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. We should have some music going when we exit this interview. You know, the little. I'll, I'll have a junior boy. Yeah, he's a player. Thanks for coming on the podcast, brother. Thanks for coming down here. I know it's slow for you guys, so. Hey man, happy to do it. All the way from the West Coast. All the way. Thank you. You bet. We're freezing our asses off. We here at Startup to Storefront would love to hear feedback from you. Reach out and let us know what you think. Either through rating us on the podcast app, or by sliding into our DMs. You can find us both on Facebook and Instagram at Startup to Storefront. Our theme song is composed by DoubleTouch. 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